Psalm 51 (Part 1)

Welcome to No Compromise Radio Ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth, and it has been probably a month since I've been in the studio between travel to Israel and to Italy and being sick. No time to record, so thanks for being patient.

I appreciate Spencer playing a few reruns. We put a couple of Pactum episodes in there. Pat and I recorded in Israel. That was fun, and it is what it is. So thanks for being patient. My name is Mike Abendroth.

We like to talk about the Lord Jesus on this show, duplex gratia, Christ for pardon and Christ for power, double grace, Christ for us, Christ in us. And of course, the Lord Jesus never sinned. He always did what was pleasing to the Father, and it is wonderful now to have union with Him and all the benefits that we receive because of that through the non-meritorious instrument of faith, right, knowledge, assent, and trust, which will lead to evidences and fruits and virtues and pressing forward, et cetera.

I used to say et cetera in Nebraska, and I used to say expresso. I used to say milk, and I still get sit and sat and set wrong, I think, most of the time. Anyway, you can listen to us on podcast, Spotify.

We are on two radio shows, KAGV 1110 on your AM dial, Alaska's Gospel Voice. It says it is a, the genre is gospel, Christian contemporary, local radio station in Alaska. It looks like it's Houston, Alaska, vfcm .org forward slash KAGV.

And we're also in Powell, Wyoming with Pastor Brian there at Trinity Bible Church. I met David and his family in Israel. They're part of the church there, so that was fun, 88 .1 FM and live stream on your radio, on your internet.

I think maybe Pat Abendross on that, that's tbcwyoming .com regarding the church. So it's kind of fun to be on radio stations, and then you think, you know, we're just not a podcast. Are you on radio too?

Oh, yes, we are. I think to be on Salem 99 .5 KKLA in Los Angeles, I want to say daily radio there for 30 minutes a day. I'm thinking 600 ,000, something like that. So I don't get paid to be on those stations, and I don't pay them.

They do wonderful work there and just want to have the gospel go out, so I'm thankful for that. Well, what else is happening? If you want to order a gospel assurance, either the larger 200-page book or the smaller devotional 80-page, you can do that on Amazon.

I was thankful for my friend and thankful, I am thankful for my friend Todd Friel. He ordered, I don't know, 500 gospel assurance books, the bigger one, the guides, and if anyone wrote to him and said, I know someone who struggles with assurance or I struggle with assurance or could be helped by this book, I, Todd Friel, and the gospel partners he has there at Retro Radio sent those things out for free.

So that was really encouraging. I was glad for that. I want to talk a lot about assurance because it inevitably leads to, if you talk about assurance correctly, the Lord Jesus, right? Objective work of Christ first, then subjective fruit that's in us that the Holy Spirit is working.

So there you have it. Whether you talk about objective assurance or subjective, it's the work of God for us and in us. We have a conference coming up. I think this show is going to play on Tuesday, and that Tuesday that today is playing is the 21st of March, 2023.

The 24th of March, Steve Meister will be here, a conference on God called The Fount of All Joy, and you can register at Bethlehem Bible Church, bbcchurch .org. He's going to talk about some of the great doctrines of God that sometimes get eclipsed these days and sometimes get taught wrongly or they are avoided.

And Steve's going to talk about immutability and aseity and incomprehensibility, things about God that just make you want to worship and want you to stand in awe of our great triune God. So that's Steve Meister, March 24th through 26th.

He'll be here on that Sunday as well. So if you already have a home church, just come on Friday night and Saturday night. I think it's a mere pittance. It's I think 20 bucks a person. I think that's all I have for announcements.

Hopefully we'll start having guests on again and some other things here on No Compromise Radio. But you can always email me, Mike at NoCompromiseRadio .com. I guess I do have one other thing to say with regard to Israel.

We were there for nine days, got to see lots of wonderful things. I just was thinking through the Herods today, which Herod is what, because we saw a lot of Herodians and Herod's palaces and the temple of Herod that he redid, the temple that Herod redid and things like that.

