To Sin Against God Alone

Psalm 51 as the Great Penitential Psalm

Well, as I said, our preaching day is from Psalm 51, so if you go ahead and start turning there, this is widely considered, and I think rightly so, to be the greatest penitential psalm in the Bible. A penitential psalm being one of penance, where someone is repenting, they're turning from their sins, and asking for forgiveness.

When I was, uh, well, I used to write a lot of poetry back in high school, and sometimes when I tell people about this, I say, I don't write as much poetry anymore, because I'm not sad enough to be able to do that.

And, uh, anyway, David was very sad when he wrote this. There's a lot of, a lot of heart, and a lot of emotion that went into this. Let's go ahead and please stand for the reading of Psalm 51. To the choir master, a psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet went to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba,.

Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love, according to your abundant mercy. Blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before you.

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, O 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, O God, O God of my salvation, and my tongue will sing aloud of your righteousness.

O Lord, open my lips. 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, O God, you will not despise.

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

Amen. You may be seated. Dear Heavenly Father, we are a people that was brought forth in iniquity, and sinned, and our mothers conceive us. Pray that you would grant us forgiveness as we hear these words.

As we hear of your mercy, I pray that we would have a great assurance in the forgiveness provided by your son's sacrifice. And that it would fill our hearts with joy. In Jesus' name. Amen. I, I've got it.

I've got it forward. I've got it forward. Is it fine? No? Okay. Yeah, something, something else is wrong. Do you want me to do anything? Test it? It's fine. Okay. All right. So as I, uh, let's see, um, yeah, as I've already introduced this, David had sinned against Bathsheba.

David's Sin Against Bathsheba, Uriah, and the Nation

He'd sinned against Uriah, her husband, by taking Bathsheba. Many of you know the story. If you don't, uh, while David was supposed to be away at war, and Uriah, one of his mighty men, was away at war, David slept with his wife, had a child by, uh, by Bathsheba, Uriah's wife, and God cursed the child so the child died.

So many people were affected in this. The whole, the whole nation was wronged when David did not go to war, when he was supposed to go to war. Uriah was wronged. David arranged for his death so that he would not find out, and the people would not find out.

Uh, Bathsheba was wronged, and this child was wronged. David had wronged many people, and this is, uh, one of, if not the greatest sin you see in scripture of someone who truly does have the heart of God sinning, just a great sin, murder, adultery, just all kinds of just very evil, wicked sin.

But here he turns to God in repentance, and you see here also, uh, I don't know how many people are aware of this, but in the Hebrew Bible, the the inscriptions, the beginning introduction is actually, uh, that's actually numbered verses, and this has, uh, this is two verses long, to the choir master, a psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet went to him after he had gone into Bathsheba.

I've not checked all the others, but I think this may be the only inscription that's two verses long and not just one verse. So the, David, as he's writing this, you know, it's very important whoever's collecting the psalms together, or maybe he's writing this inscription himself, either way, it's very important that we know this background, that he had committed a great sin against the Lord.

He was in desperate need of God's forgiveness. And there's this key verse in the middle of this that I think is often misunderstood, verse four. Against you, you only have I sinned. Now, if you've ever wondered what that means, David sinned against God alone, because didn't he sin against Bathsheba?

Didn't he sin against Uriah, against the child, against the people? How are we supposed to understand that he sinned against God alone? So I'd like to, I'd like to go through this opening portion of the psalm and talk about the importance of forgiveness, the the importance of reconciling with brothers, but then, then what does David mean when he says, against you, you only have I sinned?

I'd like to leave you with a, I'm hoping a crystal clear understanding of how he can say that when he has sinned against other people. And it's, I think it's more than just hyperbole. I think calling this hyperbole, you know, just an extreme statement, an exaggeration, doesn't do justice to what he's arguing here.

God's Mercy, Persistent Guilt, and the Need for Forgiveness

So let's begin. Just considering from verse one, have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love, according to your abundant mercy, blot out my transgressions. You know, he's appealing to God's mercy.

Have mercy on me according to your steadfast love, according to your abundant mercy. You know, three times he appeals to God's character, that because of God's mercy, he pleads that God would would heal him.

And then three times he speaks of his own sinfulness. He says, blot out my transgressions, wash me thoroughly from iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. So here he's poetically describing his guilt threefold, describing God's mercy threefold, that God's mercy is great enough to be able to meet David's great sin.

