All right, Psalm 51. I know this
is a familiar psalm. If you have ever gone to this
psalm in time of need and because of your own sin, you have found
a lot of comfort in it. So I'm going to read through
this psalm from verse one. Psalm 51, verse one. Have mercy
upon me, O God, according to thy loving kindness. According
unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions. Wash me throughly from mine iniquity
and cleanse me from my sin. For I acknowledge my transgressions
and my sin is ever before me. Against Thee, Thee only, have
I sinned and done this evil in Thy sight, that Thou mightest
be justified when Thou speakest, and be clear when Thou judgest.
Behold, I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive
me. Behold, Thou desirest truth in
the inward parts, and in the hidden part Thou shalt 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 which thou hast broken may rejoice. Hide thy
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 Thy presence, and take not Thy Holy Spirit
from me. Restore unto me the joy of Thy
salvation, and uphold me with Thy free Spirit. Then will I
teach transgressors Thy ways, and sinners shall be converted
unto Thee. Deliver me from blood guiltiness,
O God, Thou God of my salvation, and my tongue shall sing aloud
of Thy righteousness. O Lord, open Thou my lips, and
my mouth shall show forth Thy praise. For Thou desirest not
sacrifice, else would I give it. Thou delightest not in burnt
offerings. The sacrifices of God are a broken
spirit, a broken and a contrite heart, O God, Thou wilt not despise. Do good in Thy good pleasure
unto Zion. Build Thou the walls of Jerusalem. Then shalt Thou be pleased with
the sacrifices of righteousness, with burnt offering and whole
burnt offering. Then shall they offer bullocks
upon Thine altar. All right, this psalm was spoken
by David, King David, and it was spoken on the occasion of
him sinning against God in the matter of Bathsheba in adultery
and in Uriah, the Hittite, who was a faithful servant of David
when David had Uriah killed in battle at the hand of his enemies,
no less, in 2 Samuel. And if you wanna turn to 2 Samuel
chapter 12, you can pick up the reading there. But in 2 Samuel
chapter 12, this is the time when Nathan the prophet was sent
to David to tell him that he had sinned against God all that
time until Nathan came to him. He was acting as if he had not,
acting as if everything was fine. and going on about his business,
but I want to point out what God said through Nathan the prophet
to King David, and you can remind yourself of the sin that David
committed in the matter of Uriah and in the matter of Bathsheba,
but look at verse nine of 2 Samuel chapter 12. He says, Nathan speaking
on God's behalf to David, David the king, He says, wherefore
hast thou despised the commandment of the Lord to do evil in his
sight? Thou hast killed Uriah the Hittite
with a sword, and hast taken his wife to be thy wife, and
hast slain him with the sword of the children of Ammon. There
you have it. That's a compact summary of all
that David did. Verse 10, Now therefore, God
said, the sword shall never depart from thine house, because thou
hast noticed despised me. and has taken the wife of Uriah,
the Hittite, to be thy wife." And so we see in these two verses
of scripture that David's sin against God amounted to this,
and this is true of everyone who sins against God. It's despising
the word of the Lord, and it is despising God who gave us
that word. And when we see it in that light,
we see the significance of the evil of our sin, that it is against
God. David says this in Psalm 51.
He says in verse four, against thee, thee only have I sinned
and done this evil in thy sight. And he says that in verse four,
with this motive, for this purpose, that thou mightest be justified
when thou speakest and be clear when thou judgest. Now that's
the heart of a contrite sinner. He understands that his sin is
great. His sin is great because it's
despising the word of the Lord. It's great because it is despising
the Lord himself. And his sin is therefore against
God. And when the Lord convinces us
of our sin, then we have this attitude that the Lord is right
in his judgments against me. And whatever he considers to
be fair, that's what is right. Even though it may bring me tremendous
suffering and separation from him, if it seems good to him,
then it's right. I don't deserve anything from
him. I can't fault him for the judgments he brings. And David
is saying this when he says that thou mightest be justified in
thy saying. So this is also picked up in
Romans chapter three, that when God says that Israel didn't believe
him and therefore they were knowingly sinning against God for not believing
Him. And he goes on in Romans 3 to
quote this, that God might be justified in His sayings, even
if none believed, God is still true. And he quotes this verse
here in Psalm 51 to show that in every case God will be shown
to be right and man will be shown to be wrong. If we could just understand that,
then we would never have a protest against God. Would we? We're
wrong and He is right. It's that simple. Now, this psalm
is about God's mercy. It begins in verse 1 with this
plea from David. a plea from David to God, a plea
for his mercy. So notice in verse one, have
mercy upon me, O God. And so we see in that the very
personal application to himself in prayer of his need. He's going
to God for himself as a man in need of mercy. And that's that's
the That's the way that God brings us when he brings us to himself
in faith. It's a one-on-one. The sinner
in all the nakedness of his need and the Savior in all the plenitude
of his grace are brought into direct embrace with no one in
between. And that's what you see here.
