Sermon 01 Psalm 51.1-2 Pleading For Grace

The Psalter is a treasure trove for God's church. It is a divinely inspired song book of prayers and poetry that lead us in worship and adoration of God through the full range of human emotion. So the book of Psalms is, as Calvin said, an anatomy of all the parts of the soul. He also commented that a better and more unerring rule for guiding us in this exercise; that is, worship; cannot be found anywhere else than in the Psalms. The Psalms, you see, teach us about true religion and the worship of God.

Now most of us here will have favourite Psalms, I would think. Some might think of Psalm one, "Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked." Perhaps Psalm 23, "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want." We know Psalm 46, "God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble." Or Psalm 91, "He who dwells in the shelter of the most high will abide in the shadow of the almighty." And there could be many others.

Now I'm not sure about you, but on that list, certainly for me, Psalm 51, the Psalm of David, is one that has gripped me, I think, from my youth. One of the reasons for that is that perhaps of all of the Psalms, the historical occasion for Psalm 51 is so widely known that it loads the Psalm with a spiritual weightiness to it. Psalm 51, you see, and along likely with Psalm 32, is the cry of King David's repentance following his sin with Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah that we've read about in these chapters in two Samuel.

Just as God came seeking Adam in the garden after his sin, so God, through the prophet Nathan, sought out David to expose his sin. These words are recorded as a witness to David's pleading for God's grace to be extended towards him for what he has done. So it is as the preacher G. Campbell Morgan said, "This great song, pulsating with the agony of a sin stricken soul, helps us to understand the stupendous wonder of the everlasting mercy of our God."

So I think we should give thanks to God that such a scripture and such an account is recorded for us in scripture because shining out of these pages of God's word and this prayer, in response to David's sin, is an unparalleled demonstration of the mercy that is in God and that is available to sinners for their forgiveness. It is here that others might experience the forgiveness of God that the King himself found.

So as we, over the coming weeks, unpack Psalm 51, my prayer is that it would become our schoolmaster; that we would see with fresh clarity that there is a God in heaven who forgives sins; who will blot out transgressions from his book; who can cleanse us; and who can love fallen people despite their fallen condition.

In these first two verses of Psalm 51 this morning, I want to bring you a message entitled "Pleading for Grace." We want to consider the great theme of God's grace and specifically consider how David formulates his request for God's grace despite his sin. And we will see that David appeals to the nature of God himself who has disclosed himself in His Word as a God full of lovingkindness and compassion and who is ready to forgive.

Now before we continue into the text, a little background of Psalm 51 will help us grasp its weight. Let me summarise what we have considered. David, the king of Israel, has sinned against man, yes, against Bathsheba and Uriah, yes, but he has sinned against God. Now David elsewhere is called, of course, a man after God's own heart. But he has fallen and followed his own heart and his own desires instead of God.

David is the once shepherd boy who, though raised in obscurity, was elevated to be a shepherd of God's people in Israel as their king and their ruler. And this is David who said to Saul in one Samuel 17 of Goliath, "The Lord who delivered me from the paw of the lion and from the paw of the bear, he will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine." He was a man of mighty faith and a man of trust in God. He was a man who loved God; who had zeal for God; who was in covenant with God. But oh, how the strong have fallen.

How we see in David's sin this great theme of all the Bible; that there is only one hero in the Bible, just one righteous man who stands out from the multitude. It is the one true shepherd of the sheep who never leads them into ruin or sin. With David, we learn that the best of men are men at best and for this shepherd king, he has wandered like a sheep himself, headlong into sin.

The occasion reads quite ominously, doesn't it? David's head commander Joab and all the fighting men of Israel are out at war, but in two Samuel 11, we read, "But David stayed at Jerusalem." Our capacity to sin, I remember John Piper saying, just to summarise, he said our capacity to sin is often fuelled by idleness and isolation. The men are at war defending the land, but their wives and their families are at home; but so is the king. So the king takes a walk on the palace balcony and he looks out and lo and behold, from his palace, as he can see the rooftops of some homes there is Bathsheba bathing on the roof as would have been common at the time.