We have all sinned against, we have all sinned against God, and if we are to go to him for mercy, we must do so acknowledging that he is merciful. You're not going to go to God believing that he is less than merciful and receive mercy from him.

We need to recognize him as a merciful God. And David says in verse three, for I know my transgressions and my sin is ever before me. You know, he is just always, um, after he has committed the sin and has been brought to his attention, he's just always afflicted by this guilt.

And consider also that as you read the exchange in the book of Samuel, when David is confronted, as it is written, he immediately repents, and Nathan immediately pronounces that God has forgiven him. But yet David still feels the need to to wrestle with this personally and to come to God for mercy.

Otherwise, why would he have written this, written this psalm after that event? So he goes to the Lord for mercy, for this thing that is always before him. Now, I don't know how universal of an experience this is, but I think most people can, uh, can identify with this feeling of persistent guilt when you have done something wrong and something is not right, and it is just always before you, and you want to be free of this thing.

I think many people, they have much guilt and no outlet for that guilt other than, other than to tell themselves that they're okay, right? They have all this self-loathing because they know that they are, they're horrible people.

They have all this self-loathing, and they have no way to deal with it except, you know, go to, go to people who are going to tell them that they're okay. You know, why do you have all these, um, self-affirmation, you know, self-help tapes and things like that?

Where, you know, people just repeat positive affirmations to themselves that they're a winner, that they're a good person. It's because they know deep down they aren't, and they're trying to, they're trying to assure themselves that it's not true.

It can't be true. I must be okay. That's not going to solve the problem. There's no way. One time, uh, when I was at work, there's a, there's a man I've seen at, at the office occasionally, you know, back when people went to the office for work.

Um, uh, there's a man I've seen at the office occasionally. He's very normally composed inside the office, but I saw him walking to the office, and I suppose he has Tourette's. I don't, I don't know him personally, so I don't know if that's his diagnosis or anything, but he was just, every, you know, he'd walk just normal, and, but then every five seconds he would just yell, help, help me!

Just, and, uh, and as I saw this, I felt, I felt really heavy in my heart, not because I found it awkward to walk by this guy who's, you know, uh, just exploding with this, uh, you know, socially awkward, uh, disorder, but because I imagined that, that he might be going through something very similar that I have in the past when I have felt similarly and just wanted to just utter out just because I, guilt is so heavy on my heart.

Just help me, help me, save me from my sin. It will do no good to deny it. We need true forgiveness. We need true forgiveness. We need complete forgiveness. And David says, against you, you only, if I send.

Reconciling with Others and Confessing Sin

Now, before I go into that, I want to go ahead and affirm that, yes, David did sin against other people. I will explain this in a minute, but yes, David did sin against other people. He sinned against Uriah.

He sinned against Bathsheba. He sinned against the people. He sinned against his own child. And it is important that we reconcile with others. You know, we are not the, we're not the hold grudges. Hebrews 12 14 says, strive for peace with everyone and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord.

You know, if you are not striving to be at peace with others, you are not striving for holiness. You will not see the Lord. You must be one who is, who's striving for peace with others. Matthew 5 23 and 24 says, so if you're offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go.

First be reconciled to your brother and then come and offer your gift. You see that, you know, pretty much here at the end of Psalm 51 where David says, you know, I can't offer sacrifices to you because you require a contrite heart.

You require repentance first. You know, we must, and as much as we can, uh, reconcile with others. God does not, He does not need our worship. He calls for something much deeper than these external actions.

And in addition to, uh, reconciling with others, we ought to confess our sins to others. James 5 says, therefore, brothers, confess your sins to one another that you may be healed. Prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.

You know, this is why we begin our prayer sessions with prayers of confession, telling God that we are sinful people. Prayer of a righteous person has much power as working. If we are not, if we are not open about our sinfulness, about our sins, we're not one who God hears our prayers.

And, you know, think about it. If you say, well, I've confessed my sins to God and that's good enough, and you're not willing to confess your sins to others, have you really been honest with God? You know, John 3 talks about how the one who loves the darkness, it's because he doesn't want the light to expose his sins.

You know, if you've, if you said you've brought your sins into the light to God, but then aren't willing to bring them into the light before men, you know, knowing that they're forgiven, are you, have you really brought them before the Lord?

I would say no. I would say you have not. Now, there might be times when it's inappropriate to bring your sins to others, right? There are some things that, you know, if I have some sexual sin, I'm not going to go confessing this to women inappropriately.

