Psalms 51:1-12

Psalm 51, I want to read the first 12 verses of this Psalm tonight. I’ll read the preface here to the chief musician, A Psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet came unto him after he had gone in to Bashiba. Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy loving kindness, according under the multitude of thy tender mercies, blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. For I acknowledge my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Against thee, the only have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight, thou mayest be justified when thou speakest, and be clear when thou judgest. Behold, I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me. Behold thou desirest truth in the inward parts, and in the hidden part, thou shalt make me to know wisdom. Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean, wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Make me to hear joy and gladness that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice. Hide thy face from my sins and blot out my iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from thy presence, and take not thy Holy Spirit. from me. Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation and uphold me with thy free spirit. God blessed to us is sacred and holy word this evening. In a cemetery, not too far outside of New York City, there is a headstone. that has engraved upon it a single word. And that word is forgiven. The message is simple. It’s unembellished. There’s no date of birth, no date of death, no epitaph of any nature. There’s only a name and a solitary word forgiven. It would be Jack A. Worth or Jack Arthur Worth. Forgive. And that’s it. But that’s the greatest word that can be applied to any human being. As the preface of this Psalm indicates to us, David is the human writer of the Psalm. But we should be fully aware that the Holy Ghost has inspired him to write this Psalm. Psalm is used in public worship. And you’ll notice in scripture, like in 2 Samuel 232, we read the Spirit of the Lord spake by me, and his word was in my mouth. That’s what David said. It was written after David had committed the most wicked actions imaginable, probably the darkest moment in his life. 2 Samuel chapter 11 and 12 records his adulterous fair with Bashiba and then his murder of her husband, Uriah, in attempt to cover up his sin, to conceal it, to conceal it, from everyone around. To cover up his sin, around him. And then, of course, God sends Nathan the prophet to confront David the king about his sin. This Psalm is an aftermath of that. It indeed shows us, it says indeed a Psalm of heartfelt repentance and remorse over the wickedness. that he had engaged in. It’s filled with tears, if you would, and confession of sin. When you think about it, David did have a very serious problem. He had committed two sins for which the law of Moses did not have a sacrifice. He deserved a death penalty. When Micah, like Micah, he could have asked this all in question, will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams and 10,000 of river of oil, would that be enough to satisfy them? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body, for the sin of my soul? Do I have to give one of my children as a sacrifice of the Lord? And the answer would be, there is no animal sacrifice. You can make to atone for your soul, David. we think about it, the death penalty should be inevitable for one who commits adultery and murder. And yet Nathan the Prophet said, and we read it tonight, 2nd Samuel 1213, he said this to David, the Lord also hath put away thy sin, thou shalt not die. How is that possible? We have to remember that David, according to Acts chapter 2 in Peter’s sermon there on the day of Pentecost is a prophet. And the Holy Spirit has revealed to him the truth of a coming Savior, the Messiah. And through the sacrifice of the Messiah as an offering for sin, those sins like adultery and murder, which had no sacrifice under the law of Moses, as an offering for sin, those sins like adultery, like adultery and murder, Moses could be forgiven by a Holy God. Psalm 40 records something of this nature for us, lays out for us, lays out for us a prophecy of Christ coming. How that God prepared a body for Christ. How that God was not satisfied with any animal sacrifices, but a body thou has prepared me. and that he must be sacrificed himself for our sins. The New Testament interpretation of that Psalm 40 points us directly to who? To Jesus Christ. And I read from Hebrews 10 tonight, and if you want to follow me, I want to read the first 14 verses here of Hebrews 10, because before we delve into this chapter 10, I think it’s important. we realize why David was forgiven when indeed there was no animal sacrifice under the law that could be made for him. The writer of Hebrews tells us, for the law, having a shadow of good things to come and not the very image of the things can never, with those sacrifices which they offered year by year, year continually make the comers there unto perfect. For then would they not have ceased to be offered? Because that the worshippers once purged should have had no more conscience of sins. But in those sacrifices there is a remembrance again made of sins every year. for it is not possible that the blood of bulls and goat should take away sins. Boy, that is a very strong statement for us to think about. Wherefore, when he cometh into the world he seth, he seth. And here we have