Introduction:
Psalm 51 is one of the few psalms where we are given the historical background. The inscription reads, "A Psalm of David when Nathan the prophet came to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba." That identifies clearly for us the incident out of which this psalm arose.
It was the time when David became involved in the double sin of adultery and murder while he was king. He had walked with God for many years. He had gained a reputation as a prophet, a man who understood the deep things of God; and he had established himself as the long time spiritual leader of his people. Then suddenly, toward the end of his reign, he became involved in this terrible sin.
The interesting thing is that David himself records this sin for us. It must have been a painfully humiliating experience for the king. You remember the story. He was on his palace roof one day when the army had gone out to battle and he saw a beautiful woman next door bathing herself. His passion was aroused and he sent over messengers and ordered her to be brought to him. He entered into an adulterous relationship with her because she was a married woman. Her husband, a soldier in David’s army, was away fighting for his king.
Later, when David learned that she was expecting a child, he panicked and tried to cover up his actions. He ordered the husband, Uriah, to be sent home from battle, hoping that he would sleep with his wife and the child would then be accepted as his own. But Uriah was a faithful soldier, committed to battle, and though he came home at the king’s orders, he would not go into his own house but slept with the soldiers at the palace and returned to the battle the next day.
David knew that ultimately his sin would be found out so he took another step. That’s always what sin does -- it leads us on deeper and deeper, farther than we ever intended to go. Before the king knew it, he found himself forced into a desperate attempt to cover up his evil. He ordered Uriah, the husband, to be put in the forefront of the battle where he would most certainly be killed. And when news of Uriah’s death reached King David he felt he was off the hook, he had safely covered his sin. But his conscience continued to bother him.
In Psalm 32 David records how he felt during that terrible time when he was trying to cover up his sin. He said, “When I kept things to myself, I felt weak deep inside me. I moaned all day long.” (Psalm 32:3, NCV). For about a year, he tried to live with a guilty conscience.
Do you remember Edgar Allen Poe’s story, “The Telltale Heart”? In that story, the main character has committed murder and he buries the body of the victim in his basement. But the murderer is unable to escape the haunting guilt of his deed. He begins to hear the heartbeat of his dead victim. A cold sweat pours over him as that heartbeat goes on and on, relentlessly, getting louder and louder. Eventually, it becomes clear that the pounding which drove the man mad was not in the grave below but in his own chest.
You get the feeling that that’s how David felt when he committed the sins of adultery and murder. The guilt he felt became almost unbearable.
So God sent a prophet to David. God loved this king, loved him too much to let him go on covering up and thus damaging himself and his entire kingdom by this hidden sin. So God sent the prophet Nathan to David.
When David was confronted, he acknowledged the terrible sin he had committed. He fell on his face before God and out of that experience of confession comes this beautiful fifty-first Psalm. There are several things that I want us to notice as we focus on verse 10, where David writes:
“Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.” (Psalm 51:10).
I. There is a Need in Our Lives For Cleansing
I heard about two bachelors (they may even have been ASU students) who were talking one day, and their conversation drifted from politics to sports to cooking.
One of them said, “I got a cookbook once, but I could never do anything with it.”
The other one said, “Too much fancy work in it, huh?”
You first one said, “Yeah, it sure was. Every one of the recipes began the same way - ‘Take a clean dish.’”
The problem with our relationship with God is much the same. God says, “Take a clean life”, and we go, “Wait a minute, that’s a problem. Because, as Paul said in Romans 3:23, “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” And because we have all sinned, we’re all in need of forgiveness.
The concept of forgiveness, of being made right with God, is pictured in the Bible in many different ways, sometimes as a new birth, sometimes as the crossing out of a debt, sometimes as the breaking off of a heavy chain.
But the picture of forgiveness that David uses here is perhaps the most common picture throughout the word of God -- he describes it as a cleansing. “Create in me a clean heart, O God.” A few verses earlier, he wrote, “Wash me thoroughly from my sin, and cleanse me from my sin.” (Psalm 51:2). And then in verse 7, “Purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean; Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.” (Psalm 51:7).
You see, sin is dirty, it’s filthy, it stains our lives. Isaiah put it this way: “But we are all like an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags…” (Isaiah 64:6). The NCV translates the first part of that verse: “All of us are dirty with sin.” Like the mechanic who’s being working under the car all day, or the gardener who’s been out digging in the dirt, we’re covered with filth.
