Psalm 51:13 Quid pro quo or no...

“Then I will teach transgressors your ways,
and sinners will be converted to you.” (Psalm 51:13 NASB)
Short and sweet this week, unlike the usually verbose and tart prose you come to expect from your corpulent scribe. Onward we plow through Psalm 51, one of the finest in the Bible.
“Then.” Simple first word, but loaded for bear! Was David trying to bribe God? Would a quid pro quo (“this for that” arrangement) work with a God that needs nothing from us? No, he had a different thought. The past 12 verses have amounted to David begging for a restoration for failing and sinning against God by having an affair with Bathsheba, then having her husband killed to try to cover it up. David starts with “then” because he is exemplifying the right response to grace (unmerited favor). Luke 7:41+ has the Savior discussing debt to your neighbor and how being forgiven of debt in varying amounts relates to love by debtor to the one owed to. This, to me, matches David perfectly. David knows his offense was grave and that he deserves the fate of his predecessor Saul, and knows acutely that he has a hope of forgiveness with God. He also understands the importance of humility before a high and Holy God (See Psalms 18:27; 25:9; 35:13; 147:6; 149:4 among others). He is so anxious to do good things, not to earn forgiveness, but to express thanks for it. He desperately wants back his standing before God so that he can honor his Redeemer.
So...are you really saved? Do you do good things to earn forgiveness or because you are so grateful to an awesome God for saving you? Count up your sins. (Read Exodus 20 for starters.) Every lie, every lustful moment, every time you have stolen, etc.. Now add up the times you have just thought bad things. Then think of Jesus Christ dying on the cross as a punishment for your and my sins. Now ask yourself, why would Jesus die on a cross in a way that made people all around sick if He needed your help to save you? Would your helping an old lady across the street or being carbon neutral pay for the multitude of sins you have committed in your life? “Then” means “You saved a wretch like me, I will forever do all I can to bring you honor to your Awesome and Holy name, not to pay you back (impossible) or exalt myself (Isaiah 64:6).” Yikes, the first word took half a page, maybe this will be as long as the rest?!? Sorry!
“I will teach transgressors your ways...”. David knows his “testimony” has been changed by his stupidity. I believe he knows he can use his story, in a humbled way, to show others what not to do. Throughout I & II Chronicles, Judges, and I & II Kings, among others, are kings and rulers who don't learn from their mistakes. Downward spirals abound. I believe David is different. He plans on humbly exalting the Savior like he did as a boy when he whacked the Giant.
“And sinners will be converted to you.” If there was a quid pro quo to be found, it may very well have been here. “I will teach transgressors your way, and sinners will be converted to you.” When God, through a humble servant/pastor/accountability partner/ friend teaches “His ways”, sinners like us (Romans 3:23) will be “born again” (John 3). When I first grasped my own sin in a way that made sense, I ran to the One who could save me. We have dragged the term “born again” through the mud in my generation, yet Jesus clearly says in John 3 and other places that unless you are born again, you will face an eternity in a place as real as Greenfield called Hell. Don't say a prescribed prayer someone feeds you if you don't understand sin and its effects and realities. Don't walk an aisle in a church to get a better life or for fulfillment or for cash from God. Don't sign a pledge card to buy God's forgiveness. See your sins like David, REPENT from them (turn from them and forsake them...agree never to do them again and HATE them going forward), and TRUST alone in Jesus Christ to pay your sin debt on the cross to save you , and you will be born again. Trust in your good works to save you at your own peril. George Whitefield said it best saying “Works? Works? A man get to heaven by works? I would as soon think of climbing to the moon on a rope of sand!”. My works are like my column's name... Filthy Rags (Isaiah 64:6). Would God save me because of something (my good works) He compared to a used maxi-pad? I think not. I am the reason He sent Jesus to die, and you can get in on His forgiveness too! And for those already born again, read closely. We should give Him everything we have the rest of our lives for His goodness for saving us. David felt the same way. We owe God everything! Reread the Luke verse above, think about your sin and His forgiveness and get to work! The fields are white.
Verse for the week 1 John 1:9...read it closely!
Diet update: 285...lost 2.6 more, only 100 to go! God is Good, all the time!
Pray for our mission trip this week. I appreciate you!

