Let us turn again to God's Word
and I want tonight to direct your attention to the 51st psalm
that we read. I don't really have a text. I
want us to consider in general the content of this psalm. The title tells us quite plainly. Remember the title is inspired
as the rest of the psalm. to the chief musician of Psalm
of David when Nathan the prophet came unto him after he had gone
into Bathsheba. And we read that passage this
morning in 2 Samuel 11, reading through to chapter 12, and considering
something of the faithful dealings of the prophet Nathan when he
says to David, thou art the man and then goes on of course to
say that because of David's sin in the matter of his adultery
with Bathsheba and his blood guiltiness in the murder of her
husband Uriah, God tells him through the prophet that the
sword would not depart from his house. Really considering as
a text those words in chapter 23 First Samuel, then verse five,
where he says, though my house be not so with God. And then
at the end, though he make it not to grow, he considered the
beginning and the end of that verse then. The heart of the verse, of course,
speaks of David's comfort, which is found only in the covenant.
Yet he hath made with me an everlasting covenant. And that covenant was
all his salvation, and all his desire when he looked to himself,
when he looked to his own house, what confusion in his own house,
what sins there were in his own life, all his comfort then can
only be found in the God of the covenant. But this song gives
us also some idea of the confession that David was brought to make. It's often referred to as David's
great penitential Now, the psalm, I suppose, is really to be defined
as a song of praise. In fact, in the title of Psalm
145, we read, David's Psalm of Praise. However, we do see quite
clearly how that these psalms are also made up of prayers and
confessions. David addresses himself to God
and acknowledges his sins. Verse 3, he says, I acknowledge
my transgressions, my sin is ever before me, against thee
the only have I sinned and done this evil in thy sight. We're reminded also of the words
that we have in that 32nd Psalm where We read, I acknowledge
my sin unto thee, my iniquity have I not hid, I said I will
confess my transgressions unto the Lord and thou forgavest the
iniquity of my sin. The Psalms are made up then of
many confessions and a great deal of prayer and pleadings
with God. And see how here David also Ask
God for deliverance, verse 14. 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. Here is David then. And he comes now to God, and
he comes to acknowledge God and to make his confessions. unto the Lord his God. So I want us, as I said, simply
to consider this psalm in a very general sense. I have no particular
verse to center your attention upon, but just to look at this
psalm and the content of it. First of all, to say something
with regards to David's confession. And this is really how the psalm
opens. 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 my 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
am 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." What do
we see here? We are reminded in some way of
the dimensions of his sin. David is very conscious of that
fact. The awful dimensions of his sin. It has been said that man knows
the beginning of sin, but who can brook the ends thereof. Lost when it hath conceived,
bringeth forth sin. Sin, when it is finished, bringeth
forth death, says the apostle James. In that verse, the history
of sin is covered in just a few words. Lost, conceiving, sin
bringing it forth, and that sin ultimately bringing nothing but
And here David, I say, speaks in his confession of the dimensions
of his sin. He speaks of its depth, of its
height, of its length, and of its breadth. And I want us just
to consider those various aspects as we see it unfolded here in
David's psalm. First of all, there is the depth
of his sin. And that's what he is really
acknowledging here in verse 5, when he says, Behold, I was shapen
in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me. He's not
confessing any particular sin, but he is making acknowledgement
of the fact of sin in general. He is really confessing that
he is altogether By nature, one lost in trespasses and in sins. He is speaking of original sin. Not just sinful deeds, but also
the fact that he has a sinful nature. And from whence did that
nature come? Well, Adam's sin. Adam's sin
has been imparted. How the sin of Adam has come
down the generations. What David says of himself is
true of every individual who is born into this world by natural
generation. There is of course one exception,
the Lord Jesus Christ was not chaperoned in iniquity, was not
conceived in sin, because his birth was not by natural generation,
he was conceived by the Holy Ghost in the womb of the Virgin
Mary, the angel refers to that human nature as that holy thing. But every other person who has
ever been born into this world has been born as one who has
partaken of the sinful nature of the first man, Adam's sins
imparted. And we have it there in the book
of Job, Job 14, 4, who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean
is the question and the answer not what. How can he be clean
that he's born of a woman is put there in 25 and verse 4. And what does David say concerning
