To the choirmaster. A Psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet went to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba.
51:1 Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions.2 Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin! 3 For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. 4Against 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.
Introduction
Imagine for a moment that your whole life you have been doing something very wrong.Every evening you go out to water your garden and you have the same routine.You turn the faucet on and you take your garden hose and start trying to attach the end to the faucet.Every day the same thing happens.You get sprayed in the face and your clothes are drenched with water and you are very irritated at how this happens each time.Your neighbors enjoy the show each evening and especially during the colder months.But day after day and year after year you continue to do the same thing unaware of the right way.One day your neighbor comes over and starts a conversation.He tells you that for a few years now he has been watching you hook up your garden hose and although he has thoroughly enjoyed the show each day he can not stand by and watch you get sprayed with water again.For some reason you have not figured out that you should hook up the hose and then turn the water on.It seems simple enough to the rest of us but you have not figured it out.
This is exactly what happens when the Lord comes to a person and shows them their sinfulness.Maybe for your whole life you have been living in sin and you were not even aware that you were doing things the wrong way.The Lord Jesus said in John 16:8 and 9 that the Holy Spirit would come for a particular purpose.Listen as I read.
8 "And He, when He comes, will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment; 9 concerning sin, because they do not believe in Me;
If you will recall a few sermons ago when I was dealing with the doctrine of sin I told you that sin was an issue of a denial of biblical epistemology.Epistemology is the philosophical question of how we know what we know.And the way the Bible answers this question is that anything that humanity knows is because God has revealed it.If God does not reveal it then humanity will never know.There is general knowledge and there is particular knowledge.The Holy Spirit is involved in this particular knowledge.Without the Holy Spirit revealing sinfulness to humans we would simply live our lives like any other creature and go to our grave.Nothing would be different about us than say an ape but maybe our ability to talk.We would live and we would die at our appointed time.
If God had not intervened in the life of King David on several occasions he would have been in the same situation.Think for a moment about the Amelikites.What about the Hittites?What about the Jebusites?They lived and they died without the first recorded intervention into their lives by God.It was the Israelites whom God chose to reveal Himself to and in the New Covenant it is those whom the Father has set His love on that He reveals sinfulness to.It is for this reason that Christianity is to produce holiness of life.Holiness of life is due to God’s gracious act of showing us our sin.Whom the Lord loves He disciplines.If you are without discipline then you are illegitimate.
So it is a sovereign act of God’s grace to even get you to the point where you can see how sinful you actually are.Many of us walk through this life and are never aware of how sinful we are.Maybe its denial or just outright rebellion against God but to those of us who have been shown our sinfulness we need to understand that God is calling us to repentance and restoration.He is calling us to further sanctification and holy living.None of us have arrived where we have nothing to work on and this morning if you think you are at a place where you can be satisfied with the progress you have made then you are in worse shape than the most wretched of sinners.
Remember the Pharisee and the Publican praying at the Temple?One had the grace of God and the other had only the judgment of God.I want to take you on a tour of Scripture to show you the importance of becoming keenly aware of your sin.There are basically four groups of people that Scripture points to in regards to sin.
1.There are those who do not know the ways of God because they are far off. Listen to Proverbs 4:19.
19 The way of the wicked is like deep darkness; they do not know over what they stumble.
Listen to 1 Thessalonians 4:3-5.
3 For this is the will of God, your sanctification:that you abstain from sexual immorality; 4 that each one of you know how to control his own bodyin holiness and honor, 5 not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God;
Listen to 2 Thessalonians 1:5-8.
5 This is evidence of the righteous judgment of God, that you may be considered worthy of the kingdom of God, for which you are also suffering— 6 since indeed God considers it just to repay with affliction those who afflict you, 7 and to grant relief to you who are afflicted as well as to us, when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels 8 in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus.
2.Then there are those who are in close proximity to the Lord and hear the Word of the Lord and still do not know His ways and have not had their sin pressed through the stone of their wicked hearts.Listen to Psalm 95:10-11.
10 For forty years I loathed that generation and said, “They are a people who go astray in their heart, and they have not known my ways.” 11 Therefore I swore in my wrath, “They shall not enter my rest.”
Listen to Ecclesiastes 5:1.
Guard your steps when you go to the house of God. To draw near to listen is better than to offer the sacrifice of fools, for they do not know that they are doing evil.
Listen to Jeremiah 4:22.
22 “For my people are foolish; they know me not; they are stupid children; they have no understanding. They are ‘wise’—in doing evil! But how to do good they know not.”
Listen to John 15:20-22.
20 Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours.21 But all these things they will do to you on account of my name, because they do not know him who sent me.22 If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have been guilty of sin,but now they have no excuse for their sin.
Listen to Luke 23:34.
34 And Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”And they cast lots to divide his garments.
Listen to Revelation 3:17.
17 For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing, not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked.
