Psalm 51 | God Forgives

Last week we dissected sin, and it wasn't pretty. [Show 'Lamby' slide] Don't worry, no stuffed animals were harmed in the making of this slide. If you were with us, you’ll remember, it was a sobering study unwrapping David’s King-sized sin!

We learned that sin is never something to celebrate! Right, could you imagine devoting a month of celebration and pride to what David did!? The rape. The murder. The cover up and virtue signaling! It would be one messed up and confused society to spend a month celebrating sin like that!

We were all reminded last week that we are not a people who celebrate sin. Why? Well because

sin always takes us farther than we ever intend to go

it pays in death every single time

and sin brings God’s judgement down upon our lives,

but we concluded last week’s study with a glimmer of hope.

The hope is that as severe as God’s judgement is and as severe as the consequences of sin are, God’s mercy is more! Grace, forgiveness, cleansing and restoration are all available because of Jesus Christ and his death and resurrection!

However, God's forgiveness isn't automatic. If you think that we all do bad things, but God's forgiveness covers everything for everyone without condition, you'd be mistaken.

Not everyone will receive God's forgiveness, because it requires something from us, which you can think of like a trade-in. Recently, I traded in old Blue here, for a newer upgraded car. It was great day! I’m glad to be rid of that old junker! That car dealer gave me more money than old blue was worth for something far better. It was a great trade and that my friends is a picture of what God will do for us when we repent! Repentance is the pathway to reception! When we trade in our junk to God, we position ourselves to receive His forgiveness and goodness!

Last week we dissected sin; this morning we'll dissect repentance. We'll see that while God's forgiveness isn't automatic, it's always available to us through repentance. We receive from God when we repent. And when we genuinely turn from our sin back to God, His forgiveness leads to profound transformation in our lives.

Through David's prayer in Psalm 51, we'll explore the journey of true repentance and its power.

So if you have your Bibles with you, I’d encourage you to open them. While you’re getting there, to Psalm 51, let me set the context for you.

The book of Psalms is a collection of poems that are meant to provide a comprehensive guide for relating to God through all of life's experiences and emotions. You can think of Psalm 51 as a personal journal entry from David. The emotion David is showing us how to navigate is the emotion of having just been found out!

If you’ll remember from last week, God sent the Prophet Nathan to confront the many sins of David surrounding the rape of Bathsheba and the murder of her husband Uriah. Nathan told a parable of a rich man and poor man and a little lamby on the barbecue! David was outraged by the injustice and then Nathan hits him between the eyes: You. Are. That. Man!

Now before we look at David’s righteous response, let me first point out what David could have done. He as the King could have flown off into a rage and had Nathan killed! Kings did and do that sort of thing all the time. In the history of Israel’s Kings, many of them only kept “prophets” around who told them what they wanted to hear and the real prophets of God, the ones who called out sin and injustice, well some Kings put those guys in prison and pits or had them killed altogether! David could have flown off in a rage and continued to cover up, justify, explain away and/or celebrate his sin!

And I know that seems like a stretch… how could David have celebrated this sin? Hear me out. Well Bathsheba and him were in love. Uriah was poor. David is the King. He’s rich. Bathsheba is moving on up in the world! The heart wants what the heart wants. They complete each other!

Indeed David could have continued to cover up, celebrate and explain away his sin when confronted by Nathan, and Church if he would have done so, forgiveness from God would have been withheld from him.

This is because forgiveness is not automatic. Here’s the sobering reality about God, God will give us what we want and if what we want is sin then sin and it’s wages is what he’s going to give us.

You see when you and I choose to cover up and celebrate sin, what we are saying with our words and actions is that we love sin and Satan more than we love God and if we choose to persist in our love and pursuit of sin, then sin and it’s wages is what we’re going to get.

Thankfully, David’s journal entry shows us a heart that desires God more than it desires sin. David’s journal entry show us a heart of repentance and a desire to turn away from sin or trade in his sin, which is what it takes to receive the forgiveness of God through the death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ; an acknowledgement of our missing God’s mark, a turning from our sin and back to God in humility.

So with all that said, let’s dissect what repentance looks like in the life of a follower of Christ and what it’s results will be if we learn to practice it like David.

