Create In Me A Clean Heart

Psalm 51

Matt Moran

Baptism Sunday

v.1-2 Prayer

v.3-5 Confession

v.6-12 Restoration

v.13-17 Transformation

Transcript

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so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment.
Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.
Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being, and you teach me wisdom in the
secret heart. Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean. Wash me, and I shall
be whiter than snow. Let me hear joy and gladness. Let the bones that you have
broken rejoice. Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities.
Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me
not away from your presence, and take not your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to
me the joy of your salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit. Then I will
teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will return to you. Deliver me from
blood guiltiness, O God, O God of my salvation, and my tongue will sing aloud of
your righteousness. O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise,
for you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it. You will not be
pleased with the burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a
broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. Do good to Zion in your
good pleasure. Build up the walls of Jerusalem. Then will you delight in right
sacrifices, in burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings. Then bulls will be
offered on your altar. Let's take a moment and we'll pray as we open up God's
word. Lord God, we thank you for the life-giving words of scripture that you
give us, and we ask now for the illuminating power of your Holy Spirit to help
us to receive these words. In your name I pray, amen. Okay, so during the month
of August, we are in a short summer series through the Psalms, looking at a
variety of genres within the Psalter. And this Psalm, Psalm 51, is a prayer of
confession. It's probably one of the most well-known Psalms in the whole
Psalter. And this morning, we're also celebrating baptisms, as Eric and Carolyn
and Aidan are stepping into the waters of baptism. The Psalm is about sin,
confession, mercy, restoration, and cleansing. So it's perfect for what we're
about to witness. Baptism is an outward symbol of the inner cleansing that's
taken place through the forgiveness that comes through Jesus Christ. So what's
pictured in baptism is a symbol of what has happened within the heart of the
believer. This Psalm is also one of the rare Psalms that has a very specific
historical setting. There's a very well-known background behind it. If you have
your Bible in front of you, you'll probably see the superscription above the
text, which says, to the choir master, a Psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet
went to him after he had gone into Bathsheba. So we have the background for this
Psalm in 2 Samuel, which chronicles David's reign as the king of Israel. This
episode took place in midlife for the king. During the middle of his life, in
the middle of his reign as king of Israel, David was reigning over Israel,
enjoying prosperity, popularity. The blessing of God was all over his life and
his reign. During a time when he would have been expected to be on the
battlefield as a king, fighting for his people, he instead decided to stay home.
And after waking up late in the afternoon from a nap, he was walking on his
rooftop and saw a beautiful married woman, Bathsheba, as she was bathing. David
sent for her, slept with her, and got her pregnant. And he tried to cover up
what had happened by making the pregnancy appear as though it was through her
husband Uriah, who actually was on the battlefield. And when that cover up did
not work, David conspired to put Uriah in one of the most dangerous places on
the battlefield so that he would be killed by the enemy. And once Uriah was
dead, David sent for Bathsheba and made her his wife. You can read all about
that in 2 Samuel 11 and 12, but 2 Samuel 12 describes how the prophet Nathan
comes and confronts David about his sin. Nathan does this in the form of a
story. It's a parable about a rich man who had been given everything, and yet
steals a little lamb from a poor man. And David responds to that story from the
prophet with anger and outrage. And when he does that, Nathan confronts him and
says, you are that man, you are the man. And in that moment, as the prophet
rebukes him, David comes face to face with his sin, with his adultery, and with
his murder. So Psalm 51 is written in response to Nathan's rebuke as David
confesses his sin and cries out to God. However, the Psalm is not just the
personal experience of David. The Psalms are meant to be sung and read
corporately. The Psalm was later utilized by the people of God, by the
Israelites, for the purpose of confession and cleansing. You can see the
corporate nature of the Psalm in the last two verses, which seem out of place,
