RECIPE FOR RESTORATION

  PSALM 51  ABBY FREE, JULY 8, 2001        'RECIPE FOR RESTORATION'

When a novel begins with the agonizing cry, "O God, have mercy on me," you know that the character is in trouble. This person is so lost or so sick or so worried or so afraid or so guilty, that he or she can't go on without relief. Life has been interrupted by the deepest anguish. And when you read further and learn that this person is wealthy and healthy you really become curious. What could have happened here? - That's how Psalm 51 begins.

A psalm is a song, and there are 150 songs gathered together into one book or scroll called the Book of the Psalms. Psalm songs were sung or recited by Jews and also in the early church and in some present day churches. Ps 51 has been dubbed the Psalm of Psalms. We are about to find out why. This not a poetic composition but a desperate cry. There is a story behind this psalm.  Psalms often have back-stories behind them and Ps.51 may have the largest back-story of all the psalms. In fact, if this were on TV, it might begin with a content warning.

"The following presentation may contain strong language, scenes of a sexual nature and extreme violence and may not be suitable to all viewers.  Viewer discretion is advised." 

In our English Bibles, Psalm 51 has a superscription, a brief introduction that was not part of the original composition. It is an addition to help explain the purpose for the psalm or the big story. This superscription says, "To the Chief Musician. A Psalm of David when Nathan the prophet went to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba." It refers to the back-story, which is the darkest moment of David's knowledge of himself and his capabilities to sin. 

David was a renaissance man, a warrior, a philosopher, a poet, a musician, and a king. He was also a sinner. He had risen from a fairly low place to a very high place. He had God’s favour and God’s ear. As much as David was a hero in Israel, his record is forever marked by an asterisk because of a huge misstep. That asterisk is noted in 1 Kings 5:5. "David did that which was right in the eyes of the Lord, and turned not aside from any thing that he commanded him all the days of his life, save only in the matter of Uriah the Hittite.”  

What would he do and say if he learned that he had displeased God? Psalm 51 is the full script of David's confession of sin. It is filled with remorse, contrition and repentance. Psalm 51 is one of a group of Penitential Psalms (Psalms 6, 32, 38, 51, 102, 130, and 143). Like the others, 51 features confession, and repentance, and brokenness, and cries for mercy and forgiveness.

Here is that back-story directly from 2 Samuel 11 & 12 where it's portrayed in explicit detail. 

It was Springtime. In Palestine, barley and wheat crops were harvested in the spring. An invading army could live off harvested grains. It became a season to resume or launch a war. David's armies and his enemies had waited until the weather was more favourable and predictable. It was not unusual for a king to remain at home during battle, but this was David. Customarily David accompanied his troops into battle. He was that kind of leader. Not a figurehead but a full participant, a man's man. Soldiers felt courageous under his command. We don't know why on this occasion to which I will refer, David did not go with his armies into battle against the Ammonite people. David sent his general, Joab to lead the army. David instead remained in the city of Jerusalem in his royal chambers. 

One evening he got out of his bed and walked through the open doors into the cool night air on his palace balcony. From there he could survey the city, and far across the city walls into the distant country. Then he looked at surroundings closer to the palace and that's when he saw her. A woman bathing in a pool and she was attractive. A king has access to information, and he asked his assistants to inquire about her, who she was, where she lived, all those personal details. He learned that her name was Bathsheba, and that she was a married woman. Would that be an issue for the king? He learned that she was married to Uriah, one of David's loyal soldiers who was currently engaged at the front lines of battle. 

David was shamelessly thinking lustful thoughts about Bethsheba. If you were David's personal friend, and you knew what was going on in his mind, you might have said, "David, cool it. Remember who you are. Remember the LORD. Remember your vows." His personal aides said nothing to David because you do not talk back to a King. You simply obey. In spite of the fact that she was married, actually in total disregard of this, David had his aides bring Bathsheba to his chamber and he slept with her. So now if you were a personal friend, you would be ashamed of David and saddened by him and concerned for him. He displayed appallingly poor judgement and character weakness.   

You know their names now, Harvey Weinstein Movie director, Charlie Rose formerly of CBS News, actors Dustin Hoffman, Kevin Spacey and Ben Affleck, and Al Franken Democratic Senator from Minnesota. Those are a handful of several hundred high profile men who in 2017 and 2018 have been exposed to public condemnation and some to criminal charges, because of alleged sexual harassment, assault and misconduct. King David's action was similar to theirs, using position and influence to flatter or intimidate or to force another person to provide sexual favour.