David says, have mercy upon me, O God. He says he doesn't cry
for mercy on the basis of his sorrow, and he doesn't cry on
the basis of a plan to make up for his sin somehow. What could
he do for Uriah? He had killed Uriah. And so the
deed had already been done. And besides that, his sin was
against God. And how could he make up for
his sin against God? That's the point here. He couldn't. We cannot make up to God for
the offenses that we have committed against him in our own sin. He goes on. He asked the Lord
to have mercy upon him for this reason. He says, oh God, have
mercy upon me, oh God, according to thy loving kindness. according
to thy lovingkindness. And then he goes on and asks,
according unto the multitude of thy mercies blot out my transgression. I looked up that word lovingkindness
and it has, I believe, at its root the feelings of a mother
for her unborn child or her little baby. It's a very tender compassion
that she has for that baby. And this is what David is asking
according to God's loving kindness towards his people. Be merciful
to me according to that, not according to my sorrow, not according
to my reform or my resolve, but according to your loving kindness.
And that's the only plea he has. In this psalm, what we see is
that David had sinned against God. He was guilty. and he knew
he deserved whatever God decided to give him as a consequence
of his sin, and he knows that he has no power He's helpless
to do anything about his sin against God, to take it away
from before God, or to change his heart in order to make his
heart right. So he has really this twofold
need. He comes to God with this twofold
need. First, his sin against God, that
in God's sight he had offended him, and that his sin was guilty. He was guilty before God and
therefore he stood in danger of God's justice and he needed
God to do something about it. He couldn't do anything about
it. God had to do something about his sin. That's where he was. He had sinned against God and
his only plea was that God would do something about his sin according
to God's own loving kindness and according to the multitude
of his tender mercies. All right, let's go on. It says,
notice here's the second part, or could be considered part of
the first part, his first problem, his sin against God, and that
his sin was in God's sight. He says, wash me. throughly or
completely, thoroughly, from mine iniquity and cleanse me
from my sin. Notice in verse one, he calls
out his transgressions. In verse two, his iniquity. And
in verse three, his transgression and his sin. He calls out all
three of these in verse two. It's his iniquity, his sin, and
in verse one and other places, it's his transgression against
God. And if you remember back in Psalm 32, all three of those
are mentioned there in Psalm 32, where he says in verse one,
blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven. A transgression
means we have broken God's law. We've transgressed. We have done
what God has prohibited. We have failed to do what God
has required. We have transgressed his law.
God's law is not just a requirement for us to avoid evil, it's a
requirement for us to fulfill righteousness. So transgression
is any failure to keep God's law. And then he says in Psalm
32 verse 1, he says, blessed is he whose transgression is
forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man to whom the
Lord will not imputeth not iniquity and in whose spirit is no guile.