3.Then there are those whom the Lord has blinded the eyes of and they are not able to see their sin.Listen to Isaiah 44:18.
18 They know not, nor do they discern, for he has shut their eyes, so that they cannot see, and their hearts, so that they cannot understand.
Listen to Hosea 5:4-7.
4 Their deeds do not permit them to return to their God. For the spirit of whoredom is within them, and they know not the Lord.5 The pride of Israel testifies to his face; Israel and Ephraim shall stumble in his guilt; Judah also shall stumble with them. 6 With their flocks and herds they shall go to seek the Lord, but they will not find him; he has withdrawn from them.7 They have dealt faithlessly with the Lord; for they have borne alien children.Now the new moon shall devour them with their fields.
4.But then there is the group in which I pray all of us have fallen into and that is the group that have had their sins revealed to them by God.This is the group like King David who has had a Nathan stick his finger in his face and say, “You are the man.”These are people like Abraham and Isaac and Jacob.Moses and Noah.Like the Apostles and Saul of Tarsus.Like every true Christian that has ever lived.
God can do anything that He desires with you.He could allow you to continue to be blind to your own sin, he can even allow you to be close to Him in proximity and hear His Word and still be blind to your own sin, or He can blind you to your own sin.So it is an act of grace, of covenant mercy for God to so convict you of sin that you cry out like David and like the Publican, “Have mercy on me, the sinner!”
This is what David is saying in verse 3.Look at the verse with me.
3 For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me.
Biblical Hebrew has a very interesting way of emphasizing things. If we translated this verse literally it would read, “For I, even I, know my transgressions, and my sin is continually in front of me.”And what most of us fail to realize is that when we get to this point that is a gift of God.
We should be pleading for the Lord to make us aware of our sins.But most of the time we are like Adam and Eve in the Garden where we hide from the searching presence of the Lord.
David is very helpful in this Psalm concerning how this looks.What will being aware of your sins look like?What will your attitude be like when the Lord confronts you and calls you to repentance?And that is what I would like to show you from our text this morning.
PNP
From our Psalm 51:4 I want you to see that there are two understandings that come when God is so gracious to reveal to us our sinfulness.
1.We understand the insidious nature of sin.
2.We understand the righteousness of God in the punishment for sin.
Purpose
My purpose in preaching this passage is to show you that we should be constantly aware of our sin and our need for God to show us our sin.Plus I want you to understand that David’s reaction is the proper reaction when we are shattered by the breaking of the Law of God.
Let me say to you this morning that if you do not have these understandings of sin or if you are not in agreement with the seriousness of sin that David shows us this morning then you have a serious spiritual problem.Have you gotten so comfortable with sin that you don’t think that it is serious?Do you not understand that sin will not just do you harm that it will literally kill you?It will destroy your marriage, your family, your church, your business, your career, and anything else that is important to you.
RPNP
So look with me at these two understandings that come when God is so gracious to reveal to us our sinfulness.
1.We understand the insidious nature of sin.
Look with me at the first part of verse 4.
4 Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight,
In biblical repentance we are fully aware of the One whom we have wronged.Certainly David had wronged many people.He wronged his own family.He had sinned against his wife.He sinned against Bathsheba.He sinned against Uriah the Hittite. He sinned against his whole nation.But the problem is that all of these people that he sinned against were sinners also.That is why David cries out in verse 4, 4 Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight…
David recognizes that sin is so insidious because it is a holy and righteous Creator that has been wronged not just mere sinful people.Think about how badly you are offended when someone sins against you.You want revenge or you want justice and you want it now!
But because God is so holy and so righteous we can not even begin to fathom how deeply He is offended.If the wages of all sin is death then God would be justified in striking down eternally every sinner the moment they are born.Notice the seriousness of the language that David uses in verse 4.
4 Against you, you only, have I sinned (And in the next part of the verse David shows us what sin, iniquity, and transgressions amount to.) and done what is evil in your sight…
When David says “what is evil in your sight” he is acknowledging some very important things about sin and about God.David acknowledges that God is the ultimate law giver and therefore has the sovereign right to say what is wrong and what is right and what is evil and what is good.This is totally opposite of what the serpent said in the Garden of Eden.This is the opposite of what Adam and Eve did when they hid themselves from God when the sinned.
What David is doing is laying himself bare before the Lord and saying to the Lord that sin has made him guilty and he has done evil which is in total opposition to God.It is not an attempt at self justification. It is not an attempt at hiding his sin.It is not even saying that God is not capable of forgiving these sins so why mention them.David is acknowledging his wretchedness before the Lord.
Have you done this?Have you dealt with sin in such a way that you are ready to not only admit that you are a sinner but that in reality you have sinned against the Lord and you have done evil in His sight?
