Sermon
Broken Bones-Broken Lives
September 1-2, 2001
Pastor Donald Sheley

Take your Bible and join with me. If you're going to use the pew Bible it's page 388. If you have your own personal Bible it's Psalm 51. We've had a wonderful time this summer going through some of the great Psalms, and we've now spent probably four or five weeks here in Psalm 51. But we've learned that it was a prayer by David. He had sinned deeply, probably at the age of 50 or 52 years of age. He had a marvelous beginning to his career as a king; shepherd and then a king, but he sinned deeply. He committed adultery with Bathsheba and then to cover his sin he has Bathsheba's husband, whose name is Uriah, killed on the battlefield. So now he's an adulterer and he is a murderer.

Now he covers this sin for a number of months. We do not know exactly, probably nearly a year or more. And then he is confronted one day by the man of God whose name is Nathan. And Nathan tells him a story which we've gone over a number of times. David admits, I'm the man, I'm the sinner, and this is the prayer that he prays.

Have mercy upon me, 0 God, according to Your lovingkindness; according to the multitude of Your tender mercies, blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. For I acknowledge my transgressions, and my sin is always before me. Against You, You only, have I sinned, and done this evil in Your sight--that you may be found just when You speak, and blameless when You judge. Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me. Behold, You desire truth in the inward parts, and in the hidden part You will make me to know wisdom. Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Make me to hear joy and gladness, that the bones You have broken may rejoice. Hide Your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, 0 God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. 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 uphold me by Your generous Spirit. Then I will teach transgressors Your ways, and sinners shall be converted to You. Deliver me from the guilt of bloodshed, O God, the God of my salvation, and my tongue shall sing aloud of Your righteousness. O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth shall show forth Your praise. For You do not desire sacrifice, or else I would give it: You do not delight in burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, and a broken and a contrite heart--these, O God, You will not despise. Do good in Your good pleasure to Zion; build the walls of Jerusalem. Then You shall be pleased with the sacrifices of righteousness, with burnt offering and whole burnt offering; then they shall offer bulls on Your altar.

I ask you to take your notes this morning from your bulletin. And I pray all of you have a set of notes. For you that are a guest today, we're glad that you're here. My joy has been throughout the years to write my sermon out and to give you something to take home. I don't always cover much of the material, but it leaves you something to study, and it gives you an overview of what we had in mind to say today. I'm starting at page 2.

Two opposite kinds of experience are wonderfully blended in this Psalm; the experience of a conscience-stricken transgressor, and the experience of a believer rejoining in Divine mercy. Nothing can be more mournful than David's profound self-abasement and piercing cry for pardon. Nothing can be more calm, and hopeful, and restful, than his trust in God's forgiving and restoring grace. He is like one emerging from a gloomy cavern, where no ray of light shone, who does not yet stand in the sunlight, but sees it shining at the cave's mouth, and knows that a few more steps will bring him into full sunshine. The secret of this blending of opposite experiences is that David is now looking so earnestly away from himself to God.

Now today, our study begins at verse 8. "Make me to hear joy and gladness." This is the word of David. If any man ever knew the world and enjoyed it, David did. The experience of even his wise son Solomon was limited compared with his. For he was endowed with personal grace and beauty which won love at first sight. He was a man of genius, skilful in poetry and music, a hero in war, who had fought his way from the sheepfold to the throne. He was in the very hey-day of prosperity and power.

His armies and his generals won victories for him, while he enjoyed the luxury of his palace. His servants devotedly obeyed, even when he required them to commit crimes. He had obtained the wife on whom his heart was passionately set. A son had been born to them. And it might seem as though God had overlooked his sins, and was shedding on him the peaceful light of Divine favor. True, his sins-- no-no, his crimes--had made the enemies of the Lord blaspheme; but their counter-censures did not reach the royal ears of David.

What lacked he, in the midst of his prosperity? Two things: one a clear conscience, and secondly, the sense of Divine favor, what in happier days he called--the light of God's countenance. And so he longs for that joy and gladness which, in the past, filled his heart. Sin, that thief that steals all that is beautiful, had stolen from him, and his heart was empty and his life desolate. So David has asked for pardon. Now he asks that once again, joy may return to his heart.

All of us will agree that sin has the capacity to take the real joy out of living. In its place, sin brings guilt, anxiety, frustration, pain and remorse. Sin has the capacity to crush us and leave us incapacitated to be our best, and this David has felt deeply! So he prays; make me to hear joy and gladness. And then he adds to me a fascinating phrase, he says, that the bones You have broken may rejoice. Now remember, when we read David's writings much of them were written in poetry because he was a poet. And a poet thinks differently than most of us, he thinks in word pictures. And sometimes you have to get the focus to know where they're going before you understand what is being said.

I used a modern-day illustration. One of my very close friends is Dr. Jack Hayford. I have spent much time with him, and Jack is a poet. He's written already over 800 hymns, and when he leaves for heaven he'll leave a great legacy because he'll leave some of the great hymns of the church that we now in joy. Majesty, worship His Majesty -- Jack wrote that. He has a brilliant mind that is precise, but it's poetic and when you listen to his teaching it sometimes takes a little time in concentration to find where his picture words are flowing; but it's brilliant. He's a poet.

