Psalm 51

Bethlehem Bible Church

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November 17, 2019

00:00: Father in heaven, thank you for our time where we can get together and learn about your word, and even tonight, thinking about sin, and how great your son's death must be for adultery to be forgiven, for murder to be forgiven, for deception to be forgiven.
00:19: And we know that it was, and we know David's in heaven now, singing the praises of the Son, the ultimate David. Why?
00:25: Because David was good? Because David had enough faith? No, because David was saved by the blood of the
00:31: Lamb, and you even gave him that faith. So help us to learn tonight about sin, about forgiveness, and as Christians, Father, we need help keeping our accounts with you.
00:43: When we sin, we want to quickly confess. And so teach us tonight, in Jesus' name, amen. Well, before we turn to Psalm 51, or maybe you can just, we're going to have to get there eventually, take your
00:53: Bibles and turn to Psalm 51. Once a month on Sunday nights, we're looking at the Psalms. We try to sing a psalm, and then we try to teach the psalm, and then we sing the psalm again.
01:03: And so we've done Psalm 1, Psalm 2, and then tonight is Psalm 51. And I just want you to see the intro on Psalm 51, and then we're going to go back to 2
01:13: Samuel, and actually I'll read the narrative, what happened when David committed adultery, and then how he killed
01:21: Bathsheba's husband. So many of the psalms will start off something like, to the choir master, or the sons of Korah, or a psalm of Asaph, or a psalm of David.
01:32: Psalm 51, it says, to the choir master, a psalm of David, and then it gets particular, does it not?
01:39: Verse 1, before verse 1, probably verse 1 in the Hebrew, when
01:45: David, a psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet went to him after he had gone into Bathsheba.
01:54: So he writes this song that was actually put to music, and he would sing it along with Israel after this happened.
02:02: So most of you know the story, but I think it's very dramatic and very wonderful for us to see how it's framed, because if we think
02:11: David could get away with it, he could not. And the wonderful part isn't David's sin, of course, it's the mercy of the
02:17: Lord. So let's turn to 2 Samuel chapter 11, David and Bathsheba. The other day I was in my car, and I just got sick of sports radio, and sick of music, and I just listened to about the first 15 chapters of Samuel, just listening to this narrative of what was going on, this theological history.
02:33: And as I was listening to the second Samuel, this chapter really stands out, because it is dramatic, it is amazing, and it is part of the history of Israel and, of course,
02:45: David. David and Bathsheba, 2 Samuel 11. Then this will give us context to the psalm.
02:53: In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle, David sent Joab and his servants with him in all
02:59: Israel, and they ravaged the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah. But David remained at Jerusalem, 2
03:04: Samuel 11, verse 2. It happened late one afternoon when David arose from his couch and was walking on the roof of the king's house, that he saw from the roof a woman bathing, and the woman was very beautiful.
03:16: And David sent and inquired about the woman. And one said, Is this not Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the
03:23: Hittite? So David sent messengers and took her. And she came to him, and he lay with her.
03:30: Now she had been purifying herself from her uncleanness. Then she returned to her house, and the woman conceived, and she sent and told
03:40: David, I am pregnant. So David sent word to Joab, Send me Uriah the Hittite.
03:46: And Joab sent Uriah to David. When Uriah came to him, David asked how Joab was doing and how the people were doing and how the war was going.
03:54: Then David said to Uriah, Go down to your house and wash your feet. Uriah went out to the king's house, or out of the king's house, and there followed him a present from the king.
04:05: But Uriah slept at the door of the king's house with all the servants of his lord and did not go down to his house.
04:11: When they told David Uriah did not go down to his house, David said to Uriah, Have you not come home from a journey?
04:19: Why did you not go down to your house? Uriah said to David, The ark and Israel and Judah dwell in booths, and my lord
04:26: Joab and the servants of my lord are encamping in the open field. Shall I then go to my house to eat and drink and to lie with my wife?
04:33: As you live and your soul lives, I will not do this thing. Then David said to Uriah, Remain here today also, and tomorrow
04:42: I will send you back. So Uriah remained in Jerusalem that day and the next. David invited him, and he ate in his presence and drank, so that he made him drunk.
04:51: And in the evening he went out to lie on his couch with the servants of his lord, but he did not go down to his house.
