Let's turn to Psalm chapter 51.
Psalm chapter 51. Beginning in verse one, have
mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness, 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.
My sin is ever before me. Against thee, the 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.
Let's pray. Lord, we come to you in the name
of your Son, and we thank you for bringing us here this morning.
And Lord, we ask that we might hear from you, that we would
be given a heart that can see you in your scripture, see you
glorified. Lord, we ask that you would save
us by your grace, that you would show us our sin and show us our
need of a savior. We ask that you'd show us mercy
that in and of ourselves we do not deserve, but We're thankful
that mercy can be found in the person of our Savior. Be with
our friends and family and save them according to your will,
save our loved ones. It's in Christ's name and for
Christ's sake that we pray. Amen. We're going to look at
three things in these first four verses. Verse one says, have
mercy upon me, O God, according to thy loving kindness. according
unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions."
That is David's cry for mercy. And that's the first thing that
we see. Verse 2 says, wash me throughly
from mine iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. He asked to be
washed throughly from his iniquity. And verses three and four, this
is David's confession to our Lord. It says, for I acknowledge
my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Against thee
the only have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight, that
thou might be justified when thou speakest, and be clear when
thou judgest. Now turn over to 2 Samuel 11,
2 Samuel chapter 11. Why is David asking this? Why
does he need mercy? Why does he need to be washed?
Why is he confessing his sin? And this is found in the story
of Uriah and Bathsheba. Look in 2 Samuel 11 verse 2,
it says, And it came to pass in an evening tide that David
arose from off his bed and walked upon the roof of the king's house.
And from the roof he saw a woman washing herself. And the woman
was very beautiful to look upon. And David sent and inquired after
the woman. One said, is not this Bathsheba the daughter of Eliam,
the wife of Uriah the Hittite? And David sent messengers and
took her, and she came in unto him, and he lay with her, for
she was purified from her uncleanness, and she returned unto her house. And the woman conceived, and
sent, and told David, and said, I am with child. Move down to
verse 14. It says, and it came to pass
in the morning that David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it
by the hand of Uriah. And he wrote in the letter saying,
set ye Uriah in the forefront of the hottest battle and retire
ye from him that he may be smitten and die. And it came to pass
when Joab observed the city that he assigned Uriah unto a place
where he knew that valiant men were. And the men of the city
went out and fought with Joab and there fell some of the people,
the servants of David, and Uriah the Hittite died also. Look down
in verse 26, when the wife of Uriah heard
that Uriah her husband was dead, she mourned for her husband.
And when the morning was past, David sent and fetched her to
his house and she became his wife and bear him a son. But
the thing that David had done displeased the Lord. Even by
the wicked and evil standards of this world, this is a great
crime. a great crime. He goes, this
is a man that reports to David. He has a responsibility to David.
And he goes and he lays with his wife. We skipped a bunch
of stuff in the middle about how he tries to get him drunk
so that he goes back to lay with Bathsheba so that Uriah thinks
it's his child. He then sends his death letter
by the hand of Uriah to Joab and then commits cold blooded
murder. This is a great crime. But really, the only thing that
matters in this story is that last sentence, but the thing
that David had done displeased the Lord. Now, if any of us were
looking down on David or saying, well, we're not in that category,
that's us by nature. The sin that we have done by
nature displeases the Lord. Now, it's after this that David
writes the Psalm that we're going to look at. Turn back to Psalm.
51 verse 1 First one have mercy upon me.
Oh God according to thy love and kindness according under
the multitude of thy tender mercies Blot out my transgressions David
gets right to the point. He doesn't make excuses. He doesn't
say it was my circumstances He says have mercy upon me. Oh God
you ask that when you're guilty of what you've done and you need
mercy and And he asked for this mercy on the basis of two attributes
of our Lord. It says, according to thy love
and kindness, according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies. The basis which we come to our
Lord, that is just as important, if not more important than what
we even ask him for in the first place. We are to come on who
he is and what he's done and that alone. There's no other
part of that Turn to Jeremiah 29. Jeremiah
29, verse 12. Jeremiah 29, verse 12. It says, then shall ye call upon
me, and ye shall go and pray unto me, and I will hearken unto
you. Then shall ye call upon me. Then shall ye go and pray unto
me, unto who I am. unto what I've done. That's what
David is saying here when he says, according to thy loving
kindness, according to the multitude of thy tender mercies, I'm calling
upon you. I'm calling upon who you are.
