40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Psalm 51 (Episode 272)

Episode Date: June 28, 2021

Chad and Daniel hit pause on 2 Samuel to look at Psalm 51. David pleads with God for mercy, forgiveness, and a clean heart and says he will tell sinners everywhere about the steadfast love of his God. This is a beautiful Psalm of repentance and forgiveness. Have a listen. 1517 Podcast Network Regional Event in Las Vegas 1517 YouTube Donate

Welcome to another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. 40 Minutes in the Old Testament is a 1517 Podcast Network podcast. You can go to 1517.org slash podcast, check out all the other podcasts that are living over there. And while you're over there, check out the events page because you want to come hang out with Chad and me and a whole bunch of other people in Las Vegas, Nevada, October 15th and 16th. Those tickets are on sale right now. It's $65 for a two-day event. That price includes your lunch on Saturday. So grab those up. People are registering, Chad. People are coming out to Vegas. And so if you want to hang out with us, we would love to hang out with you. It's going to be

good time. We'll be talking about assurance. I mean, if you don't have any assurance, you probably need to come and get some. If you do have assurance, you need to come get some more. You can't have too much, so you need to come out to Sin City to get that assurance, because that's the sort of places that Jesus was dishing out assurance. If Jesus was walking the earth right now, I'm guessing that he would be in downtown Las Vegas, and all the religious leaders would be up in arms about, what is this guy doing? Why is this guy up and down the strip like this? Well, in our attempt to just be as Christlike as possible, Vegas, here we come. You should do likewise.

Imitate us as we imitate Jesus in Las Vegas. Chad, we decided to do something a little different today, and that is we are going to take a break, sort of, from 2 Samuel to look at Psalm 51 because it sure seems like this came pretty quick on the heels of his encounter with Nathan. This doesn't seem like the sort of thing that 10 years later you decided to write this thing out. This thing seems like Nathan left the room, David couldn't sleep, and he got the pen out.

Yeah, it seems very contemporary. I mean, like the exact time all this stuff is going now that David decides that he's going to translate everything that's going on inside him and around him into this psalm. And we were joking before we started recording that it's going to be a little bit difficult to fit the entire psalm within 40 minutes because we could probably talk for 40 hours about Psalm 51. But we will restrict ourselves to just 40 minutes.

This is one of, of course, one of the most famous of the psalms. I suppose 23 is the most well-known, but Psalm 51 probably ranks the second or third of the most well-known. And not only well-known, but most beloved of the psalms. It is one of the traditional seven penitential psalms.

There's a lot more penitential psalms than seven, but seven of those have been named, especially as kind of the characteristic or classical penitential psalms, like 6, 32, 38, 51, 102, 130, and 143, I believe, are the seven. So it starts out by not only telling us, of course, that David wrote it, But as many of the psalms do, it pinpoints the particular historical circumstance when this psalm was written. We have a number of these from David's life, such as when he's hiding from Saul in a cave or when his son Absalom is going to rebel, which we'll get to later on in 2 Samuel. So this one starts out when Nathan the prophet came to him after he had gone into Bathsheba.

there's there's almost kind of a barbed pun here because the verb for come when nathan came to him and the verb for him going into bathsheba exactly the same so it's almost like after so after david had gone to the bathsheba then nathan came to him to confront him about what he had done with with bathsheba so that's going to set the whole context of course that historical context is going to set the tenor for this particular psalm. It starts out by kind of striking the keynote with the very opening words. So in Hebrew, the psalm begins with the word haneni, which means to have mercy or to be gracious to me. In fact, this first verse has a number of highly charged words from the old testament vocabulary such as have mercy or be gracious and then it goes on to talk about

according to your steadfast love or your loving kindness that is the well-known word chesed that we've talked about multiple times in the podcast and then it goes on to say you know according to your the greatness of your compassion or according to your abundant mercy again that's another one of these words that is all over the old testament it is i think that i love that the king james used to translate this as tender mercies, which I kind of like. It's rachamim. It's related to the noun rechem, which is the word for womb. So in Hebrew, the word for compassion is basically a form of the word for womb. So you womb someone, as it were. You show them compassion, like a mother shows compassion to the child in her womb. So all of this is compressed in this

