Well, good morning, church. Welcome.
It's so good to be with you this morning.
Would you open your Bibles with me to Psalm 51, Chapter 51?
And that's where we're going to spend our time this morning as
we go through this prayer of David.
I try to convince myself not to sing too loud this morning
because I didn't want to lose my voice, but I couldn't help
myself. So hopefully it stays there.
But when we're singing of God's goodness, we want to shout it
out, right? And I hope that those words just
repeat in your mind as we go through the Psalm, because we
see God's goodness over and over again through this in the way
that he works through the life of David.
Now, before we jump into the text, I just have a quick
question for you that I'd like to ask you.
Have you ever found yourself in a moment where you realized I
just blew it? Like not just a little mistake,
but the kind of thing that you feel deep in your chest.
Your stomach is churning a little bit and you realize that
in that moment, you truly messed up.
It's one of those moments that you wish you could just take
back. You wish you could just retrieve
the words and undo the damage that has been done in that
moment. I've had many moments like that,
but I remember one specific time when I said something out of
frustration to someone that I truly love and adore.
And in full transparency, it was to my beautiful wife Beth.
It wasn't explosive, it wasn't dramatic, but it was completely
careless. I was, in that moment,
completely dismissive of her. And I'll never forget the look
in her eyes as the words just kind of hung in the air there.
The guilt in that moment hit me instantly.
I'm sure many of you are aware of those moments and you've had
those yourselves. When you want to grab those
words mid air, pull them back and shove them back in your
mouth. But it's too late.
The damage has been done. What do we do in moments like
these? I know I've experienced many of
those, but what we do in those moments is so important, what
our response is like. And this morning, I hope that as
we go through this passage and we see this prayer of David,
that we recognize that repentance truly is a gift.
It's not a burden. How we respond is so important.
Psalm 51 is is powerful because we get to see David as he
experiences one of these moments, a very deep moment, in
fact, a string of moments like this.
And to fully understand this passage, this Psalm, we need to
set the scene and remember what brought David to this point.
As I was preparing this particular passage and was given
this prayer to go over the summer, I was very thankful
because this one is set up beautifully.
In Second Samuel, we get to read about David and the story that
leads up to him writing Psalm 51.
And so I want to set the scene a little bit.
This is a prayer of King David. This is the same man that slayed
the giant Goliath. It's the same man that wrote the
words the Lord is my shepherd. This same man has just committed
adultery and orchestrated A brutal murder.
In short, we'll go through the story.
David sees Bathsheba. He's tempted, and he decides to
sleep with her. But Bathsheba is the wife of
Uriah. Now Uriah is a soldier in
David's army, and he's not just any soldier in David's army.
Uriah is one of David's mighty men.
This is an elite group of warriors known for their bravery
and known for their loyalty to King David.
Now, surprise, Bathsheba becomes pregnant.
And how does David respond in this moment?
I'll tell you, David's response is not the right one.
David tries to cover it up. He tries to cover up the
scandal. And so he brings Uriah back from
the battlefield, hoping that he'll go straight home, sleep
with his wife, and when she has the baby, everyone will just
assume that it is his. But Uriah is a very loyal
soldier and and he's loyal to the wartime code of honor.
And when he comes home, he refuses to go home and enjoy all
the comforts of home while his comrades are still in the heat
of battle. And so David realizes he needs
to escalate things in this moment.
And so he sends Uriah back to the front lines with a sealed
message that essentially orders Uriah's death.
It orders to have him placed in the fiercest fighting right on
the front lines, and then have the army pulled back so that he
would assuredly be killed. And so Uriah dies in battle.
David steps forward and marries Bathsheba.
And for a little while, we see that David gets away with it.
At least he thinks he gets away with it.
He thinks that he has taken care of.
This doesn't seem to affect him at all.
But then enters the prophet Nathan.
God sends Nathan to confront David.
So picture this with me, David sitting in his throne room,
probably thinking that no one's caught him, no one's on to what
that he has done. Bathsheba is now his wife, the
mess has been cleaned up and life gets to just move on.
Nathan is wise though, and he knows better than to call out
directly David. And so he decides to play to
David's empathetic side. He tries to play to David's
righteous sensibilities with a cleverly thought out story.
And so Nathan approaches King David and he starts like this.
He says, your Majesty, I need your wisdom on a situation that
I have. You see there are two men in
town. There's the rich one and one
poor. The rich man, he has everything.
He has sheep, cattle, wealth beyond his imagination.
The poor man, he has one little lamb.
He's raised this little lamb like family.
It's not just livestock to him. He's raised it like a daughter.
It ate from his plate. It drank from his cup.
