What's Inside?

Today's Three-minute Bible Study
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Title: What's Inside?------------------------------ Date: 1/24/2001
Keywords: "evil" "righteousness" "sin" "truth" "wisdom"
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Passage: Psalm 51:4-6*

4. Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you are proved right when you speak and justified when you judge.

5. Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.

6. Surely you desire truth in the inner parts; you teach me wisdom in the inmost place.

Questions

1. Who is the most hurt by our sin?

 

2. At what point in your life do you begin needing God?

 

3. Does the urge to view porn originate from the outside or the inside?

 

Practical help

For the context of Psalm 51, read 2 Samuel 11 and 12; the headnote to this psalm notifies us that David wrote it just after his confrontation by the prophet Nathan about his sins of adultery and murder. In that circumstance, how could David say that his sin was only against God? Certainly he had hurt many people around him as well.

I think the sense is more that David was thunderstruck by the significance of his sin in God's eyes, so much so that it mattered little what others thought or felt. Maybe we should look at our own sin that way too. Yes, we've written many times in these 3-minute studies about how porn hurts you, your family, your acquaintances, and even those nameless people in the pictures. And that's all true and fair, but first and foremost, you should be concerned about how it damages your relationship with God.

In Verses 5 and 6, David acknowledges two truths: 1) he, just by virtue of being human, is sinful, and 2) God's desire is for him not to hide from his sin but to acknowledge it and face it. We continue to need reminding of these truths. Pretense and lying goes nowhere in covering sin. Certainly the God whom we have hurt is not fooled. Truth and wisdom on the inside demands honesty and confession (not denial) on the outside.

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*Scriptures are from The Holy Bible: New International Version © Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. All rights reserved.