Psalms 51:13-19

Psalm 51, I want to read the whole Psalm with you tonight, and our focus is going to be on verses 13 to 19 tonight as we complete our study of the Psalm. To the chief musician, the Psalm of David, when Nathan, the prophet, came unto him after he had gone into Bathsheba. 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, 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 mightest be justified when thou speak. and be clear when thou judgest. Behold, I was shaping an iniquity and in sinned, 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 has broken may rejoice. Hide thy face from my sins and blot out all 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. Then will I teach transgressors thy ways and sinners shall be converted unto thee. Deliver me from blood guiltiness, O God. Thou God of my salvation, and my tongue shall sing aloud of thy righteousness. O Lord, open thou my lips, and my mouth shall show forth thy praise. for thou desirest not sacrifice, else would I give it. Thou delightest not in burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise. Do good in thy good pleasure under Zion, build the walls of Jerusalem. Then shalt thou be pleased, with the sacrifices of righteousness, with burnt offering, and whole offering, then shall they offer bullocks upon an altar. God bless to us His sacred and holy word this evening. Many years ago there was a minister who visited what was then called an insane asylum. And the behavior and the mannerisms of the people that were there was quite shocking to him. Walking through the midst of this group of people, it was certainly a bewildering and a depressing place to walk through it. He was overcome with pity for these people. And as he made his way, he was accosted by one of the patients. And the patient’s. said to him, he asked him this question, sir, have you ever thank God for your reason? The pastor was surprised and stunned by the question, especially considering the source of the question. But as he thought about it, he thought, well, you know, I really have never thank God for my reason at all. But he vowed he wouldn’t be unthankful no longer. I wonder. if you ever thank God for having a sound mind. But you have to realize your mental powers really are a gift of God. And you remember the story of Nebuchadnezzar, how God can take away your sanity in a moment, make you like one of the wild beasts of the forest, anytime he wants to. So we ought to be thankful for our reason. And yet the… truth of the matter is there are thousands of things we ought to be thankful for, to which we might well bow our head and offer up a heartfelt thanks to God for it. Now in this Psalm, David has been confessing his transgressions. He has acknowledged that he has committed both adultery and murder. And if you read the preface of the psalm, you see the setting of when this psalm was written. He has poured over the terrible effects of his sin, and remember how he used all the different terms for his sin, each with a little different nuance that we looked at with regard to the wickedness he engaged in. How it ruined him. How it became a breach of felon. How it became a breach of feloness. with the Lord his God. He has accepted total responsibility for the evil he has done. He’s repented. He’s confessed his sin before the Lord God. And he has sought for God’s forgiveness. And he has thrown himself on the unmerited mercy and the love of God. For he knows that he can’t somehow think that he could balance out his right and wrongdoing and somehow his good deeds would balance out the wrongdoing and that God would owe him some type of forgiveness as we looked at last week. He sought restoration to God’s favor. But at this point, and we’ll be focused on him verses 13 and 19, we find that David begins to talk here about the gratitude. He is going to show God because, he has been forgiven of his sin. And I thought we should spend some time looking at that. You can almost feel the weight of his sin lifting as he goes through this section tonight. So I want to speak about showing gratitude for God’s mercy. Now you can show gratitude by testifying of God’s grace. You’ll notice he says here in verse. 13, then when you restore me, give me back my joy and so forth, then will I teach transgressors thy ways and sinners shall be converted unto thee. David here has resolved to teach others about God’s mercy. Being a transgressor himself, he could speak from firsthand experience. because he has tasted of the forgiveness of God, and he expects that sinners will be turned to God through his efforts. Converted. He’s almost telling us that perhaps here, my fall shall be the restoration of other people, that they may come to know the Lord, that they may find forgiveness of their sins. So that good will be. come out of all this. Maybe even the people of God who have sin and fallen and feel like maybe there’s no hope, they will also benefit from my fall. No doubt this very Psalm has been, in connection with the story of David in the background that we have, has been to such an effect. How many people have been benefited by the this