We’ll read the entirety of Psalm 51 and as we do I want you to be on the lookout for 3 things: Genuine repentance cleanses, restores and transforms.

We’ll read it and then unpack these 3 things.

Psalm 51 (NIV)

For the director of music. A psalm of David. When the prophet Nathan came to him after David had committed adultery with Bathsheba. 1 Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions. 2 Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. 3 For I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me. 4 Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight; so you are right in your verdict and justified when you judge. 5 Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me. 6 Yet you desired faithfulness even in the womb; you taught me wisdom in that secret place. 7 Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow. 8 Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones you have crushed rejoice. 9 Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquity. 10 Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. 11 Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. 12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me. 13 Then I will teach transgressors your ways, so that sinners will turn back to you. 14 Deliver me from the guilt of bloodshed, O God, you who are God my Savior, and my tongue will sing of your righteousness. 15 Open my lips, Lord, and my mouth will declare your praise. 16 You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it; you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings. 17 My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart you, God, will not despise. 18 May it please you to prosper Zion, to build up the walls of Jerusalem. 19 Then you will delight in the sacrifices of the righteous, in burnt offerings offered whole; then bulls will be offered on your altar.

First off, genuine repentance cleanses (vv. 1-7)

If you look within vv. 1-7 you’ll see 3 words repeated frequently. Transgression, iniquity, and sin. Transgression is a word used to identify the behavior of a traitor or disloyal subject. It means to rise up in open defiance of authority with an aim to overthrow or act in complete opposition to the authority’s demands. So when you hear the word transgression, think toddler. Right, toddlers are traitors. They act in direct defiance of their parents’ authority with an aim to overthrow them or at the very least wear them down to putty that can be manipulated in their hands!

I joke, but transgression is not really a laughing matter when we’re talking about God and His Kingdom. Transgression is rebellion and it’s treason.

Iniquity is another word we don’t often hear but it’s one David repeats often in this Psalm. Iniquity means guilt from acting contrary to the will of God. It’s the guilt that comes from living contrary to God’s good design and created order and laws.

Which brings us to the word sin. Sin at it’s simplest means to miss the mark. In this case the mark is God’s moral standards.

God defines good and evil. He desires good for all of us and when we fail to be good, we miss the mark and it’s called sin.

Now, why am I telling you all this? Good question. 2 Reasons: the first is that these words teach us who’s in charge of this world and the order of things, and contrary to what toddlers and much of the world believes, we are not the judge, jury and executions in our world or lives! We are not the sovereign. We are not on the throne. We don’t get to determine what is good and evil for ourselves. We don’t set our own moral standards. There is no such thing as your truth! There is God’s Truth, capitol T and He is the judge, jury and execution, the arbiter of that truth! He’s the King and we are subjects in His Kingdom.

Which means we have 2 options, we can live loyal lives to the King in agreement with the laws of the land that he’s laid out for us. We can obey and love Him and live loyal to Him, or we can rebel. We can live in rebellion and disobedience, choosing to live contrary to His will and His ways!

Now hang with me, I know this is hard for us because we live in a democracy where the people get to choose what we want rather than a monarchy where the word of the King is the law of the land. So here’s what I want you to do. Think with me about a culturally accepted moral standard. Like a really charged issue right now. Hopefully everyone in here would say and believe that racism is wrong. Right, treating someone differently based solely on the pigmentation of their skin. I can’t think of anything more stupid or basic. Racism is evil. All people are created in the image of God and deserve to be treated with respect and dignity until their actions prove otherwise.

Now imagine, someone walks in to this room and starts dropping the N word left and right and just being a straight up racist jerk.

One of you pulls out your phone and puts a video of this racist on the internet.

What would happen? The person would be shamed, ridiculed and labeled as a piece of human garbage before our nation.

Ok, that shame, that disgust, that desire to push that person to the outskirts of our camp and culture, that feeling is what the Bible calls unclean. The person has violated a moral standard and as such is considered a piece of human garbage, unclean and this Church is what sin does to all of us in God’s eyes.

And we can all agree with this, when God’s standards match up with society’s standards, but it becomes an issue when God’s standards and society’s standards don’t align. When society wants to celebrate sin, God’s got an issue with that. The toddler is transgressing His good designs and this iniquity, this sin makes the toddler unclean like that racist we were just taking about! Deserving of discipline and judgement even if the toddler persists in it’s own way!

