Dennis Tuuri

Sermon Scripture: Psalm 51

Please stand for the reading of this psalm. Have mercy upon me, oh God, according to thy loving kindnesses, according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies. Blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquities, and cleanse me from my sin. For I acknowledge my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. 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.

Behold, I was shaped in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me. Behold, thou desireest truth in the inward parts, and in the hidden part thou shalt make me to know wisdom. Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean. Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Make me to hear joy and gladness, that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice. Hide thy face from my sins, and blot out all mine iniquities.

Create in me a clean heart, oh God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from thy presence, and take not thy holy spirit from me. Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation, and uphold me with thy free spirit. Then will I teach transgressors thy ways, and sinners shall be converted unto thee. Deliver me from blood guiltiness, oh God, thou God of my salvation, and my tongue shall sing aloud of thy righteousness.

Oh Lord, open thou my lips, and my mouth shall show forth thy praise. For thou desireest not sacrifice, else would I give it. Thou delightest not in burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit. A broken and contrite heart, oh God, thou wilt not despise. Do good in thy good pleasure unto Zion. Build thou the walls of Jerusalem. 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.

Let’s pray. Father, we pray that this word would challenge us as well as assure us. And pray Lord God we would have ears that are opened by your spirit. That your spirit may take this your powerful word into the depths of our being and transform us. And help us, Lord God, to receive a message that we take to reform all of our lives. And indeed take forth from our lives as well that wherever we go the centrality of this message—confession of sin and forgiveness through the work of the mercy of the Lord Jesus Christ—might be in all that we do and say as your people. In Christ’s name we pray.

Amen.

Both the outline and the other sheet as well. I apologize for the poorness of the copy quality—just the way it turned out. We read in 1 Thessalonians 4:23, a familiar verse to us being the benediction that we typically use at the conclusion of our worship day together. Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you entirely and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved completely without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Faithful is he who calls you and he also will bring it to pass.

This portion comes at the end of a long series of injunctions from Paul to the Thessalonians, practical statements of their need to do particular things. It’s the culmination of that series of things that Paul commands them to do ultimately. And this verse speaks to sinless perfection. This verse assures the saint that he shall indeed be the recipient of sinless perfection. He shall be perfected entirely.

The scriptures in this short section—verses 23 and 24—repeat over and over like a sledgehammer the reality that we shall indeed attain to sinless perfection. He says, “May you be sanctified entirely.” And then to repeat that: May your spirit and soul and body be preserved complete, entirely all elements of us. Not that we’re separate things really, but there are different aspects of who we are—entirely sanctified, body, soul, and spirit, complete.

There’s no hint of obtuseness either to the language relative to this sanctification—that you might be without blame at the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. So entire sinless perfection for the entire Christian man or woman. But also the assuredness of this is that God himself will accomplish it. It is God who is asked by the apostle—asked confidently by the apostle—who will do this. It is the God of peace, the God of unity and blessing, who will accomplish this.

And it is God of peace himself who will accomplish this sanctification and perfection. Faithful is he who calls you and he will also bring it to pass. An idiomatic expression. Surely this will happen if we ask this and we pronounce this blessing upon the people of God. The God who is faithful to have brought them to salvation will faithfully bring them to sinless perfection.

So this benediction is a reality, but it’s not a reality in these bodies. It is a reality in the eschaton—in our death and meeting Christ, absent from the body present with the Lord, or at his return. That is when the sinless perfection I alluded to in these verses will find its completion.

Now this is related to the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints because it says that indeed the saints will persevere. And ultimately God preserves them. And ultimately God’s preservation of the saints leads to their complete perfection before the throne of grace.

I don’t know about you, and maybe if you’re young, you don’t feel this way. The older I get, the more verses like this are a comfort to me, because I long more and more to be free from the Adamic nature and from the besetting sins that so easily entangle us. But God says to you, if that’s the way you feel today, rest assured there’s coming a day—assuredly—that the God of peace himself will sanctify you completely in body, soul, and spirit, that you may be without any sin at all. And you come into contact with the Lord Jesus Christ in the eschaton, at your death, at his coming. This will happen. God’s faithful. He called you. He’s going to bring it to pass. Praise God.

