LiMember - Regret or Remember
Notes
Transcript
Children’s Sermon
Children’s Sermon
We crucify ourselves between two thieves: regret for yesterday and fear of tomorrow. WHAT OBJECT COULD I USE FOR THIS?
Scripture
Scripture
2 Samuel 11:1-4 - In the spring, when kings usually go out to battle, David send Joab, his servants, and all Israel to ravage the Ammonites and besiege Rabbah. David, though, remained in Jerusalem. Late one afternoon, David got up from taking a nap and strolled on the roof of his palace. From the roof he saw a very beautiful woman bathing. David had servants inquire about the woman. They reported to him, “She is Bathsheba, daughter of Eliam, wife of Uriah the Hittite.” So David had her fetched and she came to him, and he lay with her. Afterward, she returned to her house.
Engage
Engage
An author for The Guardian, a British newspaper, named Emma Freud - was escorting her 20 year old son through a life change and wondered what advice she might/could give him. Later that night, on social media, where she has a following, she asked a simple question, What do you regret?
She was inundated with over 300 responses, mostly from people she didn’t really know or barely knew. The answers were by and large painfully honest. Through this experience she learned a lot about what not to do and, indirectly perhaps, something about what TO do.
Some of the responses included: Not having the courage to speak-up as a victim of abuse at the hands of a family member and protect my brother from the same abuse, not getting a better education, not telling someone I loved them, marrying the first person that asked because I thought nobody would ever ask me, being scared all the time, listening to my dad when he said my voice was too weak to be a singer...
Honest, true, painful regrets. Friends, regret has cornered the baggage market, I’m afraid. Some carry Samsonite brand, others Louis Vitton, others whatever is on sale at Ross…but I’ll bet, in some measure, we ALL carry regret. And regret is heavy, and taxing, and burdensome, and costly.
Encounter
Encounter
Ah, but friends, God, his Son, and their Spirit have given us remedy. There is a balm in Gilead! The commandments of the Bible aren’t meant to be burdensome tasks, adding to the weight of life, making life much harder. Instead, they are for our own good. They fit within how God has designed us down to the very smallest molecules. Jesus says it in Matthew 11, my yoke is easy and my burden is light. Now, if we compare the commands of God to what the world tells us, or we look to the world to define happiness, fulfillment, purpose, and the like…then God’s commands likely are going to be experienced as burdensome. Now, God doesn’t promise to remove regret…but he does offering a path to transforming it. Friends, remembering faithfully eases regretting painfully.
David knew regret. God calls David a man after his own heart for a multitude of reasons I don’t need to reiterate again here. But David is very human. He sins, he faces consequences, and even once the sin is forgiven the consequences continue to ripple down through his family. Most immediately, of course, he has Uriah the Hittite murdered and then the prophet Nathan confronts David and David loses the son conceived with Bathsheba in the assault. Later, his son Absalom revolts against him and tries to take David’s throne from him. In the attempted coup, Absalom is killed. David, in 2 Samuel 18, cries, O My son Absalom, on my son, my son…I wish I’d died instead of you, O Absalom.” This is David experiencing regret…why? Because he knows the whole affair ties back to his sin with Bathsheba. Rev. Charles Pinches says it this way,
“so mighty and gifted is David that nothing has eluded his grasp - nothing, that is, but what he evidently in this passage wants so desperately: for his son to be alive, for love to hold between them, for his family to be whole. This he cannot and will not have. It is gone from him now, lost. And so grief seems to swallow him up.”
The old Cat Stevens song comes to mind, Cat’s in the Cradle. My boy was just like me, he’d grown up just like me...
David’s story is our story. The story of regret in the family. How often do we, do I, do you wish things were different…but we know they cannot be. This is where regret fills space in so many families and so many people. There is far more space for regret in the family than in our communities, churches, or neighborhoods. Our families are what they are because we’re in them. We’re locked into family and it’s locked into us, even if we try to escape.
Also, the family has a much more specific memory. Specific failings are remembered in the family where they aren’t as much in broader circles.