himself in verse 6? Behold, thou desirest truth,
in the inward parts, and in the hidden parts, thou shalt make
me to know wisdom. Oh, he's speaking then of the
inward parts, what he is in his very nature, what he is in the
very depths of his soul. Think of the language of the
apostle in Romans 8, 7, we've up-quoted that verse, the carnal
mind, that is really the The natural mind, the mind that we're
all born with, that carnal mind, is endlessly against God. It
is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. We are born then as those who
in our very natures are dead, in trespasses and in sins. And after the fall of Adam and
Eve in Genesis chapter 3, we only have to read a little way
further in that book of Genesis and we come to chapter 6, And
we're told there how God saw that the wickedness of man was
great in the earth and every imagination of the thought of
his heart was evil continually. Commentators tell us how that
verse is full of Hebraism. There's such an emphasis. Every
imagination of the thoughts of his heart was evil continually. This is man's heart by nature
then, the heart deceitful. Above all things and desperately
wicked, who can know it? I, the Lord, search the hearts. I try the reins to give to every
man according to the fruit of his doing, says God. Here is
David then, and he is very conscious of that sinful nature that he
was born with. There was nothing sinful as far
as we know with regards to the way in which his life was conceived
in the womb of his mother, was not a base birth, and yet every
conception you see, the babe conceived in the womb, chaperoned
iniquity, born dead in trespasses and in
sins. But then, when we think of the
depth of sin, there's not only the impartation of of Adam's fallen nature to his
offspring, there's also the imputation of that first sin. And we see
that quite clearly in the language of Paul uses in Romans chapter
5. And there at verse 19 he says,
as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, So by
the obedience of one shall many be made righteous. He's contrasting
Adam and Christ. By Adam's disobedience, or disobedience
I should say, many were made sinners. So by the obedience
of Christ, many are made righteous. And it's interesting to see how
he speaks so clearly in that chapter. with regards to this
matter of the imputation of the guilt of Adam. There in verse
12 of that fifth chapter in the Epistle to the Romans. Wherefore,
as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin,
and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned,
or as the margin says, in whom all have sinned. It's not just
that we receive a fallen sinful nature from Adam, but he was
our head, our representative. And when he sinned, we actually
sinned in him. In that sense, you see, he is
a remarkable type of the Lord Jesus Christ. In fact, there
in Romans 5.14, At the end of that verse, Paul says of Adam
that he's a figure of him that was to come. He's a type of Christ. The first man is of the earth,
earthly. The second man is the Lord from
heaven. And as Adam was a public person
representing the whole human race that was in his loins, and
acting as their federal head, So the Lord Jesus Christ is that
one who is a public person, and all the life of the Lord Jesus
Christ is one in which he is representative of all those that
the Father had given to him. And so as we have the imputation
of sin in Adam, so in the Lord Jesus Christ we have the imputation
of righteousness. And Romans 5 is quite clear.
We have to accept the truth of the historic Adam, he is the
first man. And the Lord Jesus Christ, he is the second man
and he is the last Adam. And are we those tonight who
are in the first or the last Adam? By nature we're all in
the first Adam. All but to be by the grace of
God in him who is the last Adam. And to know that we have imputed
to us that righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ. Here then,
we see David so very conscious of the depth of his sin, and
it reaches back to the beginning, that nature, that sinful nature
that has come to him, been imparted to him from Adam. And David was
there in Adam, and when Adam sinned, that sin of Adam was
imputed to him. But then, besides the depth,
over here in the psalm, David also goes on to speak of the
length and the breadth of his sins. And I know I've mentioned
this on previous occasions when we've looked at various verses
in this psalm, but I remind you again of the vocabulary that
is being used, the words that are being employed to describe
what sin is in the psalm. And we believe in the verbal
inspiration of Holy Scripture, that means the very words, In
the original Hebrew, as you would be here, the very words are God's
words. And so the words of vocabulary
is important. And look at the different words
that we have, which are really descriptive of what Adam, or
rather David, feels of his sin. We have the word evil. Here in
verse four, he speaks of how he has done this evil, in the
sight of God. And the word that is used literally
means badness. It has the idea of that that
is not good, but the very opposite. That that is bad, that that is
contrary to God. But the most striking word, of
course, that he uses here is the word sin. And we have it
time and again. in the opening verses, certainly.
