After the End (3)
Create in me a clean heart, O 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 sustain me with a willing spirit. Psalm 51:10-12 NASB
Sustain me – Sacrifice me. Oh, is that what you thought when David’s says, “Sustain me”? He uses the Hebrew word tismekeni, from the root samak, but the majority of the uses of samak are from the Levitical rituals of sacrifice. Laying on hands is the way we translated samak in those passages. Of course, when the priest laid his hands on something, it was for sacrifice. Do you suppose David didn’t know that? Maybe he isn’t saying what we wish, that he wants the Spirit to support him. Maybe he is saying that he wants to be sacrificed, he wants the Spirit to lay hands on him and destroy that old heart that has caused him so much pain. Maybe what he realizes is that only sacrifice will restore the joy of deliverance because only sacrifice will remove the disobedient heart.
When we read this verse, do we think, “Yes, Lord, I want your deliverance. Sacrifice me!” I doubt it. I think we read the verse as if the way of salvation is to have God help us along. We want support, not death. Of course, the root samak can also include the idea of leaning on something for support (Amos 5:19) or trusting in God (Psalm 37:24) but I am intrigued by the usual connection to sacrifice. Perhaps David is reminding his reader of both. Unfortunately, our translation doesn’t include a footnote for the other reading.
David asks to be sustained/sacrificed with a willing spirit. But once again he chooses a word that has worship ritual written all over it. The root of this word is nadab and it is found in nedaga, the freewill offering. Is David suggesting that he is making a freewill offering of himself so that he might once again enjoy the feeling of deliverance? Every use of nadab in the Tanakh implies something given freely or voluntarily. I’m not sure our translation provides a way for us to connect these dots, but certainly readers of the Hebrew text wouldn’t have missed it.
Now that we have a fuller picture of David’s royal command (or penitent plea), we can ask ourselves the same questions implied in his choices of words. Are we voluntarily offering ourselves as sacrifice? Are we ready to die in order to be saved from ourselves? Have we reached the point where life as we know it is hell on earth? David’s poem anticipates both Yeshua and Paul. Aren’t we told again and again that the way to life is death? In the end, bearing the cross, entering baptism, encountering the Spirit is all about death, a the death that leads to life everlasting. Perhaps David saw a lot more than simply God’s help. But what would you expect from a man after God’s own heart?
Topical Index: sustain, support, samak, sacrifice, willing, nadab, Psalm 51:12
Apologies for the many typos in yesterday’s edition. They have been corrected and posted to the web site.
Frontiers are strange places. The ‘edges’ of atoms are not even edges, so some say. My frontiers are no different. Frontiers are where the changes and exchanges go down. My forbears knew frontiers. My great-grandmother spent her summers in a dugout with her 6 siblings while her widowed mother ran a B&B in town. She told me she remembered the Sundays her mom would ride out from town bringing a loaf of bread. All the children would watch her cut that loaf in 7 pieces. Each child would get a piece. For the week. The rest they had to grow, hunt or gather. Someone had to hold down the claim. I remember her as a super-tough woman with a terrific sense of humor. One of my great-great-grandmothers was the child of an immigrant trader and a Plains tribal chief who had to come to an agreement because neither could outfox the other. She ended up one tough woman, caught between two warring worlds. At ninety-odd years, she still stood tall and strong on those vast prairies in Nebraska, with no grey in her black hair. I remember her as the only person my bigger-than-life grandfather was afraid of! I was too! On the other side, the Stuart clan that was most closely related to the ousted royal family had to be banished to somewhere, and that somewhere happened to be the mountain territory belonging to the Cherokee (because it was the only land that did not belong to the king). They had it rough! It would be another 150 years before some of them would ‘own’ land again. (one of the side effects of the Trail of Tears.) There were long histories of how they had to get along and make do. They traded and intermarried, too. Some of that make do-ing also made some valleys with little creeks on them not that safe for strangers (or little girls) to go for a walk.
Above all, frontiers are where, in the course of adapting to what that frontier is, you are forced to change. You learn to get along with that tribe you live next to because your children have to relate to both sets of family. You revise how you think of your heritage when life is so hard and bitter because of that heritage. My great-grandmother Stuart would tell me stories about her great-grandmother running around after a child who had fallen and scraped a knee, with a cup in her hand, saying “quick, make sure you don’t let any blood hit the ground; it may be yer one drap o’ royal blood!” It was doggerel humor. They were certainly not very amused with their heritage! I think Skip might say their paradigm had gone through a shift!
