Psalm 51 (Part 2)

No Compromise Radio Ministry. Welcome to No Compromise Radio Ministry. My name is Mike Abendroff.

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God according to the scriptures. How about that? And confessions.

Well, I have been pretty sick, hard to breathe a little bit. The last five weeks have been really hard, but I think the last day or two, we're seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.

Does that mean I'm dying or I'm going to get better? All right, today on No Compromise Radio, I want to talk a little bit more about Psalm 51.

We started off a couple of days ago talking about Psalm 51, and it's still on my mind. And it is the

Psalm, the sinner's guide, as some have called it. So when you sin, this is what you pray.

This is how you pray. We looked at Chesed last time. It's according to God's great mercy and steadfast love.

That's what you appeal to when you sin. We talked about Psalm 51, and now on this side of the cross, it's all because of the

Lord Jesus' final sacrifice, paid in full, judicial parental type of forgiveness that we were looking at and how

Psalm 51 is parental forgiveness. David is not going to lose his salvation. He's not going to be unadopted or anything like that.

And David starts then in verses three and following with very humble heart. He's a man after God's own heart, and here you see his humility.

So we looked at Chesed, that it's humility against you, and you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight.

And shouldn't we all, as Christians, say that's the main person

I sinned against was not my wife, was not

Bathsheba, was not, sometimes I say cough button.

I shouldn't be telling you, but I just said the cough button. And so we know it's mainly against God, first and foremost.

Plummer said, we never see sin or right until we see it against God. All sin is against God in the sense that it is his law that is broken, his authority that is despised, his government that is set at naught, right?

That's the key. I have sinned against the Lord, David said to Nathan.

Jeremiah Burroughs, that Puritan writer said, the chief of all is the humiliation of the soul for sin as it is against God.

Then is the heart humbled rightly for sin when it apprehends how by sin, the soul has been against the infinite, glorious first being of all things.

It's possibly a sin against your own body, sexual sin against our neighbor.

It's against God's law. But of course, when we really think about it, it's sin against you.

Remember David, excuse me, Joseph, he didn't wanna sin sexually with Potiphar's wife. And he said, how could

I do this great evil and sin against God? Yes, sin against Potiphar, sin against the wife, that's true, but to sin against God.

And with great humility in verse four of Psalm 51, David said, so you're justified when you speak and blameless when you judge.

In other words, what your chastisement will be,

I will accept. It will be right and good and I will accept it. I understand with humility how

I'm not just a person who sins, but I'm a sinner.

I was brought forth, verse five, in iniquity and in sin, my mother conceived me from birth, right?

This is, you know, Adam's sin credited to him and consequently he, with us, we're sinners.

One writer Kidner said, this crime David now sees was no freak event. It was in character, an extreme expression of the warped creature he had always been.

And so that's why I say humility. This is not a surface issue. This is a deeply ingrained issue.

Our natures are stained and we don't come into the world with a clean slate. And we ought to appeal to God's loving kindness as hesed and we ought to be very humble when we sin.

Not only that, we ask God to heal us, verses six through 12. You can hear what he's saying here.

And if I just summarize everything with the H word heal, maybe it could be help, but heal is probably representative of the passage.

Behold, you delight in truth and 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. Created 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.

He understands God's standard is truth, not just external, but verse six, internal. And he wants that in his prayer.

He was acting like he didn't, of course, when he sinned. When we sin, it's really crazy. But I wanna have wisdom so I don't do this again when the same situation happens.

I don't have to do it again. And he just wants all this healing. And look at all the language that he has here.

Verse seven, purify me with hyssop and I shall be clean. You use hyssop in the

Old Testament when a leper would need to be cleansed ceremonially in Leviticus, I was gonna say

Lamentations. Lamentations and Leviticus together. Lamentations, Leviticatations, Leviticus 14.

It talks about that. And you touch a dead body, what do you need to do?

It's this purify with hyssop, this plant that has kind of a leafy, hairy structure so that if you dip it into something, it would attach a little bit easier than maybe some slippery elephant leaf plant or something.

What does David say? Purge me with hyssop and I'll be clean. Just take it all away, right?

This is the language of, he took the blood of the calves and goats with water and scarlet wool and hyssop and sprinkled both the book of itself and all the people saying, this is the blood of the covenant of which

God commanded you. This is Moses and the law recorded in Hebrews chapter nine and sprinkling the tabernacle with blood and everything else because without the shedding of blood, there's what?

