Sermon: Psalm 51 (Part Four): Psalm 51:13-19
David Turns to Action
#1814-PM
Richard T. Ritenbaugh
Given 19-Apr-25; 86 minutes
description: True repentance is not a one-time act, but rather a lifelong journey of transformation into the image of Jesus Christ. II Corinthians 7, Psalm 51, and Romans 6 all teach that repentance is far more than feeling guilt or apologizing but instead is a spirit-empowered reorientation of heart, mind, and behavior. When we examine Paul's profound humbling on the road to Damascus and David's broken spirit after acknowledging sinning with Bathsheba, true, godly sorrow constitutes a deep awareness and loathing of sin that produces real change. When we examine Paul's seven fruits of repentance, including zeal, indignation, and desire for justice, we learn that genuine repentance is marked for righteousness. Jesus Christ, because He never sinned, could not model for us how to repent, but His great, great, Grandfather David models repentance with a contrite heart, pleading not only for forgiveness, but for total restoration and the ability to teach others. Romans 6 instructs us that God's grace does not excuse sin, but it does empower us to walk in holiness. Even when we are forgiven, the consequences of past sin may linger, but it can be transformed into humility, wisdom, and service to others. Repentance is both deeply personal and communal, enabling us to be healed, transformed, and commissioned by Almighty God for the restoration of others.
transcript:
It would not surprise me at all if the apostle Paul had David's prayer of repentance in mind as he wrote his very well known description of true repentance in II Corinthians 7. Please turn there. We are going to be reading verses 9 through 11. I would imagine that he was probably thinking about his own very stunning repentance when he was called. He had to change his way of life quite drastically from hounding Christians to supporting them and teaching them, and that was not an easy thing to do for him. He thought he was being zealous for the Lord. And he was, according to what he had been taught, but it had not been the right way, and he had to repent of that and go about it in a way that God wanted him to go.
And remember in Acts Jesus said, "Hey Paul, why are you kicking against the goads? I'm trying to get you to go this way and you're just resisting Me at every turn and doing something totally against what I want you to do." It took a wrenching of his mind and of his purpose to complete his repentance, or maybe I should say to initiate his repentance and then he had a lot of work to do from there.
But in this particular case, just to give you a little background on II Corinthians 7, he was talking about the problems in the Corinthian church and they had to admit that they had been doing things wrong and they suddenly got it at some point. Of course we know that one of the main things was that they were being ultra-loving toward this man who had taken his father's wife and saying that, "Oh, this is just fine. We love these people and we will just let them do what they want to do." But it was not a good thing. It was a sin that they were supporting and they are supposedly being loving. And they had to come around after Paul had told them that they were wrong and tried to explain things and finally they came to the place of true godly sorrow. They were truly sorry that they had sinned in this way. So this kind of gives you the background for some of the verbiage he gives us here.
II Corinthians 7:9-10 Now I rejoice, not that you were made sorry, but that your sorrow led to repentance. For you were made sorry in a godly manner, that you might suffer loss from us in nothing. For godly sorrow produces repentance to salvation, not to be regretted; but the sorrow of the world produces death.
That is the exact wrong direction to go. If you are sorry about something, you want to produce something good like life, but the world's sorrow does not do that because it does not produce change. Not the right kind of change. And when it does not produce the right kind of change, it will not lead to the right kind of goal, like salvation.
II Corinthians 7:10-11 For godly sorrow produces repentance to salvation, not to be regretted; but the sorrow of the world produces death. For observe this very thing, that you sorrowed in a godly manner: What diligence it produced in you, what clearing of yourselves, what indignation, what fear, what vehement desire, what zeal, what vindication! In all things you proved yourselves to be clear in this matter.
Now as we think about this, think about Paul's description of repentance here, recall that the Greek word for repentance is metanoia. It means a change in thinking, a change in mind—the -noia part of the word has to do with the mind—a change in thinking that spurs a change in behavior. It goes beyond just the change of mind. It goes to what that mind produces. And the mind produces good thoughts—if it is going in the right direction, if there is been a true change—the mind changes so it produces good thoughts, good intentions, good motives, and those things work out in action, in good behavior.
So it is a change that goes all the way through the mind and into the body's actions. It is thorough. It is a thorough change. It is not just an intellectual agreement. Or on the other hand, it is not just an emotional reaction. "Oh, I did something wrong!" Boo-hoo, so sad. It is not just that, it is something that actually produces good things all the way through, a change that goes all the way through one's whole life. Like I said, it is not just saying sorry, not just saying or feeling bad for what we have done. True repentance realizes the seriousness of sin and it realizes that it is so serious because it has eternal consequences. That you cannot do sin in a corner and expect it to do nothing, to have no effects. It affects you, it affects your spouse, it affects your children, it affects your neighbor, it affects the world, and it affects your eternal life. Especially if you do not repent of it.
