Psalm 51

[Read Psalm 51]

Prayer - Father, we plead now that you give us minds to understand and hearts to comprehend. Open the text to us through Your Spirit in such a way that would evoke sorrow for sin and joy at salvation. Lead us in this time through the promises of your Word, we pray in your sons name. Amen

Introduction

Rowland Taylor, a reformer during the Protestant Reformation, was put to death because he steadfastly defended biblical doctrines and rejected the Roman Catholic Church's teachings, particularly opposing the doctrine of the Mass as a sacrifice. As the vicar of Hadley, Suffolk, he was charged with heresy under Queen Mary I's reign, which sought to restore Catholicism in England. Despite being offered a pardon if he recanted, Taylor refused to renounce his beliefs.

He was brought to trial, degraded from his clerical status, and ultimately executed by burning on February 9, 1555. During his execution, Taylor boldly defied orders to remain silent, quoted Psalm 51 in English, after being told to speak only in Latin, and prayed fervently for a man who bloodied his face by throwing a piece of wood at it before he was burned. By this he demonstrated remarkable patience and faith until his death.

Like many martyrs before and after him, Taylor was keenly aware of his own sin and fallen state even during his martyrdom, and fervently prayed Psalm 51 in order to better prepare himself for his impending meeting with his Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Main Idea: What do you do after your sin is exposed?

Today we will examine the split open and exposed heart of a king who has come to face his sin laid before him. And hopefully we will walk away with our own sin exposed, repented of, and a joy inexpressible in our Savior.

Victorinus Strigelious 16th Century Reformer - “This psalm [Psalm 51] is the brightest gem in the whole book, and contains instruction so large, and doctrine so precious, that the tongues of angels could not do justice to the full development.”

The instruction - confession, repentance, turning back to God, and then encouraging others to do the same

The doctrine - God’s saving mercy and grace, His longsuffering, and His willingness to forgive, His abundant love, His Salvation

The preamble to this psalm, sometimes referred to as the 0th verse, the "superscription" or the "title" is key to our contextual understanding of the whole thing.

Psalm 51:0 “To the choirmaster. A Psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet went to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba.”

We just heard this account read this morning from 2 Sam. 11 outlining David’s sin with Bathsheba and consequent murder of Uriah.

In light of this title, we can see that what we have here is no mere blueprint for repentance or reconciliation. It is not simply a song to be sung or a hymn to be recited when we are feeling down and out. This psalm is based in a deep recognition of sin and a deeper yearning to be right with God composed by one of the greatest figures in Old Testament history. Who was King David?

Early life and calling

A young shepherd boy born in the city of Bethlehem. The youngest of his brothers, he defended his flock from lions and bears with only a sling, stones, and his rod.

Anointed by the prophet Samuel as God’s chosen king while still a youth, even though Saul was still on the throne (1 Samuel 16). This marked him out as “a man after God’s own heart.”​

Served Saul as a skilled musician, soothing the king’s troubled spirit, and later as one of his armor‑bearers.​

Faith and personal courage

Defeated Goliath by faith and a sling when Israel’s army was paralyzed by fear, establishing his reputation as a champion of Israel who trusted God rather than conventional weapons.​

Survived repeated attempts on his life by Saul without retaliating, sparing Saul twice when he could have killed him, and thereby modeling restraint, reverence for God’s anointed, and trust in God’s timing.​

Kingship and national unification

Became king first over Judah in Hebron and then over all twelve tribes, uniting them into a single kingdom after a period of civil tension and rival claims.​

Captured Jerusalem (Jebus) from the Jebusites and made it his political capital, a neutral site that helped unify the tribes.​

Brought the Ark of the Covenant into Jerusalem and organized worship with music and liturgy.​

Military success and state-building

Defeated major regional enemies (especially the Philistines) and then subdued or neutralized surrounding peoples such as Moab, Ammon, Edom, and Aramean kingdoms, establishing Israel as the dominant power in the region.​

Expanded Israel’s borders and secured trade routes so that his reign became remembered as a kind of “golden age,” with control over territory stretching from near Egypt in the south toward Lebanon in the north and from the Mediterranean toward the desert in the east.​

Covenant and spiritual legacy

Received God’s covenant promise that his “house” would endure, with his throne established forever.

