Text: Psalm 51 (2 Samuel 12)
The psalm for today, Psalm 51, is a lament, a raw, intimate, honest petition for mercy and forgiveness. Many of us know it well and love it.—David’s lament is deeply personal. He agonizes over his sin, and we are exposed to his confession, reconciliation, and transformation in a way that gets to the heart of our own faith and relationship with God.
David’s lament is also very public, included as it is in “the book of common prayer” of the Hebrews. Even the transcription exposes David, for it describes a specific person and a specific sin, a very private thing made public and voiced by the congregation. We are invited to know David’s sin and to share in his sorrow and confession, to give voice to his words.
For many of us this is very familiar territory, perhaps too familiar. As much as we read and speak this psalm in public and private prayer, in worship, and as part of the annual entry into Lent we call Ash Wednesday, we may forget the depth of what this psalm and David’s struggle is all about.
And so I invite you to step back and look again at David in two very important ways, both critical to understanding the full scope of his sin and the confession.
1. The man, David, sinned as we do and must confess as we do.
We can identify with him, but perhaps we are uncomfortable. I have sinned as well, and I am invited to know my sin, and through David, all are privy to my prayer. His is a beautiful prayer, powerful and something with which we can identify when we slip up. His indiscretion is an interruption in his story that shows us that this great king was still a fallen human, and we can all recognize that same fallen in our own stories.
But if this is all—we’re missing quite a bit.
2. The king, David, sinned, as God’s chosen and anointed.
And this is how it was handled—in raw, intimate detail. David’s sin as king is a whole new ball game. What difference does it make?
To understand that difference, we must consider David as king in the context of Israel’s story. Israel, God’s own people, chosen, rescued, and given a promise, a covenant with God himself. And Israel, fraught with sin and rebellion, rescued again and again, given the promised land, and enslaved by more rebellion. God’s people fail the divine king they have, and they demand a king like those of other nations (1 Samuel 8.4-9).
God relents and gives them a king, promising that he will indeed be a king like the kings of other nations, a king who will rule them and tax them, taking their resources and their children to make war. “And in that day you will cry out because of your king whom you have chosen for yourselves,” Samuel warns them, “but the Lord will not answer you in that day” (1 Samuel 8.18, NRSV).
And so God gives them a king—Saul, a compromise, and eventually a problem. The king personifies the people before God and in many ways God before the people, and in both, Saul was not the kind of king Israel needed.
But then…David. He was king and the promise all in one. He was the covenant king God desired and the people needed. Where Saul became embittered, David was blessed, and through him all of Israel was shaped to be the people of God and the light to al nations they were meant to be. David was loved by God, obedient, passionate, and victorious, and the covenant promise to Israel was specifically embodied in David.
In 2 Samuel 7.8-16—the covenant is confirmed and extended through David.
Now therefore thus you shall say to my servant David: Thus says the Lord of hosts: I took you from the pasture, from following the sheep to be prince over my people Israel; and I have been with you wherever you went, and have cut off all your enemies from before you; and I will make for you a great name, like the name of the great ones of the earth. And I will appoint a place for my people Israel and will plant them, so that they may live in their own place, and be disturbed no more; and evildoers shall afflict them no more, as formerly, from the time that I appointed judges over my people Israel; and I will give you rest from all your enemies. Moreover the Lord declares to you that the Lord will make you a house. When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your ancestors, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come forth from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be a father to him, and he shall be a son to me. When he commits iniquity, I will punish him with a rod such as mortals use, with blows inflicted by human beings. But I will not takes my steadfast love from him, as I took it from Saul, whom I put away from before you. Your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me: your throne shall be established forever. In accordance with all these words and with all this vision, Nathan spoke to David.
In 2 Samuel 7.18-26, we see David’s response as the ideal king: Anointed—chosen and established by God; humble and obedient; and victorious—establishing peace in the promised land.
Then King David went in and sat before the Lord, and said, “Who am I, O Lord God, and what is my house, that you have brought me thus far? And yet this was a small thing in your eyes, O Lord God; you have spoken also of your servant’s house for a great while to come. May this be instruction for the people, O Lord God! And what more can David say to you? For you know your servant, O Lord God! Because of your promise, and according to your own heart, you have wrought all this greatness, so that your servant may know it. Therefore you are great, O Lord God; for there is no one like you, and there is no God besides you, according to all that we have heard with our ears. Who is like your people, like Israel? Is there another nation on earth whose God went to redeem it as a people, and to make a name for himself, doing great and awesome things for them, by driving out before his people nations and their gods? And you established your people Israel for yourself to be your people forever; and you, O Lord, became their God. And now, O Lord God, as for the word that you have spoken concerning your servant and concerning his house, confirm it forever; do as you have promised. Thus your name will be magnified forever in the saying, ‘The Lord of hosts is God over Israel’; and the house of your servant David will be established before you.
In 2 Samuel 8 we see evidence of God’s blessing through the victories God gave him as he fulfilled the conquest of the promised land. “The Lord gave David victory wherever he went” (6,14).
In 2 Samuel 9 we have evidence of David’s worthiness as David magnanimous to his enemies, Saul’s descendants and servants.
And in 2 Samuel 10, we have the extended story of David’s power and prowess as king in his defeat of the Ammonites, ancient antagonists of Israel and often allies of Egypt against God and his people.
And then we encounter David’s sin with Bathsheba—THE SIN that lay at the heart of David’s lament in Psalm 51 (2 Samuel 11).
1. David the man desires, fulfills that desire, and commits grievous sin (murder) in the process. David takes Bathsheba as his own, getting her pregnant in the process, and then has her husband killed (1 Samuel 11).
