Psalm 51

One of the reasons why we look at the Psalms through the summer is over this extended period of time, we do about 10 weeks every year just in the Psalms, is because the Psalms inform and teach us about our emotional life as human beings.

They expound the human experience.

They're psalms of joy, which one day we will get to because really we've been in Psalms of Lament for the last four years or so.

But the Psalms do give voice to different emotions.

They give voice to our joy, our grief, our despair, our depression, our gladness, our sorrow, our grief at injustices.

And Psalm 51 speaks about a very specific emotion.

It speaks about feeling guilty.

It speaks to those who feel ashamed.

It speaks into our experience as human beings of being weighed down by something that we have done wrong.

There are very few people in the world that don't know what this is like.

Who don't feel any sort of guilt.

The vast majority of us know what it is to be ashamed.

They know what it is to wish that we could look back and redo certain things, that there are bells that we wish we could unring actions and words that if we had a redo, we would do differently.

But we cannot.

And so we feel the shame.

The question is, for those who are like that, for those who are like me, for those who are like David, is how do you deal with those feelings?

How do you process those feelings of guilt, those feelings of shame?

Some of us try to lock those feelings away, kind of like Monica's cupboard and friends.

Everything else looks tiny or tidy except for the cupboard where everything goes.

We try to forget and dismiss.

And when those thoughts come into your mind, you immediately try and suppress, distract yourself.

Sometimes we seek to justify ourselves.

We look back at those things that we feel guilty or ashamed of, and we think, well, if this hadn't been going on at the same time, if I hadn't just experienced this, if I hadn't gone through this, if this person hadn't done this to me, then I wouldn't have, I wouldn't have said.

Or people don't understand what it is that I've been through, the kind of upbringing that I've had, we justify.

Yet others are fairly persistently and consistently hounded by their feelings of shame.

Guilt from the past becomes a burden that you carry every day.

Every Christian needs to hear this psalm.

Every Christian needs to hear this psalm because I'm not sure that we do repentance in a biblical way, really.

For some Christians, repentance is something to be avoided.

Or it's vague and cursory.

We breeze on past it in our prayers.

I'm sorry, God, that I haven't really loved you today.

Please forgive me.

Help me to walk in newness of life.

Amen.

And we move on to other things, our other requests.

Maybe it is that we don't really know how to confess our sins.

We don't really know how to repent.

If you don't know, then you will struggle to see the joy that there is in this the joy of knowing forgiveness.

Some Christians tend to think of forgiveness as God's job.

That's what he does.

And so, of course, he will do it.

But perhaps what's most common amongst us, from talking to people at City Church, is the thought that repentance is continual self-abasement.

You're not really repentant unless you're constantly dragging yourself over broken glass in order to get back to God, into his favor.

Constantly groveling before a God who is displeased with you.

But that too is a misunderstanding because what you'll see from this psalm is that the goal of repentance is joy.

The goal of coming to God and confessing your sin is so that you might leave relieved.

You might leave with renewed joy, with gladness, with a deeper sense of happiness in God and who he is and what he's done for you.

Would you like your confession from now on, your repentance from now on, to lead you to a place of increased gladness and happiness in God?

Then we need to hear Psalm 51.

I have six things at least to point out from this Psalm.

I won't say that there's six steps.

It's not like it's six steps to genuine repentance.

It's not quite like that, but it's it's six six rhythms, dispositions, uh things that that David talks about, speaks to in this whole ecosystem of repentance.

Six things that we can learn in terms of how to confess better, to repent better, in a way that leads us to, I should do that, sorry, uh, that leads us to greater joy in God.

The first thing is that repentance is turning to and remembering the character of God.

Now we need to just pause for a second and note the context.

The context is there in the superscript above the psalm.

So you'll see Psalm 51, and then there'll be a little bit of writing, and it gives us a clue to the situation that the Psalm was written for.

And so if you have a Bible on you uh or on your phone, it should still say the little superscript.

It says this it says to the choir master of Psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet went to him after he had gone into Bathsheba, uh gone into is a uh is a Koi Bible translation uh for uh had illicit sex with.

Uh so we're back in the building, we're back mentioning sex.

Um, but this is what happens.

You can read the story in uh in the book of 2 Samuel, uh you know, 10, 11, 12, those chapters.

And what you read there, if you go back into chapter 9, uh David was kind of bossing it on the battlefield, right?

He was doing really well in terms of his military campaigns.

