Psalm 51 - Renewal in God's Love

When my niece Catie was about 5 or 6 years old she loved to draw… on everything. She once took a permanent marker & drew all over her bedroom walls. One night when my sister went to tuck Catie in she found her holding the covers on her bed in a strange way & so my sister pulled the covers down a little bit & saw that Catie had taken a pen & drawn all over her sheets. My sister was visibly upset but Catie kept taking her blankets & covering up the ink marks saying, look mommy – it’s all gone, it’s all gone. When my sister told me that story I thought, wow, isn’t that what we do all the time. We sin, we make mistakes, we make a mess of our lives & then we just try to cover it up thinking it will all go away. Maybe we cover up the situation with a lie. Maybe we just try to deny that there is a problem, or lay the blame on someone else. There are many ways we might try to cover up our sin & King David tried them all.

If you remember the story of King David, not long after he had been established as the king of Israel he sent all his men out to battle & he was left alone in Jerusalem. Late one afternoon David was out walking on the roof of the palace when he saw Bathsheba taking a bath & when he saw her – he wanted her. Even after David found out that Bathsheba was the wife of Uriah, one of his soldiers, he sent for her & he committed adultery with her & then he sent her home thinking that no one would ever know. When Bathsheba became pregnant, however, David knew that pretty soon everyone would know, so he tried to cover up the situation. To make a long story short, David ends up having Uriah, Bathsheba’s husband, killed in an effort to cover up his sin. So in the course of just a few months, David has committed adultery & conspired to murder & he thinks that the situation has been neatly covered up, but then one day the prophet Nathan visits David & tells him this story 2 Sam. 12:1-6.

There were two men in a certain town, one rich and the other poor. The rich man had a very large number of sheep and cattle, but the poor man had nothing except one little ewe lamb he had bought. He raised it, and it grew up with him and his children. It shared his food, drank from his cup and even slept in his arms. It was like a daughter to him. Now a traveler came to the rich man, but the rich man refrained from taking one of his own sheep or cattle to prepare a meal for the traveler who had come to him. Instead, he took the ewe lamb that belonged to the poor man and prepared it for the one who had come to him. David burned with anger against the man and said to Nathan, "As surely as the LORD lives, the man who did this deserves to die! He must pay for that lamb four times over, because he did such a thing and had no pity."

While David is getting angry, Nathan turns the entire situation around with 4 words. “You are the man!” You, David, are the man who has sinned. You are the man who has taken what belonged to some else. You are the one who has destroyed something good & you can’t cover it up any more. The pain, the broken lives, the chaos that David’s sin has caused suddenly comes crashing down upon him & in that moment David’s greatest desire is to be made new. With all that is within him, David wants to be washed clean. He wants to be forgiven & given another chance.

Psalm 51 is David’s response to God once Nathan has exposed his sin, & over & over again in the psalm we hear David crying out for mercy & forgiveness. More than anything David wants a fresh start & a new beginning. Look at 51:1-2:

Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love;
according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions.
Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin.

Have mercy on me, blot out my sin, wash me, cleanse me. Again in 51:7-9 David says, purge me, wash me, blot out my sin, create in me a clean heart. David is looking for, he is longing for & crying out for renewal – renew a right or a steadfast spirit within me. But Psalm 51 isn’t just a cry for renewal & forgiveness, it also teaches how to experience this renewal in our own lives & it all starts when we are willing to turn to God.

In 51:10 David asks God to renew a right or steadfast spirit within him & then immediately David says, Do not cast me from your presence, do not take your spirit from me. David shows us that when things are bad, when we have made a mess of our lives & when our sin has broken us, broken our relationships & turned everything in our world upside down - we can’t run away from God, we need to run toward God. Too many times when we are confronted with the reality of our own sin our first instinct is to run away. Maybe we feel unworthy & unacceptable to God, maybe we think that if we turn to God he will turn away, or turn us away, but what we find is that because of God’s great love for us, if we turn to God he will not turn away from us, in fact he will turn toward us.

Jesus tells a powerful story about this love of God. A son asks his father for his share of the inheritance long before his father is even close to death & this is a huge insult. The son might as well be saying I wish you were dead so I could just have your money. The father gives his son the money & the son immediately goes off & spends it all on wild living & when the money is gone, the young man realizes how his sin has destroyed his life & the relationship with his father, so he decides to return home & seek forgiveness & in one of the most beautiful verses in scripture it says, Luke 15:20
So he got up and went to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.

Now understand that first of all men in this culture did not run & fathers who had been insulted by their sons certainly didn’t run out to greet them, embrace them & kiss them, but this father does & in this father we see a reflection of our father in heaven. What this story of Jesus tells us is that when we are willing to turn to God – God doesn’t run from us, on the contrary – God runs toward us. When we turn to God – it’s not that God is there waiting for us to arrive – God is on his way to meet us, like the father in the story, God sees us while we are still far off & when God sees us, He doesn’t take his spirit from us, God doesn’t cast us out – God runs out to greet us & then He draws us in.

