Well, happy Father’s Day to all of us fathers. I can say that to myself, I guess. So, happy Father’s Day. I called my dad this morning and told him how grateful I was for the father he was to me growing up. Fathers do leave an indelible mark on their sons and daughters. So, what a privilege, what a high calling to be a dad and to raise our children, as Chase was saying. We’re going to be in Psalm 51 this week. If you want to turn there with me in your Bibles. Psalm chapter 51.
There are psalms, we don’t really know what they’re about or what battle the psalmist is fighting or what internal struggle he may have. This is a psalm that we know exactly what this one’s about. This psalm is a prayer, it’s a psalm related directly to one of the, or the, biggest prayers. Errors of David’s life. This psalm is a heart cry to God after committing heinous sin. And I want us to look here because we find the heart of God for sinners. And I think that is medicine. That you and I need, time and time again, a reminder that God has a heart for sinners. Particularly, mercy. Mercy. What is it that David has done? Well, we would find that story in Samuel, 2 Samuel chapter 12. And what David did. The very man whom last week we noted was a man after God’s own heart, even. What did this man do? This man committed adultery with another man’s wife. And then that woman becoming pregnant. David is guilty of having this man murdered to cover it up. And he did it by having one of… Israel’s great enemies do it on the battlefield. And even at that, we really don’t even see David being aware of it. We don’t read he did these horrible things and then he ran. And it takes the prophet of God coming to him and really drawing him in with a parable. And through this parable, he strikes. David to the heart with what great sins he’s done. And in fact, Nathan said he scorned the word of the Lord. So, these are the big ones. He did the big ones. Murder, adultery, deceit. But we find in Psalm 51, really… He’s asking for an unthinkable thing after all of this. He asked for mercy. How dare he? How could David expect to find mercy from the hand of God? We read in Exodus that the murderer is to be killed according to the law of God. We… Read just as well in the law of God that adulterers are to be killed.
But David comes before the Lord and he says, Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love. According to your abundant mercy, blot out my transgressions. Blot out my transgressions. He comes to the Lord. And here’s why. Here’s the most important thing for us to grab from this. He comes to the Lord and he expects to find mercy because David knows it’s in the nature of God to show mercy. Big old period. In fact, if we look at Exodus chapter 34, verse 5 through 7, this is when God is owning Moses and Israel as his people and he’s covenanting himself to them. What is the first thing that the Lord says about himself? What is the first thing the Lord says about himself? It says, The Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there and proclaimed the name of the Lord. The Lord passed before him. And proclaimed the Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children to the third and the fourth generation. God is very clear when he brings himself to the Israelites, that to his people, for his people, he is a merciful God. That’s his disclosure of himself. We should really be amazed that that’s the first thing he says when he discloses his character to the Israelites. Yes. Yes. I think that if we grasp that and we live with that, we would do without a lot of grief, a lot of terror, a lot of fears that we can have in our relationship with God.
One commentator says this about God’s mercy and forgiveness. It’s that doctrine of God’s mercy that part of his character, it’s one of his attributes, that the New Testament doctrine, doctrine of forgiveness of sins is built on and eternal life is decidedly built upon because from it flows the very nature of God. He does not reluctantly forgive sins against himself and others. He does so eagerly as a manifestation of his character by which he delights in doing so.
So. So. You and I can’t really talk about a gospel if we if we don’t have a firm belief in really a deep, passionate love and obsession with that attribute that God is ultimately merciful. And you could think, well, for David, he was the king, so he got more than everybody else or he killed Goliath. So he probably has a few more mercy credits than most people. Friends, David didn’t do anything. David didn’t have anything to merit more mercy. It’s just this. And I really want you. I really want you to walk away with it. Hold it in your heart. David understood mercy isn’t a possibility. Mercy is an undeniable certainty with God because it’s who he is.
How often do we pray for forgiveness of sins and we have this maybe kind of sort of faith to it? Will God really forgive me? And if he does, he’s quite annoyed and aggravated that you had the gall to come and ask for it again. And he had to open his wallet and pull it out mad. And he’s got the furrowed eyebrows. He’s got the furrowed eyebrows. We imagine. God, it’s quite unlike the one in the scriptures, the one who has disclosed himself to us. It’s his very nature.
