A Broken Spirit

The Hebrew word that is translated spirit, and most of us don't know too many Hebrew words, but you know that the word spirit, raach, in Hebrew simply means breath. And we usually bring that out when we're talking about the immortal soul. And when you see the word spirit in the Old Testament, there was no concept that that was immortal. And in the New Testament in Greek, you have to tie in certain pagan thought to make the words mean that in Greek.

But in Hebrew, there's just none of that is associated with it. But the word spirit in the Old Testament has a lot of different uses. You know, it's like the English language where we have words that can have dozens, literally dozens of different meanings. But in Hebrew, you have the same thing. In fact, they have an economy of words in ancient Hebrew because they don't have that many words.

So a specific word can have a lot of different uses. I mean, it refers to life. And that's where we see it a lot of times. It's used to to mean life. You know, a human being receives the breath of God, and they have a spirit. They have life. They become a spirit. The spirit leaves them, and they are dead.

Animals have spirits, according to the Old Testament, because it simply means they have life. And many times it's even translated wind. It is the same word that's used for the Holy Spirit. God's Holy Spirit is the same word that is translated wind. Angels are called spirits in the Old Testament. But there's another way it's used, and used quite often throughout the Old Testament. It's used to denote a person's emotional mindset. And it really has to do with the emotions of the person. And what is their emotional mindset?

In the Old Testament, we find people with the spirit of jealousy. We find a sorrowful spirit mentioned many places. There's a faithful spirit. There's a person. There are people with haughty spirits. There's people with humble spirits. And when you read through those passages, what you see is talking about, yes, the mind processes, but it's very much the emotional motivations that we have as human beings. And that's why you'll see the sorrowful spirit. In fact, two Proverbs that really show us how it's used is in Proverbs 15.13, where it says, sorrow can produce a broken spirit. And it's used to mean what we would call depression. I'm not sure there's a Hebrew word for depression, ancient Hebrew, anyways.

But, you know, you would have a broken spirit that you would be just so overwhelmed with sorrow, you'd be so overwhelmed with anxiety and fear, you would be broken. In fact, in Proverbs 17.22, it says a broken spirit can ruin a person's health. So our very health, our physical health, can be ruined by the emotional state we're in.

We know that. I mean, how many times have you read or heard that stress and anxiety actually can cause illness? There's a lot of people that have heart issues, blood pressure issues, and sometimes stress and fear and anxiety is part of why they have that issue. We weren't created to live in this world. So we all suffer an enormous amount of stress that God never wanted us. We were designed to actually bear with. And it hurts our bodies.

It hurts our bodies. And so, you know, there's a lot of, you know, it used to be sort of poo poo poo, but now in a lot of medical professions, they're saying, you know, you have to work with a person's mental state, emotional state, if they're actually going to get well. It's not just a matter of giving them chemicals, because the mind aids in health. And there's a whole number of scriptures to talk about that in the Old Testament. So when we talk about spirit, the way we're going to talk about today, what we're going to talk about is this idea of our spirit being our emotional motivations.

I mean, we like to think that all of us, you know, when we make our decisions, we're computer-like logic, right? And that's how we all make our decisions. And the truth is, our decisions are both made through reason and emotions. And emotions play a bigger part in our decisions than we realize sometimes. In fact, I think that many times people don't even know, we don't even know why we're making certain decisions, because we don't know the emotional motivations we have. You know, we could say, well, this is my motivation, and give a reasoned, here's the reason for my motivation.

But many times, that's not, you know, the underlying motivation. The underlying motivation is actually emotional. That's why we do so many things that don't make sense. That's why many times our actions don't seem to be consistent even sometimes with their own beliefs, because there's emotional motivations that take place in all of us. Look at Proverbs 16.2. Proverbs 16.2.

