David's Prayer of Repentance (Keith Sparrow) | Ancient Prayers, Present Power

Well, good morning, church. Welcome.

It's so good to be with you this morning.

Would you open your Bibles with me to Psalm 51, Chapter 51?

And that's where we're going to spend our time this morning as

we go through this prayer of David.

I try to convince myself not to sing too loud this morning

because I didn't want to lose my voice, but I couldn't help

myself. So hopefully it stays there.

But when we're singing of God's goodness, we want to shout it

out, right? And I hope that those words just

repeat in your mind as we go through the Psalm, because we

see God's goodness over and over again through this in the way

that he works through the life of David.

Now, before we jump into the text, I just have a quick

question for you that I'd like to ask you.

Have you ever found yourself in a moment where you realized I

just blew it? Like not just a little mistake,

but the kind of thing that you feel deep in your chest.

Your stomach is churning a little bit and you realize that

in that moment, you truly messed up.

It's one of those moments that you wish you could just take

back. You wish you could just retrieve

the words and undo the damage that has been done in that

moment. I've had many moments like that,

but I remember one specific time when I said something out of

frustration to someone that I truly love and adore.

And in full transparency, it was to my beautiful wife Beth.

It wasn't explosive, it wasn't dramatic, but it was completely

careless. I was, in that moment,

completely dismissive of her. And I'll never forget the look

in her eyes as the words just kind of hung in the air there.

The guilt in that moment hit me instantly.

I'm sure many of you are aware of those moments and you've had

those yourselves. When you want to grab those

words mid air, pull them back and shove them back in your

mouth. But it's too late.

The damage has been done. What do we do in moments like

these? I know I've experienced many of

those, but what we do in those moments is so important, what

our response is like. And this morning, I hope that as

we go through this passage and we see this prayer of David,

that we recognize that repentance truly is a gift.

It's not a burden. How we respond is so important.

Psalm 51 is is powerful because we get to see David as he

experiences one of these moments, a very deep moment, in

fact, a string of moments like this.

And to fully understand this passage, this Psalm, we need to

set the scene and remember what brought David to this point.

As I was preparing this particular passage and was given

this prayer to go over the summer, I was very thankful

because this one is set up beautifully.

In Second Samuel, we get to read about David and the story that

leads up to him writing Psalm 51.

And so I want to set the scene a little bit.

This is a prayer of King David. This is the same man that slayed

the giant Goliath. It's the same man that wrote the

words the Lord is my shepherd. This same man has just committed

adultery and orchestrated A brutal murder.

In short, we'll go through the story.

David sees Bathsheba. He's tempted, and he decides to

sleep with her. But Bathsheba is the wife of

Uriah. Now Uriah is a soldier in

David's army, and he's not just any soldier in David's army.

Uriah is one of David's mighty men.

This is an elite group of warriors known for their bravery

and known for their loyalty to King David.

Now, surprise, Bathsheba becomes pregnant.

And how does David respond in this moment?

I'll tell you, David's response is not the right one.

David tries to cover it up. He tries to cover up the

scandal. And so he brings Uriah back from

the battlefield, hoping that he'll go straight home, sleep

with his wife, and when she has the baby, everyone will just

assume that it is his. But Uriah is a very loyal

soldier and and he's loyal to the wartime code of honor.

And when he comes home, he refuses to go home and enjoy all

the comforts of home while his comrades are still in the heat

of battle. And so David realizes he needs

to escalate things in this moment.

And so he sends Uriah back to the front lines with a sealed

message that essentially orders Uriah's death.

It orders to have him placed in the fiercest fighting right on

the front lines, and then have the army pulled back so that he

would assuredly be killed. And so Uriah dies in battle.

David steps forward and marries Bathsheba.

And for a little while, we see that David gets away with it.

At least he thinks he gets away with it.

He thinks that he has taken care of.

This doesn't seem to affect him at all.

But then enters the prophet Nathan.

God sends Nathan to confront David.

So picture this with me, David sitting in his throne room,

probably thinking that no one's caught him, no one's on to what

that he has done. Bathsheba is now his wife, the

mess has been cleaned up and life gets to just move on.

Nathan is wise though, and he knows better than to call out

directly David. And so he decides to play to

David's empathetic side. He tries to play to David's

righteous sensibilities with a cleverly thought out story.

And so Nathan approaches King David and he starts like this.

He says, your Majesty, I need your wisdom on a situation that

I have. You see there are two men in

town. There's the rich one and one

poor. The rich man, he has everything.

He has sheep, cattle, wealth beyond his imagination.

The poor man, he has one little lamb.

He's raised this little lamb like family.