Some time passed. Not much time. And now, if as a friend you had not been dismayed enough about David's behaviour, you are about to be disheartened even more. Bathsheba found that she was pregnant and she informed David about this. Even now David could have owned his moral failure but he didn't. One moral error can be enough to mess up a life and David's bad choice was going to cast a dark shadow over many lives. In his compromised brain David hatched a creative cover-up of his sin. He summoned Bathsheba's husband Uriah from the war zone and told him to take some well-deserved R&R. Told him to go home, eat and drink and rest and sleep with his wife whom he had not seen for some time. David's creepy plan was to fool Uriah into thinking that the child who would be born, was Uriah's own child. Easy. Done deal. Case closed. What David failed to anticipate was the strength of this soldier's patriotism. Instead of going to his own home and to his wife, Uriah spent the first night outside the King's palace. When David found out about this, he asked Uriah personally why he had done that. Uriah's response should have shamed David. Uriah told David, that because all of his fellow soldiers were away from their homes and engaged in battle, he could not justify going home, putting his feet up and enjoying all of the pleasures of home and food and his wife. Uriah refused to go home. This went on for several days and nights.  

I would have been so much better for David to obstruct the sin early, say no, stop and repent and change and make it right with Uriah and Bathsheba. But David's evil instead shifted into overdrive. This is predictably what happens. David ordered Uriah back into battle and told his commanders to place Uriah at a battle position where there was a high casualty rate. Sure enough, Uriah was killed. David didn't actually plunge a sword into the man or run him through with a spear, but he had certainly conspired to insure the man's death. David, the giant killer, the songwriter and poet, the musician, the shepherd anointed King, the beloved of the people, the man after God's own heart, was an adulterer and a murderer.

Bathsheba mourned the loss of her husband for a respectable period of time. Following that, David brought her to his palace and she became his wife. Does that displease you? It certainly displeased the LORD. The entire story I have just told you is reported in 2 Samuel chapters 11 and 12, and in 2 Samuel 11:27, it says about David's last act, "But the thing displeased the Lord".

Turn with me please to 2 Samuel 12. As you turn there I will tell you that God was gracious to David, but here is something we must be clear about. While there is forgiveness when the sinner repents, there may still be consequences. 

So chapter 12 opens with the mention of a prophet of God named Nathan whom God sent to David with an unenviable task. Nathan was told to confront King David with his sin. Just imagine the apprehension attached to that responsibility. But Nathan presented one of the most artful confrontations over sin that we can imagine, and through it he was able to teach David how wicked his behaviour had been. 

Nathan told David an hypothetical story as if it were true. This prophet of God told David about a very wealthy landowner and farmer who possessed thousands of animals but when a guest arrived for dinner, this rich man, instead of butchering and preparing one of his own many animals, confiscated a destitute neighbour's only animal which was more of a family pet than it was an animal meant for food. It was such a convincing story that David believed it. What is so conspicuous however, is David's sensitivity to the sin of this wealthy man even while his conscience remained deadened to his own felony. He became so enraged that he demanded to know the name of this entitled perpetrator because he intended to administer justice. David said that the offender should die, but not before paying the poor man back four times what he lost, 4 animals for the one that was taken. 

At that precise moment Nathan said to David, "You are that man." And then Nathan was a prophet, he recited a quotation directly from God, in which God told him how grievous his sin was in the face of all that God had done to bless David. 2 Samuel 12: 7-9. 

He has realized how sinfully he has acted and verse 13 is David's heart-broken admission of his guilt. "I have sinned against the Lord."

Nathan then says something that amazes us in 2 Samuel 12:24. "The Lord also has put away your sin; you shall not die."

We want to know why God didn’t simply destroy David or make his world fall apart or turn him into a pillar of salt. If anyone deserved to be punished, David did. His afternoon stroll on his palace penthouse roof led him to break half of the Ten Commandments. He coveted, he stole, he committed adultery, he killed and he bore false witness. And yet after his Bathsheba and Uriah scandal, David continued to live and to serve as king, so we want to know what accounts for that? Why was David able to receive forgiveness? - Simply put, it's because that's who God is. We know what David is, a sinner.  Just like us as a matter of fact. And God? God is a forgiving God. 

Now in Ps. 51 we hear David's full public admission turned into a prayer song asking for forgiveness and cleansing. This psalm provides some tremendous insights into David's spiritual recovery from a place of arrogance and callousness towards God's voice. In what he writes we read the formula for our own recovery. Let's see this psalm together right now. Ps 51:1-19

There are recovery steps suggested in this psalm, beginning with this one.

