WWUTT 1034 Create in Me a Clean Heart?

Repentance, Brokenness, and the Joy of Salvation

Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from your presence. Take not your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation. When we understand the text.

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Here once again is Pastor Gabe Hughes.

Thank you, Becky. We come back to our study of the Psalms, and we're looking at a big one today. Psalm 51. This is one of my favorite psalms, but not because it brings me a lot of joy. I mean, there is joy wrapped up in this psalm, but it's one of my favorite psalms because it actually brings back memories of a lot of pain and knowing what God has delivered me out of, convicting me of my sin, bringing me to a place of brokenness and repentance before God.

This is a pretty rough psalm. If you were to ask somebody, what are your favorite psalms, very seldom are you going to hear somebody say Psalm 51. What are you going to hear? Psalm 23, of course. That's my favorite psalm.

Psalm 23. Psalm 1. Psalm 8. I've already mentioned Psalm 8 was one of my favorite psalms. Psalm 42, as a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, oh God. Portions of Psalm 119, which is the longest psalm.

David’s Sin, Nathan’s Rebuke, and the Setting of Psalm 51

Very few are going to say Psalm 51 is their favorite psalm. Here's how we start. It says kind of the header to Psalm 51, to the choir master, a psalm of David when Nathan the prophet went to him after he had gone into Bathsheba.

So this is after David had an affair and covered up his adultery by putting the woman's husband to death. He kind of plotted to have Uriah the Hittite killed on the front lines in battle to cover up this act of adultery that he had done with this man's wife, a man who was his friend.

In fact, Nathan the prophet came and convicted David's heart. And this is the psalm that comes forth from David when his sin was laid before him. Let's read through the whole thing. Have mercy on me, oh God, according to your steadfast love.

According to your abundant mercy, blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgressions and my sin is ever before me. 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.

Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me. Behold, you delight in truth, in the inward being, and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart. Purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean.

Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow. Let me hear joy and gladness. Let the bones that you have broken rejoice. Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, oh God, and renew a right spirit within me.

Cast me not away from your presence and take not your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and uphold me with a willing spirit. Then I will teach transgressors your ways and sinners will return to you.

Deliver me from blood guiltiness, oh God, oh God of my salvation, and my tongue will sing aloud of your righteousness. Oh Lord, open my lips and my mouth will declare your praise. For you will not delight in sacrifice or I would give it.

You will not be pleased with a burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart, oh God. You will not despise. Do good to Zion in your good pleasure. Build up the walls of Jerusalem.

Then will you delight in right sacrifices, in burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings. Then bulls will be offered on your altar. Now if there's any portion of this psalm that you might hear quoted, it's certainly that section where it says, create in me a clean heart, oh God, and renew a right spirit within me.

That was verse 10. But in context, you see the anguish that David is in when he says that. Anguish over his sin. And folks, we really do need to have a brokenness over the sin that we have committed against God.

That word brokenness has unfortunately been very abused. The word brokenness is sometimes referred to talk about sin, but the scriptures refer to brokenness as the spirit that we should have when we come before God over our sin.

That word is not referring to sin itself, but it refers to our attitude about it. We need to be broken and we need to realize that we would perish in destruction beneath the wrath of God if it were not for his mercy and grace, which he displays through his son Jesus Christ, whom he gave to die on the cross for our sins, that by faith in him, we have forgiveness.

Our sins have been atoned for. He is the great sacrifice. All the bulls and rams and everything that was sacrificed in Israel back in the day, all of their blood combined. And when you read about it in the Old Testament, there are some very, very bloody sections when you get to talking about some of those sacrifices, whether it's Leviticus or all of the sacrifices that were offered in the consecration of the temple.

Any of these periods of sacrifice you read about in the Old Testament, it's a whole lot of blood and all of that blood from all of those animals do not even compare with one drop of blood from Christ who gave his life to sacrifice for our sins.

Now, I say that not meaning that there was some sort of magical quality in Christ blood for Leviticus makes it clear that the life is in the blood. The reason why blood is so often talked about is because when blood is spilled, a life is given and blood is in reference to that life.

So it's not that one drop of blood had more magical properties than all the blood of all of these animals, but simply to say that what Christ gave was significantly more than all of those animals that had been sacrificed, which did not really have the power to forgive sins.

But there's power in the blood, my brothers and sisters, as we sing about in our hymns. Jesus gave his life and through the giving of his life, our sins have been atoned for and the wrath of God is satisfied for everyone who believes in Jesus.

And we need to have a brokenness over our sin, broken hearted, grieved, depressed, even depression is talked about as such a nasty, ugly thing these days. But there is a sense in which we must understand there should be a depression over our sin.

There should be a mourning or is the apostle Paul talked about it with the Corinthians. There needs to be a grief that leads to repentance. A godly grief leads to repentance. A worldly grief leads to death.

So there is a kind of depression that leads to death. But a godly grief over sin will lead to repentance. So we we should feel bad about the things that we've done. We have this attitude in the world today that no one should ever feel bad about anything.