opening verse be gracious to me oh god or be merciful to me according to your steadfast love according to your abundant mercy blot out my my transgressions you gotta love that that the plea here i mean obviously david's in a in a position where opening with have mercy on me is a good way to start this is what david needs but he doesn't he doesn't ask god to just have mercy on him according to nothing uh he says have mercy on me according to who you are he's talking to god even though god this woman pregnant he's had her husband killed other people are dead because of it this has gone on for quite some time long enough for a baby to be born so this is a big big ask and he david feels that he can ask this according to who god is that god would still be

willing to do this not because of who david is or not even asking god to do something special or anything like that to do something that david believes that is it within the character of who god is so like do do this extraordinary thing by having mercy on me which i obviously by definition don't deserve according to your steadfast love and that for god to have mercy on him is going to require God to do something else, which is what David is going to get to, which is blot out my transgressions. It's going to be to wash him from his iniquity, to cleanse him from his sin. So David also understands that God is not going to just be able to have mercy and do nothing. He's going to have to do something with his sin. Yeah, his mercy leads to an action.

Yeah. It's kind of like we've talked about with the verb remember, when God remembers he does something. So similarly here, when God is gracious, He isn't just kind of gracious in a generic sort of way. He's gracious in the sense that His grace, His mercy, His compassion leads to an action which is beneficial towards sinners, which of course in this case is described as blotting out and washing. That word for blot out is used in a number of situations. It's kind of parallel to washing. For instance, if you write something on a scroll and you blot it out, you wash it away. That's the same verb that's used there. And for washing, that's often used for laundering clothes. So it both had the idea of the one who's about to receive this active grace or mercy on God's part

is dirty, is unclean. Something has soiled this person. Of course, in David's case, we know what that is. This is applicable to any person, but God's grace and mercy are going to wash over the sinner as it were and so remove the stain wash away the the iniquity so that's kind of the that's the tone that's set right away and i think it's it's interesting to to point out too that he begins this way instead of beginning with a confession which i think is significant so he he doesn't start out by saying here's what i've done and you know list those things those transgressions he goes right to the heart of the matter he goes immediately to the grace of god rather than pointing to his sin he goes to god's grace because he knows of course as we all know

that that's going to be the only thing which is able to get rid of this stain that he that he has yeah i love that he says uh wash me thoroughly from my sin or thoroughly from my iniquity so i I need like a complete cleansing here. Don't just splash a little water on me. No, I need to be completely soaked and washed. It's hard not to read this also, and sort of, I mean, David isn't saying this, but it's hard to read it without reading it this way. I mean, what David is asking for here is a baptism of sorts, right?

He needs to be cleansed, he needs to be baptized, he needs to be washed. Yeah, and there's hints of that later. Of course, verse 7 will say, wash me, and I'll should be watered than snow. It's using the same verb that we see in verse 2. Yeah, I mean, if you're thinking about baptism, this is a great psalm to connect that to because that's, of course, exactly what baptism does.

It's not just kind of a splashing and hoping that a little bit of the dirt will be removed, but it's a thorough washing so that it's completely gone. So he starts out here with these first two verses, appealing to God's grace and mercy as chesed to do these things for him. And then in verse 3, he transitions to talking more about the reason that he stands in this need. He says, I know my transgression and my sin is ever before me. I'll just go ahead and read these next couple of verses too.

against you you only have i sinned and done what's evil in your sight so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment behold i was brought forth in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me behold you delight in truth in the inward being and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart so the verb that's used here for i know my transgression is the one that uh you would expect. Yadah, we encountered that all the way back in the opening chapter of Genesis. This isn't just David saying, yeah, I have a recollection of what I've done. That is, he knows. He knows in a painfully intimate sort of way what he's done. And I love the image here of my sin is ever before me because it captures this idea that he can't escape from the accusations that are

leveled against him now yeah before nathan confronted him he had as it were buried his sin or made excuses for it or justified himself or whatever was going on inside him but now he's at the point where once the accusing finger of the law has been placed in front of him it's like uh he can't get away from it it's like that that i used to have one of those uh uncle sam wants you what were those posters you know we're like no matter where you're at the fingers pointing at you. That's kind of what the law is like. It was pointing its finger at David. My sin is ever before me. I can't escape it. And then this often comes up, this particular question as to how David could say what he says in verse four, against you, you only have I sinned and done what's evil in

