Biblical Repentance
0 Amens
Biblical Repentance
Psalm 51
June 28, 2009
Series 5 Sermon 1
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. 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. 5 Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me. 6 Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being, and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart. 7 Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. 8 Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones that you have broken rejoice. 9 Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities. 10 Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. 11 Cast me not away from your presence, and take not your Holy Spirit from me. 12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit. 13 Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will return to you. 14 Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God, O God of my salvation, and my tongue will sing aloud of your righteousness. 15 O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise. 16 For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it; you will not be pleased with a burnt offering. 17 The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. 18 Do good to
Introduction
As we leave our series on the doctrine of sin we are moving into the exposition of Psalm 51. I could spend more time on the doctrine of sin but as we move through this Psalm some of what I have covered already will be reviewed and some of the things that I wanted to cover in the series on sin and didn’t will be covered. But it makes sense to me after a series on the doctrine of sin to go into the subject that will bring the most help to a person who has had their sinfulness exposed to them for the first time or afresh. I hope what you came away with in the series on sin was an overwhelming reality at your own inability to deal with sin in your life. I hope that you understand that by the time you are able to understand how sinful you actually are you have accumulated such a sin debt that if you lived perfectly the remainder of your life you still could not make up for that sin by righteous deeds. I hope that you understand that you were born sinful and that your only hope is the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.
This morning I want to lay out an introduction to Psalm 51. I want to provide you the background for this Psalm so that we all understand exactly where David is coming from when he pens this Psalm. Psalm 51 is a prayer of repentance. It is the heart felt, soul stirred, prayer of a guilty and broken man. And this morning I want us to get a picture of that.
In painting this picture this morning I want to provide you three facts about repentance from Scripture that will help us understand how important repentance is. There are three facts that I would like to show you this morning that will put Psalm 51 in context as the text to go to for understanding repentance.
1. So fact number 1 this morning is that repentance is necessary for salvation.
Can anyone tell me what the first word of the Gospel is? When John the Baptist came on the scene and began heralding the coming of the Lord Jesus he told the people what? His words are recorded in Matthew 3. Listen as I read the first three verses of that chapter.
1 Now in those days John the Baptist came, preaching in the wilderness of
The first word of the Gospel is repent. In Matthew 4 the Lord Jesus begins His ministry of the proclamation of the Gospel and in verse 17 His first sermon is recorded.
17 From that time Jesus began to preach and say, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand."
Mark 6 records the Lord sending out His twelve disciples to proclaim the Gospel and He gave them instructions and Mark records all that they did. Listen to verses 7-12.
7 And He summoned the twelve and began to send them out in pairs, and gave them authority over the unclean spirits; 8 and He instructed them that they should take nothing for their journey, except a mere staff—no bread, no bag, no money in their belt— 9 but to wear sandals; and He added, "Do not put on two tunics." 10 And He said to them, "Wherever you enter a house, stay there until you leave town. 11 "Any place that does not receive you or listen to you, as you go out from there, shake the dust off the soles of your feet for a testimony against them." 12 They went out and preached that men should repent.
In the story of the rich man and the beggar Lazarus the Lord Jesus records what the rich man said to Abraham. The rich man, from hell, wanted Abraham to send Lazarus the beggar to his brothers and warn them to do something so that they would not end up in hell with their brother. Listen to Luke 16:30.
30 "But he said, 'No, father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent!'
When the Apostle Peter stood on the Day of Pentecost and proclaimed the Gospel to all those in attendance guess what he preached? Listen to Acts 2:37-38.
37 Now when they heard this, they were pierced to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, "Brethren , what shall we do?" 38 Peter said to them, "Repent, and each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
When Paul preached on Mars Hill he preached the same message that the other apostles preached. Listen as I read Acts 17:30-31.
30 "Therefore having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now declaring to men that all people everywhere should repent, 31 because He has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead."
