Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - The God of the Old Testament | The Writings | Psalm 51

Episode Date: May 8, 2024

Can the seemingly wrathful and angry God of the Old Testament be the same loving and gentle Jesus of the New Testament? In today's episode, Jensen looks to Psalm 51 to share the importance of understanding the entire picture of who God is. Read the Bible with us in 2024! This year, we’re tackling a group of Old Testament books traditionally known as “The Writings”— Psalms, Chronicles, Proverbs, Daniel, Ruth and more! Download your reading plan now. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it so that others can find it, too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Psalm 51

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life and the time it takes to get to work. I'm Jensen Holt McNair. When you think of God throughout the Old Testament, do you see him in the same way you see Jesus? Or do you, like many others, tend to think that the God of the Old Testament is angry, mean, and authoritative, compared to Jesus who ushers in an era of love, justice, and mercy. Old Testament, God, wrath, and judgment. New Testament, Jesus, love, and forgiveness. See, the problem is that Jesus is God.

The Father, Son, and Spirit have always been the triune God we see throughout all of Scripture. God, Yahweh, has always been who He is, and He has never. changed and never will. Who you see in the Old Testament is the same as who you see in the New Testament. Now, it would take a whole Bible study to dive into this topic thoroughly and understand why people make these conclusions and where we have a misunderstanding and what scripture actually shows us about who God is. But for today, we get to dive into a Psalm that I think really beautifully shows us that love and forgiveness is not just a Jesus thing. With that, we find ourselves in Psalm 51 today. This Psalm is a penitential Psalm of David, one of seven penitential Psalms that we find in the Bible.

Now, what does that mean? Well, it means that this Psalm is a prayer of confession and repentance. See, David is lamenting over his sin. The particular sin in question is that of his adultery with Besheba, and the following murder of her husband, Uriah, in order to cover up his indiscretion with Bashiba. So after he commits these sins, the prophet Nathan comes before him and calls out his sin. And what we find here in Psalm 51 is David's response. He's writing about the way he felt when that happened. Verse 1. Have mercy on me, oh God.

According to your steadfast love, according to your above, according to your abhorpe. abundant mercy blot out my transgressions. So the first thing that we have to notice here is that David doesn't continue to try and cover up his sin. He's king. He could have killed the prophet Nathan. He could have continued to hide his actions, but instead he is humbled by the rebuke and confronts what he has done. Second, in David's humility, he throws himself at the mercy of God. You see, David would have known that under the law, because of his transgressions, because he murdered, Numbers 35 tells us that he should be put to death. If you murder, you get the death sentence. So to humble himself, to stop trying to cover up his sin, to lay himself at the mercy of God,

is to accept that he is guilty of murder and therefore deserving of death. Now, if you're like me, when you read passages of the law, specifically ones like, the one in Numbers 35, where the law is so matter of fact, if you murder, you are sentenced to death. It's in these places that I begin to wonder if this God, who wrote this law in the Old Testament, is different than Jesus, who I see offering forgiveness to all people in the New Testament. But as I study this passage today, I learned something. What we find in Psalm 51 shows us that God's law was always meant to be read. and interpreted in light of who God is. You see, the first verse of Psalm 51, David calls out for God

to have mercy on him according to his steadfast love, according to his abundant mercy. That language comes from somewhere. It comes from all the way back in Exodus 34 when God passed in front of Moses on Mount Sinai. God said, The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands and forgiving wickedness, rebellion, and sin. Yet, he does not leave the guilty unpunished. He punishes the children and their children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation. So as God is establishing his covenant with his people, as he's giving them his Ten Commandments, his laws,

He tells Moses who it is that is speaking, that is giving this law, who there God is. And notice that he leads with his compassion and graciousness, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, forgiving wickedness, rebellion, and sin. And he ends with the warning that he will not leave guilt unpunished. Now, you may be wondering, how can these two things coexist? Well, in progress, In Coverbs 2831, we read that those who conceal their sin will not prosper, but those who confess it and forsake their sin will find mercy. And so God is compassionate. He will forgive those who are humbled and who truly turn from and repent of their sin. But he is also just. He will not leave unrepentant evil without judgment. God must be both. To love, he must punish evil and have mercy

on those who are repentant. Now, David knew the kind of God he was crying out to, and so when he called out to God for mercy, he appealed to what he knew to be true about this God, a God who offered steadfast love and abundant mercy. He continues in verse 2 with a request, wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. See, David speaks of being washed clean,

not because of the imagery that may come to your mind of being washed by the blood of Jesus, but because that was what was required of God's people ceremonially in order for them to even come before God. See, in Exodus 19, before God comes down on Mount Sinai, he instructs the people to wash their clothes so that they will be ready to stand before him. Later, in Numbers 19, in order for the people to become ceremonially clean and enter into the sanctuary of the Lord, along with sacrifices, they are instructed to wash their clothes and bathe with water in order to be clean. See, this washing was what made them clean so that they could safely come into God's presence. It was an outward sign of their inward need for holiness. And so here, David is referencing that action.

