(upbeat music)
- Hi, this is Pastor Tom,
and I want to welcome you to this look at Psalm 51.
Psalm 51 is one of the mountain peaks in the book of Psalms.
It's not a psalm of comfort and strength like Psalm 23.
It's not a psalm of greatest praise like Psalm 100 or 136.
Psalm 51 is a psalm of confession.
It's a psalm about how to confess your greatest sins.
The story of David, the writer of this Psalm 51,
of his sin and his repentance
is found in 2 Samuel chapter 11 and 12.
And we all know the story of David's sin with Bathsheba.
It's one of the most famous sins in all of history.
This is his prayer of confession
after Nathan the prophet confronted him with that sin,
with his greatest sin.
Many of us are willing to confess our little sins,
but not our greatest sins.
And we might even know that they're there
and even feel sorry that they're there,
but we're not willing to truly and deeply confess them
before God and before others.
Because confessing our greatest sins would force us to change,
would cause us to face shame that we don't want to face,
would make us have to be honest with ourselves
at a level we may have never approached in our lives.
And yet, this moment of confession,
it is the place of greatest change,
of expressing our greatest love to God and to others.
And so David shows us the way.
And I invite you to have the courage
to not just listen to what David did,
but to do it along with him
as we walk through this psalm together today.
What did we learn from David
about confessing your greatest sin?
Well, number one, you start with God's mercy.
Verses one and two of Psalm 51.
Have mercy on me, O God,
according to your unfailing love,
according to your great compassion,
blot out my transgressions,
wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin.
So you don't start with your guilt,
you start with God's mercy.
Because God's mercy is the only answer for your guilt.
Forgiveness is not about your sincerity,
it's about God's mercy.
No matter how sincere we could have been
about wanting to do different,
without God's mercy given to us on the cross,
our sincerity would make no difference at all.
There's nothing that you and I can feel or say or do
to achieve God's forgiveness.
It begins and ends with God's mercy.
So you begin by throwing yourself on God's mercy
and by recognizing the power of his mercy,
the power to wash away all your iniquity
and to cleanse you of all your sin.
So number one, you start with God's mercy.
Number two, you confess your sin.
Verses three to five.
David writes, for I know my transgressions
and my sin is always before me.
Against you, you only have I sinned
and done what is evil in your sight
so that you are proved right when you speak
and justified when you judge.
Surely I was sinful at birth,
sinful from the time my mother conceived me.
David did a lot of great things in his life.
He killed Goliath.
He captured Jerusalem.
He defeated foreign enemies.
But I believe David's single most significant action
is right here.
Being able to say, Lord, I was wrong.
Forgive me.
And just look more closely at the honest heart
that is behind this request for forgiveness.
He recognized that he sinned.
No more excuses, no more tricks up his sleeve,
just hard honesty.
And maybe you're tired of the excuses.
You know, it's time to be honest to God.
He also recognized who he hurt.
Against you, you only have I sinned.
He hurt God himself.
Now David's sin, it had hurt many,
but he recognized that the deepest hurt
had occurred in God's heart.
Sometimes we buy into the lie in a sin
that we're struggling with, that it's not hurting anybody.
It's hurting the God who cared enough to create you.
It's hurting the God who sacrificed himself
for you on the cross.
Sin hurts.
He recognized who he hurt.
And he also recognized his need.
Not to cover up or to clean up, but to look up.
To look up to God's forgiveness and God's kindness.
And he recognized the depth of his need.
He writes, I was sinful at birth.
He was confessing that the sin was an expression
of who he was.
Instead of an accident and oops, or how did that happen?
He confessed that it was in his nature to do this.
It was a sin.
So you confess your sin.
And then number three, you trust God to restore you.
Confession is not just about admitting that you sinned.
It's also throwing yourself on God's mercy for restoration.
David's sin, it had infected his whole person.
And he recognizes this.
In this psalm, he talks about his eyes, his mind,
his ears, his bones, his heart, his spirit,
his hands, and his lips.
He knew he needed a total restoration.
And just look quickly with me at the picture
that David gives of how God will restore you
when you confess your sin before him.
He restores you with a recreated heart.
God will cleanse you.
Verses six to 10.
Surely you desire truth in the inner parts.
You teach me wisdom in the inmost place.
Clean me with hyssop and I will be clean.
Wash me and I will be whiter than snow.
Let me hear joy and gladness
and let the bones you have crushed rejoice.
Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquity.
Create in me a pure heart, oh God.
Create in me a pure heart, oh God, David writes.
To create, that's something only God can do.
Not develop a pure heart in me or grow a pure heart in me
or encourage a pure heart.
He says create a pure heart.
God can't erase your past,
but he can cleanse you of your past sins
and he can create in you a pure heart.
That's the grace and restoration of God.
A recreated spirit.
He also gives you, a recreated heart he gives
and he also gives you a renewed spirit
in which God will make you steadfast.
The second half of verse 10 says
and renew a steadfast spirit within me.
When trust with God is broken,
so is discipline in your life.
And you feel many times like you're wandering.
Not in every area of life,
but sometimes in the most important area of life.
Your relationships, your commitment to God,
your love, your ability to feel.
You lose that ability to give a solid,
consistent commitment of yourself to anything sometimes.
To be steadfast.
When your faith is healed,
so is that steadfast, strong spirit.
You start to feel again, you start to care again.
A renewed spirit.
He also talks about a restored joy.
In verse 12, restore to me the joy of your salvation
and grant me a willing spirit to sustain me.
It is so easy to believe that joy can be found
somewhere else but in God's love.
David had found those promises to be false and empty.
Joy was offered in the sin that he chose,
but guilt and anguish was what he received.
We've all gone down that road, that Satan's trap.
God gives joy.
Not a fleeting moment of stolen pleasure,
but eternal joy, the joy of his salvation.
That's what he gives in his restoration.
He also gives a rekindled purpose.
David found himself as he's gaining this restored spirit
with a renewed purpose centered around the purposes of God
at the center of his heart.
Verses 13 to 15.
Then he writes, I will teach transgressors your ways
and sinners will turn back to you.
Save me from blood guilt, O God, the God who saves me
and my tongue will sing of your righteousness.
O Lord, open my lips and my mouth will declare your praise.
Open my lips, he writes.
His sin had kept him silent.
So you ask God to open your lips
so you can declare his praise.
God restores you.
He does not partially restore you.
He completely restores you
because there's no half measures
or partial blessings with God.
It's impossible for his character.
God is perfect and so God restores you.
That's part of the confession.
And then there's a fourth thing,
a final step in dealing with your greatest sin
that we learned from David.
Fourth, you accept forgiveness as a gift.
Don't try to earn your forgiveness.
Many times as followers of Christ,
after the forgiveness has been given, after we prayed,
we start to try to earn the forgiveness by how we live.
And without knowing it,
we're setting ourselves up for a fall
because we're living a life of works, not of grace.
And that's gonna send us back into our sin.
Verses 16 to 17.
You do not delight in sacrifices 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.
A broken spirit, a broken heart.
Certain things have to be broken
before we can be put back together again, like a bone.
Sometimes it has to be broken to be reset
'cause it healed in the wrong way
or a horse that has to be broken to be useful.
Certain things have to be broken in us
before we can be put back together again.
The spirit of independence.
I'm gonna make it work on my own, God.
The stubborn heart.
The spirit that thinks I can do it without God.
And we've all come across circumstances in our lives,
sins that may be very visible to others.
Lots of people know about them
or may be only known to ourselves,
but there are those areas of greatest sin.
And we've tried and tried again
to get it right by ourselves.
And again and again, we've fallen and fallen and fallen.
Will you let God break your heart right now?
Just speak to your heart and say,
stop trying to do it on your own.
Start trusting in me to do what only I can do.
And yes, that means you confess it to me.
And that means you're honest to God and to others.
And yes, that means you choose a new spirit of humility
rather than pride.
But wouldn't you rather live there, God's saying to you,
than in that place of sin?
If your heart is broken over your sin,
I want to encourage you right now,
give that broken heart to God right now
as a sacrifice of trust.
Just say to him, father, my heart is broken.
You see it, you see how I feel.
And I know that you know that I'm a sinner
and I know that you know I'm gonna struggle with sin,
but I also know that you know I can confess this sin to you
and you can restore me and you can bring me to a new place
even as you brought David to a new place.
That sin was something he remembered the rest of his life,
but it did not control the rest of his life.
And God, I want to confess my sin to you today.
I say, yes, I did that.
Maybe it's the first time, maybe it's the thousandth time.
And God, I want to trust you and you alone,
your mercy for forgiveness, for restoration, and for grace.
Forgive me, I pray.
In Jesus' name, amen.