04:57: Verse 14, In the morning David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it by the hand of Uriah. In the letter he wrote,
05:04: Set Uriah in the forefront of the hardest fighting, and then draw back from him that he may be struck down and die.
05:12: And as Joab was besieging the city, he assigned Uriah to the place where he knew that there were valiant men.
05:19: And the men of the city came out and fought with Joab, and some of the servants of David among the people fell.
05:25: Uriah the Hittite also died. Then Joab sent and told David all the news about the fighting, and he instructed the messenger,
05:32: When you have finished telling all the news about the fighting to the king, then if the king's anger arises, and if he says to you,
05:38: Why did you go so near the city to fight? Did you not know that they would shoot from the wall? Who killed
05:44: Abimelech the son of Jerubasheth? Did not a woman cast an upper millstone on him from the wall, so that he died at Thesbos?
05:53: Why did you go so near to the wall? Then you will say, Your servant Uriah the Hittite is dead also.
05:59: So the servant went and came and told David all that Joab had sent him to tell. The messenger said to David, The men gained an advantage over us and came out against us in the field, but we drove them back to the entrance of the gate.
06:11: Then the archers shot at your servants from the wall. Some of the king's servants are dead, and your servant
06:16: Uriah the Hittite is dead also. David said to the messenger, Thus shall you say to Joab, Do not let this matter displease you, for the sword devours now one and now another.
06:27: Strengthen your attack against the city and overthrow it, and encourage him. When the wife of Uriah heard that Uriah her husband was dead, she lamented over her husband.
06:38: And when the morning was over, David sent and brought her to his house, and she became his wife and bore him a son.
06:44: But the thing that David had done displeased the Lord. 2
06:50: Samuel 12 verse 1 And the Lord sent Nathan to David. He came to him and said to him,
06:56: There were two men in a certain city, one rich and the other poor. The rich man had very many flocks and herds, but the poor man had nothing but one little ewe lamb, which he had bought.
07:08: And he brought it up, and it grew up with him and with his children. It used to eat of his morsel and drink from his cup and lie in his arms.
07:19: It was like a daughter to him. Now there came a traveler to the rich man, and he was unwilling to take one of his own flock or herd to prepare for the guest who had come to him.
07:28: But he took the poor man's lamb and prepared it for the man who had come to him. And David's anger was greatly kindled against the man, and he said to Nathan, As the
07:38: Lord lives, the man who has done this deserves to die, and he shall restore the lamb fourfold because he did this thing and because he had no pity.
07:48: And with the memorable words, Nathan said to David, You are the man. Thus says the
07:53: Lord, the God of Israel, I anointed you king over Israel. I delivered you out of the hand of Saul.
07:58: I gave you your master's house and your master's wives into your arms and gave you the house of Israel and of Judah.
08:05: And if this were too little, I would add to you as much more. Why have you despised the word of the
08:10: Lord to do what is evil in His sight? You have struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and have taken his wife to be your wife and have killed him with the sword of the
08:19: Ammonites. Now therefore, the sword shall never depart from your house because you have despised me and have taken the wife of Uriah the
08:26: Hittite to be your wife. Thus says the Lord, Behold, I will raise up evil against you out of your own house.
08:33: I will take your wives before your eyes and give them to your neighbor, and he shall lie with your wives in the sight of this son.
08:40: For you did it in secret, or you did it secretly. But I will do this thing before all
08:45: Israel and before the Son. David said to Nathan, I have sinned against the Lord.
08:52: And Nathan said to David, The Lord also has put away your sin. You shall not die.
08:59: Nevertheless, because by this deed you have utterly scorned the Lord, the child who was born to you shall die.
09:05: Then Nathan went to his house. And the Lord afflicted the child that Uriah's wife bore to David.
09:11: And he became sick. Could those sins ever be forgiven? You see the play between Uriah the
09:19: Hittite and David, who was the one who was honorable? Let's turn our
09:24: Bibles back to Psalm 51 and talk tonight about forgiveness and how important it is to be forgiven.
09:32: And if you're not a Christian, I hope you cry out tonight, Lord, please forgive me for my sins.
09:38: And if you are a Christian, how can we keep short accounts with the Lord and make sure we ask for forgiveness?
09:45: The world is full of all kinds of improper forgiveness. And I'm sorry if you felt that way.
09:50: I'm sorry if you were hurt. What is real forgiveness and how do we ask the
09:56: Lord for forgiveness? I think what we're going to have to start with is we're going to have to say initially that we as Christians even sin.
