When I mention the names Babe Ruth, Hank Aaron, and Barry Bonds, those of you who follow baseball will quickly recognize these as Major League Baseball’s homerun record holders.
Now the interesting thing about these guys is that while many baseball fans have a good idea of how many homeruns they hit—very few have any idea how many strike outs they had.
In 10, 616 times at bat, Babe Ruth hit 714 homeruns but struck out 1330 times—he struck out more than twice as many times as he hit homeruns.
In 12,364 times at bat, Hank Aaron hit 755 homeruns and struck out 1383 times—again over twice as many strikeouts than homeruns.
And in about 10,000 at bats, Barry Bonds hit 762 homeruns and struck out 1539 times—again striking out twice as many times as he hit homeruns.
So these three great baseball homerun kings failed twice as much as they succeeded when it came to hitting homeruns.
And in their careers, when asked about all their strikeouts these homerun kings all made the point that failure was to be expected when you go to the plate over 10,000 times.
And I think they have a point there. Whenever you step up to the plate you may hit a homerun but you’re also twice as likely to strike out and fail.
And the only way to remedy the failure rate is to just not go to the plate and try anymore.
But, then none of them would have hit over 700 homeruns either.
You see, you can’t succeed without trying and you can’t try without failing, thus success at anything, including the Christian Life, encompasses a certain amount and degree of failure.
You know—that as Christians we cannot step up to the plate time after time and not strikeout once in awhile.
And if you’re like me, you’ll strikeout more than from time to time and may even find that your failures significantly out number your successes in living the Christian life.
The fact is, all of us as Christians strikeout and fail as followers of Christ and therefore, need to learn how to deal with those failures when they occur.
We have several young men and women who are leaving our church in the next few days and weeks who we all hope will succeed greatly as Christians but whom we also know may fail greatly as well.
And with all of our personal failures and knowing that our children will fail in some areas of their personal lives as well—it amazes me that so many Christians have never developed a theology of failure—In other words, a biblically sound plan for dealing with personal failures caused by personal sin.
Now the problem we have with even thinking about something like this is we really don’t want to deal with potential failure especially when it is caused by personal sin—because…….well…..we’re not supposed to sin……yet how many times do we sin and how many times have we really blown it so as to wonder if we were even recoverable?
Well listen…..my study of the Word of God and my experience in life causes me to believe that we all better have a plan and a strategy for dealing with our “sins” and in particular our “unmentionable hidden sins” so as to not become a permanent spiritual casualty whose life fails to reflect the grace and glory of God in being rescued from failing to live life God’s way.
All of us struggle with the remaining remnants of our sinful depravity imbedded in our sinful flesh in which we dwell.
And until we get to glory and are glorified we will struggle with the lust of our eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life.
That’s just the way it is and because that is just the way it is, we better figure out what to do when we do fall and sin and thus fail because there is a good chance that whereas, every once in a while we knock a homerun out of the park—we are probably striking out a whole lot more.
When I was a police officer we had to train with our firearms on a regular basis. One of the drills we practiced was called "A Failure Drill". In this drill, we practiced the steps necessary to clear a jam in our weapon that made it inoperative during a fire fight. In other words, we had to be proficient in knowing what to do when our weapon failed to operate properly so as to get back in the fight and win. This is a good example of what Psalm 85 is all about--it is rehearsing the steps a Christian needs to take after he has failed to operate properly as a believer so as to get back in the fight and win the battle.
So, turn with me to Psalm 85 where we will learn how to successfully deal with the failure of having involved ourselves in personal sin and in particular the kinds of sin that threaten to undo us.
And what I mean by that, is those sins, which are of such a serious nature that they have the potential to and may very well have already done devastating and serious damage to our lives, relationships, and testimonies for Christ.
Now, the exact background of this Psalm is not known for sure.
We can see however that the occasion for writing the psalm appears to be sin of a serious nature that has caused the people of God to experience God’s displeasure with them. We see this in verses 4-7.
Therefore, this is a psalm dealing with the failure of God’s people to obey Him and how they successfully dealt with that failure so as to recover from it and not be sidelined by it.
Our outline will be pretty simple—we’ll simply ask and answer the question:
What does a believer need after he has sinned if he is to recover and not be sidelined by it.
So, let’s get started and find out…...
What a believer needs after he has sinned if he is to recover and not be sidelined by it is:
1. To Remember and Rehearse the Gospel to God and Himself. (1-3)
Using six past tense verbs, the psalmist in talking to God, rehearses what he knows God has already accomplished on their behalf as His people.
In verse 1, he remembers before God that God has already showed favor to their land and had restored them from the discipline of captivity—whatever captivity it was.
Then in verse 2, he remembers that God has already forgiven the iniquity of the people and covered all their sin.
And in verse 3, he remembers that God has already withdrawn all His fury from them and turned away from His burning anger toward them as sinners.
In other words, he remembers before God what God has already accomplished on behalf of His covenant people in terms of dealing with their sin.
And if you look at these verses again you’ll see that verse 2 is talking about “forgiveness” and “atonement” whereas verse 3 is dealing with “propitiation”.
