"Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions." -Psalm 51:1 (NIV)
Faith Baptist Church
Psalm 51- A Psalm of Repentance
- Well good morning, faith family. Will you pray with me? Lord, I'm excited for this morning and I just keep thinking about the desire to just know you more. Lord, not just a surface level of who we think you are and not just a surface level of how we present ourselves, but our innermost being, to your innermost being, Lord, we wanna connect with you, we wanna know you. We wanna be secure and whole in you and I pray that for each person here to mend the broken hearts, Lord, to make us more like you, more connected to you. So may your word have its intended effect in us today in Jesus' name, amen. Well, I wanna start off by telling you guys a story, okay? We're right around the corner for presidential elections. Wahoo. And I just want you to picture a presidential candidate who during a debate openly confesses to a charge of murder of someone in their political party. How do you think that would go over in that election? It shouldn't, okay. No, I'm not going into the deep end here, all right, in terms of I'm cutting it off right there. I'm going no further, okay? From here on out, I'm doing hypothetical, okay? But there is a real story of a presidential-type figure who openly confessed to murdering someone in his own political party. And another person from his political party confronted him openly about what he had done. And this person said, yeah, I did do that. He had killed a man in his political party in order to take his wife. And he was caught red-handed in that. And this person wrote a poem. It was a prayer to God in that situation. And I want you to imagine probably what he was feeling. He was feeling rather exposed. He was feeling like he was in danger, okay? His political career ruined, not a let alone, just as a citizen, okay? There's probably a death penalty in store for him. And so he turns to God in prayer. And he does so in such exemplary fashion that over 3,000 years later, this prayer has been encouraging Christians over the centuries, your grandparents, great, great, great, great grandparents, okay? They've latched onto these words as a way to pour out to God. When confronted with correction, this is the example. And who I'm telling you about is, he was a presidential type figure. He was actually a king. He had complete authority over the nation of Israel. His name was King David. And he actually wrote most of the Psalms we're looking at this summer. And King David had been caught in adultery with Bethsheba. She was pregnant. And so he sent Bethsheba's husband to the front lines in a calculated fashion to pull a retreat in order to kill him. And David thought it was all covered up. Until his buddy Nathan, that pesky Nathan, came to him and shared a story with David. He didn't openly confront, he did so with some tact. Because remember the last guy that David didn't like got killed? So this took some guts for Nathan to do this. But he shared with David a story of a man who had 100 sheep, many, many sheep. And yet he took someone who had only one little lamb as their pet in order to eat for supper. And David thought that's wrong. That man should die. And Nathan said, you are the man. And David was cut to the heart. I'm sure he was embarrassed. I'm sure he felt insecure. And yet as he looked inward, he realized he wasn't the man he should be. He went, it went deeper than just sorry about the consequences. It went deeper to an internal look at his own heart. And as we've been looking in this series about a piece of paper and how sometimes life looks like it's ripped up. This is the case where someone's not looking externally at the wrongs in the world, but looking internally at the wrongs of their own heart. Realizing, I'm not the man I should be. And he goes to talk to God about that. And I don't know about you, but I'm confronted with that often in my own heart to say, I'm not the man I should be God. But I want that path forward. I need you to put those pieces together. And this is the cry of David asking God put those pieces together. There's many Psalms in the book of Psalms that are a Psalm of confession, a Psalm of repentance. And they model to us what that prayer can look like. At Men's Breakfast yesterday, we were talking at the table, why are people usually afraid in David's situation to let their sin come out, to be exposed, or to be confronted? And I was thinking about the way that this Psalm starts and how I think most people are afraid that they're gonna get what they deserve. It's kind of logical in a sense. The wages of sin is death, the scripture says. And so there's a fear we're gonna get what we deserve. And yet in order to come out into the light, we have to trust that there's a mercy of God available for those who seek it. The definition of mercy being not getting what you deserve in the full consequences of your sin. The fact that we're all living and breathing right now is evidence