It's to call upon who he is in his word, not what men say, not
what we personally think. What does the word say about
who our Lord is? And whatever it says, that's the basis we
come on. Now it says in verse one of our text, have mercy upon
me, O God, according to thy loving kindness. Now when we consider
our Lord's loving kindness, we need to get out of our head what
we think about our own love, what our love is by nature. We
all love people, right? I love a lot of you here. We
all, you know, we have family, friends, children, and we love
those people. This is not like that love. It's
just not. My love for people on this earth,
I can, and the love for my Lord, too. I'll tell you this about
it. It's evil. It's hateful. One of the big things when I
thought about it, it changes a lot. It does this. You do me
wrong, it's way down here. You do something nice for me,
it's way up here. That's what my love does for my family. That's for my wife and child.
That's what my love is. It has boundaries. It only goes so far.
It only does so much. There comes a point where I'm
not going to be able to do that for you. I don't love you that
much. It's covetous. It wants what's yours. I could
love you the second you have something I want. I want that.
I covet that. Now our pastor preached last
week out of Isaiah 55. And he said, it says in verse
eight of that, I'll just read it to you. For my thoughts are
not your thoughts, either are your ways my ways, saith the
Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are
my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts,
my ways are higher than your ways, my love is higher than
your love. All those things I just said
that I struggle with, that I can't, I can't get rid of, even for
those I love the dearest. Our Lord doesn't struggle with
one of them, not one of them. Now we're gonna look at what
the Bible says about our Lord's love, about our Lord's love and
kindness. Turn to Jeremiah 31. Jeremiah 31. Jeremiah 31, verse
one. It says, at the same time, saith
the Lord, will I be the God of the families of Israel, and they
shall be my people. Thus saith the Lord, the people
which were left of the sword found grace in the wilderness,
even Israel. When I went to cause him to rest,
the Lord hath appeared of old unto me, saying, yea, I have
loved thee with an everlasting love. Therefore, with loving
kindness have I drawn thee. It says, I have loved thee with
an everlasting love. That everlasting, that's the
same everlasting as the person of our Lord. No beginning, no
end. Eternal. That's what his love
is. Has no beginning, it never wasn't,
and it never won't be. Now because of that, we can look
back at when the Lord loved us first. When did he love us first? If we want to understand his
loving kindness and his love, we should look back at when he
loved us first. We fell in Adam. We sinned against God. We ate
of the fruit. We disobeyed him. And he loved
us then because he knew that he was going to send his son
here to die for us. And then we were born into this
world. We were dead in trespasses and sins, every one of us. There's
a lot of little babies down in the nursery right now, a lot
of little ones running around. Every one of them are sinners.
But you know, if any of those babies are one of the Lord's,
he loves them now. He might not have shown his face
to him yet, but he loves them if they're one of his. How about
when the Lord saves a sinner for the first time, when he shows
him his face, what love is shown in that? That is just, I mean,
there ain't even words. I'm not even going to try. There's
not even words for it. How about when we stumble, we doubt, we
look to Ourselves, we look to others, we look away from our
Lord, we run away. Notice there at the end of verse
three it says, therefore with loving kindness have I drawn
thee. We run away, he draws us back. We fall down, he draws
us up. We get too high of an opinion of ourself, he draws
us back down. That's a daily thing. That's something daily
we deal with that he takes care of for us. That drawing's not done with
our permission. It's not done according to our time frame.
