Back

Psalm 5
 What are our greatest needs?

     The two greatest needs are pardon & purity..  It is interesting that David notes for us the background of this psalm. It identifies clearly the incident out of which this psalm arose.   The interesting thing is that David himself records this sin for us. It must have been a painfully humiliating experience for the king.
     Do you remember Edgar Allen Poe’s story, “The Telltale Heart”? In that story, the main character has committed murder & he buries the body of the victim in his basement. But the murderer is unable to escape the haunting guilt of his deed. He begins to hear the heartbeat of his dead victim. A cold sweat pours over him as that heartbeat goes on & on, relentlessly, getting louder & louder. Eventually, it becomes clear that the pounding which drove the man mad was not in the grave below but in his own chest.
     You get the feeling that that’s how David felt when he committed the sins of adultery & murder. The guilt he felt became almost unbearable.
     So God sent Nathan to David. God loved this king, loved him too much to let him go on covering up & thus damaging himself & his entire kingdom by this hidden sin.
     When David was confronted, he acknowledged the terrible sin he had committed. He fell on his face before God & out of that experience of confession comes this beautiful fifty-first Psalm. There are several things that I want us to notice as we focus on verse 10, where David writes:   “Create in me a clean heart, O God, & renew a steadfast spirit within me.” (Ps 51:10).

I. There is a Need in Our Lives For Cleansing (Purity)

  I heard about two bachelors who were talking one day, & their conversation drifted from politics to sports to cooking.  One of them said, “I got a cookbook once, but I could never do anything with it.” The other one said, “Too much fancy work in it, huh?”  You first one said, “Yeah, it sure was. Every one of the recipes began the same way - ‘Take a clean dish.’”

The concept of forgiveness, of being made right with God, is pictured in the Bible in many different ways, sometimes as a new birth, sometimes as the crossing out of a debt, sometimes as the breaking off of a heavy chain.
     But the picture of forgiveness that David uses here is perhaps the most common picture throughout the word of God -- he describes it as a cleansing. “Create in me a clean heart, O God.” A few verses earlier, he wrote, “Wash me thoroughly from my sin, & cleanse me from my sin.” (Ps 51:2). And then in verse 7, “Purge me with hyssop & I shall be clean; Wash me, & I shall be whiter than snow.” (Ps 51:7).
     You see, sin is dirty, it’s filthy, it stains our lives. Isaiah put it this way: “But we are all like an unclean thing, & all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags…” (Is 64:6).
     And there is the need for us to be cleansed. So David says, “Purge me, purify me, wash me.” The words he uses imply a thorough scrubbing. And you can almost picture an old-time mother with her child at the sink scrubbing him until his skin literally shines & squeaks, getting behind the ears, getting rid of every bit of dirt. David says, “God, that’s what I want you to do to me. I’ve gotten myself dirty. I’ve been out messing with some things I shouldn’t have been messing with, & I’m covered with filth. I need for you to clean me up.”
     It’s a common image in the Bible. In Ez 36:25, God says to Judah, “I will cleanse you from all your filthiness & from all your idols.” 
     “But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, & the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin.” (I Jn 1:7)
     There is a need in our lives for cleansing. 

II. That Cleansing Needs to Begin in the Heart

It is a wonderful truth & promise that we hold on to.
     David doesn’t say, “Change the way I behave.” He says, “Change my heart.” It’s not that how we behave is unimportant. It’s just that we’ve got to start at the heart. We can go through all the right motions without our heart being right, but if the heart is right, everything else will fall into place.
     That’s why in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says, “I don’t want you to sit back all proud just because you’ve never murdered anyone. I want to know what’s in your heart. And I don’t want you to think you’re somebody special just because you’ve never committed adultery. Let’s take a look at what’s in your heart.”
     So David says, “Even if I never ever commit murder or adultery again in my entire life, there’s still something here that’s a problem. So God, I want you cleanse my heart. I want to cleanse the things I think about, my priorities, my desire to serve you.”
     In Eph 4, Paul talks about the change in our lives which ought to take place when we become Christians. He calls it putting off the old man & putting on the new man. Living as a new man involves such things as telling the truth & not stealing, things that we do. But notice how he starts this section: “that you put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, & be renewed in the spirit of your mind, & that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness & holiness.” (Eph 4:22-24)
     Paul goes on to say, “This is how you ought to act as Christians. And the reason you ought to act this way is because you were taught to be made new in your hearts.” That’s where the cleansing needs to start.