that we have not received the full consequences of our sin. Verse one, it says this. Oh, this sets the stage, go back a slide, I'm sorry. So it says in the scripture here, it says that this is a psalm of David when the prophet Nathan came to him after David had committed adultery with Bathsheba. And then in verse one, it says this, "Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love, according to your great compassion, blot out my transgressions, wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin, for I know my transgressions and my sin is always before me." So right off the bat, he writes this in what he knows to be true about God. It says, "God, I know that you have mercy. I know that you have great compassion and unfailing love." He roots himself there first, right? He's disoriented about everything else, but he's saying, "Okay, I know that God is constant and that these things are true. That God is merciful. He has unfailing, hussed love as the Hebrew calls it. And he has great compassion. And on the basis of those three things, he requests three things. He says, "Blot out, wash away and cleanse." He asks for three things to be blotted out and washed away and cleanse his transgressions and his iniquities and his sin. Usually that word blot out is used in the scripture when someone gets blotted out, all right? When Noah's flood came, it says that God decided to blot out those that weren't in the ark. And instead, he says, "Instead of blotting me out, blot out my sin." That word wash away was a laundry term of the day. They put clothes and water and they'd beat it silly to get the dirt out. He says, "Don't do that to me, but do that to my sin." Cleanse me from my sin. And he sees this rip in his own character, a moral defect that stems way back. He says, "I know my transgression and my sin is always before me." He's not pretending otherwise. He's accepting that. And in verse four, he turns his attention to God. He's not answering to Nathan. He's answering to God. He's saying, "You know what? Two times, it says you and you alone have I sinned." He sees that as that greatest defense. And done what is evil in your sight. He's not rationalizing him compared to the other average person. He's saying, "You know God, I am not what I was created to be. I can feel it in my heart and in my desires." He accepts this correction. And he says, "You are right and you're verdict and you are justified when you judge. For surely I was sinful at birth. Sinful from the time my mother conceived me. Yet you desired faithfulness even in the womb. You taught me wisdom in the secret place. He accepts that from birth he was sinful. We would call this original sin. It's not just accepting, you know what? Sometimes I make a mistake. Sometimes I act contrary to ever heard that before. Someone says, "You know, that's not who I really am. You know, I'm sorry about that. That's not me." Well, Christian theology said, "No, that is you." The mouth speaks and we act out of the overflow of our heart of what is there. And who can claim to do the good that they ought to do as Jesus would, as God would, that who would claim that we can match his character in everything, we can't. We're sinful. And yet verse six says, "You desired faithfulness." Another translation would say, "You delight in truth, in the inner parts, that deep within us, we'd have no pretense, no falsehood." But we would be people of integrity in every way. And so, verses seven through nine, we see these words again, blot out in inverse order. We see blot out. We see wash me and cleanse the same words used again in inverse order. And it says, "Cleanse me with hiss up and I will be clean. Wash me and I will be whiter than snow. Let me hear joy and gladness. Let the bones of you have crushed rejoice. Hide your face for my sins and blot out all of my iniquity. This person wants to hear joy and gladness because they're experiencing sorrow and sadness. That's an effective sin. Physically, he's feeling crushed in this way. He wants to be like the infomercial. They give me whitest snow as the vacuum cleaner goes over the dirty rug. He wants to be cleansed with hiss up, which hiss up was a flowering plant that was a stalk with many little flowers on it. And it acted like a sponge. Almost like a mop that would grow out of the ground. And he says, "Use this and mop up my mess." "Mop up my mess." On the topic of mopping up our mess, the Old Testament, when Israel became a nation at the time of the Exodus, they were to take a branch of hiss up, dip it in the blood of a lamb, and spread it over the doorpost of their house. That by the blood of the lamb, God's wrath would pass over them and they would receive mercy. Likewise, when Moses gave the law to the nation of Israel and the other side of the Red Sea, he took hiss up and dipped it in the blood of an animal and sprinkled it over God's people. Saying God is a Tony and cleaning up your mess for you. In the temple, when the temple was established, they would take