It's not just livestock to him. He's raised it like a daughter.

It ate from his plate. It drank from his cup.

This little lamb slept in his arms.

This little lamb meant everything to him.

Well, a guest came to visit the rich man, and instead of using

one of the many flock that he had to prepare a meal, he stole

the poor man's little lamb. He took it, he slaughtered it

and served it up as if it was nothing.

Now, you can imagine King David's response, remembering

that he is a former shepherd and has a soft spot for lambs.

And so this is David's response. He's furious over the story in

this moment. And he says as surely as the

Lords live lives, this man deserves to die.

He must pay back four times what he took because he had no pity.

And then Nathan, as I can only imagine, I can only just be

described as the ultimate mic drop moment here, probably

locked eyes with David in that moment and said you are that

man. I'd imagine you could likely

hear a pin drop in the chamber at that moment.

David's face goes from righteous anger to stunned silence.

Because suddenly David is confronted with the truth.

Nathan wasn't talking about two strangers at all.

Nathan was talking about him, about Bathsheba, and about

Uriah. Nathan says you took what wasn't

yours. God gave you everything and if

that hadn't been enough he would have given you more.

But you despised his words and now there are consequences.

And so now we get to see David's response in this moment.

David's response in this moment is quite different.

His response is not denial, His response is not blame, but his

response in this moment is this prayer.

And so if you would turn to Psalm 51, let's read this prayer

together. Be gracious to me, God,

according to your faithful love, according to your abundant

compassion. Blot out my rebellion

completely. Wash away my guilt and cleanse

me from my sin, for I am conscious of my rebellion and my

sin is always before me against You alone.

I have sinned and done this evil in your sight.

So you are right when you pass sentence, You are blameless when

you judge. Indeed, I was guilty when I was

born. I was sinful when my mother

conceived me. Surely you desire integrity in

the inner self, and you teach me wisdom deep within.

Purify me with hyssop and I will be clean.

Wash me and I will be whiter than snow.

Let me hear joy and gladness. Let the bones you have crushed

rejoice. Turn Your face away from my sins

and blot out all my guilt. God, create a clean heart for me

and renew a steadfast spirit within me.

Do not banish me from Your presence or take Your Holy

Spirit from me. Restore the joy of Your

salvation to me and sustain me by giving me a willing spirit.

Then I will teach the rebellious Your ways, and sinners will

return to You. Save me from the guilt of

bloodshed. God, God of my salvation, and my

tongue will sing of Your righteousness.

Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare Your praise.

You do not want to sacrifice or I would give it.

You are not pleased with a burnt offering.

The sacrifice pleasing to God is a broken spirit.

You will not despise a broken and humbled heart.

God in your good pleasure cause Zion to prosper.

Build the world walls of Jerusalem.

Then you will delight in righteous sacrifices.

Whole burnt offerings, then built bulls will be offered on

your altar. And so today I want to take a

look at this response of David. We want to take a look at how he

responds in this particular moment.

And what we're going to see is 3 things.

We're going to see that true repentance is honest, true

repentance is broken, and true repentance is hopeful.

Each of us will be faced with moments like this, and how we

respond is so important. The truth is that none of us

like to fess up to what we've done wrong, right?

When we're in those moments, we don't like to admit what we've

done wrong. As we're faced with our sin, we

have these natural human nature responses, and we respond in

many ways, and we see some of those even in Scripture.

Like Adam and Eve, we might try to hide from our sin.

Like King Saul, we might try to rationalize what we've done.

Like Aaron, we might find ourselves blaming others.

Or like Judas, we so often find ourselves beating ourselves up

over our sin. Yes, that is our natural

reaction. Sometimes it's to try and hide,

rationalize, blame, despair, or delay.

But God calls us to something different.

He calls us to confess and to turn.

And today we're looking at David's response in the moment

that his sin is laid bare for everyone to see.

And he first shows us that true repentance is honest.

God, I blew it. Is David's response there in

verse 1. He says be gracious to me God,

according to your faithful love, according to your abundant

compassion, blot out my rebellion.

David doesn't minimize what he's done.

He doesn't say, MMM, God, I I kind of messed up.

I'm only human. No, in that moment he owns verse

three goes on for I am conscious of my rebellion.

My sin is always before me against you alone.

I have sinned and done this evil in your sight.

So you are right when you pass sentence.

You are blameless when you judge.

Indeed, I was guilty when I was born.

I was sinful when my mother conceived me.

David names and he owns his own sin.

In that moment he calls out his own rebellion to God.

In verse three he acknowledges I am conscious of my rebellion, my

sin. It's always before me.

It's right there. I can't not see it.