True repentance, realizing how serious sin is, should produce godly sorrow. That is, the deep grief over a personal failure and your sin against God. It should also produce confession; confession to God. You are not just sorry, you take it to God and say, "Look, I messed up. I messed up bad. This is what I did. I didn't want to do it. It was a weakness. I got drawn away." I mean, you can give what justifications you want, but you want to land on "I did it. I admit it. I own it. I have sinned." And in that confession to God, it should be followed by beseeching His forgiveness, asking Him to clear you of that sin.
And then, as I said, there is still more to come. It is not just going before Him and confessing your sins and asking for forgiveness, and that is it. He expects you to change. First of all, not to do that sin again. To do everything you can to avoid succumbing to that temptation again. And then to take active steps to avoid doing that. To make yourself strong in Christ, strong in His Spirit, that you can see it coming and avoid it. Or if it does come upon you again to be strong and just say no. Mrs. Reagan was right. Just say no. With God's Spirit, you can just say no. God will give you the strength.
Also, as we think about these things that repentance does or produces, we have to remember that true repentance always produces righteousness. I have kind of merged these two together, but the second part of this—that true repentance always produces righteousness—true repentance, because it always produces righteousness, always produces a step forward in developing the mind of Christ. You get stronger in the faith if it is true repentance because you are getting rid of bad habits and you are putting on good habits of action, of behavior, of conduct.
And so true repentance will make you spiritually look and act like Christ. What I am saying here, I could put it in a few words, it produces a step forward in sanctification. And that is why Paul uses this phrase here, "for godly sorrow produces repentance to salvation." He is looking at salvation as an ongoing process, and as we repent, that is, really make these changes in our lives, we are becoming more holy, more sanctified, which will lead ultimately to our ultimate salvation and glorification in the Kingdom of God. That is the plan, the course that God has for each one of us. We are moving toward it, and it is not just the initial salvation that comes to us when we are baptized and we repent at baptism. That is part of salvation.
That is the first thing that happens in terms of justification, but justification is not the end. Justification is that initial legal state that God puts you in because Christ's blood covers you, your sins are forgiven. Now you come before God through Jesus Christ and all His righteousness, and God says, "Hey, you look pretty good because you wear My Son's blood." So we are just in His sight. He by His grace says that we are are justified. And that remains with us, that justification by His grace, by the overpowering holiness and righteousness of Jesus Christ. But we still sin. Because of that, of course, we have to keep going to God for forgiveness.
But He is looking for sanctification. He is looking for us becoming holy, which is what sanctification is. We become holy. We have a type of legal holiness but it is not the thorough holiness that He is looking for, which He sees in our actions, in our conduct. And all of that through a lifetime of learning and overcoming and growing produces, ultimately, our salvation. You know, when the Bible talks about being saved it tells us that we have been saved, that we are currently being saved, and that we will be saved. So that is very clear that it is a process that has a beginning at our justification at baptism and will not end until our change, until our glorification.
And so repentance is a vital part of every step along the way. Because every step along the way should be, if done right, changing our mind and producing a change in our conduct toward the godly holy conduct of Jesus Christ. So repentance is an ongoing thing.
Now, we do repent for individual things along the way, individual sins, but I mean, you could say to yourself, "Look at me. I'm full of sin. I have a lot of changing to do. And so I have to repent of each facet of those sinful things that I become aware of so that I could reflect the mind and behavior of Jesus Christ as much as possible." And it is all tied to repentance. Repentance, as he says here, to salvation. So the life of a Christian is a life of constant change. We are constantly undergoing transformation so that we reflect Jesus Christ as much as possible. And this goes on until God says, "Okay, I've seen enough." And he pulls the plug, if you will. You have made it. And then we die in Christ, ready for the resurrection from the dead. But repentance is a very necessary feature, and we need to make sure that we are doing it right.
As we go on here, in verse 11 Paul lists seven products of true repentance, and this is a way, a kind of a rough gauge, if you will, that you can judge, you can evaluate how well your repentance is going on a certain thing. So, he lists here, as I said, seven products, seven fruits of repentance, of true godly repentance.
The first is diligence, as it is here in the New King James. It could also be translated as earnestness or eagerness. And this is an excited fervor and conscientiousness. Those two elements are there. There is the excitement and also the conscientiousness. So you are excited about being diligent, you are excited about getting to work on something. He does not say what it is that you are excited about doing and going to be conscientious about doing, but it is kind of understood that you are excited or diligent about doing righteousness. Doing what you need to to change.
The second word that he uses here is what clearing of yourselves. What is in italics. It has been added there, but it is probably a good addition. This means a yearning to be cleared of blame. A yearning, a great deep desire to have the guilt removed. It is a feeling in the pit of your stomach that you will not feel right until the record against you has been scrubbed clean. Now we know that the record has been scrubbed clean because that is exactly what Jesus Christ did. What was nailed to His cross? Well, it was not the law. But it was the record of sin of all humanity that was nailed to the cross. That was what was covered by His blood.