But all the same, you must, you must be one who confesses your sin, who's willing to bring that into the light. Now, now having put this forward that we are, that we have, do indeed sin against others, that we ought to reconcile with others as much as we can, let me go ahead and consider this.

Why David Says Against You, You Only Have I Sinned

What he says, against you, you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight. There are a couple of options that people have put forward. One is very bad, and I don't think there are many people who actually buy this, but that that basically no one else saw when he did this, right?

It was only God who saw. I think most people know that David's not talking about just that there were no witnesses, right? Instead, instead there's something more. Now, what a lot of people say too is, okay, well, David sinned against these parties.

He sinned against God. He sinned against Uriah and Bathsheba. But his sin against God is the greater sin, right? So we've got these different sins on a plane, but this one is bigger. That's also not, not enough to explain what's going on in this passage.

Now, there is another, there's another way that's closer, again, closer again to the truth, and that is that all sins against man, because God gives us these commandments not to, not to sin against our neighbor, all sins against another are also sins against God.

Now, that is, that is very true. Proverbs 17 5 says, whoever, whoever mocks the poor insults his maker, right? When we are evil toward someone else, we are being evil toward God. And so that, that is definitely true.

However, I think what David is saying is going even beyond that. He's not just saying that my sins against my fellow man are also sins against God. There is a way that he can really say that his sins are against God alone.

There is a sense in which this is absolutely true. Please turn with me, if you would, to Genesis 9. I'd like to read a little from the, the Noahic covenant, the covenant that God made with, well, with the whole world, but specifically with Noah after Noah landed the ark.

Genesis 9 verse 4. But you shall not eat flesh with its life that is its blood. And for your lifeblood, I will require a reckoning from every beast. I will require it. And from man, from his fellow man, I will require a reckoning for the life of man.

Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man his blood shall be shed. For God made man in his own image. So here God describes life. Now, why is it wrong? Something, you know, I hear from atheists usually who are, you know, arguing against Christianity, like why, you know, God goes around murdering in the Old Testament, you know, he says murder's wrong, and then he goes around and murders.

Well, why is, why is killing someone wrong? It's wrong because you don't own that life. That is someone else's life. You don't have the authority. What God is saying here is that he owns all life. And the reason why it is wrong to kill is because that person's life is, is not yours to take.

It is, in fact, God's life to take. In fact, your own life is not yours to take, right? It is God's life to take. Now, the reason I bring this up is because I think it, it, um, not just illustrates, but shows this dynamic of God's ownership over all things, right?

God truly owns all things, and we are merely stewards of it, even our own lives, right? Even our own lives, we are stewards of it. And so when someone sins by taking another life, their blood must be shed, not because of what they owe the other person.

It's not justice for the other person so much as it is justice for God, whose, this life that he is given to be a steward of, is taken away, right? This person has taken away this life that is owned by God.

You see, all things are owned by God, and so, and only secondarily, stewarded by humanity. And as God, as people sin against others, yes, while they are sinning against others, they are ultimately sinning against the Lord in a, not on a plane, but in a much more significant, eternal, ultimate sense.

Now, just to give one illustration of this, if I am an accountant, uh, working at some kind of firm where I've got some money, and someone steals from my account, right, I might be very personally offended that they did that and, you know, try to get that money back from them, etc.

But now if I get fired from my job, I'm no longer an accountant for this firm or for, you know, whoever owns this money. I no longer have any standing to go after this person and say, hey, you've got to give that money back to me.

It's, you know, I'm no longer a steward of this. My, my stewardship of my life, my stewardship of this money, is a temporary thing. But the firm, or the owner of all these things, his is, is to perpetuity, you know, it is a fixed ownership, so that when that person has committed sin against these parties with this steward involved, while the steward is offended temporarily, the one above is the one who has this fixed offense.

I hope that makes sense. So as, as David has sinned against these other people, right, as he sinned against Uriah, as he sinned against Bathsheba, while they may be offended, as their lives are, are gone, and they are no longer stewards of their lives, they no longer need to be satisfied.

It is God alone who ultimately needs to be satisfied. These others do not. They could hold a grudge. In fact, I am sure that those in hell, apart from regeneration, will hold grudges forever and ever, but it will not matter.

And they may hold grudges about real sins that you have committed against them, but that will not hold any guilt against you. We do not need reconciliation with every single person. We should seek it as much as we can.