The psalmist says, Remember your mercy, O Lord, and your steadfast love, for they have been from of old. Remember not the sins of my youth or my transgressions according to your steadfast love. Remember me for the sake of your goodness, O Lord. When Daniel is crying out because of the sins of his people, listen to this. Daniel chapter 9 verse 17. Now therefore, O our God, listen to the prayer of your servant and to his pleas for mercy. And for your own sake, O Lord, make your face to shine upon your sanctuary, which is desolate. O my God, incline your ear and hear. Open your eyes. And see our desolations, the city that is called by your name. For we do not present our pleas before you because of our righteousness, but because of your great mercy.
Micah chapter 7 verse 18. Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity and passing over transgression for the remnant of his inheritance? He does not retain his anger forever because he delights in his steadfast love. He will again have compassion on us. Isaiah chapter 43 verse 24.
You have not bought me sweet cane with money or satisfied me with the fat of your sacrifices, but you have burdened me with your sins. You have wearied me with your iniquities. I, I am he who blocks my way. I, I am he who blocks out your transgressions for my own sake. And I will not remember your sins.
Friends, the word of God is so plain over and over again. God loves and is eager to show mercy.
He is, the word of the Lord says, compassionate and tender towards his own people. So, you and I, I think we’re guilty of committing two sins when we commit one sin. We commit whatever sin we’ve committed, but then we’re guilty at the same time of maligning God’s character for not believing he’ll forgive us for that sin. When the word of God says plainly, this is who I am.
So, push out that master of your own invention who has a rod on your back for everything you do. Adam and Eve, where did they go in the garden when they sinned? They hid. Their fears were their informant on what God’s really like. Or, how often do we import the mercy of others as a kind of definition for what mercy is like from God or our poor understanding of mercy. We imagine how little we are, how little we are in mercy. That must be like God towards us. Or, and this is often true, isn’t it? We’re just straight up ignorant towards the word of God and what he’s really like. And so we live with God as he is not. So, shame on us there for not knowing God as he is. We treat him sometimes, don’t we, like a big old bowl of emotions and reactions and reactions and I wonder how he’s going to be towards me in this one or maybe he’s going to do something towards me for this. Now understand, David was severely disciplined for what he did. Severely so. His first child with Bathsheba was struck sick and the child passed away and then God assured David that unrest and violence would never leave his house and throughout David’s life with his children there was rape and incest and murder. There were a lot of things that came on David because of his sin. But still, understand the heart of God towards his people is corrective, not punitive. God isn’t seeking to bring us to a destruction for our sins. He’s seeking, even in our sins, to make us new and to discipline us and to change us and to grow us. God is always willing and at the ready to show mercy to penitent sinners. The one seeking mercy will find it. The one who will repent and forsake sin will discover a God who is willing to receive. Proverbs 28, 13 Whoever conceals his transgressions will not prosper. But he who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy.
David deeply knows this. David deeply knows that God is committed to his own character. So David expects forgiveness even in this deep, heinous sin. Sins repeated over. And it’s true for all of God’s people. I want to say to us, we are often like maybe a new adopted child and our only idea of a father is one who thrashes and beats his children for all the things I do wrong, big and small. But there’s a wideness in God’s mercy.
There’s an old Rich Mullins song. If you know who he is, he’s a contemporary Christian singer from like the 80s and 90s. He’s got a song and it says, there’s a wideness in God’s mercy that I can’t find in my own.
And you say, why is God like that? Even to, I think, our distaste. Be honest. People do things wrong and you don’t want mercy for them. But there’s a wideness in God’s mercy.
And it’s littered all over Scripture. And I know I have a lot of verses, but I want to just read some of these. Hosea 11. The Lord says, how can I give you up, O Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel? How can I make you like Adma? How can I treat you like Zed? Those are cities that were destroyed with Sodom and Gomorrah. My heart recoils within me. My compassion grows warm and tender. I will not execute my burning anger. I will not again destroy Ephraim. For I am God and not a man. The Holy One in your midst. And I will not come in wrath.