Verse two, cleanse me from my sin. Verse three, my sin is ever
before me. Verse four, against thee the
only have I sinned. Verse five, in sin did my mother
conceive me, and so on. This word sin is used time and
time again. And you may recall that this,
the literal meaning of the word is to miss. to miss the target. The language of the Old Testament
Hebrew is very much a language that deals with concrete matters. It's a picture language in that
sense. And here we have the idea of missing. God has set a target
and the sinner is constantly falling short of that that God
has set as the that target all of sin and come short of the
glory of God. That is the aim, the object of
our lives, to glorify God, to enjoy Him forever in the language
of the Westminster Shorter Catechism. But we constantly fall short
of the glory of God. That is what sin is. So he uses
the word evil, the idea of that, that it's bad and contrary to
God. We have this word sin, and then
we have the word transgression. Again, the opening verse, he
says, blot out my transgression. Verse three, I acknowledge my
transgressions. Verse 13, then will I teach transgressors
thy ways. What is transgression? What are
we to understand by this word? Well, it has the idea of rebelling
against God, going contrary to the commandment of God. God commands
a certain thing to be done, and we do the very opposite of what
God has commanded. We rebel against his commandment.
Those who ever commit a sin transgresseth also the law. For sin is the
transgression of the Lord. It's breaking the Lord of God.
It's disobedience instead of obedience. And oh, you see, the
language is full of pictures really. Pictures that even children
might understand. Again, we have this other word,
iniquity. And we have that word used in
verse two, wash me truly from my Iniquity, he says. Verse five, behold I was shaken
in iniquity. Verse nine, blot out all my iniquities. Now, again, interestingly, the
verb literally means to bend or to
twist, and that's what sin is. It's something that is now warped,
disfigured. Think of the language of the
preacher in Ecclesiastes, though, this only if I found God made
man upright, that they have sought out many inventions. Our man
is created upright. And yet now he is so warped and
twisted. He's not what he was. He's fallen
from the image that was in him, created, made in the image after
the likeness of God. But now that he's all this thick,
Man is bent and twisted. And so, using such terminology
as this, David is very much aware of his sin and he, under the
inspiration of the Spirit, is able to use all this language,
which is expressive of the depth of his understanding of what
he hears as a sinner before God. the length, the breadth, then,
of his sins. But then also here, does he not
make mention of the height of his sin? He says in verse 4,
against thee, thee only have I sinned. Now, he had sinned
against, he'd sinned with Bathsheba. He had sinned against Uriah,
her husband. And we read that solemn 11th
chapter in 2 Samuel and David's perverse behavior there and he
tries to cover his sin by summoning the Hittites to come back from
the field of battle. He wants to cover his sin, he
wants this man to go and lie with his own wife that it might
appear that the child conceived is not David's but Uriah's and
when it He so nobly refuses to do that when the armies of Israel
are in the open field. What does David do? He buys a
man with drink, he becomes drunk, he hopes again he'll do what
David wants him to do, and he doesn't. And so David sends him
back to Joab with a letter, and that letter really is his own
death warrant for the perverseness of David's wicked, sinful, iniquitous
ways. And yet, what does he confess
Here, in verse four, he sees that his sin ultimately is against
the great God, against the living. The only have I sinned and done
this evil in thy sight. His sin reaches to heaven. And that's where our sins reach.
That's where our sins reach. When we sin against one another,
when we sin against any other. Sins reach the very throne of
God. Sin flies in the face of God. That is the heart of man. Oh,
how we see then that whilst unbelief is really at the roots of our
sins, it is mixed with that unbelief, such awful pride. We want to
put ourselves in the place of God. Remember what the serpent,
Satan's instrument says, to leave there in the As he comes with
his temptation to ensnare her, he shall be as God's. He shall
be as God's, knowing good and evil. If you do just as I suggest
and partake of that forbidden fruit, it's pride. It's man putting
himself in the place of God. And now, we have to be brought
to acknowledge that to the end of ourselves. We have to be humbled
in the very dust of the earth, all pride. It is pride, a cursed
pride, that spirit by God, oh, do what we will. It haunts us
still. It keeps us from the Lord. Against its influence, pray.