This little lamb slept in his arms.
This little lamb meant everything to him.
Well, a guest came to visit the rich man, and instead of using
one of the many flock that he had to prepare a meal, he stole
the poor man's little lamb. He took it, he slaughtered it
and served it up as if it was nothing.
Now, you can imagine King David's response, remembering
that he is a former shepherd and has a soft spot for lambs.
And so this is David's response. He's furious over the story in
this moment. And he says as surely as the
Lords live lives, this man deserves to die.
He must pay back four times what he took because he had no pity.
And then Nathan, as I can only imagine, I can only just be
described as the ultimate mic drop moment here, probably
locked eyes with David in that moment and said you are that
man. I'd imagine you could likely
hear a pin drop in the chamber at that moment.
David's face goes from righteous anger to stunned silence.
Because suddenly David is confronted with the truth.
Nathan wasn't talking about two strangers at all.
Nathan was talking about him, about Bathsheba, and about
Uriah. Nathan says you took what wasn't
yours. God gave you everything and if
that hadn't been enough he would have given you more.
But you despised his words and now there are consequences.
And so now we get to see David's response in this moment.
David's response in this moment is quite different.
His response is not denial, His response is not blame, but his
response in this moment is this prayer.
And so if you would turn to Psalm 51, let's read this prayer
together. Be gracious to me, God,
according to your faithful love, according to your abundant
compassion. Blot out my rebellion
completely. Wash away my guilt and cleanse
me from my sin, for I am conscious of my rebellion and my
sin is always before me against You alone.
I have sinned and done this evil in your sight.
So you are right when you pass sentence, You are blameless when
you judge. Indeed, I was guilty when I was
born. I was sinful when my mother
conceived me. Surely you desire integrity in
the inner self, and you teach me wisdom deep within.
Purify me with hyssop and I will be clean.
Wash me and I will be whiter than snow.
Let me hear joy and gladness. Let the bones you have crushed
rejoice. Turn Your face away from my sins
and blot out all my guilt. God, create a clean heart for me
and renew a steadfast spirit within me.
Do not banish me from Your presence or take Your Holy
Spirit from me. Restore the joy of Your
salvation to me and sustain me by giving me a willing spirit.
Then I will teach the rebellious Your ways, and sinners will
return to You. Save me from the guilt of
bloodshed. God, God of my salvation, and my
tongue will sing of Your righteousness.
Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare Your praise.
You do not want to sacrifice or I would give it.
You are not pleased with a burnt offering.
The sacrifice pleasing to God is a broken spirit.
You will not despise a broken and humbled heart.
God in your good pleasure cause Zion to prosper.
Build the world walls of Jerusalem.
Then you will delight in righteous sacrifices.
Whole burnt offerings, then built bulls will be offered on
your altar. And so today I want to take a
look at this response of David. We want to take a look at how he
responds in this particular moment.
And what we're going to see is 3 things.
We're going to see that true repentance is honest, true
repentance is broken, and true repentance is hopeful.
Each of us will be faced with moments like this, and how we
respond is so important. The truth is that none of us
like to fess up to what we've done wrong, right?
When we're in those moments, we don't like to admit what we've
done wrong. As we're faced with our sin, we
have these natural human nature responses, and we respond in
many ways, and we see some of those even in Scripture.
Like Adam and Eve, we might try to hide from our sin.
Like King Saul, we might try to rationalize what we've done.
Like Aaron, we might find ourselves blaming others.
Or like Judas, we so often find ourselves beating ourselves up
over our sin. Yes, that is our natural
reaction. Sometimes it's to try and hide,
rationalize, blame, despair, or delay.
But God calls us to something different.
He calls us to confess and to turn.
And today we're looking at David's response in the moment
that his sin is laid bare for everyone to see.
And he first shows us that true repentance is honest.
God, I blew it. Is David's response there in
verse 1. He says be gracious to me God,
according to your faithful love, according to your abundant
compassion, blot out my rebellion.
David doesn't minimize what he's done.
He doesn't say, MMM, God, I I kind of messed up.
I'm only human. No, in that moment he owns verse
three goes on for I am conscious of my rebellion.
My sin is always before me against you alone.
I have sinned and done this evil in your sight.
So you are right when you pass sentence.
You are blameless when you judge.
Indeed, I was guilty when I was born.
I was sinful when my mother conceived me.
David names and he owns his own sin.
In that moment he calls out his own rebellion to God.
In verse three he acknowledges I am conscious of my rebellion, my
sin. It's always before me.
It's right there. I can't not see it.
David in verse 4 also recognizes that his sin is ultimately
against God and His Holiness. Against you alone.