But in the meantime, we have these bodies.

Now, we’ve talked the last couple of weeks—the last couple of sermons, that is—about the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints. The context for this is the five points of Calvinism. And I’m not going to ask you to review those. I’m not going to review those again, but I am going to ask you to write down on a piece of paper or just do it mentally, if you will. If you know what those five points are and if you know if you have scripture addresses so that you could talk to somebody about the five points of God’s sovereignty articulated by the fathers at the Canons of Dort and later called the five points of Calvinism.

Do you know what they are? First of all, do you know what the acronym is? TULIP, hopefully. You know what the T is for? And then do you know scripture addresses for those particular points? Encourage you: if you don’t know that, work on it this week. I’m giving you lots of information. If still you don’t know scripture addresses for those things, give me a call, give me an email. Let’s work on it. Let’s get it done.

In the context of that, we’re on the fifth point—perseverance. And we began in dealing with this doctrine a couple of weeks ago. And we said that perseverance is vitally linked with the doctrine of God’s preservation of the saints. It is perseverance, but it’s preservation. I’m going to read the summary chapter paragraph that we began with—summarizing the teachings of the Canons of Dort on this topic.

Saints—so we’re talking about saints. We’re not talking about visible Christians. Talking about true saints who have been regenerated by God and called by him. Saints, though delivered from sin’s dominion and slavery—praise God—we’re not slaves to sin. The scriptures make that clear. Sin shall no longer exercise dominion over us. Are not free from indwelling sin. He that says he has no sin is a liar. The truth isn’t in him. He has indwelling sin, even though he’s delivered from the dominion of sin.

Paul says that we’re carnal in a sense. There’s a sense in which we are carnal. I don’t mean you and we think of carnal Christians as those who kind of are Christians but not quite first-rate Christians, but second-rate Christians. That’s not what the scriptures talk about. The scriptures say that we have this indwelling Adamic nature still. And while the principle of regeneration and new life in the Lord Jesus Christ is the dominant part, at the center of our being, from which flow the streams of the spirit to our lives and other lives, nonetheless, we still have also within us the context of the Adamic nature.

We’re carnal in that sense. The law is spiritual. There is no Adamic nature in the law—where it’s a reflection of God’s character—but we’re carnal. So we have indwelling sin and thus engage in daily sins of weaknesses. So if we try to examine our lives to see if we’re good enough to come to the communion table, forget it. The more you look under the brightness of God’s word—it’s clean and pure and so on—the more you’re going to see you got problems in motivation or in actions.

Hence, we could not persevere. But God does preserve us. The whole point of sin being brought into this discussion is that we can’t do it, but God shall surely do it. The scriptures say, as we just read in First Thessalonians, he causes us to persevere. Glory to him, not to us.

Still, saints may fall into serious sins through their own failure of diligence. And we said that, you know, don’t get hung up on the word serious. It’s not that those smaller sins, so to speak, are not serious. The scriptures are clear that one violation of the law is enough to send you to hell. So all sin is serious. But what they mean here is a translation: grievous sins. There is this distinction we made in Psalm 19. The secret sins—not that David were trying to hide. Those are important to root out of our lives. But the secret sins that he doesn’t even know about, that he’s engaged in all the time, he prays for God to deliver him from.

And then he says also from presumptuous sins. Remember Deuteronomy 17: capital punishment. Why? Because if a man acts high-handedly, presumptuous, God—by telling the priest or the judge (civil judge)—”I’m not going to do what you tell me”—then contempt of court was execution, because that is a high-handed sin: to tell the representative of God, you’re not going to do what they tell you to do.

So a high-handed sin is a rebellious sin. It’s a sin of rebellion. I know what I’m supposed to do. I’m not going to do it. I’m going to sin. Yeah. The death penalty was to wipe out that kind of sin in the context of the land. The people will see that the high-handed sins are dealt with and then to see people themselves who watch all this process going on—they won’t sin presumptuously in this way.