Psalm that’s laid out for us for public worship so that we could benefit from what happened to David. Paul himself says something similar in the New Testament in 1st Corinthians 15, 9, and 10. He said, for I am the least of the apostles that am not meet to be called an apostle because I persecuted the Church of God. But by the grace of God, I am what I am. And this grace of God, I am. which was bestowed upon me was not in vain, but I labored more abundantly than they all, yet not I, but the grace of God, which was with me. Think about this. Paul, in working so hard to promote the kingdom of God throughout the Roman Empire, was motivated. And he was motivated because of how he had persecuted the church. of God earlier and it was sort of his way of how can I make this up how can something good come out of this well what’s good going to come out of it is I’m going to work twice as hard as as the other apostles in promoting the gospel of Jesus Christ because I harm the church of God you can’t help as you read the book of Acts to see his heartless cruelty against the people of God how he persecuted them, imprisoned them, caused them the blasphying the Lord, had them thrown into a situation where they would be put to death because of their beliefs. He tirelessly worked to destroy the church that he might be eliminated from the face of the earth. And so now what is he doing? He’s tirelessly working to advance the kingdom of God on the earth. It weighed upon. him as one that had been given the mercy of God that he needed to show how God had spared him and reach out to others. Do the other apostles labor for Jesus Christ? Certainly they do. But he has to labor more than they. He has to make up for what he’s done. The principle taught here is that those who receive grace from God are the best people to teach others about the grace of God. Who best to teach about God’s forgiveness and mercy, but someone who has tasted of the grace of God and has experienced it? Reclaim sinners are the most sympathetic people in dealing with other sinners. When you look at the scripture, you might say, well, why don’t we just have a confession of faith like it? It’s just a compilation of doctrine. Why do we have all these stories about the lives of the individuals like David or Abraham or Jacob or Joseph or something of this nature. Why all the stories? Is it not because people are encouraged when they see others who are sinners who have been given the grace of God and found forgiveness themselves? It’s for our benefit. Paul said this in 1st Timothy 1 15 and 16. This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners of whom I am chief. Most of us know that verse pretty much off by heart. But here’s what he goes on and says. How be it, for this cause I obtain mercy that in me, first, Jesus Christ might show forth all long suffering for a pattern to them which should hereafter believe on him to life ever left? What is he saying? What God did for me is an example of a pattern of what he can do for others. And so he sees this as a motivator that I can teach others because God has taught me. My friends, could anybody match the chief of sinners? He’s involved in the stoning of the godly stucer. Stephen, he’s involved in the attacking of the church. Saul, Saul, why persecuteest thou need? Attack the church, you attack Christ himself. Could they claim to have bloody hands with regard to all those saints who were executed because of Paul’s efforts and testimony? Why, if Paul the chief of sinners, found mercy and grace from God, then who could not find mercy and grace from God? I think this is why Paul, even when he went out on his missionary journeys, and even though he was mistreated often, remember he was even stoned by the Jews instigating at one point, instigating people, and he gets persecuted, he gets thrown into prison because of the Jews. and yet look how sympathetic he is to the Jews. Why is that? I know their mindset. I know what they’re thinking. They’re thinking the same thing I did. When I was in their shoes, I walked a mile in their shoes, I know what they’re thinking. They need God’s grace. And so what does he tell us in Scripture, brother, in my heart’s desire and prayer to God for His risk, that they might be saved? How can he have such compassion? That’s me. That’s what I was. That’s what. what he’s saying years ago I was a partsman for a diesel engine company in the cranberry area. It was a major distributor of the diesel engine parts of from Detroit. And the partsmen for other companies would come and get trained at this company. We were like a major hub for a major hub for parts in the area. And they would come and they’d get trained to how to properly look up and identify the right part and ordered according to proper number and so forth. In one week because business was so slow, they decided that I and one other partsmen should be good and go ahead over to the training center over there. We’d been there. I was there, least a year and he was there probably two years that we would go over and sit under the training maybe we would get some benefit from the training and so there