Please turn in your Bibles to Psalm 51. Psalm 51, we continue this morning in our final sermon in our series, Familiar Psalms, Sung and You. Next week, I'm going to be away in the great Republic of Texas, Preaching, something that was prearranged before I was appointed here at 10th. But the Sunday after, we're gonna begin an Advent series and a Christmas series for five weeks. A son of a woman, a son of Abraham, a son of David, a son of Joseph, a son of circumcision. So I hope you will join us for that series in December, Lord willing. But this morning as we come to the reading and preaching of Psalm 51, let me pray for us. Father, you have said in your word that this is the one you will look upon, the one who is humble and broken and contrite in spirit and who trembles at your word. So help us to be humble and to tremble. And in trembling, Let us see our savior, the great friend of sinners. And we ask this in his name. Amen. Psalm 51. To the choir master, a Psalm of David. When Nathan the prophet went to him after he had gone into Bathsheba. Have mercy on me, O God. According to your steadfast love, according to your abundant mercy, blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgressions and my sin is ever before me. Against you, you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment. Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me. Behold, 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. Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will return to you. Deliver me from blood guiltiness, O God, O God of my salvation, and my tongue will sing aloud of your righteousness. O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise. 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. Do good in Zion in your good pleasure. Build up the walls of Jerusalem. Then will you delight in right sacrifices, in burnt offerings, and whole burnt offerings. then bulls will be offered on your altar. The grass withers, the flowers fade, but the word of our God endures forever. C.S. Lewis once said, time does not erase the fact or the guilt of sin. Time does not erase the fact or the guilt of sin. This hit home to me a number of years ago when we were living in Cambridge, England. One morning as I was leaving the house, I noticed our washing machine was spilling water out of the overflow pipe during the rinse cycle. And the next thing there was a flood of epic proportions on the kitchen floor. To cut a long story short, our drainage pipes under our floorboards had become blocked and water had nowhere to go. So it was just backing up the overflow pipe and pouring out onto the kitchen floor. Over the preceding weeks, I had been given a few warnings that something was not quite right. I remember on one occasion, I'd seen a bit of water come out from underneath the washing machine, so I just mopped it up and moved on. In the weeks leading up to the flood, the rinse cycle would start spurting out water from the sink plug hole. But because it wasn't a volcanic eruption, I just ignored it. And then just a few days before the flood, the kitchen sink started to drain slowly, like really slowly, like, hello, there's a blocked pipe below, kind of slow. And do you know what I was thinking the whole time when I was getting these warning signs? It'll be all right. It'll clear over time. And then it happened. The blockage, the overflow, the flood. The whole thing was pretty stressful because at the time, I was trying to prepare some talks for a conference, and this was a massive intrusion into my preparation. And I remember thinking, there better be a sermon illustration in this. And lo and behold, there was. And it was this. We sin every day by thought, word, and deed. If we do not confess those sins, then it's like the accumulation of dirt in the pipes of our relationship with God, and time does not remove that dirt. If we do not confess our sins, they just sit there, clogging up and eventually blocking our relationship with God. It was a lesson that King David had to learn, and in learning it, he left the church with a wonderful example of a biblical confession of sin. It's quite surprising that it is a confession for the church, because if you cast your eye back over the psalm, you'll notice how deeply personal it is. The I's and the my's and the me's sort of jump out at you. And yet notice who David addresses the psalm to, to the choir master. In other words, here's my personal confession that I wrote last night, but can you put it to a congregational tune so that we can all sing it? Listen to Augustine, who captures the application well. Listen to David crying out and cry with him. Listen to him groaning and groan too. Listen to him weeping and add your tears to his. Listen to him corrected and share his joy. Let all who have not fallen listen to ensure they do not fall. And let all who have fallen listen. so that they may learn to get up again. That's why Psalm 51 is in our Bibles, to teach us how to get up again after we've fallen into sin. David gives us five things to consider when it comes to confessing our sins. Number one, a prayer for remission. Confession of sin involves a prayer for remission. We will spend most of our time on this first point. A prayer for remission. Now, I'm using an old school word for forgiveness because I need a letter R to match the other points. But it's a good old school word because to remit means to cancel a debt or punishment. And that's where a biblical confession of sin begins with a prayer for the cancellation of the debt of sin. It begins with a prayer for forgiveness. It's what the verb blot out in verse one means. According to your abundant mercy, blot out my transgressions. Cancel them, remit them. The verb blot out is also used in the Bible for removing dirt. And that's the dominant image that David uses with his other words. Verse two, wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. He makes similar requests in verse seven and nine. Purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean. Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow. Hide your face from my sins and blot out my iniquities. The words and the repetition of the theme shows that David wants a deep clean. Doesn't want a wee rinse. He wants a big wash, a deep wash. And he wants a deep clean because his sins are serious. We see that from the words that David uses. He uses a terrible trinity of sin words. Verse 1, transgression. It means to break a law. You know, boys and girls, like when your parents tell you not to touch the vase in your grandmother's hallway, that's a law laid down. But if you touch it, you break the law. Hopefully not the vase as well, but you have broken a law. That's a transgression. Verse two, iniquity. The word refers to the waywardness of sin, like when you're out on a trail path in the woods with your parents and you veer off the path when you shouldn't. That's iniquity. It refers to the internal nature of sin, the way sin makes us twisted and bent on the inside. Verse two, sin. means to fall short, to miss the mark. Like when you're playing darts at home and you're trying to hit the bullseye and you miss. It's a picture of sin. These are the serious sins that need to be forgiven. Transgression, iniquity, sin. And David helps us to understand their impact on our lives by presenting them in a single image. It's the image of dirty stains. Sin stains. There's no such thing as stainless sin. Stainless steel, yes, but not stainless sin. Sin always stains. It always leaves a mark on us and on other people we've sinned against. I'm sure you know what it's like to get a stain on your carpet or your sofa, your new blouse, your new shirt or tie. What do you do when you get that stain on that new something? You rush to the cupboard to get the stain remover. And that's what a biblical confession of sin looks like. A truly repentant person rushes to the cupboard of heaven and asks God for the stain remover. In this case, David's sins were big sins with deep stains. Adultery, deceptive schemes, induced drunkenness, murder, multiple murders with many bereaved widows and fatherless children in Israel. And hence, David stresses his desire for a deep, clean, wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. But the question is, why is David making this request to this God? After all, this is the God who is so holy that he struck Uzzah when he put out his hand to stop the ark from falling when David was bringing it into Jerusalem. Why does David want this God? to do some cleansing for him? Well, the answer is in verse one. Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love. According to your abundant mercy, blot out my transgressions. Notice the adjectives. God is not just love and mercy, he is steadfast love. He is abundant mercy. Great sins require great mercy. Big stains require big love. And that's what David knew was available to him as a sinner. He knew in praying this prayer, he was coming to a God with an ocean full of mercy. Isn't that good news this morning? As individuals who sin, as a church that sins, however great our sin, however deep its stain, God has an ocean of mercy waiting to wash us from it. In verse three, David gives the reason why he wants to be cleansed. Because his sin is inescapable. For I know my transgressions and my sin is ever before me. Like that stain on the new carpet or blouse or tie, you notice it, everyone notices it. It's ever before you. We'll see him with our sin. It's ever before us, staring us down. But there's another reason why we should ask for the cleansing, and that is a far more fundamental reason. And that is because we're guilty before God. We have offended God, verse 4. Against you, you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight. If David had just said, against you, I have sinned and done what is evil in your sight, it wouldn't really be that surprising. But notice that little phrase in between, against you, you only have I sinned. What's so striking is who David doesn't mention. He sinned against his servants. against Bathsheba, against Uriah, against the baby in Bathsheba's womb, against Joab, against the men who died alongside Uriah. He sinned against the nation. There wasn't anyone in the whole nation of Israel he hadn't sinned against. And yet, look what he says. Against you, you only have I sinned. He's not saying he hadn't sinned against others. He's simply saying that at the end of the day, all sin is really an offense against one person, God. The