How to Pray When You’ve Sinned
Remsen Bible Fellowship, Psalm 51, 09/04/2022
The following is an AI generated transcript, not a manuscript.
And Father, again, as we turn to your word now, would you open our eyes to behold both the horrific things we would see in ourselves and the beauty of what were revealed of you, what was shown of you in your word. We ask these things in Jesus’ precious name. Amen.
If you want to take your Bibles and turn, we’re going to be in Psalm 51 this morning. Psalm 51.
One of the great dangers as a human being is to want to hide our sin. We love living in the darkness, John 3 says, because our deeds are evil. And Satan, who is the prince of darkness, and Ephesians 2 says he is the prince of the power of the air, thus he’s the god of this world, He loves that. He loves the darkness and those who are born into his reign, which is all of us. We love the darkness rather than the light because our deeds are evil. But God sometimes in his mercy will shine a spotlight into the darkness. He’ll shine a spotlight on our sin so that even if we’re trying to run, even if we’re trying to hide it, He makes it unmistakably clear that this is who we are and this is where we’re at. We are sinners without hope. We are sinners lost in our sin. We are sinners condemned under his righteous decree.
That’s what God did for David in 2 Samuel. We’ve looked the last two weeks at 2 Samuel 11 and 12, and in chapter 11, David says, sees Bathsheba he lusts after her he inquires after her he brings her to himself he takes advantage of her then he tries to get her husband to cover it up unknowingly that doesn’t work so he has him killed and he takes Bathsheba to himself And we’re told at the end of 2 Samuel 11 that the thing David had done displeased the Lord. But God did not just leave David in that dark place. He sent Nathan the prophet to him, and the word of God was spoken to David. And Nathan tells the story of the rich man who had many, many things, and the poor man who had one little lamb. But the rich man wasn’t satisfied with what he had, and so he stole from the poor man to satisfy his own desires. And David, rightly, is indignant. He’s angry at that man. And the prophet Nathan speaks the word of God to David and says, You are that man. You are the man who deserves to die, David. King, anointed of the Lord, you deserve to die.
And David has an option there. He’s the king. He’s the supreme judge. He could do what kings often did in Israel and say, get this prophet out of my sight. Kill him. Throw him in a well. Get him out of here. I don’t want to listen. He could try to keep hiding his sin. Or he could do what he did and say, I have sinned against the Lord. We have that same option anytime God, in his gracious mercy, reveals our sin to us. Whether it’s like David and someone lovingly comes and confronts us with our sin. Or God just mercifully as we’re reading his word or as we hear a sermon opens up to us. This is an area that needs change. This is an area where you fall short and you’re walking in sin. God mercifully confronts us. And we have the option in that instance whether to keep hiding in the darkness or to walk in the light as he is in the light. 1 John 1.
How do you do that? How? When we know that God is holy and we are not, how do you walk towards him? How do you pray when you’ve sinned? That’s what David shows us here in Psalm 51. Psalm 51, the heading gives us the setting. To the choir master, a psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet went to him after he had gone into Bathsheba. And in the first four verses here, we’re going to see that the first step in praying when you’ve sinned is to repent. To repent of your sins, to agree with God about what your sin is. And to have a change of mind, that’s literally what repent means, is a change of mind where you agree with God about what you’ve done, and you ask him for your forgiveness.
Repentance... 2 Corinthians chapter 7 and verse 10 tells us that there’s a godly grief that leads to repentance. Repentance is not just feeling bad about what you’ve done. We’ll talk about this more in a few minutes. But in 2 Corinthians 7.10, Paul says there’s a godly grief that leads to repentance that leads to life. And there’s a worldly sorrow that leads to death. So don’t get confused when we talk about repentance as just feeling bad about what you’ve done. Everybody at some level feels bad about what they’ve done. The question is going to be what we do with that. But true repentance has some characteristics. And in verse 1, we see that the first characteristic of true repentance... is that he cries out to God for mercy. This is fascinating to me as I read this psalm this week and was reading commentaries that David, after this grievous, grievous sin, does not, when he goes to God, start by saying, here’s what I did wrong. Here’s how I need help. Please take this out of my life. The first thing he does is he starts talking to God about God. Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love.
