Psalms 51. I want to speak to
you this morning on the subject, confession of sin. Terence told us the title of
this psalm. David had gone in to Bathsheba. and lay with her she had conceived. David had plotted the death of
Bathsheba's husband Uriah, had him killed, then lied to cover
it up. The Lord sends Nathan the prophet
to David, confronts him with his awful, awful sin. And then
David says, I have sinned against God. And then, according to the
title of this psalm, he sets down and he writes his confession. David never mentions any names. He never mentions Bathsheba.
He never mentions Uriah. He does speak of the Lord delivering
him from murder. Can you imagine standing before
the Lord and confessing murder? I can imagine that. I've done
that. You've done that. But he asked the Lord to forgive
him. But He doesn't say, I have sinned
against Uriah. Of course He has. He doesn't
say, I have sinned against Bathsheba. I have sinned against your people.
Of course He has. But He says here, against thee,
and thee only have I sinned and done this evil in thy sight. He acknowledges His sins. He begins with that in verse
3. I acknowledge my transgression. I confess it. I own it to be
mine. Now there is no doubt that there
are men in this world that though they have sinned and sinned against
God, they never recognize it. It may be difficult for some
of us whom the Lord dealt with from our childhood to realize,
but there are men, no doubt, and women who have lived in this
world that had no knowledge of sin to confess. David spoke of
them as not being in trouble as other men are. Their conscience
is not troubled with sin. They never have sleepless nights.
Trouble comes to other men's conscience, but never to them.
And even when they die, David said, there's no bands in their
death. They die at ease. Like the rich man in Luke 16. We're never told that he lifted
up his eyes until the fire of hell touched his conscience. And then he realized that he
had sinned. There are other men, no doubt,
who have sinned and they have some notion of it, but they never
confess it. They never acknowledge it. They're
like those Jews that the Lord Jesus rebuked, and they went
out, one by one, being convicted of their own conscience, but
nothing is said of them confessing it. And then there's other men
that we read about, multitudes of men, in the scriptures that
they come to some knowledge that they've sinned and even confess
it, but they die unforgiven. We have men like Pharaoh who
said twice, I have sinned against God. We have wicked King Saul
who says, I have sinned against God. We've got Achan just before
they stoned him that said, I have sinned against God. Even Judas
says, I've sinned and I've betrayed innocent blood and went out and
hanged himself. So there are many people who
acknowledge sin and they confess that they've sinned, but yet
they die in sin. And it's because they do not
acknowledge their sin rightly. And I want us to look at David's
confession this morning because David confessed his sin in a
way that he obtained forgiveness. First of all, we see this in
verse 3. And I want to look at this verse
just for a few minutes with you. First of all. And he says here,
I acknowledge, I own, I confess my transgression. First of all,
that's what God requires. What does God require of sinners? First of all, to confess their
iniquity. To acknowledge that it is indeed
theirs that they've done it. He says in Jeremiah chapter 3
verse 13, He said to the children of Israel, only acknowledge thine
iniquities that thou hast transgressed against the Lord. Acknowledge. God requires us to acknowledge. But notice what David says here
about his sin. He goes into some detail about
it. He describes it. He uses these
three words that is often used in the Old Testament. The Hebrew
people, the children of Israel, they studied the Scriptures.
They knew the meaning of words. And they used these three words
to describe sin. And David uses these three words
here in acknowledging his sin. He uses the word sin. He says that in verse 2. Cleanse
me from my sin. And that word simply means to
come short of the standard. God has a standard. And when
a man shoots at that standard and he comes short of it, that's
called sin. Here's what God requires of every
man. He has this standard. It's His
law. To love God with all the heart. To love one's neighbor as himself. And when a man comes short of
that standard, it's called sin. That's why the Scripture says
all have sinned. All have come short of God's
standard. So David says, Lord, I acknowledge
that I have come short of Your standard. He admits that. He acknowledges that. But he
uses another word here in verse 2 also to describe his sin. He calls it iniquity. Wash me, wash me thoroughly from
mine iniquity. And this word simply means that
one hasn't tried, even tried to live up to the standard. He's
not even shot at the mark. He doesn't so much care what
God's standard is. He has sinned. He just has sinned. He just has sinned. As if there's
no God, He's sinned. He's went on in His sin. From
one sin to another sin. This Word has with it the sense
of being a servant of sin. Not just one time, but I've given
myself over to commit iniquity. I've done this, and I've done
that, and I've done this thing. That's what this word iniquity
means. Well, David had committed adultery, and then he lied, and
then he committed murder, and then he tried to deceive people
in covering it up. That's iniquity. He had become
the servant of sin. And then he uses this word, transgression,
in verse 1. According to your tender mercies,
blot out all my transgression. And this is a more dramatic word
because it means lawlessness. It means to revolt, to rebel. So David is here in describing
what he's done. He says, Lord, not only have
I missed your standard, I've not even tried. I went on in sin until I'm serving
sin. And not only that, but it's worse
than that. I've rebelled. I am a rebel against
you, against your law, against light. I have rebelled. And you notice how he says it.