your sight. I've been asked this and I've wondered it myself. I'm sure you have too, Dan, like how david could just say that he's sinned against god when obviously he's sinned against many people primarily yeah uriah might push back on this right i feel you're right he's like i feel like you sinned against me a little bit yeah yeah i think i think i think maybe you've done something against me like had me murdered uh and of course bathsheba and the servants who involved joab i mean there's just the the uh presumably the widows of the guys who died alongside uriah on the battlefield? I mean, there's a lot of people that David has sinned against. We could make a very lengthy list of those people, but David says, against you, you only have I sinned and done what

is evil in your sight. And I think I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, but I think from my own perspective, the reason David says this is because when it comes right down to it, sin is always and only against one person, that is to say God, because of course he is the one who has given us, who's created us. He's the one who's given us His laws. He's the one to whom we owe our everything, and so every sin is always against Him. That doesn't mean that other people aren't sinned against. It doesn't mean that there aren't implications for a lot of other people when we sin, but when we want to strip it down to exactly who we have offended, who we have sinned against and of course that is god and god only well it it comes down to who has declared all

the things that david has done to be sin if you do something that is evil in the sight of your neighbor it may or may not be evil because your neighbor is not holy good and righteous so what what he says like oh you're evil because you did that maybe it is maybe it isn't but what he's say, this is why he says that you might be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment. You don't have to wonder when God says you've done something evil in my sight, you don't have to, well, was it really evil? Well, explain to me, how was it evil? No, God is the one against whom wickedness is weighed. So it's the goodness, it's the righteousness and the holiness of God that determines that something else is not that, right?

So sin is just that thing that isn't like God. And so when you say against you and you alone have I sinned, if you just have a world full of sinners, there is no outside standard that you're weighing these things against. David is acknowledging that regardless of what anyone else thinks or says, God has said it was evil. and so uh and god and god is right in his words he's blameless in his judgment and he has judged david to be a sinner he's judged david's actions to be uh transgressions and so i think

i think that's what he's saying he also you know he can't go to uriah and ask him for forgiveness he can't go to those men and ask them for forgiveness i mean he's really only got one place to go for a lot of what he's done now he might be able to go to basheva and some other people, but ultimately there's people from whom he cannot extract forgiveness. And so he's going to have to do it from God. You know, two more things about this verse that come to mind is how there's a, well, first of all, how it's used in the New Testament. So this, of course, this is David's psalm, but it's also our psalm. So it's written by a specific individual in a specific circumstance. But just like the hymns of the church, the hymns of the church might have

been written by an individual in a specific circumstance, but they're the hymn of the church. So the Psalms also, even though it's a Psalm of David, when he did what he did, this is also the Psalm of the church. And so in Romans chapter 3, Paul quotes Psalm 51. He's talking about, I'll just read Romans 3, 4. He says, let God be found true, though every man be found a liar as it is written that you might be justified in your words and might prevail when you are judged so he's quoting psalm 51 here showing that when god declares humanity to be sinful god is justified in what he declares and so let god be true in every every person a liar so that's the one that's that's the way that paul uses psalm 51 but i just realized this this

morning. I don't know why I hadn't realized it before, but it just never caught my eye before. When David says, I have done what is evil in your sight, literally in the Hebrew, that is, I've done what is evil in your eyes. Now that's the same phrase that we see at the very end of 2 Samuel chapter 11, that the thing that David had done was evil in the eyes of the Lord. so this is David saying in his confession that what God has declared to be evil David acknowledges to be evil which is basically what confession is when we confess our sins of course we're not telling God something doesn't already know and we're not sort of contributing to our repentance or somehow earning his absolution or anything like that confession is just saying back to God

what he has first said to us yeah God says you know what you did was evil in my sight and we say what i did was evil in your sight so we echo back the truth about our sin that god himself has already said and then god says a new thing he says something that we can't say to ourselves he says i forgive you right you can't say i forgive myself but god can say to us i forgive you and then our response to that is uh amen the word of faith yeah i think that sort of the next verse which you read but it kind of helps with this too where david is saying you know against you and you alone have i sinned and uh that you might be you know blameless in your words and your judgments are right and all this stuff uh and then he makes this statement that only god would make no one no one