Why? Well because God’s the King and his subjects have 2 options, loyalty or rebellion.

And this is why forgiveness cannot be automatic. What kind of a parent would you be if you let your toddler follow their hearts! You would be a terrible parent, an abusive parent, even. So too, God will not reward sin and rebellion because sin pays in death and so to receive forgiveness we must repentant and repentance is simply coming back into agreement with God!

Repentance is the pathway to receiving goodness from God! It’s trading in our junkers for something far nicer and better!

Look at what David does in vv. 1-7. It’s a beautiful trade-in!

He acknowledges his need for mercy. David knows he doesn’t get to define good and evil for himself. He can’t just say, well this is my truth so deal with it! No, he knows that God is King and Judge and because He’s broken God’s moral standards, he now stands rightfully under judgement thus David correctly pleads for mercy!

He also acknowledges his sin! David doesn’t try to justify or explain away, he states simply the truth and reality. He has missed the mark of God’s moral standard. God taught David His standards, but David rebelled, like a toddler, he transgressed and as such God is justified in his verdict and judgement.

And lastly, having coming into agreement with God’s truth, David knows he now stands unclean, a piece of human garbage who needs to be cleansed or purified and he recognizes that God as the King is the only one who can offer this absolution!

Do you see how genuine repentance is the only thing that can bring cleansing? Covering over, covering up, explaining away and celebrating sin, all of this just makes us more unclean. It would be like that racist doubling down on his racism! Turning from sin. Agreeing with God. Repentance is the only thing that can cleanse and purify us, it’s the only thing that can position us in a place to receive goodness from God!

If we would turn, God will cleanse us. We will be made clean as the Psalm says, washed whiter than snow!

Repentance is the pathway to receiving cleansing from God!

Along with that, genuine repentance restores!

After David aligns his heart once again with God’s Truth and seeks His mercy and cleansing. He moves on with a heart of repentance that seeks restoration.

Church sin is a thief. It steals life and goodness from God’s people. It’s steals trust, joy, and peace from God’s people BUT through repentance, restoration is possible!

Having coming back into agreement with the King, David asks for this good and righteous king to restore joy and gladness to him. He says, let the bones you crushed Oh Lord, let these bones rejoice once again.

Some of you are wading through the wasteland of sin at the moment, Your joy has been stolen, trust broken, it feels like the weight of the world is coming down on you, crushing your bones!

If that’s you, know this, if you would turn back to the Lord, joy and gladness can be yours once again! Trust can be rebuilt. Your iniquities can be blotted out, like they never happened in the first place. Your trauma at the hands of sin, can be healed and turned into a testimony of God’s goodness, mercy and power to restore and redeem!

I love the words spoken through the prophet Joel in Joel 2:25-26, where God promises His people that He can restore what the locust have eaten. In a farming culture locust were a pestilence of judgement and destruction. A swarm of locust could come in and decimate your crop and therefore your wealth and the food source for your family! But God, God says that He can restore what the locust have eaten! Translation, God can restore, rebuild, return what sin destroyed and stole!

And for those of you who’ve fallen into sin, one of sin’s deception is that it wants you to believe this is who you are and this is how you’ll always be! New life is impossible because your heart is garbage. You’re unclean! And if it were up to you and your own strength sin would have a point, but David recognizes that if God’s involved, you can get a new heart! You can get a spirit that has new desires, desires to be loyal to King Jesus and to live for Him rather than one that is bent on sin and rebellion!

Genuine repentance, Church, brings restoration of our joy and gladness, restoration of hearts and desires and restoration of our relationship with the Father which is the sustaining power and presence in all of this!

Even though your sin should cast you from the Holy King’s presence if you would repent before Him, because of Jesus death and resurrection God promises that He will always be glad to see you and that when He looks on you, He will see you as His new creation rather than a piece of sinful human garbage!

And for those of us who have repented and come to him in faith, we know this makes all the difference. Right, Jesus told a parable in the new testament about forgiveness. It goes like this.