breaking of any commandment is really the breaking of the first commandment. But where did such sin come from? Such evil from the man after God's own heart? Well, David says it began in his earliest existence, verse five. David goes to the root of the rotten fruit. And in so doing, he gives us a short lesson on the doctrine of sin. In verse three to four, he speaks of his actual sin, the sins he actually committed. In verse five, he now speaks of what lies behind his actual sin. It's his original sin, the sin that was there at the beginning of his life, which he inherited from Adam. So two kinds of sin, actual sin and original sin. And the reason we commit actual sin, says David, is because of our original sin, our disposition to sin. We sin because we were born sinners. Many years ago, when Jackie was pregnant with Ben, we had a British TV program on called One Born Every Minute, and we would watch it each week in anticipation of the birth of our first child. It followed the real-life journey of a couple and their child from pregnancy through to birth. And each episode, after all the screaming, and pain and tears, and that was just the man in the room. After all the screaming and tears, and the baby was sleeping in its mother's arms, they would bring in a balloon. If it was a boy, it was a blue balloon, and it said, congratulations, it's a boy. And if it was a girl, it was a pink balloon, congratulations, it's a girl. And I remember thinking, Imagine bringing in a gray balloon. Congratulations, it's a sinner. I mean, can you imagine you did that? But it would be true, wouldn't it? That's what David is saying here. We are all born sinners. In fact, he says the problem goes even further back than that. We were conceived in sin. Right at the very moment of the sperm fertilizing the egg in our mother's womb, in that very moment of our coming into existence, sin was present. Which means there has never been a time in the whole of our existence when we have not been a sinner. Not even a split second. This is what David is teaching us. We're not sinners because we sin. We sin because we're sinners and we have never not been a sinner. At birth, at conception, that's what we were, that's what we have only ever been. Of course, that's not the way it was supposed to be, as verse six shows. Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being, and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart. God expects wisdom and truth in our inner being, but he finds none of it. Instead, what he finds is a rotten root that produces rotten fruit. Original sin is the root, actual sin is the fruit. Now why is it important to get this right? Well, remember what we saw last week. If we don't confess our sins, God won't forgive our sins. So we need to confess the whole of our sin, actual sin and original sin. We've actually done it this morning in our confession of sin. If you take your bulletin again and take a look, you'll see it says, we confess in your presence our sinful nature that is prone to do evil and slow to do good. That's our original sin that we confessed. And then the next part, and all our shortcomings and offenses against you, that's our actual sin that we confessed. So when we confess our sins, we must confess the rotten fruit, yes, of thought, word, and deed, but we must also confess the rotten root, the sinful nature that lies behind the rotten fruit. This is the first thing that a biblical confession of sin involves, a prayer for remission of sin, actual and original. Number two, a prayer for renewal, a prayer for renewal. Verses 10 to 12. 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. This prayer of renewal is closely connected to the prayer for remission. It's as close as two sides of a coin are connected to each other. Boys and girls, here's a quarter. I'm sure you're old enough to know that it's got two sides, a heads and a tails. And those two sides are distinct, but they are inseparable. And that's a bit like when we confess our sins. We don't just ask for a clean heart, the head side of the coin. We also ask for a changed heart, the tails side of the coin. That's what David is teaching us here. We want clean hearts. We also want changed hearts. Now David isn't praying for a conversion. He's already converted. He's praying to be renewed, not regenerated. He wants a new beginning, not a new birth. He wants to be a new kind of person as he moves forward after his sin. It's a bit like the email I get every January 1st from Apple. Wonder if you ever had it. New year, new you. Every year, Apple offers me a new start, but they never deliver. Because they can't change me. And I can't change myself. Only God can. And that's what David makes so clear in this prayer for renewal. There are six commands in just three verses, and each of them is directed to God. Create, renew, cast me not away, take not, restore, uphold. The real lasting change that we need after we've been forgiven for our sin is not found in ourselves trying harder. It's found in God. The Holy Spirit, hence David's words in verse 11, cast me not away from your presence and take not your Holy Spirit from me. Some think that this prayer relates to David's anointing as king. When he was anointed by Samuel, he