Psalms 51:1-12

Psalm 51. I’m going to read the first 12 verses. 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 throughly from my 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, this evil in thy sight, that thou mayest be justified when thou speakest, and be clear when thou thou judgest. Behold, I was shapen an 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. Courage me with hyssop, and I shall be clean. Wash me, and I shall be clean. 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 all my iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and a right spirit, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from my 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 God blessed to us his sacred and holy word this evening. David was indeed a great saint of God. He’s often quoted in the New Testament. He is said to be a man after God. After God, own heart and he has called the sweet psalmist of Israel but sin knocked him down and knocked him down hard. The preface of this psalm as we’ve indicated in the past refers to the incident of David’s sin of adultery with Bashiba and how this led to all the trouble in his household and in the nation and so forth. and how this sin affected David is laid out for us in this Psalm as well. Sin causes everyone to stumble and fall, and so no Christian can boast of being sinless in this life. There’s not a just man upon earth that doeth good and sineth not. And while we can easily condemn David, we have to realize we’ve walked in his shoes somewhere along the line. ourselves. We see in this song some of the effects coming out. As we read the history of David, we also have more detail. But we see here how it affected him in this song. But we also know that the baby died that was being carried by Bashiba. There was a sword brought into David’s family. The nation was involved. in civil war. It was just a mess because of David’s sin. The secret to success is getting back up. We all fall. The righteous man falls seven times, but he rises up again. That’s what the scripture says. It’s how he rises up again that’s important to us. As we look at this tonight, we’ve talked about one of the negative things, but I’m a lot of the scripture says. It’s how he rises up again that’s important to us. I’m important to us. As we’re, as we look at us as we’ve I want to talk about finding God’s forgiveness tonight. We want to turn the corner here so that in Lord willing in our next study we can look at all the positive things that are going to come out of this forgiveness that he receives from the Lord in the latter part of this Psalm. David finds God’s forgiveness. He is enabled by grace to continue to have fellowship with God. go back to the temple of God, or the house of God, I should say, the tabernacle, and worship again, to have his prayers heard, to know that he’s accepted before the Lord. My friend, this is the most precious thing that we could possibly have. And so it behooves us as we read this. There’s a lot of negative things early on, but let’s look at the positive that comes out of it when David is indeed one who finds forgiveness with the Lord. Let me begin here. If we’re going to find forgiveness with the Lord to say this, you must throw yourself upon the unmerited mercy and the love of God. He says here in verse 1, have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy loving kindness, according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies, let out my transgressions. Now you’ll notice what David does not do here. He does not appeal to all his good works and say, God, you have to forgive me because of all the good things I’ve done for your kingdom. David confesses in verse 4 that he was rightly condemned by God, and God is just in his condemnation of him. He knows. that he deserves the most severe punishment. There’s no excuse for what he done. He doesn’t appeal here and say, well, remember God, all those Psalms I wrote about you. Or God, you know how I was the one that came up with the idea of building the temple. He doesn’t say, God, remember how patient I was with Saul and how I spared his life several times. God recall how I honored you before the nations when I went out to face Goliath and defeated him. God, please remember all those tithes I’ve given you throughout these years. This type of reasoning is not possible. It’s not something that David does. God doesn’t owe us forgiveness. We can’t sort of work a bar. with God, you know, with our good deeds balancing out, you know, the mishaps and the sins that we have in our life. We can’t appeal to the quality of our life or our good deeds or anything like this and say, forgive me on that basis. So many people seem to think that they can merit mercy. That they can sort of build up an account of good deeds and that will take care of anything that happens. along the line in case they need extra help, mercy from the Lord. You have to confess, as David does, God would be fully justified in casting