Starting Over

Everyone loves a story about a comeback. In New York City, they still talk about the Amazin’ Mets of the summer of 1969. In August of that year, the Mets were 12 games out of first place behind the Chicago Cubs. By the end of September, they had won the pennant, and went on to win the World Series.

In Buffalo, they still talk about the AFC playoff game of 1992 when the Buffalo Bills played the Houston Oilers. The Oilers were leading 35–3 at halftime. But in the second half, behind the leadership of back-up quarterback Frank Reich, the Bills mounted the greatest comeback in NFL history and won the game 41–38

I came across another comeback story recently. It’s about two frogs who fell into a 5-gallon bucket of cream. It goes like this:

Two frogs fell into a can of cream,

Or so I’ve heard it told.

The sides of the can were sharp and steep,

The cream was deep and cold.

“Oh what’s the use?” croaked number one.

“There is no help around.

Good-bye, dear friend. Good-bye cruel world!”

And with a sob, he drowned.

The other frog, of sterner stuff,

Dog-paddled in surprise.

And soon he wiped his creamy face

And dried his creamy eyes.

“I’ll swim as long as I have breath.”

Courageously he said.

“It really wouldn’t help the world

If one more frog were dead.”

And so for hours, he kicked and swam.

Not once he stopped to mutter.

Until, at last on solid ground,

He hopped out of the butter.

There was a man who lived back in the 1800’s who knew something about comebacks. He had less than three years of formal education. He failed in business in 1831. He was defeated for his state legislature in 1832. He failed again in business in 1833. He was finally elected to his state legislature in 1834, but defeated for Speaker in 1838, defeated for elector in 1840, and defeated for Congress in 1843.

He was finally elected to Congress in 1846, but promptly turned out of office in 1848. He was defeated for the Senate in 1855, and lost his party’s Vice Presidential nomination in 1856. He was defeated one more time for the Senate in 1858. You want to know who this guy was? Abraham Lincoln.

Life is often about starting over. And nowhere is that more true than in our walk with God.

There are many times when we blow it, when we mess up, when we fail. We fail in our spiritual life. We fail in our personal morals and ethics. We fail as marriage partners and as parents.

And Satan would like nothing better than for us to believe that we can’t start over. He would like us to think that our situation is hopeless—that we have failed so devastatingly that God could never pick us up and give us a new start.

If you’ve ever become discouraged to that extent, then Psalm 85 is for you. Because Psalm 85 is about starting over. Let’s look at it today.

The 85th Psalm was written by the Sons of Korah. I want to tell you more about them later. But it seems that this Psalm was written after the Jews had returned from exile in Babylon. They were back in their land, but all was not well. They had become discouraged. They weren’t making much progress spiritually. They weren’t seeing too many victories, and they felt very weak and vulnerable. It was probably the time just before Nehemiah came to Jerusalem to help them rebuild the walls.

Now you can divide this Psalm into two parts. The first seven verses are a prayer. The last six verses are a promise.

In the first part of the prayer, we find the Psalmist looking back at God’s blessings in the past:

You showed favor to your land, O Lord; you restored the fortunes of Jacob. You forgave the iniquity of your people and covered all their sins. (Selah) You set aside all your wrath and turned from your fierce anger.

Notice the key verbs. They’re all in the past tense - showed favor; restored; forgave; covered; set aside; and turned from. God showed mercy to his people in the past. Although they had sinned, and fallen down spiritually, and failed him in many ways, he had restored them. He brought them back from their Babylonian captivity and established them again in their land. He forgave their sins and covered their iniquities.

One of the most exciting aspects of God is that he is a God of new beginnings. He is always ready to give us a fresh start. He covers our sins with the blood of Jesus Christ.

As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us.

When we come to God in our brokenness and failure, He doesn’t rub our nose in it. He doesn’t constantly remind us of how badly we messed up. He takes our sin and he puts it behind him. He not only forgives it—he forgets it.

There once was a Englishman who lived back in the early 1920’s. He was quite wealthy and owned a Rolls Royce. One day, he was driving his Rolls Royce on an extremely rough road up in the highlands of Scotland. The road was rutted and full of huge potholes. It really wasn’t fit for a car to drive on, and the man shouldn’t have been driving on it.

Suddenly the car fell into one of the deep ruts and the rear axle broke. So there he was, stranded.

Fortunately, a farmer came along with a team of oxen, and he was kind enough to give him a tow to the nearest town. There, the man was able to arrange to have his car shipped by rail back to the Rolls Royce factory to get the rear axle fixed.

Well, only a few days passed when, to his surprise, the man’s Rolls Royce was shipped back to him with the rear axle fixed and as good as new. But he received no bill for the repairs. The man was puzzled, because he knew that the repair job would have been quite costly, and the car was no longer under warranty. He waited a few days, and when no bill came in the mail, he sent a telegram to the company to inquire about it.

One day later, he received a telegram back from the Rolls Royce head office. It said “We have thoroughly searched our files and we can find no record of a Rolls Royce axle ever breaking.”

Likewise, when God forgives our sin, He also forgets it. It is no longer on our record.

The Psalmist looked back and saw that God had restored his people in the past. But then he looked at the present, and he saw that they needed restoring again.

Psalm 85:4-7 Restore us again, O God our Savior, and put away your displeasure toward us. Will you be angry with us forever? Will you prolong your anger through all generations? Will you not revive us again, that your people may rejoice in you? Show us your unfailing love, O Lord, and grant us your salvation.

Evidently, the people had fallen into sin again and were feeling the consequences. God will always discipline us when we stray from his pathway. The way of the transgressor is hard.

Hebrews 12:5ff My son, do not make light of the Lord’s discipline, and do not lose heart when he rebukes you, because the Lord disciplines those he loves…God disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness. No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.”