So, Solomon writes, all the ways of a man are pure in his own eyes, but the Lord weighs the spirits. Now, there's another place, in fact, I've read that in a sermon a couple years ago, where it says, the Lord weighs the hearts. We had to talk about, what does that mean? You know, he puts it on a scale and sees whether the heart, the human heart, and he's not talking about the physical heart, but he was talking about what we would call the mind, is actually weighed to see, is it in balance with his weight on his scale. He says the same thing about the spirits. And I think it's interesting that in the the Jewish Publication Society translation of this verse, here's how they translate it in English, all the ways of a man seem right to him, but the Lord probes motives, talking about emotional motives for what we do. And we can have a lot of, I mean, good motives. In fact, we're supposed to, as we're converted more and more, our actions are motivated by emotional motives that are in line with our reason. And we have learned to have certain self-control over our emotions, you know, where we're not driven by anger, or we're not driven by, and there are a lot of negative emotions that drive people, that motivate people, greed, anger, fear, a need for some kind of recognition. And just sometimes people have this inflated look, a view of themselves, it's very emotional, you know, and sometimes they have a very deflated view of themselves, it's very emotional. And, you know, you can try to reason with that person, and if they have a very inflated view of themselves, and a need, an emotional need, they will defend themselves no matter what. They will always be in the right. If they have an inflated view of themselves, they don't see themselves in a proper perspective of how God sees them, then many times they just, they're despondent. That's a whole other subject in itself, about this idea of self-esteem in our country, and why that didn't change the world like they thought it would. I read something not too long ago that, some tests done on self-esteem, because you know, remember a number of years ago, self-esteem was the answer to everything. If we get to everybody just to have this high self-esteem, there'll be no more crime, and the highest levels of self-esteem that they recorded were with hundreds of men in prison.

They had the highest, no, in other words, they could justify the crimes they committed because, well, I had the right to do so, because I am who I am. So we can be motivated by so many different things that are actual emotional motivations, insecurity, covetousness. Now, there's a lot of positive emotions. I mean, love has an emotional element to it, and that should be, more and more, our motivation. And that's a whole other subject there, too. What I want to do today is I want to look at three places in the history of ancient Israel with some kings of Judah and a king of Israel, and how they allowed an emotional state to mess themselves up.

And what it comes down to is what we have to realize is many times we have conflicting motivations within ourselves. Conflicting motivations. You know, you can have the most... You ever be in a discussion with somebody, and you want to get them your point across, but they just won't see it. And so you get angrier and angrier until you've destroyed your own point because the person thinks you're a crazy person. Because you've destroyed your own point. Because why? You're no longer into whatever you're discussing. You're into your emotional reaction to the person. So let's look at three instances in the Old Testament. And then what we're going to do is we're going to go to one of the Psalms in each one, a different psalm in each one, where David dealt with the same thing in his life. And how he dealt with it. And how he describes what it was like to have conflicting motivations, emotional motivations that were conflicting, and at times take people away from God. 2 Chronicles 24. And this is a long passage. I'm going to read much of it simply because the story is so interesting here. We need to know this story. 2 Chronicles 24. And let's go to verse, let's just start in verse one. Then we'll just go through part of this.

This is when Joash became the king of Judah. Verse one says, Joash was seven years old when he became king, and he reigned forty years in Jerusalem. His mother's name was Zebiah of Beersheba. Joash did what was right in the sight of the Lord all the days of Jehiadah, the priest. And Jehiadah took two wives for him, and he had sons and daughters. Now, Jehiadah was the high priest who obeyed God. Now, it happened after this that Joash set his heart on repairing the house of the Lord. Now, understand, he set his heart. That means his mind, that means his emotions, his thought process. Everything now was zeroed in on repairing the temple for God. And this is seen as a very positive thing that he's doing. Then he gathered the priests and the Levites and said to them, Go out to the cities of Judah and gather from all Israel money to repair the house of your God from year to year and see that you do it quickly. However, the Levites did not do it quickly. So the king called Jehiadah the high priest and said, Why have you not required the Levites to bring in from Judah and from Jerusalem the collection, according to the commandment of Moses, the servant of the Lord, of the end of the assembly of Israel, for the tabernacle of witness? So it goes on and explains how he continued to openly support God. And to put down the leaders of Baal. See, now he goes through and he starts to remove and deal with the leadership that that is convincing people to serve Baal, and he begins to promote God. And he actually then did begin to gather in this money and this abundance in order to refurbish the house of God. Verse 12, the king and Jehiadah gave it to those, this is what they had gathered, who did the work of the service of the house of the Lord. And they hired masons and carpenters to repair the house of the Lord. And it goes on and talks about all the things that they did. And this is, you know, if we end here with this story, Joash would go down in history as one of the great kings of Judah.