we went over and we sat there and as I listened to the teacher it became obvious to me that the teacher didn’t know what he was talking about surprisingly he didn’t understand how to use an eight-digit engine identification number to look up the parts. Now, I didn’t learn it from the company either. I learned it because I was diligent enough to open up a parts book and start reading in it because I didn’t know anything about diesel engines. I really wasn’t a mechanically inclined. I was more academic in my thinking, analytical. Well, I ended up as a partsman. I don’t know. But here I am. I’m doing parts. And so I thought, man, I’ve got to learn something about this. I don’t know anything to buy this. So I had looked up in the opening part of the parts, man. It’s like eight or ten volumes of manuals on the different engines and so forth. And so I’m looking it up and I started in the beginning and I’m reading and but, oh, the engine parts number here tells you everything you need to know about the engine. And so here this teacher who evidently was a mechanic. He knew all about taking the engine apart. He could take it apart and put it together. He just didn’t know anything about looking up the parts. But the thing is, that’s what he was supposed to be teaching. And so I felt bad for the other people from all these different companies that were there getting trained. And I thought, well, during a break when we were reassembling, afterwards I thought I’d, there was a few people in there. I thought, I would, you know, mark on the chalkboard, the number, you know, eight-digit number, and start explaining to them how you can look this up. I thought this is the most basic information you have to have. Because I knew, you know, how you could find the right parts. And so with this help of the engine number, you could tell how many cylinders, the end of the end of the end of the engine was, what series it was, whether it was turbocharged or not, all in this eight-digit number. Hosts of things. So I thought, okay, you know, I’ll just take a few minutes and teach. So I had this up on the chalkboard, and he comes in, and I just sat down after that. I didn’t really see, he looks at the part number, he raises it off the board. I’m thinking, you didn’t even know what I’m doing up here, you know. Now, I told you that story, because who better to teach partsmen than someone who’s a partsman. Who better to teach sinners that someone who knows about the mercy of God himself or herself. You don’t need to have a doctor’s of divinity or a master of theology to teach people about the mercy of God that’s found in Jesus Christ. If you’ve experienced it, you have enough information to tell them about salvation in Jesus Christ. personal experience in Christ, tasting of His grace makes you an able teacher of others. Near the Kingsport Press in Tennessee, there was a southbound bus which had a scheduled midday stop of 60 minutes. And this was to give the passages a chance to stretch their legs and get something to eat while they were at Kingsport. The driver, as he brought the bus to a said, folks, we’re going to be stopping here for 60 minutes. The line makes it a strict policy that I am not to suggest or recommend any place to eat while you’re here. But if anyone wants to find me while I’m here, I’ll be eating a wonderful T-bone steak and fries over Tony’s first class spotless clean diner directly across the street. Now, what do you think the passengers did? Where do you think they went to eat after he said that? Must be pretty good place with a bus driver eats there. And so personal experience carries weight. Personal testimony carries weight. And the same as true spirit. So you will show, you will show gratitude here by testifying God’s grace. That’s what we ought to do. Secondly, you can show gratitude by praising God. Notice verses 14 and 15. Deliver me from blood guiltiness, O God. Thou God my salvation, and my tongue shall sing aloud of thy righteousness. O Lord, open thou my lips and my mouth shall show forth thy praise. David says, you deliver me from blood guiltiness and I will praise your name. I will sing aloud. I will not just, you know, hum along. I will not just say a few thoughts of songs, you know, sing the song under my breath. But I will sing aloud so others could hear of your praises. Not too long ago, I read an article in a paper about a priest that broke away from the Catholic Church in this area. And he decided he was going to start an independent Catholic congregation. A novel, novel idea. I’m surprised at that. Now, he had 350 people show up at his first service. And sadly, he declared then, he said, God doesn’t want praise, he just simply wants us to one another. He certainly didn’t know his Bible and he certain didn’t capture the spirit of the Psalms, for he should know, as the scriptures tell us, let everything that half breath praise the Lord. Psalm 150 in verse 6. David says, I intend to sing aloud of God’s praise. He’s not inclined to mumble a few words of praise under his breath. He wants others to hear it. Now he says here, He’s going to sing of God’s righteousness. Now, you