Demonstrated a pattern of earnestly seeking God, repenting when he sinned, and publicly acknowledging dependence on the Lord, which is why later Scripture repeatedly holds him up as a model king whose heart was loyal to God.​

Most importantly, David is what is referred to as a “type” for the person of Christ. This means that he like many before him, pointed the way through their life and deeds toward the Messiah, imperfectly displaying through failure and typologically modeling what the Messiah would be and do for His people.

However, this is not the David we find here in the Psalm.

It was the spring time when Kings go off to war...[retell the account]

A word of caution. Although this Psalm is not directly about us it is written to us!

I ask again to think on the statement: What do you do after your sin is exposed?

David’s sin was exposed by Nathan - The man and the lamb

2 Samuel 12:13 “David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against the Lord.” And Nathan said to David, “The Lord also has put away your sin; you shall not die.” - His sin has already been pronounced forgiven by Nathan, but yet David still petitions God to take away his guilt and restore him to a right standing with Him.

Psalms 6 and 38 find David crying out to God to “Rebuke me not in your anger!” These psalms find David with clenched fists yelling out to God in desperation.

But in Psalm 51 we find a different posture and attitude. The dust has settled. Instead we find him more calmy invoking the promise and assuredness of forgiveness based in the nature and attributes of God.

Here David is agreeing with God that his sin is not trivial, not minimal, not able to be hidden.

Sin is death incarnate. The wages of sin are death...and David will start by admitting guilt in his request for new life.

We must not trivialize this psalm into a magic spell to get rid of the yuckiness of our sin that we recite as an obligation. It is instead the cry of one who knows the pain they have caused in their rebellion against God. We must not enter here too lightly.

Psalm 51:1 “Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions.”

This is the sinners plea!

A plea for mercy is Confession of guilt

We know the comfort of steadfast love and abundant mercy - we go to God for forgiveness with no doubt that it will be done. This is no license for sin to abound or for an arrogant demand of that which is rightfully our inheritance, but rather a it is a broken and contrite child appearing before their Father for the comfort and reconciliation that only steadfast love and abundant mercy can provide. Mercy is not receiving those punishments we deserve on the merit of our disobedience. Grace is receiving the forgiveness that we do not deserve on the basis of Christ’s completed work. And steadfast love is that love of God for His children that is constantly in pursuit of those whom he has purchased with His blood.

He petitions His God for a blotting out, a washing, a cleansing from those things that have been exposed by the prophet.

Blot out my transgressions! Strike them from the record! The ledger that demands I pay for them, please God let it be done!

2 Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin! -

Wash me! Only you can! We scrub and scrub and try to justify and good deed our way to cleanliness. But even doing this creates more filth and leaves us more dirty with the grime of sin than when we started. We cannot good deed our way to cleanliness!

“thoroughly” here demands that no trace of this sin is left! DO not merely take it in part or cover it up, remove it from me as You have promised, as far as the east is from the west!

Christian is this our plea when we sin? Do we experience conviction like David did?

What do we do when are sin is exposed?

3 For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me.

This is the conviction that precedes forgiveness

We must acknowledge our sin before forgiveness can take place.

We must see our sin before us! Not push it to the side or hide it behind a smile and good works! We must see it rightly for what it is, death. Many acknowledge sin with desire to rid themselves of it. We live in a culture of people who glory in their sin and call it as such. But this must not be counted among the saints!

