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Let’s ask the Lord’s blessing on the preaching of his word.
Great God in heaven, you who sit enthroned above the cherubim, whose eyes are too pure to look upon evil, who dwell in inapproachable light.
We beseech you now, Lord, that you would speak to us from your word. That your spirit would work mightily in this hour, both in myself to say your word as I ought to, but also in those who hear it.
That they would not only understand, but be changed to put your word into practice, to obey you, and to enjoy you.
Pray this in Jesus name. Amen.
preparation for the sermon this week, I have been thinking about the concept of scandals.
The Cambridge dictionary defines a scandal as an action or event that causes a public feeling of shock and strong moral disapproval.
The English word comes from the Greek scandalon meaning a trap, a stumbling block or an offense.
There have been many famous scandals in recent times such as the Watergate scandal of the early 1970s.
That scandal of political espionage, sabotage, and cover up was so significant it not only forced a US president to resign from office, but also many scandals since then have become nicknamed as some kind of gate like Watergate. So perhaps you remember some more recent scandals like Bridgegate in 2013, Deflate Gate in 2015 and Partygate in 2021.
However, a scandal more famous and more significant than even Watergate took place in Israel around a 1000 to 950 BC.
A scandal we might call Ba Sheba Gate.
If there had been newspapers at the time, their headlines as the scandal broke would have sounded probably something like this.
God’s anointed king caught committing adultery and murder.
Sweet psalmist of Israel discovered in sickening secret sin.
Hide your kids, wives, and husbands.
King David exposed as lustful killer.
The sad historical events as we have them recorded in our Bibles in 2 Samuel 11 and12. It must have sent shock waves throughout Israel and beyond Israel when revealed.
How could King David chosen by God to shepherd Israel as a man after God’s own heart?
How could he have taken Bath Sheba, the wife of his specially honored mighty man, Uriah, to commit adultery with her?
And then, when efforts to cover up the resulted pregnancy failed, how could David send Uriah back to the front lines, carrying secret instructions for Uriah to be abandoned in the middle of battle so that Uriah would be killed by enemy Ammonites.
In essence, David outrageously murdered Uriah just to cover up adultery and take Bath Sheba as David’s wife.
No doubt Israel’s enemies relished this scandal as an opportunity to mock David, mock Israel, and mock Israel’s God.
But how did David himself react when tripping over this great stumbling block of sinful scandal?
Did David respond like many people do today? Did he simply ignore the scandal or try to divert people’s attention?
Did he try to deny or downplay his sin?
Did he try to defend himself or shift blame?
Did he try to run away or even end his own life?
No, it was none of these.
Instead, David responded to his scandal with an action arguably even more scandalous.
He wrote a commemorative prayer song of repentance, Psalm 51, and then submitted it to the Levitical singers to be taught to Israel and sung in public worship from then on.
Why why would a great king allow himself to be so humiliated or to cause the greatest scandal of his life to be so prominently remembered even by millions of people today.
It is because despite David’s terrible sin, he genuinely loved God and wanted to see God honored.
And also because as part of David’s true repentance, true turning from his sin, he desired to teach others what true repentance is. So that whether their sins seemed small or great were publicly exposed or not, those persons also might turn to God in humble brokenhearted worship and not only find themselves forgiven and accepted, but also transformed to walk a new and lead others to God.
I’d like to examine David’s commemorative prayer song of repentance together with you this morning. So, please turn in your Bibles to Psalm 51.
The title of the sermon is the broken heart of repentance, part one. Yes, we’re going to do this psalm also in two parts since there’s much soul treasure here. The broken heart of repentance, part one. If you’re using the Bibles that we provided, Psalm 51 is on page 581.
Let’s read the whole psalm together including its original Hebrew title which is there right before verse one.
It says Psalm 51 for the choir director a psalm of David when Nathan the prophet came to him after he had gone in to Ba Sheba.
Be gracious to me oh God. according to your loving kindness, according to the greatness of your compassion, blot out my transgressions.
Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin.
For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Against you, you only I have sinned and done what is evil in your sight. So that you are justified when you speak and blameless when you judge.
Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me.
Behold, you desire truth in the innermost being, and in the hidden part you will make me no wisdom.
Purify me with hissup, and I shall be clean. Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Make me to hear joy and gladness. Let the bones which you have broken rejoice.
Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquities.
Create in me a clean heart, oh God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.
Do not cast me away from your presence and do not take your holy spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and sustain me with a willing spirit.