David is a poet, and David uses a poetic word picture in his prayer that to me is very interesting. He says may the bones that You have broken rejoice. What's he talking about? Well, bones form the structure on which the muscles, and the ligaments, and the tissue of the body hang. Broken bones leave the body without the capacity to function. And there are structures on which all the values of life hang--family, marriage, social acceptance, ego or self respect, confidence and courage--when these structures are broken, life is only a shadow of what God planned it to be. It is in the act of violating the laws and the commandments of God that these structures are broken and the joys and happiness of life are taken from us.

Think with me for a moment. Everything in life--government, the home, personal relationships--they're built upon certain structures, certain things that make up the backbone of that experience. Let's take the home; one of the bones, one of the great structures in home is trust. And when trust is broken, it seems the very backbone of the home now begins to disintegrate. Trust is one of the hardest things to gain back because it always leaves suspicion and wonder. You take in terms of friendships, and a friendship is built on a structure of commitment, and respect, and love, and sacrifice. You break any of those structures and you've injured a relationship very, very deeply. It's true in all of life. There are certain backbones of structure that form the strength of that relationship.

And so David says it's in the act of violating the laws and the commandments of God that these structures are broken. Now the next line, I want you to think deeply with me, look at what it says. Men do not break the laws of God, God's laws break us. After we have violated God's law, they still stand true, unchangeable. They are always there. Laws do not break.

I told you about the other day. I broke a law. Down in Pacifica I drove without my seat belt, and a very sharp officer stopped me. I violated the law. I didn't break it, because it's the same today as it was then. If you violate it, it will break you. It broke me $23. (Congregation chuckles) But the law still remains. It never changes. It's still against the law to drive without your seat belt. The law doesn't break, but you violate that law and it will break you.

Back to our notes. Violate the laws of God with your body, and it results eventually in broken health. Violate the commandments of God in human relationships, and the result is broken relationships and blasted friendships. And David senses this brokenness and this incapacity to be every thing he could have been because of sin's effect--broken bones.

Observe the man in the gutter, held in bondage of addiction and sin. His occupation is gone, his profession squandered, his family in shreds, and his life without purpose and meaning. The bones--the structures that make life worth living are broken and he becomes seemingly useless. When David speaks of the BONES WHICH THOU HAST BROKEN, he is not speaking of fleshly wounds, but his manhood had become a dislocated, mangled, quivering sensibility. He is requesting a great thing; he seeks joy for a sinful heart, and music for broken bones. Preposterous prayer, anywhere, but at the throne of God.

Brokenness comes about when we violate the laws of God. Sometimes our brokenness is caused by other situations. I went to my library the other day and I found a book written by Gordon MacDonald entitled 'Rebuilding Your Broken World'. Gordon MacDonald is the modern-day David. Gordon graduated from some of the great universities of our world, a brilliant mind, a great leader, a great preacher, a great writer. He rose to leadership of one of the leading international Christian ministries in the world. He had everything going for him just like David, and then, he had a moral failure. It ended in brokenness. So he writes a book 'Rebuilding Your Broken World'. His prayer was the same as David's, may the bones that have been broken start singing again.

In his introduction he says, when a much younger man I had the opportunity to compete as a runner on the track in the cross-country course. Now it's been decades since I last heard the starter's pistol and sprang away from the line with hope toward the victory tape, but a love for the sport of running has never left me even though I'm now merely a power worker. That's a major reason why I was caught up in the drama of two races of recent years.

The first was a cinematic re-enactment of a competition held more than 60 years ago when Eric Liddell, the subject of the film 'Chariots of Fire', was in a pack of runners and breaking for the lead. Suddenly, he was thrown off balance and he crushed heavily to the infield grass. The camera lens zoomed in on him as he lifted his head to see the other athletes pulling away never looking behind. The moment on that infield grass only lasted for a second or two, but from my perspective as I watched the film it seemed as if it lasted for many minutes. Would he get up again? If he did, could he even finish the race? He got up! And the man began to run, and the movie audience, which I was a part of, cheered as Liddell assumed his famous awkward profile and he tore after the distant pack of competitors. The result, he won.

But the other race I often think about happened only a few years ago. Two first-class female athletes were competing at the Los Angeles Olympics. Millions of people around the world were fascinated by their rivalry and were tuned in when they, and a host of other runners, left their marks. Shoulder to shoulder the two ran together through the first 1000 meters. It was clear that they were measuring one another and preparing for the strategic moment at which they would try for the break. And then suddenly, so quickly that the slow motion replay cameras never fully showed what happened, one of them was on the infield grass just as Liddell had been 60 years ago, but this time it was different.

The runner on the infield grass did not get up. Just like in the movie, the camera zoomed in on the face etched with pain, and rage, and instant defeat as a pack of runners pulled away. Could she have gotten up, fought off the pain and the disheartening blow to her psychological edge, and re-enter the competition? I don't know. Perhaps she does not really know either. But to her credit she ran again and won.