HUMBLY APPEAL TO GOD'S CHARACTER.

DAVID APPEALED TO GOD'S CHARACTER, PS 51:1a,b,c.

Look! If you or I are satisfied merely to be right in the opinion of our closest friends or sympathizers, then we have what we want, but not what we need. We need God to continue with us. We need Him. Once David gained a more serious view of his own sin, he wanted the only thing that could give rest to his soul, and that was the mercy, the lovingkindness, and the tender mercies or steadfast love of God. Our only help and hope is to do what the Psalmist does here, and that is to abandon all attempts to justify ourselves and rather to appeal instead to the character of God. 

If a person is ever to be right with God it is imperative to understand, it is not David's character that determined the outcome of this story, but God's character. A sinner's only hope is for mercy that grows out of God's distinctive character. Notice that David is talking to God, telling him what he knows about Him. That's what we must do too. We need to tell God what we know to be true about God. "Have mercyupon me, O God, according to your lovingkindness; according to the multitude of your tender mercies, Blot out my transgressions."

Three words describe character traits of God that were necessary to David, mercy, lovingkindness and tender mercies. David didn't just imagine these or presume them to be so. These came from God's own revelation of Himself in Exodus 34:6. That is the account of God giving Moses the Ten Commandments a second time. God told Moses to prepare two more stone tablets, and to bring them to the top of Mount Sinai. God would again inscribe the commandments on those tablets. Exodus 34:4. So Moses chiseled out two stone tablets like the first ones and went up Mount Sinai early in the morning, as the LORD had commanded him; and he carried the two stone tablets in his hands.  5 Then the LORD came down in the cloud and stood there with him and proclaimed his name, the LORD.  6 And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, "The LORD, the LORD, the compassionateand gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, 7 maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished."  The three words, which David used in this petition in Psalm 51, came from that passage. 

  Small wonder that once David understood the gravity of his sin and acknowledged it, he appealed to God's character because only there could he deal with what was wrong.  

David appeals for mercy because that is the language of someone who has no claim for the favour he is begging. David appeals to God's steadfast love, which is one Hebrew word, and is a covenant word. Although David is so unworthy, he knows that he still belongs to God. David also appeals to God's tender mercies or warmth, which is a word associated with compassion from the inmost heart.

HONESTLY ACKNOWLEDGE YOUR OWN CHARACTER.

THIS IS WHAT DAVID DID NOW; TURNED TO HIS OWN CHARACTER. He considered his sinfulness. This crime was no freak event. It was in character with his human nature. David admits this. We all come from the same human stock. Psalm 51 is about David's sin. His sins are his own and are inexcusable. But it is also about us! David's sinand ours come out of our flawed natures. We are twisted and bent out of shape. That is not an excuse but an explanation.  (Read Psalm 51:1d-10)

The vocabulary of sin pervades these verses 1-5. You hear words like transgressions (vs.3), iniquity (vss 2,5), sin (vs.2b, 3b), and evil (vs.4). 

Transgressions are willful rebellion. Iniquity is crookedness. Sin is failure to reach a prescribed standard. Evil conveys the injurious effects of sinful behaviour. The repetition of these 'sin' words, drives home the point that sin and its consequences are pervasive. Sin pervades the human situation.

I considered coming to you today and reciting a list of scenarios that resemble Nathan's hypothetical story. I could string off a list of stories that might make you very angry at someone else, for verbally abusing his wife, for screaming at her children, for pocketing some products and not paying for them, for being self righteous, for gossiping, for despising someone else, and for cheating. And when you blow your stack at this supposed sinner, I could have followed that up with, "You are the man, you are the woman, you are that person." There are so many sins we may be taking for granted, or ignoring or excusing to ourselves. I believe you don't need Nathan or me to remind you. 

David says in vs 3, "I acknowledge my sins," and that's such a contrast to that self-absorbed David of 1 Samuel 11 who tried to cover up his tracks. Now he cries, "How could I treat God this way." He goes on to say that "my sins confront me all day long." Because he knows his sin is against God. "Against you, you only, have I sinned." Of course his sin was against other people too. Let's not downplay the wickedness of his act against Uriah. His acts of adultery and murder were not a private matter. But the bottom line is that the sin is an affront to and mockery of God. David's acknowledgement of his sin is the evidence according to verse 6, that God desires truth.

David's appeal is actually what sounds like a series of imperatives to God, but are really requests and they have an echo that starts in verse 6. He says them early and then again. Let me show you.

