Psalms 51:1-12

Psalm 51, I want to read the first 12 verses of this Psalm tonight with you. Psalm 51, have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy loving kindness, according under the multitude of thy tender mercies, blood out my transgressions. Wash me throughly from mine iniquity, 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, that thou mightest be justified when thou speakest, and be clear when thou judgest. Behold I was shaping 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, blot out all my iniquities, created me a clean heart, O God, 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. May the Lord bless us by his sacred and holy word this evening. The Woodstock centennial review, a paper in Ontario, Canada, once published an interesting article on American drivers that go to Canada. Our American visitors, they said, are normally welcome here, but occasionally, they reveal some very odd notions about our country. It seems that one Michigan man was charged with speeding. He was driving 74 miles an hour on the Canadian highway, and he gave a captivating explanation to the judge. He said he thought since the Canadian gallon was bigger than the U.S. gallon, miles might be longer north of the border. To cover 60 Canadian miles an hour, he felt his speedometer would have to show at least 70 miles an hour. The judge wasn’t impressed. The magistrate clarified the air, find the man in Canadian dollars, which he said are smaller than U.S. dollars. People sometimes invent some ingenious excuses for doing wrong. Today’s Freudian school of psychology teaches that you’re really. It teaches that you’re really, not responsible for your reactions. Someone must be responsible. Someone else. So you have built in excuses for what happens in your life. Maybe it’s your parents’ fault. Maybe it’s society’s fault. The Freudian solution of the problems is to analyze the patient to determine what it was that caused this person to go wrong. and on that basis, re-socialize. So if you do something bad in your life, you have to find out what caused you to act in that way. Was it your strong-willed grandmother? Maybe because you were raised in a a puritanical type of home where they were very strict about moral rules and regulations. Maybe your father was a drunk. Maybe your mother. neglected you while you were growing up maybe you were raised in a poor neighborhood and you were deprived of many things perhaps the church you attended has caused you to feel guilty about your present activities your conscience is bothering you because of their strict moral code but you are never really you are merely acting on how you’ve been socialized can you imagine David if he lived today, went to the local psychiatrist, you know, maybe Freudian psychiatrist in the main street of Jerusalem or something. And he confessed he’s been feeling guilty about committing adultery and causing Bashiba’s husband to be put to death. He’s really troubled over it. And a psychologist, Sigmund of Jerusalem, begins to calm David by saying, well, you shouldn’t have to have him. these guilty feelings. There’s no reason to feel this way. After all, it’s not your fault that you committed adultery. Really, Bashiba should have been more careful about bathing outside. She’s the one exposed her body. And you’re a healthy young man doing what comes naturally. You shouldn’t feel guilty about that. Basheba didn’t reject your sexual advances. Asher you didn’t shoot him with the arrow or they killed him with the sword the Ammonites did that this is war man it’s a dangerous occupation to be involved in David you just been exposed to too rigid of a moral code at the church your time at that temple they’re too rigid about things your father Jesse maybe he went overboard with your religious training so you have you such a fear of God in you Now, obviously, Psalm 51 takes a completely different approach than you would hear today. And what we see tonight is this, David takes full responsibility for his actions. My friends, it’s the only way to deal with your guilt. Take note of this. Because you live in a society that will make all kinds of excuses for the way you behave. Whereas the Bible teaches you completely different. So we begin with this thought. You must accept responsibility for your wrongdoing. In verses 1 to 3, you see how often the word my comes up here? The first person, singular. My transgressions in verse 1. My iniquity in verse 2. My sin. and verses 2 and 3 it’s me. It’s my fault. Not somebody else’s fault. He doesn’t blame his parents. He doesn’t blame the church. He doesn’t blame Basheba. He doesn’t blame society. He doesn’t even blame the Ammonites, those terrible people. No, he doesn’t. And he doesn’t blame God, if you had just not had that gorgeous Bashiba live so close to me. If you had just kept her from bathing while I was walking on top of the roof of the palace. If you just hadn’t made me such a man of strong passions, if you just had caused Bashiba to put up some real resistance. David doesn’t give any excuse for his sin. It’s my fault. It’s my sin. It’s my transgression. It’s my iniquity. That’s what he says. And it’s well to remember that David was a monster. Mark. He had absolute power as the king of Israel. He