But Jehiadah dies. Verse 15. But Jehiadah grew old and was full of days and died. He was 130 years old when he died. And they buried him in the city of David among the kings because he had done good in Israel both toward God and towards his house. So, Jehiadah, because he is, he is influenced, he has good influence on Joash. And Joash uses that to actually influence him. They work together. And Jehiadah is mentioned as a great high priest in the scripture. Now, after the death, verse 17 of Jehiadah, the leaders of Judah came and bowed down to the king. And the king listened to them. Therefore, they left the house of the Lord God of their fathers and served wooden images and idols. And wrath came upon Judah and Jerusalem because of their trespass. Yet he sent them prophets to bring them back to the Lord. God sent them prophets. And they testified against them, but they would not listen. Then the Spirit of God came upon Zechariah, the son of Jehiadah, the priest, and stood above the temple and said to them, Thus says God, why do you transgress the commandments of the Lord so that you cannot prosper because you forsaken the Lord? He has forsaken you. So they conspired against him and commanded, and at the command of the king of Joash, they stoned him with stones in the court of the house of the Lord.

Thus, Joash the king did not remember the kindness which Jehiadah his father had done to him, but killed his son. Something very interesting here. Why is it that Joash, for an extended period of time, obeys God, puts his whole being into it? I mean, if you would have seen Joash in those years, you would have thought this is going to be, you know, especially he was doing it young. We don't know exactly how young he was when he started doing all these things. And this is going to be one of the greatest stories of obedience to God, following God, submission to God, faith in God in the entire Bible. And yet he just turns just like that. It tells us something that's very important.

We can be motivated by external restrictions.

Joash was highly motivated as long as he had other highly motivated people around him, motivating him to do what was right.

He had these external forces, and he gave into those external forces. This seemed right. But see, at some point, Joash had to internalize the very things that was natural or had become part of the character of Joiah. But he did not. He was motivated by him, and he was motivated by this desire to do what was right, but it was external. He did not internalize it.

And as soon as the external pressures weren't there anymore, he simply gave into another set of external pressures.

He simply gave into it a whole new viewpoint in which he goes from serving God and working as a team with God's high priest to killing God's high priest and thinking it was good to do so. And he said, how could he be so good and become so evil because he was motivated by external forces? In other words, he actually had two motivations.

As long as external forces motivate us, we will end up with multiple motivations.

And eventually, we will give into the basis of our internal motivation.

Some of you will remember—I hate to bring up the past—but some of you remember back in 1995. How shocked we were that there were people who kept the holy days, the Sabbath, gave up Christmas in Easter, didn't eat pork, didn't believe in the immortal soul, and one week later—and they'd done it for 30 years—one week later, believed the opposite. And we were shocked. How in the world could people do this and then do this? And they did it with such fervor during this time period.

What it comes down to—and I'm not judging every person in that situation—but there are people who were motivated by an external pressure. They became part of the church, they learned the teachings of the church, and it was external. It never was that they were doing what they followed God because they wanted to please God and they knew God. They did what the external force around them told them to do.

They liked belonging to the church, they liked feeling special, they liked feeling like they had special knowledge, they liked being with the people. In some cases, they liked being told what to do. And when that external force wasn't there, another external force came along because they were never motivated within themselves. They're only motivated without themselves, outside themselves. What did they do? They just gave in to the new motivation.

That's what Joash did. It was never internalized. We must internalize not only the knowledge of God, but just as importantly the character we must have, which includes one of the fruits of God's spirit is self-control. It's the ability to deal with our conflicting, confusing emotions. And human emotions are always conflicting and confusing. We must learn to deal with those as part of the conversion process so that when we do respond to God, it's an internal motivation because of a relationship with God, not an external motivation.