10:05: And therefore, I know it's politically incorrect to say the S -word, sin. But in fact, we have to realize that we as Christians sin.
10:13: So what do we do? There were people years ago that would say Christians never have to ask for forgiveness from the
10:20: Father because all their sins are taken care of by the Lord Jesus at Calvary. Is that the right doctrine?
10:26: I know I don't prove things this way, but if you think that's right, just try it and see how that works.
10:32: It doesn't work. We are judicially forgiven. All our sins are taken care of because Jesus paid them all, right?
10:39: Even that song, Jesus paid it all. And so Jesus gets our sin. He pays for them.
10:45: No more double jeopardy. We don't have to pay for them. We get all Jesus' righteousness. God sees us as righteous.
10:51: He sees us as law -keeping. Remember, when you think of the word righteous, doing right, what the law requires, you do the right thing.
10:58: And so judicially, we're forgiven. There's no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus, right?
11:04: But parentally, when we sin, we ask our Father to forgive us.
11:09: So when your child sins, you don't kick them out of the family. At least I know most of you.
11:15: I don't think you've done that. But the Father doesn't kick us out of the family. But when we sin against the
11:20: Father, even though positionally, judicially, from the court of law, from the bar of God's justice, we're forgiven, we still want to make sure we keep our accounts with the
11:30: Lord proper and right and as a son would say to a father or a daughter would say to a mother that sinned,
11:38: Mama, please forgive me. Daddy, please forgive me. And then that father or mother certainly says,
11:44: I do. So what we're going to do is we're going to look at Psalm 51 tonight and talk about forgiveness for the
11:50: Christian in the parental sense. When you sin against God as a Christian, this is a great template for you to pray, to ask
11:59: God to forgive you. John Hannah, the seminary professor in Dallas said, the closer one comes to Christ, in one sense, the more miserable he becomes.
12:11: What does he mean by that? I've had people come to me and they said, Pastor, I'm not sure if I'm a Christian. And what do they mean?
12:18: They tell me, you know what, since I've become a Christian, I think I sin more than I used to. And I thought
12:25: Christians aren't sinless. I thought they're supposed to just sin less and less. I thought Christians are supposed to decrease in their sins because they're new creatures in Christ Jesus.
12:34: And they're just supposed to sin less as they progress from one level of glory to the next on the way, practically, to get to glory.
12:42: How do you think I respond to that? Now, sometimes if somebody's in a bad sin, I might say, you know what, you ought to examine yourself.
12:48: That's certainly true. But lots of times, the closer you are to the Lord and the more you mature in Christ, the more you see your sins that you didn't think were sins before.
12:58: Does that make sense? You're recognizing sins that you've always done, but you see them highlighted.
13:05: As I said this morning, this is the psalm that Lady Jane Grey recited as she was on the scaffold in the days of Henry VIII and Queen Mary.
13:13: This is the psalm that Henry V wanted to be read to him on his deathbed. This is the psalm where William Carey, the missionary to India, said, you know what, when
13:24: I die, I preach Psalm 51 at my funeral. Isn't that amazing? The background,
13:31: Psalm 51, verse 1, from the choir director, a psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet came to him after he had gone in to Bathsheba.
13:41: This is what we call a certain kind of psalm. Can you give me different psalm types or kinds?
13:47: You can just blurt them out. Sunny mornings, no blurting out unless you're four years old or younger. Sunny nights, it's okay.
13:53: What are some different psalm types? Categories of psalms. Imprecatory psalms.
13:58: Of course, only a man would say imprecatory to start. We're just kidding. Well, after this morning's sermon, imprecatory psalms are on people's minds.
14:07: Okay, good. Judge other people. That would be an imprecatory psalm, right? God, you've been offended.
14:13: Judge them. Okay, messianic. And so we've looked at Psalm 1, Psalm 2, Psalm 22,
14:19: Psalm 110. You can even see the messianic elements of Psalm 23 and others. Other kinds of psalms, do we know?
14:27: Praise the Psalms. Praise the Psalms, good. And when we praise, what do we really mean when we say praise the Lord? If you had to describe praise, give me a definition of praise.
14:36: We say it all the time. Can anybody define it? Yes, Brian? All glory to God. Okay, all glory to God. And with an element of what?