David's sin, as another has said, covers five transgressions of the ten commandments of the moral law. The law said, "You shall not covet your neighbour's wife." But David, what he saw, he desired, and in his heart, he coveted another man's wife. The seventh commandment in the law states, "You shall not commit adultery." This is the most obvious and direct violation. Whether Bathsheba is complicit or not in this is really beside the point. The king has abused his power and authority. And so while Bathsheba's husband is away at war, David makes his move.

The eighth commandment says, "You shall not steal." When the prophet Nathan rebukes David in two Samuel 12, his indictment is that David has stolen the wife of another man. The ninth commandment forbids bearing false witness. When David tries to cover up his sin (when Bathsheba sends word that she is pregnant), he wants to conceal his sin and so he sends for her husband, Uriah, to be returned home hoping that it would mask the fact that David is the father. And when this plan fails, David then violates the sixth commandment. He has Uriah placed in a compromised position in battle and Uriah is killed.

We'll consider more of the context in this series as we move along, but for now, a brief question before us, I think, is what relevance might this account and what relevance might Psalm 51 have for us?

Well, first of all, I think we should understand that this sin of David's is a post conversion sin. This is an important point, I think. This means we learn the kind of response that we as believers ought to have towards sin in our lives. In other words, we are to pray David's prayer here for ourselves. This is not a psalm reflecting when David first came to know the Lord. It's not his sinner's prayer, so to speak, when he first realised that he in general is a sinner and puts his faith in God's promise of a coming saviour, repented and was born again. No, this isn't that. This is the sin and fall of a man who already knows God.

So you see, there's real relevance in this matter for all of us who, like what lies, belong to Christ. The Christian, as the reformers would say, because of justification, has our right standing before God. Because of our justification, we are simultaneously righteous but also simultaneously a sinner. We are saved from judgement. We will not be judged in our sins because Jesus has freed us from that penalty. However, God has not yet glorified us. Rather, he is changing us from the inside out to look more and more like Christ, to sanctify us, and that is exactly what David is experiencing here. God is coming after him to sanctify the king.

So what we learn then is about the kind of attitude that we ought to have towards sin as Christians. Despite the presence and reality of sin in our hearts still, this is not a licence to treat sin casually, but instead to come again for God's grace, not out of fear that we shall lose our salvation, but rather because we love God and we want to be pleasing to him. You see, the Christian heart grieves over the presence of sin, and they long that God would cleanse them and grant grace in spite of our sin. That's one of the things we learn.

But secondly, I think we see here that God uses others to shake us from our lethargy towards sin. So you will have noticed in this story that David did not come to see the seriousness of his guilt and repent and need for repentance by himself. So David has just carried on with his life almost like nothing has never happened. He's just put everything under the rug; tried to cover it up. But instead, God sent the prophet Nathan to confront him. And then in two Samuel 12:7, he says to David, "You are the man," but not in the sense that anyone wants to hear that they're the man, but David, you are the guilty man. You are the man who has stolen; who has taken what was not yours.

And so it is with us. I think this is one of the critical roles of the church in our lives. You see, some people think that church is somehow a bit of an optional add on to faith. As in, they think they conceive of the Christian faith as I have my personal faith, and church is just a bit of an optional add on that I can plug in from time to time when I want to. They say it's a nice add on, but it's not truly necessary. But no, the scripture has quite a different perspective.

Committing yourself to a body of believers is part of how God will rub off those rough edges in your life. Because in churches, there are all sorts of people from different backgrounds and there's always internal disputes and different things going on. And there's a struggle and a wrestle and a spiritual tension in churches at times, but God, through the working of his word, is using all of these things to sanctify us; to sharpen us; to mould us; to make us go through difficult things that we would hold fast to Christ. And so we become accountable as Christians to God first; to the elders placed over us by God; and even to each other. We are accountable, and so God will use other people in our lives to draw out repentance in our rebellious hearts even when it's excruciating. That will happen in our lives as well.

A third point of relevance is I think that we are all represented in a manner of speaking by David. As you read of David's sin with Bathsheba and then his cover up mission, if you read of that account and then you respond by saying, "How could David do such a thing? I can't believe that man. That's not even possible." To react like this would be to show a kind of naivety to your own fallen condition that is frightening. You don't even understand your own soul. If you're going to say of David, "How could David do such a thing?" we are all, you see, David in this account; prone to wander; prone to deny the truth of God and rush in headlong into our own depravity.