the quotation from Psalm 40, Sacrifice in offering thou wouldest not but a body, hast thou prepared me. In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin, thou hast had no pleasure. Then said I, lo, I come in the volume of the book, it is written of me to do thy will, O God. Above, when he said sacrifice and offering and burnt offerings and offering for sin, thou wouldest not, neither hath pleasure therein which are offered by the law. Then he saith, then said he, lo, I come to do thy will, O God. He takeeth away the first, they may establish the second. By the witch will, we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. And every priest standeth daily ministering and offering of times the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins, but this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down on the right hand of God, from henceforth expecting till his enemies be made his footstall, for by one offering he hath perfected forever them that are sanctified. My friends, this is the solution to the dilemma that David has in this particular Psalm. And we’ll look at this, I’m sure, in more detail later, but at this point, let us understand this is why, even though there’s no sacrifice, he’s forgiven. Why we should realize that all those sacrifices in the Old Testament really were pointing forward to Christ, who is the sacrifice, who brings a perfect cleansing of our sins. These Old Testament sacrifices were really just sort of rolling things forward, with a portrayal of what was going to happen under Christ in the New Testament. So here David is, he is guilty of the blackest sins imaginable and yet he’s forgiven. My friends, if we can’t take comfort in that, what a blessing it is to see that God forgives sins. The Psalmist said there is forgiveness with you that you may be feared. in Psalm 130 and verse 4. That’s our comfort. My friends, think about the fact that a holy God is highly dangerous to a person who’s a sinner. And all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. The scripture says, where does that put us? If God should mark iniquities, who could stand before him? Who could ever stand before him? How could any of us ever go to heaven? and be in the very presence of the Lord God. And yet, this God of holiness, which threatens you, is the same God, which sent his son, the Lord Jesus Christ, to provide redemption for our sins and forgiveness. Sin in your life causes a separation between you and God. And as Jeremiah tells us, your sins have caused good things. to be withholding from you. Now, there are many reasons you may feel the absence of the blessing of God in your life, but one thing is, unforgiven sin. And like David, you really have nowhere to hide. There are no excuses you really can make. You have to confess, as he does in this song, that you are a vile sinners in the eyes of God, and you need his cleansing. and forgiveness and to be restored. I like what he says in Psalm 32 verses 1 and 2, Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord imputeth, not iniquity. Doesn’t charge it to your account. My friends, this Psalm teaches us, I think, how to seek forgiveness from God. and it really deserves our utmost attention. Let me begin by saying this, how do you view your wrongdoing before God? One of the things we have to do is we have to face our wrongdoing. Sin has a desensitizing effect upon you. And the more you engage in a particular sin, the more callous you become with regard to that. regarding your conscience. Suppose in the spring of year you go out and you dig up a garden or perhaps you remove a shrub or you chop firewood or something and you don’t wear any gloves on your hands. Before you know it, all that rubbing on your hand produces blisterous and it’s very sore, very tender. I remember when I was a real young, maybe 10, my neighbor and I, we were going to build a fort, so we thought we’d cut these. these trees down in the woods and we dig a hole and put trench like and put these all together and took a lot more work than we realized that before we know it we had blisters on all, you know, on my hand. Every digit on my hand had a blister on it. From all the chopping. Now if you continue to rub that irritated part of your hand, and mine would, you know, blister up and break and be really really, tender but if you continue and we kept chopping wood of course we had to get that fork built eventually what happens is it becomes calloused gets you get up like a hard piece of skin that grows on there and then it’s not so sensitive same thing can happen spiritually what at first you would be really sensitive and feel convicted about then what happens is is that you particularly go on in that sin sort of to get calloused to it. It doesn’t bother you as it wants to. David’s hardness at first regarding his sin is striking. He seems to want to cover his sin and forget about this serious nature and just hope it goes away. David is in a backslidden condition. He has committed adultery with the beautiful Bashiva and he secretly murdered her husband Uriya, putting him up in the front lines. You know, he tells Joab, hey, put him up in the front lines in the most heated area of the battle. Then, of course, he takes Bathsheba to be his wife. There’s no confession of sin before God. There’s no remorse that we read about. And for at least nine months, it would seem that there is no change in David. Because it’s when the child is going to be born that Nathan seems to go, say, that