David in verse 4 also recognizes that his sin is ultimately

against God and His Holiness. Against you alone.

Have I sinned? David says In that moment.

All sin truthfully is ultimately against the God who created us,

the God who loves us, and the God who sets the standard for

our righteousness. And David continues to recognize

that sin isn't just what we do. As he continues here, it's not

just what we do, but it's in all of us.

Sin is more than just an action, but rather it's a condition.

In verse 5, he says, indeed, I was guilty when I was born.

I was sinful when my mother conceived me.

David isn't just confessing to something.

He's done his actions. He's confessing to the condition

of his heart in this moment. You see, sin isn't just the

behavior, it's a nature problem. I love this quote from RC

Sproul, and I hope this sinks in because it puts it in context.

We aren't sinners because we sin.

We sin because we are sinners. David lays us out well.

You see, we live in a world that's allergic to ownership.

We see that around us, right? We, we see phrases like it's

just fake news. We try to reframe things, we try

to deflect and we try to blame it on anybody else.

David could have done any of those things.

I mean, he was king. But instead, David in this

moment, he gets honest. Sometimes the most spiritual

thing we can do in these kinds of moments is to stop

pretending, to stop spinning, and just be honest and tell God

the whole truth. Honest repentance rebuilds

trust. In these moments, trust has been

broken, and honest repentance is that first step towards

rebuilding trust. Whether it's at work or whether

it's in a close relationship, openly admitting wrong is the

only way that we can begin to start making things right again.

For us, being honest might mean confessing to a friend that

we've lied about something, admitting to an addiction that's

in it in our lives, maybe being honest about 1/2 truth that

we've told our spouse, or finally telling God the entire

truth in prayer instead of trying to hide it.

Now, it can be scary to be so vulnerable.

I get it. But remember David's example in

this moment. He laid it all out before God

and was honest with him because he realized that God already

sees our inner truth. God knows it all.

But God desires integrity within our inner self.

When we drop the masks and stop trying to hide, that's when God

is able to start working in our hearts.

Yes, true repentance is honest. There's no filters, there's no

facades, just the unvarnished truth about our sin.

God desires that truth. He desires the whole truth.

The second thing we can take away from this prayer of David

is that true repentance is broken.

This Prairie reading we're reading is is more than just a

confession. It's a cry for cleansing and for

renewal. Verse 7 David writes, purify me

with hyssop and I will be clean. Wash me and I will be whiter

than snow. Verse 10 is so well known it

reads God create a clean heart for me.

And renew a steadfast spirit within me.

David in this moment, isn't just asking for a simple slap on the

wrist, he's asking for a complete and total heart

renovation. In this moment when David prays

the prayer Purify Me with Hyssop, he's not just looking

for a herbal tea detox, but he's actually referencing an ordained

means of spiritual cleansing. He's asking to be treated like

someone who is unclean, who needs to be fully restored by a

sacred act. True repentance involves a

broken and a contrite heart. In verse 17, it says the

sacrifice pleasing to God is a broken spirit.

You will not despise a broken and humbled heart God.

Some other versions use the word contrite heart.

Now the word contrite means to be crushed in spirit by the

weight of our sins ugliness. This is not an easy or a

pleasant feeling. It's actually quite the opposite

of that casual attitude that we so often have towards sin.

In repentance, our hearts should be truly broken and hurt over

what we've done. We recognize how we've offended

God and how we've harmed the people around us, and it should

absolutely break our hearts. In David's case, we can imagine

the tears that well up and streamed down, the heartache as

he realizes the depth of his betrayal of God, as he

recognizes the betrayal of Uriah and everyone else around him.

He in this moment is an utterly broken man.

Now this kind of brokenness is sometimes understood and I hope

you understand that this this morning.

It doesn't mean to be wallowing in self hatred or despair.

Rather it means having a godly sorrow as opposed to just a

shallow regret. We don't want to get caught up

in worldly sorrow. Worldly sorrow is feeling sorry

for ourselves because we got caught.

Worldly sorrow is feeling sorry for ourselves because we have to

face the consequences of our actions.

No, we should be grieved with a godly sorrow.

It is different being grieved because you have sinned against

God's holiness. You've sinned against God's

goodness, God's design for our lives.

David shows this godly sorrow in verse 4 where he he writes

against you alone I have sinned and done this evil in your

sight. David's acknowledging that his

greatest offense in all of this is ultimately against a holy

God. True repentance focus focuses on

how our sin offends God first, not just how it messes up the

lives and the people around us, but how we are offending a holy

and a perfect God. Genuine repentance carries a

godly sorrow for sin, a sorrow that comes from a deep love for

God and the realization of having violated his trust in

that moment. So I want you to ask yourself

this this morning, when was the last time that I felt truly

broken over my sin? Not, not just one of those

moments where you say, oops, my bad, I'm only human.