You see, such an account should not make us despise David, but love Jesus all the more, who's the true and better David, who alone is without sin and who was made sin for us.

So in the time left, let's just consider briefly these three parts to the Psalm here in Psalm 51:1-2. Firstly, I want you to see David's need expressed; and then God's nature invoked; and then thirdly, God's forgiveness sought.

First, David's need is expressed in Psalm 51:1. He says, "Be gracious to me, O God." Now it's obvious as we have seen that David is in need of grace, and in fact, more than he can even express. And it's the same with us. You might think you're pretty good and you only need a wee sprinkle of grace in your life. The truth of the matter is we need an ocean of grace. Fortunately, God has oceans of grace to give, to meet all the demand for you and for me. Yet all of God's true children are deeply aware of their need for this grace.

You see, if you think very little of sin, you'll think very little of God's grace. Most definitions of grace in the Christian sense are something like this: grace is the free and unmerited favour of God. In other words, it is when God treats us in a way different to the way that we deserve to be treated. And as others have said, we could even go a step further and say that grace is not only unmerited and undeserved; grace that we receive is demerited. In other words, it's not just we're in a neutral position. We were running headlong the other way, but God's grace has found us out.

Our need of God's grace runs so deep because we deserve the exact opposite of grace; we deserve his wrath. We are sinners after all, and God is holy and just. The Presbyterian theologian John Gresham Machen noted this; that the very centre and core of the whole Bible is the doctrine of the grace of God.

So when we think of the law that was given in the garden to Adam and Eve and God's word, that day was the day that you eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; you shall surely die. God did not turn back on his promise because we did begin to die physically and spiritually, but at the same time, grace was extended to man and grace became the chief song of the Bible, not because of anything that is in man, but because God desires to display his attributes in his creation; his grace; his loving kindness.

Remember what God said to Moses and God declared to him in Exodus 34, "The Lord, the Lord God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in loving kindness and truth, who keeps loving kindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression, and sin." And so there is grace in God and David is expressing his need of it.

Now that raises an important question, I think. Why does David come to God like this, as here in the Psalm? Why does he come to God in this way? After Nathan confronted him, wouldn't it just be enough to simply resolve in his own heart to never do such a thing again? You know, like when you make a silly mistake in your life and you kind of like you know, it might be something silly like losing your car keys and you say, "I'm never gonna do that again. I'm gonna make sure that I look after my car keys so I don't lose access to my car." You might think, why didn't David just do the same thing? Just resolve internally, "I won't do such a thing again." Wouldn't that be enough?

Well, the answer is simple. Because God is not some impersonal deity, you see. David is one who knows God and all who are indwelt by the Spirit of God are sensitive to sin and sensitive to their relationship to God. So he's not simply thinking about himself; he's thinking about God; about how God's name has been dishonoured and how he has given cause for God's name to be blasphemed among other peoples.

So the question is then for us, when was the last time that we cried out and expressed our need of God's grace? You don't need to be a king over a kingdom or fall in such a dramatic way as David to need this grace. You just need to be an ordinary person living a quiet and ordinary life in South Lynn, New Zealand to need this grace. Maybe you've begun to think so little of sin that you don't even know now as a Christian that you need to cry out to God that he would supply more and more of his grace to you. So we must be careful not to let our hearts become like stone on this matter. We must again and again come before the throne and thank God for his grace towards us.

And if we know Christ, we've tasted of that already. But then we must say to God, "I need your grace again." We must cry out, "Forgive my sins of this past week. Forgive the way that I talked to my husband or my wife in anger this week or the way that I found pleasure thinking about or watching things that you despise. Lord, give me grace."

What is grace? Well, grace is not a substance. It's not a thing. Grace is the Triune Godhead, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, giving himself wholly and fully in love to you. That's grace. We want God. We want his grace.

Secondly, here we see God's nature invoked. If you continue on in verse one, it says, "Be gracious to me, O God now listen to this according to your lovingkindness, according to the greatness of your compassion." What is the basis that David can come to God and plead for grace? To note what the basis is not: the basis for receiving God's grace is not even in asking for it. The fact that David comes and asks for grace is not the basis of receiving grace. God's grace is not founded on the request of man; rather as we see David pray, God's grace flows from the fact that he knows that God is a God of great loving kindness and mercy and grace. It's an attribute that is in God. That's the basis. He is gracious. And so all man can do is put oneself on his knees and say, "If it be not for your grace, God, I would be nothing and I would be an object of your horror and of your wrath."

