Psalm 51:1-3 reads:

For the choir director: A psalm of David, regarding the time Nathan the prophet came to him after David had committed adultery with Bathsheba. Have mercy on me, O God, because of your unfailing love. Because of your great compassion, blot out the stain of my sins. Wash me clean from my guilt. Purify me from my sin. For I recognize my shameful deeds - they haunt me day and night.

David's life was bigger mess than the Jackson family-the Michael Jackson and Jessie Jackson families. David has committed adultery with Bathsheba while he's married to Michal, who was a 'gift' from King Saul. Some commentators believe David had nearly 100 wives, including the seven mentioned specifically in scripture.

Bathsheba tells David she's pregnant and her husband has been off to war, so she knows it's not Uriah's. So, David as Commander in Chief pulls some strings to give Uriah some R+R at home. But Uriah won't go home to his wife while his comrades are still in battle.

So, David sends Uriah back to the front with a sealed message that says, make sure this guy comes back in a body bag. So, with Uriah dead, David takes Bathsheba for one of his multiple wives!

At this point of the message, we all should be feeling pretty 'spur-tal.' I haven't had an affair. I don't have 100 wives. I've never contracted a ‘hit' on my lover's husband. Yep, I'm pretty 'spur-tal' But look at verse four:

Against you, and you alone, have I sinned; I have done what is evil in your sight. You will be proved right in what you say, and your judgment against me is just.

Now wait a minute! How about sinning against Uriah? David got his wife pregnant and then had him killed.

But every sin we commit, is first a sin against God his desires for us. In The Lord's Prayer in Luke, Jesus says 'Forgive us our hamartia as we forgive those who hamartia against us.

It's the same Greek word Paul uses in Romans 3:23: 'all have sinned an come short of the glory of God.' Keith Drury calls these the 'sins of falling shorts.' And we all fall short of God's glory.

Let's say on the north wall is standing Adolph Hitler, who ordered the extermination of six million Jews.

On the south wall is standing Mother Teresa.

Now, where would you place King David? And, most important, where would you place yourself? I'm somewhere between King David and Mother Teresa.

But here's where we 'fall short' of God's glory. We're in northern Indiana, but God is somewhere south of Miami! Compared to God, we're all a mess!

In the past few weeks [at our church] there have been several public confessions of relationship problems, marital problems, financial problems, and spiritual problems. That's encouraging. Because until we recognize that we have a need we are not making any progress in solving it. And until we make our need known we can't enjoy the prayer support of our church family.

Brennan Manning has written two of my favorite books, Abba's Child and Ruthless Truth. He's a recovering alcoholic priest and is just so honest about his spiritual journey. He writes, “[When we refuse to take moral responsibility for our actions and thoughts we] can only pretend we are sinners, and thus only pretend we are forgiven.

The Great Awakening during the 1740's in New England occurred when Jonathon Edwards delivered his famous sermon, 'Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.' It certainly stresses the mess we are in!

The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes, than the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours. You have offended him infinitely more than ever a stubborn rebel did his prince; and yet it is nothing but his hand that holds you from falling into the fire every moment. It is to be ascribed to nothing else, that you did not go to hell the last night; that you was suffered to awake again in this world, after you closed your eyes to sleep. And there is no other reason to be given, why you have not dropped into hell since you arose in the morning, but that God's hand has held you up. There is no other reason to be given why you have not gone to hell, since you have sat here in the house of God, provoking his pure eyes by your sinful wicked manner of attending his solemn worship. Yea, there is nothing else that is to be given as a reason why you do not this very moment drop down into hell.

O sinner! Consider the fearful danger you are in: it is a great furnace of wrath, a wide and bottomless pit, full of the fire of wrath, that you are held over in the hand of that God, whose wrath is provoked and incensed as much against you, as against many of the damned in hell. You hang by a slender thread, with the flames of divine wrath flashing about it, and ready every moment to singe it, and burn it asunder; and you have no interest in any Mediator, and nothing to lay hold of to save yourself, nothing to keep off the flames of wrath, nothing of your own, nothing that you ever have done, nothing that you can do, to induce God to spare you one moment.

Brennan Manning offers a softer version of that concept:

[The glory of God] induces a feeling of terror before the Infinite and exposes as sham our empty religious talk and pointless activity, our idle curiosity and ludicrous pretensions of importance, our frantic busyness.

The fear of the Lord prompts . . . silent reverence, radical amazement, and affectionate awe at the infinite goodness of God'

Hopefully you said I'm a mess with as much feeling and sincerity as you said You're a mess.

So, Hi, I'm Jim. I'm a mess. But here's the good news.

2. Recall the mess-age