would think that he would be singing about God’s mercy and forgiveness. It’s kind of odd, perhaps, to hear him say, I’m going to sing about God’s righteousness. But you know what? David knows the way of justification by faith. And he knows what it means to be given the righteousness. of Christ. We read it there in the passage tonight from Romans chapter 4. Blessed is the man to whom you don’t impute sin. Blessed is the man who you justify, who you forgive of their sins. He knew the way of salvation, and guess what? Is it not amazing? And it’s something certainly we’re singing about, that God is just at the same time the justifier of those who believe in Jesus Christ. Isn’t that really the gospel in the nutshell for us? So yes, it’s a great theme for us to sing about. Is it not what fills David with praise is how he could have a perfect righteousness. Think about this. A perfect righteousness. Not have his iniquity imputed to him after all this. He can be forgiven. This is why we can praise God for His holiness and His righteousness because we who know the way of salvation know that there is no condemnation to them which are in Jesus Christ regardless of our sinfulness and wretchedness and our background. Guilt closes your lips with regard to pray. but forgiveness opens them. And we see him praising God here, glorifying the trying in God for the pardon that he has received. Can’t you sing along with David? Psalm 51? Isn’t that a wonderful song to sing? It’s my favorite song. Of all the Psalms, it’s my favorite one. Although I get partial to 73 as well. singing is an important part of worship. We shouldn’t think of it as anything less. Some people look it as a prelude to the preaching service. In some ways it is because it prepares your heart for the preaching of the Word of God. But it is an essential part of worship. And after all, we are singing God’s word when we sing the song. so the song service should prepare our hearts to receive the word. Someone has said I think it’s one of the old Puritans. Praise is the rent we owe God and the larger the farm the greater the rent. So you show gratitude by praising God. You can show gratitude by offering spiritual sacrifices. Now notice here verses 16, 17, and 19. For thou does I not sacrifice else would I give it? Thou of the light is not in burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite heart, O God thou wilt not despise. Verse 19. Thou shalt be pleased with the sacrifices of righteousness. With burnt offering and whole burnt offering, then shall they offer bullocks upon thine altar. David could offer a thousand rams and he would be happy to do so if it would take away a sin. We’ve talked about this repeatedly. He doesn’t have a sacrifice for murder and adultery. The death penalty is what the law of God requires. So he understands that resorting to these kind of sacrifices aren’t going to do them any good. In fact, we might say David has a New Testament concept of sacrifices. Think about this a minute. David realizes that sacrifices in the animal themselves are symbolic. We sang it tonight. When we sang Psalm 50B. Does God need the sacrifices on a thousand hills? He owns all the cattle. Does he need all these sacrifices? No. He doesn’t need them. If he was hungry, he says I would take care of myself. All the offerings in the world cannot take away sin and what does Paul tell us in Hebrews 104? For it’s not possible that the blood of bulls and goats should take away sin. David knows this. And with the eye of faith he can gaze with the light upon the atonement that God himself must provide the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ. David says there are spiritual sacrifices that I can offer. And he says this, two things. A broken and contrite spirit. And secondly, he said the other sacrifice is a life of righteousness. God is more pleased with a heart that’s broken over sin than a bullock that’s slaying with an axe. In other words, God is concerned. about your spirit. Hypocrates offer sacrifices. The Bible talks about it. But why is it that the sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination under the Lord because there’s no remorse over their sin. There’s no mourning their sin. They just go through the ritual. It’s better to be humble. Under a sense of your sin than merely go through the ritual and sacrifice an animal unmoved. and unrepent. It’s better to be smitten and wounded and broken by the word of God to grieve over your guilt and confess your wrongdoing. And certainly it pleases God when we live according to his principles we live righteously. This is why in Romans 12 Paul writes to present your bodies as a living sacrifice holy and acceptable unto God. We don’t have any animal sacrifice, but we can live as a sacrifice. This is what David is speaking of. Obedience is always better than sacrifice. God is pleased by your acts of love and benevolence. Here’s what the scripture says in Hebrews 1316. but to do good and to communicate or to give to those in need forget not with such sacrifices is God well pleased. You see David has the New Testament spirit about him