And there is the need for us to be cleansed. So David says, “Purge me, purify me, wash me.” The words he uses imply a thorough scrubbing. And you can almost picture an old-time mother with her child at the sink scrubbing him until his skin literally shines and squeaks, getting behind the ears, getting rid of every bit of dirt. David says, “God, that’s what I want you to do to me. I’ve gotten myself dirty. I’ve been out messing with some things I shouldn’t have been messing with, and I’m covered with filth. I need for you to clean me up.”
It’s a common image in the Bible. In Ezekiel 36:25, God says to Judah, “I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols.”
Ananias said to Saul in Acts 22:16, “And now why are you waiting? Arise and be baptized, and wash away your sins, calling on the name of the Lord.”
“But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin.” (I John 1:7)
There is a need in our lives for cleansing.
II. That Cleansing Needs to Begin in the Heart
David doesn’t say, “Change the way I behave.” He says, “Change my heart.” It’s not that how we behave is unimportant. It’s just that we’ve got to start at the heart. We can go through all the right motions without our heart being right, but if the heart is right, everything else will fall into place.
That’s why in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says, “I don’t want you to sit back all proud just because you’ve never murdered anyone. I want to know what’s in your heart. And I don’t want you to think you’re somebody special just because you’ve never committed adultery. Let’s take a look at what’s in your heart.”
So David says, “Even if I never ever commit murder or adultery again in my entire life, there’s still something here that’s a problem. So God, I want you cleanse my heart. I want to cleanse the things I think about, my priorities, my desire to serve you -- all of it.”
In Ephesians 4, Paul talks about the change in our lives which ought to take place when we become Christians. He calls it putting off the old man and putting on the new man. Living as a new man involves such things as telling the truth and not stealing, things that we do. But notice how he starts this section:
“that you put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness.” (Ephesians 4:22-24)
I want you to notice in particular that phrase, “be renewed in the spirit of your mind”. I like the way the NCV translates this verse. It says, “But you were taught to be made new in your hearts, to become a new person.”
Paul goes on to say, “This is how you ought to act as Christians. And the reason you ought to act this way is because you were taught to be made new in your hearts.” That’s where the cleansing needs to start.
III. God Creates the Clean Heart
David doesn’t offer to do it himself. In fact, he knows that he can’t. And when David says, “Create in me a clean heart, O God”, he goes back to the language of the creation itself in the first chapters of Genesis. The word "create" used here in Psalm 51 is the very same Hebrew word used in Genesis. In fact, it is a word used only of God in the Bible. It means to create something out of nothing. Human beings can fashion, arrange, or remodel things. But human beings can never create anything in the true sense of the word. We can’t bring into being something that never existed before.
This past week, I sent out a story through “Thought For the Day” about a group of scientists who got together one day and decided that man had come a long way and no longer needed God. So they picked one scientist to go and tell God that they were done with Him.
The scientist walked up to God and said, "God, we’ve decided that we no longer need you. We’re to the point that we can clone people and do many miraculous things, so why don’t you just go on and get lost."
God listened very patiently and kindly to the man and after the scientist was done talking, God said, "Very well, how about this, let’s say we have a ’man-making’ contest." To which the scientist replied, "OK, great!"
God added, "Now, we’re going to do this just like I did back in the old days with Adam." The scientist said, "Sure, no problem" and bent down and grabbed himself a handful of dirt.
God just looked at him and said, "No, no, no. You go get your own dirt!"
The point is that, even if man can gets to the point where he thinks he can be on the level of God, he hasn’t even come close. Only God has the power to speak and bring this world into existence. Only God can create.
So it’s not surprising that when David wants a clean heart, he says, “Create in me a clean heart, O God.” Because, you see, I don’t have the power to create a clean heart. And you don’t have the power. Solomon said, “Who can say, ‘I have made my heart clean, I am pure from my sin’?” (Proverbs 20:9).
The answer is obvious. None of us can say that. Only God has the ability to take a heart of sin and purify it and cleanse it.
People try to deal with their guilt in a lot of different ways. Some try to cover it up with a lot of good works, thinking, “If I do enough good deeds, I can balance the scales in my favor.” But good deeds won’t get rid of guilt. On Rosh Hashana (the Jewish New Year) it is customary for Jews to go to the ocean, pray, and throw bread crumbs onto the water, for the fish can symbolically eat their sins. But that’s not going to take away the guilt.
Only what God has done for the us through the sacrifice Jesus offered on the cross can take away the sin and the guilt and the shame. Create in me a clean heart, O God.
IV. We Must Have an Attitude That Allows God to Change Our Heart
Yes, God is the only one who can create a clean heart, so there might be some who have the idea, “Well, let’s just sit back and wait for God to do it!” The truth is, though, we have the right kind of attitude before God can do anything with our hearts.