This is brokenness before the Lord.This is real humility before the Lord.We are, in repentance, coming to terms with ourselves and how sinful we are.And what this coming to terms with our sinfulness brings is godly sorrow.Notice that David in verse 4 expressed how God was sinned against.He makes no claims at being a victim.He does not blame anyone else.He makes no excuses.Satan is not even blamed.This is godly sorrow or grief.
In godly sorrow for sin, full responsibility is taken by the sinner and the weight of the sin is actually realized.I want you to listen to 2 Corinthians 7:10-11.
10 For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death. 11 For see what earnestness this godly grief has produced in you, but also what eagerness to clear yourselves, what indignation, what fear, what longing, what zeal, what punishment! At every point you have proved yourselves innocent in the matter.
You will remember that the Apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthians about the man who was sinfully living with his stepmother and the Corinthian church had not disciplined this man.He was still part of the church.Paul did not say the church was extra loving by tolerating this man but rather they were arrogant in not disciplining him.This letter brought great sorrow or grief to the Corinthians just as Nathan confronting David with his sin brought to him.And both reactions were signs of biblical repentance.David acknowledges his sinfulness and pleads for mercy from the Lord.So do the Corinthians and Paul tells them that this grief that has been wrought in them has led them to repentance unto life.But Paul also says there are two types of grief or sorrow.There is the sorrow that leads to repentance and life and then there is the worldly grief or sorrow that produces death.
You see all people can grieve or have sorrow.But we have sorrow for different things and for different reasons.The man who has been caught shoplifting can be sorrowful for getting caught and having to spend time in jail.The person who has ruined their marriage can be sorrowful that the relationship has ended but not be sorrowful for the sin that ended it.The church can be grieved because of God removing His hand of blessing on them but not be grieved by the sin that caused God to remove His hand.We can be sorrowful and grieved that something we have done has caused us great trouble and yet not be sorrowful for our sin that has caused it.
So how do you know the difference?How do you know that you have experienced godly sorrow or grief that is unto salvation?The answer is in the second part of verse 4 and is our second point this morning.We have seen that in biblical repentance we understand the insidious nature of sin.Now we need to see that in biblical repentance:
2.We understand the righteousness of God in the punishment for sin.
This is the difference between godly sorrow that leads to repentance to life and worldly sorrow that is mere sorrow for consequences.All people experience consequences for sin.If you sin there is punishment for all people.All people are subject to the Law of God.But all people are not appreciative of that Law.What do I mean?
There are those who see the consequences of their sin and become angry with God that He is punishing them. I want you to listen to Isaiah 8:19-22.Here the Lord allows the people to reap what they sow.Instead of falling on their faces in repentance look at what those who are sorrowed by the consequences of their sin and not the sins that brought the consequences.
19 When they say to you, "Consult the mediums and the spiritists who whisper and mutter," should not a people consult their God? Should theyconsult the dead on behalf of the living? 20 To the law and to the testimony! If they do not speak according to this word, it is because they have no dawn. 21 They will pass through the land hard-pressed and famished, and it will turn out that when they are hungry, they will be enraged and curse their king and their God as they face upward. 22 Then they will look to the earth, and behold, distress and darkness, the gloom of anguish; and they will be driven away into darkness.
The punishment has come and instead of beating on their chest and pleading for mercy acknowledging their sin they lift their haughty eyes toward Heaven and curse God.Can you hear the murmuring?
“Why have you treated us so badly?”“Why has the Lord not given us food and water and comfort in spite of our many transgressions?”
The sinner is like the modern American who walks through this life thinking the government owes them an education, health care, and an income if they choose not to work.The sinner thinks God owes them a good life and becomes angry when their sin finds them out and the weight of the consequences fall heavy on their shoulders.
But the one with true godly sorrow has a far different attitude.I want you to look at the last part of verse 4.
4 Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight,(Here is what we need to see!) so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment.
What David is saying is that God is absolutely 100% correct in everything He has said and all the punishment that He can enact on sinners including David.“Lord you are right in punishing sin,” is what David is saying.And he says that all the punishment that God chooses to hand down to him because of his iniquities, transgressions, and sins is perfectly correct and would be righteous and holy.
And in Biblical repentance this is where we need to be.When the Bible says that the wages of sin is death we should be in full agreement even though it means our death.When the Bible says that we were dead in our sins and trespasses before the Lord made us alive in Christ we should be in full agreement with God.When the Bible says that there is none who does good and all have turned aside then we should quickly be able to identify ourselves in that group.This is the part of repentance that I think most people never get to.And the reason is because it places you and I under the judgment and wrath of God and far away from any self forgiveness or self justification.
This is why conversion is so misunderstood in our day.Most think that you can almost convert yourself.Whether it be by saying a prayer or walking down to the front of a church meeting most today believe that conversion happens as a result of our response to God.When the Bible plainly shows over and over again that the conversion of a sinner is an act of God.There is a reason this has to be true not only because the Bible teaches it but also because it is the nature of true repentance.In salvation as in repentance we are at the mercy of God.We realize that there is absolutely nothing that we can do for ourselves.We are incapable of seeing our sin for our insidious and dreadful it actually is unless the Lord removes the blinders from our eyes.