Psalm 51:11-12 Verbs Say It All

“Do not cast me away from Your presence, And do not take Your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of Your salvation, And sustain me with a willing spirit.”
(Psalms 51:11-12 NASB)

When we left off we were going line by line through King David’s 51st Psalm. King David, as you recall, was confronted by the Prophet Nathan about his blatant sin against a Holy God with Bathsheba. This Psalm rightly expresses how he felt having no excuses or attempted cop-outs. As we arrive at verses 11-12, verbs capture this couplet to me.

Cast. I looked for a nice version of the Hebrew word we translate as “cast”. I checked 10 translations and paraphrases for something to grasp about the word. I say, hesitantly and with fear and trembling that Peterson’s THE MESSAGE (gasp) gives my favorite rendering of this verse and how it relates to the word “cast”. It says “Don't throw me out with the trash.” One of the most wealthy and powerful men in Earth’s history was afraid of getting cast out by God like you might a flattened and crusty toothpaste tube. “The man after God’s own heart” was deathly concerned he was about to become “the man God used to use, that is now in the burn pile outside of town where the fire never stops”. David clearly remembered running from King Saul before Saul turned sharply from anointed, successful King to raging, paranoid madman who committed suicide to avoid capture by the Philistines. Fallers from grace are often not gently placed into a pit. Often it’s more like getting cast into the pit by your hair. David was both scared of being out of God’s presence and scared to be in His presence. He clearly understood His sin and who it was against primarily…God Himself.

Side note/evangelism tip…please change the phrase “separated from God for eternity” to “go to Hell for eternity.” Why in the world would a person who hates God and are enemies of God (see Col. 1:21, James 4:4) care if they are forced to live forever without being in His presence. Duhh! (This is a highly theological yet relevant term for “He who has ears let him listen up!”) It sounds like a great thing to be separate from God until you get there and realize you don’t just party with your friends there! (For more info, search Bible for such phrases as “worm that doesn’t turn”, fire, brimstone, damnation, etc…)

Take. Take is our second verb. While I firmly believe you, once firmly and soundly saved, can not lose your salvation, nor can someone take it from you, I must acknowledge that there are a couple verses in the New Testament that make me say hmmm?!?, but this clearly isn’t one of them. David wasn’t in the same Covenant as we are. The Holy Spirit had a different role to an Old Testament King than an indwelt Holy Spirit does to a present day believer. Today the Holy Spirit, upon repenting and trusting Jesus Christ as both Lord and Savior, indwells you as a down payment of God’s presence in Heaven. He acts as a kind of teleprompter, a sin sniffer-outer (another highly theologically strong term), and many, many other things for a believer. To David, the Holy Spirit was an anointer, a wisdom-giver, and a protector for a King, and, therefore, not operationally the same as for us. He was afraid of falling out of God’s favor, not afraid of having God remove Himself, for a lack of a better/more sophisticated term, from David’s self. David knew first hand that one of the worst things that can happen is for God to give in and say “OK, have it your way...and take what happens as your lesson!” The thought of having God say this to me sends chills up my spine, as it would have David as well. Terrifying!

Restore. Have you ever done something really stupid to your best friend or your spouse? Finally an area I am an expert in! David desperately wants to be restored to God’s favor. Much like when I do something to make my way-better-than-I-deserve wife furious in my every day life, I yearn to make up with her so she isn’t upset with me, David, in an exponentially more profound amount wants to restore the fellowship he had with God. Nehemiah 8:10b says “for the joy of the LORD is your strength.” David wanted the joy back! Just reconciling with an angry wife or a sinned-against God isn’t enough. David desperately wants restored fellowship to as good then better than it was before, yet fears the worst.