It mingles with the prayer. Against it, preach. It prompts
the speech. Be silent. Still it's there. We have to recognize what our
sin is. It flies in the face of God against the Lord. The
only my sin and only sin in thy sight. So David here is coming
and making his confessions and acknowledging all that he has
done. It is truly a great time of penitence. Real repentance
is in the heart of the man who can utter such words in the presence
of God. But I want to turn in the second
place to say something with regards to his request. or a man who has such a sense
of what he is and what he has done, must ask for help. And this psalm is full of many
requests, full of petitions. Verse seven,
following, purge me with thistle, 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 I was broken may rejoice. Hide thy face from
my sins, and blot out 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 so forth. He asks time and
time again that God would do for him all those things that
he cannot do for himself. This is how he comes to God then.
He comes as one who has to plead in his prayer. He's having to
plead for the mercy of God, for the pardon of his sins, the blotting
out of all his transgressions. And what does he say here at
verse 15? Oh Lord, open now my lips, So
my mouth shall show forth thy praise. And I think particularly
of that opening clause. He says, open thou my lips. And God has to open our lips,
be it to make confession, be it to utter petitions and requests,
be it to show forth his praises. Here then what he is doing as
he comes, acknowledging how he must know something of the gracious
power of God, the enabling that comes from God and from God only. And we see that right at the
end of the psalm. The last two verses, he says,
Do good in thy good pleasure and desire, build thou the walls
of Jerusalem, then shalt thou be pleased with the sacrifices
of righteousness with burnt offering, a tall burnt offering, then shall
they offer bullets upon thine altar. And what we have in these
two verses is cause and effect. The cause is in verse 18, and
his prayer is this, he asks God to come and do good. Do good
in thine good pleasure unto Zion, build thou the walls of Jerusalem.
He's praying for restoration there, And there we have the
effect. The cause is what God does in
verse 18, the effect in verse 19, then shall thou be pleased
with the sacrifices of righteousness, with burnt offering, with all
burnt offering, then shall they offer bullets upon thine altar. And there we see cause and effect
in David's restoration. Why was it that Nathan the prophet
went to David. When we read the words this morning,
the opening words of 2 Samuel 12, the Lord sends Nathan unto
David. And this is the prophet. This
is a man who speaks the words of God. What a favor, what a
blessing when God sends his word to us. And this is what God is
doing to David. The Lord sends Nathan on today. And how faithful the Prophet
is in his dealings when he utters those four words, thou art the
man. Oh, when God sends his word,
you see, it comes home to the heart of a man. God handles the
conscience of a man. It's a great favour, a great
blessing. And so here we see something
of the power of God causing David to make the confessions that
we have in this particular psalm. But look at those words that
we have at the beginning of verse 15 when he says, O Lord, open
thou my lips. Open thou my lips. I think about,
in the Old Testament, Where there was the plague of leprosy, remember
how it's dealt with in the book of Leviticus in particular, the
leper doesn't go to the physician, the leper is to go to the priest.
There's some spiritual significance in the disease of leprosy as
we have it in the Old Testament. The man who has the signs or
symptoms of leprosy doesn't go to a physician. He goes to the
man of God, he goes to the priest. The priest is the one who examines
him. And what is leprosy? It's a type
of sin, but not just in a general sense. We've said before, it's
a type of sin when it's being opened up in a man's heart, in
a man's conscience. He begins to feel what he is,
or our sin is in God's sight. There are but few so in their
own. And the leper is that one who
is beginning to feel something of what he is. And what is told
the sinner when the disease is in him? He must cover his upper
lip. Amongst other things, he has
to cover his upper lip. His very breath is poisonous,
as it were. In a sense, we might say, as
he covers his lip, so he's dumbfounded before God. And I was thinking
about this, and the verse that came to mind was Romans 3.19.