but were sung later on by the Israelites. The Psalm ends with all the people of
God singing together. So it's not just a classic Psalm of confession. It's a
template for us today, and this Psalm helps us answer two of the most important
questions we're ever going to face. The first one is, what is sin? And the
second is, what do I do about my sin? Let's look at the Psalm together. It's
broken into several parts. It has a clear progression. Verses one and two start
with prayer. Verses three through five move to confession. Verses six through 12
move to restoration. And verses 13 through 17 to transformation. So this Psalm
moves from prayer to confession to restoration to transformation. Let's look at
verses one and two, where David cries out to God and says, have mercy. Have
mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love and according to your
abundant mercy. Blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity
and cleanse me from my sin. So what is sin? The catechism tells us that sin is
rejecting or ignoring God in the world he created, rebelling against him by
living without reference to him, not being or doing what he requires in his law.
You might notice in this Psalm, in these two verses, we actually see three
different words for sin. Three synonyms that help us kind of build out our
definition. You see the words transgressions, iniquity, and then sin. Those
words do not mean precisely the same thing. First David says, blot out my
transgressions. A transgression is willful rebellion. In other words, you know
what the rule is, you know what the standard is, you know where the line is
drawn, you know what you are supposed to do or not supposed to do, but you just
violate that rule anyway. You know how if you're ever in the city of Buffalo and
you're going up and down the side streets looking for a place to park, finally
you see an opening and then you see why the opening's there. There's a little
sign that says, no parking Thursday, Friday. And you think, what day is it?
Friday. Then you think, I'm going in, right? That's transgression. You know what
the law is, but you go in anyway. It's willful and it's intentional. Then David
says, wash me thoroughly from my iniquities. Iniquity refers to the moral
impurity that is within me. Imagine someone pours you a little glass of lemonade
this summer and says, I just made this. You should know there's a little bit of
cyanide in there. Well, of course you're not going to drink it and you're not
going to ask how much either. It's not important. Any amount is poisonous.
Iniquity refers to the pervasive moral impurity that dwells within us. And there
may be times when you have, you go through a period of temptation, you may even
overcome that temptation. But afterwards you realize, the only reason that was
even appealing to me, the only reason it was tempting is because of the impurity
that's within me. And then third, David just says, cleanse me from my sin. Sin
is falling short of God's holy standard. And not only is it falling short, sin
refers to our complete inability to meet that holy standard. If I stood in the
end zone of the new Highmark Stadium and someone handed me a football and said,
here you go, just toss it through those goalposts on the other side, what would
happen? Well, I'm not going to reach it. It's more than a hundred yards away. My
best throw is not going to come close. And you could just keep giving me more
footballs, giving me more tries. I'm not going to reach it. It wouldn't matter.
I'm not going to. And that's sin. We fall short of God's standard and we're
unable to meet it. The goalposts are a thousand yards away. We fall short. So
the Psalm brings us to this question, what do we do when we know that we've
sinned? What do you do when your conscience convicts you and you know that you
have done something that is wrong? It could be on the scale of what David's
talking about. It could be something that in terms of earthly consequences is
much less than that, but what do you do? Let me talk for a minute about some
common approaches. And as I do that, you can probably think about which ones you
have tried before. You can ignore that. You can ignore that sense of guilt and
conviction and try not to think about it and just press it down. Try and move by
it. Turn your mind to other things. You can self justify. And by that, I mean
you can tell yourself that what you have done is really not that bad, especially
if you compare yourself to other people. It's what other people might have done
as well. You can shift the blame to other people and circumstances and the
complicated things that were surrounding your actions and make excuses about the
situation that surrounded your actions. You could also try to convince yourself
that sin is not really a real thing. It's just kind of this outdated
psychological concept that has a lot to do with your religious upbringing and
it's not really an actual thing. Or you can just tell yourself, no one can know.
I will never do that again. I will just try harder. Those are the approaches