So here we have it again in Psalm 32. This is picked up in Romans
4, and it's revealed that what David was talking about here
is justification. to be justified by God is to
have our sins forgiven, our transgressions forgiven, our sin covered, and
our iniquity not imputed to us, and the result of justification
is that in our spirit we have no guile. That's the second aspect
of what David is praying for in Psalm 51, and then here in
Psalm 32, the result of justification is regeneration. First we're
justified, then we're born of God. Okay, but these three things,
transgression and sin and iniquity, it's somewhat difficult to unravel
the differences between these things, but clearly transgression
is to transgress, it's to go beyond, it's to break God's law. And iniquity speaks of in Exodus
chapter 38 about the iniquity of the holy things. So you could
say that transgression is the bad things that we do, whereas
iniquity is the bad that we do in the good that we are attempting
to do, in the holy things. So when we try to do good and
there's sin in it because we're doing it for the wrong reason
or whatever, like Isaiah 64, six, all of our righteousnesses
are as filthy rags, that's iniquity. And then sin, of course, is that,
what he says in Psalm 51, when he says, I was shapen in iniquity
and in sin did my mother conceive me. And then he goes on in verse
six of Psalm 51, thou desirest truth in the inward parts. And
in the hidden part thou shalt make me to know wisdom. So he's
talking about this twofold problem of his sin against God, that
his sin has come up into the court, into the courtroom of
God. And in God's courtroom, the balances
of his justice are not set right until something is done about
David's sin. Then also in his own heart, the
second aspect is that he needs his heart to be cleansed. He
needs his conscience to be cleansed and his heart to be made new.
And that's what he's talking about in these other verses here. So in verse two, after reviewing
the differences between transgression and sin and iniquity, transgression
being those bad things we do, and iniquity our sin, really it's our transgression
in those holy things, our attempts to do right but doing it for
the wrong reason, for self-righteous reasons, to establish our own
righteousness. And then the third thing is our
sin, our inward sin, having seen those things in some sense We
can see in verse three, he says, for I acknowledge my transgressions
and my sin is ever before me. Now this is the way that God
presses sin upon our conscience until he himself relieves us
from our sin. Did you notice that the one who
sinned here is King David? And also did you notice that
David is speaking here as a believer? When David sinned against God
in the matter of Bathsheba and Uriah, he was a believer. Samuel said about him that he
was a man after God's own heart. So it's pretty clear that David
sinned as a believer, and therefore his prayer is the prayer of a
believer who has sinned greatly against God. And so that's the
pain that he feels. He feels the pain of sin on his
conscience, which shows us that even though If God ever forgives
us of our sin, it's because Christ died for us and took our sins
away. Nevertheless, our sin causes
us pain in our conscience so that we say, with David, I acknowledge
my transgression and my sin as ever before me. So what that
we're aware of our sin? If our sin is against God, the
big issue here is that we sinned against God. Nevertheless, as
believers, we're admitting to God that the hand of his chastisement
has afflicted us in our conscience. And it is that sense of our sin
that produces this prayer. Now, there's no doubt about it
that this prayer was inspired by God. David didn't even mention
his sin as sin until Nathan, the prophet, came to him. And
even when Nathan was describing how great his sin was by the
comparison of a rich man who took the only female lamb from
his poor neighbor in order to feed the rich man's guest who
had come to him. And this poor man had so loved
this little female lamb from birth that he let it eat around
his table with his family and he held it in his bosom. And
this rich man cruelly and mercilessly had taken, for no reason really,
he had plenty, he had taken this little lamb from the poor man
and had killed it for his friend. And so that corresponds to what
David did with Bathsheba and Uriah. He stole Uriah's wife
and then killed Uriah. And so when David heard the analogy
that Nathan gave, then his anger was raised up to a high level
in his justice as the king. He had the right as King David,
God's appointed king over Israel, to judge, and he judged the matter
that Nathan presented, and in so doing, he judged himself.
He showed that he had a sense of justice, and he said that
that rich man was a son of death, and he would surely die. So that's
David's summary in the parable that God gave of what David did
with Bathsheba and Uriah. A horrible crime of a believer
and now that believer is brought by God in his grace to this confession
of his sin. So this is amazing. It shows
us that confession, true confession of sin arises from a believer. and it arises from a believer
because of God's gracious work in the believer, okay? So we're not surprised to find
in 1 John 1 that if we confess our sins, he is faithful and
just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us of all unrighteousness. And those words really parallel
this psalm perfectly, don't they? David is confessing his sins.
His confession is the result of God's operations in him. He's
a believer. He's already justified, but he
feels himself to be in need of justification, in
need of atonement, in need of reconciliation. And his conscience
is so afflicting him that he feels as one who comes to God
needing at this time for his sins to be atonement, for his
sins to be made. So that's what he's coming for,
like this. And we see that in Luke 18, verse 13, that this
is the same kind of prayer that the publican prayed. Remember,
Jesus said the publican wouldn't so much as lift up his head,
but smote on his breast, and he cried, God, be merciful to
me, the sinner. Be propitious to me, the sinner.