No forgiveness. He says, wash me and I'll be whiter than snow. I'm trying to think of stains that are deep.

And of course in our consciences, in our minds and in our very fabric of our being on a human level,

I remember when I get home from school and I had school clothes and I had like play clothes around the yard and play clothes around the yard were like last year school clothes, but then they got demoted.

And you didn't wanna get grass stains on your knees. On your school clothes, you're gonna be in big trouble.

So what are you gonna do? Matter of fact, sometimes, you know, you had to get jeans and then I don't know if it was

Wranglers or Lees or Levi's and then you'd get that stuff that your mom would iron onto your knees because there was holes in your knees.

And in those days, it wasn't trendy to have jeans that had holes in them. Now you buy them with holes in there.

And so you wanna have grass stains on your knees, on the knees of your jeans that were your school clothes.

Yikes, I think there was a time when we weren't even allowed to wear jeans to school and then that got changed. Make me to hear joy and gladness.

Mend me, this is all healing language. Mend me, let the bones that you've broken rejoice.

I'm guilty and full of anguish and it's like that lamb that goes running off all the time.

You break its bones and then you carry it for a long time then you get attached to it. Hide your face from my sins just for good.

Blot out all my iniquities. You'll notice that what David's doing is not just, I sinned, please forgive me.

I'm not saying that's always a bad prayer. Obviously you can ask the

Father, please forgive me. But there's some depth here, isn't there not? There's some modeling that we have and even including in the, having this

Psalm included in the Canon for us to understand what this is like and appealing to who

God is, his grace, his compassion, his standards, his holiness, his chastening hand.

This is a God -centered Psalm. Yes, it's talking a lot about the sin of David, that's true. But it is a

God -centered Psalm. One of the probably the most wonderful sections here is when David says in verse 10, still in this healing section, created me a clean heart, oh

God. A fashion, create. This is language of God creates the heavens and the earth.

Did you know God is always the subject of this verb in the Hebrew? You can't do it yourself, no one else can do it.

No group of people can do it. It is, as Krauss said, God's independent creative act.

That's what it's gonna take to renew David's heart. Harrison said, what is impossible with man is possible with God.

The Hebrews reserve the word create for divine operation, whether in the realm of matter or spirit. The English version hardly does justice to the original.

David does not ask for a creation that should take place within him, where the hidden depths could never furnish material for such a change.

The Hebrew expression create for me is something that carries the thought of divinely ordered and prepared gift brought to David and bestowed on him a special bounty provided for his need.

It's wonderful. Created me a clean heart. Would you recreate?

Would you do something out of nothing? This is like miracle. If you wanna know what a miracle is, okay, great signs and supernatural and intervening and coming into the natural and all this stuff.

But in one sense, in the loose sense of the word miracle, forgiveness is a miracle, restoration is a miracle.

It's something that only God can do. It's something supernatural. Let's put it that way. If you don't like my word miracle for you, sticklers out there in theology, which

I'm glad you're sticklers. Create, it's not fashion. It's not make out of something else.

It's make happen, divine fiat. And David's like, fix me on the inside.

I'm warped. I'm broken. I don't like broken and wounded, but in this sense, I'm broken. Renew a steadfast spirit in me.

Renew a right spirit in me. What's proper and right and sincere. That's what I want. Would you do that in me?

Don't cast me away from your presence. Verse 11 has nothing to do with losing salvation, taking out the

Holy Spirit from me. No, this has to do with cleanse me and wash me so we can have a close relationship.

I wanna be in your presence. So cleanse me. I want that. And as the

Holy Spirit would come upon old Testament kings like Saul to empower, come upon David to empower.

David is not saying I'm gonna lose my salvation because I've sinned. I mean, we'd all lose our salvation if that were possible because we've all sinned.

No, the Holy Spirit comes upon David to help him with his kingly duties. And please use me for your ministry,

God, and use me as your king. And don't take your Holy Spirit who's especially helping me do that away from me.

Remember the spirit of the Lord departed from Saul and an evil spirit from the Lord. First Samuel 16 terrorized

Saul. Restore unto me the joy of my salvation. This is not language of I'm gonna lose my salvation.

This is heal me language. This is language of prayer that says, you know,

I remember when I first got saved and how wonderful forgiveness was. And I just wanna experience that again.

Please, Lord. And I wanna obey. Give me a verse 12, a willing spirit.

Help me to do that. I wanna willingly obey. I want from my own heart to obey you because you're so good and you're so compassionate and you're so gracious.