And that's part of what Paul dealt with in the New Testament when he seems negative towards the law. But what he's saying is the law was an external force on him. And once he really started to understand the spirit of the law, he realized he was breaking it all the time. But the rituals, the external part, boy, that external force was strong because he lived in a Jewish community. But he realized he had to internalize things. So it wasn't just wrong to kill, it was also wrong to hate. Now how does David deal with this?

We know David really gave into wrong conflicting emotions with the sin with Bathsheba, right? He knew that was wrong. He believed it was wrong. But temporarily he became overwhelmed by his own emotions, his own desires. And then he had to deal with it. He had to deal with, okay, what do I do now that I realize that the law was always there. He knew God's law. The external force was there. But you know, as king, there wasn't anybody really anything anybody could do to him.

I don't know what all went through his head. But David found a way. He found a motivation. He found a way to give into his desires in spite of the fact that he knew the law. Anytime we sin, it's because we see the law as external. We don't see it as internal. We don't see it as something that this is a motivation.

And he lost that motivation. So we go to Psalm 51. Psalm 51 is like Romans 6, 7, and 8. You know, at least once a year, sometimes twice a year, I'm going to go to Romans 6, 7, and 8. I'm going to go to some section or part of Psalm 51, at least once or twice a year.

Psalm 51. You see, David could have been like Joash. He could have given in to his internal emotional motivations. But what he says in verse 10 of Psalm 51, he says, and this, of course, is his prayer and song of repentance after he came to deal with his sin, he said, created me a clean heart and renew a steadfast spirit in me. Now, I gave a whole sermon here about three years ago on creating a clean heart. What did he mean by that?

But renew a steadfast spirit within me. Create emotional stability within me, that my thoughts and my emotions are working together and I am stable. I am an unstable person, is what he's saying. I'm emotionally unstable. And people can do, human beings can do, some of the strangest things when we're emotionally unstable, when we let ourselves be in control by our emotions. Do not cast me away from your presence. Do not take your Holy Spirit from me.

Restore to me the joy of your salvation and uphold me by your generous spirit. And I will teach transgressors your way and sinners shall be converted to you. The joy of salvation. You know, unless salvation is a motivation. Because notice, he said the joy of salvation. He had an emotional reaction to salvation. What was the last time we really experienced the joy of salvation?

An emotional reaction to salvation. You will see that David always has emotional reactions to the truth here. He says, deliver me from the guilt of blood shed, O God, the God of my salvation, and my tongue shall sing aloud your righteousness. So he goes on and he just talks about how he knows what God wants from him in verse 16. For you do not desire sacrifice or else I would give it. You do not delight in burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit and a broken and contrite heart. Now we already, I already mentioned how in the Old Testament a broken spirit is many times a bad thing. Right? Because it's a person who is so overcome with sorrow, with confusion, with despondency, that they're just broken. And you know, we've seen people like it. You've probably had times in your life where you felt broken. Maybe the death of a loved one or something happens, and you're just broken. You can't function and you can't eat, you can't interact with anybody else. Your mind is in such turmoil you can't even think clearly. You're broken. Is that what God wants here? That all of us, you know, just we have no appetite, we can't go to work, we can't interact with anybody else because we're just so broken. When you look in the Bible in the Old Testament, you see a broken spirit. You see two things. One is a very negative thing. And once again, it is just one of emotions of crushed us. And it can be other things happening to us. You know, it was mentioned in the sermonette that you find out you have cancer, or you find out you're really, really sick, and your despondency can happen because of that. Because it's like, God, where are you? Why aren't you healing me? Why aren't you? I have faith, I'm here, I have prayed, I've done what I'm supposed to do. And yet, I'm still sick. That's not the kind of broken spirit God wants from us. When it talks about a broken spirit here before God, it means that we have reached the point where we're no longer motivated by our spirit.