child’s going to die. and the judgment falls upon his head. He doesn’t appear to examine himself. He doesn’t appear to confess his sin. He goes day by day, unmoved, like he put it off from his mind. But then there’s Nathan, the brave instrument that God uses to confront David with his sin very pointedly, very directly in a sense, he leads into it by telling this parable, this story, to awaken David out of his spiritual letharry. But then he really lays it out in very blunt terms. Wherefore hast thou despise the command of the Lord to do evil in his sight? I hast despised me, God says to David. My friend, has God ever had to arouse you out of your spiritual lethargy? When you’ve been in sin like this? God has many instruments to you. to do this. It may be a sermon. It may be heaven, you know, preach a sermon to you in a sense, and you get convicted. It may be his hand of providence. Maybe you’re more like Jonah. And God has to send the storm and the great fish and make things difficult for you before you’re brought to a conviction of your sin. In many ways, God can touch. your life to awaken you to your sin. But you have to reach that point. Will you two confess with David? I have sinned against the Lord. And now you’re ready for the song. It wouldn’t hurt in our moments of grief and repentance. If we prayed this song, sort of as we went along, to actually use these words. I think it’s written for the purpose of benefiting us and helping us in this manner. There are many layers of sin in your soul, and there is a sense in which we only begin to realize how vile we really are and how far we can fall into sin when we are exposed. It’s not an attractive picture. Many years ago, I had to go to a dentist because a tooth was bothering me. A filling had come out and the tooth was quite sensitive. I figured it was only a simple replacement procedure and wouldn’t be that big of a deal. It didn’t rush to the dentist. So I got to the dentist and he looked at it and he didn’t see any urgency. And he just covered a small cavity. underneath the area where the filling had been. And he thought, well, it’s just a simple matter. We’ll fix it. And then he began to drill. And he began to drill some more. And before you know it, he said, I had to go really close to that nerve. He said it was deeper than it looked on the surface. After he repaired a cavity, he warned me. He said, now it’s very possible that this isn’t going to last. And he says, if it doesn’t, you’re going to have the worst. worst toothache you’ve ever had. Sure enough, one of the few years later, I started getting a toothache that was so severe. It was terrible. I mean, it was, it was the worst toothache. It was nasty. And so I had to get it fixing. Guess what? My dentist was out of town. Actually, I had to get a new dentist that just hadn’t even opened. He was going to open on a Monday. I think this was on a Friday. I found him and he was willing. He said I’d come in. And he said, well, I don’t know. You may have to get a crown on this. I said, just take it out of there. You know, get that tooth out. Because, you know, I can’t go on like this. It was just so terrible. And he had to remove the tooth. My friends, we have to realize that there are times we don’t realize how serious our sin is. It made me much worse we think. We might think I was just a little cavity, you know, just a little, replace the filling situation. You may lose the tooth. You just never know how severe that sin may truly be, and it may have far-reaching consequences for your life. So facing your wrongdoing is the first thing, examining your wrongdoing. I want to focus tonight on the words that David uses to describe his sin. And he uses a variety of terms here. He gets a well-rounded statement here with regard to his sin. You’ll notice in the here in the first few verses, he says, Have mercy upon me, O God, according their loving kindness, according to the multitude of thy tender mercies, brought out my transgressions, wash me throughly from mine iniquity, cleanse me from my sin, for I acknowledge my transgression, my sin is ever before thee, against thee, the only, have I sinned and done this evil in thy sight, that thou mayest be justified when thou speakest, and be clear when thou judgest. Behold, I was shaping an iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me. In verses one and three here, he uses the word transgression. The Hebrew word is Pesha. It means a crossing into forbidden territory. We use the word trespass. You go somewhere you shouldn’t go. The idea, oh, here is more of a serious rebellion is involved in this. You recall, those of you perhaps are familiar with Roman history and the annals of Julius Caesar, that as long as the general and his army remain north of the river rubicon, he was on peaceful terms with the U.S. Senate. As long as he was in Gaul, which we call Germany and France today, that area, and it wasn’t in the home country, with his army intact, everything would be okay. But once he crossed that Rubicon, which the Senate had forbidden him to cross with his army. he was going to be at war with that legislative body. While Caesar did cross, said the die is cast, and a civil war erupted, and he won it. And of course, he proceeded to steal power away from the U.S. from the Roman Senate and become the Emperor of Rome of Rome and become the Emperor of Rome. Transgression is a rebellion against rightful authority, such as Caesar here. At is what we have done with regard to