One of the truths in understanding the Gospel in our day that is being lost or own purpose neglected has been the very first word of the Gospel and that is repentance. Every evangelistic program that I am familiar with practically leaves out what Biblical repentance should be. You have all probably heard of the ABC’s of salvation. The A stands for admitting you are a sinner. B stands for believing in Christ. C stands for confessing Jesus as your Lord. This sounds great but it does a few things very wrong. First it oversimplifies the glorious truth of conversion. So no matter if you were 6 years old or 60 when you were converted the fact is that God has to act upon you and that is a miraculous act. But in reality what this method does is take away the importance of repentance that the Bible places on salvation.
Simply admitting that you are a sinner does not mean that you have repented. I can admit that I need to lose weight but that does not mean that I have started trying to do so. Or there is methodology that simply avoids the whole issue of sin and goes straight to wanting to get people to want to go to Heaven when they die or simply to become a Christian so that they can have abundant blessings on the earth.
And I believe that today this represents the majority view of most people who call themselves Christians. If you asked them to tell you what repentance is they would tell you that they do not know or they would say that it means that they admit that they are a sinner. Which is tantamount to admitting that you are a human being.
The wonderful truth is that the Bible does not leave us to make up our definition of repentance nor does it leave us without example of both true and false examples of repentance. The problem is once we understand what repentance is from what the Bible says it makes things more difficult than we like. So by our nature we try to reduce it down to the lowest common denominator and say we merely need to admit that we are a sinner. Or as the liberals who call themselves Christians will say that there is really not sin anyway to repent of and the modern mind can not handle the idea of needing to deal with sin.
But what did the Lord Jesus say? Luke 5:32 records the words of the Lord Jesus and he said, 32 "I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance."
So in our understanding of the Gospel we can not avoid the topic of repentance. If repentance is the first word of the Gospel and the Lord Jesus and the apostles preached repentance then it is imperative that we understand from Scripture exactly what Biblical repentance looks like. Our eternal salvation depends on it. By nature we do not like to look at these things because it can make us fearful. It can at times make us doubt our salvation. But the Bible tells us that we must examine ourselves to see if we are in the faith. The Bible tells us to make our calling and election sure. And one way we do this is to look at what the Bible says about repentance which is the first word of the Gospel. And it is very possible and very likely that under the preaching of the Word of God there will be someone who discovers that they indeed have not been converted and even though they went through some religious action or experience in the past the Lord will show that person that they indeed have never repented of sin and turned to Christ in saving faith. If that is you then don’t let pride stand in the way of you dealing with the Lord on this. Don’t let your standing before men dictate your standing before God. If you do discover that you are indeed unregenerate then please don’t hesitate to let us walk through this with you. The true repenter will know no shame in dealing with their eternal soul. Pride is but for a moment, eternity is forever.
So right now what we need to understand is that repentance is the first word of the Gospel and that if you will be saved you must repent. This is what the Bible proclaims. In Luke 13:1-5 the Lord Jesus addresses a horrible situation followed by a stern warning. Listen as I read.
1 Now on the same occasion there were some present who reported to Him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. 2 And Jesus said to them, "Do you suppose that these Galileans were greater sinners than all other Galileans because they suffered this fate? 3 "I tell you, no, but unless you repent , you will all likewise perish. 4 "Or do you suppose that those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them were worse culprits than all the men who live in
Fact #2
2. The Bible also proclaims that repentance is not mere mental agreement that you are a sinner and it is not even a desire to not be a sinner. There are fruits or deeds that accompany repentance.
I want you to listen to what John the Baptist preached before Jesus arrived on the scene. Listen to Matthew 3:7-8.
7 But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, "You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? 8 "Therefore bear fruit in keeping with repentance;
Now of course some will argue that John the Baptist came before Jesus and surely this must be part of the Old Covenant. The only problem is that we have the words of the Apostle Paul as he gave his defense before King Agrippa in Acts 26. Listen to verses 19-20.
19 "So, King Agrippa, I did not prove disobedient to the heavenly vision, 20 but kept declaring both to those of Damascus first, and also at Jerusalem and then throughout all the region of Judea, and even to the Gentiles, that they should repent and turn to God, performing deeds appropriate to repentance.
So there are actions or deeds and fruit that accompany biblical repentance. It is not merely a mental acknowledgement that you are a sinner. Something tangible will happen when a person truly repents. That is the second truth we need to understand in this series and that will be fleshed out as we move through the Psalm.