So well, in fact, that he realized that he didn't really need to be there.

Uh he could uh just let his general uh lead everybody into battle, and so he thought, I'm gonna hang out at the palace.

Uh because the start of the whole uh Bathsheba incident gives you a little clue to where David should be.

It says, in the day or in the times of the year when kings go to war, David was in his palace.

So you already get the sense that David's not where he's supposed to be.

And he's in his palace, and he goes up under the roof of his palace, and he sees a beautiful woman having a bath.

And because he is the king and he can have whatever he wants, he decides to abuse his power, summons her to his bedchamber, and has illicit relations, has an adulterous affair with Bathsheba, who was married to Uriah.

Now, where's Uriah while this is going on?

Uriah's at the battle.

Uriah's doing his duty, what he's supposed to do.

And what happens is that Bathsheba falls pregnant as a result of the union.

And so David spirals down even further and uh realizes that he needs to cover his tracks, and so he sends word that Uriah needs to come back uh from the from the battlefield and uh because he's got a special message for Uriah.

And so Uriah comes to David and says, you know, here's my uh here's my made-up note that you need to take back to the general, but hey, since you're here, go and see your wife, like head on back tomorrow, go and enjoy your conjugal rites as uh as a husband, and Uriah uh, because he's a man of honor, goes, No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, like none of my fellow uh brothers in arms uh are able to see their wives.

How can I possibly dishonour them in this way?

And so I'm just going to I'm just gonna sleep outside in the courtyard of the palace.

And David's like, oh, okay, um, well, I really think that you should go uh and see your wife.

You know, he's like, you that would be good for you.

Um and he says, no.

And so David writes a note that is concealed that Uriah takes to the general, and the note says, put Uriah at the part of the line where the fighting is fiercest.

He signs Uriah's death warrant, and sure enough, Uriah is killed.

So David not only is an adulterer, he is a murderer.

He bumps Uriah off so that he can immediately marry Bathsheba and so try to cover over his shame.

And we read in 2 Samuel The Lord was displeased with David.

And so he sends Nathan the prophet.

Nathan the prophet comes and tells him a story, a parable.

Uh, and David is incensed by the injustice of the story that Nathan tells.

And then there is that great line in the scriptures where Nathan turns to David and says, You are the man, you are the committer of the injustice.

And David's cut to the heart.

David is suddenly broken and sorrowful.

And it is an overflow of that sorrow and that penitence that he pens Psalm 51.

And what is the first thing that David does, this broken man?

He begins verse one Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love, according to your abundant mercy, blot out my transgressions.

David helplessly turns to the compassionate God.

He remembers the character of God.

How is it that God discloses himself, reveals himself?

When he reveals himself to Moses, these words would have been ringing in David's ears.

Moses comes to God in the book of Exodus and says, Tell me, or show me your glory.

Let me see what you're really like.

And the Lord hides Moses in the cleft of a rock because Moses would be toast, divine toast.

And as a uh as God's glory passes, what does God do?

He declares his character.

He says, the Lord, the Lord, gracious and compassionate, abounding in steadfast love and mercy.

That's the character of God.

What's the God like that you come to repent to?

He's gracious and compassionate.

He is abounding in mercy.

When you find yourself unable to come to God after you have sinned, remember the character of God.

Remember that God is gracious, that he is compassionate.

We turn to a merciful Jesus.

We stand in a better position from a better vantage point than David did.

We turn to a merciful Christ.

Here's something that you need to hear.

Jesus loves to forgive.

He loves to forgive.

He loves to be compassionate and show mercy.

That's his heart.

That's his heart for you.

He loves to forgive you.

It brings him joy and delight to offer you grace and to show you compassion.

How good is that?

Would you stand far off from that Jesus?

That Jesus who longs to relieve those who are burdened by guilt, weighed down by shame.

He longs to place upon you his easy yoke and the light burden of forgiveness.

And so the next time you are feeling under conviction where you know that you have sinned against God, as we Anglicans say, in thought, word, and deed, in what you have done and what you have left undone, remember that you are turning to a God who is gracious and compassionate, who loves to forgive you.

Second.

Look down at verses two and three.

Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, cleanse me from my sin, for I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me.

Verse four against you you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgments.

There's no excuses from David.

He offers no justification.

There's no passing the buck.

He doesn't blame Shift, he doesn't blame his circumstances, he doesn't blame his upbringing.