The first thing he comes to God with is the character of God. Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love. According to your abundant mercy, blot out my transgressions. That phrase, steadfast love, is a phrase that’s translated one Hebrew word, chesed, which occurs 245 times in the Old Testament. It’s often translated steadfast love or loving kindness or merciful love. But that Hebrew word is one of the dominant, if not the dominant, descriptions of God in the Old Testament. That God, as 1 John tells us, is love. He is the God who keeps covenant love with his people. And so when David goes to God and asks for mercy, he does so not on the basis of anything in himself. but on the basis of God’s own character. He’s not saying, God, I deserve you to forgive me. Here’s all the things I’ve done for you in the past. He comes to God and says, you are a loving God. You are a merciful God. Please have mercy on me.
In the New Testament, Jesus talks about two different kinds of men. There’s a Pharisee who goes and he prays three times a day. And he says, Lord, thank you that I’m not like that guy over there. I give my tithes. I do my good works. Pray three times a day. I do all of the right things. Thank you. And thank you, God. I’m not going to take any of the credit for this. But thank you that I’m not like that. Thank you that I’m good. And then there’s a tax collector who beats his breast, won’t even look to heaven, and says, have mercy on me, a sinner. And only one of those men went to his house justified. David here is acting like that tax collector. Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love.
Verse 2, he says, wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. And that language that he uses there, wash me and cleanse me, is the language of Leviticus. It’s the language of... ceremonial cleanness to be able to approach god you had to have all of the proper washings all of the proper your clothes had to be washed in the right way you had to be washed in the right way you were a woman you couldn’t be there at a certain time of month there’s all these ceremonial laws and David’s saying i by my sin am made unclean and two words they’re used for sin iniquity is not talking about his actions so much as it’s talking about his person He, by his very nature, and we’ll look at this more in a second, but by his very nature, he is full of, stained by, covered in sinfulness. But then he talks about his action as well. That word sin at the end of verse 2, cleanse me from my sin, is the word that’s often used in the Old Testament. It means to miss the mark. Like God’s got a standard and it’s up here. It’s perfection. And David says, I fell short of that. Please cleanse me.
That sin, it’s not just a bad thing, it’s not just a slip-up, it’s not just a oops to heiress human. He’s saying there’s a moral deficiency that’s already present in me, I have iniquity, and that expresses itself in the fact that my actions and my words and my thoughts fall short of the glory of God. Verse 3 says, I know my transgressions and my sin is ever before me. And I can’t help but wonder here. David has had Uriah killed and brought Bathsheba to himself. I wonder if just every time he looks at her, he thinks about everything he did wrong that created the situation. Every time he sees this woman whom maybe he really loves, And this child growing, a child whom he will love, and thinks all of the things he did wrong. He hasn’t wanted to admit it. He missed when Nathan was calling him out until Nathan spelled it out in black and white. But David is a man after God’s heart. David knows the word of the Lord. And there’s just got to be this slow burn where even if he’s tried to sear and callous his conscience, God’s just working at him in the background. And he knows his transgression is ever before him, whether he wants to admit it or not in the moment.
And then we come to verse 4, which to our modern ears is probably somewhat offensive. Because he says against you and you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight. Against you and you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight. And we might read that and think... Well, David, I think you’re forgetting the story. Remember Uriah? He’s dead now. Bathsheba? The whole nation of Israel who will face the consequences of your sin? I think you’ve sinned against more than just God. And David actually, by the end, we’re going to see here, he understands that his relationship with God affects a lot more than just himself. So David’s not saying that none of those other people were affected. None of them matter.
But ultimately... Why is what he did to Bathsheba or Uriah or as the leader of a nation, why is that wrong? By what standard is it wrong? By this standard, it is wrong. By the word of the Lord, by the word of God, it is judged as wrong. If David doesn’t have that external standard, that authority over him that tells he, the king, what is right and wrong he can do whatever he wants you see that in the ancient world so a man who gets sent out to battle dies David says to Joab the sword devours one and then another so a king the most powerful man in his nation takes somebody else’s wife that’s what we expect that’s what the Egyptians do it’s what the Canaanites do what is the big deal It’s only by the authority of God’s word that we can look at these things and say right or wrong. To look at how he treated these other people and say he shouldn’t treat them that way.