And so those sins have been covered and Christ, of course, bore them away. They are no longer in force, as I mentioned before in David's psalm, those were erased from His Book. God has the obvious power to do this. But though we know this mentally, we know the Scriptures that say that this happens, we sometimes continue to hold the guilt. And so there is this feeling in us in true repentance to get it totally out of our hearts and minds. And there are ways that this can be done to to rid oneself of guilt and of course a lot of it has to do with our letting it go and trusting God that it has been forgiven and then we can take steps forward to produce something that will help us to mitigate the feelings of guilt that we have.
The third one is indignation. Indignation has to do with anger. This is a mental agitation, an emotional disturbance within our hearts, and it can be a feeling of horror or simply distress. And this indignation is inward, upon oneself because of one's sin and how unworthy one is and how corrupt one is. Because, you know, God peers down and looks into us and He sees everything about us, as it says in in Hebrews 4, and sometimes He lets us see what He sees and we go, "Oh! How terrible a person I am!" Horrified to see how wrong one has been.
What you are seeing there is how much you have covered up and deceived yourself about how good you are. Because each of us is rotten. I mean, human nature is rotten. Human nature is so self-centered, it wants everything for itself, and it is so willing to deceive itself. And every once in a while, God gives us clear sight so that we can see that, yeah, we have got a long way to go. That we are sometimes more like Satan than God and that we need to change our ways. And it horrifies us that those things could still be in us. And it is good that we can turn those into a kind of anger that, as Doctor Maas put it in an article, it was like Drano® that we use on ourselves to get rid of the sin. And so we allow that anger to scour our minds and our hearts of what is evil. Make everything flow nicely once again, if you will.
Let us go on to the next one, fear. This is the word phobos in Greek, the normal word for fear in that language. And it is talking about fear of judgment, fear of punishment. And this links with realizing what sin does. The wages of sin is death, and we fear the consequences of sin. And we also fear God, because God is just. He is also gracious and merciful, and He wants to lean to that side. But if we keep on sinning, He will respond with justice and with wrath rather than with mercy. Of course, His response with wrath and justice are ways that He tries to slap us upside the head and say, "Come on, get with the program! Turn, repent, change. Get back on the track." That is what He did with Israel, but they were too stupid, too carnal to change, and they took their punishment and went into exile and were scattered all around and now they do not even remember who they are because they did not change. And God will do the same with His spiritual people in hopes that they will put on the brakes on their sin and turn to Him and repent.
Let us go on to the fifth one. That is vehement desire. This is a longing, like the first one was. The second one is also a kind of longing, but vehement desire is prolonged, unfulfilled desire or need to be in a right relationship with God. We have this desire in us. It is full of excitement. It is an emotional thing where we feel like and we believe that we need to be in a relationship with God, and that we are the ones holding things back. And we want this desire to be fulfilled, but it is unfulfilled because we are not doing what we need to do to make it right. God is always ready for that relationship. He is always in the right. He is always doing what He needs to do to make the relationship work, but we are always the one that is hanging back. It is our sins that are separating us from Him, and we need to use this desire to spur us into a right relationship by doing what is right and by drawing closer to Him.
Let us go on to the sixth one, zeal. This is a fiery need to do something. And not just to do something, but to do something good. A fiery need to do something good, and that fiery need to do something good is to live righteously before God. So we go into the change of conduct with the zeal of a warrior to slay all the sin that is within us. The zeal is focused inward.
The seventh one, what vindication. This word could also be translated as vengeance, what vengeance. And this speaks to a readiness to see justice done. What this entails is a desire, a driving desire to make amends, or restitution. That is, with those that you have harmed through your sin. To make sure that life around you reflects the life of God for others. You will work on yourself, but you want to do what you can to make sure that any harm you have done is corrected as much as possible. Sometimes it is not possible, but this idea here is that within oneself there is a great desire to see that justice done.
Now we have already seen some of these items in Psalm 51 and I think we will see more of them throughout this sermon. So we are going to go back to Psalm 51 and finish up here in the next 45 minutes or so.
Remember, we stopped in verse 12 last time. If you recall, I mentioned, I believe it was the last time, that we can divide this prayer of repentance into two halves. The first half is about cleansing him from sin. All of that first half has to do with, "God, I've been a terrible person. Please forgive me. Please wash me, please make me white as snow. Please give me forgiveness." He made several different mentions and metaphors and whatnot to try to explain to us how badly he felt about his sin, and he wanted it to be done away. He wanted it forgiven, obviously, and he wanted that sin out of his life totally.
The second half, which we will be covering today is about staying clean, and more, about helping others. What do you do after you have been forgiven? Because it is not, as I mentioned already, just being forgiven and you are done. Repentance flows all the way through that change of activity, change of conduct. So yeah, you can wail at God forever about forgiveness. But if it is not followed on with actual change of action, then the repentance has not been followed through. You have merely asked for forgiveness and have not changed at all.
