Sermon
Psalm 51 Continued
August 25-26, 2001
Pastor Donald Sheley

We've spent a number of weeks on one of the great Psalms. Let's turn there again, shall we? We're in Psalm 51. If you're using the pew Bible it's page 388; and I know we've spent a considerable amount of time, but I have been extremely fascinated to see the depth of David's understanding of this whole problem of sin, and to know that God in His grace and mercy does forgive. Our Psalm is a Psalm that was written as a prayer. You remember David had committed a dastardly deed. He had committed adultery, to cover his adultery he had the husband of Bathsheba murdered on the field, and so now he's guilty of murder and adultery.

We've noticed in his prayer that he says, God, if there was a sacrifice that You required, I'd give it. But under Mosaic Law there was no sacrifice for adultery or for murder; it was death. David knew that, and as a result, he prays this prayer:

Have mercy upon me, 0 God, according to Your lovingkindness; according to the multitude of Your tender mercies, blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. For I acknowledge my transgressions, and my sin is always before me. Against You, You only, have I sinned, and done this evil in Your sight--that you may be found just when You speak, and blameless when You judge. Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me. Behold, You desire truth in the inward parts, and in the hidden part You will make me to know wisdom. Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Make me to hear joy and gladness, that the bones You have broken may rejoice. Hide Your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, 0 God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me away from Your presence, and do not take Your Holy Spirit from me.

Restore to me the joy of Your salvation; and uphold me by Your generous Spirit. Then I will teach transgressors Your ways, and sinners shall be converted to You. Deliver me from the guilt of bloodshed, 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, and 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.

Now in our contemplations thus far we have arrived at verse 6. Last Lord's Day we talked about verse 5 when he says, Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me. And we learned very simply that David is not blaming his sin on his mother. He just simply is stating a fact; I sin because I am a sinner. I knew that my sin was a transgression, that is, it was an open stubborn, deliberate, violation of a command that I knew, God, You had given. I sinned purposely. It was my choice. But I sin because I am a sinner by nature.

Now he adds to the prayer that portion we want to take a few moments to consider today. He said, Behold, You desire truth in the inward parts, and in the hidden part You will make me to know wisdom. Behold, You desire truth. It's interesting that he begins this part of his prayer with that word 'behold', because it seems that in the process of crying out to God in his prayer he's going through a time where God is revealing to him even deeper truths. And he comes to that point in his prayer and he says, God, I knew it all the time. You want truth. You don't want falsehood. For all of these months since I sinned the sin, and we've learned it could have been as much as the year or even more, he had covered it. And he was in pain and he talks of this pain, and he is simply saying, God, I knew it all the time. Why did I try to cover it up? You really want truth. You don't appreciate falsehood, and I've lived a lie for all these months in covering this secret sin.

God has never appreciated falsehood. In fact, when we come to the New Testament, and we find that the catalogs of sin are there of immorality and all the others sins; and when it says those sins it always completes them by saying, and all liars shall have their part in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone. God has severe judgment on liars. And it's interesting, even in a world of sinners they don't like liars. The man who tries to cover his lie today only gets into a deeper pit. If months ago he would have told to truth we could at least have forgiven him. Even the world doesn't like liars. David said, God, You really do want me to be a man of truth and sincerity and honesty.

Truth--it's the question that has agitated the minds of man for centuries. You go back into the ancient writings of the Greeks and you'll read the philosophers and one of their great quests was the question, what is truth? It fills the philosophy books of the ages. Is truth absolute or is it relative? Is it static or does it change? Truth, what is it? Interesting enough, when you analyze the writing of the philosophers they may not have understood the concept of an almighty God, but almost all philosophers will come to a conclusion truth has to be centered in something that never changes or someone who is perfect without error.