So ultimately, it’s only if sin is ultimately against God that it can be wrong against someone else. Because God’s the only one with authority to tell you how to act in the end. He sets up other structures of authority that he tells us to obey. But again, we know that as he reveals it in his word. And this is going to be important as we look at the next section. This is one of the differences between godly sorrow and worldly sorrow. Worldly sorrow will feel bad. that this person was upset or hurt, and that that’s having bad consequences for me, and so I’m gonna try to patch this up as best as I can. And either that’s going to fail, you won’t be able to patch it up, and you’ll still be devastated and it will lead you down a spiral. Or you will patch it up and think, whew, I got away with it, got past it. That sin, though it was never atoned for, I’m not having to deal with the consequences, so it’s okay.
But if sin is ultimately against God, and I go to Him and receive His forgiveness, then I can approach the horizontal relationship where I’ve failed, and I can own my responsibility, and I can say, I’ve sinned against Uriah and Bathsheba, and there may be consequences, and I will have to deal with them. But I’ve got the vertical thing figured out, and it’s going to be okay. I can do that not with any self-interest at heart, but actually go in love towards those who have hurt and say, I’m sorry. Would you please forgive me? That’s the other thing we see here is that David is asking God to forgive him. He’s not just saying, I’m sorry. He’s not just acknowledging that he did something wrong. But he’s going that next step and asking for forgiveness. He’s putting himself at God’s mercy.
So he begins with repentance. And that’s where we have to start. If we want to approach a holy God as those who are sinners, we must repent of our sins, agree with God that what we have done is wrong, that who we are in some sense is wrong, and that we need him to forgive us. And the next thing we see is David asking God to fix him, to renew him, to make him new by the power of the Holy Spirit.
I’ll just read verses 5 through 12. 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.
David, in verse 5, acknowledges that from the womb, he was a sinner. We sometimes have this backwards idea that what makes us sinners is that we sin. But the fact of the matter, as Scripture reveals it, is that we are born sinners. Everyone after Adam and Eve is born a sinner, Therefore, we sin. We have the capacity to choose between right and wrong, just like Adam and Eve did. But we are born with a bent towards evil. And so we choose over and over again to rebel against God. We are born that way from the tiniest little child all the way up. That’s what we do. That’s who we are. He’s not saying, when he says, in sin did my mother conceive me, he’s not saying his mother was in sin in that moment, but rather he’s saying that from that point of conception, I am a sinner.
Now this is a totally parenthetical comment here, but I think that also should point for us to say, God considers that unborn child from the point of conception a human being. that he’s held guilty as a sinner before God from that point. It sounds kind of negative that he’s a sinner from that point, but God doesn’t call animals sinners. He doesn’t call trees sinners, rocks sinners. Random clumps of cells that exist in the world aren’t sinners. Only human beings with full dignity made in the image of God, who are rebels against him, are called sinners.
Verse 6, he says, Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being, and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart. And that’s just set in contrast, really, with verse 5. From the point of conception, we are born into this world as those who are sinners. God delights to teach us wisdom, though. We’re reading through Proverbs with the kids right now, and it’s just so striking over and over. Wisdom is calling out. God wants to teach us his ways. He wants to show us wisdom. And yet we as rebels reject it over and over again.
He returns to the language of Leviticus here when he says, Purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean. Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow. And in Leviticus, I think it’s chapter 14, it talks about the cleansing rituals that there are for lepers. And when someone is infected with leprosy, which was just like a... It’s not necessarily talking about Hansen’s disease, which is what we call leprosy today, but just the broad range of transmissible skin diseases were called leprosy in the Old Testament. And you had a whole series of things you had to do if you had had leprosy or if somebody in your house had had leprosy, not just for you as that person to be declared clean, But for the different items in your house, some things that were permeable just had to be burned or gotten rid of. But then things that weren’t had to be cleansed. They had to be washed and then sprinkled with the blood of a sacrifice. And these birds would be killed and their bodies ripped open. And then a scarlet thread and a piece of cedar wood and a branch of hyssop would be dipped in that blood and sprinkled over those things to be declared clean.