could do as he pleas pretty much. He had a lot of leeway on what he did. Now, no other king you can imagine of his time would probably feel guilty for some of the things that David does because they did whatever they wished. They were law unto themselves. But David fully realizes that he is accountable to God. And this whole Psalm of repentance provides a warning to others that you too are accountable to God for whatever sin you commit. Oh, we can make all kinds of excuses. But the bottom line is this, you are responsible. Think about the prodigal son. See how he takes the blame for his evil actions. He doesn’t pass the blame on to others. He says, it’s all my fault. The prodigal son, after wasting his inheritance, finally sinks to that stage where he’s ready to eat the pig slop because he’s hungry. And he thought about what caused his problem and led him to this desperate state. He doesn’t blame his father. And certainly, he doesn’t blame God. Oh, if only God had more sense than to give a young man all that well, he should have known better. He doesn’t say that. He’d know I’d blow it on foolishness. It’s his fault that I’m here. No, he doesn’t say that, does he? He didn’t blame God for his hardship either. God, you shouldn’t have given me control all that wealth. You shouldn’t have placed me among those people that live so wildly. He placed me in a dangerous situation. I just couldn’t help myself. No, he returns to his father’s house full of guilt, full of remorse. Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight. I’ve sinned against God, and I’ve sinned against you. And wasting your inheritance. Daniel Webster was once asked, what is the most important thought you ever entertained? And he replied after a moment’s meditation. The most important thought I ever had was my individual responsibility to God. You see in verse 6 where God says, he desires truth in the inward parts. Are you willing to fess up to your wrongdo? To be accountable for your actions. Now, blame shifting goes all the way back to Adam and Eve. That woman you gave me, well, the serpent that you created, blame shifting. They passed the buck. When temptations come, your way, it is true that God has placed you in that situation. But he has a good and beneficial purpose for putting in you there. It’s to test your faith to make you stronger in the things of the Lord. But you were responsible for how you act. Remember how James says, you can’t blame God? It was your own lust that led you astray. And you fall of them. Have you ever prayed? You might say, well, I fell into sin. Yeah. But did you pray? What Jesus told you to pray? In the sermon of the Mount. Did you pray? Leave me not into temptation, but deliver me from evil. Actually, he says, us in that, you know, he doesn’t just pray for, don’t just pray for yourself. Pray for the other believers around you. But did you do that? Because if you were neglectful of praying that way and you fell into sin, aren’t you no responsible? This is the problem. You can imagine Nathan going his way and David’s sitting in that palace and he’s thinking to himself, what have I done? How guilty I am. So you must accept responsibility for your wrongdoing. You must recognize the vowness of your nature. Let us verse 5 here with me. Behold, I was shaping an iniquity and in sin. Did my mother conceive me? The Romans had some cruel tortures that they used, and one of them was they would compel a captive to be joined face to face with a dead body, and bind them together. And you have to bear about this body, this dead body with you. And the horrible effects of the germs, the bacteria of the decaying flesh, and it would end up destroyed. the very life of the living victim. Virgil describes it this way. The living and the dead at his command were coupled face to face and hand to hand. Chil choke with stench in load in braces tied. The lingering wretches pined away and died. What a terrible punishment. Like those Roman prisoners David Feinthens himself strapped with a nature which is corrupt and it defiles everything that he does. David contemplated how could I do such an evil? How could I commit adultery? Could I, who love the Lord, who claimed I love God’s law? Do this. How could I kill? Erai? What terrible sins. against the Lord God. And he discovers that sin is imbred within him. David is not trying to justify himself here. He’s trying to get to the source of the problem. He says, I’m a wicked man. I have this corrupt nature in me that leads me down the wrong path. And I got it from Adam. And that’s why I’m a vile sinner. And that’s why I did this. He goes back to the earliest moments of his existence. He says, we go back to the very root of the problem is, I was conceived as a sin. Now, while it seems that David’s mother was probably a believer, a child of God, she was also a daughter Adam. Thus, David here was born with a corrupt nature. We talk about original sin. When Adam violated him, God’s command not to eat off the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. He was a representative for every human being. So that when he sin, you sin. When his nature fell, your nature was born, fallen. And thus, the problem that exists in your life. This is why the scripture tells us that foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child. My daughter, she was raising three children. She said, they’re so bad. And I looked at her and I said, total depravity. Becky, total depravity. Haven’t you been listening to what I’ve been teaching you since you were a little kid? Sometimes you see it firsthand before, I guess, it registers. I don’t know. You remember how Paul, even after his conversion, still talks about the sinful naked. nature still plaguing him to some degree. For he says, I know in Romans 7, that in me, that is in my flesh dwelleth no good thing, for I delight in the law of God after the inward man. But I see another law of my members, warring against the law of my mind and bringing me into captivity, the law of sin, which is in my members, O wretched man that I am. I think it’s important to realize that we’re more corrupt. And even though we have been renewed by the Holy Ghost, there’s still a remnant of that corruption with it. Until we’re glorified, it’s there. And even though it has been, in a sense, the power has been broken to some degree here, it’s still there. That’s why even though Paul wants to do good, he finds himself doing the wrong thing at times. And we’ll find the same thing with us. A wretched man that I am, who should deliver me from this body of death. Thanks that, he gives thanks to God to Christ’s will. You must recognize the vowness of your nature. You must agree that God is right to judge you. Now notice verse four with me here. 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. Suppose Fred Smith is a bar hopper on Friday nights. He gets his paycheck cash. He goes to the bar and he blows it on drinking all night. Several hours later and many drinks later, he decides he’s going to drive home at his red Ford pickup truck. And he gets in the truck and he’s trying to drive but he’s impaired because of his alcohol and his system and he begins, the truck’s weaving back and forth on the highway. He can’t see. seem to keep it in the lanes that he’s supposed to follow. And he accidentally runs over a pedestrian who has been walking on the side of the road a young teenager and kills the teenager. Fear of being caught and being under the influence, he races away from the scene of the crime in several days the police are looking for who was engaged in this hit and run accident. Fred eventually, hearing the news day after day decides that he needs to turn himself into the police and he does. And there’s that day that he has to stand before the judge. And he’s filled with remorse for his foolish behavior. And so he decides he’ll throw himself on the mercy of the court. I’m guilty judge. I shouldn’t have drunk. I shouldn’t have gotten engaged in drinking this alcohol and being come drunk and I was foolish and stupid in what I did. And he acknowledged all he done that he had killed a person and he realizes that whatever the law demands, he’ll accept. He just throws himself in the mercy of the judge. In a sense here, this is what David is doing. What can he say? There’s no way to whitewash this. He’s accepting full responsibility. He’s not passing the buck. He admits he’s done evil in the sight of God. And what is more, he fully realizes, he’s sinned against the Lord God, fragently, shamefully violated God’s law. All this humble, David. Now certainly, we could say that he sinned against Bashiba. He sinned. against Eurya. He sinned against his own soul, his own body, his family, his church, if you would, his kingdom, and so forth. But the psalmist’s sense of sin rises to the highest level in all that I’ve done. The key thing is, I’ve sinned against you, Lord. All his wrongdoing, culminate. It’s sinned. centered. It climaxed at the foot of God’s throne. His guilt before God superseded everything else. He doesn’t present any special circumstances or any excuses. I’ve done evil. On your sight. That you may be clear when you judge. He’s willing to submit here to divine justice. Nathan told him the sword shall never depart from your house from your family. And David responds here by saying, Lord, I have nothing to say against your justice, I deserve that, and much more besides. You can be clear in your judgment of me because I’m guilty and I deserve it. Have you been able to accept God’s verdict? upon your wrongdoing when you sin against the Lord? Do you admit in a humble manner that your sin deserves what God deems necessary? And probably much more besides. Do you bow before God’s chastism in this? Are you willing to say if you’ve punished me even less than my sins are deserved? Or do we complain that God’s punished? that he meets out is greater than I can bear. It’s too much. It’s too heavy. Perhaps you don’t see your sin as black as God does. Or you don’t consider your wrongdoings toward others really crimes against God himself. So you must agree that God is right to judge you. Let me mention fourthly tonight at this point. You must be willing to publicly confess your faith or your sin excuse me if necessary. Now I noticed the preface of this song. A Psalm of David when Nathan the Prophet came under him after he had gone in the Bashiba. Notice the first line here. To the chief musician. See that? To the chief musician. What does this tell us? This song was not