It's done when he sees fit. And when it says, therefore with
loving kindness have I drawn thee, that speaks to the action
of the Lord's loving kindness. There's action behind it. It
accomplishes things, it does things. My love doesn't do things,
but his love does things. If you wanna see an example of
the Lord's love, and the action that he put behind that love.
Look at the cross. Now I was talking about boundaries
a second ago. I love having boundaries. Our
Lord sacrificed his own son for us. I can tell you this right
now. That's not a boundary I'd ever
cross. I don't care how much I love somebody. There's nobody
I'm sacrificing my boy for. Our Lord did that though because
his love has no boundaries. It's a perfect love. That's why.
And the son has a perfect love for his people because he willingly
went to die. That's our Lord's love. That's
not my love. That's not love like is on this
earth outside of the love that the Lord has for his people.
Now at the end of verse one of our text it says, have mercy
upon me, O God, according to thy loving kindness and according
under the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions.
That's the second basis on which David comes. I love the simplicity
that David speaks of here. What he's saying is, Lord, have
mercy on me because you are merciful. Because you are mercy, you are
the person of mercy. You're the source of it. Turn
to Ephesians chapter 2. Ephesians chapter 2. Ephesians chapter 2 verse 4,
it says, but God who is rich in mercy for his great love,
wherewith he loved us, have mercy on me because you're rich in
mercy. That's the only right we have
to ask for mercy. Have mercy on me because you
are merciful. You're rich in mercy. It's what
it says in your word. And I think the beautiful thing
about this specific basis on which David comes, have mercy
on me because you're merciful. We can extrapolate that out to
every attribute of our Lord and it holds true. Have mercy on
me because you're merciful. Love me because you are love. Because you love your people
and you have a perfect love like we just read, an everlasting
love, a love that draws, a love that does things. Save me because
you're the Savior. Because it says in your work
that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. Save me
because of that. Give me light because you are
the light. That's the grounds on which David
came. And that's solid ground. That's a ground which we can
actually come to our Lord. We can approach him based on
who he is, based on what his son did, That is solid ground. Our Lord is described many times
in the scriptures as the rock. He's described as the rock of
our refuge, the rock of our strength. Psalm 95 verse one, O come let
us sing unto the Lord, let us make a joyful noise to the rock
of our salvation. That's the ground on which David
came. He put his salvation on the rock of his salvation. That's
solid ground, that is the only solid ground. Anything else is
sinking sand, it's uneven. That's solid ground though, the
rock of our salvation. All right, let's look at verse
two. Verse two, Psalm chapter 51,
verse two. Wash me throughly from mine iniquity
and cleanse me from my sin. He has to be washed throughly,
completely, head to toe from his iniquity, cleansed from his
sin. Now why do we need to be washed?
Because our Lord is just and he's not going to accept sin.
That's made very apparent in the word. He will not accept
sin. And why does it need to be asked
of the Lord to do this? Why can't we do it? There's a
lot of religious means that people use to cleanse sin, to wash sin
off somebody. Why does the Lord have to do
it? Two things, number one, we have no ability. Look in the
scriptures, you won't find one time where anybody has the ability
to wash themselves of sin. Not one time. And even if we
could, we don't know where the dirt is. We don't know how much
of it is there. If one of us committed a sin
like David did. Right, we committed adultery,
we committed cold blooded murder. Yeah, we know that's a sin. What
about the things we did this morning getting ready to come
here? Those things we don't even think about, we don't even know.
We see through a glass dimly. And when we were reading in Isaiah
55, my ways are higher than your ways, he sees things as they
really are. He sees things from an elevated perspective, not
from a perspective of down here, sinful nature like we do. He
sees things as they really are. He has to wash us throughly.
Nobody is going to come into the Lord's presence with the
dirt of sin on them. They're going to have to be washed
throughly. Now look down in verse 7, Psalm chapter 51 verse 7,
it says, purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean. Wash me
and I shall be whiter than snow. This is how the Lord does the
washing. And when you see hyssop, just
think the blood. The Israelites, that's what they
used to apply the blood over the posts during the Passover.
