Intro
Good morning, Calvary.
I hope you had a good Thanksgiving.
My family and I went down to Joplin for the day to see my parents, who
will be listening to this via podcast, so “Hello, Mom and Dad.” Last week, as a church, you voted me in as
your newest elder and I just wanted to say thank you and I’ll try to live up to
that responsibility.
We have a lot to be thankful for and 1 thing in particular we
can be thankful for is a small Latin phrase Vox Scriptura Vox Dei. Vox is a Latin word meaning voice so Vox
Scriputra Vox Dei means the voice of scripture is the voice of God. This means we don’t need to send some
spiritual mystic on TV a $1000 seed offering to “hear a special word from God” and
if we want to hear from God all we need to do is open our Bible and read it out
loud.
So let me say a quick prayer over us and I will read
Psalm 51 so you can hear God’s sermon first and then we’ll double back and I’ll
just flesh out a few points for you.
Long prayer – Let’s pray. Father we thank you for this Lord’s Day and we thank you for our pastors: Brian and Jay. We pray that they are having a good holiday off from work to recoup with their families and we thank you for the faithful members of this congregation and for this ancient word to us from the past, regarding your servant David. Here we see a plea that the people of God stray not far away from the basic principles of this passage – faith in the Gospel – that you and only you can ultimately forgive sin; that we, your people, must daily recognize our own sin in repentance; that we must resolve ourselves with our need for you to act sovereignly; that we who have been forgiven, we who have feasted on the forgiveness of sins…we must act and we must be the ones now who point others back to the banquet table of Christ. Like David, may our hearts be broken and burdened with our own sin, may we plead with you for forgiveness and for the blessing of the church and for the growth and maturity of the people of God. This we pray…and all of God’s people said? Amen. Read passage!!
Historical Background
If you don’t know much about the Psalms there are about 150,
David wrote about 70-75, of those about 18 are autobiographical and of those
this one is by far the best. As a
matter of fact I think this may be one of the best chapters in the entire
bible. Psalm 51 is a gospel/repentance
song, a plea for mercy and grace written by the great Jewish King – David after
his adultery with Bathsheba and his murder of her husband, Uriah the
Hittite. About a year after these dark
events the Lord sent a prophet, a pastor, Nathan to David’s court with a
parable about an unjust rich man who took a poorer man’s one and only lamb…at
the end of the story David indignant cries, “Unjust! Let this man face judgment!” And it was here that Nathan explained to
David that he was the selfish rich man greedily taking what didn’t
belong to him…and while God promised to ultimately forgive David of his sin, he
also directly told David how he would suffer in this life because of his
crimes.
If you’ve got your notes I’ve tried to break down the Psalm
into 5 parts based off their theme and their paragraphs according to the ESV or
as I like to call it the Elect Standard Version. These 5 sections are: Faith in
the Gospel, True Repentance, Reliance on God, Motivation for Service and a
Petition for God’s People.
Section I – Faith in the Gospel vs. 1-2
A – Mercy
vs. Merit
I love that David starts the Psalm right off with the Gospel.
He trusts that as bad as his sin was God
in his mercy would forgive and cleanse him from all his faults. I know we say we understand that Salvation
is God’s work done for us but from a very young age we are ingrained with
the Merit system.
From what I remember of Pre-school and Kindergarten the
teacher had a large chart with spaces and kids names and the days of the week. Each week students could earn gold stars
by listening and behaving well and whatever and at the end of the week the
students with the most gold stars would earn some reward. Like this, maybe you have studied hard so you
earned that A on a paper, or you worked hard so you earned that raise or
promotion. But that’s not mercy or
grace. Grace would be you were the worst
behaved kid in school so here is your ice cream, or you were the laziest student
in class so here is your A. Maybe you
had the most customer complaints in the entire region, so welcome to management
and a corner office.
Grace is undeserved favor and sometimes its important to be reminded of that, as
it keeps us humble and not thinking too highly of ourselves.
B – Compounding
sin
One of our girls recently got caught in a lie and to squirm
out of it she had to keep coming up with more and more lies to cover it
up. For those who cannot or will not
repent there is often compounding sin.
As David lusts for Bathsheba, then that leads to adultery, then to lies
and deceit to cove it up, then ultimately to the murder of Uriah when the lies
and deceit don’t work. See this is the
way of unrepentant sin; it often makes the sinner’s heart more and more callous
making it less and less likely that you will ever repent and more and more
likely that you will sin again in the future.
That is why a passage like psalm 51 can be such a powerful engine for
real change in a believer’s life.
Section II – True Repentance vs. 3-6
A – For the
believer
Martin Luther famously said in the 1st of his 95
thesis that when our Lord and Master said, “Repent.” He meant that the entire
life of the believer should be 1 of repentance.
We see this too in the mind of David, as he laments over his
sin he uses a particular word in 2 different verses wash which in Hebrew
literally means “to wash clothes,” David is poetically describing himself and
his sin as dirty garments that need cleaned by God. This illusion is used several other times in
Scripture. Once in Revelation chapter 7
when the Apostle John is describing the Saints of God - he calls them those whose robes have been
washed in the blood of the Lamb or in Zechariah chapter 3 when Joshua the high
priest is in a vision before the throne of heaven and his dirty clothes are replaced
by God and there those dirty clothes are explained as all of Joshua’s
iniquities, his faults, and failures.
Friends, if you are someone with a sensitive heart, unsure of God’s
mercy, then this is a great psalm for you.
God’s gift of whiter than white garments, purer than pure
vestments and more righteous than righteous forgiveness is greater than your
sin. That is why you can come to the
Lord in repentance not because you are great in yourself but because His mercy for
you is greater than your wickedness.