So that's kind of a fun little exercise. Maybe we'll do that on the show one of these days where we say, okay, it was Herod the great that had the, who built Masada, who built Caesarea Maritime, who built the Herodium, who helped with the temple.

He's the one that wanted to kill baby Jesus and then killed all the two year old boys and under in the Bethlehem area. And of course, Jesus with his family, they fled to Egypt. And of course we have Herod the great dies.

And then we have a mention of Herod Antipas, and he was a Tatar. He had four, one fourth of what Herod the great had. And he was the one that put Jesus on trial, et cetera. Then you have Herod Agrippa the first, I think that's the grandson of Herod the great.

And he was the one that killed Stephen, excuse me, killed James. And then you had Agrippa too. And he was the one that had Paul come to his grandfather's place by the sea there in Mediterranean Caesarea, Caesarea by the sea maritime.

And you know, Paul was Roman citizen. So we've got some extra, extra love, I guess, from Herod Agrippa the second. So those kinds of things, when you're in Israel, like, okay, Judea, Bethlehem, okay, around, around and around.

So anyway, we had a great time. I think Pat is planning a trip next March, 2024. I don't know if I'll be able to go that soon, but stay tuned to No Compromise Radio Ministry. All right. Oh, and I was going to go speak for Kofi, my friend up in Oregon.

And for those of you that were looking forward to that and me meeting you and vice versa, I was looking forward to that. That's been, that's going to be, it's canceled and hopefully rescheduled. Today, I'd like to talk a little bit about one of the Psalms that probably is near and dear to you.

Maybe not near and dear to you because it is such a praise Psalm. Uh, maybe not near and dear to you because it is such a worshipful Psalm and uplifting and upbeat. But it is important to you because like me, we sin, not only as unbelievers, we sinned, basically everything we did was sin, right?

Even if it's something good, but we as Christians sin. And we are realists as John Stott talked about people who sin. I mean, we believe in the doctrine of sin because it's in the Bible and we see what's going on in us and around us and in the world.

So why would we avoid the doctrine of sin? Lots of words in the New Testament and old that talk about sin. So my question today on No Compromise Radio is when you sin, what do you do? When you transgress, where do you go?

And of course, the Psalm that we're going to look at today, you probably already figured out is Psalm 51, Psalm 51. And it's one of those Psalms that you say to yourself, while the skeletons in my closet are many, my regrets are many.

Some things I wish I could scrub out of the hard drive, out of my mind. I can have forgiveness because of Jesus Christ and there is hope because God's loving kindness is everlasting. Isn't that good? It's wonderful to realize that God has a steadfast love, a faithful love, a loyal love, a self-sacrificial love versus a love that's contingent on what we do.

And we have to do our part and allow God to do his part, et cetera. No, we realize that it is the nature of God, his goodness. God is good and he is faithful in his kindness. And so we look to God and we look to Psalm 51 for those of us who want relief.

Don't you want relief and a clean conscience and a sweet relationship with the Lord who sought you and bought you with his redeeming love? This is the Psalm that Lady Jane Grey recited as she was on the scaffold in the days of King Henry VIII and Queen Mary.

This is the Psalm that King Henry V wanted read at his bedside. This is the Psalm that William Carey, the great preacher, missionary in India, wanted to be preached at his funeral. And this is, of course, the occasion where David has gone into Bathsheba, he's killed Uriah, he's lied, he's cheated, he's been confronted by Nathan.

And it says in Psalm 51, one in the New American Standard from the choir director, a Psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet came to him after he had gone into Bathsheba. And we come to this Psalm and we realize these high-handed, treasonous sins against God can be forgiven.

And we see how David pours out his heart and we want to do the same thing. Very personal Psalm. You're going to see a lot of me's and my's in there talking from David's perspective. This is obviously not meant to be a private Psalm just between David and God.

I mean, it could have been, but God didn't have that intention. And so it's not just for private, but it's public and it was to be sung, right? These Psalms are to be sung. And some have called this Psalm the sinner's guide.