Look upon the sacrifice, and for the sake of your sacrifice
that you provided and which you accepted for sinners, appeasing
your own wrath and satisfying your own justice, be merciful
to me." That's what he's saying. And Jesus said, and this was
a parable that Jesus himself gave, therefore we know it was
inspired by the Holy Spirit and given for sinners to know that
this man, this publican, this sinful man, self-admitted sinner,
went down to his house justified. And so we see that the result,
I mean, the cause of our confession is the grace of God. The grace
of God is given to us, not because of what we deserve, but because
of what Christ has earned for us. Now I want you to think about
that for a little bit here, because David is going on in Psalm 51
to ask God to cleanse not only his record before God in the
court of heaven, but his heart here on earth. It's that two-fold
salvation he needed for his two-fold problem. The two-fold problem
being his guilt in the court of heaven and his sinful nature,
his heart that was conceived in sin in his mother's womb.
That's the twofold problem. And the twofold salvation he
needed was atonement for his sins in the blood of Christ by
God's mercy, free mercy. and also that his heart would
be cleansed. So those two things, the cleansing
of our guilt and the cleansing of our heart because of our guilt
before God and all because of Christ, that's what I want to
consider now when we go to the New Testament and look at a couple
of verses of Scripture. Let's begin with Galatians chapter
3. In Galatians chapter 3, a well-known text of scripture, it says in
verse 13, having concluded that the law is not the way that the
righteous live, but by faith, and that this faith is given
to us by God in Christ, who was crucified for us and risen again. He goes on, he says, I'll read
from verse 11, that no man is justified by the law in the sight
of God is evident, for the just shall live by faith. And the
law is not of faith, but the man that doeth them, the things
of the law, shall live in them. So the law is a conditional salvation. You do your part, God will do
his part. That's what the law is. If you do, if you meet the
requirements, then God will bless you. And sometimes you hear this,
You'll hear people say that salvation is possible for all because God
loves all, Christ died for all, and God offers it to all. But
that's exactly what the law does. The law offers life to everyone
who's obedient to it, but no one is. And if salvation is just
an offer, then it's no more than the law. But God goes on here,
he says, the man that doeth them according to the law shall live
in them. Notice, here's what the gospel says. Christ hath
redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for
us, for it is written, cursed is everyone that hangeth on a
tree. The proof that he was cursed was that he hung on the cross.
The fact that he was cursed is stated here in unambiguous language. He was cursed as we were under
the curse of the law. So he had to bear the curse of
his people. The curse of God, the curse called
for by His law, the curse of the law. We failed to keep the
law, we were therefore under its curse. Christ redeemed us
from that curse of the law. How? He himself was made a curse
for us. Now, in verse 14 it goes on that
the blessing, Christ was cursed. in order to remove the curse
from us. He redeemed us from the curse by himself, paying
the ransom due to God's justice and law. He himself was the ransom. And then he says in verse 14,
that the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through
Jesus Christ, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through
faith. All right, so when we believe on the Lord Jesus Christ,
that is the work of the Spirit of Christ. we receive the promise
of the spirit because Christ was cursed for us. Look at chapter
four in verses four through six. Galatians 4 verse four says,
but when the fullness of the time was come, okay, this is
the time appointed by God, God sent forth his son, made of a
woman, so now his son, the divine son, who was not man, but was
appointed to be the son of man, came and was born as the son
of man. And that's called descending
from heaven. Jesus didn't have to change his
location to descend. He had to take on human nature.