that most people have with their sin. They ignore it, they press it down, they
rationalize it, they try harder, they blame other people, they psychologize it
away. You can do all those things, but the only way to actually find life is to
run to God for mercy. Look at what David says. Have mercy, have mercy on me, oh
God. He's come face to face with what he's done and the only thing to say is
have mercy. The need for mercy suggests that someone is powerless and
undeserving and mercy is God's compassion and pity and faithfulness and
steadfast love towards his covenant people. It's at the foundation of his
character. And when you consider the horror of what David did, you might think,
I cannot even believe he's asking for that. He's committed adultery and murder
and he's asking for mercy. He's asking for sins to be cleansed and washed away.
How is that even possible? Well, let's think about that. On what basis should
mercy be granted or not be granted? The mercy that we're asking for, the mercy
that David's asking for, it's not based on who he is or some great resolve to do
better in the future. We do not deserve mercy and we can never earn it. Instead,
David appeals to who God is and to his character. Look at this, according to
your steadfast love, according to your abundant mercy. Those words refer to the
way that God has revealed himself to his people. The language comes from Exodus
34, when God reveals himself to Moses. Steadfast love and mercy. When we ask God
for mercy, it cannot be based on our human conception of what he's like. Because
if we do that, we'll either do two things. We'll think, well, I don't picture
God to be someone who would be really bothered by that. Or we'll think, I could
never come before God after what I've done. The point is not how you or I
imagine God to be. The point is how he is revealed in scripture. And God has
revealed himself to us in scripture in such a way that his steadfast love and
his abundant mercy are fundamental and basic to who he is. And those
characteristics, that mercy and that love, it is available to everyone who calls
on him. And you might think, is it that simple? This guy just slept with someone
else's wife and had that man killed? And he can just ask for forgiveness and be
cleansed? It's that simple? This is not some cheap or easy, permissive
forgiveness. Look at verses three through five, and we'll see that the one who
asks for mercy has to acknowledge their sin. So the Psalm begins with a prayer
for mercy and now moves to a humble confession. Verses three through five. For I
know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. 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. Behold, I was brought forth in
iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me. Real forgiveness, it never comes
from hiding or justifying your sin. David puts it straight out in the open. He
lays it out there. The only way to find forgiveness from God, real cleansing, is
to confess and fully acknowledge your sinfulness. If you ask most people, what
is your biggest problem? What would they say? Even if I ask you that, what is
your biggest problem? Most of us are not used to thinking like that, so it would
take a moment to reflect. But what is wonderfully liberating about Psalm 51 is
that our biggest problem is not what we tend to think it is. Our biggest problem
is not our circumstances, or our boss, or our background, or our family history,
or whoever screwed you over, or your health, or your bad luck. Our biggest
problem is that we've sinned against a holy God. And you could say, how is that
liberating? The reason I can say that that's liberating is there's actually
something that can be done about that. We actually can confess and find a remedy
for our sin when we confess our sins to God. And when David says, against you
and you only have I sinned, he is acknowledging that his sin is first, vertical
before a holy God. The point here is not that there are not horizontal
consequences to our sin. Of course that there are. Obviously David sinned
grossly against Uriah, against his family, against Bathsheba, and really against
the whole nation that he had authority over. And if you continue to read 2
Samuel, there are major consequences for his actions. But look at what has
happened in David's heart. If you look back in 2 Samuel 11, when he got the word
that Bathsheba was pregnant, his only thought was, how can I cover this up? He
went into damage control mode and started doing his best to hide what had
happened. There is a very selfish and worldly type of confession that is really
just, how can I stop thinking about this and feel better again? How can things
get back to the way that they were? David is now going much deeper. He's saying,
how could I have sinned against God in this way? And our sin is fundamentally
against the God who created us. And then secondly, it's against the people who
are made in his image. And when David says, so that you may be justified in your
words and blameless in your judgment, he's not ready to accept whatever the