hiss up, again, dip it in the blood of the lamb and spread it over the people to say you've been cleansed, you've been purified. And in John 19, 29, as Jesus hung on the cross, they took a branch of hiss up and touched it to Jesus' lips, given a nod to the fact that God was cleaning up the mess. He was absorbing all the sin, past, present, and future, and taking it upon himself, those character and moral defects in our heart that we can't run away from, that we can't fix in our own Jesus, saying, I'm gonna fix that. I'm gonna hide my face from your sins and I'm gonna blot out your iniquity. In the Psalmist here, he sees the need for that Jesus. In verses 10 through 12, he says, God, you're gonna have to do this. I can't do it on my own. This is a man who's hit rock bottom and found that actually the firmest foundation he can have is relying on God and not himself. And he says, creating me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit to sustain me. Beautiful words. Has anyone ever sung a song with those words in them? I know there's many out there. They're just beautiful to wash over you. And I love how the psalmist in here is sees a need for a creator God. That the God who said, let light shine out of darkness and Genesis 1-1 would need to create in him a new heart. And he sees a need for a present God, that God's, who's Holy Spirit would be with him. And he sees a need for a saving God. A goddess would bring the joy of salvation. That word, salvation translated in Hebrew is Yeshua. We see Jesus again in the songs. He sees a need for a Trinitarian God, a creator to be present. The Holy Spirit to be with him. And to Jesus to save him. Verse 13 through 15. David gives a gift to us in his transparency. He says, then I will teach transgressors, your ways, so that sinners will turn back to you. Deliver me from the guilt of bloodshed, O God, you who are God my Savior. And my tongue will sing of your righteousness. Open my lips, Lord, and my mouth will declare your praise. He realizes, you know what? I'm gonna use this as a testimony. So that future generations would be encouraged that they can, as it says, turn back to God and rely on the mercy and great compassion of God. He's modeling repentance. What a gift to us. What a gift to us. He's sharing to us God, his Savior. God, our Yeshua, God, our Jesus, who comes and put the pieces of our hearts back together so that we can be who we ought to be once again. And then in the closing of the chapter, it says this. You do not delight in sacrifice or I would bring it. You do not take pleasure and burn offerings. In other words, he doesn't delight in just the surface stuff. The external stuff, but he wants your heart. He wants what's inside. He says, but my sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart. You, God, will not despise. This is the example for how to receive correction. And we usually don't do it this way. There's something called pride. Pride hides our own sin. It despises the sin of others and casts them away from our presence. As it says, back up in verse 11 that David was afraid of. He said, don't cast me from your presence. But we have a cancel culture that has very little mercy. It receives very little mercy and it gives very little mercy. And oftentimes that fear keeps people from addressing God, even in the first verse. I remember talking to one person after church and they said, said, have you talked to God about that yet? They said, I don't know if he'd want to take my call. Right? When you don't even trust that God is a merciful and compassionate God, you don't even pray verse one. You don't even start a prayer. You already assume he has cast you away and despised you, and that is a lie from the enemy church to keep you in darkness, to keep you from love. And yet you are called to be the beloved of God. First John says that if we confess our sin, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sin and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Colossians 1 says that in Christ, we are holy in his sight without blemish and free from accusation. As we continue in the faith, establish and firm, not move from the whole pilled out in the gospel. These are truthful words, church. Words that guarantee that you do receive mercy and you do receive love in the presence of God. And a conviction as a church that you will receive mercy and you will receive love in the presence of God's family. What does it look like to be a community that does this? That's what the remaining verses pick up on in verses 18 through 19. Says, "May it please you to prosper Zion "to build up the walls of Jerusalem. "Then you will delight in the sacrifices of the righteous "and burn offerings offered whole. "Then bulls will be offered on your altar." I love how it says offerings offered whole, not just surface level stuff, not just parts of you, not just the piece of you that you think God would accept, but everything offered to him. 