Then I will teach transgressors your ways and sinners will be converted to you. Deliver me from blood guiltiness, oh God, the God of my salvation. Then my tongue will joyfully sing of your righteousness. Oh Lord, open my lips that my mouth may declare your praise.
For you do not delight in sacrifice, otherwise I would give it. You are not pleased with burnt offering.
The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit. A broken and contrite heart, oh God, you will not despise.
By your favor, do good to Zion. Build the walls of Jerusalem. Then you will delight in righteous sacrifices, in burnt offering and whole burnt offering.
Then young bulls will be offered on your altar. Among the larger collection of Israel’s prayer songs and prayer poems that we know as the book of Psalms, Psalm 51 is one of seven penitential psalms or psalms marked by confession of personal sin, expressions of sorrow and repentance and petition for cleansing and repentance or cleansing and deliverance.
The other penitential psalms, by the way, are Psalms 6, 32, 38, 102, 130, which Joe actually mentioned earlier in worship, and 143.
of this set of seven penitential psalms, Psalm 51 is probably the most well-known partly due to the rawness of the emotion and the relatability of what David writes, but also partly due to the occasion mentioned in the title. Look again before verse one in your Bibles to see the original Hebrew title again. It says, “For the choir director, a psalm of David after Nathan the prophet came to him after he had gone in to Ba Sheba.” This title indicates that the psalm was written by David and dedicated to the choir master for public worship.
The reference or I’ll say this first.
Notice further that the title says that this psalm was written right after David’s great and scandalous sin, the adultery with Ba Sheeba.
And the reference to Nathan the prophet’s arrival has to do with how David’s sin was exposed. Perhaps you remember this.
We or remember this from your own Bible reading, but we did also read it earlier in the service. 2 Samuel 12 1-14 describes how God’s prophet Nathan strategically yet dramatically confronted David’s sin with a little story. Nathan reported an injustice that had taken place somewhere in David’s kingdom. A rich man with many sheep had stolen the one and only beloved u lamb of a poor neighbor and killed and prepared the lamb as dinner for an arriving guest.
At hearing the story, David was moved with righteous indignation and he declared that that cruel rich man deserved to die. But at the least that man had to repay the poor man four animals for the one animal that was stolen.
Nathan then revealed that David was that cruel rich man, that cruel rich thief by how David, who already had multiple wives, had stolen the wife of Uriah and butchered her husband by the hand of the Ammonites.
Nathan also pronounced God’s judgment on David. As a result, continual family strife, a future rebellion from David’s own household, and the public violation of some of David’s wives.
All these prophecies soon came to pass.
If you just read on in 2 Samuel chapters 13 to 20, where we see the rebellion of David’s son, Abselum, described.
So this was Nathan’s confrontation and denunciation of David. And facing such David could have reacted like many hypoc hypocritical tyrants do in the Bible and do today by shooting the messenger. That is by imprisoning or executing Nathan.
That’s not what David does. David’s reaction, David’s remarkable reaction was instead as 2 Samuel 12:13a says 2 Samuel 12:13a, “Then David said to Nathan, I have sinned against Yahweh.” In other words, David immediately repented of his sin and publicly confessed it before God.
Nathan’s response on behalf of God in the second half of that same verse is even more remarkable. It says, “And Nathan said to David, Yahweh has also taken away your sin.
You shall not die.” David had declared that the reported lamb thief deserved to die unknowingly but rightly condemning himself.
According to God’s law for Israel as given through Moses, adultery and murder were sinful crimes that had to be punished by death.
No animal sacrifices could atone for such high-handed sins.
David was guilty of both of these and many other attending sins. Yet God immediately declared through Nathan that David’s sin was removed.
He was forgiven.
And despite what David deserved, David would not die.
Now, Nathan quickly added that because David had given occasion to God’s enemies to blaspheme, David’s child with Ba Sheba would still die. Israel’s leaders had to be held to a high standard before their people and the other nations.
Nevertheless, what amazing grace, what amazing mercy God showed to David that God would forgive David’s sin and spare David from death.
and all on the simple basis of repentance.
That is David’s change of heart about himself, about his sin, about God, and thus David’s returning to God in humble faith and worship.
With David’s repentance and God’s pardon both publicly proclaimed, it would seem nothing more needed to be said about David’s sin. it has been sufficiently dealt with.
But that’s not what David felt.
As David continued to think on the depth of his sin and the depth of God’s forgiveness, David desired as an act of contrite worship to express his repentance more completely than David did in the brief exchange he had with Nathan in the throne room.