He's asking God to wash and cleanse his inner life, his heart, to take away his sin. sin. David knows he has done evil. He knows he has sinned, and he looks to God alone for mercy, to cleanse him of this sin. Now the next four verses show us the humble state of David's heart. For I know my transgressions and my sin is ever before me. Against you, you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment. Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being and you teach me wisdom in a secret heart. David is no longer hiding. He isn't trying to cover it up or explain it away. He's admitting his sin before his just and righteous God. And because he knows the gravity of his sin, the penalty for his

sin, he lays himself at the mercy of God and asks him again to cleanse him, to give him a new heart. Purge or cleanse. Cleanse me with hyssop, and I shall be clean. Wash me, and I will be wider than snow. Let me hear joy and gladness. Let the bones that you have broken rejoice. Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from your presence and take not your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation. and uphold me with a willing spirit. Now why? Why does David want to be cleansed, to be given a new heart? We find out in verse 13. Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will return to you. Deliver me from blood guiltiness, O God, O God of my salvation, and my tongue will sing aloud of your righteousness.

O Lord, open my lips and my mouth will declare your praise. So David, he wants to be cleansed so that he can worship God and give him praise, so that he can share the goodness of God with the people around him. See, David knows that in order to safely draw near to God, in order to live faithfully, in order to worship and be in right relationship with His God, he must be cleansed, washed, forgiven, purified. David needs God's steadfast love and abundant mercy, and he knows that he gives it to those who are repentant,

and humbled by their sin, by their need for God's mercy. He finishes out this Psalm by further nailing down this point. Verse 16, for you will not delight in sacrifice or I would give it. You will not be pleased with a burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart. Oh God, you will not despise. Do good to Zion in your good pleasure. Build up the walls of Jerusalem. then will you delight in right sacrifices, in burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings, then bulls will be offered on your altar. When you read verse 16 alone, you may be tempted to wonder if David is saying that God's law to make sacrifices isn't a good thing, or that he's suggesting that it doesn't work,

that all the people need is a broken and contrite heart, as he says in verse 17. But that it isn't what he's saying. Later in verse 19, we read that David and the people of God will continue. on in giving sacrifices, because God does delight in right sacrifices, sacrifices given with a broken and contrite heart, sacrifices made by someone who is humbled, repentant, and seeking God's mercy. You see, we've come all the way back to the beginning. David knows he's sinned. He knows that under the law he is deserving in death, but he throws himself at the mercy of his God, a God who is just, but is also compassionate, gracious, loving, and merciful.

A God who is slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who forgives the wicked their sin and rebellion, a God who promises to have mercy and compassion on those who humble themselves before him. You see, even before Jesus ever entered the scene, David knew that the law and commands that we often bristle at were always meant to be read and interpreted with the understanding of the one who wrote it.

not a wrathful, vengeful, angry, hateful God, but one full of steadfast love and abundant mercy. Is this how you see God? When you've messed up, when your sin is before you, are you tempted to hide it first like David did, to fall further into sin in your attempts to cover up and run away from your brokenness? This psalm should give us assurance that the same God who made a way for David to be washed clean through the conviction of the law and offering of God's mercy has also made a way for you and I to stand before him righteous, cleansed, and washed. Like David, we must stand before God, repentant, humbled, aware of our sin, aware of our guilt, aware that our actions, our rebellion,

make us enemies of God deserving of death. It is in that understanding that we give ourselves over to the mercy of a loving God. You see, the same God who offered forgiveness to David came to live among us, to die for our sins and to rise to life again. He was the sacrifice that all of creation needed to be washed clean so that we could come safely into God's presence. Will you stop trying to run from your sin? Stop trying to cover it up to ignore it. See, Scripture tells us that we follow a merciful God, one who offers forgiveness and righteousness to those. who have repentant hearts, so that we can live faithful lives, praising, worshiping, and spreading

God's kingdom to the ends of the earth. That is the God of the whole Bible, a God of steadfast love and abundant mercy. Will you follow him?