God, I Need to Start Over

There once was a man who lived back in the 1800’s. He was not a learned man; in fact, he didn’t even have three years of formal education. As an adult, he decided to go into business, but his business failed. Someone persuaded him to try local politics but he failed in that too.

So he went back to business, but his second business attempt fared no better than his first, and he was out of business just a year later. So he turned back to politics and finally managed to be elected to local office. But he didn’t manage to hang onto to that position for very long—he was turned out of office at the next election. Over the next twenty years, this strange man ran for office a total of eight times. He won only once.

He was a remarkable man—remarkable for his failures. But he never gave up; he kept trying again. He didn’t go away; he just kept starting over. Eventually, this remarkable man became the President of the United States. His name was Abraham Lincoln.

Life is about starting over. And nowhere is that more true than in our spiritual life. You see, we’d like to think that our spiritual life is a long, steady upward climb to success and consistency and stability. Much of modern Christian teaching and writing presents that sort of picture.

But in reality, our spiritual lives are more like the roller coaster at Canada’s Wonderland. There are ups, there are highs—but there are also dizzying descents which leave us gasping for air, disoriented and discouraged.

There are times in our spiritual and moral lives when we blow it—we fail, we mess up. For whatever reasons, we choose our own way rather than God’s way. The Bible calls it sin. And the consequences are disastrous. Life falls apart. And we’re left in bewilderment trying to pick up the pieces. Maybe that’s where you are this morning.

And when we find ourselves in that situation, Satan would like nothing better than for us to believe that we cannot start over. He would like us to think that our situation is hopeless—that we have failed so devastatingly, so thoroughly, so convincingly that God would never pick us up and give us a new start.

If you’ve ever felt that way, then Psalm 85 is for you. Because Psalm 85 has something to say about starting over. Let’s turn in our Bibles there now.

The 85th Psalm was written by the Sons of Korah. I want to tell you more about them later. But we believe that the Sons of Korah wrote this Psalm after the Jews had returned from exile in Babylon.

Now historically speaking, the exile to Babylon was about the lowest low that the children of Israel had ever experienced. As a people, they had failed in their walk with God and they had reaped the bitter consequences. They were defeated militarily, separated from their land geographically, and humiliated nationally. They spent 70 years in captivity in Babylon and it was not a good time to be a Jew.

Eventually, as we read in the book of Ezra, God allowed a few of them—a remnant—to return to Judea. But when they came back to their homeland, they found it a wasteland. Their capital city, Jerusalem, was in ruins. The walls had been torn down; the gates were burned. The glorious Temple that Solomon had built was nothing but an expensive pile of rubble.

And as the people struggled to come to terms with the enormity of all that had happened; with the scope of their failure, they became discouraged. They felt overwhelmed they felt weak and vulnerable. They were surrounded by enemies on the outside, and assailed by doubts on the inside. They needed to start over, but they weren’t sure if they could.

This is when the Sons of Korah wrote this Psalm. We 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 wonderful things about God is that he is a God of new beginnings. He is always ready to give us a fresh start. He takes us, in our failure and brokenness, and redeems us. He covers our sins with the blood of His Son.

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.

The story is told of 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 return telegram 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 Sons of Korah looked back and saw that God had restored his people in the past. But then they looked at the present, and they saw that they needed restoring again. So the next four verses of the Psalm are a plea.

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.

The people, in their discouragement, were drifting into spiritual apathy. And the Sons of Korah in these verses cry out to God for revival and restoration. “Restore us again…revive us again”.

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.

That passage is incredibly important. Because when Jesus began his public ministry, he went into the synagogue in Nazareth, picked up the scroll of Isaiah and read those very words. And after he had finished reading them, he said “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing”.

In other words: “I am here to undertake this ministry of restoration.” The ministry of Jesus is all about giving people a new start. The Gospel is not meant to make respectable people a little nicer. It’s meant to make reprehensible people into new people. It’s about giving us a new start.