Fact #3
Third, we need to understand that repentance is the gift of God. And this is where I would like to spend the rest of my time this morning. Because of the spiritual condition of man being utterly sinful, totally depraved, dead in sins and trespasses, and by nature children of wrath we are incapable of repenting in our own strength. If we would truly repent then the Lord Himself must grant that repentance because by nature we would continue in sin to our own destruction. So how can I be so sure that repentance is granted by God and not something that we are all capable of? Listen to Peter on the Day of Pentecost in Acts 2:38-39.
38 Peter said to them, "Repent, and each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. 39 "For the promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off, as many as the Lord our God will call to Himself."
What Peter is saying is that all those whom the Lord calls to Himself will repent. How many people were in
We also have Acts 5:31. I want you to listen to verses 27-33. This is when Peter and John were brought before the same men who had condemned the Lord Jesus to death and sent Him before Pilate.
27 When they had brought them, they stood them before the Council. The high priest questioned them, 28 saying, "We gave you strict orders not to continue teaching in this name, and yet , you have filled
Obviously those who desired to kill the apostles were not granted repentance.
We also have Acts 11:18.
18 When they heard this, they quieted down and glorified God, saying, "Well then, God has granted to the Gentiles also the repentance that leads to life."
We also have 2 Timothy 2:24-26.
24 The Lord's bond-servant must not be quarrelsome, but be kind to all, able to teach, patient when wronged, 25 with gentleness correcting those who are in opposition, if perhaps God may grant them repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth, 26 and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, having been held captive by him to do his will.
So let’s review. Repentance is the first word of the Gospel. With biblical repentance there are deeds and fruits that accompany it. The Lord has to grant genuine repentance.
Purpose
So my purpose in preaching through Psalm 51 is to show you that biblical repentance is not merely an acknowledgement of sin but is accompanied by deeds and fruits that show forth that this repentance has been granted by God.
Context
This morning I would like to give you some background information for Psalm 51 before we begin the line by line exposition of this wonderful Psalm next week. As most of you know the Psalms are a collection of songs and prayers recorded by several authors over a pretty lengthy period of time. These Psalms have been important throughout Jewish history and the history of the church. Many have found great comfort in the Psalms especially in times of grief and sadness. Many turn to the 23rd Psalm in difficult times. The Psalms as you have seen already this morning have been used for Christian worship as well. They can be read, recited, and sung. But they are also chocked full of theology.
And that is the case with our Psalm this morning. We are going to take the time to look at this Psalm because it is the quintessential passage of Scripture that deals with what Biblical repentance looks like. It actually records a prayer of repentance prayed by King David. And the Lord has been faithful to preserve this prayer for us because in this Psalm we see the deeds and fruits of repentance and also the acknowledgment that only God can bring these things about.
This morning I want us to look at the historical title of Psalm 51 in order to set the context. Understand that these historical titles are part of the original text and if you have a Hebrew Bible the titles are the first verses in the Psalm. Specifically in Psalm 51 the historical title makes up the first two verses of the Psalm and where we have our first verse is actually verse 3 in the Hebrew Bible. Look at the historical title with me in your Bible of Psalm 51.
To the choirmaster. A Psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet went to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba.
What we have is for whom the Psalm was written, who authored it, and the occasion for which it was written. The choirmaster or the chief musician would receive this Psalm for public worship. King David was its composer. And there was the occasion for its writing. What should jump out at you this morning is that David made this prayer of repentance a public matter. His sin was public and therefore his repentance should have been public as well.
The occasion of this Psalm is the event in the life of King David that caused him the most pain and the most shame. David was a man after God’s own heart. He was chosen by God to be king over all
It was the spring of the year. After the crops were planted the kings of the
Now if David would have been where he was supposed to be this would not have happened. I want you to listen to 2 Samuel 11:1.