B – For the
church
Tying this back to our study of the book of Ephesians, Paul
in Acts 20 is about to die, he knows this and he has 1 last chance to tell the
Christians of Ephesus what they’ll need to know to live the Christian life
without his guidance and he only gives them 3 things: live humbly, repent to
God and trust in the work of Christ.
I fear that the biblical emphases on repentance, which requires time and
self-reflection are being pushed to the wayside today…either because of the
busyness of our lives or because we frankly don’t think our sin is all that bad. And if that is the case I would suggest
re-reading the 10 commandments from Exodus 20 or the sin list in Romans 1. And see how gossiping is still listed alongside
homosexuality and honoring your parents and not coveting your neighbors stuff
is alongside murder and adultery, as grave crimes against God. This may remind us of the seriousness of our
errors. But for those of us believers
that strive for goodness only to fail and begin again we are taught in these
passages that Divine Grace covers our faults the way a cloak covers a
wayward traveler.
One of my favorite ancient writers was a man called Augustine
of Hippo. Augustine said if you
recognize yourself being too critical of others then it’s because you are in
need of repentance of your own sins.
Listen to this quote, “Men are hopeless creatures – the less they
concentrate on their own sin, the more interested they become in the sins of
others. They seek to criticize, not
correct. Unable to excuse themselves,
they are ready to accuse others.”
Section III – Relying on God vs. 7-12
A – God must
be at work
David gives us another vivid picture – that of being purged
with hyssop, which is an illustration from Leviticus about the cleansing of
leapers. See in God’s eyes our sin is an
incurable disease with 1 of 2 outcomes either eternal death or new life
“in Christ.” In repentance, David shows
us his longing to be spiritually cleansed from moral defilement. David’s example is that a believer should
desire renewal back into holiness as much as the joy of their salvation. David in recognition of his own sin does not
give us weak vows toward moral improvement, excuses or blame-shifting, he
doesn’t even see his own ability to fix himself but begs the Sovereign God to
do it to him and for him.
Create in me a pure heart, oh God!
Grant me faith, gift me repentance and make me willing to fulfill your
purposes.
B – the
Dependent Will
Very popular in American theology is a term called Free will;
Libertarian Free will has to do with a separation or independence from
God. As an example, we are free from the
rules and regulations put forth by the Queen of England and their Prime
Minister because we are not British; we’re free from that.
Conversely, let me give you a few points from the NT
regarding our dependent will. We
are dependent on God for being drawn to God (John 6), conversion (John 3),
faith (Eph. 2), repentance (2nd Timothy 2), the opening of our
hearts, understanding of Scripture, the fruits of the Spirit, and on and on and
on. David recognizes his need for
God to be the one at work in his life; if you cleanse me I’ll be
clean. It’s not a work he can do on his
own, and that’s what motivates and impassions his prayer life before God. This is why we can pray to God that he
will act in saving our friends and family, many who do not even will to be his
children yet, who do not even recognize their need for a Savior. David is our example for Man’s utter reliance
on God in the forgiveness of sins, correction and guidance for life.
Section IV – Motivation for Service vs. 13-16
We have already seen earlier that the Gospel is about God’s
work in saving sinners and not due to our merit in earning that
Salvation. Yet here we also see a 2nd
universal truth for believers that those to have been forgiven, long for
others to be forgiven as well. This has
been the biblical motivation for service and missions since the days of
David. In this section we see that David
in recognition of God’s mercy, longs to preach, teach, praise and worship and
lead others in these acts as well. If
you have no concern for the growth of the church or the salvation of sinners
then perhaps you should look to yourself for sin in need of repentance.
Again from my friend Martin Luther, “The Christian’s life
consists of nothing but grace. To lose
oneself in the depth of grace is our truest theology. God loves those who acknowledge their
lostness; he purifies them and sets them free.
Anyone who came to God in a lost condition brought him the most
appropriate offering. True theology is
turning from your lost condition to trust in God.” And thus true service is pointing others to
that place of forgiveness as well.
Section V – A Petition for God’s People vs. 18-19
Like David we are called to prayer, begging for blessings for
the church “Zion,” and for God’s people “Jerusalem.” What this section reminds us is that prayer
should not be taken for granted – prayer is the best weapon a Christian
has. God is like the A-bomb in the
Christian’s arsenal, this is what we should be doing, praying for God’s gospel
to go forth, for its gaining ground, and for God’s people. The most underappreciated but most powerful
work in the church today is prayer, unrelenting; never quitting prayer that God
will move in his church and among his people.
Conclusion:
Before we close let me just say that behind this chapter,
behind the forgiveness of sin, behind repentance, behind a sovereign Savior looms
large the cross of Christ. God gave
David the most painful of object lessons ever.
This confrontation between the prophet Nathan and David happens in 2nd
Samuel 12 and in that meeting God teaches David something of substitution. God tells David that his sin will cost the
life of his and Bathsheba’s 1 and only son, their beloved son; the son of the
king. In this we see the foreshadowing
of our substitute Jesus Christ, the son of the True King, who died in the place
of our sin, to bring us to repentance and faith and forgiveness. Let us be thankful for that this holiday
season.
Let’s pray:
You must do this God.
We, your people, are dependent on you for the salvation of sinners, for the
advancement of your Gospel, for faithfulness, keep us willing to serve, we pray
for this and we pray like Charles Spurgeon did when contemplating this chapter–
“Oh let us seek after this brokenness of heart, for however excellent our words
may be, yet if the heart is not conscious of the blackness and
hell-deservingness of sin, we cannot expect to find mercy with the Judge of all
the earth. If the Lord wills to break
your heart today, consent to have it broken; asking that he may sanctify that
brokenness of spirit to bring you in earnest to a Savior, that you may yet be
numbered with the righteous’d ones.” We are thankful for you Lord, bless your
people and bless your church. Amen.