It produces a harvest of righteousness and peace in those who turn their hearts back to God. And that’s what the Psalmist does in these verses: he cries out to God for revival and restoration. “Restore us again…revive us again” he says.

Don’t ever fall into the temptation of thinking that God might not want to revive you and restore you when you sin. Satan wants you to think that this time, you’ve gone too far. This time, you’re too far down for God to ever pick you up again. Revival and restoration are God’s specialties. And when we cry out for it, God will do it.

There is a very beautiful passage in Isaiah 61 that reveals God’s heart in this matter:

Isaiah 61:1-3 The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion—to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair.

When Jesus began his public ministry, one of the first things he did was to go to the synagogue in Nazareth, and pick up the scroll of Isaiah and read those very words in chapter 61. And after he had finished reading them aloud, he said “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing—because I’m here; your Messiah is here.”

Jesus came from God the Father to undertake the ministry of restoration—giving people a new start.

In the second half of this Psalm, we see a promise. Look at verse 8:

I will listen to what God the Lord will say; he promises peace to his people, his saints—but let them not return to folly.

There are two important things for us to learn here in this matter of starting over. The first is that God promises peace. He promises to restore and revive and bring back those who sin. That’s God’s part.

But the second thing we have to learn is that it is up to us to prioritize righteousness. We need to commit ourselves to God’s way of doing things. That’s our part.

You see, there’s no place here in this Psalm, or anywhere else in the Bible, for a kind of casual view of sin and restoration. God doesn’t want us to think that just because he has committed himself to forgiving us when we sin that we can go out and sin as often as we please, knowing that he’ll always take us back.

Paul said “Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase?” No! By no means!

The genuineness of our desire for restoration will be proven by the extent to which we make righteousness a priority in our lives. The Psalmist says that God promises us peace, but he also says “let us not return to folly.”

We’ll never know the peace that God wants us to know if we just go on sinning. Because the simple fact of the matter is that sin makes for a very un-peaceful life.

You know it yourself—when you sin, your fellowship with God is broken. And that makes for turmoil. Your conscience begins to bother you. The Holy Spirit begins to talk to you. You feel convicted for your sin. You feel a sense of unrest and frustration inside. You can’t sleep at night. You look in the mirror—you don’t like what you see.

Your relationships begin to go sour. Your life begins to get very complicated. And if you cover up your sin, it really gets complicated! And the stress level rises, because you’re trying to hide certain areas of your life. You’re trying to pretend that all is right on the outside when all is not well on the inside. It’s not a very peaceful way to live.

King David experienced that when he said in Psalm 32:

When I kept silent (about my sin), my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was sapped as in the heat of summer.

But look at what the Psalmist says in verse 10:

Love and faithfulness meet together; righteousness and peace kiss each other.

Love and faithfulness meet together. If a man really loves a woman, he’s going to be faithful to her.

If you really love God, you’re going to be faithful to his teaching. Jesus said “The one who loves me is the one who keeps my commandments.”

And if you are faithful to the teaching of Christ, righteousness and peace will kiss each other—they will come together in your life. Because a righteous life is a peaceful life. That doesn’t mean you won’t have problems, or you won’t feel pressure. But you will have peace in the midst of the storm if you make righteousness your priority.

Starting over spiritually involves two things—God doing his part to forgive and forget your sin; and you doing your part to turn away from sin. It’s a two-sided coin. God does his part, but you must do your part.

Now what about those sons of Korah who wrote this Psalm? Well, if you’ll remember back in the days of Moses, there was a man named Korah. You can read about him in Numbers 16 which was written during the time of the Exodus.

Korah was not a happy camper. He resented being out there wandering in the wilderness, he wanted to go back to Egypt, and he especially resented Moses’ leadership. Korah was a Levite, and as a Levite, he had special responsibilities before God for the ministry of worship. The Levites took care of the tabernacle and were in charge of the music, etc.

But Korah wanted more. He wasn’t happy with the role that God had given him. He wanted to be like Moses and Aaron—a spiritual leader. He wanted to be a priest. And so he challenged Moses. He became sullen and uncooperative. And he began to sow discord in the camp.

To make a long story short, God judged Korah for his rebellion. One day, the earth just opened up and swallowed up Korah and his household. The Bible says that they went down alive into the grave with everything they owned; the earth closed over them, and they perished and were gone from the community.

Wow. That’s pretty intense! Now suppose that you were one of the descendants of Korah? How would you like to have had that episode as the thing your family was remembered for? The name Korah must have become synonymous with spiritual rebellion and failure.

But the interesting thing is that God didn’t stop working with that family. Some of the descendants of Korah survived. They survived for a thousand years. They became faithful to the Lord. Some of them became Temple singers. Some of them became worship leaders. Some of them wrote some of the Psalms, like Psalm 85.

The fact that this Psalm—a Psalm of restoration; a Psalm about starting over—was written by the sons of Korah tells me that God never tires of new beginnings. With God, it’s never too late to start over. His mercy and grace are abundant toward those who seek His face. Even those who have failed in the past.

My name is Peter. My name reminds me that God is always ready to give us a new start. Remember how the apostle Peter was always messing up? Remember how he denied his Lord with oaths and curses the night before Jesus was crucified?

And yet after Jesus rose, he made a special point of seeking out Peter. And in John 21, he restored Peter. He brought him back into fellowship, and he gave him a place of ministry and effectiveness. And on the Day of Pentecost, who preached the very first sermon in church history? Who saw 3,000 people come to the Lord? Peter—the man who started over.

So be encouraged! Just because you have failed in the past doesn’t mean that God is finished with you. And just because you may be feeling spiritually down and out right now doesn’t mean that God doesn’t have a future for you.

For our God is a God of restoration. Our God is the God of starting over. All you have to do is turn to Him.