would come up with this statement no one would say behold i was brought forth in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me this is not david's not saying that my mother was a prostitute or my mother was out messing around and that's how i was conceived what he's saying is that i've been this way from the beginning and this is this is a judgment that only god would make yeah we would not on our own look at a baby or so or someone in the womb and say what you got in your womb is a sinner for sure we're naturally prone to say the opposite we're like well no they're they're innocent they're pure like the sin comes later so what david is doing is is he said i've sinned against you i've sinned against the one who has judged all of humanity to be

sinful from the beginning, right? And so he's dealing with the ultimate judge. He's going straight to the top and saying, I am agreeing with you that I was born this way. Yeah, he's moving from the particular ways in which he has sinned to the real reason that he has sinned. So the reason that David did what he did is because it's the outgrowth of who he already was. So he, you know, We talked about this before, that we're not sinners because we sin. We sin because we're sinners. We are first, by nature, sinful and unclean, and we're like that from the moment of conception onward.

And so any outward acts of sin are indicative of the inner state in which we find ourselves. Yeah, I think you have the Old Testament simile here, because Paul says something similar. It almost sounds like an excuse, but it's not. It's just a theological reality that David and Paul will acknowledge. So when David says, okay, listen, I'm a sinner. Here's the reason why. I was brought forth in iniquity.

My mother conceived me in sin. You sound like, well, that sounds like you're kind of making an excuse. Like, look, the reason I did this is because I'm a sinner. And that's the sort of stuff that sinners do. Paul will say something similar to this, where he will say, talk about his sin, and then he'll say, so it's not me that sins. But sin dwelling in me, and you're like, well, that sounds like you're trying to get off the hook for your sin. Yeah, you're passing the buck, right? Yeah, you're like, that wasn't me.

That was my sin. And Paul will go on, you know, say like, I don't understand my actions. Like, I do stuff all the time that I don't even want to do. And then there's other things that are good that I want to do. I don't do them. David says something similar to that here, where he says, I'm brought forth in sin. I was conceived in sin. That's why I'm a sinner. Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart. So David is saying, I got like two things going on here where you delight in truth in the inward being and you're doing some of that in me. You're teaching me that wisdom on the, that new man is actually learning these things. But then also because I was conceived in sin, because I was

born a sinner, I'm out here acting this way. And so, I think those passages are very similar, and I don't see either of them as excusing away anything. It's an explanation for how David can be a retriever of Bathsheba, murderer of Uriah, and man after God's own heart. I mean, that's the most simple thing that you could possibly ever be. Yeah, this verse is a very helpful verse for just kind of understanding humanity, understanding ourselves, understanding other people. So we're not born with a clean slate, in other words. We're not born in a state of kind of spiritual neutrality, where once we get to a certain point in our lives, we can choose, okay, do I want to be a sinner or do I want to be righteous? The choice isn't up to us. That's

why this verse is so significant. We're not born in the state of spiritual neutrality. We're born, conceived and born as a as a sinner and so that means and this is the way of course of glorifying the mercy and grace of god because that means that the only way we're going to get from that particular situation into a state of righteousness is not by clawing our way up to righteousness or by performing a series of good acts it's got to be divine initiative divine action alone which rescues us from the state in which we find ourselves so being conceived and born in iniquity means that God alone is going to be the one who rescues us, which, of course, is what he ends up doing for David,

does for all of us. It's not as though you're born not bent a certain way, not curved in on yourself. I mean, anyone with kids knows how this works. And, I mean, I've seen instances where, you know, there'll be a toddler and he'll get something taken away from him that he's not supposed to have or that's dangerous for him. And that toddler will have a look on his face.

he would kill everyone in that room to get that ball back the only thing that's stopping him is inability oh absolutely yeah you actually learn how to more and more not to be that way as you get older but it's a good thing that like babies are don't have any power because initially you pop out you're like i'll kill everyone in this room to get what i want if i could i the only problem is i can't walk and i'm you know and i weighed 11 pounds yeah yeah any parent knows that I just spent the weekend this past weekend taking care of, uh, helping my wife take care of our three grandson, grand grandchildren, our two grandsons and our granddaughter and, uh, our, our youngest grandson. Yeah. He's, he's very young, but he's kind of in that situation.