14:46: Thanksgiving. I didn't know how to lead the question any other way. You're giving glory to God for who
14:52: He is, what He's done, and you thank Him for it. That would be a good way to praise God. Any other kind of psalm types?
14:59: Lament psalms, right? We rarely sing those, right? When you go to church, everybody only wants to sing happy, peppy, upbeat psalms.
15:07: When sometimes you get a diagnosis and you're not so peppy, you're not so happy in terms of circumstances, you still might have joy.
15:16: This particular psalm... Yes, another one. Yes, there. That's right.
15:22: This is called a penitential psalm. This psalm has to do with understanding sin and how serious sin is.
15:32: We don't have prisons anymore. We have what? Penitentiaries.
15:37: Because we hope those people there are very sorry for what they've done. I found some penitential psalms.
15:44: Psalm 6, 32, 38, 102, 130, and 143.
15:50: If you don't have this book by Robert Godfrey, Learning to Love the Psalms, this is an excellent book.
15:55: It doesn't give you every psalm with details, but it has many of the psalms, including Psalm 51, in which
16:02: Godfrey writes, Psalm 51 is closely related to the other psalms in its immediate context in the
16:08: Psalter. After the confident assertion of Psalm 48 about Jerusalem, which
16:13: God will establish forever, the following psalms seem to offer warnings to Jerusalem not to be presumptuous about her status.
16:22: Psalm 49 warns the rich against presuming that their riches will give them life.
16:29: Psalm 50 warns God's people against the dangers of formalism in their worship. Psalm 51 reflects the terrible character of personal sin.
16:39: And Psalms 52 to 54 continue to warn of the judgment that comes on sin.
16:46: So tonight we're going to look at Psalm 51, this penitential psalm.
16:52: Of course, I could describe this psalm in New Testament terms that I quoted this morning.
16:57: If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
17:03: If we say we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and His word is not in us. My little children,
17:09: I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the
17:14: Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins and not for ours only, but also the sins of the whole world.
17:24: How to ask God for forgiveness? Let me give you a few ways to do it. Number one, call out to the gracious, merciful
17:31: Lord for forgiveness. Just ask Him. We see that in verses 1 and 2. If you're desperate to be forgiven by God, remind yourself that He is gracious and merciful.
17:42: He will forgive you. Be gracious to me, O God, according to Thy loving kindness.
17:49: Or as the ESV says, have mercy on me, O God, according to Your steadfast love.
17:56: According to the greatness of Thy compassion, blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin.
18:06: If you sin as a Christian, simply ask the Lord to forgive you. And notice what
18:12: He doesn't do. He doesn't say, you know what, I didn't feel good when I sinned, I had a headache when
18:18: I sinned, it's the society that made me do it, I was really hungry, and you know how
18:24: I get when I get hypoglycemic. I mean, we have a thousand excuses, do we not? Anybody that's smiling understands that.
18:30: He just calls sin, sin. Notice the different words for sin there. Transgressions, that means
18:36: I'm going to step over the line. I don't care what you say, I step over it anyway. Iniquity, iniquity means something that's crooked or perverse.
18:46: Sin means missing the mark. He just simply says, I've sinned and these are the ways
18:51: I've sinned, and I know I can find forgiveness in you. He's not running to the bottle,
18:57: He's not running to hedonism, He's not going to try to ignore it or sedate Himself with any kind of music or anything else.
19:04: He's like, I'm just going to go straight to the Lord. And actually, it's an imperative there, be gracious to me.
19:09: God, please show me favor. Bestow grace to me. God, I don't deserve it.
19:19: God, I haven't earned it. I haven't merited it. That's why it's called grace, because it's unearned. I've earned your displeasure,
19:25: I've earned your punishment in terms of discipline. So I'm just asking you, since you're a gracious God, would you be gracious to me?
19:33: Because I know you're faithful, I know you're good. And this grace is according to the greatness of thy compassion.
19:44: It's not according to the smallness of His love, it's the greatness of His compassion.
19:50: And that word compassion there comes from the Hebrew word for womb. Something close.
19:56: Something near. This is language of abounding in mercy that Moses writes about in Exodus 34, the
20:06: Lord God compassionate and gracious. God delights in mercy, does
20:13: He not? Micah 7, verse 18. God, please. And He names three sins, and so He has kind of a trifold saving element for the trifold sin.
20:25: Blot out my transgressions. Can you wipe them away? Can you erase them? Can you wash me?