received the Holy Spirit. And so some think that David is saying, take not my anointing as king away from me. I sinned as a king. Please let me remain as a king. But the two surrounding verses, verse 10 and 12, speak about internal renewal. And so I think it's best to read verse 11 in that light. In other words, David just doesn't want to just continue in office. He wants to continue in holiness. But he can't unless the Spirit remains with him. When we sin, we quench and grieve the Holy Spirit, but we do not lose Him entirely. But were we to continue in sin, unrepentant, then we would lose the Holy Spirit in the sense that we would become like those in Hebrews 6 who tasted of the things of the Spirit, but were never truly born again of the spirit. And David is saying, Lord, may it be that I am truly born again. Do not take your spirit from me. He doesn't want to be counted among that group of apostates. And so he prays that God would let his spirit remain in him and give him a right and willing spirit to make progress in holiness. We've prayed that as well in our confession of sin, a prayer for renewal. If you look back again, you'll see it. Oh, most holy and loving Father, send your purifying grace into our hearts, we pray, that we may from now on live in your light and walk in your ways. This is the second thing that a confession of sin involves. A prayer for remission and a prayer for renewal. And number three, a prayer for rejoicing. A prayer for rejoicing, verses 13 to 17. Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will return to you. Deliver me from blood guiltiness, O God, O God of my salvation, and my tongue will sing aloud of your righteousness. O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise. If God answers David's request for remission and renewal, then David envisages doing two things, teaching and singing. He's not so much talking about remaining in office as the king, he's talking about being able to tell his personal testimony of God's forgiving and renewing ways. But he doesn't just want to teach, he also wants to sing. Verse 14, deliver me from blood guiltiness, O God, and my tongue will sing aloud of your righteousness. Clean hearts and willing spirits make for new songs. Dirty hearts and wayward spirits make for no songs. This is what David expresses back in verse eight. Let me hear joy and gladness. Let the bones you have broken rejoice. when he was under the cloud of his guilt, his bones felt crushed, his soul was suppressed, he had no song to sing. Hence his prayer that God would help him to rejoice again. Because trying to get a guilt-ridden person to sing is like trying to get someone with the flu to go for a run. This is what guilt does to our souls. It zaps us of any spiritual energy in life so that we are unable to sing. But the person who has been set free from their guilt, who has had their sins washed away, has the energy and the vitality to sing. And why do they sing? Because they are guilt-free. The other day, I was taking my Hannah to pre-K, and as she was walking down the path from our house to the car, she was skipping. And I thought to myself, oh, to be that carefree again. Not a care in life, just skipping her way to pre-K. I haven't skipped in years. Have you? I've got things on my mind, I've got cares, I've got burdens, I've got problems, I've got work, but we, Hannah, skipping her way through life because she is carefree. And that's like the believer whose sins have been forgiven. They sing their way through life because they are guilt-free. Guilt-ridden souls are songless souls. Guilt-forgiven souls are full of songs. This is what David prays for in his confession of sin, that God would help him to rejoice again in song. And if God helps him to do that, then it will be evidence that God has forgiven David without David having to do anything. Hence what David says in verse 16 and 17. For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I will give it. You will not be pleased with a burned offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. David isn't saying that repentance is the sacrifice that atones for his sins. Rather, he's saying that the sacrifice of a broken and contrite heart reveals that he's got no sacrifice to offer God for the payment of his sins. He's entirely at his mercy. If God grants him his request for remission and renewal, then the only thing he has to offer God is an offering of thanksgiving from a broken heart. That is the sacrifice he can offer God. This is the third thing a biblical confession of sin involves, a prayer for rejoicing. A prayer for remission, a prayer for renewal, a prayer for rejoicing. And number four, a prayer for restoration. A prayer for restoration. Verses 18 and 19. Do good to Zion in your good pleasure. Build up the walls of Jerusalem. then will you delight in right sacrifices and burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings. Then bulls will be offered on your altar. Do you notice how David switches from the personal requests to now praying for the church of Old Testament Israel at large? He does so because he recognizes that as goes the king, so goes the nation. And David did not go well in the whole Bathsheba affair. And so neither did the nation. This is seen