RECIPE FOR RESTORATION

  PSALM 51  ABBY FREE, JULY 8, 2001        'RECIPE FOR RESTORATION'

When a novel begins with the agonizing cry, "O God, have mercy on me," you know that the character is in trouble. This person is so lost or so sick or so worried or so afraid or so guilty, that he or she can't go on without relief. Life has been interrupted by the deepest anguish. And when you read further and learn that this person is wealthy and healthy you really become curious. What could have happened here? - That's how Psalm 51 begins.

A psalm is a song, and there are 150 songs gathered together into one book or scroll called the Book of the Psalms. Psalm songs were sung or recited by Jews and also in the early church and in some present day churches. Ps 51 has been dubbed the Psalm of Psalms. We are about to find out why. This not a poetic composition but a desperate cry. There is a story behind this psalm.  Psalms often have back-stories behind them and Ps.51 may have the largest back-story of all the psalms. In fact, if this were on TV, it might begin with a content warning.

THE CRYING DESIRE

Not for a moment would I suggest that every church that is located inside a building whether a small wood frame structure or colossal concrete edifice is an ineffectual institutional church. That kind of wholesale depreciation would miss the point of all my recent articles and certainly of this one. I must make that qualification as I publicly question present-day interpretations of church and what churches do. I observe the church through the lens of scripture and the eyes of experience.

The assembly or church about which Jesus spoke just before he was airlifted into the heavens began with the investment of the Holy Spirit into each one of the approximately 120 people waiting and praying as he instructed them to do. That was the memorable Day of Pentecost described in Acts 1&2. By the end of that first day, 3,000 more people were added to this assembly, the same way the first 120 were endorsed, by repentance of personal sin, faith in Jesus being God's Son, Messiah, whose death atoned for their sin, personal baptism as a public display of allegiance to Jesus, and the coincident filling by the Holy Spirit of God.

Jesus' early church was stamped with an enthralling relationship with God that should characterize his followers always. It is that gripping rapport with the Father for which many people are longing today.

That dynamic affiliation with Almighty God, and with the eternal Son and with the indwelling Spirit, is not the experience and sometimes not even the teaching that occurs within institutional churches whether wood or concrete. For that reason some believers pull away, disappointed, vacant, starving. They will search for that which scripture described, the church that God is building rather than the church that humans build. God's assembly or church has been knowing God and loving God and experiencing His power, and growing numerically ever since those early days. This is Jesus' church. His church is comprised of people with a passion for obediently following Jesus; people who can talk together with love and grace and permission to be authentic; people who compassionately respond to people around them. Jesus' church has grown in battle field bunkers, in refugee camps, in summer children's camps, in prisons, in lunch break conversations during business hours, in family devotions, in university dorm rooms, and in sanctuaries of some country and city church buildings.

What many of you want more than anything is friendships with people who are fervently following Jesus and living his holy kind of life and winsomely relating to everyone with the presence of the LORD.