They used a hyssop branch. The hyssop branch was used to
sprinkle the blood. David's ass gonna be purged in
the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ here. That's how he's gonna be
washed. And look down in verse 10, you'll
see the results of it. Create in me a clean heart, O
God, and renew a right spirit within me. That's what it is
to be cleaned. is to be found with something
new, something that was not there before. We don't put a fresh
coat of paint, clean our old heart, and present that to our
Lord as a new heart, as a heart that He can accept. We have to
have a new heart created in us, a perfect heart, the heart of
our Savior. And any time you see create, only He creates. We don't create anything, he
creates. When you see that in the word,
that's somebody saying, I need the Lord to do this for me. I
need him to show me mercy, I need him to love me, and I need to
have something created in me that wasn't there before. All
right, look at verse three. This is David's confession. Now
up until a couple of years ago, I had not really thought much
about what the Bible had said about confession. I'd gotten
caught up in what our world, how they've made a mockery of
it, I guess. And I was listening to Henry and he was preaching
from this exact passage and he made this statement about the
confession of sins. He said, there will be no forgiveness
where there's no confession. Now that got my attention, obviously. And we can see this in the scriptures.
This is what Henry quoted. Turn to 1 John 1. 1 John 1, verse
9. 1 John 1, verse 9. It says, if we confess our sins,
he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us
from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned,
we make him a liar and his word is not in us. Now, yes, the world's
made a mockery of this. I mean, what they've done is
evil, what we've done is evil. But it doesn't take away the
importance of it, it doesn't change what the word says about it.
Now when I looked at what confession means in the scriptures, and
confess means in the scriptures, what I found mostly that it means
is to agree with. To agree with. To agree with
what the Lord says about me and about him. And that's what David's
doing here. He's saying, Lord, this is what
you say. You say I'm a sinner, I'm a sinner.
And I'm confessing my sin to you. That's what it means to
confess. And there's no glory in that
for David. We're just, we agree with the Lord. We don't come
up with that. He says, and we agree. He's just as complete
in anything that we're looking at, in a confession of sin, in
a cry for mercy, in an ask to be washed thoroughly. He is just
as complete in that as he is in salvation itself. Let's say
one of us cry for mercy, like David. We ask to be washed. He
had to will us to do that since the beginning of time. He had
to give us the ability in that day to do it. He has to be the
one to hear it. Doesn't matter if man hears it,
the Lord has to hear it. And most importantly, he's got
to act on it. He has to be the one to do something. Again, he's active. He's active. If I cry for mercy and Drew says,
yeah, I'll show you mercy. What's it do for me? It does
nothing. When the Lord says, I'll show
mercy to you. That's when mercy is had and that's when we know
that we have mercy, we don't have to wonder. We have mercy
when he says we have mercy. 1 John 4.19 says we love him
because he first loved us. We love him, why? Because he
loved us. Action by us, it starts with
action by him, always. All right, verse three, let's
read the confession. It says, for I acknowledge my
transgressions. My sin is ever before me. Against
thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight,
that thou must be justified when thou speakest, and be clear when
thou judgest." Notice the ownership. The Lord gives David the grace
to take ownership for his sins. He said, for I acknowledge whose
transgressions my transgressions, and whose sin my sin is ever
before me. Against thee the only have I
sinned and done this evil in thy sight We don't blame our
circumstances on Adam. We don't blame our sin on anything. It's our fault It's our doing
when you bring your sin to the Lord. That's how we bring it.
We bring it as ours we take ownership for it and Who's the sin against? It says, for I acknowledge my
transgressions, my sin as ever before me against thee, thee
only have I sinned and done this evil in thy sight. Our sin is
against the Holy One that has a holy law, that's perfect, that
knows good from evil. It's not against a man. If one
of you guys steals something from me, you've done me wrong,
but you didn't sin against me, okay? If you steal from me, first
of all, I've stolen from you 10 times over. That's the truth
of the matter. That's what I've done. Our Lord
never did that. He's never taken from us. Remember
when Brian a couple weeks ago was talking about how gracious
the Lord's been to us and all that we do is sin against him.