me into hell because I’m a wicked sinner. And the only thing you can do is what David does. He throws himself at the feet of the Lord and says, forgive me on the basis of your mercy. and your loving kindness. I read a story about a Lily Baltrip. Evidently, she was a very good bus driver, according to the Fort Worth Star Telegram in 1988. In fact, this Houston School District in which she drove nominated her for a best driver award. And her colleagues who were going to the ceremony to receive a good driver reward also, decided they were to let her drive since she had the most sterling record to this award ceremony. Unfortunately, on her way to the ceremony, she took her curve too sharply and tilted the bus over and crashed it. And here 18 people ended up in the hospital for minor, you know, injuries according to the bus crash. Did Lily get her reward? when she went to the ceremony? Did they say, well, you know, you had all this good driving build up? So we’re going to give the award anyhow. No, she didn’t get the reward. She, they didn’t give it to her. She had the accident. Her one mishap took away her safe driver award. My friends, we should realize and be very thankful that our forgiveness from God does not, is not based on this idea. of merit somehow or other we have to work with God had said to you okay I’ll forgive you but you have to make sure you don’t sin for the next year you know you think you could do that I think that would be a good idea I got no sphere if you they put me in that category I’d fail the next day so I’m going to be already maybe even that day and I’d be in trouble those who bargain with God really don’t know anything about God’s grace they don’t know anything about God mercy as a true child of God. If you have tasted of God’s grace, you know better than that. You would repudiate such thoughts. You can’t appeal to your good deeds for forgiveness. You must appeal to the tender mercy of God as he tells us here. This is his only hope. It’s our only hope too. Now we have to understand that God sovereignly bestows mercy. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy. He declares in Romans chapter 9 and as a quotation really from the Old Testament of the law. The petition of the public and remember I read that tonight in the temple must be the prayer of every child of God. God be merciful to me. That’s it. That’s it. Not only you need that to be justified in God’s sight when we seek forgiveness of our sins initially, but we need it all the time. You can’t be like the Pharisee and brag about all the things you did and the ties you did and how you did this, that, and the other, and you’re not like all these other wicked people around you and so forth. Did that get him anywhere with God? Did that help him at all? No, it didn’t help him. That’s not going to work. We have to ask for mercy knowing it’s unmerited. Throw yourself at God’s feet. Plead for mercy. That’s what he does. That’s what we must do. It’s free. Isn’t that the wonderful thing about mercy and grace? It’s free. I like that passage in Genesis chapter 8. We’re to read about Noah. He lives in a very wicked world. And yet we read about that passage. him that Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. Didn’t earn it. We find it by going to the Lord and asking for His mercy. You know what else is nice? Noting the multitude of your sins, isn’t it a great comfort that we read here about the multitude of God’s tender mercies. He’s not skimpy with his mercy. He’s abundant with it. Isn’t that a wonderful thing? Think about how many sins you’ve committed. I mean, after a while, you’re like, it’s like a mountain full. He just keeps piling up. But his mercy is such that it is a multitude of it. It is such that it’s a multitude. There’s such that it’s a multitude. There’s no limit to it. I read a story about a woman in 1995. Her name was Katie Fisher. She was 17 years old. She pulled her unruly lamb onto the arena at Madison Jr. Livestock site there, and it was a sale that was going on in Columbus, Ohio. And she hoped that she wouldn’t collapse as she had done the day before when she went to another livestock show because she was battling Burkett’s lymphoma, which was a fast-growing malignancy that she had, and she was a lot of pain. And she endured many hospitalizations and months of chemotherapy and so forth. And she was hoping to raise some money for the sale of her lamb here toward that debt. the auctioneer, Roger Wilson, hoping to spread the news of Katie’s situation, he was thinking that perhaps he could push the price of the lamb up past the average $2 a pound. Well, the lamb sold for $11.50 a pound. The buyer then gave it back. And she got to sell it again. They resold it. They resold it 37 times. Whether a family bought it or business or a corporation bought it, they just kept giving it back to where they had raised $16,000 for her. And finally they said you can keep the lamb. Nobody took the lamb from her. Now, friends, that