Thus, David wrote Psalm 51, and the Holy Spirit has given it to us as instruction even today.
So, here’s the main idea of David’s psalm. In Psalm 51, David models four heart cries of true repentance so that your own broken heart might cry out thus and present acceptable worship to God.
Now, note the way I’ve worded this. This psalm does not provide a formula for repentance. That is, don’t think that you can read this and then just pray these or similar words to God and God will accept you.
No, repentance does not happen in words.
Repentance is a change of mind. It is a turning of the heart.
If your inner person is genuinely changed the way God wants it to be, if you are truly broken over your own sin, then your heart should cry out like this, like David expresses in this psalm, even in these four specific ways.
But just know that spoken or prayed words to God, they are only expressions of repentance. They are not repentance itself.
Repentance is a change of heart.
Now, since I’ve taken time to discuss the psalm’s background with you today, we’re only going to look at the first of this Psalms four heart cries this morning. We’ll come back and do the other three in a few weeks.
But there’s a lot to see even in just this first heart cry. So, I think you’ll appreciate taking extra time. What is the first heart cry of true repentance that David models for us, shows us in this psalm that we may do likewise?
We see it in verses 1-6 number one.
Oh God, forgive me my great guilt.
Oh God, forgive me my great guilt.
As we explore this, we’ll take just a few verses at a time. We’ll start with verses 1 to two. Look at those again.
Be gracious to me, oh God, according to your loving kindness. according to the greatness of your compassion. Blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin.
David’s model prayer opens up right away with a desperate petition for God’s undeserved favor or mercy.
Be gracious to me, David asks God.
And we know that David is asking for grace, undeserved favor, because of how he supports his request. David doesn’t appeal to God based on David’s noble heart, his good works, or his meritorious confession. Rather, David appeals to God’s loving kindness.
That is God’s, you remember that term, God’s faithful, loyal, or steadfast love. Hebrew cassed is that committed covenant love that God has for all those who put their trust in him. David appeals to that.
David also appeals to God’s great compassions. It says here or tender mercies as the King James puts it. The Hebrew word for compassions.
It probably comes from the Hebrew word for a mother’s womb.
It captures something of the tender love and pity a mother has for her own child when that child is in need or is in trouble.
He appeals to such in God as well.
Why should David do that?
Where does he get that from? Well, for one, God famously proclaims to Moses in Exodus 346 and 7 the following. Exodus 34 6 and 7. Yahweh God is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in loving kindness and truth, who keeps loving kindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression, and sin.
So really, what we’re seeing here is David taking God at his word. He says, “Oh God, you proclaimed yourself a gracious, compassionate, loving God.
Therefore, I ask you to be such to me.
Why does David need these from God? Why does he need such mercy from God? Well, I think we already have from the context understood the answer. But notice what David says here. David has recognized in himself exactly what Exodus 34:7 also mentions, namely iniquity, transgression, and sin. Those same three words which are in the Exodus passage, they appear here in verses 1 to2 of our psalm.
Why does he use all three of these words?
On one level, these three words are synonyms merely repeated for emphasis. David knows that he is a sinner who has done great wrong.
But on another level, each of these Hebrew words has an instructive nuance and each David says is true of him and what he has done.
The word transgression comes from the Hebrew pashang and it has the idea of rebellion or crime. The word for iniquity is Hebrew aon and it has the idea of crookedness or turning from the right way. And the word from word for sin is Hebrew katah and it has the idea of offense or missing the mark.
One common idea in each of these terms for wrongdoing is that the evil is not accidental but willful.
I didn’t accidentally transgress you, oh God. I willfully rebelled against you. I didn’t accidentally grow go crooked. I chose to stray from you. I didn’t accidentally miss the mark. I aimed and fired according to my own pleasure, not yours.
David confesses all this to be true of his sin, every nuance altogether. He understands just how thoroughly he has acted before God.
And because this is a model for us, we must also, if we are thinking rightly about our sin, say the same about ourselves and about our own sin. Friends and brethren, we must, David teaches us, view and label our sin as God does.
Don’t call your sins mistakes, errors of judgment, immaturity, a result of a chemical imbalance.
Call them what they are. Call them what God calls them. Inexcusable, willful rebellion, crookedness, and offense against the holy God.
But what specifically does David now need from God? David has appealed to God’s grace, love, and mercy. David has confessed his iniquity, transgression, and sin. But what does David now want from God? God, help me to do better.