So today we are going to continue and finish this study into Psalm 51 and move on to something else next time. Let us read the second half from verse 13 on in Psalm 51. Actually, I am going to read verse 12 as well to get a little running start.
Psalm 51:12-19 Restore to me the joy of Your salvation, and uphold me with Your generous Spirit. Then I will teach transgressors Your ways, and sinners shall be converted to You. Deliver me from blood guiltiness, O God, the God of my salvation, and my tongue shall sing aloud of Your righteousness. O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth shall show forth Your praise. For You do not desire sacrifice, or else I would give it; You do not delight in burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite heart—these, O God, You will not despise. Do good in Your good pleasure to Zion; build the walls of Jerusalem. Then You shall be pleased with the sacrifices of righteousness, with burnt offering and whole burnt offering; then they shall offer bulls on Your altar.
In verse 12, where we left off last time, David asked God for two things. He beseeches God to restore to him the joy of salvation. And the second thing in the second couplet there, to sustain him in his weakness, to put it in other words. Because David was in great emotional pain. He was feeling like he had come this close to losing his salvation. And he was like some of the things we saw as we went through II Corinthians 7:11, he was feeling so low, so disappointed at himself. He was feeling fear that he had really messed up and he was yearning for the restoration of his relationship with God.
But as I mentioned, he was the one that was holding things back. He asked for these things of God because he knew that God would give them. God wanted to give them to him. But did he deserve it? So he was feeling spiritually at his lowest point of his life, I would imagine. Totally unworthy, weak in the knees, spiritual knees, if you can make that kind of a metaphor, and he just had this indescribable feeling of failure. And could he come back from this terrible failure? Because that is what sin is. Sin is failure—failure to meet a standard, failure to hit the mark, a failure to come up to what God expects.
So he was in this great emotional pain and he needed godly joy to help him. He needed some sort of spiritual pick-me-up, if you will, some confidence boosting action on God's part through the Spirit to help him move forward. To make him believe that he could rest, spiritually, in the peace and goodness of God. Because right now, at this point, he was not resting. He was still in great agitation. He wanted some way that God would give him direction, guidance, strength, settle out his nerves a bit, push him in the right direction, and help him have a little bit of oomph, if you will, to get off his rear end and start doing what was right.
And so he says, "Restore to me the joy of Your salvation." Help him to get over this great crater that he had found himself in so that he could start again, so that he could move forward in his life. He knew that he could not do it on his own if he did not have God to give him a boost somehow through His, as he calls it here, generous spirit or His willing spirit. I like it willing a little bit better because it shows God's willingness to help when we are at our lowest. But he knew that if God did not help, he would remain in that crater forever. He could never get out of it. Which reminds me of Philippians 2:12-13, "Work out your own salvation in fear and trembling" because God is doing His work in you to finish your salvation here.
We can never forget that we are not the one actually putting in the most in our salvation process. God is always the one fueling us and we are just responding to Him and what He wants for us. Hopefully we are responding in joy. That this is the way we want to go and that we want to have that deep relationship with Him and we are then cooperating with Him.
But he knew he needed the help of God to help him make these first steps out of this low spot in his life. He needed God to come beside him by His Spirit. Put an arm around him as he, like the walking wounded, started walking forward again. And he says here, "by Your willing, generous Spirit I can do this. But I need Your help."
Now in verse 13, I will just read 13. Then once You give me this boost, once You help me get back on my feet, "I will teach transgressors Your ways, and sinners shall be converted to You." So after he confesses his sin and makes his pleas for forgiveness and restoration, the psalm turns here at this point to David's promise of action. Then, now that I am back on my feet, I am going to do something right. I am going to do something good. We need to remember it is never enough just to ask God to forgive. There must be consequent change. When He forgives, He expects change. He is willing, very free with His mercy, but that does not mean there is not expectation. He wants you to grow. He wants you to overcome those bad habits. He wants us in the way that the Old Testament speaks about repentance. He wants us to turn, change directions. He wants us to look at our sin and say, "I'm not going there again" and start taking steps to return to a righteous way of life. Because if he keeps going into sin, he is going to keep going into trouble and that trouble is ultimately going to end in death. So God wants us to turn from that and take action so that we do not do it again.
I have met people out in the world that say something like, "Oh, I know I sin, but I just ask God and He'll forgive me." And that is the end of the sentence, that is where the period comes. And so they just think that, oh, I can keep sinning and God will keep giving me grace AD infinitum. Hey, if God tells us to forgive a sinner seven times seventy, will not God put that into the infinity symbol? Let us change that. God just is going to give us grace, grace, grace, grace, grace, and expect nothing. This is a very unbiblical way of thinking about God's grace.
You know why God gives grace? Well, the first reason is that nothing would ever happen without Him giving us mercy. But the second reason is that God gives us grace to produce righteousness. God puts us back at square one with His grace so that we can from that point live out a righteous life. It is like, "OK, let's try again. Back to square one. Let's clear the board. Okay, start now. Do right." So grace is given because God is merciful. But then He expects us to produce righteousness with that clean slate that He has given us.