Isn't that good? What do you do when you sin as a Christian? This is the sinner's guide. Athanasius said when he wakes up in the middle of the night, this is the Psalm that he would think about. And this is what you should think about in the middle of the night.

Last night I woke up and I thought about student loans. That's what I thought about. I've got a button here. I don't know what this button here is for. Listening, green. I don't know, but I think I'm back to recording and I've got the levels up.

So that's good. Luther said, quote, there's no other Psalm, which is oftener sung or prayed in the church. And basically this is the Psalm that is for us when we sin. What do we do? We could just say, God, forgive us.

And there's nothing wrong with that. Of course, you can say that to your father, but there's something more in depth here that I think really helps us when it comes to asking God for forgiveness. So we're just going to have a little outline in Psalm 51.

They're all going to start with H's, not because I'm Baptist, but because sometimes that's fun to do. I don't do it all the time. Always alliterate. No, not always, but sometimes. Always and occasionally.

What do we have here today? I think we have Pete's coffee. Did I tell you that I've had to give up French press coffee? I've been drinking French press coffee for, I don't know, 30 years. Big, huge French press every single morning.

And I think because of what COVID did to me and racked my GI system, I don't think I can take the oil that's in there. So I need some type of filter. What I used to love was the oil and the taste. And then now I can't have that.

So now I have to do other means, Nespresso's and stuff like that. Psalm 51, No Compromise Radio, Mike Aventroth, as we talk about a sinner's guide. Number one, chesed, chesed. I'm taking Duolingo, a modern Hebrew and learning some.

I think I have 130 days in a row or something like that. Cooley, the Tuesday guy, he's up at, I don't know. What is he up at? A thousand days or something like that. Matter of fact, Steve went to the Shepherd's Conference this year.

So did my son, Luke, just for a day, I think. And I wasn't able to make it, but had so many friends that I would have loved to have seen and chatted with and talked about and who knows, maybe debated with even.

But it would have been nice to see some of my old, can you call fellow alums, comrades? Will that be appropriate? I'm not exactly sure. Psalm 51, chesed. That is a word for loving kindness. When you sin, we are tempted to maybe run and hide, to ignore, to debate, but we'll just call right out to this gracious and merciful Lord for forgiveness because of his loving kindness, chesed.

Have mercy on me, O God, according to your, there's the word, steadfast love. According to your abundant mercy, blot out my transgressions, wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin.

God, I've sinned and you know about my sin and you've taught me about you and I know you're merciful and I know you have a steadfast love. And I'm going to call out to you. If you look at the words here, even in these first couple of verses, transgressions, right, you defy God by deliberately stepping over the line.

Iniquity, it means crooked and perverse and twisted and yucky and icky, to use words that maybe little kids might know. Sin, you know that word, missing the mark on purpose. And here David realizes that his adultery with Bathsheba, his murder of Uriah, all the stuff with the army and Israel, these are transgressions and sins and perverted things.

And he's pleading for forgiveness. Where do you find relief, right? Sacraments, sedation, hedonism. He calls out to God for his graciousness, according to his loving kindness. There was a writer who said, when David is rebuked for the crime, he yields the point without argument.

He is told that he has done wrong and he receives the prophet in a prophet's name. When has this been done before or since? Mary Queen of Scots would declare that she was above the law. Charles I would have thrown over Bathsheba.

James II would have hired witnesses to swear away her character. Muhammad would have produced a revelation authorizing both crimes. Charles II would have publicly abrogated the seventh commandment. Queen Elizabeth would have suspended Nathan.

Who has ever acknowledged any error of any magnitude if it has been in his power to maintain that he was right? Kane's plan that of silencing the accuser and Adam's plan that of shifting the responsibility seem to exhaust the range of human expedience when an error is brought home.

He who has escaped from both is a man who's after God's own heart. That's true. And he, David, the man after God's own heart goes right to the Lord. Be gracious. Show me favor. God, you're generous. You're kind.

You love your people. And without any merit of my own, because we're talking about grace here, without any self-righteousness and without any kind of I deserve it or I've merited it or I've accumulated extra work so I can get it and works of irrigation and super irrigation.