here. Now Isaac Watts can say all he wants about the Psalms do not capture the New Testament Christian and so forth. I’m sorry, read this Psalm, it does. capture the New Testament Christian spirit. He’s offering the kind of sacrifices that God wants. And the New Testament calls upon us to offer. That’s free of charge too. That’s like this morning. I read a story years ago about Munich, Germany, that any beggar children on the streets would be rested. They would be rounded up. And then they would be brought to a place where they would go to a charitable institution and receive education and training and so forth so that they could be useful citizens. Now the moment the child entered the place, before they got washed up, before they got out of their clothes, a painting would be made of them exactly as they were found on the streets. All dirty with the ragged clothes on them. And then after years of getting the education and training that they had, they would be given the painting that was originally painted. And they would be made to swear by oath that they would keep the painting the rest of their life and realize what they owed to this institution for taking care of them and providing for them so that they would always remember and support the institution themselves when they went out and worked. I think that story sort of captures the idea here with the case of the Christian. We need a spirit of humility that we who have been taken out of the deep pit, we who have been changed by the grace of God, we that have been forgiven, had our iniquities erased, that we would see our obligations. We would see our obligation. to be offering up spiritual sacrifices to the Lord the rest of our lives. So you can show gratitude by showing spiritual sacrifices. Fourthly tonight my last point is this. You can show gratitude by seeking the progress of the kingdom of God. Notice verse 18 with me here. do good in thy good pleasure unto Zion, build thou the walls of Jerusalem. Now David is sensitive to the wrong that he has done. He’s done it to Judah and Jerusalem by his sin. How he has disappointed and sad in the hearts of the people of God. how he is given an occasion to the enemy to condemn not only him but the people of God and the Lord himself. It’s almost as if he’s afraid, as a public person that his sin will bring down judgment upon the city and the kingdom itself. And therefore he prays to God to protect and to promote the interest of the people God that he’s endangered and damaged by his sin. He prays here that God will not send a national judgment. That the walls of Jerusalem will not be torn down. He desires God continual blessing to rest upon the nation. He knows how oppressed they were in the past by the Philistines, the Moabites, the Amarites, and the Egyptians and the Egyptians and so forth. They bullied them and mistreated them. God has recently granted such a great deliverance to the nation through the hand of David. Now they’re one of the superpowers in the area. Now they are a major kingdom in the area. Will all this be lost because of David’s foolishness? Will the walls of Jerusalem be torn down by the enemy? Remember how they were torn down later by Babylon for their wickedness? You see David’s concern. here. Now, you and I, as Christians today, belong to the heavenly Jerusalem, do we not? And we must not forget to pray here for the Church of God. And it’s advancement upon this earth. And we know that our kingdom is not one that comes by observation. It has to do with the internal work of God in the hearts and lives of people. We should always consider what harm we could bring to the kingdom of God by our sin against the Lord. We should seek that God would not reduce the effectiveness of his church because of our own sinfulness. Because a lot of times when we sin, people look at us and ridicule the whole church and paint the whole church as if they’re a bunch of hypocrites because of what we’ve done, we keep in mind these areas of gratitude. that we can show to the Lord. Well, the minister who visited the insane asylum was surprised by the question, ask him, by one of the patients there. If he ever thank God for insanity, there’s a thousand things we probably have not thanked God for, or we have not shown the gratitude we should to the Lord for. But see David here? See him finding forgiveness and saying, boy, I’m grateful for this. And I’m grateful for this. this for this and I’m going to do this and I’m going to do that out of my gratefulness to the Lord. May we have that same spirit about us. And may we be like Paul after we have failed the Lord and disgrace maybe his name, how can I make up for it? You know, what can I do? You know, work harder for his kingdom because of it. And may God bless us in this endeavor. as his people tonight. What a wonderful song. And a song that I know has been very helpful to me, even when I came to the knowledge of salvation. This Psalm, reading it over with tears in my own eyes, the words of David, and realizing this is God’s teaching us about forgiveness and the way of salvation in Christ. Let’s close with the word of prayer tonight.