Now, yes it is true that Jesus has not died yet, but so sure was the fact that He would die on the cross and pay the believers’ sin penalties that God could treat even these people with saving grace as they believed in Him.
The main point in this stanza is that if the believer is to deal effectively with the devastation and destruction caused by his sin so as to recover and not be sidelined by his failure—he must remember and rehearse to God, so as to rehearse to himself, that his sin has already been covered by the blood and God’s wrath toward it has already been removed.
This is the first aspect of preaching the Gospel to yourself.
It would go like this—O LORD, I have sinned so terribly against you—so badly that I am deeply ashamed of myself and detest what I have done to so dishonor your Name.
And Lord, I deserve nothing but wrath and eternal damnation but I know and I remember that You….
Have already forgiven me of this sin.
And have already covered this sin with the blood of Jesus.
And have already withdrawn from me all your fury for this sin.
And have turned completely away from me your burning anger for this sin.
2. To Seek Restoration to God’s Fellowship & Relief From His Indignation. (4-5)
Once our sin is realized, it needs to be repented of and confessed as we seek to be restored to fellowship with God.
And the fact of the matter is that the Bible promises that once we confess our sins to God that He does restore us to fellowship with Himself, however this does not mean that He always allows us to experience this restored fellowship right away.
You see, whereas, as believers we never have to worry about being brought under the wrath of God, we can find ourselves experiencing the indignation and the displeasure of God when we choose to disobey Him even after we have confessed our sin and had our fellowship with God restored.
This is sometimes the discipline that God brings into the believer’s life after he has sinned.
And this indignation and divine displeasure is miserable for it usually manifests itself as a sense of distance between you and God in which God seems far away.
In this position, you are unable to enjoy God or to sense His enjoyment of you.
And again as I said before this feeling of separation from God and the inability to experience His warm fellowship is often the very divine discipline He brings into our lives to teach us that sin is simply not worth it.
Consider Micah 7:7-9, where the prophet Micah admits that he has sinned and is having to bear the indignation of the Lord for his sin.
Furthermore, note that just because he confesses his sin and has repented of it that he still is having to undergo this sense of distance from and displeasure of the Lord.
In fact, he will undergo this discipline from the Lord until God sees fit to bring it to an end.
Isaiah made this same point when speaking on behalf of God’s people he wrote in Isaiah 8:17, “And I will wait for the LORD who is hiding His face from the house of Jacob; I will even look eagerly for Him.”
Consider also the words of Psalm 123:1-2 as well as Psalm 130.
These are prayers of confession yet the psalmist is still waiting for God to restore the joy of his salvation.
You know this is what happens when we sin. God has promised to discipline us and even after we have confessed our sin and turned from it we oftentimes experience God’s discipline in terms of a sense of distance from Him.
Don’t misinterpret that to mean that He no longer desires your fellowship or that He does not love you or that He is getting His revenge by giving you the “silent treatment”.
No…..what God is doing is teaching you and I that the sin we so desired because we thought it would make us happy has really robbed of us true happiness and joy that only comes when we are able to sense God’s presence in our lives.
While undergoing this divine discipline we should earnestly pray that God would bring it to an end at the proper time and restore us to a point of being able to experience and enjoy His fellowship again.
Even David, in his prayer of confession recorded for us in Psalm 51 had to ask God to restore to him the joy of his salvation because it was not automatically restored upon his confession of sin.
The sense of not allowing us to enjoy the “joy of our salvation” by being able to experience renewed fellowship with God is often the divine discipline that God teaches us about in Hebrews 12.
Listen, if indeed the greatest treasure and pleasure in life for the believer is the experience and enjoyment of God then what is the greater spiritual discipline for disobedience—taking your health, your job, consigning you to a life of bad consequences………
No…..the most severe discipline is the removal of your ability to enjoy God as your greatest treasure and pleasure.
All those other things can be used by God as divine forms of discipline as well but the most severe is not being able to experience the joy of your salvation.
3. To Pray for Personal Revival…….so that he may rejoice in God once again. (6)
Verse 6 shows us exactly what the discipline of the Lord is—the inability to rejoice in the Lord or as David put it—“the joy of my salvation”.
And again, this is a form of divine discipline that while necessary for the believer who has sinned is still something the believer is to seek relief from for in the seeking of relief from God’s hiding Himself from the believer the believer is demonstrating a renewed desire for God rather than sin.
Thus the believer is to seek revival.
This is a revival of the soul in which the soul that is under divine discipline and feeling separated from the Lord is given the strength to pursue God once again as his soul’s delight.
The trouble with most of us when we sin and sin greatly is that we do not feel we have the right any longer to rejoice in God and thus to pursue Him.
We feel that because of our sin God no longer accepts us and no longer is really interested in us and thus we pull away from Him.
Our shame over our sin causes us to retreat and run from the only One Who can help us and in this position we are really in a desperate state because our emotions are telling us that we have no right to come to God for help because it is He Whom we have sinned so greatly against.
But it is in this position of desperation that we must do the very thing the Psalmist does—we must go to God with our sin and all and ask Him to revive us—to strengthen us—to give us renewed resolve to pursue Him and His ways again even when we feel as though all is lost and unrecoverable.