    1. Do not cast me away  - Pardon

  David is not talking about eternal security.

  He is referring to the fact that one cannot live a holy life without God.

  He is reminding us that we need the help & power of the H.S. every moment.

  Quote: Alexander Maclaren –“The psalmist is recoiling from what he knows only too well to be the consequence of an unclean heart – separation from God.”

   2. Restore the joy of your salvation 

  He has lost the joy.  He has not lost his salvation!

  As long as he was living in sin, he had no joy.

  David could no longer testify or witness, or even sing God’s praises.  Nothing shuts a Christian’s mouth like unconfessed sin. 

  We have the prayer of a backslider who has found repentance.

  His fellowship with God was broken.

  Notice He repented of his sin -He found cleansing for his sin - He seeks a renewed spirit

                Many think the way to joy is by sinning

                  We can have a good time!  Godliness is boring.

                Actually the opposite is the case! 

Sin brings sorrow. - Righteousness brings rejoicing

                Allowed to continue, sin will remove every good thing from your life

                Only righteousness will restore them.

                All the things David prays for in 7-12 indicate how many things he had lost when he

plunged into sin.

III. God Creates the Clean Heart

     David doesn’t offer to do it himself. In fact, he knows that he can’t. And when David says, “Create in me a clean heart, O God”, he goes back to the language of the creation itself in the first chapters of Genesis. The word "create" used here in Psalm 51 is the very same Hebrew word used in Genesis. In fact, it is a word used only of God in the Bible. It means to create something out of nothing. Human beings can fashion, arrange, or remodel things. But human beings can never create anything in the true sense of the word. We can’t bring into being something that never existed before.
     Because, you see, I don’t have the power to create a clean heart. And you don’t have the power. Solomon said, “Who can say, ‘I have made my heart clean, I am pure from my sin’?” (Proverbs 20:9).  The answer is obvious. None of us can say that. Only God has the ability to take a heart of sin & purify it & cleanse it.
     People try to deal with their guilt in a lot of different ways. Some try to cover it up with a lot of good works, thinking, “If I do enough good deeds, I can balance the scales in my favor.” But good deeds won’t get rid of guilt. On Rosh Hashana  it is customary for Jews to go to the ocean, pray, & throw bread crumbs onto the water, for the fish can symbolically eat their sins. But that’s not going to take away the guilt.
     Only what God has done for the us through the sacrifice Jesus offered on the cross can take away the sin & the guilt & the shame. Create in me a clean heart, O God.

                It is important to note that David did not ask for God to make his old heart clean.

                This should get our attention.

The word that is used here is bara used in creation of the heavens.

                It describes something that only God can do!

                It means creating something out of nothing.

                                It is used in 1:1 to describe creation of matter

                                It is used in 1:21 to describe creation of animals

                                It is used in 1:27 to describe the creation of the human race

                With this word, David asks for nothing less than a miracle. 

Something only God can provide.

He is asking for something to be made out of nothing. 

  If the work was to be any good, it could not use anything that was already in David.

  It is saying that if are to have victory over sin, God is going to have to start over with us.