It doesn’t matter who we are or what we have done. It doesn’t matter how broken our lives might be today, it doesn’t matter how chaotic our world is & it doesn’t matter that it is our sin that caused it, when we turn to God we find that God is already on his way to meet us. If God was there to forgiven & renew David’s life after all that had happened to him, then we can trust that God will be there to forgive & renew us, but the first step in experiencing this forgiveness & renewal is to turn to God. But there is more – we also have to acknowledge our sin & our problems.

Look at Psalm 51:3-5. For I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me. Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you are proved right when you speak and justified when you judge. Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.

David is clear that the sin & the problems of his life are of his own doing. He doesn’t blame Bathsheba for being out that day & tempting him. He doesn’t blame the officials for bringing Bathsheba to him & he doesn’t blame his officers for how they helped him have Uriah killed, David takes full responsibility for his own actions. Renewal doesn’t take place without us first taking responsibility for our own actions. Forgiveness doesn’t come unless there is first honest & sincere confession.

We see this in the story of the prodigal son as well. Go back to Luke 15:21. The son said to him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Before the father can say anything the son admits that he was wrong. He confesses that not only had he sinned against his father but he sinned against God, he took full responsibility for his actions & he acknowledges his sin. Are we ready to stop ignoring our problems or laying them at the feet of others & start looking deep within to the condition of our own heart & soul? We have set up mirrors throughout the lobby & the question is are we willing to take a good hard look in the mirror & acknowledge the sin & the problems that we see? We live in a world where no one seems to want to take responsibility for their own words or actions. During the next 100 days we will be hearing politicians on both sides deny that they have ever said or done anything wrong & they will lay the blame of every problem on someone else. We live in a culture where admitting that we are wrong or that we have a problem is seen as weakness – but in our relationship with God – weakness is strength. When we are weak – God is strong. When we take responsibility & confess our sin – God forgives – God renews.

So David turns to God & David acknowledges his sin & then David steps back & realizes what he can do & what he can’t do to bring about his own renewal. Here’s what David can’t do – he can’t make his own heart clean. In other words, David can not renew himself – renewal & forgiveness has to come from God. In 51:10 David says, Create in me a pure heart, O God & the word create is the same word we find in Genesis 1:1 where it says that in the beginning God created the heavens & the earth. David is acknowledging that the renewal that needs to take place in his heart & life can only come from God. It will be from the hand of God, the heart of God & from the power of God working within that that renewal will take place. David can not bring it about himself, we can not renew our own hearts; renewal only comes from God.

Sometimes we feel like we have to wash ourselves clean or work to earn God forgiveness, but that’s not the way it works. In Ephesians 2:8-9 the Apostle Paul says, for it is by grace that you have been saved, through faith, and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God, not by works so that no one can boast. Our work isn’t to earn forgiveness, it is not to renew ourselves, it is to trust in the God who forgives. We don’t wash ourselves clean, we allow God to wash us clean & renew us in his love. Paul says it is by grace we have been saved, thru faith, so our job is to have faith. Our job, or what we can do is have faith that God will renew us. So what is faith? The book of Hebrews says that faith is the assurance of things hoped for & the conviction of things unseen. In this case, faith is being willing to let go of what we can see (or what we can do on our own) & allow God to make us new.

We can’t create a new heart within us, we can’t wash ourselves clean, we can’t trust in our own strength, power & wisdom, we have to let go of trying to renew our lives & have the faith that God will renew us. So what we can’t do is renew ourselves, but what we can do is turn to God & confess our sin. What we can do is let go of trying to do things on our own & have faith that God will be there to forgive us. If we are holding on to sin today, or if we are trying to cover it up or if we are running from God because we think there is no way he can love us or forgive us, then we need to let go & have faith that God will be there running out to us when we turn to him & we need to trust that in his love– he will renew us & give us a new & right & steadfast spirit.

There is one more thing that David realized he could do. Once he experienced renewal – he could give thanks & praise to God, look at Psalm 51:13 & 15: 13 - Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will turn back to you.
15 - O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise.

David knew that when renewal came he would give thanks & praise to God & he would encourage others to find that forgiveness & grace in God as well. I will teach transgressors your ways & sinners will turn back to you. Once we have experienced renewal, it is our job to share God’s grace & love with others, & what we can do is encourage those who are broken & hurting to turn to God themselves. So if you are rejoicing in God’s renewal today, if you have experienced it your life, then share your story of God’s grace with others so that they can be renewed as well.