Now the figures of these two runners lying on the infield grass are drilled deep into my mind. They're visual symbols to me of what happens in the race of life when men and women crash, either because they have made a terrible choice or set of choices, or because they have been jostled or upset by what someone else has done to them. Those who have fallen to the infield grass in life also have a decision to make that is similar to those runners. Will I get up again, or will I just stay on the grass and lay here in pity? Now I have a name for men and women in that decision-making situation. I call them for broken world people, for that is exactly what has happened to them.

After years of dreaming, preparing, conditioning and fighting their way to a particular point, they have usually, by their own initiative, fallen. This world they have constructed is suddenly shattered and the only question left are versions of what the runner's questions were: will I get up again? Can I rebuild my broken world? And then he says, I have come to a high point of sensitivity about broken world people, because I am one of them.

He said, my perception is that broken world people exist in large numbers, and they ask similar questions over, and over again. Can my world be a rebuilt? Do I have any value? Can I be useful again? Is there life after misbehavior? And my answer is, yes. Broken worlds may always have cracks to remind us of the past. That's reality. But sometimes the grace of God is like the glue my mother used on her broken lamp, the bonded edges can become stronger than the original surface. And the rest of his book is the story of a man who out of his brokenness finds a God big enough to make his bones singing again.

I went home the other evening. It was late. I was tired. I thought I'll just see some news here for a few minutes then I'll go off to bed. While I'm flipping through the channels I ran across an old black and white movie. It dates me. It was shot in the '50s and it was the story of the son of a rich man who had gone off to college, and in his arrogance and in his sin he caused his girlfriend to become pregnant. But after learning of that situation he abandons her, abandons all responsibility, and he deserts a poor family to bring that life into existence. He totally ignores his responsibility as a father for twenty years.

After 20 years, he's empty inside. His pockets are full, but his heart is empty. Where is that boy I neglected and I never cared for? So he gets a New York lawyer and he starts the search, but the people who knew the story so protected the whereabouts of the son nobody would tell him, because they felt he had been wrong. He had broken the structures of decency, and respect, and love. Why should they bring that son back into his life now? And after he searched, lost his court case, late in the night he's walking the streets. He walks into a bowling alley. It's empty. There's only one man at the counter. Take any lane you want. He starts throwing the bowling balls.

Finally, after a little while, somebody comes through the door and it's a young man. And the older man said, son, come join me. It's just us tonight. Throw some balls here with me. So they're bowling together, and after a little bit the old man looks over and says, son, who are you? There's a long pause. The handsome young man looks at the old man and says, I'm your son. And I've learned, sir, that you've been looking for me so I thought I would come looking for you. He said I feared that when I met you I would be so full of anger for the way you treated mother, and for the way you abandon any responsibility to me as your son. And now I stand here and I don't have any anger, I just have pity for you sir, and I came to tell you one thing: goodbye. He turned and left the bowling alley. The camera lens followed him down a dark, lonely, rainy street off into night.

The camera turns and focuses on the broken dad standing there weeping, because here was one broken bone, one broken structure, that would never be healed again. But it's different with our story. David knows a God who's big enough, and powerful enough, and loving enough to take the brokenness of our lives and mend them back together and make them sing again! That's why I say a prayer, and any other condition, would be preposterous, but David knows a God who loves him supremely even though he has sinned wretchedly, and that God can heal his brokenness, and his bones can sing again.

In my 50 years his ministry I have watched God take the brokenness of lives, mend them, and make something beautiful out of them. Twenty-five years ago a man who was high in the educational realms of our city lived without God. His children grew up; they became drug addicts, in total despondency his wife committed suicide. I mean you call broken, that man was broken. He walked into the sanctuary. He poured out his heart to God, and I watched a man heal from brokenness. After three years falling in love with Jesus, he fell in love with one of the lovely ladies of our church. I married them 20 years ago, and for the last 20 years they've been singing together, and broken bones do sing again.

There may be some sitting here today and something in life has broken the structures that would have been the structures on which you could have built beauty, and peace, and happiness, and joy, but the structures are broken today. I have a wonderful God and a wonderful gospel. I have watched them by the hundreds, come out of their brokenness and watched their bones sing again. I think if I had a moment and was brave enough I'd ask you to raise your hand because many of you come out of brokenness, and God has put a song back in your heart. He does that. Yes-sure-look at that. There are my witnesses folks. It's true! He'll make us to hear joy and gladness again, and out of the brokenness of life the bones will make music for His glory. Amen?

Let's pray. Father in heaven, I thank You for Your grace, and I thank You that after we make a mess out of life and we break the very structures upon which love and happiness are placed, You come into our life with grace and You mend the brokenness and make something beautiful. And I thank you for David being honest enough to write this prayer down for us, and I thank you, dear God, that when we do come to You and we confess, as our young people so beautifully showed us today, if we'll just confess we are forgiven and then You can start that healing process that makes us whole and brings joy and gladness, for that truly is what the gospel is all about. We give You all the praise, all the glory, and all the honor. In Jesus' name, amen. God bless you. God bless you.