Sermon on Psalm 51. Other relevant texts: Romans 3; 12:1,2; Hebrews 13:15-16
From http://www.ozemail.com.au/~gsmunro/resource.htm
G.S. Munro. Panania-Milperra Anglican Church, Jan 17, 1999.

Leaders, lust and lies. They seem too often to go together, don't they? Lust led to sexual immorality, which led to fear of discovery, deception and lies. You may think I'm talking about a certain beleaguered US President. But I'm actually talking about a leader who lived 3000 years ago. King David, the one who wrote Psalm 51. If you think the bible is irrelevant today and is just a book of ancient history, then think again. The fact is, as this Psalm shows, human nature has not changed in all that time.

In this Psalm we see David crying out in anguish over his sinfulness. In the first four verses he gets straight to the point. And so will I, because that's what we need to do too. Whenever our conscience convicts we have done wrong. We need like David, to go straight to the One source of help, forgiveness and comfort. We need, like David, to call upon the loving and forgiving character of our heavenly Father. David cries, "Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion... "

So the first thing this psalm teaches us is how to think of God and how to address him, when we have sinned. The devil tries to teach us that we should run and hide from God when we sin, because God will not want to have us back. That's what Adam & Eve tried to do in the Garden. But hiding our sin is really only hiding it from ourselves, isn't it? And maybe from others. We can't hide from God anyway. The one we hurt most when we don't deal with our sins, is ourself. The bible says, when we confess our sins, God is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. David knew God is like that. So he addresses him as the one who is unfailing in covenant love for his people, the one who as the Law of Moses says, is compassionate and full of mercy, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.

And so he asks God three things in verses 1 and 2. He asks for mercy based upon God's compassion; he asks God to blot out his transgressions, and he asks for cleansing.

Our God is a God of mercy. The God of the second chance. Never take that for granted. It is not something that the false and idolatrous religions of human beings offer. It is not something you will find in the teachings of the Koran and the Hadith, the Holy Writings of Islam. In Islam if you offend, you pay. No second chances, no mercy, no opportunity for repentence or restoration. That's why Salmon Rushdie must die.

If David had been a Muslim, he would simply have been executed. In fact, under the Old Covenant Law, that is what he deserved. We must appreciate the seriousness of the sins that David is talking about here.

Look at verse 14.

"Save me from blood guilt, O God, the God who saves me, and my tongue will sing of your righteousness."

You may think that President Clinton's actions as the leader of his people were despicable. But at least he didn't hire someone to bump Monica Lewinsky off! David makes Bill look like an amateur in the art of coverups. Bill was not prepared to shed blood to hide his shame. So what is this bloodguilt that David speaks about in verse 14? Well it relates to his treatment of Uriah the Hittite, which 2 Samuel chapter 11 records. You probably know the story. David, who should have been out leading his army, was relaxing on his palace roof when he saw Bathsheba, Uriah's wife, bathing in her backyard below. David breaks the tenth commandment, and desires his neighbour's wife. Together, they break the seventh commandment, and Bathsheba becomes pregnant. David recalls Uriah from the front where he is fighting, and attempts to get him to sleep with his wife to cover up what has happened, but without success.

You see, Uriah was a righteous and faithful man. 1 Chronicles 11 lists him among the chiefs of the mighty warriors who supported David in his battles and were his companions when he was an outlaw on the run from king Saul. They did so, not just because they liked David, but because they knew God's prophet, Samuel, had anointed him king at God's instruction. 1 Chronicles 11:10 says that these men including Uriah, "gave David's kingship strong support to extend it over the whole land, as the Lord had promised."

Well, Uriah is too righteous for his own good, and refuses to spend the night in comfort in his house, when his men are asleep in the fields of war. Finally in despair David breaks also the sixth commandment. He orders Joab, the commander of the army, to put Uriah in the fiercest part of the battle and deliberately withdraw from him so he is killed. Uriah unknowingly takes his own death warrant to Joab when he returns to the battle.

This is the blood guilt of verse 14. Not some trifling little indiscretion, not even just breaking one of God's commands, but three capital offences, and the betrayal of a friend. Psalm 51 acknowleges David's guilt and complete spiritual bankruptcy before God. God alone can save him. And what is the result of that salvation? "…my tongue shall sing of your righteousness."