was a multitude of mercy. The one mercy was the first guy gave it back. That was a multitude of mercy. people give it back over and over and over again to help her and her situations. How do you like the fact that God’s not only merciful, but I like the idea of tender mercy. There’s a tenderness to God’s mercy. You know, God’s sympathetic to our cause. He knows we’ve sin. He knows we deserve severe judgment. But he’s tender. toward his people. I like that about that, of him, that we read this. It’s not that he forgives and then says, I don’t have any more to do with you. You disgust me. Don’t even come into my presence anymore. Don’t even seek my fellowship. An Absalon murdered his brother Amnon. He fled from Israel. And you recall that Joab finally persuaded David to allow his wayward son to return to Israel. David said, well, he can return. but I don’t want to see his face ever. You keep him out of the court. So Absalom was able to return to Israel, but it was a grudging mercy, wasn’t it? Fellowship was not restored. David had this grudge against him. That’s not the way it is with God. You know the way it is with God? Jesus tells us, and that account of the two sons. The prodigal son, look at him as he comes back. Maybe my father would just make me a servant in his household. I’ve sinned against heaven and before you. What does the father do? Does he say, okay, you can be a servant. Go in and scrub the floors. He comes home, and he races out to see him, hugs him, kisses him, kisses him. You know, get some nice clothes. for my son. Put the ring on his finger. Hey, we’re going to have a feast here. My friend, that’s a tender mercy. That portrays how God the Father embraces his people. When we sin against him, we come back. He brings us back. He embraces us warmly. He hugs and kisses, in a sense. You must appeal to the tender mercy of God. It must appeal to God’s covenant love. You see the word here, by loving kindness. This word loving kindness has a connection with the covenant that God makes with his people. It’s connected with a covenant, the pond of friendship that God has with his people. The marriage covenant, if you want to put it that way, that he has with his people. When God chose you in Christ before the foundation of the world, he entered, into a bond of friendship, a covenant with you. God doesn’t break that covenant. His love is never alienated from you. He may chasing you for your sin. But like God, as the scripture says, God loved Jacob before he was born, before he had done good or evil, God loves you, before you have done good or evil, good and evil doesn’t play into it. God has committed himself to you. When you took your marriage vows, you committed love to one another. A special bond to your mate. Don’t you love your mate even when he or she does something wrong? When he or she provokes you to anger, you may not like being slighted or ignored or something of this nature. You may not like the behavior displayed by your spouse. Maybe he leaves his clothes all over the floor all the time. You have to pick them up. maybe she overspends when she goes out and the credit card gives you fits when you begin to write out the bills. Maybe there’s sharp words that have passed between you. Maybe there’s a lack of affection at times. But don’t you forgive your mate? Don’t you still love them? Because of this covenant of marriage. The strong bond that you have between you. Even if it appears that one mate may think about splitting up and divorcing. The other partner can always refer to the marriage vows. You promise to love me till death do us part. In sickness and in health, in richness and in poorness, you committed your love to me. Isn’t that we, you know, that’s what we’re doing in the marriage vial. God places himself in a situation where he’s totally committed to you. His loving kindness His covenant bond is with you. I will never leave thee nor forsake thee, he tells us. In Scripture, Hebrews 13, Hebrews 13, 5. This is something upon which we can always appeal. So you must throw yourself upon the unmerited mercy and love of God. Secondly, you should be full and complete in your praying for forgiveness. Notice in verse 7, you pray for God. cleansing here. Purge me with Hyssp and I shall be clean, wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. God wants the defalment removed. Now the purging with Hissop is something that we read about in Leviticus chapter 14. It has to do with the cleansing of a leper. When you think about it, the sinners were like the leper. We’re alienated. You know, sinners were separated. lepers were separated from the camp of God. Couldn’t go in. There was a sense in which they were separated from God. They couldn’t go into worship. And so that’s what happens to you. When you’re like the leper. And he’s saying, well, like the leper, I need to Hissop. And Hissop is from the mint family. It has hairs on it. They collect like fluids so that when you would dip it in fluid, it