Help me to make it up to you. Is that what he prays for?
No. Again, in parallel with Exodus 34:7, David knows that what he needs first and foremost is forgiveness.
God, I am thoroughly guilty, but please, by your own goodness, remove my guilt from me. Do not hold my sins against me.
rather make me totally clean in your sight.
Now in verses 1 and two here we don’t see the word forgive itself used forgive or forgiveness but we do see three equivalent expressions three petitions from David that are essentially the same. He says blot out my transgressions at the beginning of verse one or rather the end of verse one which is to say erase the record of my sins from your books. Wipe it out forever. Scrub so that no trace remains.
Wash me thoroughly, David says at the beginning of verse two, which interestingly, more literally translated, would be fool me.
Full me like you would a filthy garment.
So foing was the process of cleaning a garment that was somewhat labor intensive. You would soak, you would heat, you would press a garment until you squeezed out all the dirt in it.
David says, ‘d do that with me. Squeeze out every bit of guilt. Press me like a garment until there’s no guilt left.
Cleanse me, David says at the end of verse two.
Give me the kind of soul bath that doesn’t leave a speck of dirt or grime behind.
With such petitions, David emphasizes another truth which we must all realize and believe.
that you cannot cleanse yourself or by your own efforts make yourself acceptable to God.
That is the lie of every false religion in the world. Yes, you’ve sinned, but do all these good deeds, follow these rules, say these prayers, go through these rituals, and you can make yourself clean again.
Not in a million years.
Your sins, my sins have thoroughly stained us. And the only one who can clean us is God.
And the only way God cleans according to his scriptures is by giving undeserved favor to those who cry out for it.
Now already David has been quite instructive in how we ought to view and confess our own sin.
But David dives even more deeply in verses three and four. And we should follow David’s example there, too. So, let’s look at those verses.
David continues, “For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Against you. You only I have sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you are justified when you speak and blameless when you judge.” David clarifies in verse three that his confessions and petitions, as already featured in the first two verses, they come from David being reminded continually and becoming thoroughly acquainted with the true depth of his own sin. I’m asking you these things, God, because I know my sin. I’ve I’ve gotten to understand it.
And one further consequence is that David has arrived at a fundamental and perhaps startling conclusion which is what he says emphatically to God at the beginning of verse four. Against you, you only I have sinned.
Which is a statement that might confuse you or give you pause. Wait a second.
How can David say that he only sinned against God? Didn’t he also sin against Bath Sheba, Uriah, David’s other wives, the whole kingdom of Israel?
How can he say this? Well, it is true.
He he sinned against those other persons. Yes, that’s quite obvious. So, how do we understand what David says in verse four at the beginning of verse four?
Well, in two senses and these two senses complement one another.
The first is we should understand that every sin against another person is ultimately a sin against God.
After all, God has commanded you not to sin against others. So if you violate that command, you sin against God.
Furthermore, according to Genesis 1, all people are made in God’s image. So when you sin against an image bearer, which is what another person is, you are showing contempt for God’s image. and thus showing contempt for God himself which is sin against God.
But there’s a second sense and perhaps more important.
Whatever offense or harm you commit against another person by sin, even by great sin, is nothing compared to the offense or harm that you commit against God himself by that sin.
You see, David, he speaks in the beginning of verse four here like Jesus does in the New Testament when Jesus says that those who want to follow him must hate their own families and their own lives.
Luke 14:26.
In that New Testament statement, Jesus is not invalidating God’s command to love others, especially family. But he’s drawing a pointy comparison between the devotion we should have to Jesus and the devotion that we should have to others or to ourselves.
David speaks similarly here in comparing how his sin offends God versus offends other people.
Brethren, have you ever really come to grips with why your sin is so horrible?
Why it is so despicable? Why it is so disgusting before God?
Your sin is not sinful merely because an omnipotent spirit being, God, said so.
Call this evil or else. No, that’s not it.
Your sin is utterly sinful because of the utterly beautiful holiness of God.
God is perfect light in his very essence. Goodness is his being. He loves what is right. He overflows with generosity, compassion, and truth. Even as we heard from Exodus, he has never had and will never have a wicked thought, a wicked word, or a wicked act.
Rather, he despises evil. He is utterly committed to justice and he does judge evil and he judges evildoers with appropriate and furious holiness. As actually the rest of Exodus 34:7 says, I didn’t quote it earlier, but Exodus 34:7b says, “Yet he will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations.” God’s judgment, God’s wrath even, is not a regrettable attribute. It is intimately tied to his goodness and holiness. He hates evil and will do something about it.