For... We often think of sin, again, just as stuff that we do. But especially in the Old Testament, the idea of sin is broader than that. It’s like this contagion that goes out everywhere. Everything that’s touched by a sinner becomes tainted by that sin. And God says the only way for that to get fixed is to be sprinkled with blood, to be cleansed. And David here, he’s like, I am a man. And this is exactly what God promises to do for those who will trust in him. Isaiah chapter 1 and verse 18 says, are like crimson i will wash them white as snow though they are like scarlet i will make them like wool god will cleanse away the sins of those who trust in him that’s what David’s asking for purge me as we who are on this side of the cross we know that that final blood sacrifice is Christ and in first peter chapter one and verse two it’s talking about and he’s addressing those to whom he’s writing that letter in the region of Asia Minor, and he calls them those who have been sprinkled with the blood of Christ Jesus.
And if you are in Christ, you’ve trusted Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins, and he has sprinkled you with Christ’s blood and cleansed you, it’s as if that red garment, that stain, the red of Christ’s blood, and that his blood’s more powerful than your sin. And it outsoaks to the point where your garment becomes white as snow. Verse 80 says, let me hear joy and gladness. Let the bones that you have broken rejoice. Hide your face from my sins and blot out my iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, oh God, and renew a right spirit within me. Just asking over and over again, God, would you cleanse me? Would you purify me? This sin goes all the way down, and I can’t get it out. I need you to do it.
Do you recognize that in yourself? That in the end, no matter how hard you try, you can’t clean you up. You can’t fix your problems. Only God can. And here we have a great advantage over David. Verses 11 and 12, he says, Cast me not away from your presence. Take not your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and uphold me with a willing spirit. That verse 11 causes a lot of people to trip up. Well, if we’re given the Holy Spirit, he doesn’t take the Spirit away, does he? Like once saved, always saved, right? But in the Old Testament, they didn’t have the continuous indwelling of the Spirit. That’s a new thing in the New Testament, starting in the book of Acts. Jesus promised it in the upper room to the disciples that when he went away, it would actually be better for them because the Spirit would come upon them and he would indwell them.
But for saints in the Old Testament, though the Spirit was at work, he’s the one who gave them new life to be able to trust in Christ. He was still working in them. But he didn’t dwell with them in the same way. And the Spirit would come upon people for particular purposes. And so we see Saul, David’s predecessor, who is probably in David’s mind right now. The Spirit of God came upon Saul, rushed upon Saul, so that he could lead the people, so that he could guide the nation of Israel in holiness and in battle and to direct them underneath God. But then when Saul rejected the word of the Lord and would not repent when confronted with his sin, God took the spirit away, and Saul went crazy. It said God took his Holy Spirit away, and then a couple chapters later, God is sending a tormenting spirit upon him. Things go very bad for Saul when he refuses to repent for his sin, and David has got that in his head to be sure, and is saying, God, I don’t want to go that same way. Do not make me like Saul. Do not take your Holy Spirit away from me, O Lord.
And as we who are believers, we know that God won’t take his spirit from us. He gives his spirit irrevocably. If you’ve trusted in Christ, the spirit has come upon you and he makes your body his temple. He lives there. But this prayer can still be instructive for us because even with the spirit living in you, still grieve the spirit you can still get out of step from where the spirit wants you to be walking that’s why the apostle Paul in Galatians 5 says keep in step with the spirit because we can still harden our hearts against god and say i don’t want to listen i don’t want to do things your way and stamp our foot like a toddler throwing a temper tantrum And we can lose the joy of salvation by acting that way.
We should be instructed here by David, who desires deeply to have the joy of salvation, restore to me the joy of salvation. He contrasts that with the breaking of bones that he’s felt from having this sin stuffed inside. When you’re confronted with your sin i think we’ve basically got three roads in front of us when that happens the first is to try to stuff it behind us and pretend it doesn’t exist to and i think this is probably like one of the biggest temptations for believers is to pretend that we’re okay when we’re not okay to pretend that What we’re doing that’s wrong or bad or the thoughts that we’re having that are dishonoring to God to pretend they don’t exist and try to paste them over with our good works. To be like that Pharisee who said, I’m not like that guy over there. Look at all the good things about me. And we do that towards one another. We try to put a good front up. And we try to do it to God, which is stupid because he sees everything. But we still try to do it.