Let us go to Romans chapter 6, verses 1 and 2 and then we will skip down to verse 10. David Grabbe wrote an article not too long ago about these people in the world as Christians who sing the tune of Romans and Galatians, various other places, and they hum when they get to certain verses because it does not go with what they think, what they believe. And these are some of those scriptures that they tend to hum, at least the implications of some of them.
Romans 6:1-2 What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Certainly not! How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it?
Oh, no. But Christ does it all for you. You do not have to worry about that law anymore that defines what righteousness is, right? Yes, you do, God says. God wants to see those who have died with Christ live in Christ's righteousness. That is why He gave them grace, so that they could live in His grace and do what is right.
Romans 6:10-11 For the death that He died [Christ died], He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. Likewise you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin [like Christ], but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
We have done the same thing through baptism. He has gone all through chapter 6 here using the metaphor of baptism to show that we have died to sin and once we are raised out of the watery grave, our lives are dedicated to doing, to living like Christ. So we died, like Christ, from sin. We were raised to life in righteousness.
Let us keep going.
Romans 6:12-14 Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts. And do not present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace.
And when you are under grace, that means you are living righteously. Right? That is what Paul is talking about, because you are living the life of Christ.
Romans 6:15-16 What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? Certainly not! Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves slaves to obey, you are that one slaves whom you obey, whether of sin to death, or of obedience to righteousness?
As we have learned, when the great Master calls us out of sin to this world or calls us out of slavery to this world or slavery to sin, He makes us His slaves and we are slaves then to His way of life, which is a way of righteousness. We are still servants. We are still bond slaves. We have just changed masters, and we are still obligated to live the life of the Master and to serve Him in every way. And that is what he is saying here. Once you have changed teams from Team World, Team Satan, Team Sin, and come to team Jesus Christ and the way of the Kingdom of God, you are expected to live like Christ. He is our Owner and Master.
Romans 6:17 But God be thanked that though you were slaves of sin, yet you obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine to which you were delivered.
You changed. You made a conscious choice to join the right side—the good side, the godly side. You decided that you were going to obey Jesus Christ. You were going to obey God and His commands.
Romans 6:18-19 And having been set free from sin, you became slaves of righteousness. I speak in human terms [it is a metaphor] because of the weakness of your flesh. For just as you presented your members as slaves of uncleanness, and of lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves of righteousness for holiness [or unto sanctification].
So we have been given a chance here, we have been given an opportunity to live like God lives and those past sins have been forgiven, taken away, totally removed. We are no longer to go back to lawlessness or uncleanness. But we have to present our members, we have to present our bodies, all our functions, all our faculties now as slaves of right doing so that we can be cleaned up, made pure, sanctified, so we are like Jesus Christ.
Romans 6:20-22 For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. [I mean, when you were a slave of sin, you did not probably think about righteousness at all. You were totally free from any ideas of that sort of thing.] What fruit did you have then in the things of which you are now ashamed? [not good fruit] For the end of those things is death. But now having been set free from sin, and having become slaves of God, you have your fruit to holiness [or to sanctification], and the end, everlasting life.
Now that you have become a slave of God, and sin is, I will not say not a problem, but it is conquerable through Jesus Christ, then we can see that it produces good things. Yes, it will produce sanctification. It will produce holiness in our life. We will live righteously. And the end, it is so good—everlasting life. We have that hope of everlasting life because we have, through God, made ourselves slaves of Him and His righteousness. We have cooperated that far and if we just keep on going we can see that glorious end and have the hope of the resurrection and all the good things that come with it.
That is so much better than death. I mean, the rewards for being a slave of righteousness are so much better than being a slave of sin. I mean, that is comparing everything with nothing, right? What do you have in death? Nothing, zilch. (I sound like my dad.) But otherwise, if we are slaves of righteousness, then we have the Kingdom of God to look forward to.
Romans 6:23 For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
So, Paul is very clear here. God is there to forgive sin by His grace. But He wants us to live righteously. He is looking for growth. He is eager for it. Eager to see the fruits of the bread of life in our conduct, as I mentioned last week. He wants to see that we are breaking old sinful habits and creating new godly ones based on the example of Jesus Christ. He is testing us. He is judging us. He is working with us to see if the mind of Christ is developing in us by His Spirit. That we are incrementally, slowly but surely becoming, looking more like His Son.
As John the apostle puts it in I John 3:3, everyone who has the hope of eternal life in the resurrection purifies himself just as He is pure. That person does not continue in sin. He does his best to get all the sin out and eat all the bread of life so that he could be like the Bread of Life, Jesus Christ.
So back in Psalm 51, verse 13. A prime product of true repentance is diligence and eagerness to accomplish something. To make up for the harm we have done by doing something good for others, helpful for others. Because sin destroys. If it ends in death, then all it can do is destroy. And so when we sin, we should want to do something to make up for all the harm that we have done.