God, who has rightful authority over us. Sin is then a treason. Sin is a rebellion against God. His law, his government, his rule, if you were. It speaks of self-assertiveness. sense we make ourselves the emperor we decide we’re going to rule clearly this is what happened to David the danger of course was that he was king of Israel and he could pretty much do whatever he wanted to do he had great authority but he lost his perspective on this authority that he was given as king for it did not give him the right to sin against God and break God’s law he was under God’s authority and here he rebelled against it. David knew that adultery and murder were wrong, but he decided to do what he pleased and not what God pleased. And this is the problem with sin. It’s a rebellion against God’s authority. We’re saying not thy will be done, but mine. Transgression. In verses 2 and also in verse 9, he uses the word iniquity, iniquity. The Hebrew word, Ava, is used here, which means bent or twisted, conveys the idea of a twisted waywardness. This word is similar to our English word wrong, which means something that’s rung out of shape. Picture a bent key that would no longer fit into the lock. I used to work at a corrugated box company, and we had these big sheets of car. We had to lift up. And so you had to use your legs. You had to like put them up against your legs and sort of turn with them and set them down on carts and things like that because they were big sheets and you’d pick up, you know, stack like that at one time. Well, I kept my keys in my pocket and before I knew it, one of the keys got pretty well bent because of all that weight that was, you know, constantly people put on it. So, you know, it won’t fit in the lock anymore. It won’t unlock the door because it got, bent, you know, and I’m hair tried, straight it back out again. This is the picture. It’s twisted out of shape and therefore it cannot be used to accomplish the purpose for which it was intended. You were created to honor God. You were created in such a way that you were supposed to live a life pleasing before God. And now you’re twisted out of shape. You can’t please it. You can’t please him apart from God’s gracious work in you. No human being functions as originally created because we’ve all fallen in Adam. And we need to be straightened out, if you would. A sinning Christian is like physically having a bone out of a place. How can you honor God unless you’re restored? You’ve got to get the bone back into place. And this is why the prophet told Nathan, and because of this deed, thou has given occasion to the enemies of God to blaspheme. Don’t you think that people realized that when David did this, the surrounding nations, and they heard about all this? Don’t you think they looked at this was scorn upon David? And maybe even upon the Jewish religion, the biblical religion, as it was revealed. Don’t you think people realize when you, as a professing Christian, do something that’s contrary to the law of God? Can you imagine the enemies of Israel? What they’re thinking about? David, yeah, he claims to be God’s representative. He claims to be a holy man, but just look what he did. He committed adultery. And then he had the husband murdered it covered up. Why, we wouldn’t do such a thing. And he wants to do that. to build a temple. My friends, have your life been so twisted that others look at you and realize you can’t match up to the profession of faith that you’ve made? David felt this keenly, and so should you. In verses two and three, he uses the word sin here. The word, the Hebrew word is catha, which means to wonder from, to fall short of, to miss the mark. when my son Matthew was younger, he got a dart board as a gift. And on the board, of course, there’s the bullseye, and then there’s the rings around it. The closer you get to the bullseye, the more points you get. So we hung it up on the wall, you know, and we’re going to play darts. You find out it wasn’t so easy to hitting the bullseye. Sometimes you missed the whole board. Or you fell short of the board. The biblical teaching here is that God has given you a tool. target you are to measure up to his standard which is the commandments that he’s given us and failure to meet god’s requirements is the is the prominent idea you’ve missed the mark there’s the standard you missed it you fell short of it you know where the bull’s eye is you know that’s where you should be aiming and you should be hitting it but you don’t do it wherefore this hast thou despise the command of the Lord to do this evil in his sight James tells us therefore to him that knoweth to do good and doeth it not it is sin David knew better he was well versed in the law of God how could a man who wrote Psalm 119 which is all about the law of God every stanza in it how could he possibly think that he could deliberately sin like this, miss the mark, and treat it with indifference. Have you knowingly violated the law of God? Have you missed the mark? That’s a serious step to take. You wander off the narrow path. You deliberately know that your actions are not right in God’s sight. You sin. Yes, the law. And then there’s this word evil that’s found in verse 4. The word raw in the Hebrew, to break up, to ruin something. The destructive nature of sin comes out in this particular term. Sin harms you. Often the word is used for the trouble which sin ruins bring on you. For example, sin breaks your fellowship of God. Sin may cause the breakup of your