He just asked God. God, I'm asking for a favor. Ever said that to someone? Can I ask you for a favor? To favor me, to grace me. He appeals to God's mercy and his steadfast, loyal covenant love. David's not faithful.

Israel's not faithful. Adam's not faithful. I'm not faithful. You're not faithful, but God's faithful. And you can appeal to his faithful love for forgiveness. Be gracious to me, O God, according to your loving kindness, according to your hesed, according to who you are.

And that's really the attribute here that we're looking at. God is a God who has faithful, steadfast love. And of course, if you begin to think in eternity past, if we even call it that, in eternity that God chooses, sends the son to redeem, applies that work by the spirit of God that's by both the father and the son.

And it just explodes with this zip drive unzipped of all these great things. According to your loving kindness, according to the greatness of your compassion or mercy. Remember, God abounds in mercy. Moses knew that.

He'd been tucked in the cleft of the rock and God passed in front of him. The Lord, the Lord God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in what? Loving kindness and truth, who keeps loving kindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression, and sin.

That's amazing. Psalm 103, the Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in loving kindness. I mean, didn't Jonah know that? And Jonah, please, Lord, was not this what I said while I was still in my own country?

Therefore, in order to forestall this, I fled to Tarshish for I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in loving kindness. What does Micah 7 say? Who is a God like you who pardons iniquity and passes over the rebellious act of the remnant of his possession?

He does not retain his anger forever, but he delights in his steadfast, loyal, unchanging love. I mean, that's a lot of love, a lot of compassion, a lot of grace to blot out a lot of transgressions. And what does David say?

Blot it out, wipe it out, just obliterate from the memory, just erase it. Isn't that what we do? Isn't that what we want to say to the Lord when we sin? Wash me, literally, instead of wash me thoroughly, it's multiply to wash me.

Just scrub, get every little grain out until it's over and done with and cleansed. He goes on to say, cleanse me from my sin, make me pure. This is language of ceremonial offerings. Just cleanse me, purify me, remove it completely.

And that's David's heart. And you can see that echoed on the other side of the cross. Can you not, when we read 1 John 1, if we confess our sins, he's faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

If we say we've not sinned, we make him a liar and his word is not in us. My little children, I'm writing these things to you that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we present tense have an advocate with the Father face to face in front of the Father, right in his presence is the idea.

Jesus Christ, the righteous one. While we're not righteous, he's righteous and he's so righteous, he doesn't need an advocate. He is the advocate. He is the propitiation, or he assuages the wrath of God that we've earned for our sins, not for ours only, but also the sins of the whole world.

Jew, Gentile, all the people of God. You, dear Christian, because of the Lord Jesus get to come to the Father and say, be gracious to me because the Lord Jesus is my advocate. And yes, in fact, I have sinned.

But the righteous one stands between me and the accuser, Satan, or stands between me and the, however you want to kind of think through that. I'm also going to say the Father, but you know what I'm saying?

Jesus, the one to seek and save those that are lost. And when you think about forgiveness, of course, you think judicially before God, we're forgiven as Christians, right? No condemnation, great love with which he loved us when we were dead and trespasses, we're made alive together with Christ.

By grace, we've been saved. That's Ephesians chapter two. And then we realize that everything's taken care of because of justification. All of our sins, Colossians two, having forgiven all of our transgressions, canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us.

And Jesus has bore our sins. He's taken away our sins. He's purged our sins. He's put away our sins. He's made an end of sin, all verses for those. And then there's a parental forgiveness that my children, when they sin, they don't get kicked out of the family, but there's discipline and there's exhortation and there's shepherding and chastisement.

And that's what's happening here. David is a child of God and he is not going to get kicked out of the family, but he's going to have a need for forgiveness in terms of the relationship, not judicially, but parentally.

And he, David, cries out to God's hesed. Number two, as we work through this Psalm, and the next word we have that starts with an H is humility. When you sin, you go to God and you appeal to his steadfast, loving kindness, of course, epitomized in the eternal son, who assumes human nature, became flesh.