And David is concerned that others need God's instruction to return to Him, so he offers himself for God to use. The least he could do is to help others. Because he has been through a lot, he now had a lot of experience and he wanted to make sure that other people could go walk the same path that he now walked. So he wants to be instrumental in restoring others as he was restored. And like I just mentioned a minute ago, there is a hint here that he would use his own experience with God's forgiveness and restoration to help others see their need and the efficacy of God's gracious mercy.
So he is saying, "Okay, God, you've taught me a lot in this situation. I regret what I've done, and I thank You for Your forgiveness, but now I want to help others climb out of that same hole or their similar holes. I've got a lot of experience. Let me help people. Give me what it takes to help people."
Now on to verse 14, "Deliver me from blood guiltiness, O God, the God of my salvation, and my tongue shall sing aloud of Your righteousness." David, I think, goes to this idea of blood guiltiness because what he had just written here and thinking about his own experience and how he could help others reminded him of just how bad he was once again, that he was guilty of blood. He was guilty of at least the blood of Uriah the Hittite. We could probably throw the death of his son in there, and as we have seen recently, God also because of this ended up allowing Amnon and Absalom to die. And Adonijah died as well later on. There was a lot of death that came from this problem, this horrible sin that David had committed. And doing stuff for others based on his own experience made him think about just how far he had devolved into evil, an evil person.
The guilt was just oppressive to him, weighed very heavily on his mind, and he probably thought, "I just asked God to help me help people and I'm not worthy. I've got all this blood guilt stacked against me" and only God can forgive that. But he still felt the guilt in himself even though God had cleared him. I mean, Nathan was very plain when he said God has forgiven you. When he admitted that he was the man. But it still was like a canker on his soul, if you will. He probably thought, "How could I be so evil to have done that so blithely? How could I be so contemptuous of their lives? Why would I throw away a good man like Uriah? Why would I endanger that innocent baby?" But he had done it.
And so it kind of shows us that even a great man like David, even though he knew he was forgiven, still had these feelings afterward, still had these feelings of worthlessness and guilt that he had to work through. I mean, it is not just God waving a magic wand and somehow everything goes away. He still had to deal with this. And one of the best results of this hanging on to one's soul, to one's heart, is that if it is dealt with properly, it should produce humility. That we are worthless and that any help we can give to others is just an obligation that we have because we have been through this experience and only by the grace of God go I.
So guilt is not all bad. If it is responded to properly, it can motivate good things. Especially if it leads to things like humility, like being poor in spirit, and mourning in terms of the Beatitudes. Those things will help us have a right attitude.
I just want to mention offhandedly here that this blood guiltiness, if we look at it at a bit of a higher level, could be his guilt for Christ's death. He knew that a Savior had to die for him. He knew that only blood covers sin. Only a life given, the blood shed would actually cover his sin. So only the Redeemer, the Savior, the life of the Savior could cover a man's sin. So I think this is at least on two levels here, that is, his blood guiltiness over the death of those physical men that died, but also ultimately the death of the Savior.
Let us go back to II Samuel. I want to follow up on this idea of how much guilt he carried.
II Samuel 12:1-7 Then the Lord sent Nathan to David. And he came to him, and said to him, "There were two men in one city, one rich and the other poor. The rich man had exceedingly many flocks and herds. But the poor man had nothing, except the one little ewe lamb which he had bought and nourished; and it grew up together with him and with his children. It ate of his own food and drank from his own cup and lay in his bosom; and it was like a daughter to him. And a traveler came to the rich man, who refused to take from his own flock and from his own herd to prepare one for the wayfaring man who had come to him; but he took the poor man's lamb and prepared it for the man who had come to him." Then David's anger was greatly aroused against the man, and he said to Nathan, "As the Lord lives, the man who has done this shall surely die! And he shall restore fourfold for the lamb, because he did this thing and because he had no pity." Then Nathan said to David, "You are the man!"
Notice that the man is called a rich man and he had no pity. So through Nathan, God made David realize with what arrogance, with what lack of pity he had dealt with others. From this attitude, the one in charge of his salvation, he calls Him there back in Psalm 51, the God of my salvation, he is saying the One who is working with me to give me salvation had saved him through this intervention that had happened with Nathan, you know, sending Nathan to David. It was the God of salvation trying to pull David back from this attitude of lack of pity. Of being like the arrogant rich man who thinks he could do whatever he pleases. David had become the iconic, the classic rich man that we see in the Bible. The one who cruelly exploits and abuses those that are under him. He has little care for them.
Let us go back to the book of James in James 5. Notice what James says about the rich men. This is a description of the way David had become.
James 5:1-6 Come now, you rich, weep and howl for your miseries that are coming upon you! Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver are corroded, and their corrosion will be a witness against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have heaped up treasure in the last days. Indeed the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out; and the cries of the reapers have reached the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth [or the Lord of Hosts]. You have lived on the earth in pleasure and luxury; you have fattened your hearts as in a day of slaughter. You have condemned, you have murdered the just; he does not resist you.