But the other temptation is a temptation that our world has bought fully into at this point, which is to say, wrong. I’m proud of this. This is not wrong. There’s nothing wrong with how I live. There’s nothing wrong with what I want to do. In the book of Isaiah chapter 5, it says, woe unto those who call good evil and evil good. But that’s an option that we have in front of us. When we’re confronted with our sins, sometimes we just say, wow, that’s who I am. If you don’t like it, that’s your problem, not mine. But woe unto a culture that calls killing life health care. Woe unto a culture that calls the denial of the gift of male and female good to say those things don’t exist. who say acting like the culture in how we speak is just how you get things done rather than being different.
Chapter 6 of Isaiah, Woe unto me, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I come from a people of unclean lips. We can try to stuff it and hide it, but God sees everything. We can try to just embrace it and say, well, this is who I am and it’s okay. And God will say, no, it’s not. Or we can humbly submit to him and say, Lord, please forgive me. Please renew me. Make me like Christ.
Finally, we see that David understands this isn’t just about him. This is about the renown of God in the world. god’s fame his glory verse 13 then i will teach transgressors your ways and sinners will return to you David understands like i don’t deserve this grace god but if you give it to me i will tell others that there is grace to be found in you i will teach transgressors your ways and it starts with repentance that’s where god the beginning of wisdom and that that David says if you save me forgive me lord i will spread that message abroad and i wonder how many thousands or millions of people since David wrote that have read psalm 51 and been turned to the Lord if God can forgive David if he can forgive David he can forgive anybody
Deliver me from blood guiltiness, O God, O God of my salvation. And my tongue will sing aloud of your righteousness. You sing to the Lord with the joy that he has forgiven you. I’ve always been puzzled in church when you look around and you see people who just don’t sing. They’re so self-conscious about their voice or something. I understand not feeling comfortable singing where people can hear you. I’ve heard people where I understand the discomfort come from. But it isn’t about you. It’s about singing to the Lord over what he’s done for you so that others can hear you and hear, who cares if they’re four octaves off or couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket, We’ve got the joy of God’s salvation, and they’re encouraged too. We sing to the Lord, not to put on a show, but because of what he’s done for us.
Open, O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise, verse 15. 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, O God, you will not despise. Now, David’s not disparaging the system of sacrifice that God set up in the Old Testament. He’s about to talk about, at the end of the psalm, God accepting those things again. But what he’s saying is, those things on their own don’t do anything. The sacrifices didn’t matter as a course of going through the motions. Check that box, check that box, check that box. Okay, God, you good with me now? It only mattered if it came from a heart that was broken and contrite and by faith decided I’m going to obey God in this matter of sacrifice so that this temporary covering of animal blood is there for my sins. The broken and contrite heart is what made the sacrifices matter.
He says finally in verses 18 to 19, Do good to Zion in your good pleasure. Build up the walls of Jerusalem, then you will delight in right sacrifices, in burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings. Then bowls will be offered on your altar. David understood that as the king of the nation, his sin affected everybody underneath of him. Everybody in the nation was affected by David’s sin. And if he was out of whack with God, in some sense, everybody else was in a bad situation because of that. Because God was dealing with the nation of Israel primarily through their king.
And we know, we talked about this when we looked at 2 Samuel 7, the only way Through the Davidic king who makes us right with God. Through Christ and the sacrifice that he made on the cross that was perfectly acceptable to God. Which God put his seal of approval on, Romans 1 says, by raising Jesus Christ from the dead. It’s only through being identified with him that we can receive forgiveness, that we receive the gift of the Spirit who will renew us from the inside out, and that we can be right with him forever.
And so what do you do when you sin? How do you pray? You turn to the Lord and you repent of your sin. And you repent. And you know that because God is concerned with his glory being made known, his character being shown in the world, that he will be happy to answer that prayer. Those who would seek God must believe that he exists, the book of Hebrews said, and that he rewards those who seek him. He rewards them with answers to prayers like this.
Would you pray with me? Father God, we thank you that you are a God who loves sinners like us. You so love the world that you gave your only son that whoever believes in him might not perish but have eternal life. Lord, would you graciously, mercifully reveal our sin to us? Little by little, we can’t handle it all at once. Lord, we thank you that Jesus paid for it all at once. As we turn to communion now and think about what he did for us on that cross, allowing his body to be broken and his blood to be shed, would you give us joy in the salvation that we’ve been given through Christ? In his precious name we pray.