'Cause he wants to bring it back together. He will create in you a new heart. And he is pleased when he who are honest with him and bring all of yourself to him. And as a community, what does this look like? There's this vision of the walls of Jerusalem being tall and strong. A people of God that are stable and firm. And I want to start off about what does this not look like? What if we don't do this? What if we let pride hide our sin and cast away others for theirs? We're not much of a community at all at that point. We're not a family at all at that point. But a family knows one another, sees one another, loves one another. In my previous church, I talked to one gentleman before Father's Day, I was collecting input about what it feels like to be a father. His point, what he enjoyed most about being a dad is that they know me and love me anyways. From 90 year old lips, I thought that was profound wisdom. We need to be a family that knows one another and acts as God would. And to do that, we need to be like David first and receive mercy. You see, if the greatest problem in the world is the sin of someone else, then we are missing what the scripture is telling us today that starts with our own heart. The biggest problem in the world is my sin and you might say, well, I could go find someone who's worse. When does God ever say in the scriptures, hey, at least you're better than the next guy? That next guy grew up in a whole set of circumstances, by the way, it's between you and God. And I tell you, our character is far from his. God knew that. That's why he sent his son, Jesus Christ, to die for our sins. And that he sends his Holy Spirit to anyone who receives that gift through faith. That we might be given a new heart. The scripture says that therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. There's such a thing as insecurity, even in the church, that doesn't need to be there. Paul tells the Galatians, "You started off believing the gospel. "Who cut in to turn you a different direction "to get you to think that now you have to earn it on your own." And so we root ourselves as the church of God, as the family of God, holy leaning on the mercy and great compassion of God. We start out that way, we run that way, and we finish that way at the doors of heaven. Holy relying on Yeshua, our Savior, to put the problem of our own sin together. So how did you respond last time you were corrected? When you received confrontation and correction, how did you respond? There can be an impulse to say, well, who are they to judge me? There can be an insecurity to say, am I good enough, oh no, what must I do to be acceptable? Or do we root it as David did? Saying, you know what? It's true, I might not need to answer to anyone. Except God, and maybe God is using that person to point my heart to look vertically and have a conversation, to say, God, would you make me more like you? And I need more of your mercy and more of your love to be more like you. And as we handle confrontation like David, we're now in a position to be like a Nathan, to lovingly and truthfully, encourage others to have that conversation with God. They're not answering to us. They're answering to God. We say, hey, how is your soul? How is your relationship with God? And in some ways, I think your actions are showing that you're not, have not been receiving the mercy and love from him that's there. 'Cause if you did, you might be acting a little different. But said gently, said lovingly. That can be a great gift just as Nathan gave David. And I want to close with this. As I looked in the scripture, isn't first Chronicles 14, it gives a list of all of David's children. And we know that David had a child with Bathsheba. And after seven days, that child died. And then he had another child, and that child became Solomon. And if this list is chronological order, which I believe it is, that child that died, David named Nathan. How often do you name the person who calls you out? Do you use their name to name your nextborn child? But David was a man after God's own heart, the scripture says. Which, when you combine that with this song, makes me say wow. Part of me thinks maybe he could have found a better guy to say was a man after it was in a heart. But the point was that David leaned wholly on God. He didn't get caught up on the externals or the circumstances, but he looked between him and God. And he accepted those words from a friend that encouraged him to get right with God willingly. So I hope these words encourage you this week before you get caught up on the externals, look up. Find that firm footing in God's mercy and love. Let's pray. Lord, I pray against the sin of pride. Lord, it was the sin that fell the angel Lucifer in his pride. I pray it's not the sin that falls us or our church. May we accept correction like David did, putting our eyes on you and you alone. Lord, might that be an acceptable offering, a whole offering in your sight as we give all our heart to you? May you make us more like you as we know you more. Jesus name, amen.