Notice how David prepared himself before he asked God to create in him a clean heart:
1. There was contrition.
“The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite heart -- These, O God, you will not despise.” (Psalm 51:17). David truly was contrite.
To be contrite means to be aware of our spiritual condition. It means that our inner self is crushed with a sense of its guilt. It does not mean merely feeling bad or remorseful about sin. It means that we have a genuine and deep sorrow for our rebellion against God and a determined desire to do differently.
I read once about a man who wrote a letter to the Internal Revenue Service saying, "I haven’t been able to sleep lately because last year, when I filled out my income tax forms, I deliberately misrepresented my income. I am enclosing a check for $150.00, and if I still can’t sleep, I’ll send you the rest." That’s not at all an attitude of contrition.
You see, our tendency is to rationalize or explain or excuse or defend or justify our sin. A contrite heart does not seek to blame circumstances or other people or God for our own failure. You don’t see David blaming God or Bathsheba: “Lord, if you hadn’t had me king I wouldn’t be walking on this palace roof in the first place. And besides, did you see what she wasn’t wearing?”
And yet we hear that sort of thing all the time. “If you were married to this jerk, you’d cheat, too” Or, “It’s not my fault, the boss is so cheap I have to steal from the company to survive.” Or, “If I didn’t have such terrible neighbors, I wouldn’t lose my temper as much.”
If we ever hope to have a clean heart, there must be contrition.
2. There was confession
“For I acknowledge my transgressions, and my sin is always before me. Against You, You only, have I sinned, and done this evil in Your sight.” (Psalm 51:3-4a).
There are two sides to David’s confession. First of all, he confessed to himself. He said, “I realize that I have sinned. I can’t deny it or escape it or forget it. I recognize what I’ve done.”
Then he confessed his sin to God, “Against you, you only, have I sinned.” Along with his admission of guilt is a confession of God’s justice, God’s right to judge him for his sin. David makes no plea for lenience, no claim that God is too hard on him, no appeal for a light sentence. Simply put, he says, “You’re right, I’m wrong.”
Genuine confession demands that we take sin as seriously as God takes it. It’s not just a slip-up, a mistake. We need to have the right attitude toward sin -- a loathing, a disgust. And we need to determine to turn away from our sin.
Solomon said, “He who covers his sins will not prosper, but whoever confesses and forsakes them will have mercy.” (Proverbs 28:13).
Here in Psalm 51 is a frank and full acknowledgment of sin. David says, "I know my sins, I’m not trying to cover them up. They are always before me, this double act of adultery and murder. I am guilty." He doesn’t try to cover them up or to blame God for them. He says, "It’s not your fault, God; it’s mine."
That’s one reason why so many cannot find forgiveness for their sins. They suffer for years with a guilty conscience because they are not willing to come to the place where they acknowledge their sin. They refuse to call it what God calls it. They refuse to be honest with themselves and with God. But we can never be forgiven while we do this, for the first step in the process of forgiveness is an acknowledgment of sin.
Conclusion:
“Create in me a clean heart, O God.”
The most beautiful part of this story is that God did that for David and he’s willing to do the same for any of us. God’s delights in having the opportunity to forgive. And when he forgives, he doesn’t continue to hold it over our heads.
I heard the story a few months ago about the owner of a Rolls Royce. I don’t know if it’s a true story or not, but it certainly sounds as if could be true:
You see, that great British automaker takes great pride in the reliability of their handcrafted automobiles. An obviously wealthy owner of a Rolls Royce took it to Europe on an extended trip. While traveling in France the car had some mechanical problem. He called the Rolls Royce factory and asked that they send out a mechanic immediately to fix the problem. The company responded in royal fashion. They put a mechanic on a private jet with all of the necessary tools and flew him over to France to make the repairs. The owner was so wealthy that he wasn’t at all concerned about the cost, and would spare no expense to make sure that his beloved Rolls Royce was properly repaired.
However, after several months he realized that he had not received a bill. He had his secretary contact the Rolls Royce factory to inquire about the bill. He received this reply from the Rolls Royce company: In typical British fashion, it said simply, "We have no recollection or record of any Rolls Royce having ever had a breakdown or being in need of repair anywhere in France."
That reminds me of how God treats us when he forgives us of sin. Sometimes we have a harder time forgiving ourselves than does God. We sometimes feel weighed down with the burden of guilt long after God has removed the burden of sin. We need to follow God’s instructions to find forgiveness, then trust that God has kept his promise to forgive. Take comfort from these words:
"As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us." (Psalm 103:12)
This morning, there may be some in this audience in need of the cleansing that God offers.
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.” (2 Corinthians 5:17)