He says, it's mine. He takes full responsibility
for it. He doesn't even blame the devil.
It's my transgression. It's my rebellion. It's my iniquity. It's my sin. He acknowledges
it as his own. And the second thing about David's
confession is this. He confesses his sin not only
according to what he feels. And you can tell he's heavy with
it. You can tell he has guilt upon his conscience. But he looks
outside himself, and he sees his sin as God sees it. He looks at his sin from God's
perspective. And he says this, "...against
thee, and thee only, have I sinned, and did this evil." Where? In your sight. He sets his sin right before
the face of God, and he says, you were watching me all the
time that I thought I had my sin hit. I did it right in your
face. Now I see that your eye is looking
upon my sin. What is sin in the eyes of God? David said it's an evil thing.
It's not a pretty thing. Oh, you and I, you and I, we
can't help it. We look upon sin sometimes as
a trivial thing. We commit sin and forget about
it. We go our way and sleep easy. But if we ever see our sin in
God's sight, God who is so pure-eyed that He cannot look upon iniquity,
That he loves righteousness and hates iniquity. And here David
stands. And he says, now I see my sin.
It's not just what I feel about my sin. Now I'm beginning to
see how defiling they are. Now I begin to see how soul-destroying
they are. Now I see how offensive they
are. Because I see them as you see
them. in your eyes. Brothers and sisters, you and
I will never see sin for what it is until we see it set in
the light of God's holy countenance. And then we'll see something
of its evil. Then we'll see why there's a
cross. Then we'll see why there's a hell to punish it. Notice thirdly about David's
confession of sin is this. He not only confesses his sin
and the evil of it in the eyes of God, but he acknowledges the
root cause of his sin. He doesn't say, Lord, I'm a good
man who has done some evil thing. He doesn't say that at all. Look
again what he says in verse 5. He gets to the root cause of
his sin. Behold, I was shapen in iniquity,
and in sin did my mother conceive me. How could David sin? You look
back at David when he was just a child and how the Lord was
with him. When a bear and a lion came out
to steal this little sheep that he was shepherding, the Lord
came upon him and he grabbed the bear by the whiskers and
slew him and slew the lion. And when Goliath was challenging
the children of Israel and blaspheming the Lord, David put the five
little stones in his shepherd bag and went out to face the
giant. And he looked at David and said,
am I a dog that you should come to me with your little shepherd
bag and your sling? He said, I'm going to feed you to
the birds of the air. And David said, you come to me
with your sword and your shield. But I come to you in the name
of the Lord God of heaven. Oh, this was a man who loved
the Lord. The Lord was with him. But look at him now. Look at
him as he looks down upon another man's wife and lays with her. And look at him as he plots to
murder her husband. How could he do this? What would
cause him to do this? And he tells us. He tells us
the cause. And he finds the cause in himself.
He says, I'm a sinner. By nature. And he doesn't smile when he
writes this down. It's not that he's excusing himself. But he goes to the root cause
of his problem. He says, it's not just what I've
done, it's what I am. I'm ruined. I'm evil by my nature. I tell you the thing that should
scare us more than anything else. is what we are. That's our whole
problem. Oh, I would never do this. I
would never do that. But what would we do? Is there
anything that we would not do if the grace of God did not keep
us from it? We have the potential to do anything. I remember The story of Adolf Eichmann.
He was Adolf Hitler's right-hand man, responsible for killing
hundreds of thousands of Jews himself, Eichmann was. And he
had gone into this family, took some soldiers with him, this
young woman, and he had killed her family before her eyes. They
had taken her and put her in the camps. Killed her brother
and her father and mother and her whole family. And they arrested
Ackman after the war. And she requested to sit with
him and talk with him in his cell and they allowed her to
do that. And she sat with him for quite some time and talked
with this man who had killed her entire family. And she'd
come away from that interview and they asked her about it.
And she said, what scares me as I sit and talk with Adolph
Ackman He is a normal man. She expected to go in there and
see a monster, a man who was ravenly mad. How could he have
done this? How could he have murdered so
many people and then just sat down and seemed so normal? You
know how he could have done it? Deep within this cloak that we
put on, this cloak of religion, this cloak of morality, down
inside of us is a cesspool of sin. It's a world of depravity. And just give it an opportunity.
It not only will allow you to do evil, It will promote it. It will cause you to do it. We have nothing to fear but ourselves. We're our greatest enemy. And
our sin doesn't come from without us. It comes from within us.
