A psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet came to him, and rebuked him, in the name of God, for his great sin with Bathsheba.
Psalms 51:1. Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindess: according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions.
This is not a Psalm to be sung to the joyous music of the harp and the viol, but rather to the minor music of sighs, and groans, and tears. You must have the picture of weeping David before your mind's eye if you would really get to the heart and soul of his language here. There is only one thing on the psalmist's heart, and that is the consciousness of his great sin, which seemed to swallow up everything else. He feels that he must have that sin forgiven; he cannot rest until he knows that it is pardoned. Note how he makes his appeal to the lovingkindness and tender mercies of God. A sinner under a sense of sin has a keen eye for the mercy of God, for he knows that there is his only hope, and therefore he looks for it as a mariner at sea looks for a star, and will not allow even one to escape his observation if there be but one visible between the rifts of the clouds. David urges the most powerful plea with God: «According to thy lovingkindness; according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions.»
Psalms 51:2. Wash me throughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.
For he loathes it, it is abominable in his sight, his whole spirit seems sickened at the very recollection of it. He not merely prays, «Wash me,» but «'Wash me thoroughly.» Wash me thoroughly, not only from sin, but from the inequity of it, the wrongdoing of it, that wherein it was essentially sin, and when thou hast washed me, cleanse me, for, perhaps, washing will not be enough; there may need a cleansing by fire. Lord cleanse me anyhow, only do cleanse me from my sin.»
Psalms 51:3. For I acknowledge my transgressions: and my sin is ever before me.
He had tried to forget it, but he could not, for it haunted him wherever he went. He had put it behind his back, but now it had got in front of his eyes.
It seemed as if it were painted on his eyeballs, and he could not see without seeing through his sin. This is how God makes men repent, how he makes sin to be like gall and wormwood to them.
Psalms 51:4. Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight that thou mightest be justified when thou speakest, and be clear when thou judgest.
David had sinned against a great many others beside God, but the virus, the very poison of the sin, seemed to him to lie in this, that he had sinned against God. The unregenerate usually take no account of that, they care nothing about sinning against God. Offending men, doing some injury to their fellow-creatures, may cause them trouble, but as for offending God they snap their fingers at that, and count it to be something not worth even thinking of. But when a man is really awakened by divine grace, he sees that sin is an attack upon God, an offense against God's very nature and this becomes the heaviest burden to him. Do you know what this experience means, dear friends?
Psalms 51:5. Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.
David has got further than seeing sin upon him, he sees that he is himself sinfulness, that his nature, his very being, is steeped and dyed in sin. The evil is, not merely that thou hast sinned, but that thou art a sinner. Sin would never come out of thee if it were not in thee. And, oh, what mine of sin, what a bottomless deep of sin, there is in human nature! No wonder that it bursts forth as it does. As the volcano is but the index of a mighty seething ocean of devouring flame within the bowels of the earth so any one sin is only a token of far greater sinfulness that seethes and boils within the cauldron of our nature: «Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.»
Psalms 51:6. Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts:
«Alas, O Lord, it is not there! I have looked there, but have seen only sin. It is not truth, but the reverse of truth, that I find in my inward parts Lord, thou wilt never have what thou desires to see in me unless thou dost put thy hand to the work.»
Psalms 51:6. And in the hidden part thou shalt make me to know wisdom.
Yes, God can teach us. Even those hidden parts which no human teaching can reach, God can touch, and there he can make us to know wisdom.
Psalms 51:7. Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean:
«Sprinkle the blood of atonement upon me, give me a sacrificial cleansing, and then I shall be clean.»
Psalms 51:7. Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
To my mind, this is a wonderful expression of faith, I do not know of any Scripture that seems more full of holy confidence than this is. David had such a deep sense of his sinfulness that it was a wonderful thing that he should have, side by side with it, such a perfect confidence in the power of God to cleanse him. It is easy enough to say, «I shall be whiter than snow,» when we do not realize what scarlet sinners we are, but when the crimson is before us, and we are startled by it, it requires a real and living faith to be able to say to God, «Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.»
Psalms 51:8. Make me to hear joy and gladness; that the bones which thou had broken may rejoice.
God has a way of making our sins come home to us like the blows of great bone-breaking hammers. I suppose that no pain can be much worse than that of a broken bone, but God can make the pain of sin in the conscience to be as continuous and as intense as that of broken bones, and then, blessed be his name, he knows how to heal the bones which he has broken, and to make each broken bone to sing and rejoice. Whereas it groaned before, he can give it a new power, and make that very bone to be a mouth out of which shall come praise to God.
Psalms 51:9. Hide thy face from my sins,
«Lord, look no more at them. Do not hide thy face from me, but hide it from my sins.»
«O thou that hear'st when sinners cry,
Though all my crimes before thee lie,
Behold them not with angry look,
But blot their memory from thy book!»
Psalms 51:9. And blot out all mine iniquities.
«Do not let them be recorded any longer, O Lord! Run thy pen through them; let them not stand against me in thy books of remembrance!»
Psalms 51:10. Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.
Here the truly quickened man speaks. It is not salvation from punishment he asks for, but salvation from the power of sin. He wants a new heart. He wants to have removed from him the defiling power of sin over his affections; «Create in me a clean heart, O God.» It will need the Creator to do it. Only the God who made the world can make me what I ought to be.
Great Creator, put thy hand to this work: ‘Create in me a glean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.'»
Psalms 51:11. Cast me not away from thy presence; and take not thy holy spirit from me, «O Lord, do not thrust me into a dungeon, and say, ‘Thou shalt never be a favoured child of mine again.' ‘Take not thy Holy Spirit from me. That I should dread beyond everything else.»
Psalms 51:12. Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation; and uphold me with thy free spirit.
«Lord, I shall slip again unless thou dost hold me up, and, since thou canst not trust thy little child by himself, come and teach me how to walk.»
Psalms 51:13. Then will I teach transgressors thy ways; and sinners shall be converted unto thee.
«If thou wilt but teach me, and save me, and cleanse me, then I will tell to others what great things thou hast done for me. I will tell out the story of thy love that others also may prove its power.»
Psalms 51:14. Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God, thou God of my salvation: and my tongue shall sing aloud of thy righteousness.
This was a wonderful prayer, but it was not wonderful that David should get relief when he called his sin by its right name. Another man, in his place, might have said, «I did not kill Uriah. It is true that I had him put where he was likely to be slain, but then the sword devoureth one as well as another.» That was the way that David did hypocritically talk at first; but now that his conscience has been aroused, he confesses that he is a murderer: «Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God.»
Psalms 51:15-16. O Lord open thou my lips: and my mouth shall shew forth thy praise. For thou desirest not sacrifice; else would I give it: thou delightest not in burnt offering.
How wonderfully a true sense of sin puts a man on the track of Evangelical doctrine, David could see that sin was too grievous a thing for the blood of sheep and bullocks to wash it away, and though he did not despise the ritual which God had ordained, he looked beyond it to something greater and better of which it was but a type.
Psalms 51:17-18. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise. Do good in thy good pleasure unto Zion: build thou the walls of Jerusalem.
This is a blessed end to David's mournful Psalm. He felt that his sin had a tendency to do injury to the Church of God, that he had, in fact, pulled down the towers of Zion by his iniquity, so he prays «Build thou the walls of Jerusalem.»
Psalms 51:19. Then shalt thou be pleased with the sacrifices of righteousness, with burnt offering and whole burnt offering: then shall they offer bullocks upon thine altar.