So here, take this pill. Now, it's not that all pills for depression are bad. I'm not saying that. But sometimes we think that the pill needs to be the cure. And the reality is that a person may feel the grief that they feel because of their sin.

And they should feel that so that it leads them to repentance. It leads them to cling to Christ, who was the only sinless one. And it's only through Christ that we can have our sins forgiven. Not by feeling better.

Your sins are not forgiven because you feel better about them. Your sins are forgiven by faith in Christ. By turning to Jesus. By putting trust in him. By turning from sin and turning to his righteousness.

All of this being done by the power of the Holy Spirit, whom we have mentioned here in Psalm 51. So we continue in verse one, have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love, according to your abundant mercy, blot out my transgressions.

So David recognizing here, right at the very start of this prayer, that it's because of God's steadfast love that David would receive any mercy. David has not been steadfast. David's been a lowlife. The king over the people of God, the chosen one, anointed by the prophet Samuel to be the successor to Saul, to be the king of God's people.

This guy slept with another man's wife. Though he had everything. He had the whole kingdom. He had other wives. David had wives, plural, but no, he wanted this woman. And had her husband murdered to try to cover it up.

So David deserves death. That's what he deserves. And then when Nathan came and convicted him of his sin, that's what David thought was going to happen to him. He thought God was going to destroy him.

That didn't happen. But what did happen as a punishment was the child that was conceived in Bathsheba as a result of their union died, got sick and died. And it's only because of the mercy of God that David was forgiven.

Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love, because God is steadfast. David betrayed God, but the Lord is faithful to his promises. According to your abundant mercy, blot out my transgressions.

Let them not be kept in the heavenly registry. May they not haunt me forever so that they would be used against me on the day of judgment. But blot them out. That's what blotting them out means. Doesn't necessarily mean that we will forget our sins.

In fact, there is it's good that we don't forget them. So that way we don't do them again. We don't repeat them. We might forget the grief that was caused because of that sin in the sense that there's no like residual of the grief in our mind or in our heart.

We might remember what feeling that grief was like, but we don't have that depression anymore because God has freed us from it. But blotting out my transgressions means that it would not be counted against me eternally.

As we read in Psalm 103, God throws our sins as far as the east is from the west, and he remembers them no more. And it's also not that God is forgetful, but he chooses to look past our sins. As it says in Romans 3, in his divine forbearance, he passed over former sins.

Blotting out our transgressions so they would not be held against us. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. And in this part of his prayer, it's David saying, may I not ever repeat this?

May it not ever be on my mind or my heart to ever do such a thing again. Cleanse it from my mind so that I would not even think this way. My friends, our sin comes from a polluted mind and a corrupt heart.

We sin because we are sinners. And because we're sinners, we sin. Sin is why we're called sinners and we are sinners and therefore we sin. It's cyclical. It kind of works the same way. It wasn't you sinned and therefore became a sinner.

You were a sinner before you sinned. You sinned because you're a sinner. Is all this making sense? Anyway, so what David is asking for here is that the sin would be cleansed from him in such a way that it's no longer on his mind to ever do such a thing.

May it not be in my heart to incline myself to such evil. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin that I may stand before you blameless and in my eyes, I'm not looking to ever repeat this sin and therefore betray my God.

Verse three, for I know my transgressions and my sin is ever before me. You will know your sin far more than you will ever know anyone else's sin. You are more intimately acquainted with your own sins than you know anyone else's sin.

Verse four, against you, you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight. Does that mean that David did not sin against Uriah the Hittite and we have no reason to ever go and apologize to those people that we have wronged since our sin is only before God?

No, it's understanding that God is the ultimate judge. Another person is not going to have judgment over your soul. God does. So therefore, as the judge who sits enthroned over all of creation, we have sinned against him alone and we need some way for our sins to be atoned for, to be paid for if we are to be right before God.

Against you only have I done what is evil in your sight so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment. When God judges, it's because we have sinned against him. Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me.

This is not David saying that his mother did something sinful and David was the result of that sinful union. This is David simply acknowledging the doctrine of original sin, that Adam was the first to sin and everyone who is descended from Adam has inherited his sin nature.

So therefore, David was a sinner from birth, from his conception. I was brought forth in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me because that conception happened by the seed of a sinful man. Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart.

So just as sin comes from a sinful heart, so therefore truth comes from a heart that delights in truth. And that's what David is praying for. Now, going back to the the original sin thing there again, remember that Jesus Christ was not conceived by the seed of man.

He was conceived by the Holy Spirit. This is why the virgin birth is so important. Jesus being virgin born means that he was not conceived in sin. He is the holy one, not just because he was sinless in his obedience, but because he was sinless even from his conception.

He did not sin because he had no inclination to sin. He had no sin nature. We have that. Jesus Christ does not. So Jesus Christ, therefore, becomes the perfect sacrifice for us on our behalf because he is spotless and blameless in everything.

God is both just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus, as it says in Romans, because he put forth his own son that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in him. Verse seven, purge me with hyssop.

