Ps 51; 2 Samuel 11:26
I have had people tell me that I never preach on sin (not from this parish). But today we are looking at the nature of sin and what it does to the sinner, and repentance.
Not the repentance we have when we first believe, but being sorry for a specific thing or things we have done as Christians.
Something we did, or said, or thought, or joined in with, that truly pained others, that we furthermore tried to ‘cover up’ from ourselves and others, a process which starts in our subconscious and moves into outright denial.
This is David’s story, but alas it is also mine, and I think, part of the human condition.
Most of us are familiar with last week’s account of David’s taking of Bathsheba, her conceiving a child, and David’s evil conspiracy to murder her loyal and true husband, Uriah, and cover it all up.
From all of Israel and from God.
And today’s reading follows directly on. After a time of lamentation and mourning, Bathsheba marries David, one of many, many wives and gives birth to a son.
Now David’s repentance of these evil acts is very pure and good and true. However its worth noticing how long David was fully absent from God before God called him to repentance.
In the depths of his sin, his separation from God, he was unaware of how greatly he had fallen. The weeks and months of official mourning, the rest of Bathsheba’s pregnancy and the eventual birth of a son had all gone by before the Lord sent Nathan the prophet to David.
David hadn’t come to repentance because he had been living in denial. He had refused to acknowledge the depth of his sin in having Uriah, husband of Bathsheba, killed.
For the duration of that time I suggest that his amazing communion with God was suspended. I suggest he was incapable of writing a Psalm, his harp was out of tune, and to quote Matthew Henry, ‘his soul like a tree in winter, that has life in the root only.’
The seriousness of his behaviour had not dawned on him until Nathan the prophet came to him and confronted the King with the severity of his sin. He does so in the way Jesus will often do, he tells David a parable.
In which a rich man steals the ewe lamb of a poor man for his own convenience and profit. He had huge flocks of his own but, in his selfishness, he took the only thing of any value to the poor man; his lamb.
When Nathan told the story, David was so angry about the behaviour of the rich man. He said, “As surely as the Lord lives, the man who did this deserves to die!.”
Then the prophet Nathan, in and with the full authority of God confronts David with the terrible truth; “King David – you are the man!”
David is confronted with the reality of who he is, and today’s Psalm 51 is written by him out of that experience of pain, that experience of uncovering.
It is the moment when he enters into ‘deep knowing’ and, out of that knowing, he speaks with God with a clarity of honesty that mirrors our own understanding of self.
Now I am speaking of no one in particular, and yet this will apply to some or many of us. The process of self-reflection can sometimes mean that we don’t always like what we see which understandably makes us a little defensive. The Lord wants to make us truly whole.
If we allow God in we can see that our attitudes to these vexed issues are driven by a deep-rooted fear. A fear of being uncovered, a fear of understanding ourselves as we truly are, a fear of ‘deep knowing’. We don’t want others to know who we really are.
We are frightened that God knows us as we really are. We don’t even want to know ourselves as we really are because that may become a journey into deep self-loathing and even despair.
Psalm 51 is a wonderful example of the journey we are all on as we turn inward to the process of ‘deep knowing’. As we reflect on his words in Psalm 51 so we can think about our own need for deep grace from God.
There are some deep, deep truths to learn about how damaging sin can be to our lives.
The first thing is our deep need for God which is the very first principle of repentance. David begins, “Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions” (v.1).
Be reassured by this my friends! He has done this in Jesus Christ! There is nothing we can do to cleanse ourselves. We are incapable of doing anything to eradicate our sinful nature.
We are constantly improving when we utterly submit to and rely on God. We might try over and over again ourselves, trying to find a way to overcome our destructive patterns of behaviour – but ultimately we fail.
Our reliance is totally on God, as David summarises in v.10 which is the heart of this repentant prayer; “Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.” Only God can give us a pure heart. Only God can give us a steadfast spirit.
Secondly, the truth is that we can never know true happiness until we are restored into a right relationship with God - “For I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me” (v.3).
No matter how we may try to ignore things we’ve done or to blot them out, in the silence of our inner being our sin is always before us. We can run – but we just can’t hide.
When we look in the mirror, we see ourselves as we are in that moment. But as we look more closely, we are confronted with the face of a person who is the sum total of our personal history for good and for bad; pleasure and pain etched in every line.
A history of good choices and bad choices burnt deep into our eyes. We can’t escape our past failings any more than our past successes because, on one level, we are the sum total of all our decisions.
Thirdly, and it’s a big, big, truth. The reality is that sin against others and sin against ourselves is ultimately sin against God. David had sinned against Uriah. He had sinned against his own people. He had sinned against Bathsheba. He had sinned against himself.
Yet, in v.4 he writes, “Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you are proved right when you speak and justified when you judge.” God is Lord and Sovereign of this creation.
If we refuse to sit under his Lordship, we are sinning against him and we will face the consequence of judgement - that is Natural Law, as those who have refused the Lordship of Christ have forfeited the law of grace.
Psalm 51 is not meant though to add to our burden of guilt. It’s a beautiful psalm that helps us not collapse under the burden. This deep knowing of himself that the Lord gave David in this Psalm, he gives to us too, always.
When we come to terms with who we are – frail, broken children of dust – it is at that point that we are able to relax into the love of God.
And then, when we relax into the love of God, we realise in a deeply experiential way the good news of the Gospel; that Jesus Christ came to save sinners
Finally, with David, we are brought to the place of praise and worship. In v.15 he writes, “O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise.” This Psalm is the inward journey that we go through all our believing lives.
We begin at v.1, “have mercy on me, O God”. We are confident that if we make this journey with earnestness and honesty and a willingness to submit to Christ, we will arrive with David at the last verse, v.19, where “God will delight in [our] right sacrifices,” which are a “broken and contrite heart” (v.17).
Let me pray.