I wonder if he was thinking about David and the murder of Uriah the Hittite. I do not know. I see David and Uriah and other things all in Scripture now that I have been so immersed in it over the past couple of months.
But that was the low point that David had reached and God had pulled him up out of that by His intervention and David's subsequent repentance. And I think David understood. I think he had an insight. Well, no, I will not say I think. I know. David had an insight into the mind of God. And he knew that though God had forgiven him, and cleared him of these things, that there was still a reckoning. He could not do these things without some sort of punishment. They were too much. They were too big.
And God heard the cries of David's victims. Remember Abel's blood cried out from the ground. Well, I think Uriah's blood cried out from the ground, as it were. And He avenged—God did—their deaths, his death upon David and his house. We could go back and read that in II Samuel 12:9-10 where God said, "Your family's going to be a mess from now on. You're going to have war within your own family." And it was because of what he had done in this particular situation. God gave him conflict within his own family. But he admits here back in Psalm 51:14, that he had done it all. He had become guilty of blood. And that God was just.
Psalm 51:14 Deliver me from blood guiltiness, O God, the God of my salvation, and my tongue shall sing aloud of Your righteousness.
Sometimes that word righteousness could also be translated as justice. Even though God was going to bring down on him and his family the penalties of his blood guiltiness, God would still require justice. He had slain a man cruelly. He admits that God had been just in his case. He admits without saying so, that God cannot do wrong. And so because of that, David deserved punishment for his despicable sins. He admits the reality. Because God does not promise us that we are not going to feel any consequences of our sins. He clears us of the guilt. He forgives us. But we still have to pay some consequences of our actions.
So God gave him conflict in his own family and David submits to it. That is what the person with the mind of Christ would do. He would be like a lamb going to the slaughter, but in this case, deservedly so. So, in a sense, what David says here is "I deserve it. So I will sing aloud, praising God for always doing what is right." What a man! Even to his own hurt. He was probably weeping inside. But he would praise God because he could trust God to be just. He could have faith in Him.
And then he says, "O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth shall show forth Your praise." He asked God to empower him to praise Him. To give him what little more or whatever he needed to praise God. Now this verse reflects a typical human reaction, a tendency to remain silent when one is ashamed. We want to crawl into a hole and cover ourselves up with dirt so no one can see. We do not want to go out in public and confess our wrongdoing. We do not want to admit our guilt and take our lumps from others. But David asks God here to clear his conscience and to give him strength to face the music. To face what others might think and the consequences of his actions. And so he asked God to give him the strength so that he can continue to praise God and worship God in a way that will help others to overcome their sins. To be a good public example of a repentant Christian, we might say.
Let us go on to verses 16 and 17.
Psalm 51:16-17 For You do not desire sacrifice, or else I would give it; You do not delight in burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, and a broken and contrite heart—these, O God, You will not despise.
David once again shows his deep knowledge of God here. He knew that animal sacrifices and offerings were not effective for truly covering sin. That is why he says "You do not desire" those things necessarily. He is not opposed to them, neither David nor God is opposed to them. If God had been opposed to them He would not have given them to Israel to do. But David knew that God meant them as types. They were types that foreshadowed the reality of Christ's sacrifice for sin. They pictured that sin had to be paid for with a life, with the life of that animal in its blood, shed and poured out so that a covering of sin could be made.
As the writer of Hebrews puts it in Hebrews 10:4, "It is not possible that the blood of bulls and goats could take away sin." David knew that. And also seven verses later, the same writer says, "Every priest stands ministering daily and offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins." That is verse 11. It takes the blood of someone greater than a man to pay for a man's sins. And so the Creator Himself gave His life, He offered His blood to bear the sins of many, as it says in Hebrews 9:28. So David knew this.
Verse 17 here may contain a slight mistranslation that puts a different spin on what David is saying here. The first word in Hebrew of verse 17 is zebach, and it means sacrifices. But with only a slight emendation of the text, which is a different vowel at the end of the word that is there in in Psalm 51:17, it would not read the sacrifices of God but my sacrifices, O God, which is very interesting. Let us read or let us think of the flow of this thought because it fits very well if the emendation is correct. "You do not desire animal sacrifices of burnt offerings. My sacrifices, O God, are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart."
For what it is worth, I think it makes a greater point here. I know that you do not necessarily want animal sacrifices because they are just a type. What You want to see is my broken heart. You want to see my broken spirit. That I am going to kneel down before You and humbly do Your will—and quit sinning.
We could go to several verses here if we wanted to. They all talk about a contrite spirit and a broken heart: Psalm 34:18; Isaiah 57:15; Isaiah 66:2. Let us go to Micah 6, verse 8. They all say essentially the same thing.
Micah 6:8 He has shown you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?