David said God desires truth in the inward part. And in our
confession, We must own this. What's the cause of our sinning? I tell you, until we see that,
until we see what we are by nature, we'll never need the righteousness
of another to clothe the shame of it and to justify us freely. David acknowledges something
else here in his confession. He acknowledges that whatever
judgment God brings upon his sin, he's just in doing it. If God judges him for his sin,
if God punishes him for his sin, then God is just. He'll praise
God for it. If the Lord forgives him and
shows him mercy, he's just in doing it. He'll praise Him for
it. See what he says? In verse 4, "...against thee
and thee only have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight.
I acknowledge that, that you may be justified when you speak,
and be clear when you judge." I tell you, this is easy to read
this. But I'm telling you, stand before
God in a guilty conscience. and say to him, you've got to
reach a verdict. I've acknowledged my sin. Now
the verdict is with you. Will you condemn me? Then you're
right. Will you save me? Then you're
right. That's not an easy thing, is
it? We look at men like Hitler. Saddam Hussein, some mass murderer,
or some serial rapist, or some child molester, or somebody we
don't like. And we'll say, boy, they deserve
everything they get. That man has been an open and
profane man. Look at the harm he's done to
humanity. He's going to get just what he
deserves. But what about my thought of
foolishness? What about my pride? What about
my unbelief? What about my self-righteousness?
What about my hard heart? What about those sins that's
in my heart that people can't see? What do I think about my
sin? Can I set them in the light of
God's countenance and say, Oh God, if you send me to hell,
you're right in doing it. I'll shout hallelujah. Glory
be to your name because you're God and all you do with me or
with my children or anyone else, you're right. That's not an easy
thing to do, is it? That's why you don't see very
many people doing it. To justify God in your own condemnation. I am guilty. And now, you render
the verdict. You render the verdict. You're
the judge of all the earth. You render the verdict. And I think this probably is
one of the most important things about confession. And it's this. When I speak of
acknowledging sin, confessing sin, and you notice this about
David, he acknowledges his sin and he stops there. Only acknowledge Thine iniquity. Only, only acknowledge thine
iniquity. And he says in verse 3, my sin
is ever before me. But David, you've made a confession of sin.
And as I read your Psalms here, you articulated your confession
very well. You mean your sin is ever before
you? It's still there? You mean you
didn't ease your conscience by your confession? You know, confession can be one
of the most dangerous things in the world if we trust in it
to relieve our conscience. Lord, I confess that I've sinned,
and I promise you..." Uh-oh. Uh-oh. You know what you just
did? You did what He says do not do. Only confess. And stop there. Acknowledge your sin and stop
there. Oh Lord, I've sinned, but I'm
going to get my act together. Lord, I've sinned, but I'm going
to be baptized. Lord, I've sinned, but I'm going
to start paying my tithes. No, only acknowledge your sin. To acknowledge sin rightly is
to acknowledge the evil of it before God and seek no means
in and of ourselves to relieve us of our guilt. That's another difficult thing
to do. I confessed sin all my teenage years. I'd go to bed
almost every night confessing. But I never could leave it there.
I never could stop. If you'll give me one more day,
I promise you this, that's just another way to perish. It's just another wrong way to
confess your sin. Men can do many things after
they confess. But to only confess, they cannot endure to leave it
there. This is a hard matter. Only. Only. Here David, he cuts himself
off. from any hope of forgiveness. Now listen to me. What is true
confession? It's when you cut yourself off
from any hope of forgiveness of that sin, if the cause of
forgiveness is found in you. You acknowledge your sin, you
own it, and look for no cause in yourself. Why God should forgive
you. All David has is his transgression
and iniquity and sin. Now, what must he do? He must look for a cause of forgiveness
outside himself. It's not in himself. All he has
is his evil. But he looks and he finds a cause
in God as to why God would forgive him. And what is it? It's found in verse 1. Have mercy
upon me, O God, according to your love, according to your
kindness, according to your tender mercies. He looks for a cause in God and
he finds it. And he pleads it. And what is
it? Mercy. Mercy. God delights in mercy. So David
pleads mercy. He doesn't plead promises. He
doesn't plead reformation. He pleads mercy. Great mercy
may draw out. Great misery may draw out. Mercy. God will show mercy if you have
no merit to plead. If you have merit, you won't
draw mercy. If you have no merit, you draw
mercy. Not by works of righteousness
which we have done, but according to His mercy. He saved us. Without any works of righteousness?