Hyssop was a plant that was used to smear the blood of the sacrifices that were made. We read about that in Exodus when when God says to sacrifice a lamb and put the blood on the doorposts of your house, it was with a plant that they would spread that blood.

And so David is saying, purge me with hyssop, use that plant to cover over my sins, atone for my sins, and I shall be clean, wash me and I shall be whiter than snow. In the book of Revelation to the churches, Jesus says to purchase from him white garments so that we may be clothed in purity, in the righteousness of Christ for all who have faith in him.

Let me hear joy and gladness. Let the bones that you have broken, again, the grief that we feel, may it be a godly grief that leads to repentance. So let the bones that you have broken rejoice. I feel guilty for this sin because God has laid his hand heavy upon me.

He has broken my bones. He has broken my spirit, crushed me that I might realize the evil that I have done. So therefore repair these things that I may rejoice in you. I may rejoice in the forgiveness that I have received that comes not from myself, nothing that I have done, but because God has been good to me and he alone is worthy of all praise.

Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, oh God, and renew a right spirit within me. We have that statement said yet again. Blot out all this condition in my heart so I won't repeat it.

Create in me a clean heart and give me a spirit that desires to do the things that please God. Cast me not away from your presence and take not your Holy Spirit from me. There is a prayer that I have often prayed and I think that I've shared this with you before in this podcast.

I have asked God, do not let me lose my conviction because the moment I am no longer convicted over my sin is the moment I know that I have become comfortable with my sin and his Holy Spirit is no longer convicting me of it.

The Holy Spirit would not be with me in such a circumstance if I'm not even guilty over my sin anymore. And so David is saying, take not your Holy Spirit from me that I may be convicted and I may repent.

Restore to me the joy of your salvation and uphold me with a willing spirit. May it be because you delight in me, God, that you would uphold me and keep me in your statutes. Verse 13, then I will teach transgressors your ways.

I'll share my testimony. I was a sinner. I was doomed for destruction. I deserved death and God saved me. He showed me mercy. Though this is what I deserved, God has given me grace and sinners will return to you because of this testimony that I have shared, because God has been good to me.

Sinners will realize, hey, I need that grace and they will come to God to receive it. Deliver me from blood guiltiness, oh God. Oh God of my salvation and my tongue will sing aloud of your righteousness.

Oh Lord, open my lips and my mouth will declare your praise. As we read in Psalm 8, it is by the ordination of God that he has determined praise for himself. So David is saying by the power of God, may my mouth be open to sing your praise.

This is all according to God's providence, his sovereignty over us. May we have the favor of God to be able to praise him. Even this is the blessing of God that we can sing his praises. You worship God because it's God's will for you to.

Broken Spirit, True Sacrifice, and God’s Mercy in Zion

Verses 16 and 17, for you will not delight in sacrifice or I would give it. You will not be pleased with a burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart. Oh God, you will not despise.

See, the sacrifice of animals, the giving of animals had no power to forgive anybody's sins. They were to demonstrate the brokenness of the person that was offering the animal, realizing that they had sinned against God and what they deserved for that was death.

And so in obedience to what the Lord had commanded, they obey by the giving of an animal to demonstrate a life needed to be given for a life to atone for sins. And all of this was a type and shadow leading to Christ, who was going to be the ultimate sacrificial lamb, the spotless lamb of God, the one perfect man who could give his life for humankind, who would believe in him.

Everyone who believes in Jesus has the forgiveness of sins. An animal had no power to forgive sins. It was God who had mercy and forgave sin. But the giving of the animal demonstrated the remorse of the person who had sinned against God and what they know, what they knew, what they realized needed to be done in order to atone for that sin.

When Christ died, he died not just for people in the present and the future, but he died to atone the sins of those in the past as well. Even those in Israel who had offered animal sacrifices, anticipating one who would truly be the sacrifice for sins versus 18 and 19.

Do good in Zion in your good pleasure. Build up the walls of Jerusalem. Then will you delight in right sacrifices in burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings. Then bulls will be offered on your altar.

Right sacrifices that come from the right attitude of heart, not a person who's pridefully thinking, hey, look at me and what I'm doing and all my legalism. And therefore, God's going to show me grace.

No, but that they first have the right heart before God, a broken and contrite spirit. And so their obedience is out of love for God, not out of confidence in self where David makes the comments about do good in Zion in your good pleasure and build up the walls in Jerusalem.

Throughout the Old Testament, we often saw building projects as a sign of God's blessing upon the people. But in this particular sense, we're not talking about a literal building project, but rather that there would be a the blessing of God upon a person that he would build a person's life up again.

That they would not wallow in despair over their sin, but that he would raise them up from the despair that they feel. That's simply what David is asking for here and metaphorically making reference to a building project, the walls of Jerusalem that they would be built up.

Build me up again so that my confidence will be not in myself, but in the God who saves me. Whatever you are convicted over and need to ask forgiveness for, do that today and the God of peace will have mercy upon you.

Gabriel Hughes is the pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Junction City, Kansas. Find out more online at www .utt .com.