When the Lord lays us bare in real repentance and conversion we are no longer filled with self righteousness.God showing us our sins removes all of our defenses.We cannot say to the Lord as Adam said, “It was the woman whom You gave me that gave me the fruit to eat!”Or like Eve, “It was the serpent who tricked me.”The punishment is handed down and the sentence is death.And the truly repentant person will be in full agreement with God.
Let me tell you how deep this agreement should go.If you are a believer this morning God has shown you at least a glimpse of your own depravity.Even your ongoing depravity is bad enough to condemn you all over again.And when we sin we are worthy of death and the truly repentant person is in full agreement with God.When the truly repentant person reads passages like Romans 1:32 that state that all sinners deserve to die we should be in full agreement with God.We should understand that sin of any sort is worthy of eternal death and we should see that God is justified in the death of sinners both here on earth and in eternity.And furthermore we should understand that our sinfulness is so bad and has so offended our Lord that if He chose to end our lives today and to send us to Hell He would be perfectly justified in doing so.
But I can hear the argument from someone.But I trusted in Christ.Wonderful.Who told you to trust in Christ?Did you do it because you were smarter than most of the world that will spend an eternity in Hell?Were you just wise enough to get on board with salvation while your family members, friends, coworkers, and neighbors just simply refuse the greatest gift of all time?
I hope and pray that is not your attitude.Because if it is then you seriously need to go to the Lord this very day and allow Him to show you whether you are His child or not.You see any attempt at self justification will be met with an eternity in Hell.God is just as offended by our attempts at self justification as He is offended by our sins.
Our only hope as wretched sinners is that God will show you the horridness of our sins and will allow us to come to the end of ourselves and see that we have no hope of salvation and avoiding eternal death and separation from God unless God acts on our behalf.Ephesians 2 says that we were dead in our sins and trespasses and were walking according to the pattern of Satan as the rest of the world and were by nature children of wrath and then God intervened and worked a miracle and that miracle is regeneration.He made us alive.The same power that was necessary and is necessary for salvation is the same power that raised Lazarus from the dead and the same power that raised Christ from the dead.And when God exerts that power on a sinner that sinner is brought from death to life and sees the wretchedness of sin and this world and reaches out in faith for the mercy of God found only in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ.This is why the Bible speaks of conversion in such picturesque and radical language.
We were dead and He made us alive. I have been crucified with Christ.It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me and the life I now live I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me.The Kingdom of Heaven is like the man who went out into the field and found the pearl of great price.And he went out and sold all of his belongings so that he could purchase that field so he could own that pearl.In salvation we become willing to part with everything that we have ever had or known so that we can have the one thing that matters and that is Christ.
Christ is our righteousness.He is the keeper of the Law of God in my place.He is the one who lived a righteous life, perfect in all His ways. He is the one who died a criminal’s death in my place so that when God the Father looks upon me He sees me in Christ and no longer in my flesh.
Let me ask you this morning.Have you come to the end of yourself?Have you seen your sin so great that you understand full well that if God chose to kill you on the spot and send you to an eternal Hell He would be perfectly justified in doing so?Do you understand that all the excuses that you could come up with or the people you could blame for your sins only condemn you further before God who sees through all the excuses you can make?Do you understand that God knew every sin you would commit and the reasons for those sins even before He created the world and therefore no excuse will ever be sufficient?
Sure David could have offered excuses.He could have attempted before God to justify all of his behavior as simply a matter of the way of kings with their subjects.But look at verse 4 again and be reminded of what the truly repentant person says.
4 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.
Have you been to this place and furthermore are you still here?Because the truly repentant person understands that this truth never changes.We have all sinned against God and we have all done what is evil in His sight and we better understand that God is justified in His words and blameless in His judgment.
This is why Christ had to die.The cross does not show our great worth before God, the cross shows just how insidious and grotesque our sin is before God.In that moment that Paul describes as the time when He who knew no sin became sin is when at the crucifixion the sins and iniquities of all God’s people for all time was laid upon Christ and the Father could no longer look upon His only begotten Son and the Lord Jesus cries out from the cross, “My God, My God.Why have you forsaken me?”Which I think will be the screams and cries from those who will be cast into eternal Hell for all eternity separated from the presence of God.
If sin is so bad that on the cross the Father rejected and forsook His Son then we need to be greatly bothered and troubled by our familiarity with sin and our lack of repentance. We are not moved to grief over our sin the way we should.And I think that this is a hardness of heart that permeates our lives.We are so accustomed to sin around us and in our own lives we don’t mourn over it and weep over it.We should be praying for God to send us an overwhelming sense of our sin.
Sproul on Luther in The Holiness of God.