So the two types of sin, you know, in terms of civil justice—that’s very important. We had a case in this church where you know one of our fellows here a year or two ago: what kind of sin was it? Sin of ignorance. Civil magistrate no longer makes a distinction between a rebellion—an attempt to assault somebody—and the assault of self-defense. There’s really not much distinction made anymore. It’s assault. So the civil magistrate has moved away from a consideration of these two kinds or two categories that Psalm 19 puts forth for the sins of man.

Okay. So today we’re going to deal in a couple minutes with grievous sins.

Saints seriously fall through their own failure of diligence. It’s not God’s fault. It’s their own failure of diligence and reap various ill effects. Problems happen. We’re going to talk about David. You may say, “Well, David didn’t get executed.” Well, a number of his sons did. Blood was shed by David, and God took a number of his children in restitution. And the people saw that, and they weren’t stupid. They saw the hand of God in those things. And the people were warned by the judgments upon David’s children of the justice of God against presumptuous sin. Various ill effects. But God will not permit his elect to be lost and will again renew his elect to true repentance. That’s what we just read about, wasn’t it? Psalm 51. He renewed David again to true repentance. David didn’t get lost. It is God’s grace that preserves us.

And David at the beginning of that psalm calls on God’s mercy. It’s how it starts. Ends with assurance. It begins with mercy. It’s God’s grace that preserves us. And this assurance of preservation can and is known by the believer. David knew it. “Wash me and I will be clean.” He says—see, it is a petition, but it’s also a confident trust in David in the covenantal mercies of God. Wasn’t wondering whether it would happen or not. He knew that as God brought him to repentance that God would surely preserve him.

This assurance of preservation can and is known by the believer through the word, the spirit, desire for good works, and a good conscience, though for a season doubt of this may occur. This assurance does not lead to pride, complacency, or carelessness, but rather to humility, its varied fruits: works, diligence, and a great desire to have God’s countenance shine upon us. That’s what David wanted. “Don’t take your spirit from me. Shine upon me.”

As God began his work in us by the use of means, so he continues it also by means, notably the word, discipline, and sacraments. While this doctrine is no source of joy to the world, the flesh and the devil, neither the hypocrites and heretics, the church loves and defends it as a treasure of inestimable value. These are secondary means. David was worked upon through the secondary means of Nathan the prophet and brought God’s word to bear upon David.

Now, we’re going to deal with the serious sins in a moment, but just by way of review again, I printed out for you Article Number Two of the Fifth Head of Doctrine. Let me go over that real quickly. Therefore, daily sins of weaknesses spring up and defects cling to even the best works of the saints. Outward conformity to the law is not good enough. What did we just read about in terms of the complete sanctity, the sinless perfection that God will accomplish for us in Christ? Spirit, body, and soul. Our motivations—all that we are—is where sin resides, in the context not just of our actions, but in terms of our motivations. Why are we doing things?

You may come to church every Lord’s day, be on time, take good notes. But if you’re doing it not in submission to the King of Kings, if you’re doing it for the motivation of looking good to your family or looking good to your friends, or somehow thinking that there is a mechanical blessing involved in this, you’re sinning in it.

And see, all of us—our motivations are never totally pure because we’re not two people. We’re not the old dog and the new dog. We’re one person. We have the principle of regeneration of God in our hearts motivating us, but we also have the Adamic nature symbolized in scripture by our flesh and our body. And until the flesh and the body is gone—till that’s transformed totally—it’s not that it resides in the flesh, but it’s a picture of our fallen Adamic nature.

Okay? You don’t want to get into a flesh-spirit dichotomy. It’s just that the flesh is a picture of the old fallen creation. And so the old fallen creation is with us. And so everything we do—the father’s rightly said—has this defect cling to the best of our works.

So what does that mean? These are for them a constant reason, and this is what we should be doing as we meditate upon these truths of Psalm 19 and the secret sins: humble ourselves before God—drives out pride. Flee to the crucified Christ. The principle of the gospel, the truth of the gospel, the grace by which we are created is also the means and the primary method of our sanctification. It’s not a matter of: if we’re sanctified by works, we’re sanctified through a humiliation of ourselves to God and a fleeing to the crucified Christ. Doesn’t mean we throw away the law. But don’t get the idea that somehow you were brought here by grace and then now you’re going to decide to work out your sanctification by means of law apart from the grace of God. No, that’s wrong.