Well, you know, if my daddy hadn't sent me out to look after the sheep, I wouldn't have ended up like this.

He doesn't claim his daddy issues.

No what David says.

David says, My sin is emblazoned on my mind.

I can't get away from seeing it.

It's as though the tape keeps on playing over and over and over.

Have you had that experience?

He can't escape it.

So David talks about his sin as being ever before him.

He also talks in verse 5 about his sin as iniquity.

David here is pointing out that sin isn't just the singular individual act.

There's a heart issue.

A from birth heart issue going on.

When it says in sin did my mother conceive me, that's not the Bible saying that conception is wrong.

That it's wrong to conceive of children and give birth to them.

No, he's saying that from my very birth there has been a problem with my heart.

There is a problem with the human heart from our very first moments.

And what we can learn there is that sin is not something external to us.

It's not something that we accidentally fall into as a victim of our circumstance.

It's a disposition, it's an orientation of the heart.

Isn't that what Jesus says?

When Jesus is talking to his disciples and the Pharisees about food and what makes people clean, he says, nothing can defile you that goes into your uh into your mouth and into your stomach and then is expelled.

It's from your heart, it's from within that sinful thoughts and desires come.

And let me say this by way, I guess, of warning, of caution, of pleading.

You will never come to Jesus if you never accept that the problem that you have is the problem of your heart.

If you never see your need of Jesus, you will never come to him.

He will only ever be useful to you for giving you a nice life, like some divine butler.

But if you never see your need of him, your sin need, your need for a transformed heart, you will never come up to him.

We see this iniquity, this disposition of the heart working out in people's lives.

We've maybe even seen it in our own lives.

It's not just the singular act.

The decision to be unfaithful, for example, because that's the example in the text, the decision to be unfaithful doesn't act, doesn't begin with the individual act of unfaithfulness.

It begins ten thousand little decisions before that.

That puts you on a trajectory.

That's what we're seeing in 2 Samuel in David's life.

The opening to the chapter that says it was the time when kings went to war, is just one of a myriad of examples in the chapters leading up to it, that David was already on a trajectory away from God, that he was already on a trajectory following the desires of his heart.

And so we must watch those ten thousand little decisions that put us on that trajectory.

What's more, and perhaps even more.

More shocking is that David sees his sin for as it truly is.

We're still in still in point two about confessing the seriousness of your sin.

He sees it as it truly is.

Look at verse 4 again.

Against you, you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight.

That's bizarre at first reading, really, isn't it?

Because you kind of think, well, who's he trying to kid?

He sinned against Bathsheba by abusing his power and taking her, forcing her to commit adultery with him.

He has Uriah murdered.

In order to have Uriah murdered, he corrupts the Israelite military complex.

He sinned against his generals.

As you think about the David and Bathsheba incident, there's scarcely a person that David hasn't sinned against.

And yet he says in verse 4, against you, you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight.

How can David say this?

What does he mean by that?

What David is pointing out is that all sin is first and foremost.

That it is ultimately committed against God who is holy and just.

One between us and our Maker.

And David recognizes that.

And there is nothing that he can do about it.

David's experience is often ours.

That there is a helplessness that comes from feelings of guilt.

That we simply don't know where to turn.

We need God to provide a way that we can be renewed.

And so David, thirdly, comes to God and asks for cleansing.

So first, turn to God and acknowledge his character.

Second, confess the seriousness of your sin.

And third, ask for cleansing.

Ask God to make you clean.

Have a look again, verse 2, wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, cleanse me from my sin.

Verse 7, purge me with hyssop and I will be clean.

Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow.

Verse 10, create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.

Sin and perhaps in particular sexual sin, as is the context of the Psalm, makes us feel dirty.

Both in terms of if we are the one who has sinned or the one who has been sinned again.

Guilt and shame come from that sense of defilement.

And so in order to deal with our guilt and our shame, we need to be made clean.

But how?

David comes to God and he asks for cleansing.

There's an interesting turn of phrase in verse 7 at the very start of it where he says, Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean.

We don't normally use the word purge, and we don't know what hyssop is.

Hyssop is like thyme.

It's a woody herb when it's in a bunch, it looks a bit like a kind of a fairly makeshift brush.

So the next time you're in Tesco and you see the little baggie of time, you can think hyssop, it's like that, right?

And then hyssop was the uh the bunch, you would kind of tie a bunch of it together and use it as a brush, and it was what was used at a passover to to paint.