consequences are, whatever God's judgment is, it's right. And he's also
considered who he is and recognizes my sin sprang from my nature. When people
are discovered to have committed some terrible act, maybe they got caught in a
lie or they cheated on a spouse or they stole or something like that, once they
are discovered, my experience is that people will often have a need to describe
what they've done as some type of crazy or freaky abnormality. They will want
you to understand that there was like a perfect storm of unusual or strange
circumstances that resulted in their behavior. And it all came together to
result in what happened. If David's adultery had happened in the 21st century,
David would have sat down with his therapist and explained, I was in my mid 40s,
I wasn't feeling very fulfilled professionally. I had accomplished everything
that I wanted to. There were some emotional gaps at home and I saw Beth Sheba
and in that moment, she made me feel young again. And the therapist would say,
those are normal feelings. And when I say that, I'm not even trying to say that
that might be like meaningful and insightful on some level, it might be. But the
Christian doctrine of original sin is that we are sinners by nature and by
choice. In other words, we're born into sin and because of our sinful nature,
it's the soil in our heart and we grow up and we make sinful actions for our
sins. We make sinful actions and choices. And if you want to have mercy, if you
want to be renewed, you have to confess and to acknowledge your sin. And David's
now cried out for mercy, he's acknowledged his sin and now he prays for
cleansing on this basis. There's prayer, there's confession and now there's real
restoration. Look at verses six through 12. Behold, you delight in truth in the
inward being and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart. Purge me with hyssop
and I shall be clean. Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow. Let me hear joy
and gladness. Let the bones that you have broken rejoice. Hide your face from my
sins and blot out all my iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, oh God, and
renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from your presence and take not
your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and uphold me
with a willing spirit. Verse six shows us there's a huge gap between who David
acknowledges himself to be and what God desires. He acknowledges that he's a
sinner. God is asking for truth in the inward being. He's a sinner from birth.
The Lord is desiring purity and integrity. What can we even do about that gap?
We can confess our sin and we can come to God for cleansing and renewal. He
says, purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean. Hyssop is a reference to the
Old Testament in connection with ceremonial cleansing. A person would, for
example, be a leper, have leprosy or come in contact with the dead or something
like that. They would come to the priest to be cleans and after they were
touched with hyssop, the pronunciation would come, you shall be clean. David
says, wash me and I will be whiter than snow. We've probably all seen, unless
you just moved here, the incredible whiteness of sunlight on freshly fallen
snow. That's a picture of renewal and restoration with the Lord, forgiveness and
cleansing is total and complete. His grace is overflowing. He brings complete
and absolute cleansing. And the prayer for renewal comes to its peak in verse 10
when David says, create in me a clean heart, O God. When you think about that
verse, that is not a request for improved behavior or some sort of modification
or progress. Create in me is something only God can do, create. That's Genesis
one and two language. It means to make something new. And to put it simply,
David is asking God to do a miracle, something he can't do. Do for me what I
would never be able to do myself, give me a new heart. And we read this psalm in
light of the person and work of Jesus Christ. It's Jesus who told Nicodemus, you
must be born again. You must have a new heart. It's Jesus who took the
punishment for our sins in his body on the cross. The reason sins can be removed
and atoned for is because Jesus actually paid for them on the cross. And in 1
John, the New Testament tells us, everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ
has been born of God, has that new heart. That's the hope of the gospel, that
everyone who wholeheartedly trusts in the work of Jesus Christ in their place
for their sins has that new heart, is regenerated, and receives a new and clean
heart. David goes on to say, cast me not away from your presence and take not
your Holy Spirit from me. It's interesting to think he'd watch the former king,
King Saul, fall into spiritual darkness and rebellion, and he'd watch the Lord
take away his spirit from King Saul. And it's likely with that background that
he's begging the Lord, don't let that happen to me. Restore to me the joy of
your salvation and uphold me with a willing spirit. The prayer for restoration,