In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle, David sent Joab, and his servants with him, and all
It seems to me that the writer of 2 Samuel is emphasizing the fact that David was not with his troops. Which should tell us that we should be careful to be where we are supposed to be and not be where we should not be. Temptation happens when we are in the wrong places. That can be anywhere including the websites that you visit. So David sees Bathsheba and as James says in James 1:14-16:
14 But each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust. 15 Then when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and when sin is accomplished, it brings forth death. 16 Do not be deceived, my beloved brethren.
He commits adultery with Bathsheba even though he is married and she is married to another. He breaks God’s law. He sins. And the penalty for that sin according to Leviticus 20:10 is death. Listen as I read.
10 'If there is a man who commits adultery with another man's wife, one who commits adultery with his friend's wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death.
So that we learn that sin will never go unnoticed we have 2 Samuel 11:5.
5 And the woman conceived, and she sent and told David, “I am pregnant.”
So now David is in a lot of trouble. Bathsheba’s husband Uriah is away fighting for King David. So David devises a plan to cover his tracks. He will send for Uriah and let him have a weekend furlough, a kind of a second honeymoon. There is only one problem. Uriah is much more loyal to the cause of the nation of
The battle happened and the report came back from Joab that Uriah is dead. He sends word back to Joab to not let this thing displease him because after all, the sword devours whom it will. The problem is solved. David has successfully covered his sins. All is set right and now he can just move on with life and not think about all that has happened.
After a period of mourning for Bathsheba, David brings her into his house as his own wife and she has a son. I am sure to some it looked like this great King David had acted wonderfully in personally caring for this bereaved widow. “Poor Bathsheba, her husband is dead but look what a wonderful king we have who has taken this poor widow in.”
But what did David deserve? Listen to Deuteronomy 19:11-13.
11 "But if there is a man who hates his neighbor and lies in wait for him and rises up against him and strikes him so that he dies, and he flees to one of these cities, 12 then the elders of his city shall send and take him from there and deliver him into the hand of the avenger of blood, that he may die. 13 "You shall not pity him, but you shall purge the blood of the innocent from
David was guilty before God of two sins that were to be punished by capital punishment. The King should have been stoned and Bathsheba should have been as well. Joab was an accomplice in this also. Do you see how our sin affects those around us and we get other people involved in covering for us so no one finds out?
Now if there were no God in Heaven who knows the heart of men this story would have never been recorded. This story would have been swept under the rug of human history and no one would even care. After all, this is how kings behave. Isn’t it the kings right to do with his subjects what he desires? Many kings have operated that way.
But we do have a God in Heaven who is greatly concerned with the sins and sanctification of His people. 2 Samuel 11 and 12 are two of the most familiar chapters in the Bible. And if you don’t catch the key verse in the section you will miss the purpose of the two chapters. The Lord could have ignored this. The Lord could have sent plagues on David or simply took his life. But in the horrible actions and sins of David the Lord has given us the blueprint for how He acts in bringing His people to repentance and what that repentance looks like.
I told you before that repentance is a gift of God. The New Testament tells us that it is God who grants repentance and 2 Samuel 11 and 12 shows us that truth in a real life example. I want you to turn to 2 Samuel 12. Look at verse 1.
And the Lord sent Nathan to David.
If the Lord had not sent Nathan to confront David then David probably would have never acknowledged his sins. He would have just went along in life as if nothing happened. He may have been tormented of soul at times but as humans we find a way to cover those sins. We can provide the balm for our own sins that merely are a Band-Aid instead of the sinectomy that needs to happen. So Nathan tells David a story.
Look at verse 1 through 4.
And the Lord sent Nathan to David. He came to him and said to him, “There were two men in a certain city, the one rich and the other poor. 2 The rich man had very many flocks and herds, 3 but the poor man had nothing but one little ewe lamb, which he had bought. And he brought it up, and it grew up with him and with his children. It used to eat of his morsel and drink from his cup and lie in his arms, and it was like a daughter to him. 4 Now there came a traveler to the rich man, and he was unwilling to take one of his own flock or herd to prepare for the guest who had come to him, but he took the poor man's lamb and prepared it for the man who had come to him.”
David shows his own hypocrisy and ability to see the speck in his brother’s eye while ignoring the log in his own. It shows in his reaction. There is no grace at all here. Look at verses 5 and 6.