Oh look, I've got a frame, look at this.

Um to pint the sides and the lintel, don't know if that's in the frame, but there's another bit up there, to pint the blood of the sacrificial lamb on the doorpost.

The lamb who took your sin.

And what what David is saying, in a sense, is never mind the door.

Pint me.

It's me that needs to be painted, not the door of my house.

I need to be blood covered.

I need the sacrificial lamp.

Purge me with his pin me.

And already you can see the resonances, perhaps through to the New Testament.

Where John looks at Jesus and says, Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

That by his blood we are cleansed.

That is what we are assured of in John's first letter.

Because John says, if we say we were without sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.

But if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Jesus will make you clean.

He will cleanse you.

He will take the dirt and the defilement of your sin and make you clean.

Fourth.

Pray for renewal.

Pray for renewal.

Look at verse ten and eleven.

He says, Create in me a clean heart, O God.

And renew a right spirit within me, cast me not away from your presence, nor take your Holy Spirit from me.

Here's the thing.

Forgiven people are committed to being changed by God.

And so repentance must involve a desire, a resolve to live renewed by God.

David here is passionately committed to being changed by God.

Hello everyone.

It's good to see you from our new angle.

I don't really know what's happened.

My phone is over there.

But this is obviously necessary.

And so we're going to keep going.

We're in verses 10 and 11, point four of Psalm 51.

And what we're looking at is the idea that we pray for cleansing and then we pray for renewal.

We ask God to change us.

We ask God to renew us, to uh renew a right spirit within me, is what 10B says.

Because people who are truly penitent, people who are truly repentant are also committed to life change.

Because that's what repentance is.

Repentance is not just stopping going one way, it's turning around and going another way.

I'm like a mine.

Look at this.

It's turning around and going another way.

It's turning away from self and going towards God.

David has recognized that his sin is ultimately an issue with his heart, and so he cries out to God for a new one, for a creative act of renewal.

That's an amazing thought, isn't it?

That the God who spoke galaxies into being makes a new heart in you.

He makes a new heart in you.

He makes a new heart in those people who you are praying for.

He wants a pure heart, a right spirit.

That is, he doesn't want to think or act or feel according to his natural self anymore.

He wants new desires that come from a new heart.

He wants to conform his thoughts and his actions and his feelings according to God and according to his will for him.

He wants his heart to be after God's heart, his thoughts to be after God's thoughts, his feelings to be after God's feelings.

That's what true repentance is.

True repentance is a yearning and a longing to be renewed.

And how often, looking at verse 11, how often in our guilt and in our shame do we think thoughts like, does God even love me?

Am I even a Christian?

How can I possibly be a Christian?

I would offer you comfort this morning.

David knows precisely that it is because his Holy Spirit is with him that he is grieving his sin.

If God took away his Holy Spirit, if God took away his presence, David would no longer feel any conviction over his sin.

And so it's almost like David in verse 11 is saying, I want to feel the weight of this.

Don't take that from me.

That convicting work of the Holy Spirit.

I need that because it drives me to you.

So here's the comfort, guilty Christian.

Here's the comfort, shamed Christian.

Those pangs of guilt can often be a sign that God has not abandoned you.

They are a sign that God is with you.

Christ's death and resurrection for you ensures that renewal is possible.

That is a gift of grace by faith.

You can have a new heart, new desires.

This is not to say that instantaneously, uh, that you won't sin anymore.

Wouldn't that be nice?

But more that through your life, through your whole life, you will be conformed all the more to him by the power of the Holy Spirit that he has given to you that is dwelling within you.

Fifth.

Repent and rejoice.

Repent and rejoice.

Verse 12, restore to me the joy of your salvation and uphold me with a willing spirit.

David needs his joy back.

And don't we?

Because here's the thing that sin does.

Sin kills your joy.

Sin kills your joy in God, it kills your joy in the Christian life, it kills your joyful stop.

Confession, coming to God, trusting in his provision and in his cleansing work has as its end point, as its goal, to reignite your joy again.

And as an overflow of that, he says that he will sing with gladness.

Verse 15, O Lord, open my lips and my mouth will declare your praise.

And isn't it interesting that while this Psalm is a Psalm of repentance and repenting of sexual sin, nowhere in the Psalm does David pray, O Lord, help me have good accountability partners.

Or, oh Lord, help me to turn from my impure thoughts when they come.

Oh Lord, help me to put my phone outside my room.