You know, you come with the one that you dance with—the one that brought you to the dance. Okay? And the one that God brought you to the holy dance before his throne today is the God of grace. And it’s the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ—his mercy and his love for you. And that mercy and love and grace is what is the dynamo for our sanctification as well as it was for our salvation.

We flee to the crucified Christ regularly, daily. We put the flesh to death more and more through the spirit of prayer. Doesn’t mean you chop off your hand. It means this Adamic nature again is put to death by use of these secondary means of the spirit and prayer. We’ll talk about that a little later in this series, in a couple of weeks. The secondary means: by holy exercises of godliness, and to long for the goal of perfection. That’s what that First Thessalonians 4 benediction should be to us. It should bring forth a longing that be true of ourselves. And until last, deliver from this body of death, they reign with the lamb of God in heaven.

Okay, so that’s by way of review. And we’re going to move on today to Articles 3-7 in the context of Psalm 51.

Now, I did want to read a couple of things. This is kind of by way of review and sort of by way of introduction. You know, we are as I said—we are told in Romans 6:14: sin shall not have dominion over you if you are not under the law. In other words, under the indictment of the law, but you are under grace. In other words, in and under the power of God’s grace. So sin shall not have dominion over us. We have been released from the dominion of sin. Nonetheless, we do have the Adamic nature, which continues to manifest itself in all of our life.

So this sin nature, the Adamic nature, continues to plague us in the best of our activities. And I wanted to read a quote here from R.J. Rushdoony in his systematic theology dealing with the Adamic nature. Okay. Our original sin is the tempter’s religion: “You shall be as gods”—or god—”knowing”—that is, determining for yourself what constitutes good and evil. This is the faith which determines, or rather dominates, the total life of fallen man and is the underlying presupposition of all of our reasoning.

So fallen man—the Adamic nature—this is the Adamic nature that Adam went into and sinned by, and this is the Adamic nature that continues to cling to the best of our efforts. It’s this idea of determining for yourself what constitutes good and evil. It’s accepting our own counsel. Remember we talked about the wicked king who didn’t take God’s counsel. He wanted his own counsel. So it’s accepting our own counsel instead of God’s counsel.

As a result, life has become—has lost its original center. And instead, the false center now is not any longer God, but it is man and his counsel. The universe becomes in such thinking anthropocentric. Big word that means life itself is good if I have what I want—money, husband, wife, or children, position, privilege, or whatever else a man’s heart may desire. Life is evil—this principle says the Adamic nature—says if I am frustrated in my desire to realize any of these things.

Do you see the importance of that? Man’s counsel becomes the center. To the Adamic nature, it is the center of our Adamic nature. And that man’s council says that our lives are centered upon our desires. And life is good if we get what we want. Life is evil if we’re frustrated.

And again quoting from Rushdoony: Thus that which saddens, grieves, or makes unhappy most people is not sin, but rather a failure to realize their desires. This is the effect of total depravity. It gives us a false center. Now unless we recognize what total depravity is and does, we still carry its basic presupposition over into the Christian life.

Now, I think that’s very significant. I’ll read it again. That which saddens, grieves, or makes unhappy most people is not sin, but rather a failure to realize our desires. And I think if you look back on your life—I know if I do in this past week—what has made me sad or unhappy usually is not a recognition of my own sins. Certainly there is that in the daily life of the Christian, but all too often our Adamic nature is prone to say: we’re sad. We’re unhappy. We’re grieved because we didn’t get the thing that our sin desires. We didn’t get what we’ve determined is good or necessary for us, as opposed to the providence of God, which is quite clear. You know, we’d end up where we are. And if we don’t have what we want, it’s because God doesn’t want us to have it.

Okay. So that’s the Adamic nature and the subtleties by which it enters into decision-making and into our motivation and into our actions. And as a result, everything we do has at least an element of this clinging to us in the context of the words of the Canons of Dort that we discussed last time.

Okay, let’s move on then to a consideration of Psalm 51 as we talk about now serious or grievous sins.