Every single one of God’s works is perfect.
No one can find fault with him. No one can find the limit of his righteousness and purity.
In short, God is in his own category. He is infinitely holy and thus infinitely lovely. His glorious character, his beautiful self, it is only reflected in the overwhelming splendor of his heaven. You think about heaven, you think about the light, you think about the shining, you think about the glory. That’s just a visible reflection of who he is in his character and being.
He is a God consently lovely because he is a consently good and holy God.
But what have we done?
What have we, his good creation, done in response to encountering knowing this beautiful God.
By our sin, we have treated his infinite holiness, goodness, and beauty like trash.
We have despised his lovely light. And we have enjoyed instead polluted darkness.
We have not served him or found our joy in him, but preferred everything else to him.
We have in essence when he presented himself to us and his way to us for our eternal life and enjoyment. We’ve not only rejected him but we have spat on him, slapped him and cursed him. And if we had the opportunity, we would kill him so that we could be free of him and reign as gods ourselves.
In our world, when a truly good person is slandered or hurt, the crime seems worse to us than usual. For we say, “That one didn’t deserve to be treated like that. He deserved much better.” How much truer is this of our holy creator God?
Just how evil is willfully and blasphe blasphemously sinning against a God of infinite worth? He is the worthy God.
You can’t find the limit of it. So what does it mean to sin against such a god that it is infinitely evil?
And for those who do commit such sins, who are they and what are they but infinitely polluted and vile?
This is the realization David has come to at the beginning of verse four. His sins against Ba Sheba and Uriah and the rest, they were indeed terrible. For derivatively, as imagebearers of God, they are worthy of dignity and proper treatment, these people are.
But David’s sins against God were so much worse. They were unendingly worse.
So, it’s like David had sinned against God and God alone.
The result then is just as David says at the end of verse four. When God speaks to condemn David or when God determines judgment for David, David says God proves himself to be completely justified and his judgment is totally just.
In other words, David has no excuse, no defense against any pronouncement of judgment.
If God should remove David from kingship, if God should execute David, if God should send David into the torments of hell forever, David humbly acknowledges that God would be completely in the right to do so.
Because David and his sins really do deserve it.
Now friends and brethren, can you say the same about yourself and your sin?
You may not have committed actual adultery and murder like David did, but Jesus explains that anyone who lusts in his heart or gets angry against another person has essentially committed those same sins. You have committed adultery and murder in the heart and you deserve hellfire forever.
And those are just two examples. We could add any sin of commission, lying, disobeying parents, being fearful of things you shouldn’t fear, or sins of omission. You didn’t seek reconciliation with the person that you should have, or you didn’t serve in the way that you could have. Somebody had a need and you didn’t meet it. You didn’t love God with your whole heart.
Every one of those sins is a fundamental blasphemy against the worthiness of God. And you have committed it again and again.
The Apostle James says that anyone who stumbles in even one of God’s commands is a lawb breakaker and thus will be judged as if guilty of breaking the whole law. That’s James 2:10.
Because it’s not just the sins themselves that are important but against whom those sins have been committed.
So your sins too and this is true for me also. Your sins too in one important sense are against God and God alone.
Which means you and I apart from a merciful intervention of God we are worthy of hell forever.
We have to confess that God, if you wanted to send me to hell forever, it’s what I deserve. I now see what my sin really is. And what you deserve. So I now know what I deserve. I deserve hell.
And unless we repent and cry out for mercy like David does here, God will send us there because he’s a good God. He is a just God. He will deal with evil appropriately.
By the way, have you noticed in this psalm that David never complains about the temporal or this world consequences of his sin? Doesn’t even mention them.
And yet, those consequences were considerable even after David repented.
Remember 2 Samuel 12, Nathan said, “You’re going to have kingdom troubles.
You’re going to have family troubles.
Your sick child is going to die.” Why doesn’t David grumble to God like Cain does and say, “My punishment is more than I can bear.” Because David understands that sin has poison in it. Sin always has consequences even after you repent.
But more importantly, whatever consequences David suffers suffers in his temporal life are less than what he deserves.
Now, just when you thought David couldn’t sink any lower in his estimation of himself, we have verses five and six.
Look at those now.
Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me.
Behold, you desire truth in the innermost being, and in the hidden part, you will make me know wisdom.
