Sermon Tone Analysis

Psalm 51 King James Version (KJV)

1 Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness: according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions.

2 Wash me throughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.

3 For I acknowledge my transgressions: and my sin is ever before me.

4 Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight: that thou mightest be justified when thou speakest, and be clear when thou judgest.

5 Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.

6 Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts: and in the hidden part thou shalt make me to know wisdom.

7 Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.

8 Make me to hear joy and gladness; that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice.

9 Hide thy face from my sins, and blot out all mine iniquities.

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

11 Cast me not away from thy presence; and take not thy holy spirit from me.

12 Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation; and uphold me with thy free spirit.

13 Then will I teach transgressors thy ways; and sinners shall be converted unto thee.

14 Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God, thou God of my salvation: and my tongue shall sing aloud of thy righteousness.

15 O Lord, open thou my lips; and my mouth shall shew forth thy praise.

16 For thou desirest not sacrifice; else would I give it: thou delightest not in burnt offering.

17 The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.

18 Do good in thy good pleasure unto Zion: build thou the walls of Jerusalem.

19 Then shalt thou be pleased with the sacrifices of righteousness, with burnt offering and whole burnt offering: then shall they offer bullocks upon thine altar.

Prayer

The last time I brought a message here I said we tend to view the gospel as the way to get saved and then we head off for greater things.

While Paul does call us to move on to greater things my concern is that to often while we confess at conversion that the answer to our problem does not come from us but from God pretty soon we leave the Gospel of Jesus Christ (the very core of the good news to our bad problem) we leave the core sitting on the shelf beside our first grade reader as if it were our introduction and now we don’t really need it anymore because we are going to work really hard to KEEP God happy.

We might not say it that way but thats what we are doing .

We are trusting in our righteousness and not the work of Jesus Christ and that is self righteousness.

This morning I want to plead with you to examine your life.

How are you measuring up?

What do things look like?

Is it Christ working in you, molding you toward perfection or is it you trying to measure up and falling short over and over and over and over again.

Do you know that story?

I do.

Friends if you could not live righteously before conversion and Christ was your only strength at conversion, today your only strenght lies at the heart of the Gospel.

Your ONLY hope of strength and victory come ONLY from the risen saviour - Jesus Christ.

And so this morning I want to plead with you that you would not leave the gospel with your first grade reader but that you would LIVE in the gospel.

(the news that Jesus Christ, the Righteous One, died for our sins and rose again, eternally triumphant over all his enemies, so that there is now no condemnation for those who believe, but only everlasting joy.)

Its in his reasurrection that we find strenthg.

We find strength in our RISEN Savior.

We are not made to be some superman.

The strenght is not ours but Christ and we get this strength by living the Gospel.

By bringing nothing to Christ and in repentance fall brocken before him casting our faith in HIM and when we do we fall solidly into the arms of an ALMIGHTY SAVIOR.

When we live our life in the arms of this saviour we see change and growth but when we set about to see how we can prop ourselves up to keep us from falling and it is in these times that we get hit from the other side or we skip a prop and we go down and the ride down generaly is a messy one.

Do you know what I’m talking about?

Have you lived it?

So you with me probobly treasure 1 John 2:1 My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not.

And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous:

This morning I would like to suggest that the only true sorce of power comes from dropping the righteousness we are holding in our hands and fall onto the arms of our almighty Savior - Jesus Christ and to see what that looks like I’d like to look at Psalm 51 but before we got there we need to take a look at David’s downward spiral of sin that leads up to Psalm 51.

David’s Downward Spiral of Sin

Psalm 51 is one of the few psalms that are pinpointed as to their historical origin.

The heading of the psalm goes like this: “To the choirmaster.

A Psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet went to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba.

Here is the story in crisp biblical words from 2 Samuel 11:2–5:

It happened, late one afternoon, when David arose from his couch and was walking on the roof of the king’s house, that he saw from the roof a woman bathing; and the woman was very beautiful.

And David sent and inquired about the woman.

And one said, “Is not this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?”

So David sent messengers and took her, and she came to him, and he lay with her. . . .

Then she returned to her house.

And the woman conceived, and she sent and told David, “I am pregnant.”

He tried to cover his sin by bringing her husband Uriah home from battle so Uriah could lie with her and think it was his baby.

Uriah was too noble to go in to his wife while his comrades were in battle.

So David arranged to have him killed so that he could quickly marry Bathsheba and cover the sin that way.

2 Samuel 11 ends with these words: “The thing that David had done displeased the Lord” (2 Samuel 11:27).

So God sent the prophet Nathan to David with a parable that caused David to pronounce his own condemnation.

Then Nathan says, “You are the man!” and asks, “Why have you despised the word of the Lord?” David confesses, “I have sinned against the Lord.”

Then Nathan says, astonishingly, “The Lord also has put away your sin; you shall not die.

Nevertheless, because by this deed you have utterly scorned the Lord, the child who is born to you shall die” (2 Samuel 12:7–15).

“The Lord Has Put Away Your Sin”

This is outrageous.

Uriah is dead.

David sinned with Bathsheba.

The baby will die.

And Nathan says, “The Lord has put away your sin.”

Just like that?

David committed adultery.

He ordered murder.

He lied.

He “despised the word of the Lord.”

He “scorned God.”

And the Lord “put away [his] sin” (2 Samuel 12:13).

What kind of a righteous judge is God?

You don’t just pass over these sins.

Righteous judges don’t do that.

But here is what Paul says in Romans 3:25–26.

This is one of the most important sentences in the Bible for understanding how Christ relates to the Psalms—and to the Old Testament in general:

God put [Christ] forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith.

This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins [that’s exactly what 2 Samuel 12:13 says God did—he passed over David’s sin].

It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

In other words,.

God sees from the time of David down the centuries to the death of his Son, Jesus Christ, who would die in David’s place, so that David’s faith in God’s mercy and God’s future redeeming work unites David with Christ.

And in God’s all-knowing mind, David’s sins are counted as Christ’s sins and Christ’s righteousness is counted as his righteousness, and God justly passing over David’s adultery and murder and lying.

Now lets go to Psalm 51 to see David's attitude that prompted God to forgive him.

These feelings and ways of thinking should be typical if we are LIVING BY the Gospel.

1.

He Turns to God

First, he turns to his only hope, the mercy and love of God.

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

Three times: “Have mercy,” “according to your steadfast love,” and “according to your abundant mercy.”

This is what God had promised in Exodus 34:6–7: “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty.”

David knew that there were guilty who would not be forgiven.

And there were guilty who by some mysterious work of redemption would not be counted as guilty, but would be forgiven.

Psalm 51 is his way of laying hold on that mystery of mercy.

We know more of the mystery of this redemption than David did.