We know that what things whoever the Lord said, except that they
were under the law, that every mouth may be stopped. And all
the world become guilty before God. How the sinner's mouth has
to be stopped. And this was David, his mouth
was stopped. And he has to cry to God, oh
Lord, open my lips. David is made. to feel his sin,
David is made to feel his need of cleansing from his sin. Heard
me with hyssop, and I shall be clean. Wash me and I shall be
whiter than snow is the prayer that he makes in verse seven. And again, he needs his lips
to be cleansed. Or think of the experience of
another, of Isaiah, when we read of his call, his commission,
in chapter six of the book of Isaiah, when he sees the glories
of God, the throne of God in heaven, woe is me, for I am undone,
because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst
of a people of unclean lips, for my eyes have seen the King,
the Lord of hosts. And one of those seraphim is
He commanded to take a living coal from off the brazen altar
and to take it and put it to the lips of the prophet. And
that cleanses his lips. And what is a brazen altar? It's
a place of sacrifice. It's the application of that
precious blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. Or David, as he feels
his sin, it is only God who can cleanse his sin. It is only God
who can cleanse his lips. That he might utter those prayers
and petitions and confessions that will be acceptable unto
God. Oh Lord, open thou my lips, he
says. He must look to God, and he must
look to God alone for righteousness. Previously, here in verse 14,
he says, my tongue shall sing aloud of thy righteousness. Oh, when God opens a man's lips,
he has nothing to say for himself other than to confess his sins
and to acknowledge his transgression. If he is going to speak of righteousness,
there is only one righteousness that he can ever speak of. My
tongue shall sing aloud of thy righteousness, O Lord, open thou
my lips. And we think, therefore, of what
David says later. David, I suppose in some ways,
Psalm 71 is maybe the last Of all his Psalms, David now,
in Psalm 71, is clearly an aged man. And what does David say
there at verse 15? My mouth shall show forth thy
righteousness and thy salvation all the day, for I know not the
numbers thereof. He's coming to the end of his
days, few days left. I will go in the strength of
the Lord God. I will make mention of thy righteousness,
even of thine own. O God, thou hast taught me from
my youth, and never too have I declared thy wondrous works. Now when I am old and grey-headed,
O God, forsake me, until I have showed thy strength unto this
generation and thy power to every one that is to come. Or what
will he talk of? He'll talk of the righteousness
of God. Verse 24, My tongue also shall talk of thy righteousness
all the day long, for they are confounded, for they are brought
unto shame that seek my hurt. Or David can only speak of the
righteousness of another. It's what we see in the apostle.
There in Philippians 3, 9, is one desire to be found in him,
not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that
which is through the righteousness of Christ, that righteousness
which is from God himself, that righteousness that justifies
the sinner. And what length God goes to in
order to open the sinner's mouth. Here is David's petition, O Lord,
open thou mine God goes to great lengths. When Moses is called
to be God's servant in delivering the children of Israel from the
bondage which they were having to endure in Egypt, remember
how Moses objects that he is not a man of words. He says he
is not a man that can speak. In Exodus 4, verse 10, Moses
said unto the Lord, O my Lord, I am not arrogant, neither heretofore
nor since thou hast spoken unto thy servant, but have slower
speech, and of a slow tongue. The Lord said unto him, Who hath
made man now? Or who maketh the dumb, or deaf,
or the seeing, or the blind? Have not I the Lord? What does
God do? read there, if we'd have read
the opening verses, the context, we'd have seen that what God
has done is to show something of his power to Moses in the
miracles. In the former part of that fourth
chapter, he's commanded to take the rod in his hand and to cast
it to the ground, and it becomes a serpent. And then he takes
it by the tail and it's a rod again. and then is to put his
hand into his bosom and he comes out leprous. And he puts it back
in, he comes out whole. He casts water upon the ground,
as Moses, and he becomes blood. It's God performing miracles,
showing something of his power. If God can do all of these things,
then surely this God can open the mouth of a man who is slow
of speech. All the power of God, and now
we need that power God. We see it, of course, in the
miracles that the Lord Jesus Christ performs in the New Testament.
He doesn't simply make the blind to see or the deaf to hear. He also makes the dumb to speak.
He can unloose the tongue of a man. And there we need that,
that the Lord would come. It must be the Lord. It must
be that gracious power of the Lord that moves us to come If
we're going to make real, genuine confessions of our sin, it's
the Lord who must do it. O Lord, open thou my lips. And we need it when it comes
to prayer. I know I oft times quote those
words in Romans 8, but how true they are. The Spirit must be
our help. The Spirit help us out in firmities. We know not what to pray for
as we walk. The Spirit itself maketh intercession
for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. Or do we feel like
that sometimes? We scarce know how to speak.