Biblical Repentance 4
A Keen Awareness of Our Sinfulness
Psalm 51:3-4
GraceFellowshipChurch
July 19, 2009
Series 5 Sermon 4
To the choirmaster. A Psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet went to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba.
51:1 Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions.2 Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin! 3 For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. 4Against 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.
Introduction
Imagine for a moment that your whole life you have been doing something very wrong.Every evening you go out to water your garden and you have the same routine.You turn the faucet on and you take your garden hose and start trying to attach the end to the faucet.Every day the same thing happens.You get sprayed in the face and your clothes are drenched with water and you are very irritated at how this happens each time.Your neighbors enjoy the show each evening and especially during the colder months.But day after day and year after year you continue to do the same thing unaware of the right way.One day your neighbor comes over and starts a conversation.He tells you that for a few years now he has been watching you hook up your garden hose and although he has thoroughly enjoyed the show each day he can not stand by and watch you get sprayed with water again.For some reason you have not figured out that you should hook up the hose and then turn the water on.It seems simple enough to the rest of us but you have not figured it out.
This is exactly what happens when the Lord comes to a person and shows them their sinfulness.Maybe for your whole life you have been living in sin and you were not even aware that you were doing things the wrong way.The Lord Jesus said in John 16:8 and 9 that the Holy Spirit would come for a particular purpose.Listen as I read.
8 "And He, when He comes, will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment; 9 concerning sin, because they do not believe in Me;
If you will recall a few sermons ago when I was dealing with the doctrine of sin I told you that sin was an issue of a denial of biblical epistemology.Epistemology is the philosophical question of how we know what we know.And the way the Bible answers this question is that anything that humanity knows is because God has revealed it.If God does not reveal it then humanity will never know.There is general knowledge and there is particular knowledge.The Holy Spirit is involved in this particular knowledge.Without the Holy Spirit revealing sinfulness to humans we would simply live our lives like any other creature and go to our grave.Nothing would be different about us than say an ape but maybe our ability to talk.We would live and we would die at our appointed time.
If God had not intervened in the life of King David on several occasions he would have been in the same situation.Think for a moment about the Amelikites.What about the Hittites?What about the Jebusites?They lived and they died without the first recorded intervention into their lives by God.It was the Israelites whom God chose to reveal Himself to and in the New Covenant it is those whom the Father has set His love on that He reveals sinfulness to.It is for this reason that Christianity is to produce holiness of life.Holiness of life is due to God’s gracious act of showing us our sin.Whom the Lord loves He disciplines.If you are without discipline then you are illegitimate.
So it is a sovereign act of God’s grace to even get you to the point where you can see how sinful you actually are.Many of us walk through this life and are never aware of how sinful we are.Maybe its denial or just outright rebellion against God but to those of us who have been shown our sinfulness we need to understand that God is calling us to repentance and restoration.He is calling us to further sanctification and holy living.None of us have arrived where we have nothing to work on and this morning if you think you are at a place where you can be satisfied with the progress you have made then you are in worse shape than the most wretched of sinners.
Remember the Pharisee and the Publican praying at the Temple?One had the grace of God and the other had only the judgment of God.I want to take you on a tour of Scripture to show you the importance of becoming keenly aware of your sin.There are basically four groups of people that Scripture points to in regards to sin.
1.There are those who do not know the ways of God because they are far off. Listen to Proverbs 4:19.
19 The way of the wicked is like deep darkness; they do not know over what they stumble.
Listen to 1 Thessalonians 4:3-5.
3 For this is the will of God, your sanctification:that you abstain from sexual immorality; 4 that each one of you know how to control his own bodyin holiness and honor, 5 not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God;
Listen to 2 Thessalonians 1:5-8.
5 This is evidence of the righteous judgment of God, that you may be considered worthy of the kingdom of God, for which you are also suffering— 6 since indeed God considers it just to repay with affliction those who afflict you, 7 and to grant relief to you who are afflicted as well as to us, when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels 8 in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus.
2.Then there are those who are in close proximity to the Lord and hear the Word of the Lord and still do not know His ways and have not had their sin pressed through the stone of their wicked hearts.Listen to Psalm 95:10-11.
10 For forty years I loathed that generation and said, “They are a people who go astray in their heart, and they have not known my ways.” 11 Therefore I swore in my wrath, “They shall not enter my rest.”
Listen to Ecclesiastes 5:1.
Guard your steps when you go to the house of God. To draw near to listen is better than to offer the sacrifice of fools, for they do not know that they are doing evil.
Listen to Jeremiah 4:22.
22 “For my people are foolish; they know me not; they are stupid children; they have no understanding. They are ‘wise’—in doing evil! But how to do good they know not.”
Listen to John 15:20-22.
20 Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours.21 But all these things they will do to you on account of my name, because they do not know him who sent me.22 If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have been guilty of sin,but now they have no excuse for their sin.
Listen to Luke 23:34.
34 And Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”And they cast lots to divide his garments.
Listen to Revelation 3:17.