5 Then David's anger was greatly kindled against the man, and he said to Nathan, “As the Lord lives, the man who has done this deserves to die, 6 and he shall restore the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing, and because he had no pity.”
Who is David to get angry with this man who took a lamb when he had taken a man’s wife and then had him killed?
This is why the Lord Jesus said in Matthew 7:1-5 that we need to understand that when we pass judgment on someone we are holding ourselves to that same standard. Listen as I read the Words of the Lord.
1 "Do not judge so that you will not be judged. 2 "For in the way you judge, you will be judged; and by your standard of measure, it will be measured to you. 3 "Why do you look at the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? 4 "Or how can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' and behold, the log is in your own eye? 5 "You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye.
David judged this man and said he deserved to die. He must restore to the man the lamb fourfold because he had no pity on the poor man. Remember this is the man who sent one of his loyal and trustworthy and brave soldiers to his death to cover his own sins.
Now the time for reckoning has come. Look at verses 7-9.
7 Nathan said to David, “You are the man! Thus says the Lord, the God of
David is cut to the heart. He is now sure that Nathan knows his sins and God certainly knows his sins. He has pronounced judgment on himself with his judgment of the man that Nathan mentions. He realizes what a blessing the Lord has been to him and how he has sinned so greatly against the Lord. But it took the Lord coming to him in confrontation to do this.
So many times we are blinded by our own sin. We become trapped in that sin and we can’t even see how wrong it actually is. We try to justify our actions and we fail to see our own depravity and need for grace and as soon as we see someone else in sin we are quick to pass judgment on them.
You see we like David are legalists at heart. This crime that Nathan told David about was not worthy of death. The Law made no such command for a man who stole a sheep to be put to death. Exodus 22:1 gives the command.
1 "If a man steals an ox or a sheep and slaughters it or sells it, he shall pay five oxen for the ox and four sheep for the sheep.
But David is quick to point out what a wretch this man was. Do you do that? Are you guilty of passing harsh judgment on people for their sins and overlooking your own sins which may be far worse? Be careful of the log in your own eye when trying to remove the speck from your own.
Notice that it was God who confronted David in his sins. It was God who sent Nathan to David. It was God who would also cleanse David from these sins. And the reason for this is because it is God who was sinned against. Look at verse 9.
9 Why have you despised the word of the Lord, to do what is evil in his sight?
When we sin we are despising the word of the Lord and we are doing evil in His sight. And when we do if we are children of God we may not get a Nathan to come to us and point his finger at us and say that we are the guilty party but the Holy Spirit of God that resides in us will be grieved and in turn we will be grieved as well.
David repented of his great sins when confronted by Nathan. He made no excuse for his actions. He did not blame it on anyone else. He took full responsibility for his actions and cast himself on the mercy and grace of God. Look at verses 11-15.
11 Thus says the Lord, ‘Behold, I will raise up evil against you out of your own house. And I will take your wives before your eyes and give them to your neighbor, and he shall lie with your wives in the sight of this sun. 12 For you did it secretly, but I will do this thing before all
And this is what we will be looking at in Psalm 51. We will see the prayer of a broken and sorrowful sinner whom the Lord has confronted in his sin and he is need of forgiveness.
As I close this morning I would like to ask you. Has God granted you repentance? Has he shown you the ugliness of your own heart and how sinful you are and how much you need a Savior? Has the light of the Holy Spirit shown in your fallen heart and now you see Christ as your greatest possession? Have you come to the place in your life where you look at all of the sin that you can remember committing and see it as ugly and appalling in a way that is similar to how God sees it? Have you cried out like David, “I have sinned against the Lord” and understood that God has every right to condemn you to an eternal Hell? Have you cast yourself on the grace of our Lord Jesus and received by faith His salvation that He secured on the cross?
If not, may today be the day of your salvation. Turn to me and live, all the ends of the earth says the Lord, for I am God and there is no other. Is your soul travailing because of the sin in your life? Look to Christ. Is your heart weighed down by the burden of the weight of your sin? Look to Christ. He is our only hope and He is our only way of salvation.
Let’s pray.
Comments:
Login to post comments