We don't want to be motivated by our inner confused emotions, which, of course, affect our thoughts. So you can't separate the two. I mean, we're looking at this as as if they're separated. They're not, because one is affected by the other. But that we have a broken spirit before God. That we are literally saying, my spirit does not work. How I feel does not work. Therefore, I want you, your spirit, to guide me and motivate me and lead me where I should go. It is a broken spirit before God isn't despondency. In fact, David, we'll see later, a broken spirit before God was the only way he came out of his despondency, because he realized God gives me the joy of salvation. God gives me what I cannot have. God does for me what I cannot do. And that's what it means to have a broken spirit. So that's our first lesson. Spiritual growth will only be temporary when we're motivated only by external restrictions. We must be motivated by a broken spirit before God. There's actually an emotional element to this, a broken spirit before God, that says, I'm tired of doing things my way, because nothing I do works. So I submit myself to you to do it your way. Now, the second lesson is in 2 Kings chapter 10.

I think Joash is just such a perfect example of someone does so well when they're around the right influences, and then just does so bad when they're around the wrong influences. Because the internal motivation of a broken spirit is not there. So Joash was just pulled back and forth by his own thoughts and his own emotions, and eventually destroyed by it.

2 Kings 10. And let's go to verse 23. And it says, Then Jehu, or Yehu, the Jehonadab, the son of Rekab, went into the temple of Baal and said to the worshipers of Baal. Now, this is very interesting, because Jehu now is going to do something that's right. They have a real problem in Israel or in Judah, in that they are just absolutely following the Baal again. The God of the Canaanites just never got it out of their society. And so he says, here's what we're going to do. We have this huge temple to Baal. We're going to invite all the worshipers of Baal to come to a special ceremony. And so they did. They sent out, and all the worshipers of Baal came. They filled up the temple. Then he said to his soldiers, you go in and kill everyone of them. Because all those who were worshiping God didn't show up. All those who were worshiping God said, no, that's wrong. He forbids that. And this is actually seen as a good thing. He goes in and he wipes out or tries to wipe out Baal worship in a public way. But what's interesting is he doesn't wipe it out entirely. Look at verse 29. However, Jehu did not turn away from the sins of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, who had made Israel sin. That is, from the golden calves that were Bethel and Dan.

And the Lord God said to Jehu, because you have done well in doing what is right on my side, and have done to the house of Ahab all that was in my heart, your son shall sit on the throne of Israel to the fourth generation. But Jehu took no heed to walk in the law of the Lord God of Israel with all his heart, nor did he part from the sins of Jeroboam, who had made Israel sin. Now, you think, what is this guy's motivation? God says, stop Baal worship, and he does. And then he allows the religion that Jeroboam had set up, actually this is in Israel, Jeroboam had set up, that was against God. Why would he do this? It sounds like, well, two conflicting motivations. One, he wanted the favor of God. He wanted God to look down upon him in favor. He wanted God to bless him. He wanted God to be in his life. But there was another motivation he had. To understand that, we have to understand Jeroboam's motivation. So let's go to 1 Kings 12, and let's look at Jeroboam's motivation. 1 Kings 12.

Verse 25.

When Jeroboam built Shechem in the mountains of Ephraim, and dwelt there, he also went out from there and built penny oil. And Jeroboam sat in his heart. Now the kingdom may return to the house of David. He was afraid Israel, of course Israel and Judah had split into two countries, he was afraid that Israel returned. Because why? Because they had to go to the feasts three times a year in Jerusalem. And they would go back, and he would lose his kingdom. Because they'd say, well why are we, we shouldn't be separated. We shouldn't be separated. If these people go up to offer sacrifices in the house of the Lord of Jerusalem, then the heart of this people returned back to their Lord Reoboam, king of Judah. And they will kill me and go back to Reoboam, king of Judah. So they built two calves and said, this is where we worship Yahweh.

Excuse me. This is where we worship Yahweh. Jeroboam had two conflicting motivations. Let's keep the favor of God, but we'll corrupt it for political reasons to maintain power. So you see his other motivation that was really his real motivation. We have the same thing in Jehu. What we have in Jehu is a man that wants favor from God. He wants to appear to follow God, but he also will compromise that for power or control. I suppose this is mine.

You probably have diphtheria and Ebola and a whole bunch of things.

I started coughing to other people. This is just that residue from having a pneumonia. Every time I talk more than about 45 minutes, I start to cough. Someone told me it was like Paul had the thorn in the flesh. It would not go away. This was God's way of keeping me from only talking 45 minutes, and this was never going to go away.

Let's go to Psalm 32 and look at David. Not exactly the same issue, but a similar issue.