Chesed, humility, healing. And finally, verses 13 and following in Psalm 51 on No Compromise Radio today.

Hallelujah. I had to figure out how to get an H here. What am I gonna do?

How am I gonna get the H in? Well, hallelujah is gonna work out just fine. Verse 13 and following.

Then I will teach transgressors your ways and sinners will return to you. Deliver me from blood guiltiness,

O God. O God of my salvation. And my tongue will sing aloud of your righteousness. O Lord, open my lips and my mouth will declare your praise.

For you will not delight in sacrifice or I would give it. For you will not be pleased with the burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are of a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart.

O God, you will not despised. Do good to Zion and your good pleasure. Build up the walls of Jerusalem. Then you will delight in right sacrifices in burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings.

Then bowls will be offered on your altar. Hallelujah. I just wanna sing aloud again for joy as a forgiven sinner reconciled to my father based on the work of the

Lord Jesus Christ applied by the Holy Spirit. Worship, singing.

Lord, I've done a lot of things that are wrong. And so now would you just open my lips and I wanna praise you.

I wanna praise you for being full of great steadfast love. I wanna praise you that you have enabled me to be restored and I want to obey.

It's not just about sacrifices, but it's obedience. I want to do good in Zion.

I want to build up the walls of Jerusalem. I want to do things now in the body.

I'm connected, right? It's not like just me, myself, and I. Now that I'm restored, I'm with the people of God and can worship with them.

And I wanna be a part of them. Isn't that good? So think about it, dear listeners at No Compromise Radio Ministry.

We all sin. And when we sin, the best thing we can do is to ask

God to forgive our sins, to think differently, to show forth fruits of repentance and change, to try to set up things in our life so we don't fall into the same sin.

And if we do, to sin less with frequency and less with intensity and more quickly to repent and to stop and forsake.

This is all fruit of God's work in us as one day we will be glorified. Isn't that gonna be good?

No more sin and glory. I like that. No more temptation and glory. I like that. But when we do sin, my tendency is, please forgive me for all my sins,

Lord. I'm selfish, I'm arrogant, I'm prideful, I'm self -righteous.

I don't love my wife like I ought to. I'm not considered with people. I don't love you like I should and I don't love my neighbors myself.

Okay. Is that a bad prayer, as I've said on this show and two days ago?

I'm not saying it's a bad prayer. I'm saying Psalm 51 is a little more expansive, is it not?

Oh yeah, a lot more, you say. Well, then you would be correct. It's not something that's just quick. When Kim and I were in Italy, we went to a variety of churches and of course the churches we went to were

Roman Catholic churches and the one has Mary slaying the heretics, looks like it was Luther and Calvin and the

Protestants and she's got the lightsaber sword type of thing, the cross. The postcard of that scene says,

Mary destroying the heretics. I think that's what it says. Why did

I bring that up? I don't know, it was just in my mind. It was on my phone because I took pictures every time I go to Rome, I go to that church.

You go there and you think, all right, still, I still don't remember what I'm talking about.

You want answers? I do, I want answers. I want answers. You can't handle the truth.

I have no idea what I'm talking about with this Mary church. Something about rote, something about expansive, something about, oh, oh, oh,

I now remember. Very, very thankful. We finally remembered. I'm glad, thank you.

I know we remembered where the rabbit trail ended. There's a confessional in there and I said to Kim, look, there's the green light.

Somebody can go in. There's a priest on one side, the other side's open. You can go in, confessional's open. She said, no, there's not, there's not anybody in there.

And I saw a lady walk in the opposite side and shut the door, now the red light's on. But the other side where the man was, the priest, he has a window open a little bit and you can kind of walk by and maybe we were, maybe possibly we might've been taking pictures, hypothetically, theoretically, to kind of look at this confessional.

First of all, you don't have to confess to another man that you didn't sin against any of your sins, right?

If you sin against people, confess, right? If you're having people shepherd you and guide you and mentor you and disciple you and you wanna talk to them about some sins and then they can help you through what restoration is like and repentance, okay, fine,

I get all that. But it's just you and the Lord because you have an advocate, the Lord Jesus, and you can go right to the

Father and ask for forgiveness because you have an advocate, 1 John 2, Jesus Christ, the righteous, and you have an advocate before the

Father's face, just in front of him because of the Lord Jesus' great work.