20:37: Just wash me thoroughly. By the way, I love this word wash. It means to scrub. And I know this is not the way it is, but just to give you the illustration.
20:47: I know sometimes if I got in late from playing around the neighborhood with my buddies, and my mom was going to wash me a little bit, you know, some kind of spit bath or something.
20:56: I don't know how old I was, five or six. She was bugging up at me that she would rub pretty hard when she was washing me.
21:02: You ever clean a kid? They're kind of disobeying. You rub them a little harder than maybe you normally would, just going...
21:09: See, all the parents here are smiling. This isn't that, but this is a washing.
21:14: Every little tiny detail. It's like, you know, you see your hands and they look clean, but you look with a microscope and there's all these lines of like dirt.
21:22: Just get it all out. Scrub me. Wash me. I just want to be forgiven. Literally, the Hebrew is multiply to wash me.
21:30: Make it thorough. Make it increasing. Now remember what David has done. He's committed adultery.
21:36: He's committed murder. He's sinned against the army. He's sinned against the nation of Israel. He's sinned against the Lord. Could anybody be forgiven for such sins?
21:49: I'm so thankful that it says in Ephesians 2, but God being rich in mercy. He's taken care of our sins when we were saved.
21:57: He's made us alive together with Him, forgiven us all our trespasses, so now we sin as children.
22:05: We still go to Him and say, please forgive us. John Owen said,
22:10: I do not understand how a man can be a true believer in whom sin is not the greatest burden, sorrow, or trouble.
22:18: Lord, I sinned against You. Please forgive me. Well, not only that, you call out to the gracious Lord.
22:26: Number two, you just own it. You acknowledge it. Verses 3, 4, and 5. This is what the society today doesn't do.
22:33: They blame everybody. They pass the buck. He just owns it. He confesses. He agrees.
22:38: That's what confession is. Do you see verse 3? I know my transgressions and my sin is ever before me.
22:44: It haunted Him. He's owning it. Against thee...
22:52: Oh, sorry. Yes, verse 4. Against you, you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment.
23:01: Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity and in sin my mother did conceive me. The first thing you do, dear
23:08: Christian, when you sin against the Lord is you ask Him for forgiveness. And you own it. You say, I confess.
23:14: You said it's sin. I say it's sin. You said adultery is sin. I say it's sin.
23:20: You say murder is sin. I say it's sin. I agree with you. And you know it doesn't take very long to have the blame game slip in.
23:30: The woman you gave me. Does that sound familiar? The serpent made me do it.
23:36: You know what, God? Being a king is really stressful. He didn't say that.
23:44: She shouldn't have been up there on the roof taking a bath without her clothes on, looking all appealing. All these ways essentially blame
23:55: God. God, you made me with the capacity to sin. That is such a lie.
24:01: That's not true. People blame their heredity for things. I don't know if I can even say this anymore in this politically correct climate.
24:08: When I taught this psalm 20 years ago, I said sometimes people blame their Italian temper for their anger. Am I allowed to say that anymore?
24:16: Well, this is not gonna be on the internet, so we're fine. Is actually somebody taping it tonight? Is it being recorded? Oh, it is, okay.
24:24: You never know. Sometimes when I preach a sermon, I have to say, don't play that. Don't put it on there. Jonathan Newton has done a good job with the other folks at the church pulling together.
24:34: Megan's helped immensely as well. All the sermons from the last 22 years and farther are online and I just have to click on them saying, do
24:43: I publish it or don't I? The problem is I'm paralyzed because most of them
24:50: I don't want published. Back to the point here.
24:58: David just confesses, he agrees. He doesn't say, you know what, what two consenting adults do in the privacy of their own home doesn't matter.
25:05: Sin is quaint and outdated and antique. It's kind of puritanical. We love each other.
25:15: I didn't really mean to do it. No syndrome. No disease.
25:20: James 1 says, but each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust.
25:26: Confession is simple. It means I agree with God. I say the same thing as God. Hamo legeo.
25:37: Same word as God. God, you know what? Your rules are too hard to obey.
25:43: You don't understand. No, no. Proverbs 28, 13, he who conceals his transgressions will not prosper.
25:51: But he who confesses and forsakes them will find compassion. The world is going to say, don't confess, don't admit.
25:59: And the Lord says, just acknowledge it. I know what you've done and there's compassion for you. He's not having this dragged out of him in some kind of mechanical admission.