Jesus was standing in Pilate's hall; friendless, forsaken, despised by all. And Pilate said, where are You from? And Jesus began to talk about His kingdom, and He says those that are of truth will understand. And Pilate, he's a part of the crowd of the ancient past who he in his mind had searched for truth, now he's got this ignorant peasant, Galilean, who he thinks, before him. This Jesus, and this Galilean, this peasant, is talking about the answer to truth. And old Pilate immediately says, what is truth? He almost asked it in derision. Who are You to think that You can give the answer to truth? You're just standing here before me and I'm ready to pass judgment. You say You know the answer to truth?

Thomas was listening to Jesus in John chapter 14 when he said, let not your heart be trouble; you believe in God, believed also in Me. in My Father's house there are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. Thomas said, just a minute. We don't know where You're going. How do we go there? Jesus said, I am the way. I am truth, and I am life. Pilot, if he had waited. It's interesting that in this story of Pilate he asked the question and then left the room. He didn't even wait for an answer. If he had just stood there may be truth would have told him. Jesus said in that same interview, that passage in John 14:16-17, He said He will send the Spirit who will lead us and guide us into all truth.

When you go through the Old Testament, you find that truth was always embodied in the thought of trustworthiness, fidelity, sincerity, honesty, rightness, and godliness. David said, I know what truth is. In fact he wrote in Psalm 119 over and over again, he said the laws of God are truth. The ways of God are truth. God is the God of truth. David said that. He knew it. And he said, God, in his prayer, God, here I've played a part of a fool. Behold I knew all the time You do not allow a person to cover their sins without deep regret, and I've been a liar. I know You want truth. In fact, God, part of my prayer today is, O God, I want You to write eternal truth so deeply on this inner man of mine that it'll totally guide me and change my very character. David said I know You want truth, but O God, somehow write truth in my inner part, in the deepest part of my nature.

You know I had a man come to me the other day who sits over here in one of the services. He works out of the airport. He said, you know Pastor, I listened the other day when you talked about this idea that sin is a sin against God. David said against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned and done this evil in Thy sight. David realized that men and women were always involved or life itself was involved as the objects of our sin, but he said in the deepest part of it all when I sin I sin against You God. He said, you know when I started thinking of that to realize that's the dimension of sin sometimes we forget, and maybe if God could write that so indelibly on our souls that when we realize that when we sinned it was against Jesus, who we say we love. And I use the illustration that when we become Christians His Spirit comes to live within us, and when we decide to sin He doesn't say, okay, I'll just sit on the street corner here while you go do your sinning and I'll meet you when you get done. He doesn't leave us. We drag our Christ right into every act of sin because He's always with us.

This man said, you know Pastor, when I started thinking about that, I said God write that so on my heart. And we've observed that David's first 50 years were very successful. It was after he reached 50 that we find the sin recorded with Bathsheba. But you'll find that as you follow his life through 2 Samuel that David learned so much. God really wrote that thing indelibly. Every time something happened he remembers. Take that man who has stole that little lamb and you make him pay for it four times. And every time something of great tragedy, calamity, a death or a murder, what ever happened in his home--once again, indelibly, God is saying I'm writing that truth deep on your inner self. Oh if we could learn through these experiences, and then David goes on to say purge me with hyssop.

And you remember some weeks ago I told you that in going into the original Hebrew that's an interesting word. It implies, dear God, un-sin me. Isn't that a picture? Just God, un-sin me. And David understood, he said You purge me with hyssop. Well what's hyssop Pastor? It's a twig kind of a bush that grows out of almost anyplace there in the eastern lands, and what they would do is go pluck that bush from the wall and they used it as a brush. And the first occasion that we have of it is found in Exodus chapter 12. And you remember the children of Israel were about ready to leave for the Promised Land, and that night when the death angel is to pass over, all the Jewish people are told to kill a lamb and then you take a brush of hyssop and you dip it into that blood and you splashed on the lintel and the doorposts of your home. At midnight when the death angel passes over you will not have the penalty of death on your home as a judgment of death. Because you remember when that death angel passed over the first-born was slain. So that Jewish family that evening took and slew the animal, took that twig of hyssop, brushed in the basin, and then swabbed the doorposts and the lintel of their home.