And verse 15 says essentially the same thing, in parallel, as verse 14. "O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise."

It's possible for us to think, or to feel, that praising God will somehow make us more acceptable to him. That if only we could lift ourselves up out of our depression or our lethargy and praise him, then he would be more pleased with us. Or perhaps when we're a bit down, we look at others who are happy and singing to God, or we see others witnessing with fervour and teaching others about God, and we think, "How pleased God is with them. I wish I could be like that, so that God would be pleased with me."

But such thinking is upside down. Unless God first opens our lips, we are powerless to praise him. Unless he saves us, we WILL not praise him. God's grace comes first and our praise and witness is a fruit of God's favour towards us, not a root. That is, a result, not a cause, of our right standing with God.

Let's go on to verses 16 & 17. "You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it; you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart O God, you will not despise."

David is not belittling the sacrifices God commanded through Moses. They had their place, but sacrifice was only acceptable to God with a humble and contrite heart that admitted your guilt and your inability to save yourself. The sacrifices themselves could never take away sins. To offer sacrifice was to admit that your only hope was to trust in God's mercy to the repentant sinner. David believed there was a place for sacrifice, as verse 19 shows, however, to offer sacrifice without a humble heart attitude of acknowleging his utter guilt and shame before God, would be no sacrifice at all.

Speaking of no sacrifice at all, there is another reason David says "You do not delight in sacrifice or I would bring it," and that is, in the Old Testament system, there was no sacrifice for murder or adultery. Only the death of the offender himself was sufficient. No sacrifice can save David, but only God's mercy. That mercy was declared to David through God's prophet Nathan. After David confessed his sin, Nathan said, "The Lord has taken away your sin. You are not going to die."

This psalm is all about the wonderful truth that God saves sinners. David didn't know how God's mercy operated, he didn't know, as we know, that one of his own descendants, who would also be God in human form, was to die as the perfect sacrifice for all sin, even the sin of murder and adultery. All David knew, was that by God's sheer undeserved mercy, he had been let off the hook. He knew the only "sacrifice" he could bring, was the admission from a broken and contrite heart, that he had no sacrifice at all, and must rely entirely on God's saving character.

And friends, we are the same. If we have faith in Jesus as our Lord and Saviour, no sacrifice we make, no gift or service that we bring, can make us any more acceptable to God than we are already by God's grace to us in the Lord Jesus Christ. He is our only sacrifice. Jesus Christ has done it all - everything necessary to ensure our salvation. All we must do is accept God's mercy. That's what grace means. Do you believe that?

The concept of grace for sinners is totally foreign to our fallen human nature. Psalm 51 clearly teaches two things about God and Man. That God is totally Good and that Man is hopelessly Bad. We are by nature rebellious and unrighteous, unable to do good apart from God's saving grace. Our natural fallen minds want to elevate ourselves, we want to pretend that we are good enough for God without having to admit we are sinners and trust in his mercy. But David knows the truth about God and Man. He says, "for I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me…" And he says in verse 5, "surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me." We have a fallen nature. Even little Emily here. We inherit it from Adam and Eve, our first ancestors, who brought the curse of sin upon the human race. And that nature has a bias away from God and towards self. A bias that is there from the very beginning of human life. We are rebels against God by nature, not by nurture. And as our children grow, we struggle with that fallen nature in them and in us, as any parent knows.

Now you may not have committed the sins of adultery and murder like David. Nevertheless, we all grow up as objects of God's righteous anger, because we have a sinful nature and we all sin, and God is justified in condemning us.

Now we are, in our natural minds, much more comfortable with legalism than grace. That is, we prefer to think that sacrifice on our part can earn God's forgiveness. And we think that if we can praise him right and feel good about our Christian life, and lead others to him, that will make us more acceptable to him.

What does David say? He simply asks for God's mercy, and then in verse 12 he says, "Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and grant me a willing spirit to sustain me, THEN, THEN I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will turn back to you." Get the order right. Forgiveness, Joy, Witness. Witness comes as a result of the joy of salvation. The joy of salvation comes from knowing our sins are forgiven. Psalm 32 says, "Happy is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Happy is the one to whom the Lord does not impute iniquity."