Sustain. David wants to never do it again. He had sinned against God in a profound way and wants to stop. He needs sustaining power. Other translations call it upholding, but all point to desired holiness and help retreating from sin. Scottish preacher and evangelist Robert Murray McCheyne, as quoted in C.H. Spurgeon’s Expositions of the Psalms, writes brilliantly “I am tempted to think that I am now an established Christian, that I have overcome this or that lust so long that I have got into the habit of the opposite grace, so that there is no fear; I may venture very near the temptation, nearer than other men. This is a lie of Satan. I might as well speak of gunpowder getting by habit a power of resisting fire, so as not to catch the spark. As long as the powder is wet it resists the spark, but when it is dry it is ready to explode at the first touch. As long as the Spirit dwells in my heart, He deadens me to sin, so that if lawfully called through temptation I may recon upon God carrying me through. But when the Spirit leaves me, I am like dry gunpowder. Oh for a sense of this!” (FYI : The Spirit of God always technically dwells in a believer’s heart, but our sin breaks fellowship with Him and builds up calluses that make resisting temptation harder and harder, leaving the impression, like McCheyne says, that the Spirit has left.) McCheyne knew the Holy Spirit of God is our sustainer in resisting temptation. David wanted, and needs this help badly!
As a matter of application, where are you with God? Are you a believer who has become calloused to your sin? Do you believe at all? Do you think sin is a big deal? Look at Exodus 20 and read the Ten Commandments as a tool to check to see if you are “good enough” to go to heaven. Have you ever told a lie? Have you really wanted something someone else has? Have you ever committed adultery, or even lusted in your heart? Now reread Psalm 51 and know who your sin is against. Think of it like murder. Murder a dog, get a fine. Murder a homeless man, get 15 years. Murder the president, get the chair. Who the offense is against makes all the difference in the penalty. God is Holy. God is perfectly just. Sin against Him at your own risk. David understood the ramifications…do you?

Weight update: 287.6…lost 4 pounds for a total of 49…little over half an Olson twin. God has been merciful and so very good to me!
Memory Verse: Romans 3:10.
Prayer request: I leave on a Mission trip to New Orleans Saturday morning. We are helping rebuild a church destroyed by Katrina.

Psalm 51:9-10

“Hide Your face from my sinsAnd blot out all my iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God,And renew a steadfast spirit within me.”
(Psalm 51:9-10)

I am particularly interested in four words of this piece of David’s repentant cry for cleansing: Hide, Blot, Create, Renew. Four loaded verbs. Four humble requests from a humbled King to a Worthy God. Four gems we can together mine from this beautiful psalm. Forgive me in advance for getting in the way of their luster.

Hide. Charles Spurgeon, in his uber-exhaustive work Expositions of the Psalms, explains how serious David seemed to be, saying “Do not look at them (David’s sins); be at pains not to see them. They thrust themselves in the way; but, Lord, refuse to behold them, lest if thou consider them, thine anger burn, and I die.”
If only David’s son Solomon could have given him Proverb (3:7) “Do not be wise in your own eyes; fear the LORD and shun evil.” before he failed and broke the entirety of the Ten Commandments in his adulterous and murderous affair with Bathsheba. After the fact, his fear was realized. He seemed to be (in vain) begging an omnipresent God to not look at him. It reminds me of when I would catch one of my kids red-handed in some indiscretion at my house…inevitably the same response from the guilty party…”don’t look at me Dad!” More than a caught with the hand in the cookie jar! He was caught spitting in the face of his Creator…and he knew it. Romans 3:23 makes it clear we share this with David. Yet, He died for us anyway! What amazing love, what amazing grace!