that is also a humble acknowledgement of ongoing weakness. The sinner can easily
say to himself, I'm never gonna do that again. I'll never struggle with that
again. That's a one-time thing. These requests, there's a humble acknowledgement
there of the ongoing need for God. And he's requesting that he would sense God's
presence again, that he would be renewed and restored and purified. And all of
that also has an outward dimension. Forgiveness is about much more than just
feeling better about myself, feeling better about my guilt. True forgiveness is
not just therapeutic, it's not just cathartic, it leads to a transformed life.
One of the worst things about sin are the consequences it has for unbelievers,
those who have, it gives people reasons to mock or to disbelieve God, but the
one who's been forgiven will be transformed to praise and worship and to testify
of God's grace. So you see the movement of the Psalm now from prayer to
confession to restoration and finally to transformation in verses 13 through 17.
Then I will teach transgressors your ways and sinners will return to you.
Deliver me from blood guiltiness, oh God, oh God of my salvation, and my tongue
will sing aloud of your righteousness. Oh Lord, open my lips and my mouth will
declare your praise. For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it.
You will not be pleased with a burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a
broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart, oh God, you will not despise. One of
the amazing things about this Psalm here is that true repentance and forgiveness
actually opens up new doors for ministry. Look at what David says, then I will
teach transgressors your ways and sinners will return to you. Now, in saying
that, we have to be careful. There are some sins that are disqualifying for
future leadership, especially in terms of the church. For example, it is common
in some Christian circles when a ministry leader falls into sin that there's
almost like a race to restore him, as though his gifts are essential and we
can't function without him. Some sins are disqualifying in terms of future
positions of formal leadership. However, that being said, someone who has
experienced the grace and mercy of God has a powerful testimony and ability to
encourage and impact others. When we've experienced God's grace in our own life,
we want others to have that experience as well. I received a note of
encouragement in the last couple weeks from a man who's currently incarcerated.
He and I used to visit regularly when he was in prison before he was transferred
to a facility in central New York. He's repented of his sins, he's giving
financially to this church, he's leading five younger inmates in a study of the
book of Romans. And I say that to say your sin, on whatever scale it is, does
not have to be the end of your ministry. And the experience of God's grace leads
us to true and heartfelt worship. Guilt and shame, that ongoing condition of
guilt and shame, it makes us silent and ashamed. But David prays, open my lips
and my mouth will declare your praise. He wants to praise God again, loud and
unashamed. And if you're here this morning and you're not singing as loud as you
could sing, let me encourage you, believe that God is full of steadfast love and
mercy and confess your sins to him and rejoice in his mercy. Let me wrap this
up, here's how the psalm ends. Now it becomes corporate, verses 18 through 19.
Do good to Zion and your good pleasure. Build up the walls of Jerusalem. Then
you will delight and write sacrifices in burnt offerings and whole burnt
offerings. Then bowls will be offered on your altar. So David's prayer of
confession now becomes the corporate prayer of the Israelites. These last two
verses are likely written hundreds of years later after the reign of David when
the Israelites were between the captivity and returning to Israel, rebuilding
the temple, acknowledging their own sin, their own portion in the exile, now
coming back to rebuild. It's a picture, really, of the church, forgiven sinners
coming together to rejoice and to worship and ask God for his blessing. That's
us saying, do good to Zion, bless your people, oh God, that we might worship
rightly. We don't ignore our sin, we don't justify it, we don't just say I'll
try harder. We confess our sin to the Lord and we find mercy because he is full
of steadfast love. Let's pray together. Lord God, we thank you for your word and
we thank you for the amazing extent of your mercy. Lord, we thank you for the
example that we have here from King David and the hope that we have through
Jesus Christ, that we can have a new heart. Lord, I pray that we would look to
you for ongoing cleansing, that in our sin we would not push it away, ignore it,
justify it, rationalize it, but that we would come to you according to your
steadfast love and according to your mercy to find forgiveness and cleansing.
Lord, I pray that for each one here that they would find that deep inner
cleansing that comes through your mercy. We pray for that in Jesus' name, amen.