Where he now has two conflicting motivations. Psalm 32.

He says, Blessed, verse 1, is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is a man in whom the Lord does not impute iniquity, in whom spirit there is no deceit. Now, his point being is, many times we don't repent of sins because we're deceived by our own sins, or we're deceived by our own motivation.

We don't seek repentance. Oh, thank you.

We're deceived by our own sins. We can think our sin is correct. You know, it can be just sort of self-righteousness, or we're actually deceived by the sin itself. Or we deceive ourselves that this sin is okay in our case, or whatever. But he's talking about forgiveness. You've been forgiven by God. Why? Because you haven't been deceived by sin, you have acknowledged sin in yourself. But notice, he had come to this conclusion a hard way. Verse 3, When I kept silent, my bones grew old, through my groaning all the day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me, my vitality was turned into the drought of summer. He said, I could feel God's hand on me, and it was so heavy. He says, I was just... You know, you look at what he's saying here, it's almost like emotionally, maybe physically, the man is just being crushed. The hand of God is on him. Like God reached out, put his hand on his shoulder. But you know, he said, well, today my hand weighs 300 pounds. So that's what it's going to feel like. And it's just going to drive you down until you stop deceiving yourself. Verse 5, I acknowledge my sin to you, and my iniquity I have not hidden. I said, I will confess my transgression to the Lord, and you forgave the iniquity of my sin. And for this cause, everyone who is godly shall pray to you in a time when you may be found. Surely in a flood of great waters they shall not come near him. You are my hiding place. You shall preserve me from trouble. You shall surround me with songs of deliverance. Notice there's an emotional element here. The emotional element was, I was being crushed because I would not acknowledge my sins.

I wouldn't... now you know David here isn't talking about his sin with Bathsheba. He's just talking about sins he committed. And he said, I will not go before God. He says, I wasn't going before God on a regular basis and saying, forgive me for my sins. Hey, he's made me king. I got this all together. I killed Goliath. I mean, I've done all these things that God has done with me and in me. And, you know, in that attitude he had stopped understanding how he still had motivations and desires and failed because he was still sinning. Because he was still committing sins. And here he finally had to admit it. I have conflicting motivations. We keep going back to this, but notice David has a broken heart before God. He has a broken spirit before God. I feel what's happening here, so I come to you. See, there is an emotional element. The great danger is we can't be driven by our emotions because many times they're wrong. Or even if they're not wrong, they're just too all too human. But in this, yet there is this emotional element, the joy of salvation, the fact that you can feel God holding you down because you're not going to him. So you're just filled with frustration or anger. And he had to recognize I still have other motivations. We have to go to God and ask him to help take away the deceit of our own sins. That's our second point. We must be willing to ask God to reveal to us our conflicting motivations and submit to his spirit. We must be willing to ask God to reveal to us our conflicting motivations. Reveal to me where my motivation is wrong. We ask God to reveal to us where our actions are wrong, but the idea that my spirit must be right with God.

And my heart must be right with God. In other words, my thoughts and my emotions, we must have them in compliance with God. And our last point is in 1 Chronicles 21. So really we have one point, but there are, I mean, three points, but they're really all derivatives of one point. 1 Chronicles. And this actually has to do with David specifically.

1 Chronicles 21. And this is towards the end of his career. He had been king for a long time. He wants to start building the temple, and God won't let anybody. He says he can prepare for it. So he's sort of at the pinnacle here. He's the king over united Israel. They become a major power in the entire Middle East. They're an important country, and he's the king. And it says in verse 1, Now Satan stood up against Israel and moved David to number Israel. So David said to Joab and to the leaders of the people, Go number Israel from Bathsheba to Dan, and bring the number of them to me, that I may know it. Now there's a couple things here. Moses was told to do a census. This isn't just a census. David has some motivations here.