Have I sinned? David says In that moment.
All sin truthfully is ultimately against the God who created us,
the God who loves us, and the God who sets the standard for
our righteousness. And David continues to recognize
that sin isn't just what we do. As he continues here, it's not
just what we do, but it's in all of us.
Sin is more than just an action, but rather it's a condition.
In verse 5, he says, indeed, I was guilty when I was born.
I was sinful when my mother conceived me.
David isn't just confessing to something.
He's done his actions. He's confessing to the condition
of his heart in this moment. You see, sin isn't just the
behavior, it's a nature problem. I love this quote from RC
Sproul, and I hope this sinks in because it puts it in context.
We aren't sinners because we sin.
We sin because we are sinners. David lays us out well.
You see, we live in a world that's allergic to ownership.
We see that around us, right? We, we see phrases like it's
just fake news. We try to reframe things, we try
to deflect and we try to blame it on anybody else.
David could have done any of those things.
I mean, he was king. But instead, David in this
moment, he gets honest. Sometimes the most spiritual
thing we can do in these kinds of moments is to stop
pretending, to stop spinning, and just be honest and tell God
the whole truth. Honest repentance rebuilds
trust. In these moments, trust has been
broken, and honest repentance is that first step towards
rebuilding trust. Whether it's at work or whether
it's in a close relationship, openly admitting wrong is the
only way that we can begin to start making things right again.
For us, being honest might mean confessing to a friend that
we've lied about something, admitting to an addiction that's
in it in our lives, maybe being honest about 1/2 truth that
we've told our spouse, or finally telling God the entire
truth in prayer instead of trying to hide it.
Now, it can be scary to be so vulnerable.
I get it. But remember David's example in
this moment. He laid it all out before God
and was honest with him because he realized that God already
sees our inner truth. God knows it all.
But God desires integrity within our inner self.
When we drop the masks and stop trying to hide, that's when God
is able to start working in our hearts.
Yes, true repentance is honest. There's no filters, there's no
facades, just the unvarnished truth about our sin.
God desires that truth. He desires the whole truth.
The second thing we can take away from this prayer of David
is that true repentance is broken.
This Prairie reading we're reading is is more than just a
confession. It's a cry for cleansing and for
renewal. Verse 7 David writes, purify me
with hyssop and I will be clean. Wash me and I will be whiter
than snow. Verse 10 is so well known it
reads God create a clean heart for me.
And renew a steadfast spirit within me.
David in this moment, isn't just asking for a simple slap on the
wrist, he's asking for a complete and total heart
renovation. In this moment when David prays
the prayer Purify Me with Hyssop, he's not just looking
for a herbal tea detox, but he's actually referencing an ordained
means of spiritual cleansing. He's asking to be treated like
someone who is unclean, who needs to be fully restored by a
sacred act. True repentance involves a
broken and a contrite heart. In verse 17, it says the
sacrifice pleasing to God is a broken spirit.
You will not despise a broken and humbled heart God.
Some other versions use the word contrite heart.
Now the word contrite means to be crushed in spirit by the
weight of our sins ugliness. This is not an easy or a
pleasant feeling. It's actually quite the opposite
of that casual attitude that we so often have towards sin.
In repentance, our hearts should be truly broken and hurt over
what we've done. We recognize how we've offended
God and how we've harmed the people around us, and it should
absolutely break our hearts. In David's case, we can imagine
the tears that well up and streamed down, the heartache as
he realizes the depth of his betrayal of God, as he
recognizes the betrayal of Uriah and everyone else around him.
He in this moment is an utterly broken man.
Now this kind of brokenness is sometimes understood and I hope
you understand that this this morning.
It doesn't mean to be wallowing in self hatred or despair.
Rather it means having a godly sorrow as opposed to just a
shallow regret. We don't want to get caught up
in worldly sorrow. Worldly sorrow is feeling sorry
for ourselves because we got caught.
Worldly sorrow is feeling sorry for ourselves because we have to
face the consequences of our actions.
No, we should be grieved with a godly sorrow.
It is different being grieved because you have sinned against
God's holiness. You've sinned against God's
goodness, God's design for our lives.
David shows this godly sorrow in verse 4 where he he writes
against you alone I have sinned and done this evil in your
sight. David's acknowledging that his
greatest offense in all of this is ultimately against a holy
God. True repentance focus focuses on
how our sin offends God first, not just how it messes up the
lives and the people around us, but how we are offending a holy
and a perfect God. Genuine repentance carries a
godly sorrow for sin, a sorrow that comes from a deep love for
God and the realization of having violated his trust in
that moment. So I want you to ask yourself
this this morning, when was the last time that I felt truly
broken over my sin? Not, not just one of those
moments where you say, oops, my bad, I'm only human.
