Psalm 51 “Repentance Is Not Just a One Time Thing!” 07-11-21

Sometimes smart people do dumb things. Sometimes wise people do foolish things. Sometimes Godly people do sinful things and when we blow it big time, we need God’s help more than perhaps at any other time. In the days surrounding the Super Bowl in 1999, a player named Eugene Robinson made national news. He made a career in the NFL by intercepting passes. When quarterbacks threw the ball, he had a unique ability of knowing where it would go and stealing it. He was smart both on and off the field as a Christian. He was an inspirational leader and had a great track record as a competitor and as a Godly role model. On the Saturday right before the Super Bowl, Athletes in Action, a Christian ministry, gave him their Outstanding Citizen Award for demonstrating the Godliest character in the NFL that year. He spent Saturday giving interviews to the media making a public witness of his relationship with Jesus Christ. But that night he did a dumb, foolish and sinful thing. This all-star Christian leader was handcuffed by an undercover female cop who arrested him for soliciting prostitution. He landed in jail. His wife’s phone rang in the middle of the night and his coaches were called. Suddenly the reporters who had interviewed him the day before had a surprise ending for their stories. You should have seen the two men from the publishing company – they weren’t excited about the ten thousand fliers they had sent to Miami to publicize Eugene’s book that was coming out. Now what were they going to do? Eugene Robinson was left wondering what he was going to do. Would God help him now that he had blown it big time? He played the game and his team, the Atlanta Falcons lost to the Denver Broncos. When he was released he said: "What I really want to do now is apologize first to my Lord, Jesus Christ, secondly to my wife and kids, and thirdly to my teammates and the entire NFL organization for the distraction that I may have caused them."

Before you shake your head at him – he’s not the first Godly person to do a sinful thing and he won’t be the last. People who love God with all their hearts – including me – have done foolish and utterly sinful things. You may have done something that you hope no one ever finds out and it probably will never make the headlines. I’m sure all of us can relate to King David who wrote this 51st psalm after he blew it big time. What were’ going to discover from our text is that true repentance always involves coming clean on the inside. God demonstrates through David what happens when sin gets stuck inside of us. We know that the Spirit of God empowered David to write this psalm after Nathan confronted him with his sin of adultery and murder. David was as smart and Godly (he was called a “man after God’s own heart”) as they come but he had a problem with his heart. One day he saw a woman named Bathsheba bathing and he wanted her, kept looking at her and committed adultery. He tried to cover up his sin by getting her husband Uriah to sleep with her but that didn’t work so he committed murder by having Uriah killed and covered up the murder as a casualty of war. Several months later, God sent a prophet named Nathan to confront David. Nathan told King David a little story about a rich man with many sheep who stole from a poor man the one ewe sheep his family owned. Nathan then asked David: “What should be done to the rich man to acted so ruthlessly?” And David’s answer was: “He should be put to death” David responded in anger. Nathan then looked at David and said, “You are that man!” David responded by saying the 3 hardest words in the English language: “I have sinned!”

What we’re going to discover is: 1. FAILURE NEVER HAS TO BE FINAL WITH GOD! David didn’t shift the blame to another person, instead he admitted his sin and God forgave him. And here in this psalm we see the process of how God cleans or restores our heart. There are three parts to this prayer. First, David confesses his sin (vv.1-6), then he prays for cleansing (vv.7-12) and third he offers a prayer of consecration (vv.13-19). In verse one notice what David asks for: “Have mercy on me, O God according to Your unfailing love; David’s prayer begins with a request for mercy because he knows that God loves him. When you know that God loves you unconditionally, then you won’t be afraid to be honest about your sin. Do you remember when you were a child and did something wrong and tried to hide it from your parents because you were afraid of the consequences? When David’s sin was exposed, his desire was mercy because he trusted in God’s love. What he failed to realize was that his sin had damaged his relationships with those around him. But even more importantly, he had let his heart damage his relationship with God. Repentance literally means a “change of mind,’ and that change involves three things: our MIND (how we think), our EMOTIONS (how we feel), and our WILL (our behavior).