Verse 3, And Joab answered, Now Joab is not a good guy. Okay? Joab is a general who is a good guy. He will do anything for power, and he played his politics well. He served David. But soon as David died, he ran, because he knew what David was going to do. He told Solomon, Joab will stab you in the back. You find him and you kill him. He knew what he had done, but, you know, he was sort of the greatest general of the day, so he kept him on. But he knew he would try to overthrow Solomon. Joab answered, May the Lord make his people a hundred times more than they are, but my Lord the King, are they not all my Lord's servants? Why then does the Lord require this thing? Why should he be a cause of guilt in Israel? They were not allowed to do a census to find out how big their army was. It's supposed to be a military census. He's going to figure out how great his numbers are, how big, how many people he has. You know, hey, maybe we have as many people as Egypt. Who knows? Let's find out how many people we have. We're a great nation. Let's find out how many men we have that will serve in the army. Nevertheless, the King's word prevailed against Joab. Therefore Joab departed, went through all of Israel, and came to Jerusalem. Then Joab gave him the sum of the number of the people of Israel. All Israel had 1,100,000 men who drew the sword. Notice what the reason is? How many kids do we have? I don't know if that was in the number. The only number that David was interested in is how big is my army. This is a huge army.

And he says, in Judah had 470,000 men who drew the sword. But he did not count Levi and Benjamin among them, for the King's word was abominable to Joab. Even Joab knew this was wrong. Now there's a couple things here that are very interesting. One, doing the census wasn't necessarily wrong, but his motivation was wrong. He wanted to see how big his army was. Now he'd always trusted in God, but you know, even King over a country that's now become a major country. How many men do I have that can carry the sword? And he had a huge army. Huge army.

This displeased God, as it says in verse 7. And God was displeased with this thing, so he struck Israel. So David said to God, I have sinned greatly because I have done this thing, but now I pray take away the iniquity of your servant, for I have done very foolishly. Now, how God dealt with him is a whole other story. What God did with him the rest of this chapter is absolutely fascinating how God dealt with him, the choices he gave him. Okay, I will punish you, but he had to be involved in deciding his own punishment. The important thing here is to realize that David, whose motivations were the love of God, wanting to please God, that even later in his life, there is a point where he led another motivation driving. And what's interesting here is Satan used it. Satan couldn't give him a motivation he didn't already have. Satan can't possess us and give us a motivation. He already wondered. He must have probably wondered. I wonder how big the army is. But it says Satan kept pushing at him until he helped him make this decision. And that is a really important point. Satan gets to us through our emotions more than almost anything else.

The easiest way to get to us is through our emotions. Once he gets to us emotionally, we can do almost anything. We can justify almost anything. We can justify mistreating other people. We can justify, oh, I've seen people justify divorces or for emotional reasons that have no biblical basis. Once we let ourselves become prey to him, he will find our weakest, most base emotions, and he will drive them. So we have to be aware of that. In fact, David has a psalm that helps us. Although he didn't meet it exactly this way. Let's go to Psalm 143. This isn't about Satan, but it's about enemies who are about to destroy you. And what David sings and actually prays here should be a type of prayer that we have in reference to Satan. Because Satan will motivate our emotions. And once again, look, here's a great man of God who's considered one of the greatest men of God in the entire Old Testament, who is going to be king of Israel throughout the entire millennium. And yet we see him struggling, just like we see Paul and Peter, others struggling with the very same things we do. But in Psalm 143, he says, Here, my prayer, O Lord, give ear to my supplications, and your faithfulness answer me, and in your righteousness. Do not enter into judgment even with your servant, for in your sight no living one is righteous. Here's a broken spirit again. That's what we find in all these Psalms. David's not despondent. He's not depressed. He's not driven by his anger. But he is looking at the condition he's in, and he goes before God and says, only you have the solutions. David failed because he figured he had a solution. A big army with a lot of well-trained, experienced men, because there had been a lot of wars during his lifetime, and during the lifetime of Saul. He had an army that could just about match anybody in the known world. He had a solution to the problem. But in doing that, at that moment, he did not have a broken spirit before God. Is this your solution to the problem?