Psalm 51 and I’ve provided on your outline a brief overview of this psalm. What we have in Psalm 51 is a series of confessions by David—confessions and petitions. I guess I should say better: petitions. And I have—there’s lots of ways, of course, I’m not suggesting this is the ultimate outline for the book, but in terms of dealing with it, I think it is a good way to deal with this: to look at a variety of petitions that David enters into in the context of this psalm and look at it according to a particular set of relevant truths accompanying it.

For instance, in Psalm, in verse number one, we have: “Mercy upon me, oh God, according to thy loving kindnesses, according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies, blot out my transgressions.” Now, David’s basis for that petition is a consideration of the attributes of God.

Remember, we have in the opening introduction to this psalm the historical reference to when it was written. And let’s review that a little bit. You remember that David had an adulterous affair with Bath-Sheba and ended up killing Ba—well, he didn’t kill him directly, but he arranged for Uriah, Bath-Sheba’s husband, to be placed in the front of the troops battling the enemies of God, for the rest of the army to pull back and let him be killed. So David arranged for the murder of Uriah. A murderer and an adulterer. Here’s the confession of a murder and an adulterer.

But it’s worse than that because the psalm here references his sin against God, and it references his actions. But those actions are understood in the light of the historical context. And that historical context tells us—as the prelude to what happens in the context of the story of David seeing Bath-Sheba, having her over, etc.—the beginning of that story is that it was the time of year when kings go out to war. When kings, not just armies, go out to war. And then it’s emphasized later in the story because Uriah, you know, David tries to arrange for Uriah to come home and sleep with his wife. And Uriah comes back. David wants to cover up his adultery. And so Uriah comes back and won’t go be with his wife. Says, you know, the ark of God is out there in the field and I’m going to be happy and luxurious here with my wife.

Oh, what a stunning indictment of what David has done here. David’s failure in the first instance is a failure as a king to go out and engage in the battle of God’s enemies. And because he hasn’t done that, he’s fallen into this great sin. Idle hands are the devil’s workshop. And people, when we are not busy doing the things of the Lord, temptations will multiply. And you know, if you take a bottle of pop—good time of year for bottles—you shake it up a little bit. Soon as you pop that top, that stuff’s spurting out. Satan doesn’t need to work on us much. When we’re not doing the Lord’s work, opens the door a little—pop—we come flying out. Whatever sins he’ll give us temptation to engage in, we’re like dry tinder when we’re not doing the work of the Lord. One little spark, we go up in flame.

See, and here’s David as an example of that to us.

Now, it’s even worse than that because if you look at the genealogy and the chronologies, David is an older man. Now, Bath-Sheba is a young woman. I mean, she’s a woman, but she’s young. And if you look at the genealogies closely, it appears that David has probably known Bath-Sheba since she was a little girl. She, her family is in the context of the king’s court. So David has responsibilities to guard all his country for the glory of God and certainly guard the members of his court. But here’s David taking a young girl that he’s probably played with as a child when she was a child and he was king. And he’s actually now sinning relative to her.

And when the prophet comes in and rebukes him for this and gives him the story—the story is, you know, about a little ewe lamb that a guy has. It’s a defenseless sort of thing. It’s not just about a woman. That’s true, too. But it’s talking about a young woman, and a young woman who David should have known and who should have been—the particular—as the younger children and women in the context of his court were particular recipients of his kingly duty to guard them.

And yet here’s David sinning against Bath-Sheba and sinning against Uriah. So it’s a really, you know, it’s a terrible thing. It’s one of those atrocious, serious, grievous sins that the Canons of Dort talk about.

And David, when Nathan brings him to his repentance, no longer does he seek plots by which he can cover up his sin the way he did with Uriah. Sin begets sin. Yes, we don’t deal with it God’s way. We deal with it our way. The sin multiplies, right? He committed adultery because his plot to cover it up didn’t work. Then he had to kill Uriah. Multiplication. Here though, he comes to his senses, and there’s no thought anymore of how to cover up his sin. There is simply a crying out to God that his sin be forgiven.

And let’s look at that then. And first, as I said, the first set of petitions: this psalm begins with mercy. That is significant. It is the mercy of God that David is driven back to through this grievous action that he has fallen into—that he has committed in sin. Okay, that’s important. Why is that important? Because the Canons of Dort tell us correctly. So let’s pick up your sheet on the Canons of Dort and let’s read this a little bit and consider this in relationship to what we’re seeing here in David’s life.