So we must understand that grace is God's to give because it's in him. He will extend grace to man at his own discretion. In Exodus 33:19, the Lord says, "I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious and I will show compassion on whom I will show compassion." So David is invoking the religious context of Israel as a theocracy; that is, a people under God's direct rule through the king. All about him were the symbols of God's loving kindness and grace. You see, Israel had been swept up in the redemptive plans of God. The tabernacle was in Jerusalem that David had established there, and it had the ark of the covenant in it for all the people to be reminded of the holiness of God. And inside the ark were Moses' tablets of stone, the ten commandments representing that God's law is holy just as God is holy. But what really points David to God's loving kindness was that sacrificial system given to Israel; a constant witness to the people in the world that despite human disobedience against God, there is forgiveness to be found in the transferal of human disobedience and guilt to another who can bear it in their place. There was a system pointing to and was to be fulfilled by Jesus Christ, who took upon himself the guilt of his people.

And so David knew with the symbols all around him that there is grace and loving kindness that is in God. But what about us? Maybe when we sin and God makes that known to us in our conscience or through others who confront us, maybe we then shy away from God thinking he does not want to see us any longer or to come to Him. Now God grieves when, as Christians, we sin, but He grieves as a father grieves, whose discipline occurs in love for our own good and because he loves. And so we can know that because Jesus is our Redeemer, God's promise is that we have an advocate for us when we sin. And he's always there and he's always willing to shower us again with his grace. In one John 2:1, it says, "I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous." Such is the nature of God, the basis for grace given. Throw yourself upon it.

The third point here and the final point is that David seeks God's forgiveness and so we want to consider God's forgiveness sought. Psalm 51 again says, "Blot out my transgressions, wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin." Here at the end of verse one and the beginning of verse two, we have the grace David seeks expanded upon and made clear exactly the kind of grace and what he wants it to accomplish in his life. It's not a vague request for God's grace. The grace he seeks is in direct correspondence to the sin he has committed. He wants his sin blotted out. He wants it removed from God's register; removed from memory. He wants to be washed clean from the condemnation of his sin that he knows is upon him.

Why is it that David is so earnest in his request before God? Of course, he actually knows that he is already forgiven. He is already standing in a place of right standing before God. But does he then just say, "God will forgive me. It's all good. No worries." If God forgives me, what makes me want to live any differently?

Well, Paul answers this very query in Romans 6:1. He says, "What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase?" The answer to it is of course no. Grace cannot increase. We can't be growing as Christians when we're just deliberately continuing in sin because it's not in the believer's new nature to be comfortable with sin. And so David here is showing the fruits of one who truly knows God. Believers are always sensitive to sin. It unsettles them when they commit it. And they understand that persistence in sin disrupts our relationship with God.

One theologian put it this way: when sin disrupts the fellowship with the covenant Lord, the sinner has no right to divine blessing. David does not want that. He doesn't want disrupted fellowship. He wants to be restored to full communion; undisrupted fellowship; and access to God. So he says, "Blot out my transgressions."

The final word here is, of course, that in Jesus Christ, this prayer is truly answered. Jesus, friends, is the full expression to the world of God's love and the one who blots out David's sins. He is the one who knew no sin himself so that he would be made sin for others when he died on that cross. So it is ultimately because of Jesus that the prophet Nathan was able to say in two Samuel 12:13, "The Lord also has taken away your sin. You shall not die." That's the promise. And why? Because of what Christ had done.

Let's wrap things up. In Psalm 32, believed to be a later Psalm of David's, arising from the same historical context, he opens by saying, "How blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered, how blessed is the man to whom the Lord does not impute iniquity and in whose spirit there is no deceit." If you're in Christ this morning, you can pray that and hold on to such truth for yourself because if you are in Christ, he has not imputed the punishment for your sins upon you; instead he has put them upon Christ. So he has blotted out our transgressions. Such is the grace of God that is available to sinners.

So consider David's need expressed. The kind of grace we want is the kind of grace that washes away sin; that cleanses us from all iniquity; that we might live before him with righteousness.