And then when you go in front of him, you can lay it all out. And so when you see people use the

ACTS acronym for prayers, what's that again? Adoration, confession, thanksgiving, supplication.

May I just try to remind you, as I remind myself, Psalm 51 for the C, confession, really breaks it down in a way that's not just please forgive me, okay?

Please forgive me is better than nothing. Please forgive me is better than acting like a functional

Keswick perfectionist Wesleyan, okay? Noted, but Psalm 51 is better.

Psalm 32 is better than those rote confessions that are just quick. And one of the reasons it's better is because it appeals to God and who he is, gracious, compassionate, long -suffering, chesed, who he is, the

Holy One. It really gives you a view of our state and our need and our humility as we come before God, realizing the depths of our sin and transgression and iniquity and how it's just in us, not just something that happens and we just once in a while do, but the depth of it and only the

Lord Jesus could cleanse us from those very things. And then asking God for help and healing where we're downcast and we're sad and we're underneath the chastening hand of rod and we would like to have our joy back.

We would like to have that restoration back, a fellowship. You get in an argument with your wife, you make up and don't you feel good after that restoration has happened?

The answer is yes. And then finally, then you sing. And you sing with the congregation, you sing as you do ministry.

You're just hallelujah, remembering who God is. And that's the

Psalm, that's Psalm 51. And it really gives hope for sinners because of the

Lord Jesus, no matter what kind of sin you've ever committed, it's probably not, maybe it's up there with David with adultery and murder, but those are some pretty big sins that only the blood of Christ could cover.

Also makes me think I'm saved by grace and grace alone because it can't be any of my merit because if I'm this sinful,

I can't add anything. And also makes me realize I should be thinking about the Lord Jesus every day.

Jerry Bridges said, as you know, very famously, to preach the gospel to yourself then means that you continually face up to your own sinfulness and then flee to Jesus through faith in his shed blood and righteous life.

It means that you appropriate again by faith that the fact that Jesus fully satisfied the law, that he is your propitiation and that God's holy wrath is no longer directed toward you.

You can be sure of one thing though, when you set yourself to seriously pursue holiness, you will begin to realize what an awful sinner you are.

And if you're not firmly rooted in the gospel and not learned to preach it to yourself every day, you will soon be discouraged and will slack off in your pursuit of holiness.

Jerry Bridges, the Discipline of Grace, 1994. And my last comment, if God forgives you for your sins, he's forgiven me of my sins.

Can't we forgive others? Must we forgive others? How could we not forgive others?

Who in your life are you not forgiving? Who in your life is causing bitterness and replay of what they've done to you and you just won't let it go?

And you just won't say, Lord, that they won't come to me and ask for my goodness. They don't think what they did is wrong.

They've hurt me, they've sinned against me and I'm just going to let it go. And I'm not going to hold it against them.

You forgave me for a lot more sins. I'd like to forgive them. Would you help me? Right, Leon Morris said, we can always think of some good reason why in any particular case we need not to forgive, but that is always an error.

And a theologian that I usually don't quote, but I'll quote here, but won't tell you his name. Everybody thinks forgiveness is a lovely idea until he has someone to forgive.

Well, my name is Mike Abendroth. This is No Compromise Radio Ministry and we wrapped up today, Psalm 51.

What a Psalm. I mean, we love Psalm one and two, the gateway into the Psalms about this great man, the son of man, chapter one and two.

We love the Psalm 103 about praising the Lord and bless the Lord for all his benefits.

We love Psalm 22, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Psalm 23, the

Lord is my shepherd. Psalm 24, the exaltation of the Lord Jesus. We love those Psalms.

We love Psalm 110, this great messianic Psalm. We love Psalm 102 quoted in Hebrews chapter one.

We love Psalm 45 also quoted in Hebrews chapter one. We love

Psalm 113 through 118, the Hallel, the praise Psalms. We love the Psalms of ascent.

We love the Psalms that celebrate God with dancing and joy. And we also love

Psalm 51, right? It is a lament Psalm. It is a penitential Psalm, but it is a

Psalm that we can readily identify with, learn from and be thankful because the direction of the

Psalm ultimately is not on the person like us who sin, but on the one who forgives us.

And in light of that, my name is Mike Abendroth. This is No Compromise Radio Ministry. You can find us at nocompromiseradio .com.

Don't forget the YouTube channel. I haven't done a lot of videos lately, but there's about 150 videos that you can watch, including if you go to AGTV, American Gospel Television, five parts on sanctification, five parts on law gospel and five parts on assurance.