But when was the last time you were truly broken with a godly
sorrow over your sin? And if it's been a while, I
encourage you to pray for a softened heart from God.
The good news is, Psalm 51 assures us that God will not
despise a broken and a contrite heart.
He never rejects or casts aside the person who comes to Him with
humility and with sorrow for their sin.
In our culture, broken things are often cast aside and thrown
away. But I want you to understand
this morning that God loves a broken heart that's offered up
to Him. It's the sacrifice He looks for
more than any kind of outward ritual.
True repentance, it's broken. It mourns over sin with a level
of sincerity that touches God's heart and in turn opens our
hearts up to his grace. As we look at David's prayer of
repentance, we've seen how true repentance first is honest.
We've seen how true repentance, secondly, is broken.
And lastly, we're going to look this morning at how true
repentance is actually hopeful. You see, at first glance, we
might think that brokenness and hope might contradict one
another, right? But in the gospel and in
biblical repentance, they belong together.
This is the gospel. This is the good news about
Jesus that we celebrate. He has taken broken lives, He
has taken hopelessness, and he restores.
God renews, and He breathes new life into us as we saw a truly
repentant heart that is broken and contrite, but it is not
despairing. In David, Psalm 51 shows that
repentance leads to restore restoration, and it leads to
hope. You see, David comes to God.
He's absolutely crushed by the guilt of his sin.
Yet throughout the prayer that David writes and offers up here,
he expresses confidence in God's mercy, and he looks forward to
being made new. He prays, wash me and I will be
whiter than snow. And then he says, let me hear
joy and gladness. Let the bones you have crushed
rejoice. And then he asked God, create in
me a clean heart, restore the joy of your salvation to me.
These statements are statements of expectation from David.
David expects that God can cleanse him and this gives him
joy again. I I think this is so important
for us to understand even as such sin, even after such sin
and and and we've we've seen David commit adultery, he's
committed murdered here, he still believes in the mercy of
God that can completely renew him.
True repentance is fueled in the hope that God's grace is
sufficient for us. If we had no hope of
forgiveness, if we had no hope of restoration, then we would
just fall into self loathing or beating ourselves up every time
that we sin, right? But because God is merciful,
repentance is possible and there is hope.
I love the beginning of that song we sang just before the
message. I love you, Lord.
There are new mercies every
morning. I'm getting the words wrong now,
but as we sang, I was like, yes, that's right.
And I didn't put it in my notes. But David in this moment, he
knows God's love is faithful. David appeals to this abundant
mercy right at the start in verse, verse one where he says
be gracious to me God according to your faithful love.
David knows that God is faithful even when we are not.
This assurance of God's faithfulness, this assurance of
God's character gives repentance.
It's hope. We know that if we confess, if
we bring it before God, that he will hear us and he will forgive
us. This hope is rooted in God's
mercy, not our goodness. And I have to tell you, as a
first born, that gives me hope because I've grown up wanting to
do the right thing all the time on my own.
But this hope in God is rooted in God's mercy, not our
goodness. We know that Jesus has paid the
full price for our sins on the cross.
Amen. So we can be cleansed forever.
In the New Testament we have this promise in first John
chapter one verse 9, which reads, If we confess our sins,
He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to
cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
Our hope in repentance rests on Jesus and His finished work on
the cross. Because Jesus already took on
the judgment for our sin, we can approach God for mercy without
fear. We can step forward and approach
the throne of God with hopeful and expectant hearts.
Now David's story didn't end with sorrow, and neither does
Psalm 51. After pleading for a clean heart
and a restored joy, David goes on in verse 13 and says, then I
will teach the rebellious your ways, and sinners will return to
you. In other words, he's saying,
God, if you forgive, if you restore me, I'll be able to help
others find you too. David recognizes that he can be
useful to God again. Even in his sin and his
brokenness, he can still be useful to God.
He's able to sing aloud of God's righteousness and declare his
praise. And this is the hope of a second
chance in Jesus, the hope that God can turn even our failures
into something good. How many of you have been in
that place? The internal dialogue says it's
it's just too late for me. I'm you don't understand.
I'm too far gone. Maybe you're watching online
this morning because you're too scared to come into a church
building because you think you have sinned.
Nobody else has. I want to assure you this room
is filled with sinners. But we're recognizing that it's
only through the grace and the love of God that we can have
hope out of that. My heart breaks for you if you
feel that way this morning. And God's heart is broken for
you too. Don't wallow in your regret,
friends. You want to step forward into
the hope that we can find through Jesus.