26:09: It's not kind of a formality. He's not sweeping it under the rug. He's just saying, you know what? Exactly what you said,
26:15: I did. I am. And do you notice verse 4?
26:21: He doesn't say, I'm ultimately sorry I sinned against Uriah. I'm ultimately sorry I sinned against Bathsheba.
26:27: Those were both sins, by the way. But the ultimate sin isn't against someone else. Anytime you sin, the ultimate sin isn't against them.
26:35: Although it is sin if you sin against someone. But the ultimate person you're sinning against is the Lord. And he recognized that in verse 4.
26:42: You probably memorized it. Against you and you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight.
26:48: Compared to the offense of men and women, he sees the offense against God and God alone. Plummer said we never see sin aright until we see it against God.
26:57: All sin is against God in this sense. That is His law that is broken. His authority that is despised.
27:03: And His government that is set at naught. So if you ever sin, yes, go to the other person and say, please forgive me.
27:10: But you need to go straight to the Lord. Remember Joseph to Potiphar?
27:26: Alright, that ain't going up online either. I want to give you an excuse why
27:33: I said that, but I'm not going to. Remember Joseph said to Potiphar, his wife, regarding that, there's no greater in this house than I and He has withheld nothing from me except you because you are
27:46: His wife. How could I then do this great evil and sin against God? It would be a sin against you.
27:53: It would be a sin against Potiphar. But it's going to be a sin against God. And then what does confession do?
28:00: I'm willing to accept the chastening. Do you see in v. 4? When you confess your sins, you're like,
28:05: I agree, Lord. And I'll accept what You want to do. I'll accept Your discipline. So You may be justified in Your words and blameless in Your judgment.
28:16: Whatever kind of discipline you think I need, I'm willing to take. Because He understood the depth of His real sin.
28:24: And that's v. 5. I was brought forth in iniquity. It didn't just come over me. It just didn't kind of slip up.
28:30: This is talking about original sin. This is not talking about David's mother was a sexual sinner.
28:36: This is original sin. This is federal headship sin. This is sin that we get because we're humans and Adam was our father.
28:44: I was brought forth in iniquity and in sin my mother conceived me. So when you sin against the
28:51: Lord, you go to Him as gracious, you confess, and then now v. 3, you rely on God for restoration.
28:58: I don't know how He could ever forgive me. Well, He does forgive. Look at v. 6. This is wonderful. God does forgive.
29:04: Behold, you delight in truth and inward being and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart.
29:10: Purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean. Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow.
29:16: Let me hear joy and gladness. Let the bones that you have broken rejoice. Hide your face from my sins.
29:24: Blot out all my iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.
29:29: Cast me not away from Your presence and take not Your Holy Spirit from me. So David just says,
29:35: I am going to just ask You to restore me. Remember Augustine's stages of sin?
29:41: Lord, make me good, but not yet. Lord, make me good, but not entirely. And now
29:47: David's come to the third point. Lord, make me good. Restore unto me. And he uses this
29:52: Old Testament language. He starts with this purging of hyssop. Can you think of any other kind of hyssop used in the
29:59: Old Testament when it was dealing with sin? Passover, they would take the hyssop and paint the door with the blood.
30:07: That leafy plant hyssop. By the way, if you're ever in Israel and you should go with us, February 2021, and you can get some ground up hyssop and dip some bread in it if you'd like.
30:20: I'll buy you the hyssop. I won't pay for your flights, but I'll buy you the hyssop. I think it's three shekels. Here's what he's saying.
30:31: Lord, using Old Testament language, would You desin me? Unsin me,
30:38: God. Please. May the blood of the covenant wash me clean.
30:44: And that's what he says in verse 7. Wash me. This reminds me of, though your sins are scarlet, they'll be white as snow.
30:51: Though they're red like crimson, they'll be like wool. Wash me and I'll be whiter than snow. Wouldn't you love to sing that song?
30:58: Whiter than snow. Yes, whiter than snow. Let me hear joy and gladness.
31:05: There's nothing like when you ask for forgiveness to another person and they say from their heart, you are forgiven,
31:11: I restore you. And how do you feel? What do you hear? What do you hear essentially? Joy and gladness.
31:17: He uses language of mending. I don't know if you sew here at all. Anybody sews or knits?
31:24: But that's the language that we have here. Let the bones which you have broken rejoice. Make me hear joy and gladness.