That is the battle of faith when we have sinned.
You see before you gave into temptation and actually sinned the battle of faith was to believe obedience to God and His Word would make you happier than disbelieving Him and then sinning against Him.
But once you have sinned, the battle of faith is to believe God still wants you to pursue Him as your greatest treasure and pleasure in life and then to actually do so—even when under His divine discipline in which He is not enabling you to experience and enjoy Him in a positive manner..
But to do that—you must ask God to revive your heart and soul so as to give you the spiritual strength and might to overcome your emotions which are telling you that God no longer desires you or that you must prove yourself to God first.
And before we leave this verse, I want you to see that revival is not for unbelievers—it is for believers and specifically for believers who have lost the joy of their salvation in that they are no longer rejoicing in God.
Listen if that is you—regardless of how you got to this point—you need to start asking God to revive you and to give you a renewed taste and desire for Him.
Renewed spiritual passion does not come as a result of reading more, praying longer, serving harder, giving more, or sacrificing more…..it can only come from God as you beseech Him to bring revival to your life and then wait upon Him to do so in His perfect time.
4. Reassurance……….in terms of a renewed expression of God’s love and salvation. (7)
The believer who has sinned and returned to the Lord needs the reassurance of God’s lovingkindness.
Lovingkindness comes from the Hebrew word hessed, which means God’s eternal covenant love.
Thus, the Psalmist is asking God to give him a renewed vision of God’s eternal love for him that is not and cannot be affected by anything the Psalmist does or does not do—it is soley dependent upon God.
In asking to see this—the Psalmist is asking God for the reassurance of His salvation.
In asking God to “grant” us your salvation, the Psalmist uses a form of the Hebrew word Nathan.
Nathan means “God has given”. But this form that the Psalmist uses here means has the idea of God giving His people something that will serve as an expression of His preservation of them.
One example of this is found in Leviticus 26:4, where God promises to give rain to his people as a sign of his blessing and intent to preserve them.
Thus, what the Psalmist is asking for is not that God “save” him again—but rather grant him the assurance of his salvation.
5. Renewed Resolve……….in terms of wanting, needing, and demanding to hear what God has to say to him. (8-10)
And notice that the Psalmist knows that when he hears from God…when the silence of God’s discipline is over and God allows and enables the repentant sinner to hear His voice again—he will not hear words of condemnation or anger but rather words of peace.
God will speak “peace” to His people—His saved people.
And the Psalmist realizes that some would then say….”Well, if that is all God does why not just keep on sinning and coming back to the Lord to hear more words of peace?”
So he qualifies the statement by adding “But let them not turn back to their folly.”
In other words, God’s restorative discipline is for the purpose of breaking our bondage to sin and we must not see it as incentive to return to the stupidity of sin but rather as the means by which to walk away from our sin.
Then in verses 9-11, the Psalmist makes the point that in Christ and His salvation the truth of our sin and the truth of our ugly depravity—the truth about who we really are and what we have done and will do that may be hidden from everyone else…….has converged with God’s lovingkindness so that we are assured of our salvation….
Listen, God chose to save us with His eyes open to the truth of who and what we really are! God's lovingkindness did not act blindly. It acted in full knowledge of the truth of what we were before salvation and how badly we would fail as believers. The One Who knew and knows us best....saved us anyway!
6. Renewed Vision For the Future. (11-13)
Indeed the Lord does restore the years the locusts have devoured! And that is what verse 12 is talking about. God will cause our lives to yield spiritual fruit again after we have responded correctly to our failures. Oh, it may not be the same kind of fruit as before...but nevertheless, He will bring forth fruit.
You know we all carry the baggage of our sin. It is part of our story. Our sin is part of the "all things" of Romans 8:28. It in part is one of the tools God is using to conform you to the image of Christ. And whereas you and I cannot change our past God in His grace does change the meaning of our past. He brings forth new and beautiful fruit in the lives of those Christians who have failed and responded to their failures in a godly way.
CONCLUSION
Turn with me to Psalm 37:23-24. Note the passage does not say..."if he falls", but "when he falls". Listen folks, we have all failed and we will fail but the point is when we fail God is the One preserving us from ultimate and total failure. So don't quit living and "going to the plate" so as to keep from striking out. Rather, live your Christian life with the confidence that God knows all about our sin and loves us anyway and will not allow us to fail completely--He is indeed holding us by the hand.
Look at Luke 22:31-32 too. The interesting thing about Jesus' words to Peter is that He wasn't concerned with Peter failing (by denying Him). His concern was that Peter's faith not fail. And this is what Jesus said He would pray for. And since Jesus always gets what He prays for since His prayers reveal the Divine Will...Peter's faith was secure in the midst of his great sin of denying Christ.
If you are a true believer your sin failures are not fatal nor permanent. God has you by the hand and will preserve you and your faith. So whereas, it would be best not to sin...don't give in to despair when you do. Fight the fight of faith, believe the promises of God, get up off the ground, brush yourself off, and fight on to victory.....and be prepared to do it everyday!
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