Twice here we see the word behold which is a word meant to emphasize and draw attention to a especially amazing sight or declaration.
What is the amazing declaration of verse 5? Well, something easily misunderstood.
David is not saying in verse 5 that he himself is the product of sin. That is adultery or some other kind of sexual sin. There’s no evidence of that elsewhere in the Bible. And such a declaration in this context wouldn’t add anything doesn’t make sense.
David is also not saying that the sexual union that conceives children is itself lustful and therefore sinful.
This actually has been a common stance that the sexual union involves sin in some measure. This has been a common stance of Christians throughout church history but it is contradicted by the Bible. Hebrews 13:4, Proverbs 5:15-19, and the whole Song of Solomon, they instead teach that in marriage, sexual union is both holy and honorable, passions included.
So, David is not saying either of those things. What is David saying? Well, in verse five, David is giving his own personal testimony of the doctrine of original sin.
That is David is testifying that he is not simply a sinner by choice or by practice but by nature by the inherited sinfulness from his and our first parents Adam and Eve.
David confesses that from the beginning of his life from both his conception and his birth David existed in sin and iniquity.
That is to say, he was a sinner, which by the way is proof that life begins at conception because you have to be alive. You have to exist to be a sinner. And he says, “That was true when I was conceived.” Consider how different this confession is here from David from what we often hear today and maybe even say ourselves.
I may have done some bad things, but that’s not me.
I just cannot forgive myself. I know that I’m better than that. Actually, you’re not better than that. Not in your natural state. Not without God recreating you supernaturally.
David teaches us that we, like him, are all both conceived and born as sinners.
that we arrive in this world in cute and innocent looking little packages.
Each of us hides a rebellious, self-exalting, wicked heart.
Thus, when we sin, we are just being who we naturally are as fallen humans. And if you sin as a Christian, you’re being who you naturally are in your old self.
that old self that’s still attached to you by the flesh. That’s why Paul can say, “I know that nothing good dwells in me that is in my flesh.” That’s true of you. It’s true of me.
If you say, “But I don’t think I’m that bad. I I’m not as bad as David.” Well, remember, God looks the heart. But also, it’s only God’s restraining mercy that has prevented you and me from sinning worse than we actually have, at least outwardly.
Now, here someone might ask, is David avoiding responsibility by asserting that he was just born this way, that is, as a sinner?
The answer is, it’s the opposite. David is magnifying his guilt today. Due to the prevalence of ideas from modern psychology in the west, we may find it hard to accept that someone born evil deserves punishment and deserves even greater punishment than someone who just happens to do evil.
This is probably because we think in terms of psychological needs or biological necessity. He cannot help doing evil because there’s something wrong in his brain. Don’t punish him.
But mankind doesn’t have something fundamentally wrong in his brain or his body, but in his spirit.
Furthermore, this perverse spirit in man is not something God, a good God, originally created in man, but it’s something that unfallen man, foolishly chose for himself and for his descendants through sinful rebellion.
Also, the brokenness of man’s spirit, the sinfulness of man’s spirit. It is not a wanting to do good but being forced to do bad kind of reality.
Rather, it’s a wanting to do bad kind of reality.
We all naturally want to seek ourselves and to seek evil rather than God. Listen to how Jesus describes mankind in John 3:19. John 3:19.
This is the judgment that the light has come into the world and men loved the darkness rather than the light for their deeds were evil.
Even in our society today, we recognize that the worst kind of criminals who deserve the utmost punishment are the ones who just love doing evil, who cannot get enough of it.
They are unrepentant and as soon as you release them, they’re going to go do it more.
According to Jesus and according to David, that is who we all are naturally in our hearts since conception.
We may disguise the evil in a self-righteous form, but one way or another, we are going to go after evil.
It’s who we are.
Since the fall, humanity is by nature a rebellious race, continually provoking the holiness and wrath of God.
David, for his part, by the plainly evident sin of his life, he confesses himself to be one of that wicked, wrath-deserving race.
Do you make the same confession?
And what a contrast between what man fundamentally is and what God fundamentally desires, which is what David speaks of in verse six.
Now, admittedly, the Hebrew of verse 6 is difficult. So, depending on your translation, you may have read something slightly different than what I read moments ago for this verse.
Nevertheless, the overall sense of verse 6 is probably as we have it in our New American Standard 95 translation. What is David saying in verse six?
While horrifyingly each of us is born and conceived in iniquity, we are sinful to the core. What God desires, what he delights in, and even what he demands is righteousness and truth in the inner man, in the secret place of the heart.