There was a servant in the King’s service who wracked up terrible and crushing debt because of mismanagement and the King brings this servant in to judge him. He calls him on this debt. While there, the servant pleads for mercy and the King grants it. He forgives a 100 million dollar loan! It’s extravagant mercy! The servant is overjoyed but he goes out from the King’s presence immediately to track down a man that owes him some money, 1,000 bucks. The man can’t pay, so the servant has him sent to jail until he can settle this debt. The King hears of this and is obviously upset! How could this servant treat others, with no mercy, after the King had shown him such extravagant mercy! Answer, this was not one of the King’s men, but a wicked servant, a disloyal subject, who did indeed deserve the King’s punishment after all!

Church this is how you know if you’re one of the King’s children, if you turn from sin and experience joy in God’s presence that flows out from you to others! Those who have been forgiven much love much! It’s what you do!

Repentance is the pathway to cleansing, restoration as a child of the King and transformation.

If you genuinely repent, you are restored to a beloved child of the King and it shows!

Look at the shift in David!

David has just spent the last several weeks of his life using his god-given power and authority to serve not the people or God, but himself. He took what he wanted, when he wanted it. When King’s normally went to war with their troops, where was David, taking naps and doing laps in his mom’s basement! He was preying women he was supposed to be protecting, he was exploiting his men, he was murdering and virtue signaling his nobility all the while he was acting like a piece of human garbage. For the last several weeks David couldn’t have been more self-important or more selfish!

And God sent a prophet to bring him to his senses! You are that man, Nathan said!

And David does not double down in his sin, he repents. He trades his junk, his sin into to God by coming back into agreement with God’s truth, pleaing for mercy, cleansing and restoration before God and God grants it!

You say, how do you know? Because of the transformation we can see in this Psalm. Look how it ends?

David moves his focus from himself back to God and others! In vv. 13-19, David says he wants to teach other traitors (like him) to turn back to God too! He wants to sing of God’s righteousness or rightness! He will declare God’s praises. Church this is a big deal. While God does offer forgiveness to David and restores their relationship, God does not remove sin’s consequences. David’s life in a lot of ways goes from bad to worse in his Kingship. One of his sons rapes one of his daughters and then another son tries to overthrow the Kingdom! It’s a train wreck and yet, David says he’s going to praise God through it anyway! This is a loyal subject, this is a man who loves the Lord! And then we see his journal entry ends with David praying for the nation!

Do you see it? David has traded in his selfishness for selflessness before God. It's a remarkable transformation, made possible only by and through genuine repentance. This authentic change stands in stark contrast to disingenuous repentance, which can manifest in two prideful extremes.

On one end of pride, we find what I call "Worm Theology." This mindset leaves us wallowing in guilt, desperately trying to make up for our sins through endless penance. It's a subtle form of pride, suggesting our sins are too grievous for Christ's blood to cover. But true forgiveness isn't earned through self-punishment or groveling. Instead, it's freely given to those who humbly acknowledge their need for grace, repent sincerely, and trust in Christ's finished work. It's about recognizing our inability to atone for ourselves and accepting God's merciful provision in Christ.

And on the other end of the prideful spectrum lies arrogance. Here, we strut around like peacocks, pretending we have no sin and acting as if God is lucky to have us. This attitude leads to finger-pointing and condemning others while conveniently ignoring our own faults. It's a blindness to our own need for grace.

Neither of these represents genuine repentance or gospel transformation. True repentance, as we see in David's prayer, results in a broken spirit and a contrite heart - a spirit of humility.

The key transformation in those who've been forgiven much is that they love God and others much. They move from self-absorption to selfless service. True repentance trades in our excessive self-criticism and inflated self-importance for selflessness before God. As we've seen in David's prayer, it leads to a humble, God & others-focused life. It's not about thinking less of yourself, but simply thinking of yourself less.

In conclusion: Sin is nothing to celebrate. It takes us to dark places we never intend to go, eventually leading to death and God's judgment. But there is hope! If we repent - if we trade in the sin that so easily entangles us and fix our eyes on the author and perfecter of our faith - we can be cleansed, restored, and transformed.

Repentance is the pathway to receiving cleansing, restoration and transformation from God!

So, are you clean? Have you experienced God's restoration? Are you living transformed? You can. Repent, receive the Lord's forgiveness, and live.

Let's pray.