would like capture. some of that fluid so that it could be sprinkled on you. And you’d be sprinkled with water and blood, by the way, when you were cleansed as a leper. And so he’d say, sprinkle me and pronounce me clean. Just like the priest would do a leper. And then the person would be just charged from those restrictions and he’d be allowed to come into the camp. Be allowed to worship the Lord God again. David. is asking for the reality of what that legal ceremony symbolized. I want the real thing here. Now he needs a sin offering to purge him. And I’m afraid he doesn’t have one, at least not from the law. There’s nothing there for, as we said, for adultery and for murder. There’s no sacrifice for that. But he’s looking beyond this. He’s looking to God’s sacrifice of the law. lamb of God, Jesus Christ, for his sins. And in Christ, he has the sacrifice he needs. And he will be perched from his sins. And then he will have the privileges of being in fellowship with God again and being able to worship with the people of God. The Bible talks about the sprinkling of the blood of Christ upon us in Hebrews chapter 12 and verse 24. His sacrifices purges our conscience from dead works. Though your sins be as scarlet, God says they shall be as white as snow. I like what we read in Revelation 1.5. He loved us and he washed us from our sins in his own blood. That’s what we have. We’re washed. You can always appeal to Christ’s work for forgiveness and cleansing of your sins. sin. It’s the sacrifice you do have working on your behalf. Because none of the Old Testament sacrifices can actually take away sin. But they all pointed to Christ’s great sacrifice to come. Pray for God’s cleansing. Pray for the comfort of God’s forgiveness. He says here in verse 8, make me to hear joy and gladness that the bones which thou has broken may rejoice. Imagine if you were up on the ladder, maybe cleaning the leaves out of your gutter or something, you fell off the ladder and you’re up three stories or something, and you hit the ground. If I hit the ground, I hit a sidewalk down below, or I only have a short little spot there for grass to hit. I’ll probably hit the sidewalk down on me. Bones get broken. Bones get broken. Well, he’s had a great fall. and he’s saying it hurt. It was damaging to me. It’s like I had broken bones in my body. Think of the pain and agony you’d have to go through if you broke bones like that. Now transfer this to the spiritual realm for a moment because there’s David. He has this great fall. He’s suffering by way of transgression. God has crushed him by a heavy blow against sin is painful to the Christian. And David feels here crushed under the guilt of his sin. The conviction he has felt is like having his bones broken. And what is his only hope? He goes to the great physician. Just reset them. He’ll heal them. My bones are out of place. They’re broken. They need fixed. He asked for pardon. But he also asked, as it says, here in verse 8, that he might hear joy and gladness. He wants a total healing, but he wants that joy and gladness that he once had to be restored to him. Boy, you heard God’s thundering rebuke to him through Nathan, the prophet, thou art the man. No, he wants to hear some comforting words from the Lord. He wants the Lord to show him mercy. He wants to be comforted. Where is the joy and gladness that once had, restored to me. That he’ll know all as well. The same Holy Spirit who smites, who breaks the bones, so to speak, is the same one who restores the joy and gladness to us. Because these are gifts of the Spirit. Isn’t he called the great comfort? Isn’t that how we are comforted in our Christian life by the Spirit of God? And so, in a sense, we want God to give us a hug. embrace us, comfort us. Let us know that we’re forgiven. I don’t know about you, but sometimes, you know, you’ve sin so badly, you wonder, you ask for forgiveness, but you’re thinking, well, I’m still in the dog out. I still feel bad about it. You know, I still feel overwhelmed. I take a little time, you know, until God grant you that comfort, that assurance. You’re still mine. I still love you. You’re still my. child, I’m not going to cast you off and the joy and the comfort’s restored to you. It comes back. It’s not gone forever. Pray for the comfort of God’s forgiveness. Pray for complete pardon from divine judgment, as he tells us here in verse 9. Hide thy face from my sins and blot out all my iniquities. Boy, if God forever holds the adultery and murder against David, there’s no way to give back in fellowship with him. There’s no way to get back to the house of God. There’s no way for his joy and gladness to be restored to him. He says, don’t look at my sins. Hide them. Cover them over. I like what we read from the song that is quoted in Romans 8 where David talks about the Lord not imputing sins to his account. I like that idea. It’s not that we haven’t sined. It’s not credited to our account. It’s not marked up against