True repentance doesn't wallow in guilt.
No, it looks to the future full of hope.
Once we've confessed and we've received the mercy given to us,
we don't want to stay stuck in our shame.
We don't want to stay stuck in the shame of yesterday.
We want to move forward into the hope of tomorrow.
Yes, in that moment, we're going to be humbled as we recognize
the sin in our lives and we're broken over it.
But ultimately, friends, we are hopeful because of what Jesus
has done. As Psalm 51 comes to a
conclusion, David even prays that his renewed life will bless
the community around him. He's essentially praying, Lord,
would you rebuild the walls that my sin broke down?
Use me again, God for good. And David, sorry, God did
restore David. While David certainly did face
many consequences for his sin, he remained king and is often
referred to as Israel's greatest kin.
He continued to write Psalms and he was known as a man after
God's own heart. What we see out of this prayer
of David is that God's forgiveness was greater than
David's failure. The story of King David reminds
us that we are never beyond the mercy and the grace of God.
It lays out. And it teaches us that true
repentance is honest. It's broken.
But friends, it is hopeful. We have to be honest when we
repent there, there should be no more hiding, no more excuses,
just a full confession of the truth.
And our hearts should be broken, broken for the sin with genuine
godly sorrow and humility. But true repentance is hopeful,
right? We need to open ourselves to the
mercy of a gracious God and trust Him to forgive us, trust
Him to renew us, and trust Him to fully restore us.
This kind of repentance is not a one time event for us as
Christ's followers. This is not something we do and
then move on. But it's a lifelong practice.
But as we come into those moments that we're confronted by
our sin, we come into those moments where we see the sin in
our lives. We don't need to enter into
those moments and hide, deflect, blame.
We can enter in knowing there is hope because we serve a God who
loves us. And so as we apply Psalm 51 to
our lives, let's remind ourselves today that repentance
is a gift. It's not a punishment.
This is what it means to live gospel centered lives under the
truth and the grace of Jesus as we accept him to be the one to
renew and restore us. It's an opportunity each time to
experience a new the mercy of God.
Amen. In a world that is filled with
blame shifting, fake news and half hearted apologies all over
the place, true repentance stands apart.
It's something different, it's real and it's transformative.
Imagine the impact in the world around us if more people live
this out. If we live this out as God's
community in this world, in our church, in our families, if we
even saw this in public figures, practicing this kind of
repentance, our world would be changed, our relationships would
be renewed and restored. That is the hope of redemption
through Jesus. It would radically change so
much. That is the power of the gospel.
That is the power of God at work in our lives.
So the next time you find yourself convicted of doing
something wrong, don't run from God.
Don't try to hide behind a prideful attitude.
Rather, be honest about it. Let your heart be moved to godly
sorrow, and then lift your eyes up to the God of hope and mercy.
Because friends, He's got you. He loves you so we were
reminded. He will not despise a broken and
contrite heart. In fact, he rather welcomes it.
On the other side of repentance, just like David, you'll be able
to rejoice and declare God's praise.
The weight of sin is lifted. You don't have to carry it
anymore. True repentance hurts at first.
It humbles us, but ultimately it leads to healing, and it is the
pathway from the guilt of our sin to the joy of salvation.
Let's pray together. Father, we thank you that
through your Son Jesus, we can truly experience what it means
to be fully forgiven, fully renewed, fully restored.
God, our human hearts want to run away from the sin in our
lives just to cover it up, to deflect, to blame others, to
pretend like it doesn't exist. But you've called us to
something different. You've called us to confess and
to turn from our sins. And so, Father, today I pray
that you, through the power of your Spirit, would reveal those
things in our lives that we need to honestly take account for, to
confess, to be broken over. But Lord, in those moments, I
pray that you, through your Spirit as well, would not leave
us in that place of despair and wallowing, but to recognize that
that is just recognizing that we are far from a holy and perfect
God, but that perfect God has given us his Son Jesus on the
cross, to forgive us of all those things.
And then in confessing them to you and recognizing that this is
not how you want us to live, and turning from it God, you will
restore our hearts to the full joy of your salvation.
That repentance is not the start of heartache and brokenness, but
rather it is the entrance to a life of joy and freedom where we
can take off the weight of our sin, lay it aside, knowing that
Jesus is paid the cost, and we can live in the full joy of
salvation through you, God. You want to breathe new life
into us? Father, may we turn from those
things that break your heart and come to You in repentance,
believing that You are all that we need.
There is nothing in this world that is too big for Your mercy
and Your grace. God, we love you stir us up.
We pray to live lives that are worthy of You in Your name.