And then now we say to ourselves, humility, humility, verse three through five. I know my transgressions. 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. David just owns it. He's humble. He's not trying to make excuses. He's not blaming genetics. He's not blaming scantily clad Bathsheba.

He's not blaming obstinate Uriah. I'm not saying he was obstinate, but he's just not, he's not putting any blame. And it's just a personal ownership and acknowledgement. And that's really what we should do.

Right? Isn't that we want to do? I mean, we don't always want to do it in the moment, but we know this is the right thing to do. And of course there was a time that this wasn't going through David's mind.

And I think the Lord perfectly timed Nathan's going to David so that it would really put a shock to the system. But once Nathan shows up and now David realizes there's no vindication, no circumstances to be blamed.

God, your law is too, is too holy, too high. You know, she should have, I don't know, being a King is stressful and the serpent made me do it and she should be out, you know, taking a bath with the clothes on.

I have no idea. By the way, the arguments on social media about rape and David and men's position of authority and all this other stuff, it's really, I don't know, there's a lot of inks built on all this.

And I steer clear of that. Today we're talking about Psalm 51 and not about Twitter wars. Sometimes I'm getting myself into some trouble here with Twitter, but that's okay. Once in a while, you have to say a few things, right?

If somebody says, well, I don't, if you tell me the Bible's inerrant, that doesn't tell me anything. Yes, it does. You tell me that the Bible's infallible. That doesn't tell me anything about you. Well, by the way, I'm not reporting to you anyway, Mr. Big Celebrity Man.

What tells me everything is sola scriptura, the Bible sufficient. That's what, that's what everything tells me is that. Obviously I believe in sola scriptura. Obviously I believe the Bible's sufficient, but strictly speaking, when you talk about sola scriptura, we're talking about the Bible is the final authority.

That's what we're talking about. And when you're blasting Calvinism, uh, that's one thing, you know, five points type of thing, God's sovereign and salvation. But when you mean Calvinism and you say reformed, then you don't have that right either.

So if you don't know what you're talking about, you don't know what you're talking about. I guess that's true for all of us. We learn and grow. That's true. But I'm just, the whole celebrity thing, uh, it just walking around on eggshells.

You can't say anything, ever critique a celebrity. You only may praise them. They throw their name out. They throw their message out. They will receive accolades and praise and encouragement and kudos and attaboys.

But if you say, well, you know what? That's not right. This particular area is not right. That's wrong. That's the wrong way to describe it. We're not saying that their moms wear army boots or some kind of personal attack, but if you want the kudos and you put your name out there, I mean, I've written some books before and some of the stuff in the books I could have written better.

And I could have said things better and I've said wrong doctrines in the past. And now I've repented of them. And you know what? If you stick your chin out, you better be willing to take the hit. So I don't like all this sycophant stuff and platform and brand.

And I can never criticize anybody for anything because if I criticize them, then I'm not welcome on the big stage to do the speaking, to do this, to do that. And we've got to sell books and we have to have this.

And I mean, it's just like, this is crazy world. I think my life is better if it's just 7 ,000 people in the town of West Boylston. And here I am with Pastor Steve, that's it. David doesn't blame. He's just humble.

He agrees with God. That's what confession is. And it's not dragged out of him. He's not just saying the words and formal wrote deal. Just with humility. And I've sinned against you. So I think that's a good place to stop today on No Compromise Radio.

We're talking about David sinning and how to go to God. So your homework for today is to go to Psalm 51, read the rest of Psalm 51. Maybe tomorrow we'll pick it up and talk a little bit more about this wonderful Psalm that helps us see the heart of David, a man after God's own heart and how he longs for restoration with God as a child of God who has sinned.

Don't forget, you can write me. Mike Abendroth is my name. Mike at NoCompromiseRadio .com. Tell your friends, tell your, who knows? You could tell your enemies. You could tell anybody you wanted. You could tell people about the new intro music and outro music.

Have a good day.