You know, there were a couple of times where he had a meltdown where if he was, if he was 20 years old, he probably would have killed everybody in the room to get what he wanted but he just physically can't do it uh so uh he's safe for now uh but yeah i mean any any parent realizes pretty pretty quickly that the little human being that they are raising is uh very turned in on himself or herself and this is nothing which is learned this is definitely a by nature situation i'm learning i'm learning that you think that that got baptized out of them and then they become teenagers and that's what i'm dealing with now and you're like oh nope never mind nope nope still still the same so in uh in verse seven we transition to some uh some language

which is actually directly lifted from some of the ritual text of the of the of the torah verse seven says purify me with hyssop and i shall be clean wash me and i shall be whiter than than snow i love the the verb that's translated in new american standard as as purify is translated as purge in the ESV. Now, what's kind of unique about this particular verb is the verb and the noun form of it are the word for sin. So, to chata is to sin. It's the same for the noun, but here's the cool thing about this particular verb. In certain grammatical forms, it doesn't mean to sin, but it means to de-sin, to remove sin. So it's the same verb, but in this particular form, it means to take away sin. So when you read purge me with hyssop or purify me with hyssop,

really you could translate that almost literally as de-sin me. So remove the sin. So de-sin me with hyssop and I shall be clean. Now, why hyssop? Well, hyssop was used in particular in a couple different contexts. This is a plant that has kind of a sponge-like end that can be used to absorb liquid and then to sprinkle it on things. So in Exodus 12, it's used for the Passover, and then it's used in Leviticus 14 and Numbers 19. Leviticus 14 is to cleanse a leper. Numbers 19 is to cleanse someone who's become ritually unclean through contact with a corpse. So when David says, purify me with hyssop or descend me with hyssop what he's leading us back to are these texts from the torah like leviticus 14 and numbers 19 where he is implicitly saying hey i'm i'm like a leper

or i'm like someone who's become unclean because i've come into contact with with death itself so this is david's implicit confession of that that he's unclean that he is in need of god's God's mercy that's going to be the descending agent that's going to bring him back to back to God so purify me with hyssop and then I'll be clean wash me and then I'll be whiter than snow so there's no half measures here don't make me partially white but make me as white as snow the same same simile that's going to be used in Isaiah chapter one where those who are those whose sins are scarlet become as white as snow so there's no half measures with god's absolution he makes us to be as white as as white can be it's kind of awesome that david i mean you know if

david said maybe white as snow i think we get the picture you're like okay well snow is pretty white you know i mean it's probably one of the whitest things we know about until something happens to it when it's just falling on the ground it's pretty white but david david wants to be purer than that. And so he grabs the whitest thing that he can think of and says, make me cleaner than that. You're asking for something that only God can do. Yeah, remove every single possible speck of dirt from me. Make me that white. And then he goes on to offer another petition to make me to hear joy and gladness. Let the bones which you have broken rejoice. So this is another one of those prayers in which we have implicit within that prayer kind of where David's at. I mean,

he feels like God has taken a baseball bat to him and broken his bones. So let these bones which you have broken for the accusations of the law, this inner torture that I'm enduring because of my guilt and my shame. So transform that instead to where I'm rejoicing. Yeah. Yeah. So this is a man that's been crushed by the law. He's in a place where things like joy and gladness seem like they might never be part of his life again. And so he's asking God to rebuild him. This is kind of a wonderful way to think about the absolution that David's requesting is that, you know when you're in this situation you're things like laughter and joy and ever being at peace again or enjoying anything again seem pretty distant and david knows that so he's like

i would like to have those gifts again uh but for me to have those gifts again you're going to have to to rebuild me because i'm i've been absolutely destroyed by the law yeah yeah and uh we i think we've all been there uh you know we're at that situation where we're we're needing god's absolution and we're in a very very dark place and we're just praying i can't remember years ago praying this quite frequently you know restore to me the joy of your salvation yeah you know we just bring back instead of this this this overwhelming sense of dread that i am constantly trapped in bring back the joy bring back the gladness restore to me that kind of joy that i get from knowing that i have your salvation that i am that i am forgiven yeah well as david's

being asked asking god to rebuild him put his joints back together uh and all this he tells god exactly how this has to be done and it's in the next line which is hide your face for my sins and blot out all of my iniquities. This is how I'm going to be rebuilt. I'm only going to be able to laugh again and have joy again and have peace again. The only way I'm going to be able to do that is for you to hide your face from my sin.