Yes. The Lord Jesus said, I didn't
come. I did not come to solicit a sacrifice from you. I did not come asking anything
from you. I come to show mercy. I come to have mercy. If mercy is what God delights
in, Then plead mercy. Plead His mercy. David is pleading
like this. He says here to the Lord, set
what is found in you over against what is found in me. And see
which one wins today. There is mercy in you. Tender
mercies. Covenant mercies. And there's
evil in me. I set my evil against your mercy. Which one is the greatest? Brethren,
that's the way to confess. That's the way to confess. Come
with your conscience burdened down with guilt and resolve that
your conscience will stay burdened down with guilt until you obtain
mercy. If mercy doesn't win the day,
then I'll perish because nothing but mercy can save me. And notice this about David's
confession of sin. You see it in this, especially
these verses, these first few verses. His faith is in Jesus
Christ, the Lord and Savior. Mercy has brought David, the
poor sinner, and Christ, the great Savior, together. Notice how he puts it here in
verse 1. Have mercy upon me, O Lord, according
to Thy lovingkindness, according to the multitude of Thy tender
mercies. Blot out. That word, blot out. It simply means to rub away. Erase. Erase it. Thoroughly erase it. Rebellion? Rebellion? How can God erase
rebellion? He blots it out. How does He
do it? How is He going to blot out your
rebellion? By the obedience of somebody
else. Christ's obedience is so full
of merit, it blots out your rebellion. He says in verse 2, and if his
faith is not in Jesus Christ, then I misinterpreted this verse
altogether. Wash me. Cleanse me. Where is David's heart? Where
is his thoughts? Where is his faith? Wash me. You think he was talking about
the blood of some goat or a heifer? Why, no. Who was on David's mind? The
Lamb of God was on his mind. Jesus Christ, the Son of God,
was on his mind. Wash me! Wash me! What can wash away my sin? Jesus'
blood. There's where David's faith was.
There's where his faith was. David saw the evil of his sin,
but he believed the merit and the power of Jesus' blood could
wash him and cleanse him. And he prayed and he believed
to that end. Dear soul, until our guilty souls
and a great Savior comes together, we have not confessed our sins
rightly. He loved us and washed us from
our sins in His own blood. If we confess our sins, He is
faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us
from all unrighteousness. The blood of Jesus Christ God's
Son cleanses us. If you and I deny our evil, We
make God a liar. If we lessen our evil, we only
deceive ourselves. But we must never forget the
gospel or we'll despair. If thou, Lord, shouldst mark
iniquity, who could stand? But there is forgiveness with
thee. Here's where our faith must be.
It's outside of ourselves. It's in another. In the marriage,
in the obedience, in the worth, in the righteousness of Jesus
Christ, the Son of God. That's where our faith must go.
To Him. If we'd be forgiven of sin, our
faith must be in the blood of Jesus Christ. I remember when I was under conviction
for sin, I went and bought me a Bible and started reading it. Me and my cousin about the same
time. He's a free will Baptist preacher.
I'm a sovereign grace preacher. We both had the same opportunities.
Both had the same choice. And we both made good ones, boy.
He went and got circumcised and I went and made restitution.
That was the choice that we made. And both of us went away lost.
And I started reading my Bible about doing this and doing that. And then I read one day where
God justifies by faith in Christ. And you know what I said to myself?
I can't believe in Christ. I cannot believe in Christ. I
can keep the law easier than I can believe in Christ. Did you ever feel that way? And
because you feel that way, you just go ahead and do all sorts
of religious activities. And you just get deeper and deeper
in debt. And here's the remedy for that.
Come like David did. I'm a hell deserving sinner.
There's nothing I can do to deliver myself from this dilemma that
I'm in. Give me faith to believe. Give
me eyes to see outside of myself to Jesus Christ, or I'm going
to perish in my sins. And you will. If you can't lay hold upon Him
by faith, you'll perish in your sins. Nothing else can wash you. That's where I come to, and it
scared me to death. And I didn't think the Lord was going to ever
give me grace to believe. I cried until I had no tears
left, because I was probably trusting in Him. I made restitutions
for things I hadn't even done wrong. I was desperate. Until one night, until one night,
He gave me grace to believe. And then I saw all my sins gone. Not by my promises, not by my
restitution, but by the blood of Jesus Christ. Just so there is no other way.
There is no other way to stand clean before God but through
the blood of His Son. And oh, as David even was confessing
his sins, his heart went out to Christ. He saw such a merit
in Him He said, there's more merit in His blood to cleanse
me than there is sin in me to damn me. You say, Bruce, how
do you know that? Because He said, wash me thoroughly, abundantly, over and above. He knew the blood of Christ reached
deeper than the stain of sin had gone. And He said, Lord,
I'm not looking any place else. Nothing else can cleanse me but
Your blood can. And he casts himself upon Jesus
Christ. And he was cleansed. He's forgiven. May God help all of us to confess
our sins truthfully and refuse to do one thing, to
put them away until we see them put away. in that fountain that's
open for sin and unclean. Let's pray.