Saint, what sin convicts you this very moment? Is the way you spoke to your spouse or child this morning? Is the though you had when you saw that person today at service? The one that you would have done fine not to see today? Is it what you did when you thought you were all alone last night, just you and your sin? The thoughts you entertain and do not take captive. Men, what have you viewed on your phone this past week? What if I told you we had the technology to show it to the church right up here on the big screen? Would you panic? Women, what if i told you that every conversation you had about another church member was recorded and was ready to be played back for them this very minute. Young adults and children...even you do not stand innocent here. This is not some cheap scare tactic friends! Because something far more probing than a public display of our sin has already taken place. You have the Spirit of Christ indwelling you. Even what man does not know, God knows! The Spirit should be crying out to you, bringing to mind those Scriptures and lessons that should drive you to your knees and confess before a Holy God and Father to blot out! Wash! And cleanse!

Paul Washer rightly observes that for the Christian, sin is like....

And let’s be clear that this is not about shame. Christ bore our sin AND shame for us. If you still hold on to either of these this morning it is time for you to give them Christ! I am talking to the believers and unbelievers this morning.

For those of you this morning that have not repented, believed, and been made new through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ; my prayer for you today is that you are convicted through the preaching of the Word and, like David, you would cry out to God for forgiveness in faith and repentance. Understand that you stand condemned before a Holy and righteous God! The punishment is eternal death and the gift is eternal life.

David realizes this condemnation and admits in verse four that:

4 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.

All sin is ultimately against God, even though we injure and act out against others. Making right with others must also be based in making things right with God. A child's platitude of I’m sorry is not what is in view here. If we say we are sorry for our sin but are unable to go before God with a contrite heart then it is for naught.

Furthermore, David acknowledges that whatever God does because of this sin He is justified in it. This is based in God’s holiness and righteousness. Death, eternal death, is the penalty. And God needs no justification other than His nature.

5 Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.

Original sin and total depravity are taught here. We are separated from God in our sinful existence from the beginning. It is David’s admission here, and should be the admission of us all that we are separated from God from our very birth and before. True, we are fearfully and wonderfully made, but we are also lack the ability and want to do good, to seek God, or to come to Him apart from His calling us. This calling, whether for the first time or to bring us back to Himself is what initiates the cleansing of the sinner.

Cleansing of the sinner

6 Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being, and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart. - The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. And an admission of our sin is the only right response to the fear of the Lord. We may try to hide as our first parents did in the garden, but God is faithful to those He loves and will pursue us. He questions us with the Spirit and convicts us. This is not to leave us on the floor in our tears, but to cleanse us from the very things we should be weeping over!

7 Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. - “Wash me” - Foul I to the Fountain fly, wash me Savior or I die!

Hyssop was a plant used in cleansing ceremonies. Here David is calling for a ceremonial cleansing of his sin to eradicate from him.

Allison’s purging of her dog bite wound...

Christ is the only cleanser for our sin. Here David is relying on the promise of the Messiah and final condition of the Saint as promised in Genesis 3:15 “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”

Isaiah 53:5 “But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.”

8 Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones that you have broken rejoice. - It is God who disciplines His children! He breaks our bones for our own good! He applies the pain of chastisement out of love for His children that disobey and a way to sanctify them and return them to Himself. He breaks our bones and returns our joy. This is all to and for His glory.

In Isaiah we see the punitive and physical crushing of the son by the Father for the payment of our sins, in Psalm 51 we see the corrective and figurative breaking or crushing of our bones for our own good as the Father applies discipline to those he loves. We are crushed under the weight of correction for sin, not payment for sin.

In verse nine we see familiar language.

9 Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities. - why the repetition? Didn’t he already cry out to have this done?? Because it bears repeating! It is not a trite thing that is taking place here. Outside of the aspects of Hebrew poetry and repetition, chiastic, and dualistic structures...repetition is how we cause ourselves to learn of the importance of thing.

So I ask again...What do you do when your sin has been exposed?

And before we think there is much that we can do...let us examine what God does for us.

Creating a clean heart

10 Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.