In relationship, there is always going to be more than one perspective; more than one paradigm to deal with by both sides. C. S. Lewis described it by saying a “bulge in Devonshire is really a dent in Cornwall”. The view of the process of my salvation is surely no different. From my side, it sure walks like, sounds like, and looks like a duck- I mean, death. But what about from the Spirit’s point of view? When Yeshua prayed “not My will, but Thine, be done”, wasn’t that a statement of death on His part? But what was it on His Father’s part? Didn’t it free Him up to defeat that death?
What happens when I am delivered from sin? What is sin? Sin is where another kingdom is attempting to set up shop (in ‘my’ real estate). When I repent of that, I hand the keys to the castle back over to the rightful Owner, Who promptly starts going about His Own business again (in ‘my’ real estate). It only feels and seems like death to me to the extent that I was identifying with that other paradigm, that other kingdom, but to Him, isn’t it freedom to do His Own will because the options and choices are no longer limited- bound- by those rival claims? What only seems like death to me is really freedom returned to Him, is it not? And I am promised that if I voluntarily share in His death, I also likewise will share in that freedom. Wouldn’t that put us both in Cornwall? Halleluah!
The man without Torah is a slave to his own desires. He is the least free of all men. The man who lives by Torah is free because he knows how to live in alignment with the King. The confusion of freedom and slavery, a confusion that has affected Mankind since the Fall, is still one of the most persistent obstacles to faithfulness.
The world’s religion is witchcraft, the antidote, the ONLY antidote, is Torah.
But i repeat myself. The reason to NOT participate in the world’s religion, on any level is to not open myself up to giving the enemy ANY toehold in my life.
Laurita, you are a Stuart? I love royal history!
Well, I guess would be sorry to disappoint you, girlfriend, but there is no trace left of my family’s lineage past a certain number of generations here. No record in any church, courthouse or registry anywhere on both sides of the Atlantic. By royal edict, they were all expunged, as my mama found out after she went to England in an attempt to complete the genealogy. I do not know who I am a child of, as the law only called for records to be kept for 4 gen’s out on that side, but there is a whole generation missing after that. Oh well. None of us over here are really happy with our ancestors over there, anyway (no personal offense to anybody I do or do not know, y’all). I never could get anybody to talk at all. None of them seemed to think much of the rest of the clan that stayed back there, but changed the spelling of their name to Stewart. It can still get pretty tense sometimes at the Clans Gathering at King’s Mountain….LOL.
“What only seems like death to me is really freedom returned to Him, is it not?”
Well said, Laurita! The thought really hits home for me after reading all of Skip’s recent teachings on Psalm 51:10-12 this morning. It is like a summation of many of the points Skip has been making.
Dear Laurita,
A friend just gave me a book called “Cherokee, Beliefs and Practices of the Ancients” by James Adair. I thought you might be interested in the book also as it talks about how the Cherokee are descendants of the Israelites and how this insight was reached. I am only 20 pages in to it. Your story is touching and it is incredible that you know so much of your heritage. Thank you for sharing.
Dear MLH, I think I have heard of the book, but haven’t read it. I would be interested to know what you might think of it, though. Thank you for telling me the name! I do know that every civilization has been to these shores, from the Phoenicians to the Egyptians, the Celts, and so many more. In the Lewis and Clark accounts, the Mandan that they spent the winter with still had some people with red hair and grey eyes. And loved the Irish jigs they sang. I have seen that most peoples still have at least some faint echo of the memory of the Truth before the Deluge, and before the Fall. There is a tribe in China that still refers to Shem as their first emperor, and counts their royal lineage back to Adam, who, most appropriately, had the name “Dirt”. The vast majority of the royal houses of Europe, in fact, independently trace their lines back through at least Noah, but many of them back to Adam. If you want some good reading to go along with your book, check out the book called After The Flood, by Bill Cooper. And hold onto your hat!
Thank you, Laurita, for some very interesting stories.
And thank you, Skip, for stating the truth so plainly.
Wow….what a “coincidence”. Just yesterday a passage jumped out at me…
Psalm 51:17, “The sacrifice pleasing to God is a broken spirit. O God, you do not despise a broken and sorrowful heart.” You, Skip, also appeared in my mind and Holy Spirit said, very clearly, “Tell him, I hear his heart.”