In verse 2 he continues: According to your great compassion blot out my transgressions. Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. Notice that David didn’t try to cut a deal with God. “Transgress” is a very descriptive word. His response was, “I have sinned against the Lord, I have crossed the line.” You can’t get a clean heart without saying: “I’ve blown it Lord, and here’s how I’ve blown it...” David had to be honest and come clean with God, with himself and with others. That’s why he clearly asks God to forgive him and to remove his sin according to God’s “mercy”. Verse 3 is even more descriptive: “For I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me.” There’s no doubt that David was replaying over and over in his mind this specific sin of adultery. We tend to do the same thing, don’t we? Before David ever committed physical adultery, he had committed spiritual adultery! We know that our behavior (whether good or bad) is really just a manifestation of what we desire the most. We’re sinners through and through! I’m going to say something that may surprise you: Even our good deeds are tainted with selfish sin! I like how one person has described it by saying: “Even our tears of repentance must be washed in the blood of the Lamb.”

In verse 4 David says an extraordinary thing: “Against You, You only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight.” David is crying out for mercy because he knows he’s guilty! Genuine repentance also involves our emotions! Hadn’t David sinned against Uriah twice? Yes. Hadn’t he also sinned against Bathsheba by stealing her from her husband? Yes! Had he not sinned against the people of Israel? Yes but finally he had to start with God where it mattered the most! Until we grasp this, until we see it and confess it, we cannot be forgiven! Verse 5 clarifies this: “Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.” We all know this because you don’t have to teach a child to be selfish. It’s an inside job the moment we were conceived! If you look at the words in the Bible that are associated with “the heart”, they include: thinking, feeling, reasoning, knowing, selfish, hating God, hating self or others. Have you ever seen an iceberg? Only 10% of the ice is above the water. 90% of the mass is there but you can’t see it! The same thing is true of you, me and all people. This is why God wants to clean the inside of us as David writes in verse 6: “Surely you desire truth in the inward parts” or as Eugene Peterson puts it, “truth from the inside out." It reminds me of the famous Jack Nicholson scene in the movie A Few Good Men where he says to Tom Cruise, “You want the truth?” When Cruise says, “Yes, I do” Nicholson shouts in a rage, “You can’t handle the truth.” The truth can be hard to handle, especially the truth about ourselves. We live a culture of victimization, a culture that rewards us for blaming others. You may remember the shooting that took place at Virginia Tech several few years ago. The gunman left a note behind that said, “You made me do this.” That’s an easy way out, isn’t it? The problem goes back to the Garden of Eden in Genesis 3. The serpent came to Eve and tricked her into eating the fruit. She offered some to Adam and he ate, knowing full well the consequences of his action. Suddenly the world became a very unfriendly place. Fear entered their heart for the first time. When Adam and Eve heard God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, they hid. Where once they talked with God freely, now they hid in the forest lest their sin be discovered. At length God called out to Adam, “Where are you?” Adam answered and said, “I hid because I was naked.” God said, “Who told you that you were naked?” Then the dreaded question: “Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?” Adam is cornered, caught red-handed, stripped of all his excuses. God knows! Adam does what men usually do. He passes the buck. His answer is a classic form of evasion: “The woman you put here with me-she gave me some fruit from the true, and I ate it” (Genesis 3:12). Did you get that? “The woman you put here with me." Adam passes the buck twice. First it was the woman. Then it was the woman you put here. “Lord, it was her fault. She gave me the fruit and so I ate it. What was I supposed to do? Say no and watch her pout all night? And anyway, who put her in the garden? You did! She wasn’t my idea. I didn’t have this problem when it was just me and the animals.” The Bible is telling us something significant.

2. BY NATURE WE DENY OUR GUILT AND WILL SHIFT THE BLAME TO OTHERS. Every one of us needs a new heart. It doesn’t matter how young or old you are because we’ll wrestle with it till the day we die. It’s amazing to count the number of times in this psalm that David owns up to his sin. In the first five verses he accepts responsibility for his sin 5 times! He admits: “I have a sin problem that goes beyond just a bad choice with Bathsheba and a wrong decision about her husband – I’m a terrible sinner!” David not only owned the sin he had committed but also the consequences. He knew that the baby boy Bathsheba was going to deliver was going to die. He didn’t want it to happen, but he understood the consequences of his sin. Sometimes we have to live with certain consequences – but this doesn’t mean we’re not forgiven!