Let me make it quite clear. There is only one sacrifice that God wants as a pre-requisite to forgiveness. And that is the admission that we have no sacrifice worthy to bring - that we are totally spiritually bankrupt. We burn our self-righteousness on the altar of the cross. Verse 17 - "the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart - these O God, you will not despise."

Even when we get that straight, we're not necessarily out of the woods yet. Because we can then begin to think that this confession and repentance and broken spirit is itself the grounds of our salvation. And we ask ourselves, but am I REALLY sorry? Am I REALLY REALLY sorry? Let me give you three reasons why the depth of our confession and repentence is not what saves us either.

1. It is only God's Spirit working in us that produces that sorrow at our sins and that recognition of our spiritual poverty in the first place.

2. We can never be contrite and sorrowful enough, never be as penitent as we ought.

3. Who is it that the bible describes as broken in spirit, with a lowly and humble heart? (Matt 11:29) Whose spirit was broken in the garden of Gethsemane and on the Cross? (Matt 27:46), not in contrition for his own sin (for he had none), but for ours. In this, as in everything, Jesus Christ is our substitute. He is the prefect penitent for us. We cannot hope to match the depth of his sorrow at our sin. Or his perfect intercession on our behalf.

Do you think you have to be good enough to earn your salvation? You can't. Do you think that as long as you don't do any really bad sins lately, then you'll be okay? You won't. On the other hand, do you think God will reject you because you can't feel as sorry for your sins as you should? He won't. Just trust that Jesus has both lived and died in your place to make you acceptable to God. Yes, you do need to be sorry and repent, but don't become inward looking and don't despair because your remorse is not as great as it should be. Simply trust Jesus and God's goodness and love in saving you.

Having said all that, there does remain a place for sacrifice in the believer's life. There are two types of sacrifice in Psalm 51. One is the sacrifice to take away sins. Christ has done that for us. The other is the sacrifice of Thanksgiving and Dedication, in verse 19. One is offered under obligation, the other is freely given, in response to God's salvation. It is the same as the praise and witness of verses 14 & 15.

David ends his prayer, "In your good pleasure make Zion prosper; build up the walls of Jerusalem. Then there will be righteous sacrifices, whole burnt offerings to delight you, then bulls will be offered on your altar."

Our sacrifice for sins has been provided by Jesus, and now that we are right with God through faith in his blood, we are set free to bring to him the sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving which the New Testament interprets as a life lived in worship to God. Remember Romans 12 verse 1. And Hebrews 13:15,16, which says

"Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise - the fruit of lips that confess his name. And do not forget to do good and to share with others, for with such sacrifices God is pleased."

Why is he pleased with such sacrifices? Is it because they make us acceptable to him? No, but because they come from the joy of knowing that God has saved us. Because they acknowlege that he has done it all, and are offered in thanksgiving.

Finally, notice that the context for these sacrifices is the church of God. That's another sermon in itself, but let me quickly explain what I mean. David prays,
"In your good pleasure make Zion prosper; build up the walls of Jerusalem."

Zion and Jerusalem refer to the covenant community of God. His Holy people, united in worship of Him. The New Testament teaches that this covenant community is now the church of Jesus Christ.

You see, David's sin did not affect just him. Because he was the King, it had dire effects for the whole Israelite nation. And consequences that lasted for centuries. Your sins may not have as great an effect on the whole people of God as David's did. But they do have an effect. And when we confess our sins to God, as well as asking forgiveness for ourselves, we should pray that God may minimise the effect our sins may have had on others. That others will benefit from our ministry and be built up, instead of being discouraged because of our sinful actions.

So when you use this Psalm as your own personal confession, or when we use it as a corporate prayer of confession in church, it is appropriate to include these last two verses, because they are as relevant to us as they were to David. The only difference is that when we see the words Zion and Jerusalem, we think not of the mount and city in Israel, but of the church of Jesus Christ. We want God to deal with our sins so that the church of God may be built upon the foundation of Jesus, and offer up to God through him sacrifices of praise and thanksgiving.

Let us trust that God has accepted us in Christ. Let's stop trying to offer our own sacrifices to appease him and earn his forgiveness. And let's offer instead the thanksgiving sacrifice of godly lives and brotherly love, because Jesus has saved us. All we must do is, like David, throw our selves on God's mercy. Have mercy on me O God, according to your unfailing love.