But when was the last time you were truly broken with a godly

sorrow over your sin? And if it's been a while, I

encourage you to pray for a softened heart from God.

The good news is, Psalm 51 assures us that God will not

despise a broken and a contrite heart.

He never rejects or casts aside the person who comes to Him with

humility and with sorrow for their sin.

In our culture, broken things are often cast aside and thrown

away. But I want you to understand

this morning that God loves a broken heart that's offered up

to Him. It's the sacrifice He looks for

more than any kind of outward ritual.

True repentance, it's broken. It mourns over sin with a level

of sincerity that touches God's heart and in turn opens our

hearts up to his grace. As we look at David's prayer of

repentance, we've seen how true repentance first is honest.

We've seen how true repentance, secondly, is broken.

And lastly, we're going to look this morning at how true

repentance is actually hopeful. You see, at first glance, we

might think that brokenness and hope might contradict one

another, right? But in the gospel and in

biblical repentance, they belong together.

This is the gospel. This is the good news about

Jesus that we celebrate. He has taken broken lives, He

has taken hopelessness, and he restores.

God renews, and He breathes new life into us as we saw a truly

repentant heart that is broken and contrite, but it is not

despairing. In David, Psalm 51 shows that

repentance leads to restore restoration, and it leads to

hope. You see, David comes to God.

He's absolutely crushed by the guilt of his sin.

Yet throughout the prayer that David writes and offers up here,

he expresses confidence in God's mercy, and he looks forward to

being made new. He prays, wash me and I will be

whiter than snow. And then he says, let me hear

joy and gladness. Let the bones you have crushed

rejoice. And then he asked God, create in

me a clean heart, restore the joy of your salvation to me.

These statements are statements of expectation from David.

David expects that God can cleanse him and this gives him

joy again. I I think this is so important

for us to understand even as such sin, even after such sin

and and and we've we've seen David commit adultery, he's

committed murdered here, he still believes in the mercy of

God that can completely renew him.

True repentance is fueled in the hope that God's grace is

sufficient for us. If we had no hope of

forgiveness, if we had no hope of restoration, then we would

just fall into self loathing or beating ourselves up every time

that we sin, right? But because God is merciful,

repentance is possible and there is hope.

I love the beginning of that song we sang just before the

message. I love you, Lord.

I love you, Lord. There are new mercies every

morning. I'm getting the words wrong now,

but as we sang, I was like, yes, that's right.

And I didn't put it in my notes. But David in this moment, he

knows God's love is faithful. David appeals to this abundant

mercy right at the start in verse, verse one where he says

be gracious to me God according to your faithful love.

David knows that God is faithful even when we are not.

This assurance of God's faithfulness, this assurance of

God's character gives repentance.

It's hope. We know that if we confess, if

we bring it before God, that he will hear us and he will forgive

us. This hope is rooted in God's

mercy, not our goodness. And I have to tell you, as a

first born, that gives me hope because I've grown up wanting to

do the right thing all the time on my own.

But this hope in God is rooted in God's mercy, not our

goodness. We know that Jesus has paid the

full price for our sins on the cross.

Amen. So we can be cleansed forever.

In the New Testament we have this promise in first John

chapter one verse 9, which reads, If we confess our sins,

He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to

cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Our hope in repentance rests on Jesus and His finished work on

the cross. Because Jesus already took on

the judgment for our sin, we can approach God for mercy without

fear. We can step forward and approach

the throne of God with hopeful and expectant hearts.

Now David's story didn't end with sorrow, and neither does

Psalm 51. After pleading for a clean heart

and a restored joy, David goes on in verse 13 and says, then I

will teach the rebellious your ways, and sinners will return to

you. In other words, he's saying,

God, if you forgive, if you restore me, I'll be able to help

others find you too. David recognizes that he can be

useful to God again. Even in his sin and his

brokenness, he can still be useful to God.

He's able to sing aloud of God's righteousness and declare his

praise. And this is the hope of a second

chance in Jesus, the hope that God can turn even our failures

into something good. How many of you have been in

that place? The internal dialogue says it's

it's just too late for me. I'm you don't understand.

I'm too far gone. Maybe you're watching online

this morning because you're too scared to come into a church

building because you think you have sinned.

Nobody else has. I want to assure you this room

is filled with sinners. But we're recognizing that it's

only through the grace and the love of God that we can have

hope out of that. My heart breaks for you if you

feel that way this morning. And God's heart is broken for

you too. Don't wallow in your regret,

friends. You want to step forward into

the hope that we can find through Jesus.