31:31: My bones are broken, and just kind of knit them back together. And so this is a poem. This is just one line after another with this kind of parallelism, these synonyms to just say,
31:42: I've got all these sins, I'm going to just use all these requests for restoration. Verse 9, Hide your face from my sins.
31:50: Blot out all your iniquities. Or my iniquities rather, excuse me. Create in me a clean heart.
31:58: Maybe this is my favorite part here. There's lots of words for create. This is used only of God, and it's used of Him creating something out of nothing in Genesis 1.
32:10: God created the heavens and earth out of nothing. Ex nihilo. God, there's nothing good in me, so would you create with a creation kind of mandate, power, make me whole.
32:22: Create in me a clean heart. I can't do it on my own. I can't wash my own heart. I can't cleanse me on the inside.
32:31: I need to be fixed on the inside. Only you could do that. You're the soul surgeon. You're the physician. And Father, don't cast me away from Your presence.
32:39: Don't take Your Holy Spirit from me. Now, you don't know how many Christians have thought, you know what, if I sin, God takes
32:44: His Holy Spirit from me. Is that what David's saying here? That's right.
32:50: No. That is perfect. Let's see.
32:57: Here's a little mint or something for you. He's not saying that.
33:03: You can't lose the Holy Spirit in terms of the indwelling Spirit. But remember what happened in the
33:08: Old Testament. The Spirit would not just indwell people, but He would come upon them for a work.
33:13: He'd come upon Saul for some kind of extraordinary work. He'd come upon Samson for a work.
33:19: And if they did something wrong, they might lose the Holy Spirit from them for this special work.
33:26: And David says, I know I'm anointed. I know You've used me. And I don't want Your Holy Spirit to leave me.
33:32: I still want to be used by You. This is not that you could lose your salvation. If David could have lost his salvation, he would have lost it doing something else.
33:42: Here's what he's saying. And here's what you could say. Lord, I still like to serve You. I don't want to be like Saul where the
33:49: Spirit of the Lord departed, 1 Samuel 16. I want to be used in Your kingdom. Give me joy like when
33:57: I first got saved. Verse 12, Restore unto me the joy of Thy salvation. Lord, if I could just have those sins forgiven and know that You've forgiven me,
34:06: I would feel like I did when I first got saved. Remember those feelings? Restore unto me that great joy.
34:14: That's what I'm looking for. And then he begins to worship. You call out for the gracious, merciful
34:21: Lord to forgive you. You confess sin as sin. You ask God to restore you and He does and then you respond with worship.
34:29: Here's what he's going to do now that he's forgiven. You can just see, Okay, I've been forgiven. Now I'm going to go talk to other people.
34:36: I'll teach transgressors Your way and sinners will return to You. That's what I'm going to do. I'm going to go serve now.
34:43: I'm actually going to go sing now. Verse 14, Deliver me from blood guiltiness, O God, God of my salvation.
34:49: Then my tongue will joyfully sing of Your righteousness. That's what I'm going to do.
34:54: I'm going to tell others I'm going to serve. I'm going to sing. No longer tongue -tied with sin.
35:00: I'm forgiven. I can't wait to tell people I'm forgiven. Open my lips, verse 15, that my mouth may declare
35:06: Your praise, that You can forgive. Any God that can forgive murder, adultery, should be sung about.
35:13: And then he says, From my heart, verse 16, You don't delight in sacrifice or I'd give it.
35:20: How many bulls and goats do you think David could give the Lord? A thousand? Ten thousand? I know that's not what you're really after,
35:27: Lord. You're not really pleased with burnt offering. You want my heart. That's what you're after. What you're after, verse 17, is sacrifice of God or a broken spirit.
35:39: You're after a broken and contrite heart, O God. That's what you're not going to despise. That's what I want. I want to learn from this.
35:52: I'd like the community to worship, verse 18. By Thy favor, do good to Zion.
35:57: Build the walls of Jerusalem. This is just figurative language. One man said,
36:03: A prayer that God would favor and bless His people as if the city was to be protected by walls. Lord, I want everybody to be blessed.
36:10: I want everybody to rejoice. I've sinned against the nation. Now I want the nation to be praising
36:15: You. Verse 19, Then Thou wilt delight in sacrifices, righteous sacrifices, in burnt offering and whole burnt offerings.