Well, you sin against me, I've sinned against you. You're not
sinning against me. Sin's against the Lord. And he
gives David the grace to see that here. Now look in verse
two, we're gonna look at three words that David says, and this
is what David needs help with, this is his problem. In verse
two it says, wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity, that's the
first one, and cleanse me from my sin, that's the second. For
I acknowledge my transgressions, that's the third, and my sin,
there it is again, is ever before me, against thee the only have
I sinned and done this evil in thy sight. Now keep those three
words in mind, iniquity, sin, transgression. Let's turn to
Exodus 34, verse six. Exodus 34, verse six. It says, and the Lord passed
by before him and proclaimed the Lord, the Lord God, merciful
and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and
truth. Before I read this, the Lord said this, the Lord proclaimed
this. I'm not saying this, the Lord said it. Keeping mercy for
thousands, forgiving iniquity, number one, transgression, number
two, and sin, number three. and that will by no means clear
the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children
and upon the children's children unto the third and to the fourth
generation. That's the gospel. That's it
right there. Look at the wickedness of the
man that came and asked for this, the sin, the transgressions,
the iniquity, and what does the Lord do? He says, that's who
I'm keeping mercy for, that's who I forgave. That's the gospel
right there. 1 Timothy 1, 15, this is a faithful
saying and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the
world to save sinners of whom I am chief. Now look at the last
part of verse four. Last part it says, that thou
might be justified when thou speakest and be clear when thou
judgest. What David says here is, Lord,
whatever you find on me, whether you forgive me or you pass me
by, whether you show me the mercy I've asked for or you don't show
me mercy, you're holy, you're just, you're righteous, you're
God. You judge me how you will. You
just have a little bit of pride, you can't be that way. Lord,
just a little bit and we will never be able to really come
that way but when the Lord really saves a sinner that's how they
can come. The pride of man, I mean it's
a serious problem but our Lord can remove that. That's what
he does, he says, however you deal with me you're right. I've
asked for mercy, I've asked to be washed. Well, whatever you
do with that, you're right. If you have that attitude, if
any sinner has that attitude, those are people that are saved,
that the Lord has already shown mercy to. And yes, whatever he
does is right, but he promised that he would save his people.
That's the only promise that can really be upheld. You make
a promise with me, I might forget it five minutes later. He's made
a covenant with his people. Now the main question is how
did the Lord deal with David here? If the Lord passed David
by, what can we learn from this? How did he deal with him? Did
he show him mercy? Did he show him mercy? Turn to
Acts 13 verse 22. Acts 13 verse 22. He says, and when he had removed
him, he raised up unto them David to be their king. To him also
he gave testimony and said, I have found David, the son of Jesse,
a man after mine own heart, which shall fulfill all my will. Of
this man's seed hath David, according to his promise, raised unto Israel
a Savior, Jesus. The Lord showed mercy to David.
He washed him. That's how we come. We come like
the Lord gave David the grace to come. This is our prayer. We don't need to change it. We
don't need to put our own spin on it. Worked for David, right? We're no more or less sinners
than David was. If you're less of a sinner than
David is, I don't know what to tell you, but if you're in the
boat as David, that's it right there. And the whole chapter,
really, I mean, this whole chapter, this chapter is so glorious and
so beautiful. One last scripture, Psalm 145,
verse 18. This is what the Lord did for
David. He says, he's a man after mine
own heart. Psalm 145, verse 18. This is David speaking, and he
can speak from personal experience of receiving our Lord's grace.
It says, the Lord is nigh unto all them that call upon him.
That's what David did. He called upon the Lord. That's
what it is to cry for mercy, to ask to be washed, to confess
your sin. Call upon him. The Lord is nigh
unto all them that call upon him. To all that call upon him
in truth, he will fulfill the desire of them that fear him. He also will hear their cry and
will save them. All right.