17 For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing, not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked.
3.Then there are those whom the Lord has blinded the eyes of and they are not able to see their sin.Listen to Isaiah 44:18.
18 They know not, nor do they discern, for he has shut their eyes, so that they cannot see, and their hearts, so that they cannot understand.
Listen to Hosea 5:4-7.
4 Their deeds do not permit them to return to their God. For the spirit of whoredom is within them, and they know not the Lord.5 The pride of Israel testifies to his face; Israel and Ephraim shall stumble in his guilt; Judah also shall stumble with them. 6 With their flocks and herds they shall go to seek the Lord, but they will not find him; he has withdrawn from them.7 They have dealt faithlessly with the Lord; for they have borne alien children.Now the new moon shall devour them with their fields.
4.But then there is the group in which I pray all of us have fallen into and that is the group that have had their sins revealed to them by God.This is the group like King David who has had a Nathan stick his finger in his face and say, “You are the man.”These are people like Abraham and Isaac and Jacob.Moses and Noah.Like the Apostles and Saul of Tarsus.Like every true Christian that has ever lived.
God can do anything that He desires with you.He could allow you to continue to be blind to your own sin, he can even allow you to be close to Him in proximity and hear His Word and still be blind to your own sin, or He can blind you to your own sin.So it is an act of grace, of covenant mercy for God to so convict you of sin that you cry out like David and like the Publican, “Have mercy on me, the sinner!”
This is what David is saying in verse 3.Look at the verse with me.
3 For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me.
Biblical Hebrew has a very interesting way of emphasizing things. If we translated this verse literally it would read, “For I, even I, know my transgressions, and my sin is continually in front of me.”And what most of us fail to realize is that when we get to this point that is a gift of God.
We should be pleading for the Lord to make us aware of our sins.But most of the time we are like Adam and Eve in the Garden where we hide from the searching presence of the Lord.
David is very helpful in this Psalm concerning how this looks.What will being aware of your sins look like?What will your attitude be like when the Lord confronts you and calls you to repentance?And that is what I would like to show you from our text this morning.
PNP
From our Psalm 51:4 I want you to see that there are two understandings that come when God is so gracious to reveal to us our sinfulness.
1.We understand the insidious nature of sin.
2.We understand the righteousness of God in the punishment for sin.
Purpose
My purpose in preaching this passage is to show you that we should be constantly aware of our sin and our need for God to show us our sin.Plus I want you to understand that David’s reaction is the proper reaction when we are shattered by the breaking of the Law of God.
Let me say to you this morning that if you do not have these understandings of sin or if you are not in agreement with the seriousness of sin that David shows us this morning then you have a serious spiritual problem.Have you gotten so comfortable with sin that you don’t think that it is serious?Do you not understand that sin will not just do you harm that it will literally kill you?It will destroy your marriage, your family, your church, your business, your career, and anything else that is important to you.
RPNP
So look with me at these two understandings that come when God is so gracious to reveal to us our sinfulness.
1.We understand the insidious nature of sin.
Look with me at the first part of verse 4.
4 Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight,
In biblical repentance we are fully aware of the One whom we have wronged.Certainly David had wronged many people.He wronged his own family.He had sinned against his wife.He sinned against Bathsheba.He sinned against Uriah the Hittite. He sinned against his whole nation.But the problem is that all of these people that he sinned against were sinners also.That is why David cries out in verse 4, 4 Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight…
David recognizes that sin is so insidious because it is a holy and righteous Creator that has been wronged not just mere sinful people.Think about how badly you are offended when someone sins against you.You want revenge or you want justice and you want it now!
But because God is so holy and so righteous we can not even begin to fathom how deeply He is offended.If the wages of all sin is death then God would be justified in striking down eternally every sinner the moment they are born.Notice the seriousness of the language that David uses in verse 4.
4 Against you, you only, have I sinned (And in the next part of the verse David shows us what sin, iniquity, and transgressions amount to.) and done what is evil in your sight…
When David says “what is evil in your sight” he is acknowledging some very important things about sin and about God.David acknowledges that God is the ultimate law giver and therefore has the sovereign right to say what is wrong and what is right and what is evil and what is good.This is totally opposite of what the serpent said in the Garden of Eden.This is the opposite of what Adam and Eve did when they hid themselves from God when the sinned.
What David is doing is laying himself bare before the Lord and saying to the Lord that sin has made him guilty and he has done evil which is in total opposition to God.It is not an attempt at self justification. It is not an attempt at hiding his sin.It is not even saying that God is not capable of forgiving these sins so why mention them.David is acknowledging his wretchedness before the Lord.
Have you done this?Have you dealt with sin in such a way that you are ready to not only admit that you are a sinner but that in reality you have sinned against the Lord and you have done evil in His sight?