He had to stoop to become man and become even in the likeness
of sinful flesh. So he says here, He says, when
the fullness of the time was come, God sent forth his son,
made of a woman, made under the law. So Christ not only became
a man, but he became a man under the law. And so you see this
throughout scripture, but one case is when Satan tempted Jesus,
he says, if you are the son of God, then turn these stones into
bread. tempting him to prove that he
was the son of God. But he didn't call himself the
son of God. He said, I'm the son of man,
because he says, it is written, man shall not live by bread alone,
but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. So here
he is. He's come, he's born of a woman,
made under the law, and he willingly took the yoke of the law on his
shoulders. The son of man. In other words, there's only
one man who could fulfill God's holy law. It was Christ. And
that was not obvious to all those who heard God's law and were
under God's law, which we all were, and guilty before God by
that law and helpless to do anything to keep it or to remove our sin
against God or take off the curse that was on us. But Christ was
made under the law, he says, as a man, in order to redeem
them that were under the law. that's all of his people, that
we might receive the adoption of sons. We were adopted, now
we get to receive it. Why? Because Christ was made
under the law to redeem us from the law. And then in verse six,
and because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of
His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father. So the result of
the Spirit of God coming into our hearts is that we then know
God is our Father by Jesus Christ. Christ redeemed us. He fulfilled
the law. He was made under it and then
fulfilled it for righteousness. And then in his death, he fulfilled
the law for sacrifice and in righteousness. So all these things
teach us that Christ redeemed us from the law and the result
of that that we might receive the promise of the Spirit of
God, that we might receive the spirit of adoption. We might
receive the adoption in the giving of the Spirit of God, which Christ
gives to us because he redeemed us. All right. So stepping back
now to Psalm 51, what we see is that David was a believer. He sinned against God. He prayed
this prayer. It was inspired by God himself. It calls for God to cover, to
blot out, to make an atonement for his sin. And it calls for
God to cleanse him inwardly. And both of these things are
accomplished by Jesus Christ. The first, by his sin-atoning
blood, and the second, by his gift of his spirit when he gives
his spirit to us under the preaching of his word concerning himself.
So that in receiving the Spirit, we're given the Spirit, and therefore
we receive it. We receive it from God because
he gives it. And in receiving it, we believe
Christ. And that is the evidence of life. That is the life of
Christ in us. which is that new heart, which
is that conscience that's made clear through faith in His blood. We see the propitiation that
God has made for us in Christ, His Son. All right, does that
help now for us to see that what's spoken of here in Psalm 51 is
a sinner who needs God to do something about his sin, a sinner
whose need is twofold, his guilt, and his bad heart, his bad record
in heaven and his bad heart, his sin against God and in his
sight, and his sin that sprang from his own wicked and corrupt
nature. And so, let's read on now. He
goes on in verse 5, Behold, I was shapen in iniquity. That's the
sin nature. And in sin did my mother conceive
me. We receive our sinful nature
in conception because we are the children of Adam. As in Adam,
all die. We died in Adam. We sinned in
Adam. We therefore died in Adam. We did it. It was our sin in
Adam, and we therefore died, and we are born in time. When
we're born, we're still under that sentence of death in our
nature. Our nature is corrupt. It's alienated
from God. Our mind is hostile towards God. We're called enemies in our mind.
And by wicked works, we're foolish, disobedient, deceived, hateful,
and hating one another. These are all words from scripture
to describe our sinful selves, our nature. He goes on in verse
6, Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts, and in the
hidden part thou shalt make me to know wisdom. The hidden part,
that's the new man. In 1 Peter chapter 3, I think
it is around verse 4, it says that we, the hidden man of the
heart. the hidden man of the heart.
This is that part of us that's a spiritual part. It's born of
the spirit. It's created by the spirit in
Christ Jesus. And it's resurrected from spiritual
death so that God's own seed, in analogy to the seed of our
father that conceived us in our mother's womb, God's own seed,
which is his spirit and his word in us, has produced this new
man. We're a new creature in Christ.
That's fantastic, and we can't see it, we can't feel it, but
we know it's true, and the evidence is that we believe on the Lord
Jesus Christ as needy sinners. We need him. like David, to take
away our sin before God and to give us a new heart, and we look
to Christ to do that. Looking to Christ is the fruit
of life. It's the work that God has done
in us to cause us to do that. So God desires truth in the inward
parts, and that truth begins where? Truth begins with an understanding
of what I've done and who I am. What I've done is sin against
God. What I am is a sinner. And so we confess both those
things. I have sinned and I am a sinner. I've sinned in action
and it sprang from my own corrupt heart. And I can't do anything
about it. I need God to do it. And this
psalm is that prayer of a sinner. You desire truth in the inward
parts, and in the hidden part thou shalt make me to know wisdom.