Friends, God’s mercy is wide. It’s so wide. And where do we see the wideness of God most? We see it in the cross of Christ, don’t we? Because it’s in the Son, suffering, condemned, carrying the heinous sins of David, carrying your heinous sins, carrying your repeated patterns of sins. It’s there and seeing, in Christ crucified, that the mercy of God is amplified the loudest and God speaks concerning His own character. I am merciful, the cross tells us.
So let’s give up. Let’s give up this God of our minds, this Master who beats with the rod, this God who’s only angry. All of God’s anger and all of God’s wrath, it was poured out where? It was poured out on Jesus. And that doesn’t mean, well, wonderful. This means I can take my sins lightly. If that’s how we’re thinking about God’s mercy and grace, then we’re not thinking about God’s mercy and grace. Because if you get a vision for God’s mercy and grace for your sins and you see them all poured out on the perfect name of God, sin grows all the more disgusting and you’re all the more grateful and you’re all the more worshipful and you all the more long for the Lord. So see a perfect Savior crucified so the mercy of God can come to each one of us indiscriminately. That’s the mercy of God. So how do we get the mercy of God? What does it mean? What does it mean to receive the mercy of God? Because if you noted in the Exodus chapter where God reveals Himself as a merciful God, He says, but by no means do I clear the guilty. So God is not turning a blind eye to our sins. So what does it mean to be seen in God’s sight as one who needs mercy, for whom He shows mercy, versus being someone in God’s sight who is guilty? Verse 2 in Psalm chapter 51,
David says, Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. So wash me thoroughly from my iniquity. Cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgressions and my sin is ever before me. Verse 4, Against you and 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. So see what David’s asking for and it’s important to take every word and really take it for what it is. They’re not general words. David wants full remission of the cancer. He asks that the garment is thoroughly cleaned. He wants a thorough cleanliness. So David says in verse 3, My sins are ever before me. Obviously, he has a really strong sense of acute awareness of his grave evils. And they consume him. As sin consumes the heart of a man, the penitent sinner is consumed with being made clean. Consumed with getting rid of the disease. Think about Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress and Christian before it happens, the burden on his back. It consumes him. He just wants to get rid of that burden. It’s horrible to him. He wants to be rid of it entirely. Who goes to the doctor for a half cure? Doctor, I want some of my sickness taken away. I want a partial healing. I want half this flu. Can you half it? I just have sentimental feelings about laying around miserable in my house and I still want some of it.
Here we see the only attitude, this is the only attitude, the only attitude pleasing to God for which he shows mercy. And I think this verse really chastises us for lamenting we sin, being sorry for our sinful inclinations. We take note of them. Or worst of all, sometimes we altogether ignore patterns of sin in our life. But we must be as David and be completely broken for our sins. That’s the kind of person that God shows mercy to. That’s the kind of person that God shows mercy to. That’s the kind of person that God shows mercy to. That’s the kind of person that wants to be rid of the burden entirely.
And verse 4 explains why. Against you and you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight. So King Saul, before David, when the prophet called him out, Saul said, I have sinned. But when Nathan called out David, David said, I have sinned against the Lord. And that’s the difference between false and true repentance. Saul was just sorry it happened. He lamented the way he was. But David saw he had offended a holy God. You think about what about Bathsheba? What about Uriah and Uriah’s family? What about all the people that have lost Uriah? Think about what David’s done. Shouldn’t he march to them and just fall? Fall on the floor? It’s not that he’s innocent on their account. But David sees this. And it’s important that we see it. Every sin we commit, even against people, it’s first against God. It’s chiefly against God. Charles Spurgeon says this, the virus of sin lies in its opposition to God. The psalmist’s sense of sin towards others rather tended to increase the force of his feeling of sin against God. All his wrongdoing culminated and climaxed at the foot of the divine throne to injure our fellow man as sin, mainly because in doing so, we violate the law of God.
You could go the world around and find people who are sorry for the way they are, Christian or not. You could find plenty of people who live with guilt that they, you know, have a behavior problem. They constantly yell at folks or they know that they’re constantly not reliable or many men have had affairs and they’re sorry for it and they see it as a moral failure. But this is particularly Christian because we don’t just see the offense. You see the offense as against the Lord. And it’s a gracious thing for us to see our offense, our offenses against the Lord because how does the Lord respond to us when we see our sin for what it is? Well, positively. He sees the brokenhearted sinner who’s offended His law and He shows mercy. So we must feel the weight of our sins. The second thing here we see, we must fully confess to them. Fully confess to them. Fully confess to them. Fully confess to them.