Okay, verse three—God may or not. Article three we won’t read, but Article four then: “Saints may fall into serious sins.” Okay, the power of God whereby he confirms and preserves true believers in grace is so great that it cannot be conquered by the flesh. Yet the converted are not always so led and moved by God that they cannot in certain particular actions turn aside through their own fault from the guidance of grace and be seduced by and yield to the lust of the flesh.

They must therefore constantly watch and pray that they may not be led into temptation. When they do not watch and pray, they not only can be drawn away by the flesh—when they don’t do this, the world and Satan—into serious and atrocious sins, but with the righteous permission of God are sometimes actually drawn away. The lamentable fall of David, Peter, and other saints described in holy scripture demonstrate this.

So now let’s understand what they’re saying here. Now they’re using language that is legitimate to use. They say that God—it’s by his righteous permission that in this case David fell into this sin. Now permission is a well—for those of you who know the terms—it’s an infralapsarian term. It’s a term that says that takes up the scene after man’s fall and says well, God permitted this to happen. But of course, with the sovereign God, what he permits he could have prevented.

So don’t get the idea that God just sort of permits it apart from his decree. It’s a different question, but the emphasis here is that God has permitted this to occur. He has in a sense withdrawn his superintending and providential grace that prevents us from these kind of actions, and it alone prevents us from these kind of actions. For a season, he lets us by our own fault engage in these kind of notorious sins.

Okay. Now it is our fault, even though God has withdrawn his grace. It tells us here that this is the righteous permission of God. And we know that God is always just and righteous. So when God through his righteous permission allows David to enter—by his own fault—into what his flesh would always do, and what you and my flesh always do—were it not for the superintending grace of God—there is nothing unrighteous in that.

Okay, it’s righteous. And it is particularly righteous as we contemplate the effects.

Article 5 says: “By such gross sins, however, they greatly offend God. They incur deadly guilt.” David says: “Deliver me from blood guiltiness.” The word there is bloods. It means capital crimes. “They grieve the Holy Spirit.” David says: “Don’t withdraw your spirit from me.” “They suspend the exercise of faith.” I need sanctity. We’ll look at these again in just a moment. They very grievously wound their own consciences and sometimes for a while lose the sense of God’s favor. David had lost the sense of God’s favor until they return to the right way through sincere repentance and God’s fatherly face again shines upon them.

Now Article six says: “But God who is rich in mercy according to the unchangeable purpose of his election does not completely withdraw his holy spirit from his own even in this deplorable fall. Neither does he permit them to sink so deeply that they fall away from the grace of adoption and the state of justification or commit the sin unto death or the sin against the Holy Spirit. They’re totally deserted by him, plunge themselves into eternal ruin.”

In other words, David’s a saint, and God is going to withdraw his superintending grace for a season so that David ends up in this atrocious sin through his own fault, through his own actions, of his own moral culpability. But God does not withdraw it such that David is going to perpetually then cycle down.

When we see Saul, who perpetually cycles down—when David says, “Don’t take your spirit,” he’s probably thinking about the fact that God did remove his spirit from Saul. When we see Saul cycle down, that’s not a saint. See, and God in his case leaves him to total destruction. But he will not do that to his elect and to his saints. And he doesn’t do it to David. That’s what Article six says.

In Article 7, he will again renew his elect to repentance. This will find its evidence in certain ways. For the first place in their fall, he preserves in them his imperishable seed of regeneration so that it does not perish, is not cast out. Further, through his word and spirit, he effectually renews them to repentance. And as a result, okay, as a result, they grieve from the heart with a godly sorrow for the sins they have committed. They seek and obtain through faith with a contrite heart forgiveness in the blood of the mediator.

They again experience the favor of a reconciled God and adore his mercies and faithfulness. And from now on they more diligently work out their own salvation with fear and trembling.

Why did David go through this? So that David would—when God’s grace punches through again, not as if it was trying to before, but when it comes to David again and brings him to repentance—to God be the glory when we repent.