IV. We Must Have an Attitude That Allows God to Change Our Heart
    God is the only one who can create a clean heart, so there might be some who have the idea, “Well, let’s just sit back & wait for God to do it!” The truth is, though, we have the right kind of attitude before God can do anything with our hearts.
     Note how David prepared himself before he asked God to create in him a clean heart:
   1. There was contrition.
     “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken & a contrite heart -- These, O God, you will not despise.” (Psalm 51:17). David truly was contrite.
     To be contrite means to be aware of our spiritual condition. It means that our inner self is crushed with a sense of its guilt. It does not mean merely feeling bad or remorseful about sin. It means that we have a genuine & deep sorrow for our rebellion against God & a determined desire to do differently.
     I read once about a man who wrote a letter to the Internal Revenue Service saying, "I haven’t been able to sleep lately because last year, when I filled out my income tax forms, I deliberately misrepresented my income. I am enclosing a check for $150.00, & if I still can’t sleep, I’ll send you the rest." That’s not at all an attitude of contrition.
    You see, our tendency is to rationalize or explain or excuse or defend or justify our sin. A contrite heart does not seek to blame circumstances or other people or God for our own failure. You don’t see David blaming God or Bathsheba: “Lord, if you hadn’t had me king I wouldn’t be walking on this palace roof in the first place. And besides, did you see what she wasn’t wearing?” And yet we hear that sort of thing all the time. “If you were married to this jerk, you’d cheat, too” Or, “It’s not my fault, the boss is so cheap I have to steal from the company to survive.” Or, “If I didn’t have such terrible neighbors, I wouldn’t lose my temper as much.”
  If we ever hope to have a clean heart, there must be contrition.
   2. There was confession
     “For I acknowledge my transgressions, & my sin is always before me. Against You, You only, have I sinned, & done this evil in Your sight.” (Psalm 51:3-4a).
     There are two sides to David’s confession. First of all, he confessed to himself. He said, “I realize that I have sinned. I can’t deny it or escape it or forget it. I recognize what I’ve done.” Then he confessed his sin to God, “Against you, you only, have I sinned.” Along with his admission of guilt is a confession of God’s justice, God’s right to judge him for his sin. David makes no plea for lenience, no claim that God is too hard on him, no appeal for a light sentence. Simply put, he says, “You’re right, I’m wrong.”
     Genuine confession demands that we take sin as seriously as God takes it. It’s not just a slip-up, a mistake. We need to have the right attitude toward sin -- a loathing, a disgust. And we need to determine to turn away from our sin.
     Solomon said, “He who covers his sins will not prosper, but whoever confesses & forsakes them will have mercy.” (Prov 28:13).
     Here in Psalm 51 is a frank & full acknowledgment of sin. David says, "I know my sins, I’m not trying to cover them up. They are always before me, this double act of adultery & murder. I am guilty." He doesn’t try to cover them up or to blame God for them. He says, "It’s not your fault, God; it’s mine."
     That’s one reason why so many cannot find forgiveness for their sins. They suffer for years with a guilty conscience because they are not willing to come to the place where they acknowledge their sin. They refuse to call it what God calls it. They refuse to be honest with themselves & with God. But we can never be forgiven while we do this, for the first step in the process of forgiveness is an acknowledgment of sin.

Conclusion:
     “Create in me a clean heart, O God.”  The most beautiful part of this story is that God did that for David & he’s willing to do the same for any of us. God’s delights in having the opportunity to forgive. And when he forgives, he doesn’t continue to hold it over us.
     I heard the story a few months ago about the owner of a Rolls Royce. The great British automaker takes great pride in the reliability of their handcrafted automobiles. An obviously wealthy owner of a Rolls Royce took it to Europe on an extended trip. While traveling in France the car had some mechanical problem. He called the Rolls Royce factory & asked that they send out a mechanic immediately to fix the problem. The company responded in royal fashion. They put a mechanic on a private jet with all of the necessary tools & flew him over to France to make the repairs. The owner was so wealthy that he wasn’t at all concerned about the cost, & would spare no expense to make sure that his beloved Rolls Royce was properly repaired.
    However, after several months he realized that he had not received a bill. He had his secretary contact the Rolls Royce factory to inquire about the bill. He received this reply from the Rolls Royce company: In typical British fashion, it said simply, "We have no recollection or record of any Rolls Royce having ever had a breakdown or being in need of repair anywhere in France."
     That reminds me of how God treats us when he forgives us of sin. Sometimes we have a harder time forgiving ourselves than does God. We sometimes feel weighed down with the burden of guilt long after God has removed the burden of sin. We need to follow God’s instructions to find forgiveness, then trust that God has kept his promise to forgive. Take comfort from these words:
     "As far as the east is from the west, so far… (Ps 103:12)  This morning, there may be some in this audience in need of the cleansing that God offers.
     “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new… (2 Cor 5:17)

                Religion is a personal thing.  We must confess our sin, not someone else’s.  Forgiveness is not a cheap thing; it cost Jesus His life.  The high cost of cleansing alone ought to make us hate sin & want to turn from it.  May we never forget the high cost of committing sin!

Top of Page