We should strive for peace, but we do not need that. We need instead peace with God, and that is why David continues on, saying in verse 4,. Now, however, you understand the first half of verse 4 needs to make sense with the second half of verse 4.

It is important that he has sinned against God alone so that God may be justified in his words and blameless in his judgments. Now, let's take a little thought experiment. Let's say, you know, one percent of his guilt was against Bathsheba, one percent against Uriah, one percent against the people, one percent against his child, and the other 96 was against the Lord.

Okay, so he gets forgiveness from God. He gets forgiveness from, let's say Bathsheba and the people, but then Uriah is dead. He's never been able to reconcile with Uriah. His child that died, never able to reconcile with the child.

Now he's got two percent guilt still over his head. What's he going to do? He has no hope. But, but if he has sinned against God alone, he can have perfect 100 forgiveness without needing to reconcile with those that he cannot reconcile with.

God is capable of being just in his judgments because David has sinned against God alone. Now, a lot of people read this and they think that David is saying, you know, I submit to your judgment. And so if you say that I'm guilty, I'm guilty.

Now he is, he is submitting to his judgment, but the emphasis is not on that God may declare him guilty. God could already declare him guilty even if he hadn't sinned against God alone. Right? If he had only sinned partly against God and partly against these others, you know, they could all declare him innocent and God would still be just to say that he's guilty because he would still have some of the offense by which he could say this, I'm not forgiving him.

Right? The reason why these two halves of the verse go together are not because God is, uh, because David is submitting to God's potential declaration of guilt, though certainly that submission mindset is in there.

He is, he is putting these two together so that he may accept God's declaration of innocence. It is important that he is sinned against God alone so that God may be just when he declares David innocent.

This is, this is of extreme importance. You know, how many times, uh, have you had some feud with someone where there's just not, there's not perfect reconciliation and you know that it's not possible because, because of this person's frame of mind?

Or you sinned against somebody and, you know, maybe it's an older parent who's passed away and you wish, boy, I just wish I could tell him I didn't mean that last thing I said. You're never going to get that chance.

You know, there are people who have, who have, uh, committed abortions. They can never reconcile with their child. But if they know God's character, if they know that he's the owner of all things, they can say, I have sinned against you alone and you can declare me innocent.

You can be just in your judgment when you say that I am innocent. And we know that all this happens because God has sent Jesus Christ. He sent Jesus Christ to die on the cross, to pay perfectly for all our sins against him.

Right? Others, that does not, that does not satisfy them that, you know, Jesus has died. The one who's rotting away in hell and others had done wrong to him, he's not satisfied with Jesus' death. Jesus' death satisfies the Father, the one who is ultimately wronged.

And if we have sinned against multiple parties on an even plane, we have no hope. But if we have sinned against God alone, Jesus' sacrifice is enough for us. And so, David's confession here of God's ownership of all things, of God's justice, is a declaration that God's statement of innocence is enough.

He can be right with the world without having every individual be satisfied with him because it is God's world. He is the owner of all things. And if we know this, if we can find this forgiveness, even when we don't have everyone's forgiveness, if we can find this forgiveness of God's and be satisfied with it in a way that is right and pleasing to him without denying his commands to live at peace and to be reconciled, you know, if we can embrace that without denying these other truths that we should live in with at peace as much as we can, then we can have great joy.

Joy, Praise, and the Cross of Christ

He says in verse 15, Oh Lord, open my lips and my mouth will declare your praise. Once he's delivered from blood guiltiness, he can praise God. He says, I will teach transgressors your ways in verse 13, and sinners will return to you.

If we truly understand how God can be just in declaring us justified, then we can, like David, be overflowing with joy, teach sinners his ways that they might also find forgiveness, that they might also find the cross of Christ.

And we might, with David, open our mouths and declare God's praise because he would not be satisfied with our praise apart from forgiveness. But as we are found in Jesus Christ, there's no more need for self-loathing, for sitting there and thinking about how awful we are, because even though we are, even though we are great sinners, if we are found in Jesus Christ and if we have sinned against God alone, then we are perfectly forgiven and we have all of his righteousness and lack nothing.

Let's pray. Dear heavenly Father, this is a great and wonderful truth. The forgiveness that you've provided in Jesus Christ is full forgiveness, even if even if we may not have perfect relationships with with others in your world, we may have a perfect relationship with you.

We thank you that you are just in your judgments. We thank you. We thank you that you are blameless in your judgment. In Jesus' name. Amen.