marriage. Sin may cause homes to be ruined. It may cause careers to be destroyed. Both the sinful act and the tragic effects, I think, are contemplated in this word. Sin deteriorates. It ruins you. It promises pleasure, but it creates problems. David’s sin brought much sorrow to him personally, to his family, and even to his nation. Since he had slain the husband of back. Sheba with the sword, what does God say? The sword shall not depart from your house forever. There’s going to be bloodshed in your family. David would be troubled by domestic violence. Remember Amon rapes his half-sister, Tamar. Then Absalom decides he’s going to take his life for doing such a thing. And then Absalon ends up trying to steal the kingdom from David and there’s a civil war that breaks out. And even David’s concubines, when he had to flee Jerusalem, when Absalom was approaching with his army, he left ten concubines behind to sort of take care of the place. While he was gone, all would be sexually violated by Absalom. My friend, you’re going to find sin doing the same thing in your life. It starts a fire, and you don’t know how much it’s going to burn. You don’t know how much it’s going to burn. How much damage sin is going to do. It will ruin you. All the rest of your life, you may have to live with the effects. God may forgive you or sin, but there are consequences sometimes to sin that are long-lasting. There’s a man I was counseling once. He professed to be Christian. He once one of these more megachurch type assemblies. He was a man who cheated on his wife several times. his wife had forgiven him several times and taken him back. But eventually she said, I’ve had enough, and she left, moved to Arizona. He was here in Pennsylvania. And he was talking with me, you know, he was very sorrowful, but he was trying to woo her back and to get her to come back to him. I said to him, you know, she has a biblical right to leave. she forgave you twice. And you kept breaking the marriage covenant. And it’s a sad fact, what you’ve done. And it’s said, I don’t know if this can be corrected. I prayed with the man, went over some biblical principles with him. But you get to the point where you’re like, I don’t know if this can be put back together. Like Humpty Dumpty falling off the wall. Sometimes you can’t put it all back together. And, you know, it ruined them. Sin has consequences. And so we have to keep that in mind. So examine your wrongdoing. Look at these terms. Transgression. Iniquity, sin, evil, all the facets of what he had done wrong. Now, I have to close tonight. I’m already well past what I should be. How do you view your wrongdoing before God? Nothing is more characteristic of people than have the easy assumption that they’re pretty good people in the eyes of God. They think highly of themselves. You may think, well, you sin despite yourself. That covetous, hateful, immoral thought is considered a departure maybe from what you might think is known. You may think, what sin is temporary insanity. But David here has been confronted, and he confronts you with an earth and shattering truth, and that is this. Like Paul, I know that within me, that is within my flesh, there dwelleth no good thing. And that’s what we have to reach that point. Man is a vile creature born in sin, having a nature that is corrupted, by sin of depraved being incapable doing good apart from God’s grace. Even as a Christian, there’s this remnant of our fallen nature still within us, still troubling us. And the good that we would do, we often do not do. And the evil that we would not do, we somehow rather end up doing. Those who believe in the teaching of Scripture, we of all people, should know the truth about ourselves. And like Paul, be willing to confess, I am the chief of sinners. There’s a famous passage in the confessions of Augustine about when he was a youngster and how he would steal pears from a local orchard. And as he looked back upon those days of his youth, he analyzes his motives. Why did he do such a thing? He said, I could have had better payers. and they would be freely gotten without stealing. So why did I steal? He said he stole for the sake of stealing. He said he sin because he loves sin rather than God. He took a delight in doing what was forbidden. He had a rebellious heart. It did not respect the ways of the Lord. Now, while the dominion of sin has been broken in your life and mind as Christians. We must realize it still has a powerful effect. Sin is dangerous. We must realize it can bring great damage upon us. It’s a rebellion against God’s authority. It’s missing God’s standard. It twists you out of shape. It ruins you. It is a great evil in God’s sight. Let us come with that thought in mind when we repent of our sin. Because this is how David begins. this song by describing his own wickedness. Let’s close with a word of prayer tonight. Heavenly Father, we thank you for your goodness and being forgiving of our sins in Christ. Frankly, we can all look at the life of David and realize that in many ways we have been guilty just like him. Oh, we may not have gone as far as the physical acts of murder or adultery or something of this nature. Yet, Father, we’re all guilty of some sin, some missing of the mark. Forgive us, Lord. Open this Psalm to us that we may appreciate the way you forgive sins through Christ. Let us also learn how to repent of our sins, as David does here. In Jesus’ name, we pray with Thanksgiving. Let’s stand for the benediction tonight.