He wants you to be actually righteous there. God will not be satisfied with mere external religion. Not even in a whole parade of sacrifices, prayers, confessions, and songs.
God is looking for humble, holy hearts that love him and hate sin.
In other words, God is looking for broken hearts of true repentance.
Yet who can change his own heart?
What corrupt heart can will itself to no longer be corrupted?
In verse six, we now understand that God must be the one to bring about the good and gracious outcome that he himself desires.
God must reveal himself to the heart. He must speak to it. He must teach it. He must break it.
He must transform it.
for a person to be what God really wants that person to be.
If you think about it, we sinners are utterly helpless before God. We have bad records, bad hearts, and we deserve the bad outcome of endless punishment from God. And we can do nothing to change these three realities.
to undo them.
The only way we can be forgiven, the only way we can be saved if is if God in unearned favor intervenes to undo all those three things.
Yet, these are precisely what God does.
What God does for vessels of mercy by his spirit through the gospel of Jesus Christ.
And perhaps God is graciously intervening in that way for some of you this morning.
Friends and brethren, I ask you as you have heard David’s prayer of repentance thus far read and explained, has God been revealing himself a new to you and speaking to your heart? These are the means he has ordained, the word explained and preached. Has God been speaking to your heart? Has God been unveiling to you his beautiful holiness and your ugly sinfulness so that your heart now genuinely cries out with David, “Oh God, forgive me my great guilt.” If so, I have good news for you.
You are forgiven.
You are now forgiven. You say, “But wait, how can you be sure of that?” Because of the life of David and because of the words of this psalm.
David, though guilty of adultery and murder, was immediately pronounced forgiven and pardoned upon repentance to God. Even before he wrote this psalm, thus David does not write verses 1 to6 ringing his hands, anxious to find out whether God will indeed be gracious and forgive David’s sin.
No, David knows he already has that for which he asks, but he writes what he does as a heartfelt expression of worship. He just has to tell God about this. But he knows that God will answer him and he will answer him in the affirmative. Yes, you are forgiven. Yes, you are cleansed because you have that repentant heart. I have given it to you.
This then is given to us to show that we can have a similar confidence when we turn to God in the same way.
Remember the basis of David’s appeal to God. It is nothing that is in David, it is all that is in God.
Though God is holy, God has proclaimed himself a gracious God of abundant love and compassion who forgives iniquity, transgression, and sin.
Therefore, if you cry out to him for mercy from the heart, you know you will have it.
Why? Because God will not be unfaithful to who he is. He is good and he is just.
And in case you still doubt, look ahead to just verse 17 of our psalm.
It says, “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart. Oh God, you will not despise.” God will accept the broken and contrite heart. Guaranteed. Guaranteed.
But you may still say, “But how can God just forgive sin? Doesn’t that make God unjust and arbitrary?” Ah, this question hits upon the great mystery of this psalm and of the whole Old Testament that God proclaims himself to be forgiving is obvious if you just read the Old Testament scripture.
But how can that be? How can a holy God forgive sin?
The answer is only revealed in full in the New Testament. And what is really the biggest scandal of the universe that a glorious and holy God should provide himself to be the saving substitute for sinners.
God says in the Old Testament and we read that he will by no means leave the guilty unpunished. No way. Not going to happen.
That means for sinners like you and me to have our sins forgiven, the punishment of that sin, it must fall on a fitting and righteous substitute. If it’s not us who’s going to pay for it, it’s got to be someone else who’s appropriate and who’s blameless. The picture of this in the Old Testament was the sacrificial system in which a innocent animal, a perfect animal, a blameless animal symbolically took on the sins of a repentant worshipper and then that animal died in the worshipper’s place.
That was just a picture though. The reality to which that picture pointed was, as the New Testament reveals, the lamb of God, Jesus, God the Son, who came to earth as a man and lived the perfectly righteous life that you and me all should have lived.
Then Jesus died innocently on the cross, suffering the wrath of hell that our sins deserve. lying, adultery, murder, not serving when you had the opportunity.
Then Jesus rose again three days later, proving that his work on behalf of believing sinners was finished and accepted.
David, when he wrote Psalm 51, he didn’t know the name of Jesus, but now that name has been revealed.
David didn’t know how God would provide.
But David knew that God somehow someday would provide for sin so that there can be forgiveness. But now we know how. Now we know the name.