  "Wash me thoroughly" David cries in vs 2a and 7b. Verse 7 as a future says, "you will wash me."  The verb is associated with doing laundry and David compares himself to dirty jeans or sox or something that needs to be washed and washed and washed again. The washing machine agitates clothes. This used to be done with hands, pounding clothes on rocks, beating and kneading and washing thoroughly. 

  "Cleanse me" in vs 2b and 7a. Verse 7, the future says, "you will purge me with hyssop." The cleansing of a leper required sprinkling him seven times with the sacrificial blood into which a bunch of hyssop was dipped as a sprinkler, or it may refer to ritual cleansing of someone who had come in contact with a dead body. In either case the priest ended this with the announcement, "and he shall be clean." 

  "Blot out" in vss 1 and 9.  Real forgiveness involves more than just a tender spirit toward the offender. It means to 'wipe away' the offenses, like the expunging of the words in a book. The pollution that clings has to be removed.  "You will blot out my iniquities." 

What's the point of this? It's this. If God will take these actions toward David, David will be transformed. He will be restored. He will as vs. 8 says, "hear joy and gladness again." You and I expect to eventually come into God's presence and to hear him say to us, "well done, good and faithful servant." How could that ever be true unless we repent and God washes and cleanses and blots out? And these are the requests that you and I must make when the Spirit of God tells us, "you are that person." "Wash me, cleanse me, and blot out my iniquities." 

Then probably the most memorable three-verse stretch of this psalm comes now in vss. 10-12. Tears flow as David asks for this. When we are truly sorry for sin, serious about being holy people, here is what God hears us saying to him. Read vss. 10-12.This is unmistakable contrition.

Vs. 10. The verb "to create" is the verb used in Genesis 1 of God in creating the world and in Isaiah 40-55 of God doing a new thing. What David wants is a pure heart, a clean heart. And he wants renewal, specifically that he will have a steadfast spirit, a right spirit, a willing spirit to follow God. 

Vs. 11. For David it was the fear of becoming a castaway like his predecessor King Saul, from whom the Spirit of God departed (1 Samuel 16:14), that drives him to cry this out from the depth of his soul. David knew he deserved the same as Saul and he desperately did not want that. So he prayed this prayer of a backslider. 

Vs.12. Have you lost the "joy" of your salvation? Have you become somewhat distant from God? Have you taken God for granted? Or perhaps have you never really gotten to know him. God wants to restore the joy to you that is your birthright as a Christian. Joy is a fruit of the Holy Spirit's work in your life (Galatians 5:22-23). Call out to him and receive the joy God desires for you.

GO PUBLIC WITH YOUR STORY. 

DAVID IS COMMITTED TO MAKING A PUBLIC WITNESS, READ PS. 51:13-17.

An inward transformation was not going to be enough. The inner 'clean heart'and the 'new … spirit' would be accompanied by outwardly visible and audible proclamation. David who sees himself as the chief sinners according to verses 1-5 has now become the teacher of sinners. He has made his confession public. We have read it here. He is teaching us. The one who was reconciled now carried the message of reconciliation all the way through these centuries to us.

As verse 14 begins, David is still horrified by the enormity of his sin against Uriah, so he prays "Deliver me from the guilt of bloodshed." His conscience, so deeply troubled, experiences that transforming work of God's mercy and David can't keep it secret. The new thing that God was doing in David's life needed to be declared. Every organ of speech participates in this. Can you hear it in verse 14, "My tongue shall sing aloud of your righteousness. And verse 15, 'open my lips, and my mouth shall show forth your praise.'  

  The customary practice would have been for a sinner to make a ritual public offering or sacrifice both in praise to God and as a sign of remorse and repentance. Here it sounds as though David's intent by this outpouring of praise is to replace what would have been the customary public offering, with what truly satisfies God. "For you do not desire sacrifice or else I would give it; You do not delight in burnt offering."  Instead the Psalmist's sacrifice is 'a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart' in verse 17 does and God does not despise this but welcomes it.

We come to the final two verses of the psalm.They give the intensely personal testimony of the Psalm a corporate dimension. The whole city of Jerusalem is built up physically and spiritually by the example of this psalmist’s genuine brokenness before God. The ultimate security of the city rests in the mercy of the loving God who forgives, redeems and restores to true service and worship.

Finally, the benefit of full forgiveness and spiritual renewal extends to the city as a whole. Jerusalem’s prosperity is captured in two images: well-fortified walls and God-pleasing worship. 

These last two verses show that the nation, in its own darkest hour, found words for its own confession and in praying like David did, it rekindled hope.