And that wisdom is the wisdom of the gospel. It's the wisdom
of Christ crucified, the wisdom of God. First Corinthians chapter
one says that Christ is the wisdom of God and the power of God. We know the wisdom of God when
we look to Christ, seeing our salvation is in him. He goes
on in verse seven, purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean.
Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow. Hyssop is what they
use to sprinkle the blood on the doorposts. in Exodus chapter
12, remember? And so that scene is brought
back to our minds where God said, when I see the blood, I will
pass over you. And in first Corinthians five
or seven, Christ, our Passover is sacrificed for us. So he's
saying here, apply to me Christ and him crucified. And what is
that? How does God do that? through
faith, Jesus said, whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood
has everlasting life. And in the same text in John
chapter six, he interchanges eating and drinking with believing
when he says, and whoever believes on me has everlasting life. Coming
and believing, eating and drinking, all are referring to the same
thing. It's taking of Christ crucified into my own trust as
my life and my acceptance before God as my cleansing of my sin
before God and the application of it to my own conscience in
my heart. Purge me with hyssop. Take the
Passover lamb and his precious blood, and make me clean. Wash me, and I shall be whiter
than snow." Throughout Scripture, the blood of Christ is shown
to wash us from our sins. In 1 John 1-7, the blood of Jesus
Christ Himself cleanses us from all sin. And in Revelation 1.5,
unto him who loved us and washed us from our sins in his own blood. Blood doesn't make things, blood,
human blood, if you take it and try to apply it to anything,
it makes it red, it stains it. But the reason the blood of Christ
washes us is because it's offered to God, and Christ's sacrifice
makes us holy, Hebrews 10.10 and 13.12, and also perfects
us forever, Hebrews 10.14. It takes away our sin, and where
the remission of sin is, by the blood of Christ, there's no more
offering, Hebrews 10.16-18. Blood does cleanse in the sense
that it takes away the guilt because Christ bore our sin.
He was made sin. He bore the curse and our sins
are therefore taken from us and we're made whiter than snow.
Snow is pretty white. Have you seen it after a new
fall of snow and the sun shines on it? You can't even look at
it, it's so bright. Because the light just reflects right off
the snow. It's a beautiful thing. But there's nothing cleaner or
whiter than snow. But there is. It's the person
who's been washed in the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. He
says in verse eight, make me to hear joy and gladness that
the bones which thou has broken may rejoice. We do hear joy and
gladness, don't we? When we hear as sinners that
our sins have been covered by the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ
because of God's free grace, his loving kindness and the multitude
of his mercies. Hide thy face, he says in verse
nine, hide thy face from my sins and blot out all my iniquities. Does God blot out the iniquities
of everybody? Most evangelical religion nowadays
says Jesus died for all men and that the reason that any are
saved is because they believe on Jesus Christ, that he died
and put away their sins. But is that true? Did Jesus actually
blot out the sins of every person? Did he make atonement for every
person? Did he make propitiation to God
for every person in the world? The fact is that he says throughout
the New Testament that he says explicitly that he made, he offered
himself to God for his sheep. He laid down his life for his
sheep. He gave himself for the church. It was the sons and the
brethren and the children in Hebrews chapter two that he is
the captain of their salvation, that he sanctified and that he
made propitiation for. So in all these statements like
that, we hear that God made atonement for his people. and his bride,
or Christ's bride, and his brethren, and his children, and the sheep,
and the church, and these kind of things, the sons, the sons
who were chosen in Christ and adopted by God the Father. In
fact, it says that in John chapter 11, verse 52, that Jesus would
not only die for that nation, but that he would gather together
in one all the children of God, which were scattered abroad.
So that has to do with those who were already adopted by God.
So there's many statements in scripture that describe those
for whom Christ died with terms that can only be applied to God's
elect. But more than that, there are
other scriptures that distinctly state that Jesus did not die
for every person. And I wanna take you to a couple
of those scriptures, and then I'm gonna close for tonight.