Blot. “Blotting” calls to mind a sponge. There was a glaring red blot in David’s recent past. He has absolutely failed and was sick about it. If you recall, the first verse of this psalm said “According to the greatness of Your compassion blot out my transgressions.” I have been told by many a wise Bible teacher that when something is repeated, examine it close…it’s probably very important. David not only requested a blottin’ twice, he added the word “all” to it to be sure none of the spot is left behind. Spurgeon wrote “All repetitions are not ‘vain repetitions.’ Souls in agony have no space to find variety of language: pain has to conceal itself in monotones David’s face was ashamed with looking on his sin, and no diverting thoughts could remove it from his memory; he prays the Lord to do with his sin what he himself cannot. If God hide not His face from our sin, He must hide it forever from us; and if He blot not out our sins, He must blot our names out of His Book of Life”. I think my sin required coarse sandpaper to grind away, but Christ’s paid the penalty for my failures on the cross and still had power to remove yours as well! What amazing love, what amazing grace!

Create. The word create here is the same as the Hebrew in Genesis’ Creation account. “Bara” transliterated means “to create from nothing”. Evolution can’t create something from nothing. Man can’t either. Oprah may seem to create money from nothing, but it actually comes from people, not from thin air. Only God can create something from nothing. J. Vernon McGee’s Thru the Bible Commentary explains eloquently saying “’I need a new heart,’ David said. ‘Create in me a new heart’ and the word create means ‘out of nothing’. In other words, there was nothing in David’s heart He could use. He was not asking for renovation or reformation. He was asking for something new. Sometimes we hear the invitation ‘Give God your heart.’ May I ask you, ‘What do you think God wants with that old, dirty, filthy heart of yours?’ He wants to give you a new one.” Switching languages but with the same idea in mind, Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:17 “Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.” I am so very thankful God replaced my old heart with a new one! What amazing love, what amazing grace!

Renew. Renew is similar but in a way opposite to Create. It implies a fallen version of the old good one. There is hope for a back slider here. I was saved when I was a pre-teen. I wasn’t discipled and remained a naïve Christian for nearly ten years. During that time I drifted further away from God and deeper into sin. I knew the sin I committed was against God but became calloused, yet self-righteous enough to it and did it anyway. I was spiritually overconfident enough to think God must overlook the sin in my life because I was such a good ole boy! At the same time, I longed for another mountaintop experience, but was in no spiritual condition to deserve one (if that’s possible anyway). Fortunately, at the birth of my first child I realized the depravity of my life and recommitted myself to driving out sin in my life. Have I got it all pushed from my life? Not hardly. Am I growing in holiness? Yes. Do I have a long way to go? Just like David! Join me when I ask God to “renew a steadfast spirit within me”. None of us are what we should be. None are beyond a “Bathsheba on the roof” experience. As sure as you think you are above it, the devil has a foothold on which to work.
To conclude, read through this Psalm and pray it to God. If it comes out insincere, evaluate your heart…are you as good as you think you are? I used to overlook my own sin especially as it compared to my neighbor. Is your and my sin a big deal to a Holy God? The big ones as well as the little ones are what Jesus was put on the tree as a replacement punishment for. Knowing fully that we would deliberately sin against Him with no remorse, He died for us anyway! What amazing love, what amazing grace!


Diet update…I lost 2.6 lbs this week. I have lost a total of 44.8 lbs, almost exactly what my 5 year old boy weighs. God is Good, All the time!

Bible verse of the week… John 3:16.

Won't You Take Me To...Demon Town? by Dan Phillips (Teampyro.blogspot.com)