Memories that have turned into regret in the family are, again, like heavy baggage. They weigh down, they nag, they hassle. Maybe something like one of those roller bags that rolls smoothly along until one of the wheels breaks. Or, maybe your someone who carries so much baggage from the past that you end up like this poor fellow. DONKEY PICTURE. Weighed down, tied up, but not going anywhere.
How can David escape, how can we escape, how can you escape these soul crushing bags of regret we lug around? By properly remembering. Remembering faithfully eases regretting painfully.
How does David remember this way? Let’s look to what he wrote, in Psalm 25 -
I offer my life to you, Lord. My God, I trust you. Please don’t let me be put to shame…for that matter, don’t let anyone who hopes in you be put to shame..make your ways known to me, Lord: teach me your paths. Lead me in your truth - teach it to me - because you are the God who saves me. I put my hope in you all day long. Lord, REMEMBER your compassion and faithful love - they are eternal! But don’t remember the sins of my youth or my wrongdoing…Remember me only according to your faithful love for the sake of your goodness, Lord.
Then, also, Psalm 51 -
Have mercy on me, God, according to your faithful love! Wipe away my wrongdoings according to your great compassion! Wash me completely clean of my guilt; purify me from my sin! Because I know my wrongdoings, my sin is always right in front of me (REGRET)....
David knows the truth about himself, he hasn’t sentimentalized his past, or justified it somehow…he KNOWS it’s sinful and regrets it, yet he, in faith, faithfully, REMEMBERS who God is! And he calls on God to be who God is!
The remedy for the deep regret that so often arises in family life is not forgetfulness of the one who regrets, but remembering another whose nature is mercy! When we faithfully REMEMBER who God is…other things can begin to fill the space occupied by regret…joy, gladness, PRAISE!
Taking our sins, our regrets, to God open the path to forgiveness, grace, strength. David, in faith, faithfully, remembers that the world is ruled by a gracious God (and Jesus, we know) in whom he can confidently place his trust…and this gives him strength to go on.
You might remember a person helps shake David out of his grief over Absalom as well…Joab, his amazing general…Much like another person wakes him up to his sin with Bathsheeba, Nathan. Often people, family, communities of memory, fellow disciples, can help us REMEMBER who God is and who we are…if we’ll just LISTEN.
Next week, we’ll continue with David and examine a bit more closely how redemption is available to us…even within our families.
Empower
Empower
I have a friend who wrote a post about her dad when he died a little over a month ago. You may remember them, his name is Dennis and he survived the tornado in Joplin, MO. Her name is Keri and she’s a few years older than me. PICTURE OF DENNIE & KERI. I think she and her siblings each see their dad a little differently. She and her older brother were perhaps around more for some of the early dysfunction of their parents still married while Chad, the one I graduated with, might not have seen quite so much. I’m not sure. Chad wrote a nice obituary for Dennis. PICTURE OF DENNIE & CHAD KIDS. Keri is a strong Christian, which is not incidental in all of this. She wrote this, connected to the obituary Chad had written:
My brother wrote this beautiful obituary for our father who passed away. To be honest… my Dad and I struggled in our relationship for most of my life. It’s been very difficult to even come up with words to write this simple post. I know he didn’t intend to cause so much pain in my life but he did. My Dad at times reached out to start over in our relationship and “forget the past”. We would try but sadly we found ourselves in a dysfunctional relationship again. Time is starting to heal some of the memories. The importance of a father should not be underrated. I will miss him and I’m very thankful that he believed in God.
Dennie survived the Joplin tornado but lost everything. A good memory was when a family in my church gave him a car to replace his car that was destroyed. Many of my friends jumped to help me to furnish his new place with clothing and basics. Thank you all again. Dennie was so extremely thankful.
She doesn’t sentimentalize, she’s honest, she remembers things as they were…yet as a Christian she believes strongly in Jesus and is glad her biological father did as well. And any regret baggage she may have lugged around here and there certainly hasn’t impacted her functionality and fruitfulness much, if at all. I’d say that’s a pretty healthy place to be.
Remembering faithfully eases regretting painfully
Pray