That is what He wanted to see from from David, this rich man who had dealt so arrogantly with his people. He wanted to see him humble himself. That was a great sacrifice for a proud man. To become aware of his sinfulness and become poor in spirit, as it says in Matthew 5:3. Because the first step in spiritual renewal is humility. Realizing that we are weak and evil, that we are not God. That we are not so wonderful as we think we are. And because of that we feel crushed when we finally realized it.
That is what the word contrite means there back in Psalm 51:17. It is a blow. It is an emotional blow, and it makes us feel so little and pounded into the dirt because we are such a terrible person. That is a sacrifice for a proud person, to do that. To know that we have disappointed God again and again! And we are so petty and wicked and self-centered, and that the only reason we live is through God. And so we surrender. That is what this broken spirit and contrite heart is all about, that we surrender to God. That we know that the only reason why we should live is through His mercy. And we live to be corrected and to change.
So we sacrifice our self-will and our self-importance and say to God, "Do what You can with this hunk of junk." That is what a living sacrifice is all about (Romans 12:1-2).
And as he says here, such an attitude of total surrender God will not spurn. In fact, it is the human attitude He can work with. Someone who looks at himself and sees someone so low that he will do anything that is right and good to please God.
Finally, verses 18 and 19. (I am taking you a little bit over, but I can get through this fairly quickly.)
Psalm 51:18-19 Do good in Your good pleasure to Zion; build the walls of Jerusalem. Then You shall be pleased with the sacrifices of righteousness, with burnt offering and whole burnt offering; then they shall offer bulls on Your altar.
Now the critical scholars like to say that these verses were put in later, but there is little to suggest that. It flows very well from what David has just been talking about. And what if I can put it in my own words, to me it feels like David is saying, "Please do not let Your people and Your city suffer for my sins. Rather, bless them, build them up, protect them, turn them, and be pleased with Your people's worship."
He does not want what he did to affect the nation. Because he knew that as king, his sins had done great destruction. He had done them in the sight of all Israel. When he and Bathsheba first started this, they were both on the roofs of their houses. Anybody who was there could look and see. He was the one that people looked to as an example of a godly man, and he had blown it big time. And it would have its effect on the nation.
Now, I think that even though he had said a few verses earlier that God did not delight in animal sacrifices, I am pretty sure that David made a significant burnt offering and gave numerous sacrifices to cover his sins in the people's eyes. Because doing that is what was expected. That if a ruler of the nation sinned, he was supposed to go before the priest and bring his offering and ask God to cover his sins. So he had to do what he could to make a proper example and restore his reputation as God's representative because that is what he was. He was God's representative in the land of Israel, and he had made a hatchet job of that, and he needed to do what he could to restore all of that. So it was this hope that others would follow his example and offer sacrifices of righteousness to God and it would lead to a restoration of true worship.
And so he talks about burnt offerings. Bulls, by the way, were the most expensive burnt offerings that could be given. And as we heard this morning from Bill, they were totally consumed on the altar. In terms of sin offerings, bulls were what the high priest or the whole nation gave. The ruler of the people was only required to give a kid of the goats. So David here, speaking primarily of burnt offerings, is wishing for the people to give extravagantly to God and to restore the relationship, dedicating or devoting themselves to Him wholeheartedly. He is praying that his sin, which had done great damage, could somehow be turned into a restoration of true worship like it had with him but over the whole nation.
Let us conclude in the book of Revelation. I just want to get a few verses here, just five.
Revelation 2:5 "Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent and do the first works, or else I will come to you quickly and remove your lampstand from its place—unless you repent."
Revelation 2:16 "Repent, or else I will come to you quickly and I will fight against them with the sword of My mouth."
Revelation 2:22 "Indeed I will cast her into a sickbed, and those who commit adultery with her into great tribulation, unless they repent of their deeds."
Revelation 3:3 "Remember therefore how you have received and heard; hold fast and repent. Therefore if you will not watch, I will come upon you as a thief, and you will not know what hour I will come upon you."
Revelation 3:19 "As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten. Therefore be zealous and repent."
We should never allow ourselves to be lulled into thinking that David's prayer of repentance is just pretty poetry, a nice song that we hear every once in a while at the Feast or some historical artifact of the life of David the king. Instead, we need to remember that it is a living lesson from a deeply converted man who fell almost irrecoverably.
You know, I just thought this week as I was preparing this that Jesus Christ could not give us an example of repentance because He never sinned. But He allowed His many, many, many great grandfather David to write it for us, to write an example of extreme repentance because of how low he had gotten into this sin.
And through this poem, this psalm, David—and God—shows us the attitude we must have to repent thoroughly before God. We still have some repenting to do. The seven churches at the end time have some repenting to do. God tells five of the seven to repent or else He would come and they would miss out. And He tells all of them to overcome, which is a similar activity.
God wants us to change, to grow, to have His mind. He wants us to get on it and stay on it until we develop with Him the mind of Christ in us. And you know what? There is no time like the present.
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