Charles Spurgeon

None but God can create either a new heart or a new earth. The Treasury Of David, Psalm 51, Verse 10

This creation is a work entirely of God. And this work of God is followed by a plea that is really more of an acknowledgment of what could have happened but also what David knows will not happen since Nathan has already told him he was forgiven.

11 Cast me not away from your presence, and take not your Holy Spirit from me. - The only request from punishment; what happened to Saul after he disobeyed God.

And in verse twelve the opposite, the antithesis of verse eleven is petitioned by David to God.

12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit.

This is a claim to a promise. Those who are of God will in no way be cast away forever. We are safe in the Father’s hand. Those who have been purchased with the blood of Christ will not be lost. Not one drop of Christ’s blood, His imputed righteousness, or His suffering was in vain.

13 Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will return to you.

14 Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God, O God of my salvation, and my tongue will sing aloud of your righteousness. - For give me for the murder so I may sing of your life!

15 O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise. - Not his words, but the words of his God. Total and complete reliance on the work of God even in praising Him!

Look at the first words in verses 7, 8, 10, 12, 14, 15 - All works of God! David pleads for God alone to do these things!

16 For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it; you will not be pleased with a burnt offering. - Not by the blood of bulls and goats, David had the means to offer sacrifice upon sacrifice, the like of which the nation of Israel had never seen! However, this is not what God required of him. This agrees with the prophet Micah:

Micah 6:6–8 ““With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?” He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”

17 The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. - Just as the prophet Joel will tell his readers to “rend their hearts and not their garments” David too knows that sin and its forgiveness comes down to a heart problem. There is no amount of intellectual ascent, good deeds, physical actions, Masses observed...

18 Do good to Zion in your good pleasure; build up the walls of Jerusalem;

19 then will you delight in right sacrifices, in burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings; then bulls will be offered on your altar.

With the final two verses we see the national restoration after repentance. David’s sin did not only affect him and his household, but the entire nation was disgraced. There would still be consequences for sin. Spiritual forgiveness does not negate temporal effects of sin. Can God take these away, absolutely. Is it a guaranteed outcome of spiritual forgiveness, absolutely not. However, a characteristic of the repentant is what we have already observed, that we agree with God that He is just and right in his words and judgments. The child that David had with Bathsheba died. He was lost. Our sin has both physical and spiritual consequences. But David in his maturity recognized this reality and still made public his failures and his disposition.

David made his repentance public in this psalm! His shame was given over to God and he was able to continue to lead his people because of his repentance.

Conclusion

I ask you a final time: What do you do after your sin is exposed?

Do you cry a plea for mercy as a confession of guilt?

Do you feel the conviction that proceeds forgiveness?

Do you revel in the cleansing of sin by the Father?

Do you cry out for a clean heart?

And finally, do you tell others about the power of God to offer forgiveness for their sins as well?

Some of you today may be thinking “What a horribly depressing sermon Scott. So much talk about sin and failure.” And to that I would say, you’ve missed the point. Todays sermon was an invitation to leave behind your sin, guilt, shame, stains, failures before God...it is an invitation to go to the living Messiah and lay your burdens at the foot of His cross! If you are already a child of God, you should embrace this opportunity to fall on your face and confess your sin to God, daily! What a privilege it is to have a Father who lovingly corrects us and is willing to fully forgive us when we rebel against Him!

For those of you that have already bowed your knee to the living Messiah and embraced His forgiveness for your sin. I will remind you that we stand on the edge of eternity everyday...I pray by this sermon your sin was exposed and the Holy Spirit have been convicting you of your sin for this time we have together this morning. I pray that you are squirming in your seat unable to comfort yourself. And now I implore you to call out to Christ for the forgiveness of your sin. Take solace in His perfect life, his sacrificial death, and his justifying resurrection all for the reconciliation of you to Him.

Saint and sinner, let Psalm 51 return to you or offer to you for the first time the joy of His salvation! Allow your broken bones to rejoice in His justice over sin! And cry out even now that the God of the Universe is willing to create in you a clean heart even now.