And so here you see the broken spirit that you'll find over and over again, and this is what kept bringing David back to God. For the enemy has persecuted my soul. He has crushed my life to the ground. He's made me to dwell in darkness like those who have long been dead. Therefore my spirit is overwhelmed within me, and my heart within me is distressed. So he's broken before God, but he's also broken in spirit in the wrong sense. And this is what happens to us. We get broken in spirit. We get despondent. We get overwhelmed. We get filled with our own motivations, and we seek solutions to problems. And he realized at this moment, in this despondency, the only solution was to go with a broken spirit before God. I bring before you my broken spirit because you're the only one that can save me. You're the only one that can help me. You're the only one that can get me through this.

The only solution to the broken spirit, in the negative sense, is the broken spirit before God, because he heals our emotional broken spirit.

It is God that gets us through the crises of life. It is God that gets us through the health crisis and the crisis of living in a deteriorating society. The crisis of getting older. The crisis of just add them up. Job crises, problems with relationships. All these crises we go through that break our spirit. The answer to that is to build my spirit back up. The answer to that is to go before God with the right broken spirit before him and let him. Remember what David said earlier? Around me, once I did that, I was surrounded by the songs of deliverance. Notice what he says here. I remember the days of old. I meditate on your works. I muse on the works of your hands. Suddenly, he wasn't thinking about his enemies anymore. What was he thinking about? God. God's work. What God does. God's involvement in his life. I spread out my hands to you. My song so longs for you like a thirsty land. He said, now I found myself wanting, being drawn to God. When we find ourselves many times being drawn into actions that become hurtful to us and others, we have to wonder, what are we doing? If he would have had this attitude when he was first attracted to Bathsheba, I almost said, Bersheba. That's a place. Bathsheba, he wouldn't have committed adultery.

But he didn't. And that motivation, that emotion, that desire overwhelmed him.

Here, he realizes my enemies are going to crush me, and my soul, how do you say it? He said, my soul is overwhelmed. My spirit is overwhelmed within me. So he asked God to deliver him. And then in verse 9, he says, deliver me, O Lord, for my enemies, and you I take shelter. Teach me to do your will, for you are my God. Your spirit is good. Lead me in the land of uprightness. Revive me, O Lord, for your name's sake. When we're confronted with the enemy, who is Satan, what do we do? We have to go to God with the broken spirit. Or Satan will actually motivate our wrong motivations. He will actually take what the wrong motivations we have, especially our emotions, and drive them and inspire us to be driven in a wrong direction. David looked at his enemy and said, he has overwhelmed me. I am crushed. My spirit is crushed and overwhelmed within me. So I now have a broken spirit. So what do I need to do? Fortunately, he didn't say, let me number my army and go kill my enemy. In this case, what he did, he said, I have to go before God with my broken spirit and some misnus to him, and he will heal my broken spirit. It doesn't seem logical, does it? The way to heal our broken spirit is to have a broken spirit, but they're two different kinds. One is the broken spirit of just being emotionally crushed. The other is the broken spirit of going before God with the absolute understanding. I am broken without you. You are the only one who can take care of me. You're the only one who can heal me. You're the only one who can see me through this, and therefore I come to you, and I ask you to guide me and direct me and show me what I should do. And you see, in all these cases where David did this, there was a certain calmness that came upon him, because now he knew God was going to show me what he was supposed to do. He was going to take care of him, even though at times it wasn't what David wanted.

The Lord weighs the spirits. God not only judges our actions, but he does work with us and eventually judges for how we control and react to our own emotions. Because those are some of the greatest motivations we have from our own emotions. Ask God through his spirit to do what we talked about here today. To give you a right kind of broken spirit before him. You have to go ask for it. That's what in Psalm 51, David asked for that. He says, what you want is this. Help me to have a broken spirit before you, so that I don't have a broken spirit in the negative sense. Despondent, fearful, overwhelmed.

Because why? Because God, if I'm submitting to God, he's working in me. And how many times we read where he talked about your spirit, your spirit, God's spirit in us, that he gives to us. And we have to ask him to show us our wrong emotions. Help us to learn to control our emotions. And that's some of the hardest stuff we'll ever do. That's some of the hardest things we'll ever do. Come to God with a broken spirit. And when you do, instead of being despondent, instead of being anxious, instead of being overwhelmed by the enemy, what's going to happen to you is exactly what David wrote. He said he found himself surrounded in a very positive emotional statement, surrounded by the songs of deliverance.