by the fact that while this whole sordid affair was going on, Israel was not able to defeat the Ammonites. The war came to a standstill. Only once David was forgiven and he heads out to war himself does Israel defeat the Ammonites. Hence David's prayer at the end of his confession, that the collateral damage from his sin on the nation might be minimal, that God might do good to Zion and secure the city rather than leaving it vulnerable to an attack. If God is so pleased to preserve the nation despite David's sin, then David says, true worship will be restored in Israel. bulls will be offered again on your altar." In other words, this is a prayer for the restoration of God's church despite the sin. This is another aspect of a biblical confession of sin. When we repent of our sin, we are to take into consideration the damage that it may have done to others and to the church of Christ as a whole. So we've seen four aspects of a confession of sin, but there's a fifth. A prayer for a Redeemer. A prayer for a Redeemer. Did you notice the tension in this psalm around whether there is a sacrifice for David's sin or not? In verse 16, David seems to suggest there isn't one, otherwise he would bring it. In verse 17, he says that his broken and contrised heart is the sacrifice that God accepts. But then in verse 18 and 19, he speaks of the sacrificial system being restored and animal sacrifices being offered. So which is it? Is there a sacrifice for sin for David's sin or not? And if so, which is it? There certainly needed to be a sacrifice for his sin because according to Old Testament law, he deserved the death penalty and twice over, one for adultery and one for murder. The fact that David doesn't offer a bull sacrifice suggests that this is one of those moments in the Old Testament where the insufficiency and the inadequacy of these Old Testament sacrifices to pay for human sin is exposed. A bull won't do in this case. But if so, then what is the sacrifice? Because there needs to be one. Well, verse 17 perhaps points us in the direction of an answer. When David speaks of his repentant heart as a sacrifice to God, what he's really saying is, oh God, I am a broken man. I have nothing to offer you. If you're going to forgive me, you're going to have to provide the sacrifice. In this sense, David is praying for a Redeemer. He's praying for God to provide a sacrifice for his sin. And God, in His grace, does. Initially, in David's time, and then, ultimately, in the fullness of time. In David's time, there was a sacrifice for his sin. It came in the form of his own son dying. The son from the affair with Bathsheba was born a healthy boy, but God afflicted him because of David's sin, and he died. A son of David died for David's sin. A son of David died for David's sin. David's son was his redeemer. He died so David could live. He received the death penalty for David's crimes. And as such, that innocent little boy, whose name we are never given, served as a type of the ultimate Redeemer whose name we are given, Jesus, which means he will save his people from their sins. Do you remember one of Jesus' titles? Son of David. He was born in innocence. In fact, he was conceived in innocence. God delighted in truth in his inner being. God taught him wisdom in his secret heart. And then when he was born, he lived under the law of God, the same law that David lived under, but which he broke, but not Jesus. He lived in perfect obedience under that law from childhood to manhood. There was never a moment in the whole of his existence, from conception to crucifixion, from womb to tomb, when he was not a perfect, sinless person. And yet, despite this, he was crucified on a cross and given the death of a criminal. He was crucified at the time of the morning sacrifice. He expired his final breath at the time of the evening sacrifice. His life and death were one whole burnt offering to God for the sins of his fathers and mothers, for David and Bathsheba and Joab and all the Old Testament saints. Jesus' sacrifice for sin reached back into the Old Testament and paid for those people's sins. But the great good news for us is that it also reaches forward into the New Testament era, down to us today, and pays for our sins. Do you see it? A son of David died for your sins. And this is why all biblical confessions of sin ends with a prayer for God to forgive our sins for Jesus' sake. In Jesus' name. Because without this son of David, we could never have our sins forgiven. And we need to have those sins forgiven because C.S. Lewis was right. Time. does not erase the fact or the guilt of sin. If you're here this morning and you have unconfessed sin, time will never erase it. The only thing that will erase our sins is God's grace. A grace that is received through faith in a Redeemer. A Redeemer we approach with a broken and contrite spirit saying, nothing in my hand I bring. Simply to your cross I cling, Naked come to you for dress, Helpless look to you for grace, Foul I to the fountain fly, Wash me, Savior, or I die. Let us pray. Father, our sins are great and their stains are deep. So would you please wash us in that fountain of blood that flowed for sinners like us? And we ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.