When you or I have blown it we need God’s grace – but it doesn’t come automatically. In order for God to release the power of forgiveness inside of us David explains in verse 10 what our prayer should be: “Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me from Your presence or take Your Holy Spirit from me.” The first thing I need to point out is that only a true disciple of Jesus can pray this kind of prayer because an unbeliever doesn’t care about being cast away from God’s presence because he was never close to God in the first place. Secondly, the word “Create” is an amazing word! It’s the same word used in Genesis when God created something out of nothing! David realized that he was asking for nothing less than a miracle. He was saying, “God, I’m asking You to miraculously create a pure heart in this dirty, defiled man that I am!” Then he asks for a renewed spirit – and do you know why? What do you want to do when you’ve sinned badly? If you’re like me, you want to run away from God, run from people and give up. So he’s asking God to give him the spirit he needed to hang in there, to face whatever would come without running. When God shows up, He can do a fresh work of grace in our spirit that will keep us from running! That’s what the cross is all about! In Luke 15:11-32 Jesus told a story about a young man who felt an urge to leave his father’s house. This young man asked for his portion of the family estate and left for a distant land. There he squandered his money on wild living. Days passed, then weeks, then months. At last, the day came when the young man had spent all his money. Now broke and destitute, he found himself in a desperate place, far from family and friends. Although he was ashamed, he hired on with a farmer who put him to work slopping the hogs. He was so hungry that he found himself ready to eat with the pigs.

At that precise moment, the light turned on in his brain. In a blinding flash, he saw himself and he saw what he had become. Most of all, he saw that it was his own stupidity that had gotten him in such a mess. No longer would he blame his father or criticize his older brother. He was still a long way off when his father spotted him and before the young man knew what was happening, his father ran to him, threw his arms around him, kissed him and said, “Welcome home, son.” The son said what he had memorized in the pig pen. “Father, I have sinned against you and against heaven. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.” But the father cut him off. He would hear no more of it. The cry went out, “Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Find the fattened calf and kill it. Call the neighbors and spread the good news. Tell everyone you see. This son of mine was dead and is alive again. He was lost and is found.” I want to make one observation: This young man, whom we call the Prodigal Son, turned his whole life around by saying three simple words: “I have sinned.” He said it while he was still living with the pigs, far away from home. But those three words turned his life around.

3. ONLY THE HOLY SPIRIT CAN RESTORE THE JOY OF OUR SALVATION AND UPHOLD US WITH A WILLING SPIRIT THAT CHANGES OUR BEHAVIOR. Getting back to our text, which is really a parallel to David’s life we can see the impact confessing his sin had on his life because in verse 13 we see him journeying down a new path. Because of being forgiven, now: “I will teach transgressors your ways , and sinner will turn back to You.” As he considered the lessons he had learned following his tragic affair with Bathsheba, he vowed to God that he would use his experience to cause sinners to return to the Lord. When you and I see how we’ve been rescued from sin, we can’t help but tell others how Jesus has lifted us up and given us new life and set our feet in a new direction. David never forgot the grace of God.

If you reread this psalm later, you’ll discover that There is only one time where David asks God “NOT” to do something. It’s in verse 11:”Do not cast me away from Your presence or take Your Holy Spirit from me.” That’s what the grace of God is all about. Anyone can come home and start over. We can be forgiven. The slate can be wiped clean. We don’t have to live the rest of your life in hiding. We don’t have to live in fear that someone will find you out because when we are forgiven by Jesus, the slate is wiped clean! When I wrote this message I contemplated on having the title being: “How Much Sin Will God Forgive?” or “How far can we go in sin before God will not forgive us?” The answer is: no one knows because no one has ever gone that far. If God forgave David, He will certainly forgive you and me! If a murdering adulterer could find grace, there is hope for you and me. Because it’s not about you or your sins – it’s all about God, it’s all about grace!!! A Sunday school superintendent was registering two new sisters in Sunday School. When she asked them how old they were one replied, "We're both seven. My birthday is April 8th and my sister's is April 20th." The superintendent replied, "That's impossible girls." The other sister then spoke up and said, "No it's true, one of us is adopted." "Oh," the superintendent said, "Which one?" The two sisters looked at each other and one said, "We asked Dad that question, but he just looked at us and said that he loved us both equally, so much so that he couldn't remember which one of us was adopted." God loves us all, equally. We are loved, not because we have earned God's love or deserve it, but because of God's grace. https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/sports/nfl/longterm/superbowl99/stories/01/robinson01.htm