How can we come and confess our sin? We've committed this sin
so many times. We're so often ensnared by our
sinful ways. We're so ashamed and the devil
will shut our mouths. He'll accuse us. We have to ask
God to open our mouths. Again, the words of Joseph Hart
don't just speak, they'll be on our table. Always pray and
never rest. Prayer's a weapon for the feeble.
Weakest souls can wield it best. Or that the Lord would open your
lips, open my lips, that we might be those who know what it is
really to pray to him. As we see, the psalmist time
and again in this book, These remarkable psalms and the prayers
of the godly, crying to God, petitioning God, making their
confessions. What is David's request? And
he wants to know something of the power of God, even to open
his lips. But then also here, there is
that to encourage, there's a promise of God. A man can pray like this,
O Lord, open thou my lips. because God has given promises.
And there's a relationship between God's words to us and our words
to God. I was looking at some verses
in Ezekiel. Ezekiel 29, 21. God says to the
prophet, I will give thee the opening of the mouth. I will
give thee the opening of the mouth. Ezekiel 29, 21, and then
again earlier in the book, chapter three, verse 27, when I speak
with thee, I will open thy mouth. How does God speak to us? God
speaks to us in his word. God speaks to us by his promises.
And what is the point and purpose of the promises? To open our
mouths. When I speak with thee, I will
open thy mouth, he says to the prophet. And here in Psalm 81
verse 10, open thy mouth wide and I will fill it. There we
have the promise of God. We have every encouragement then
to come and to speak with God, to make our confessions to him. Hosea 14 to open, take with you
words and turn to the Lord and say, take away all iniquity and
receive us Graciously. That's how we're to come and
to say, take a word. All iniquity. Well, why does
God give promises here in Holy Scripture? He gives them to us
that we might take hold of those promises and surround the Lord
God Almighty with His own words and hold Him fast, hold Him true
to the promises that He has given us. Like the old Puritan said,
We have these promises. Why? That we might thicken our
prayers with his promises. That's why God comes to us and
then you see there is a certain mutuality. God speaks to us and
we speak to him. And here we have David, O Lord,
open thou my lips and my mouth shall show forth thy praise. Well, that's what David wants
to do ultimately. He wants to be one who is praising God, giving
God the glory. And what is this praise? Well, it's not just outward observances,
that's quite clear. Verse 16, that thou desirest
not sacrifice, else would I give it. Thou delightest not in burnt
offerings. rebukes the children of Israel
through his servant Isaiah. He doesn't want their formal
worship. In the very first chapter of
the book of Isaiah, verse 11, to what purpose is the multitude
of your sacrifices unto me, saith the Lord? I am full of the burnt
offering of rams, and the fat of dead beasts. I delight not
in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he-goats? When
ye come to appear before me, who hath required this at your
hand, to tread my courts? Bring no more vain oblations,
incenses and abomination unto me, the new moons and sabbaths,
the calling of assemblies, I cannot obey with, it is iniquitous,
even the sun and meeting dim. All of these were what God had
ordained. This is that worship that was prescribed in the Old
Testament, but they were merely formalists. They were the people
who drew near with the lip, and they honored God with the mouth,
but their hearts were far from him. What is the worship that
God delights in? Well, verse 17, the sacrifices
of God. For a broken spirit, a broken
and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise. Well, this is what God delights
in. And David, David is the man after God's own heart. How amazing
it is. The man after God's own heart,
and yet a man who was such a great sinner. Why is the man after
God's own heart? Because he knew what it was to
have a broken heart. Broken hearted because of his
sins. And that's what we see here in the Psalms. as he comes
to make his confessions, to acknowledge all the perverseness of his ways,
or do we not see that there is great hope for sinners? And we
see it in the case of this man. And this is what the psalm ends
on, really. It ends on that note of praises
unto God. 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 shalt thou offer bullets
upon thine altar. Oh, the Lord be pleased, and
to grant that we might know what it is to receive the promises,
to plead the promises, and to praise that God, who is a merciful
God, a gracious God, that gospel that is full of pardons, so rich
and so fruity, in the Lord Jesus Christ. May the Lord be pleased
to bless these truths to us.