This is brokenness before the Lord.This is real humility before the Lord.We are, in repentance, coming to terms with ourselves and how sinful we are.And what this coming to terms with our sinfulness brings is godly sorrow.Notice that David in verse 4 expressed how God was sinned against.He makes no claims at being a victim.He does not blame anyone else.He makes no excuses.Satan is not even blamed.This is godly sorrow or grief.
In godly sorrow for sin, full responsibility is taken by the sinner and the weight of the sin is actually realized.I want you to listen to 2 Corinthians 7:10-11.
10 For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death. 11 For see what earnestness this godly grief has produced in you, but also what eagerness to clear yourselves, what indignation, what fear, what longing, what zeal, what punishment! At every point you have proved yourselves innocent in the matter.
You will remember that the Apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthians about the man who was sinfully living with his stepmother and the Corinthian church had not disciplined this man.He was still part of the church.Paul did not say the church was extra loving by tolerating this man but rather they were arrogant in not disciplining him.This letter brought great sorrow or grief to the Corinthians just as Nathan confronting David with his sin brought to him.And both reactions were signs of biblical repentance.David acknowledges his sinfulness and pleads for mercy from the Lord.So do the Corinthians and Paul tells them that this grief that has been wrought in them has led them to repentance unto life.But Paul also says there are two types of grief or sorrow.There is the sorrow that leads to repentance and life and then there is the worldly grief or sorrow that produces death.
You see all people can grieve or have sorrow.But we have sorrow for different things and for different reasons.The man who has been caught shoplifting can be sorrowful for getting caught and having to spend time in jail.The person who has ruined their marriage can be sorrowful that the relationship has ended but not be sorrowful for the sin that ended it.The church can be grieved because of God removing His hand of blessing on them but not be grieved by the sin that caused God to remove His hand.We can be sorrowful and grieved that something we have done has caused us great trouble and yet not be sorrowful for our sin that has caused it.
So how do you know the difference?How do you know that you have experienced godly sorrow or grief that is unto salvation?The answer is in the second part of verse 4 and is our second point this morning.We have seen that in biblical repentance we understand the insidious nature of sin.Now we need to see that in biblical repentance:
2.We understand the righteousness of God in the punishment for sin.
This is the difference between godly sorrow that leads to repentance to life and worldly sorrow that is mere sorrow for consequences.All people experience consequences for sin.If you sin there is punishment for all people.All people are subject to the Law of God.But all people are not appreciative of that Law.What do I mean?
There are those who see the consequences of their sin and become angry with God that He is punishing them. I want you to listen to Isaiah 8:19-22.Here the Lord allows the people to reap what they sow.Instead of falling on their faces in repentance look at what those who are sorrowed by the consequences of their sin and not the sins that brought the consequences.
19 When they say to you, "Consult the mediums and the spiritists who whisper and mutter," should not a people consult their God? Should theyconsult the dead on behalf of the living? 20 To the law and to the testimony! If they do not speak according to this word, it is because they have no dawn. 21 They will pass through the land hard-pressed and famished, and it will turn out that when they are hungry, they will be enraged and curse their king and their God as they face upward. 22 Then they will look to the earth, and behold, distress and darkness, the gloom of anguish; and they will be driven away into darkness.
The punishment has come and instead of beating on their chest and pleading for mercy acknowledging their sin they lift their haughty eyes toward Heaven and curse God.Can you hear the murmuring?
“Why have you treated us so badly?”“Why has the Lord not given us food and water and comfort in spite of our many transgressions?”
The sinner is like the modern American who walks through this life thinking the government owes them an education, health care, and an income if they choose not to work.The sinner thinks God owes them a good life and becomes angry when their sin finds them out and the weight of the consequences fall heavy on their shoulders.
But the one with true godly sorrow has a far different attitude.I want you to look at the last part of verse 4.
4 Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight,(Here is what we need to see!) so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment.
What David is saying is that God is absolutely 100% correct in everything He has said and all the punishment that He can enact on sinners including David.“Lord you are right in punishing sin,” is what David is saying.And he says that all the punishment that God chooses to hand down to him because of his iniquities, transgressions, and sins is perfectly correct and would be righteous and holy.
And in Biblical repentance this is where we need to be.When the Bible says that the wages of sin is death we should be in full agreement even though it means our death.When the Bible says that we were dead in our sins and trespasses before the Lord made us alive in Christ we should be in full agreement with God.When the Bible says that there is none who does good and all have turned aside then we should quickly be able to identify ourselves in that group.This is the part of repentance that I think most people never get to.And the reason is because it places you and I under the judgment and wrath of God and far away from any self forgiveness or self justification.
This is why conversion is so misunderstood in our day.Most think that you can almost convert yourself.Whether it be by saying a prayer or walking down to the front of a church meeting most today believe that conversion happens as a result of our response to God.When the Bible plainly shows over and over again that the conversion of a sinner is an act of God.There is a reason this has to be true not only because the Bible teaches it but also because it is the nature of true repentance.In salvation as in repentance we are at the mercy of God.We realize that there is absolutely nothing that we can do for ourselves.We are incapable of seeing our sin for our insidious and dreadful it actually is unless the Lord removes the blinders from our eyes.