written for private repentance only. It was written as a public song for the house of God. It was a public repentance before the nation as well as before God. Now, certainly the Psalm would be suitable for private repentance and you can use it that way. But David confesses that his sin and guilt is before the entire kingdom. It’s amazing that he does this, but it’s necessary. part of the evil of David’s wrongdoing was that the enemies of Israel had a chance to blaspheme God. Because of what he did. David, God’s servant, the ruler of Israel, acted as a horrible hypocrite. Remember how he tried to keep his sin secret. try to hide it so that no one would know. That’s what led to your rise death. But people knew what was going on. Can you imagine the rumor mills churning? What everybody in the public was saying about this? The government officials, even in our land, whether you be a president or senator or representative or a judge of some sort, they’re sort of constantly in the public eye people were watching it’s almost impossible to get away with throng doing for too long eventually it catches up with you but here’s David a beloved king you can’t do things very secretly basheba became pregnant and other family members must have known what happened David had summoned her before him as the king. Now that’s something you hide. That’s pretty interesting situation, isn’t it? I wonder why he wants Bathsheba. How did she become pregnant when Uriah never visited the house since he’s been sent away to battle against the Amonites? David tried to get him to be down the house, but he wouldn’t go. He says, how can I go down there when my fellow soldiers are risky? their life. I can’t go down there and join my family in my life. Maybe the neighbors know. What are the people in the palace? When David and Bashiba engaged this adulterous affair, what about the servants that escorted her to the king? Didn’t Joab, the commander of the army, know that Yari had been placed on David’s hit list and was told to put this man in the most heated area of the battle, and then with draw the rest of the soldiers from him? And surely, when you think about it, it must have been something the other soldiers were thinking about. Why are they calling us to pull back so this guy gets killed? Uriah. One of David’s Mighty Man, by the way. He’s on the list. Valiant fighter. No doubt when Nathan confronted David, he didn’t ask the whole room to be cleared when he talked with the king at the court and told him the parable about the U-Lam and the poor neighbor, they all heard it. They all heard it. The enemy is the Lord. These other nations around Israel also heard about it. And gave an occasion to blaspheme so the public, there was public knowledge of this sin. And so David here needs to publicly confess his sin. before the entire congregation. And they sing this song of repentance that David has put out. Obviously, if you have sinful thoughts relating to another person, you don’t need to necessarily go to that person and tell them, I have had sinful thoughts about it. You take that to the Lord privately and confess your thoughts. If David had merely lusted after a from the rooftop and she didn’t know anything about it, he could go to the Lord and say, I shouldn’t have done this and confess his sin. When the offense is contained just between you and it’s another person, you can go to that person himself and confess the sin. And put it away. If David had perhaps just expressed his desire for sexual relations with Bathsheba and she was adamant and no and was one to leave the palace. she refuses his advances he certainly should have repented before her but now things are getting public public sins require public confession davidson is well known his people as well as the enemy nations around him knew about it being responsible and truly repenting means a willing to confess your sins to those who’ve wrong, whether it’s your neighbor, your family, your church, and so forth. You know, part of church discipline is that you go step by step to the point where you reach where you tell the whole church. Now, if you reach that point, obviously the person needs to have a public confession before the church that they’ve wronged and they’ve done evil in the eyes of God. If you have done it, just sin against the person, you go and Christ says, well, you settle it with him alone. But if that doesn’t work and you take somebody else with you, if it gets settled at that point, we’ll then confess it with that small group. But when you get to the whole church, now this requires a public confession of faith of the sin. This is what being responsible means. The Freudian School of Psychology teaches you’re not responsible for your action. Shift the blame to somebody else. God’s forgiveness requires you accept responsibility for your wrongdoing, that you recognize the foulness of your nature, that you agree with God’s justice, that you confess your sin as widely as it is known. These things aren’t easy to do. But if you have a true spirit of repentance, if you’re like David here, You’re willing to do that to make things right before God and others. I pray that we would have that same spirit that David has in this song. May God bless to us His word this evening.