David begins this statement of contrition and petition with the mercy of God. We think we know the mercy of God. But then when we sin, when God by his grace and righteous permission allows us to sin in these kind of ways, then we come to a fuller knowledge and appreciation the mercy of God. You know, this building situation—we had a meeting Friday night, and it’s, you know, a month ago, you get, you—I—some of you who bought houses probably go through this. You think you know what you’re on, and you have enthusiasm. And there’s a period of time at which God kind of brings you to sobriety about the decision. And you come to it, and you think you were trying hard before, but God does things, and all of a sudden you realize, yeah, now we’re really serious now. We’re really being sober about this decision and really focused. And it’s not that you were trying to be flippant before, but God works through means, and those means bring you to a fuller realization of decisions you have to make.

Well, that’s what’s going on here in these daily besetting sins, the sins of ignorance, and even the atrocious sins. They’re part of God’s grace and his preservation of his people by casting us at the end of the process—when he brings us back to repentance—upon his mercy. His mercy brings us to the fruit of the cross again and again. And in that way, we then redouble our efforts to watch and pray and not enter into temptation.

So David’s beginning here at mercy is exceedingly important. Is my point. It really gives us the picture right in the first verse of why God does—he moves in these particular ways in the context of our sanctification, that our sanctification might also then be totally motivated. The dynamism of the gospel of Christ and his grace may be what pushes us forward.

Okay, let’s go forward into the psalm then.

So first of all, David begins his petitions with the sense, or a consideration of God’s attributes. And then secondly, David’s has petitions based on his confession of grievous sin against God.

Beginning at verse two: “Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity and cleanse me from my sin.” Wash me—thoroughly, repeatedly, over and over—is the idea here. Blot out my sin. My sin, David realizes, is like huge, massive, indelible marks on him. And God’s going to wash him over and over and beat it out of him, as it were. And he asks for God to cleanse him from his sin. And the basis for this is his acknowledgment, his confession of grievous fault.

The petition is wash and cleanse. And then his confession in verse three: “I acknowledge my transgressions.” I’m not trying to hide my adultery anymore through sinful acts. I confess. I own up. And he doesn’t just acknowledge: I acknowledge my transgressions. I, David, in other words, am doing this. I’m entering into this confession. This is a confession—is an acknowledgement that it is my fault and my fault only.

And these transgressions—or violations of God’s law, which is sin—are my transgressions. A true confession, boys and girls, men and women, doesn’t make excuses. No excuses can be found in this psalm. He knows the truths of the Canons of Dort—much later, true—he knows the grace of God is all that will keep him from these sins. And we’ll see it as we go through. But he doesn’t blame God. He blames himself. His confession is a good one. It is an evangelical, a godly confession of sin. It isn’t just a sorrow for results. It’s a sorrow for his offense of God and the transgression of his law.

And it is a sorrow that is continually before him. It’s not like, “Oh yeah, I sinned. I better ask God to forgive me, and then I’ll move on to the rest of my life.” It’s there. It’s always before me. He says, “My sin is ever before me.” There are things that God’s spirit brings to your consciousness, and you can’t get away from in your life. And you know that there’s sin, and you know you’ve got to deal with it. Deal with it. Maybe it’s what we call a besetting sin, and year after year you’re dealing with it. But you better deal with it the way David dealt with it here.

His sin is ever before him. And then this confession, this good confession, is an acknowledgement that his sin is against God. “Against thee, against thee only have I sinned and done this evil in thy sight.”

And so this is so significant, boys and girls, in terms of our confession of sin. Your mom and dad do not want you confessing sin ultimately against them. Now they want that. I mean, if you disobey them, they want you to repent of that. But parents, we need to train our children that ultimately they haven’t sinned against us. You know, it’s easy to take offense for our position. You know, child’s going to talk to me that way. I don’t like that at all. Well, you know what, we want to have that offense taken for—is God. God placed me in relationship to this child. Child, God placed me here. You’re not sinning against me. You sinned against God. You’re like Adam and Eve. You’re taking the fruit now—by, you know, not obeying me. But your sin was determining for yourself what was right in this situation. You decided what you needed, what was good for you, and it was different than what your parents decided. But your parents represent God.