And now we know that there is no other name under heaven as the apostles say by which we can be forgiven and saved. It is only Jesus God’s son. Therefore, friends and brethren, I call upon you by the authority of the scriptures. Take hold of the divine promise, the divine invitation that if you will repent of your sins and believe in Jesus, you will be saved, you will be forgiven, you will be cleansed instantly, totally forever.
When you behold your guilt, even through this psalm or the next time you sin, when you behold your guilt, when you realize the sinfulness of your own sin, do not hide from God. Do not run from God. You say, “I’m so sinful. I I can have nothing to do with God. He surely doesn’t want to even see me.” That does not honor God. What does honor God?
Coming to him in repentance. That’s what David did. And he’s showing you that’s what you do. If you really understand your sin and God’s holiness, you realize, I need to repent of it before God. That’s what God really wants.
That’s what’s really going to give him honor.
So, you’re not to run away. Don’t hide from God. Instead, believe in who God is and believe in what Jesus has done for for sinners. And if you do what what David prays, it will be true for you.
Your sins will be blotted out. your soul will be washed thoroughly and you will be clean.
And as Christians, those who have testified that we do believe in the gospel and we have repented and believed and it is all of God and nothing of us, we should be reminded of this today so that it makes us love God more and praise him. I cannot believe it should make us almost giddy with joy that this is true. You see your sin, I see my sin.
It’s just piling up, piling up. We say, “How can I ever be forgiven?” And God says, “I’ve done it. I’ve done it. I do it for the brokenhearted person who believes in Jesus. It’s all gone. It’s all gone forever. Even the sins you haven’t committed yet.” That’s true for you. If you’re in Jesus Christ, your sins are forgiven.
You are cleansed. You are saved. You have been made acceptable to God.
Hallelujah. Praise the Lord. Amen. And amen. What a wonderful, wonderful day.
What a wonderful, wonderful truth.
But this is just the first hard cry.
What I presented to you thus far, what David has showed us thus far, it must be joined with other heart cries if it is true repentance.
I trust that if you are crying out such in your heart that these other heart cries will be true of you. But I don’t want you to be misled and David doesn’t want us to be misled. So, we do want to look at those also, but we’ll have to wait until we come back to Psalm 51. But just to give you a preview, the other three heart cries of true repentance, which also will be there if someone’s heart is truly broken by sin and beholding the beauty of the Lord. The other heart cries are number two, oh God, change me by your power. So, we have, oh God, forgive my great guilt.
That’s number one. But number two, oh God, change me by your power. Then number three, oh God, enable me to teach others. And number four, oh God, revive us to worship you. There’s a switch from the individual, the singular, to the plural, the communal. And I look forward to going over each of those with you when we come back to Psalm 51. But I trust that we have received good ministry from just the first six verses of this psalm.
Pray that you would continue to meditate on that and apply that. We’ll end our sermon here for today. Let’s close in prayer.
Lord, I’m thinking of the other words that your psalmist wrote in relation to you forgiving sin.
I believe it’s Psalm 32 where David says, “How blessed is the man whose sins are forgiven, who whose iniquity is covered, God, we who have believed in Christ, we can testify to that. Oh Lord, we are a blessed people.” And uh the other psalm that says, ‘Lord, if you regard iniquity, if you keep account of it and there was no changing that account, who could stand?
But there is forgiveness with you so that you may be revered.
God, you indeed show yourself even greater than we imagined in maintaining your perfect holiness and justice and yet justifying sinners.
For so long, nobody understood how this worked. But you’ve shown us in Jesus.
You’ve shown us in the New Testament.
And we say, “What a great God. What an amazing God to send his son, Jesus. How amazing you are to come willingly and to die in the place of sinners and to give your perfect life into the account of sinners so that you can bring them to your God. You can bring them to your father.” Lord, what a wonderful thought that saved, cleansed, and forgiven, we will never be made to depart from your presence, but we will be there forever. You have saved us from hell and the punishment that we deserve. And whatever consequences of our sins in this life, Lord, we understand that those will come.
But considering the the greater consequence removed, it’s nothing. You have been more than merciful.
Oh Lord, we thank you today. But as Paul says in Ephesians, and as we’ll get to later in this psalm, we pray that this would not just be something we say, “Yeah, I’ll claim that forgiveness and then just go live in sin.” Oh, no, Lord.
That is not repentance at all. If we really see our sin or really see you, we don’t want to walk differently. And you give us a spirit to walk differently. So Lord, help us to walk worthy of the great salvation, the great forgiveness that we sinners have received in