I can't do anything about my sin, so you're going to have to turn away from it, and you're going to have to blot it all out. It's a nice contrast with what he said earlier when he said that my sin is ever before me. Yeah. Verse 3, and now he prays, hide your face from my sins so these sins that are in front of me i pray that they will not be

in front of you hide your face from them and then blot out my iniquities that same verb that we saw saw earlier and then he has this this i love this prayer in verse 10 to create in me a clean heart and renew renew or restore a steadfast spirit within me because the verb for create here bara is the same word that we have in genesis 1 1 where god creates the heavens and the earth and bara is one of those rare hebrew verbs where god and god alone is always a subject so you can't say to somebody else in hebrew create something for me create a work of art or create this or that because only god can do that so when david says created me a clean heart he's acknowledging that the only one capable of doing this is god he can't you know get in a good

relationship with another human being. And that person is going to be able somehow to create this clean heart within him. This is going to be God and God alone who's able to accomplish this. And it's going to be like a new creation. So recreate within me this clean heart. And then the verb for renew can also mean to repair. When an altar was broken down, you repair the altar. And this was the verb to choose there. So restore, repair, renew a steadfast spirit within me. So So the ideas of repair and restoration and recreation is what David is needing. Then he goes on, don't cast me away from your presence. Don't fling me from your presence, maybe we could translate this,

and don't take your Holy Spirit from me. The Holy Spirit is going to be the one through whom God is at work to do all of these things that David's been praying for, the restoration, the recreation. So, don't cast me away, and don't cast the Holy Spirit from me. Instead, use your Holy Spirit to accomplish in me that for which I am praying. Yeah, this is an interesting verse here. When he says, cast me not away from your presence, you are assuming that David has not been cast out yet.

So, David is not, God has not rejected him or cast him aside. In fact, he sent Nathan to him. Yeah, because in odd prayer, if he had already been cast out. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, there's some people that will talk about, and I know that even within our tradition, there's people that would say that David was outside of salvation for a while there. I don't know that you can get that from the text here. God seems that's the last thing he wants to do, sends Nathan to preach the law,

and the law does its work, and then Nathan gives him the absolution, and David writes it down. And David does not seem to think that God has left him yet, and he is asking him not to do so. And then you have this, take not your Holy Spirit from me. And you can correct me if I'm wrong about this, Chad, but it's not that often within the Old Testament that you get this exact phrase, Holy Spirit. This is pretty unique. Yeah, I'm trying to remember if there's any other—I mean, of course, the Spirit's talked about all over the place in the Old Testament. But I'm trying to remember if there is any other place where we actually have this particular combination of Holy Spirit that we find, of course, all over the New Testament. Yeah, I mean, we talk about the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit all the time, but these aren't—and obviously the Son, we've pointed out a ton where he is in the Old Testament, and of course you have the Father.

But the Holy Spirit, talked about in this way, this is fairly unique. Yeah, yeah, it is. And I love the fact that where it is talked about is in this particular psalm. It's in this psalm about how the Spirit is at work to restore the sinner back to the grace of God. Well, what David is saying is, as I've become familiar again with being a sinner, I'm going to definitely need you to not take your Holy Spirit, that is, your holying Spirit, your sanctifying Spirit, away from me, or else what am I left with? Just me as a sinner.

Yeah. Well, moving on. Verse 12, restore to me the joy of your salvation. Talked about that before. Sustain me with a willing or a noble spirit, right spirit. Then verse 13 is kind of a fascinating transition. He says, then, so having prayed all this, having confessed all this, he says, then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will return to you. So this is David's way of saying, I've done all these things, I'm praying for your grace and mercy, I'm asking that you don't cast me away, don't take your Holy Spirit from me, but keep me in this absolution which you have given to me through your prophet. it. And what am I going to do in response to this? I'm going to teach transgressors your ways, not my ways, but your ways. And as a result of that, sinners will return to you, be converted to you, be brought back to you. In other words, David, the sinner, having confessed, having been absolved, having received this forgiveness from God, now says, what I'm going to do as a forgiven sinner is i'm going to tell others about the forgiveness that you have given to me yeah this

isn't simply david saying uh you know do all these things you know forgive me forgive my sins have mercy on me rebuild these bones don't cast me from your presence uh take not your holy spirit for me restore to me the joy of your salvation and i'll go and tell people not to go do these things, and I'll go become the most arduous studier and preacher of the law. This is not what he's saying at all. He's saying, I will teach transgressors your ways. He's going to teach transgressors all of those things about God, the things that he is asking of God to do. He's, I'm going to teach sinners about that, and when I do that, because, I mean, as Paul will write, that it's the kindness of God that leads to repentance, right? And so David says, look,