David had slept with a woman here. Committed adultery. He was married. She was married. Adultery. It’s a woman in the armed forces being court-martialed over this kind of offense. It’s a big deal in the military. It won’t be probably after this trial is over. But it used to be a big deal. Adultery in this country, and it should be. It’s a capital offense. It’s a crime against the family, which is the basic unit of God’s community. But committed adultery. Not only committed adultery, he committed murder of her husband. Not only that, but he failed to guard this little ewe lamb, as it were, belonging to another, in the context of his guarding requirements as a king. Horrible sin.

You say, “Well, now David, against God, against God only have you sinned. It seems like you sin against Bath-Sheba and Uriah.” This could be offensive to us. But see, ultimately, of course, he did sin against Bath-Sheba and Uriah. But ultimately, all sin is rebellion against God. You know, man, Bath-Sheba and Uriah are images of God. Yes. And they’re images of God to remind us that when we sin against God’s image, we’re ultimately striking out at God. When we kill a man, we’re ultimately trying to kill God. That’s what David was doing.

And David’s confession—a good confession—acknowledgment of sin, says at its heart that I have sinned against the God of heaven in being unkind to my wife or children, in failing to encourage my husband as I ought, in failing to train my children up to know the scriptures, in striking up my children in anger—that I’ve sinned against the God of heaven.

And David says, “Against thee, against thee only have I sinned and done this evil in thy sight.”

People, we’re going to see here in a little bit that God requires truth in the inward parts. But you see, we are always in the sight of God. Now, David is in the throne room of God literally. I mean, he’s the king, and this happens in the king’s palace—there, king’s house. So I mean, to him, it’s very emphatically in the sight of God because the king is supposed to represent God. He’s right next to where God should be, I mean, where people should think of God dwelling. But see, it’s also true for us, right? I mean, God is in all the earth, and he’s made us kings and priests and prophets before God.

And when we sin, we may think it’s secret, and we may think we’re behind closed doors, or that the wife or the husband can’t see or can’t read our thoughts, the hateful thoughts we may be having or the inappropriate speech one to the other or the bad attitude toward the boss at work or the sneaking out an hour early or a half hour or ten minutes early when the boss, you know, wants you there to the last minute. When we steal from our employers, when we fail to exercise diligence relative to our civil setting—I mean, these things, you know, when we do these things, we sin in the sight of God. God’s watching. You know, God watches over us protectingly. But that protecting eye is also a searching eye.

And David felt the searching eye of God upon him in the context of his being brought to repentance for his sins.

“But thou mightest be justified when thou speakest and be clear when thou judgest.” What does this mean? It means that is saying, you know, I’m not going to blame you because I know that this has come to pass as an evidence of who I am, and you’re the one who is justified when you speak, not me. I’m not going to try to justify myself. I’ve done this great evil in your sight that you might be just when you speak. When you judge me, I know it’s completely righteous and good because I know I have done this sin as a frontery to the royal God and King of heaven.

“Behold,” and now David’s confession, starting at this recognition of what he had done wrong—his sins and transgressions—broadening to a sense that all his sin is against the God of heaven. Look at now what he considers.

“Behold, I was shaped in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me. Behold, thou desire truth in the inward parts, and in the hidden part thou shalt make me to know wisdom.”

See, David in this good confession of sin, which is the basis for this petition that he would be washed by God and cleansed, David’s confession goes from individual actions to a sin against God. And then he realizes the truth of one of the implications of the Canons of Dort that we’ve just read. He realizes that this is not abnormal, that this isn’t a one-time thing. He realizes that the motivation for this sin against Bath-Sheba and Uriah is rooted in his very being. This is who he is.

And when we strike out at our children in anger or women strike out their husbands with their tongues or husbands just turn the cold silence to the wife, this is not abnormal for us in our Adamic nature. It is our Adamic nature.

David says, “Behold, I was shaped in iniquity. In sin did my mother conceive me.” He’s not saying that his mother sinned. She didn’t. She was undoubtedly a very godly woman. He had a godly father. David had good lineage here—picture of the coming of Christ. She was a picture of Mary, as it were. But what he’s saying is that in his very nature, in his Adamic nature, he is depraved and he’s totally—