36:22: Then young bulls will be offered on Thine altar. That's what I'm after. Well, when
36:29: I read this psalm, I think to myself, when I do sin, this is the psalm I like to read, and it reminds me that God will forgive.
36:36: I simply confess. Any practical takeaways? Number one, there's hope for sinners.
36:45: What does the text say? The vilest offender who truly believes? This is a God who not only forgives
36:51: His children, but He forgives sinners. This psalm reminds me that my prayers should be more than just,
37:01: God, I know I've sinned against You today. Please forgive me in Jesus' name. Amen. Now, is that a wrong prayer to pray?
37:07: Could you pray that prayer? You could. But David's into it, if I could use that language.
37:13: He's working through all these details, and it's his heart that's contemplating who he is, who he's sinned against, and then he's crafting this.
37:22: And so I think what we can do, just taking that as a template, I think my prayers of confession need to be more than just,
37:30: God, please forgive me. Because that wasn't the way David prayed. His confession cost something.
37:38: It cost him a contrite heart. His eloquence didn't earn him forgiveness, but he thought about it.
37:47: What else does this psalm make me think of? That you're not forgiven by indulgences, or penance, or trying harder.
37:55: It's by grace and grace alone. This psalm makes me think, you know what? Jerry Bridges is right. Preach the gospel to yourself every day.
38:04: It means, Jerry said, that you continually face up to your own sinfulness and then flee to Jesus through faith in His shed blood and righteous life.
38:11: It means that you appropriate again by faith the fact that Jesus fully satisfied the law of God, that He is your propitiation, and that God's holy wrath is no longer directed toward you.
38:22: You can be sure of one thing though. When you will set yourself to seriously pursue holiness, you will begin to realize what an awful sinner you are.
38:31: And if you're not firmly rooted in the gospel and have not learned to preach it to yourself every day, you'll soon become discouraged and will slack off in pursuit of holiness.
38:40: Jerry Bridges, discipline of grace. What else could we learn from this psalm?
38:46: If someone sinned against you, should you forgive? One man said, the unforgiving spirit is the number one killer of spiritual life.
38:56: We sin against God, He forgives us. Our spouse sins against us, we forgive them.
39:03: Leon Moore said, we can always think of some good reason why we need not forgive, but that is always an error.
39:14: Another man said, everybody thinks forgiveness is a lovely idea until he has something to forgive. John Chrysostom, the great preacher, centuries ago said, nothing causes us so nearly to resemble
39:26: God as the forgiveness of injuries. I think we probably have to be careful when we do this.
39:33: You know how when you learn something in the Bible, then often the Lord makes you learn that? What could someone come to you and say they've sinned against you and you would say, there's no way
39:44: I'm going to forgive you. Could you think of anything? Could anything be said to you, something done to you, that you would go,
39:52: I cannot forgive. I will not forgive. My problem is when
39:59: I think about these things, then somebody does something bad to me and I have to forgive them. When God forgives,
40:07: He goes on record, I will not remember your sins. I don't bring it up anymore. Can you imagine,
40:13: David didn't have to pay for those sins? Remember, Nathan said, God has put your sin away. I wonder if David thought to himself,
40:19: I wonder where he put it. And I know where he put it. He put it on the Lord Jesus at Calvary.
40:29: What do Christians do when they sin? They just ask the Lord to forgive. And they agree.
40:35: They want to get back into ministry and serve, serving the body. Well, that's it for tonight.
40:41: Let's go ahead and pray. Father, I thank you for your word. I thank you for Psalm 51. I'm thankful that you forgive.
40:48: And for many of us, we recognize that we may have never committed adultery and we may never have murdered, but your
40:59: Son, the Lord Jesus, has said very clearly that if you lust in your heart for someone, it's adultery.
41:05: And if you are angry with someone, it's murder. So we would confess, we're no better than David.
41:11: We're probably worse. And yet, he was a man after your own heart. Not because of the sin, but how he responded after he sinned.
41:20: How he longed for your kingdom, longed for your glory. That's what we want. And we're thankful that we have the ultimate
41:27: David. This David here was shown not to be the one. We thought he could have been the one early on, but he was not.
41:35: There needed to be a greater David. A David who never had to pray the prayer that he taught his disciples.
41:42: Forgive us our debts as we forgive others. Because our Lord Jesus never did sin, so he never had to pray that prayer of forgiveness or confess sins.