Oh Lord, give me the will to download covenant eyes.

Doesn't do any of that.

He prays for gladness.

He prays that he will have joy again.

All of us need to hear this.

All of us, especially all of us who have sinned sexually, need to hear this.

That the remedy for you is not simply restraint or suppression or better ways of relating, though those can be all necessary outflows.

No, the way that you will do battle with that sin is when you are glad in God.

When He is the source of your joy, of your contentment, and of your satisfaction.

So often we treat repentance as a single emotional act.

Yes, there's sorrow, yes, there's contrition.

But there is also cause for the Christian to rejoice.

To rejoice in the knowledge of sins forgiven, to rejoice that Jesus has paid it all, as we sing, that forgiveness and cleansing are possible and have been achieved, that the Spirit is within you, making you new, that the Father does smile upon you.

And so, Christian, brother, sister, when you repent, when you come with honest penitence and contrition before your heavenly Father who loves you, be so assured that He has forgiven you in Jesus that you can leave with joy.

Have that double heartbeat in your repentance of repenting and rejoicing.

Repent and rejoice in what Jesus has done.

Repent of your sin, rejoice in his cleansing, repent of your iniquity, rejoice in your new heart.

Sixth and finally.

Deliver me from blood guiltiness, O God, O God of my salvation, and my tongue will sing aloud for your righteousness.

O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth shall declare your praise.

For you would for you will not delight in a sacrifice, or I would give it.

You will not be pleased with a burnt offering.

The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.

Just look at that last verse for a second.

David is not saying that when you're repenting, uh you come broken and contrite, and uh and then you you leave and go about the rest of your life in some other sort of disposition.

No, he's saying that your entire life as a Christian, the flavor of your Christian obedience is broken and contrite.

That's how you move through life.

Broken and contrite.

A broken and contrite heart, oh Lord, you will not despise.

That's what you carry with you, and that's not over and against joy.

It's not joy or brokenness and contrition.

Brokenness and contrition is the flavor of your joy.

It is our disposition as we move through this life.

We are an army on our knees, are we not?

But being forgiven and knowing the joy of forgiveness must necessarily overflow in obedience.

It is as a result of the cleansing and a result of the joy that he now has that he is driven forward, verse 13, to tell transgressors your ways.

And this is so important because how often do we do the opposite?

We wallow in our sin, we draw back from serving others, we think that we are unworthy.

No, joy of forgiveness compels us forward into new obedience.

First, in terms of effective evangelism, David wants renewed, wants to tell others about God.

When he said I want to teach transgressors your ways, David's not being judgmental, he's identifying with them.

I know what it is to be forgiven of all of my sin.

I need to tell other people of that.

Transformed obedience should send us out to share the good news with friends, family, co-workers, neighbors.

But second, he also understands something crucial that God does not desire our perfunctor obedience.

It's like what we saw with Duncan in Psalm 50.

God doesn't deal in quid pro quo.

I'll do this for you if you do this for me.

Worshipful deeds are the outflow of a cleansed and renewed heart.

And that is received by faith in God who cleanses and renews.

Do you see?

Maybe I need to say that again more slowly.

Worshipful deeds are the outflow of a cleanse and a renewed heart.

And that is received by faith in the God who cleanses and renews.

And so that is why the gospel is such good news for us.

It is such good news for you and I when we are weighed down with guilt and shame.

David cast himself on the mercy of God as one who would blot out his transgressions.

He strained to see in Psalm 51 what we see in Glorious Technicolor through the life and work of Jesus.

That Jesus is the means of that cleansing and renewal.

And when we see that, that is what liberates us from our shame.

That is what brings us out of the darkness and into the light where we don't need to hide anymore.

Brings us into a family of redeemed people who are all in need of cleansing.

I think that's that's what he's getting at in verse 18 and 19, where he talks, it seems weird that he kind of pivots quickly to you know, do good to Zion, your good pleasure, build up the walls of Jerusalem.

He's kind of saying, you know, there needs to be a corporate, uh, a corporate appropriation of this cleansing, of this forgiveness.

That sin affects the body, but forgiveness uh builds up the body corporate.

And when we are come together as forgiven people, oh that fills us with joy.

Not only that, but it sends us out on mission.

And so my prayer this morning, whether it is that you can only hear me, uh, or if you're able to watch right now.

Is that we will know the joy of sins forgiven, and that that would be the fuel of our mission to the city and to the world.

Let's pray.