us. It’s gone. It’s forgiven. What a wonderful thing that God can put away our sin and erase their record, blot out all our iniquities. Destroy the evidence against me. One might, Martin Luther went to sleep and he was troubled about a sin. I don’t know why Luther always has these strange dreams and things. But if you read some of his life, a lot of strange things happen in his life. But as often is the case, your dreams reflect what you’re thinking about when you fall asleep. So he’s thinking about his sins. And in his dream, he said he saw this angel writing at this large chalkboard and his name was at the top of the chalkboard, but as the the angel was writing, he noticed it was all his sins were being written down on the chalkboard by the angel. It’s large chalkboard. He’s looking at it. This isn’t too good. The list gets pretty long and fills up the whole blackboard. Luther is shuddering in despair, feeling that his sins are so many, he’s never going to be forgiven of them all. But suddenly in his dream, he said he saw a pierced hand. And it was writing above the list on the chalkboard. These words, the blood of Jesus Christ, his son, cleanses us from all sins. And he said, blood was coming from the hand wound and was wiping out all the list of his sins on the chalkboard as it wrote that verse of scripture. And then he awoke. I don’t have to interpret that for you, but I think the point is in Christ, we can be forgiven of all our sins and cleansed of them. Pray for complete pardon from divine judgment. Pray for sanctifying grace. Look at verses 10 and 11. 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. I’m reminded of when Saul sinned. He asked that Samuel would somehow preserve his reputation. I’ve sinned. Yet honor me before the people. David doesn’t say anything like that here, does he? What does he want? Change me within. Change my heart. Cleanse it. He knows where the problem lies. It always lies at the heart, doesn’t. That’s the source. The heart is deceitful. and it needs cleansing. It needs a clean heart. Sin is so destructive that you need God to make you over within. David sees also an inconsistency in his spirit. I need a right spirit. It hasn’t been a right spirit that I’ve had for nine months. I need a right spirit with you. He desires God’s favorable presence. Don’t banish me like cane from your face in favor of favor. permit me to enter in your presence answer my prayers David doesn’t want God to withdraw his comforts his gifts his wisdom his counsel his assistance the convictions of the Holy Spirit from him you know the Bible talks about in the new test and we can grieve the Holy Spirit this very spirit that is the spirit of comfort to us the comforter. If we grieve the comforter, are we going to have comfort? Are we going to have the joy and gladness that we need when it comes from the Spirit of God? No. Thankfully, we never lose the Spirit as we talked about previously. But his kiss and graces can be withheld for a time from us, and we need those restored to us. Pray for sanctifying grace. Pray for the restoration of spiritual benefit. as he tells us here in verse 12, restore unto me the joy of thy salvation and uphold me with thy free spirit. You can’t read the songs. You just can’t. Without sensing this overwhelming joy that David has. It comes through. Of course, he’s reflecting really Christ. the man that’s truly after God’s own heart, who truly rejoices in the Lord. But David was a man who at least tasted something at that. And I think you can see it in the Psalms. But sin has eroded that, and now he wants it restore. This joy I have in my salvation, give it back to me. I said, my friends, there is no joy out, real joy outside of a relationship with Christ. It’s just nothing there like that. So David here, conscious of his own weakness and failure, he wants this restored to him. It’s the spirit of God which grants you liberty. It calls it the free spirit. It’s the spirit of liberty that we have. Enabling us to walk in the commandments of God, as we once did before our fall. do you realize the need for the Holy Spirit to sustain you? Before you fall into various sins, you have to think about how evil these things are, how impossible it is for you to avoid sin without the Spirit of God working in you. We need the Holy Spirit, keep us from thought. Keep us on the straight and narrow path. Well, he finds forgiveness. You’re going to fall. It’s inevitable. We’re going to have a lot. fall. It may be a hard fall. But let us see that no matter how great the fall, there is a way to be restored. There is a way for acceptance again with the Lord. We have to get back up. We have to rise again. We are only able to rise again by the power of God working in us. Throw yourself on the unmerited mercy of God. Be full and complete in your prayer for forgiveness and ask him to restore what you’ve lost and he can do it. He did it for David. He can do it for you and for me. Let’s close with a word of prayer.