Let's look at one of them in Nehemiah, in chapter four. If you can find Nehemiah, or
if I can find it, It's before the book of Esther, and it's
after the book of Ezra, I believe. So if you find Ezra, it's the
next book over. If you find Esther, it's before
that. And go to Nehemiah chapter four, and look at chapter four
in verse four. Here, O our God, for we are despised,
and turn their reproach upon their own head, and give them
for a prey in the land of captivity. So this is clearly a prayer by
God's, the one who's praying here, which I believe is, without
reading back on this, I believe it's Nehemiah, but he's asking
the Lord to turn away their reproach back on the head of those who
were reproaching them. All right. Look at verse five.
Cover not their iniquity and let not their sin be blotted
out from before thee. All right, so this is a prayer
that God would not cover, that He would not blot out the sin
of these people who were sinning against God by the way they were
treating those with Nehemiah who were sent back to rebuild
the wall of Jerusalem. All right, that's one example. Look at another one in Jeremiah
chapter 18. In Jeremiah 18, I'll read this one to you also.
In Jeremiah 18, the last verse of Jeremiah 18, verse 23, he
says, yet Lord, thou knowest all their counsel against me
to slay me. Whoever it was that Jeremiah
was talking about here, they were trying to murder him. You
know their counsel to murder me. And he says, forgive not
their iniquity. neither blot out their sin from
thy sight. But let them be overthrown before
thee. Deal thus with them in the time of thine anger. Now
the word forgive in this verse is the same word that's normally
translated atone. Don't make atonement for them. So here what we see is there's
an explicit statement in scripture that God would not make atonement,
would not blot out the sins of these people. And yet we know
that Jesus Christ did make atonement for his people. Look at Romans
chapter five. In Romans chapter five it tells
us that he actually did make atonement. He made propitiation
for the sins of his people. Romans chapter five in verse
six, He says, for when we were yet without strength in due time,
Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous
man will one die, yet peradventure for a good man some would even
dare to die. But God commended his love toward
us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. much more than being now justified
by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him." But
in Jeremiah 18.23, the prayer is, don't make atonement, don't
blot out their sins, don't cover them, and visit them, deal with
them in your anger. But God's anger is taken away
here. When we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the
death of his son, much more being reconciled, we shall be saved
by his life. We're saved from wrath through
him. We were enemies, now we're reconciled. How did this happen?
Through the death of his son. So those for whom Christ died
are reconciled. Their sins have been propitiated. And yet there are many who are
not atoned for. Their sins are not removed from
them, and God will deal with them in His wrath. And it's not
a surprise, because in Matthew 7, Jesus says to those who boasted
in their works, He says, Depart from Me, you that work iniquity. I never knew you. He never knew
them. And we know Christ knows his
own and loves them from the foundation of the world. So all these things
teach us that the atoning work of Christ was for a specific
people, and those people are brought to God to confess their
sins as David does in Psalm 51 because of the work of God in
them by his spirit when he shows Christ to them by his spirit.
And next time I wanna look at that, how that in Psalm 51, the
same words that David used are used by the Lord Jesus Christ
himself, especially in Psalm 69 when he prays to God as the
sinner's substitute, as the surety for his people. He uses the same
words that David used, his tender mercies and his loving kindness
to take away his sin. And this is amazing. It teaches
us that in order for David to be accepted by God, that his
sins be purged and his heart made clean, the Lord Jesus Christ
had to bear his sin and bear the curse for it too. Let's pray. Father, thank you for the Lord
Jesus Christ. Only in Him can we hope to have
mercy from you. That is where all of your loving
kindness is. That's where all of your tender
mercies are in the Lord Jesus Christ, who himself was made
under the law, fulfilling the law, not only in its righteous
commands, but also in its sin-atoning commands, so that in his love
he laid down his life for his friends, for his enemies, and
he made reconciliation for them in his own blood. He made propitiation. You gave him to do that, and
we look to him now. We come to you as David did,
in feeling the weight of his sin and his conscience by your
hand. We pray, Lord, that your hand
would cause us to confess our great need for you to take our
sins away and knowing you can do it only in the Lord Jesus
Christ. We pray, Lord, that you would
wash us so that our guilt of our sins, our transgressions
would be removed and that our inner sin nature would be taken
away and we would be made like the Lord Jesus Christ in every
part. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.