David says that God is justified in His words and He’s blameless in His judgments. So God is the one who’s got the, you know, gauge of perfect justice, perfect holiness. And we can’t come to the perfect holy judge and say, well, I kind of did this or yeah, I did this. No good judge is going to take that. It’s a full confession of sin. It’s full honesty. And if we’re not really willing to be fully honest with God about our shortcomings and our sins, we can’t expect to grow and change and we certainly can’t expect forgiveness. God can’t forgive what we don’t confess. So you want to give a partial confession? You think you’re going to get full forgiveness? We have to come honest. And what does it take to come before God and confess all your sins? It takes humility. It knocks on, the door of your heart and reminds you, hey, you’re prideful. Are you willing to confess your sins fully? Are you willing to forsake them?
So David goes on deeper in that. Verse 5, Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me.
Behold, you delight in, truth in the inward being. And you teach me wisdom in the secret heart. Now David’s getting just flat honest here. And this is so important to see why. David is not just confessing he’s done a bad thing. David is confessing he is a bad thing. David is not saying, Lord, here’s my list. Thank you for taking this giant list. That’s not what’s happening here.
David’s saying, Lord, I was born this way. My mother was like this. And because my mother was like this, I’m like this. And there’s no outward external attempt to do right or some ritual or internal self-loathing and beat myself to death that could ever fix it. There’s no self-repair possible. And David knows that. He’s corrupt beyond, beyond repair. This is why the doctrine of total depravity is so great. Because it says to each one of us, stop thinking you can do one thing internally, externally to help yourself. Every part of you is bad at pleasing God.
The goodness of the gospel reaches back this far to David. And even before that, and I want you to see this in in in in ,
in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in
in in in in in in in the time of Paul, but all the way back to the time of David and even to the time of Abraham, it wasn’t anything they could do to merit salvation or to be shown mercy. It was believing in God. So much so, Paul can say that the gospel was preached to Abraham even way back in his day.
The gospel does not cause to self-repair. It does not cause to self-help. The gospel calls us to self-abandonment. To depend on God and God alone for His mercy. To wash and to clean.
Faith in Jesus. That’s where mercy comes from. It’s with the blood of Jesus we’re washed to be made clean. Jesus and Him alone are we made new and pure. With a full confession, with full brokenness, friends, we will find mercy at the foot of the cross.
And that’s the supernatural grace you and I are shown at the first when we’re converted. And that’s the supernatural grace we receive along the way as we err. And we do. Why? Why is it that that’s it? Hold on now. There’s got to be something. You’re not reading the fine print.
Friends, this is just so. Don’t argue with it. Don’t try to understand it. Don’t be looking for disqualifiers about why it can’t be true for you. There is a wideness in God’s mercy for His people because it’s who He is.
We are who we are because God says we are so in His Son Jesus.
Only this morning I pray that each of us would receive the unmerited grace, mercy, and love of God in Christ Jesus. My pastor growing up would always say don’t live below your identity in Jesus. Don’t live below your identity. And you know, when you’re a pastor, when you hear that, well, that sounds a little proud and a little, you know. No, it’s just true. You are who you are. If a prince wondered around a kingdom and felt, gosh, I feel so bad I’m in here and other people aren’t in here. Who am I to be in here? You’re no less a prince. You’re just not enjoying it. Friends, God would have us, you know, like a pig in mud, just roll around in His mercy. Flick it up in the air. Stop letting your flesh, stop letting Satan beat the fire out of you over your sins. Be set free in the Lord Jesus.
So let’s run to the cross of Jesus with fully broken hearts for our sin, fully confessing them, renouncing our very selves. There we will find the plentiful mercy of God for sinners. And if you’re still, you’re still wondering, like, that’s a good Rich Mullins song, but I don’t know, is that true? Is God’s mercy really that wide? For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is His steadfast love towards those who fear Him. As far as the east is from the west. So far does He remove our transgression from us. There’s a wideness in God’s mercy. There’s a wideness God’s mercy. God’s mercy. God’s mercy.