When the Lord lays us bare in real repentance and conversion we are no longer filled with self righteousness.God showing us our sins removes all of our defenses.We cannot say to the Lord as Adam said, “It was the woman whom You gave me that gave me the fruit to eat!”Or like Eve, “It was the serpent who tricked me.”The punishment is handed down and the sentence is death.And the truly repentant person will be in full agreement with God.
Let me tell you how deep this agreement should go.If you are a believer this morning God has shown you at least a glimpse of your own depravity.Even your ongoing depravity is bad enough to condemn you all over again.And when we sin we are worthy of death and the truly repentant person is in full agreement with God.When the truly repentant person reads passages like Romans 1:32 that state that all sinners deserve to die we should be in full agreement with God.We should understand that sin of any sort is worthy of eternal death and we should see that God is justified in the death of sinners both here on earth and in eternity.And furthermore we should understand that our sinfulness is so bad and has so offended our Lord that if He chose to end our lives today and to send us to Hell He would be perfectly justified in doing so.
But I can hear the argument from someone.But I trusted in Christ.Wonderful.Who told you to trust in Christ?Did you do it because you were smarter than most of the world that will spend an eternity in Hell?Were you just wise enough to get on board with salvation while your family members, friends, coworkers, and neighbors just simply refuse the greatest gift of all time?
I hope and pray that is not your attitude.Because if it is then you seriously need to go to the Lord this very day and allow Him to show you whether you are His child or not.You see any attempt at self justification will be met with an eternity in Hell.God is just as offended by our attempts at self justification as He is offended by our sins.
Our only hope as wretched sinners is that God will show you the horridness of our sins and will allow us to come to the end of ourselves and see that we have no hope of salvation and avoiding eternal death and separation from God unless God acts on our behalf.Ephesians 2 says that we were dead in our sins and trespasses and were walking according to the pattern of Satan as the rest of the world and were by nature children of wrath and then God intervened and worked a miracle and that miracle is regeneration.He made us alive.The same power that was necessary and is necessary for salvation is the same power that raised Lazarus from the dead and the same power that raised Christ from the dead.And when God exerts that power on a sinner that sinner is brought from death to life and sees the wretchedness of sin and this world and reaches out in faith for the mercy of God found only in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ.This is why the Bible speaks of conversion in such picturesque and radical language.
We were dead and He made us alive. I have been crucified with Christ.It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me and the life I now live I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me.The Kingdom of Heaven is like the man who went out into the field and found the pearl of great price.And he went out and sold all of his belongings so that he could purchase that field so he could own that pearl.In salvation we become willing to part with everything that we have ever had or known so that we can have the one thing that matters and that is Christ.
Christ is our righteousness.He is the keeper of the Law of God in my place.He is the one who lived a righteous life, perfect in all His ways. He is the one who died a criminal’s death in my place so that when God the Father looks upon me He sees me in Christ and no longer in my flesh.
Let me ask you this morning.Have you come to the end of yourself?Have you seen your sin so great that you understand full well that if God chose to kill you on the spot and send you to an eternal Hell He would be perfectly justified in doing so?Do you understand that all the excuses that you could come up with or the people you could blame for your sins only condemn you further before God who sees through all the excuses you can make?Do you understand that God knew every sin you would commit and the reasons for those sins even before He created the world and therefore no excuse will ever be sufficient?
Sure David could have offered excuses.He could have attempted before God to justify all of his behavior as simply a matter of the way of kings with their subjects.But look at verse 4 again and be reminded of what the truly repentant person says.
4 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.
Have you been to this place and furthermore are you still here?Because the truly repentant person understands that this truth never changes.We have all sinned against God and we have all done what is evil in His sight and we better understand that God is justified in His words and blameless in His judgment.
This is why Christ had to die.The cross does not show our great worth before God, the cross shows just how insidious and grotesque our sin is before God.In that moment that Paul describes as the time when He who knew no sin became sin is when at the crucifixion the sins and iniquities of all God’s people for all time was laid upon Christ and the Father could no longer look upon His only begotten Son and the Lord Jesus cries out from the cross, “My God, My God.Why have you forsaken me?”Which I think will be the screams and cries from those who will be cast into eternal Hell for all eternity separated from the presence of God.
If sin is so bad that on the cross the Father rejected and forsook His Son then we need to be greatly bothered and troubled by our familiarity with sin and our lack of repentance. We are not moved to grief over our sin the way we should.And I think that this is a hardness of heart that permeates our lives.We are so accustomed to sin around us and in our own lives we don’t mourn over it and weep over it.We should be praying for God to send us an overwhelming sense of our sin.
Comments:
Login to post comments