If I can go and use this then, this encounter with the love and forgiveness of God, sinners are going to say, well, then maybe me too. Yeah, and part of the way he does this is actually in the very composition of Psalm 51. Oh, for sure, yeah. Yeah, this is one of the ways he teaches transgressors about the merciful, gracious, forgiving ways of God. It's like what Jesus says to Peter in Luke 22, after you have returned then uh comfort your brothers right yeah so after having experienced what you're about to experience peter then come back and comfort console strengthen your brothers

it goes on verse 14 deliver me from blood guiltiness oh god uh god of my salvation then my tongue will joyfully sing of your your righteousness so deliver me from the the blood guiltiness which was on his hands as a result of what he what he did to uriah as well as to the the other soldiers who were who were with him verse 15 if you're part of a liturgical church or perhaps if even if you're not you probably heard this this is a very familiar part of the the liturgy oh lord open my lips and my mouth will declare your praise this is david saying that before this point he's been he's been silent uh he's almost as it were ashamed to say anything and so he's praying that God will open his lips so that he can declare all these things which he

has been declaring in the psalm the praise of God for who he is and for what he's done to to David done for David yeah it's a wild thing that David is saying that do all these things and what I'm to do is I'm going to sing, teach, preach. All these things have to do with his mouth, right? I'm going to teach people. I'm going to share about your forgiveness. I'm going to preach the absolution. I'm going to sing praise. All of this. Yeah, David can't shut up about the goodness of God, which is a great thing not to be able to be quiet about. Yeah, he's like the leper that Jesus healed. He's like, don't say anything. He's like, well, that's not going to happen. yeah reverse psychology he goes and tells everybody what uh what christ has done for him

well to kind of to wrap up these these closing verses uh since we're kind of at the end of our end of our time he says uh in verse 16 you don't delight in sacrifice or i would give it you're not pleased with a burnt offering the sacrifices of god are a broken spirit a broken and a contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. Those are words familiar from Isaiah 66 as well. These are the kind of sacrifices that God is pleased with, because as Luther often says, God works from nothing, so God reduces us down to nothing like a broken spirit and a contrite heart, so that from that nothingness, he can create us anew into the people that he wants us to be. Yeah, this is really an acknowledgment of David that the sacrificial system is not going to be enough

for him. He's like, I mean, if I could just go sacrifice an animal, it'd be good to go. I mean, obviously, I would go do that. But David knows that something more is going to be required here, that that is not going to get it done. Yeah. And then the closing two verses are a little bit out of, not out of sync, but a little bit different focus than the rest of the psalm, because it expands out from just David or just the individual sinner to what we might call the community of God, which here is called Zion. He says, do good to Zion in your good pleasure. Build the walls of Jerusalem. Then you will delight in right sacrifices and burn offerings and whole burnt offerings. Then wools will be offered on your altar, which I take to mean that the impact

that the mercy and the grace of God makes upon the individual sinner is also the impact that it makes upon the broader community of the of the church this builds up zion this builds up the community of god so that the kind of worship that is conducted there may reflect who god is as the gracious and merciful forgiver and the restorer of sinners which then leads to sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving to god and that is it man we went we went a little bit long that's okay hopefully this is 43 minutes in the old yeah it's a little long but you know it's you got a little bonus. That was us trying. I was trying hard. I was holding my tongue. Yeah, that was us going a little bit quicker than we wanted to. I was praying the opposite prayer of David there.

I was like, shut my mouth, God. This is going to be a two-hour podcast if I say everything I'm thinking right now. But, well, guys, hopefully you enjoyed that. This is a good time to look of the psalm, and in the next episode, we'll get back into the narrative in David's life. But, you know, the psalms are part of the Bible that are obviously written in conjunction with other things that are going on in the scriptures. Now, we don't know what all those are, but there's some that are real obvious, and so it seemed appropriate to do that. All right, Chad, I'll see you next week, where we will pick up the story of David. All right, see you then. We'll see you next time.