John 3:17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.

And in the first half of this Psalm, the Sons of Korah yearn for that new start…

Show us your unfailing love, O Lord, and grant us your salvation.

If the first half of this Psalm is a prayer, the second half is 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. Surely his salvation is near those who fear him, that his glory may dwell in our land.

There are two important things for us to learn about starting over. The first is that God promises peace. He promises to restore and revive us when we sin. His salvation is near those who fear him (v.9)—it is available to us, and when we rely on His salvation, His glory dwells in us and around us. That’s what He has committed himself to.

It’s up to God to provide restoration. But it’s up to me to prioritize righteousness. I need to commit myself to doing things God’s way. That’s my part.

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

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

To think that way only proves that I don’t understand the seriousness of sin and the costliness of God’s grace—what it cost God to provide my salvation.

The genuineness of my desire for restoration will be proven by the extent to which I make righteousness a priority in my life. The Sons of Korah say that God promises us peace, but they also say “let us not return to folly.”

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

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 convict you. 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.

And life begins to get very complicated. The stress level rises, because you’re trying to hide sinful parts 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 this very thing when he said in Psalm 32:

Psalm 32:3-4 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 Sons of Korah say in verse 10:

Psalm 85:10 Love and faithfulness meet together; righteousness and peace kiss each other.

Love and faithfulness meet together. If you really love God, you’re going to be faithful to his teaching. Jesus said in John 14:21 “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 inner peace in the midst of the storm when you make God’s righteousness your priority.

Jesus said “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” Life will begin to sort itself out. And you see this reflected in the latter portion of this Psalm (vv. 12-13)…

The Lord will indeed give what is good, and our land will yield its harvest. Righteousness goes before him and prepares the way for his steps.

So when we say “God, I need to start over” there are two things involved—God has promised to do his part to forgive and forget our sin; and we need to do our part to turn away from our sin and to seek His righteousness. It’s a two-sided coin. And that’s the only way that righteousness and peace can come together in our lives.

Now what about those sons of Korah who wrote this Psalm? Well, perhaps 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 when Israel was encamped in the desert.

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. So Korah was a worship leader.

But Korah wanted more. He wasn’t happy with the role that God had given him. He wanted the power and the privilege that Moses and Aaron had to stand before God as representatives of the people. 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.

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 would have become synonymous in Israel with spiritual rebellion.

But the interesting thing is that God was not finished 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 part of the Bible—Psalm 85.

It reminds me of the story about an Irishman named Ed O’Hare. They called him Artful Eddie. He lived during the Roaring Twenties, in the city of Chicago. He was slick, and well-dressed—a lawyer by profession. But unfortunately, he operated on the wrong side of the law most of the time.

Artful Eddie was a friend of Al Capone, the notorious gangster. Among other things, Ed took charge of Capone’s dog tracks, and he mastered the art of fixing races. Artful Eddie had money, status, and style. But one day, he decided to turn his back on all that. He turned himself in to the FBI and became a government witness against Al Capone and his gang.

That was an extremely dangerous thing to do. Everyone knows what happens to people who squeal on the Mob. And Artful Eddie was no different. Not long afterward, Ed O’Hare was killed by two shotgun blasts—just another mobster who met a violent death.

Ed O’Hare was survived by a young son named Butch. Butch grew up and went to the U.S. Naval Academy. He became a Navy fighter pilot and went to war in the South Pacific. One day, Butch singlehandedly shot down five Japanese bombers, saving the lives of hundreds of crewmen on the U.S.S. Lexington. For that heroic feat, Butch won the Congressional Medal of Honor.

But even better, the name O’Hare was cleared. And more than cleared, it was remembered and honored. Today, when you fly through Chicago, chances are you’ll fly into O’Hare Airport—named in honor of a mobster’s son who went good.

The fact that this Psalm—a Psalm of restoration; a Psalm about starting over—is attributed to 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. Especially those who have failed in the past.

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.