The scene described in Mark 5 has the makings of a pretty effective little horror story:
They came to the other side of the sea, to the country of the Gerasenes.2 And when Jesus had stepped out of the boat, immediately there met him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit. 3 He lived among the tombs. And no one could bind him anymore, not even with a chain, 4 for he had often been bound with shackles and chains, but he wrenched the chains apart, and he broke the shackles in pieces. No one had the strength to subdue him. 5 Night and day among the tombs and on the mountains he was always crying out and cutting himself with stones.6 And when he saw Jesus from afar, he ran and fell down before him. 7 And crying out with a loud voice, he said, "What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I adjure you by God, do not torment me." 8 For he was saying to him, "Come out of the man, you unclean spirit!"9 And Jesus asked him, "What is your name?"He replied, "My name is Legion, for we are many." 10 And he begged him earnestly not to send them out of the country. 11 Now a great herd of pigs was feeding there on the hillside, 12 and they begged him, saying, "Send us to the pigs; let us enter them."13 So he gave them permission.And the unclean spirits came out, and entered the pigs, and the herd, numbering about two thousand, rushed down the steep bank into the sea and were drowned in the sea. 14 The herdsmen fled and told it in the city and in the country. And people came to see what it was that had happened.15 And they came to Jesus and saw the demon-possessed man, the one who had had the legion, sitting there, clothed and in his right mind, and they were afraid. 16 And those who had seen it described to them what had happened to the demon-possessed man and to the pigs.17 And they began to beg Jesus to depart from their region.18 As he was getting into the boat....It has many of the classic elements. It was apparently nighttime; there had been a terrible storm; graveyards — and demons. Lots and lots of demons.On most occasions Jesus cast the demons out with a word (Matthew 8:16). Here, more of a process is involved. The demon tells Jesus that there is a "legion" of them in the man. We stagger at the thought that there could have actually been six thousand demons in one man. It could have been demonic bravado; boastful, if pointless, exaggeration.Yet they then inhabited and enfrenzied a herd of two thousand pigs. We simply must admit that there is more that we do not know about demons, than there is that we do know.The really important thing to know about demons, though, is that they are utterly subject to Jesus' word. He who had stilled the elemental storm at sea with a word, could do the same to the spiritual storm inside the man. The demons know they have no choice but to go where He sends them. As many as six thousand demons versus one Jesus — and they're hopelessly outmatched. They wait, quavering to see what He will do to them, knowing they are bound to His word.So they implore Him to send them into the herd of pigs. Particularly, the spokesman "begged [Jesus] earnestly not to send them out of the country."Did that ever strike you? "Pigs, fine, whatever. Just please let us hang around these parts." Something about that area, that region, appealed to them, felt like home to them.So here's the great irony, and probably the key to the demons' petition. They are cast out into the pigs, the pigs drown, the demoniac is restored to his right mind, the townspeople come and see this all....And what is their reaction? They all know about this notoriously insane, demonized man. His feats of insane strength were the stuff of local legend. Yet here he sits, calm, sane, sober. And Jesus is responsible.Their response?They ask Jesus to leave.I never get over that, it just so amazes me. "Wow, that's really great, with the, heh-heh, the demons, and the... the... all that — so, could you, like, go? Please? Now?"That's their priorities. A man saved — but that herd of pigs, all gone. All that profit, gone. You did this? Go.So I wonder: was that just a really great place to be a demon? These people, all obsessed with order and propriety, and profit; not so concerned about this wasted wretch of a man... "Mmm-mm, smells like Hell to me!" Was that it?But I haven't even gotten to the scariest part of this little horror yarn yet.The scariest part isn't the storm, or the imagery of graves at night, or the raging, raving demoniac. The scariest part isn't the image of thousands of demons, holding the soul of a helpless man captive.No, this is the scariest part.They ask Jesus to leave —And He does.

Psalm 51:8 from the Broken King

Did you hear about the famous quarterback’s gimpy ankle? Will the Cardinals’ famous pitchers be able to pitch this year with the bum arms and all? Did you see how that famous obese writer is shedding pounds…he must be ill! Throughout our lives we all get blessed with injuries and illnesses. How we learn from these events will determine how much of a blessing they turn out to be. Looking back at my childhood, it is no small miracle I am here to write this piece of journalistic smorgas-bore for your enjoyment today. My childhood was wrought with wounds, gouges, fires and accidents. I was the youngest of three kids and found myself on the short end of a physiological bludgeoning more often than not. Take the following list for example…
Before the age of 16:

I ran through a plate glass door chasing a sibling ala Mr.T. Getting the non-safety glass out of arms can be a tedious chore.
I was hit with a full swing of a nine-iron golf club on the forehead, cracking my skull. (Insert misc. head injury joke of your choice relating to my writing prowess.)
I bashed my face into our porch step cracking teeth and surely not adding to my heinously good looks. (See notes from #2.)
I was shot between the eyes with a bb gun.
I broke a needle off in my foot playing the static electricity game on my brother while he mindlessly talked to his girlfriend on the phone.
I ripped a massive hole in my shin on a tent stake running at the local carnival…not the most interesting thing to happen to me at the carnival mind you…
I cut my Achilles tendon on my foot riding a bicycle barefooted. Being the Mensa candidate I wasn’t, I repeated the event a week after the repair and broke out all the stitches. The doctor butterfly bandaged it and gave me a referral card to his competition…I guess he had seen enough.
I played a game with my brother I’ll call “dead man’s dive”. He blindfolded me and led me throughout the yard and ultimately to the top of a wood pile. He told me to jump!...presumably out over the barb-wire fence next to the wood pile. Instead I landed on the fence and hung by my pectoral muscle (boob for those in Greenfield) until he rescued me from my meat hook agony.
I stubbed my big toe so many times in such a gory way the doctor fitted me with a special metal toe guard to try in vain to let it heal.

So what on earth does this drivel have to do with my faith or the cost of gas at Hot Spot? Psalm 51:8…our next verse from the study that began with me in Las Vegas a couple weeks ago.
Psalm 51:8 says “Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones you have crushed rejoice.” Context is required especially if you are just joining us in this journey through one of the most meaningful chapters in the Bible. Psalm 51 is a psalm written by King David after sleeping with his general’s wife, getting her pregnant, trying to cover up his sin, and killing the general to avoid being found out. Nathan the prophet then heard from God and confronted King David about the sin. This Psalm is a song of broken remorse and requested healing and forgiveness from a crushed King to his God. David’s bones are being crushed under the weight of God’s wrath over this sin, and David, in a humble and contrite way, says “Uncle!”
Charles Spurgeon, in his wonderful Volume 1 of The Treasury of David explains the key to this verse said in a way that further illustrates my lack of writing skill when he wrote:
“ He groaned under no mere flesh wounds; his firmest and yet tenderest powers were broken in pieces all asunder;…Yet if He who crushed would cure, every wound would become a new mouth for song, every bone quivering before with agony would become equally sensible of intense delight! The figure is bold and so is the supplicant. He is requesting a great thing; he seeks joy for a sinful heart, music for crushed bones. Preposterous prayer anywhere but at the throne of God! Preposterous there most of all but for the cross where Jehovah Jesus bore our sins in His body on the tree.”

Looking back, I was tough as a kid! Sticks and stones and golf clubs may have broken my bones, but words were the first thing to really hurt me. The Bible showed me my sin just like Nathan showed David his. My point is that through all of the major and minor injuries I endured physically (listed above) and emotionally (through a verbally abusive step-father…they’re divorced now…and multiple divorces of my parents and the redicule of being fat), nothing remotely made the impression on me that the brokenness I felt the first time I pieced together the significance of Jesus’ sacrifice. Jesus Christ left Heaven to become a man to live on our fallen planet to save mankind. He healed the lame, raised the dead, and walked on water. What did we do for Him in return? We brutally killed Him! Why? Because of Mark Applegate’s (and your) sin. Someone had to pay the penalty for the sin we all committed against a Holy God. (Romans 6:23). Who cares about the cuts and surgeries of life? Let the wounds of my brokenness because of realizing how Good God is be a mouth for my song! I was guilty just like King David! Jesus paid my penalty on the cross for all my many sins before and after I came to know Him. Add up your sins…how often do you lie? Lust? Steal? Use His name in vain? (Read Exodus 20, then add them up!) Yet He died for you anyway. Simply amazing! David understood. I do too. How about you? If you want to get right with God, first review your sins, turn from them, then call on the One who died for you and let Him be Boss. Until you realize your need for Him, you will never find Him. Be humble (Read Proverbs 3:34) and broken like King David and you will find Him! When you do, trust me…you’ll know exactly what to say in your prayer to Him.

Weight update 293.8…lost 5.8 pounds...still enormous but shrinking fast! Bible verse for the week… Romans 5:8.