Now David's got this in mind. He knows he's got the death sentence on him. He knows there is no sacrifice for his sin, and here's what he's saying, God, I'm that household; here I am and the death sentence is upon me. O do what You did in ancient past. Take that divine hyssop and place it on my house so that this penalty for sin, which is death, will pass over me. David knew what he was praying. God, it happened in ancient past that You took the death sentence from the home that was applied with blood.

Then he went further. He knew also that in Leviticus 14 God had spent about 50 verses talking about this whole issue of leprosy. It was a dreaded disease in the past. We do not have much of it now, but in ancient past they would start to blotch, a white blotch would appear on their skin, and when they saw that they were obligated under Mosaic Law to immediately go to the priest and say to the priest; will you examine this? Is this leprosy? It would turn red around the edges and then white and then start scabbing. And the priest would say, well I don't know, but what we'll do is we'll put you here in confinement for seven days and I'll watch this. And I'll come back in seven days, and so the man's suspicious of leprosy would be set aside for seven days, and the priest would come and looked at it. If the thing is getting bigger, we're going to stay seven more days. You're going to have to stay here because I'm going to watch this, and if it still is getting worse the second seven days he says to the man, you have leprosy. And then what he does is he separates him from society. A leper could not come within a certain amount of distance from a person. All they could do was stand on the other side of the street and say unclean, unclean, unclean. And what they're saying is don't come near me because of Mosaic Law I've got leprosy, and you're not to come near me. That's the marvel of Jesus when He healed the leper, He overlooked all those Mosaic Laws and walked up and touched the leper. That's something you never did.

The first time I became aware of leprosy I was preaching in Calcutta India years ago, and much leprosy was there. The night that I was taken to the place I was to stay I had to stumble over lepers who slept in the doorways and the stairs of the apartment. I cannot forget that night. I saw those lepers, some of them, leprosy had eaten off their fingers and their hands were stubs. And their face was eaten away and their teeth were hanging just from their jaws without lips. It's a tragic disease. David said, God, I've got the leprosy of sin. There's not a thing I can do to cure it. But under Mosaic Law if there was a healing that took place they took scarlet, two birds, killed one under running water, placed the blood of that one killed in a basin, took hyssop, and brushed in the basin from the blood that was spilt by the one bird. They've got another bird standing here. And what they would do is they'd take that hyssop and they apply it to the leper and then to the bird; the bird flies away. And David sees that beautiful scene where the priest pronounces leprosy cleansed. And when he says purge me with hyssop, take this house of mine that has the death sentence on it and apply the doorposts and the lintel with Your precious blood. Take this man who now bears the marks of sin that ultimately will take his life. I'm a leper when it comes to sin. Somehow, Almighty God, un-sin me, un-leprosy me, and take that divine hyssop and sprinkle Your blood on me.

Ladies and gentlemen, I feel so sorry for the churches who have gone through their hymn books and thrown away the great hymns on the blood of Jesus Christ. There is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Immanuel's veins; and sinners, plunged beneath that flood, lose all their guilty stains. What can wash away my sin, nothing but the blood of Jesus. What can make me whole again, nothing but the blood of Jesus. And when those beautiful truths are taken from the body of Christ, and the hymnals are ripped apart, and they sing no more of the blood of Jesus, then there is no more cleansing and there's no more pardon and there's no more forgiveness. We sing it with all of our hearts--cleansed by the blood of the crucified One. We're still old-fashioned enough to believe that it's the blood of Jesus Christ that cleanses from all sin. No matter how much you have sinned, even if it marks that compared to David, you can come to Christ and say, Jesus, cleanse me and wash me whiter than snow. And He does that. Amen? Amen.

Father thank you for this great prayer. Some of us sitting here today need to pray as David: purge me and wash me and I shall be whiter than snow. Help us not to be so foolish as to think we can cover our sins with falsehood, but to be honest and open. And when we are, You do forgive. Thank you Jesus. And everybody said, amen. God bless you.