True repentance doesn't wallow in guilt.

No, it looks to the future full of hope.

Once we've confessed and we've received the mercy given to us,

we don't want to stay stuck in our shame.

We don't want to stay stuck in the shame of yesterday.

We want to move forward into the hope of tomorrow.

Yes, in that moment, we're going to be humbled as we recognize

the sin in our lives and we're broken over it.

But ultimately, friends, we are hopeful because of what Jesus

has done. As Psalm 51 comes to a

conclusion, David even prays that his renewed life will bless

the community around him. He's essentially praying, Lord,

would you rebuild the walls that my sin broke down?

Use me again, God for good. And David, sorry, God did

restore David. While David certainly did face

many consequences for his sin, he remained king and is often

referred to as Israel's greatest kin.

He continued to write Psalms and he was known as a man after

God's own heart. What we see out of this prayer

of David is that God's forgiveness was greater than

David's failure. The story of King David reminds

us that we are never beyond the mercy and the grace of God.

It lays out. And it teaches us that true

repentance is honest. It's broken.

But friends, it is hopeful. We have to be honest when we

repent there, there should be no more hiding, no more excuses,

just a full confession of the truth.

And our hearts should be broken, broken for the sin with genuine

godly sorrow and humility. But true repentance is hopeful,

right? We need to open ourselves to the

mercy of a gracious God and trust Him to forgive us, trust

Him to renew us, and trust Him to fully restore us.

This kind of repentance is not a one time event for us as

Christ's followers. This is not something we do and

then move on. But it's a lifelong practice.

But as we come into those moments that we're confronted by

our sin, we come into those moments where we see the sin in

our lives. We don't need to enter into

those moments and hide, deflect, blame.

We can enter in knowing there is hope because we serve a God who

loves us. And so as we apply Psalm 51 to

our lives, let's remind ourselves today that repentance

is a gift. It's not a punishment.

This is what it means to live gospel centered lives under the

truth and the grace of Jesus as we accept him to be the one to

renew and restore us. It's an opportunity each time to

experience a new the mercy of God.

Amen. In a world that is filled with

blame shifting, fake news and half hearted apologies all over

the place, true repentance stands apart.

It's something different, it's real and it's transformative.

Imagine the impact in the world around us if more people live

this out. If we live this out as God's

community in this world, in our church, in our families, if we

even saw this in public figures, practicing this kind of

repentance, our world would be changed, our relationships would

be renewed and restored. That is the hope of redemption

through Jesus. It would radically change so

much. That is the power of the gospel.

That is the power of God at work in our lives.

So the next time you find yourself convicted of doing

something wrong, don't run from God.

Don't try to hide behind a prideful attitude.

Rather, be honest about it. Let your heart be moved to godly

sorrow, and then lift your eyes up to the God of hope and mercy.

Because friends, He's got you. He loves you so we were

reminded. He will not despise a broken and

contrite heart. In fact, he rather welcomes it.

On the other side of repentance, just like David, you'll be able

to rejoice and declare God's praise.

The weight of sin is lifted. You don't have to carry it

anymore. True repentance hurts at first.

It humbles us, but ultimately it leads to healing, and it is the

pathway from the guilt of our sin to the joy of salvation.

Let's pray together. Father, we thank you that

through your Son Jesus, we can truly experience what it means

to be fully forgiven, fully renewed, fully restored.

God, our human hearts want to run away from the sin in our

lives just to cover it up, to deflect, to blame others, to

pretend like it doesn't exist. But you've called us to

something different. You've called us to confess and

to turn from our sins. And so, Father, today I pray

that you, through the power of your Spirit, would reveal those

things in our lives that we need to honestly take account for, to

confess, to be broken over. But Lord, in those moments, I

pray that you, through your Spirit as well, would not leave

us in that place of despair and wallowing, but to recognize that

that is just recognizing that we are far from a holy and perfect

God, but that perfect God has given us his Son Jesus on the

cross, to forgive us of all those things.

And then in confessing them to you and recognizing that this is

not how you want us to live, and turning from it God, you will

restore our hearts to the full joy of your salvation.

That repentance is not the start of heartache and brokenness, but

rather it is the entrance to a life of joy and freedom where we

can take off the weight of our sin, lay it aside, knowing that

Jesus is paid the cost, and we can live in the full joy of

salvation through you, God. You want to breathe new life

into us? Father, may we turn from those

things that break your heart and come to You in repentance,

believing that You are all that we need.

There is nothing in this world that is too big for Your mercy

and Your grace. God, we love you stir us up.

We pray to live lives that are worthy of You in Your name.