Like life as we know it, the beauty of love and of Bathsheba herself is marred by lust, selfishness, pride. “I am the king,” is David’s unspoken excuse. Feeling entitled, David does what any king would do, what any king has a right to do.
David does not even appear to be aware of what he’s doing wrong, for he is surprised when confronted by the prophet, Nathan (1 Samual 12.5-7). Much like the ways we’re not aware of how influenced we are by worldly ways of thinking and behaving, he doesn’t seem to see the inconsistency until it’s pointed out to him. In a way, this is a classic story of typical sin. In his world, it is okay to behave this way.
In our worlds, in business, in politics, in romance, in the daily grind, what is wrong often seems right and normal. We find many excuses—we are only human, life’s hard, it feels right, and this is just the way it’s done.
For David, it takes Nathan (the voice of God) to shed light on the sin. And the way David responds is instructive. Much can be learned through the story of the man David alone.
– David’s sense of entitlement and his sinful action: Lust, greed, murder.
– Nathan’s courage as he confronts a king (does that make us squirm?).
– David’s repentance. (How would we react? How should we react? Would we make excuses and remain indignant?)
– The consequences of David’s sin: A child lost, rape, murder, and civil war (2 Sam 12.10-12).
We can easily see the parallels for us. We all have sin in our life—not murder, perhaps, but greed, selfish desire, hurting someone to benefit ourselves. How would we react to confrontation—by others or by God himself? How should we react?
2. But David is KING—and not just any king! David is God’s king, over God’s own people.
Nathan’s confrontation is not just God’s word to a man. Even the king—especially the king—is subject to YHWH, the true king of Israel. And the consequences are not just the penalties of sin for the man David and his famliy—they affect the fate of Israel, her future kings, and the entire world as the light to all nations is dimmed.
The pattern we see in David is identical to that of the people of God, Israel. David, God’s chosen and anointed king fails, and through him Israel, God’s chosen people, fails. Where God called him as king to submit to God in obedience and as leader by example and in ordering Israelite worship and life together to show the world what it means to live in right relationship with the one, true God, creator and Lord of all things, David behaves as any other king would, acting sovereignly for his own desire and purpose. And the consequences are disastrous, for Israel as well as David.
And yet…God remains true to his covenant, and David confesses and seeks restoration in the right place.
In the end, we’re invited into David’s story at both levels. This is our fate, our story he’s living. He shows Israel, and us, the new covenant people of God, the way. We see all of Israel in David, we see the entire church in David, and we see ourselves in David.
And we see God’s heart in David—the whole story: Love and promise, our failure and sin, the path to reconciliation, and God’s faithfulness—through consequence to covenant.
Into all of this, we are invited to know David’s sin and ours, and to pray his prayer and ours. God’s promise to David was God’s promise to Israel, and God’s promise to Israel is God’s promise to us all.
Notice what this says about God. Using flawed people, he works through our sin to bring redemption. Not that sin is okay because God uses it, but because his forgiveness is hope for the big picture—our redemption and that of the whole world, even all creation.
None of this is just about us. When we fail God and he forgives, acting redemptively through our failure and our restoration, it is all about GOD’s faithfulness, GOD’s plan, and GOD’s sovereignty. It is all about his steadfast love, through failure to new hope.
In the “really big picture,” our failure, our sin, hurts God and flies in the face of his plans. The consequences can be huge, as they were in David’s case, but the failure is never too big that God cannot prevail and bring something new out of our sin.
1. At a personal level, the man David’s story is our story
Sin requires confession, forgiveness, and reconciliation. We ruin our relationship with God. He doesn’t ask questions about responsibility—he assumes it. “All have sinned,” Paul tells us (Romans 3.23). Our sin leads us to Christ—to confess, to repent, to receive forgiveness and restoration, and to become the people of God he desires us to be.
2. In the cosmic, big picture level, David’s story as king is everyone’s promise.
God’s promise is life out of death, reconciliation out of sin, and new creation. David leads us to Christ, the king even David couldn’t be. Jesus Christ is the focus of God’s promise, his covenant, his plan. Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of God’s promise to David. Jesus Christ is the way through the fullness of the world, through sin, through failure, through death to new life, to redemption.
And so we come to the psalm, this very personal and yet not very private prayer of David that we all should pray.
Have mercy on me, O God,
according to your steadfast love;
according to your abundant mercy
blot out my transgressions.
Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,
and cleanse me from my sin.
For I know my transgressions,
and my sin is ever before me.
Against you, you alone, have I sinned,
and done what is evil in your sight,
so that you are justified in your sentence
and blameless when you pass judgment.
Indeed, I was born guilty,
a sinner when my mother conceived me.
You desire truth in the inward being;
therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart.
Purge me with hyssop,
and I shall be clean;
wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
Let me hear joy and gladness;
let the bones that you have crushed rejoice.
Hide your face from my sins,
and blot out all my iniquities.
Create in me a clean heart, O God,
and put a new and right spirit within me.
Do not cast me away from your presence,
and do not take your holy spirit from me.
Restore to me the joy of your salvation,
and sustain in me a willing spirit.
Then I will teach transgressors your ways,
and sinners will return to you.
Deliver me from bloodshed, O God,
O God of my salvation,
and my tongue will sing aloud of your deliverance.
O Lord, open my lips,
and my mouth will declare your praise.
For you have no delight in sacrifice;
if I were to give a burnt offering,
you would not be pleased.
The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit;
a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.
Do good to Zion in your good pleasure;
rebuild the walls of Jerusalem,
then you will delight in right sacrifices,
then bulls will be offered on your altar. (51.1-19)
David gets right to the heart of the matter. “Have mercy,” he cries (51.1). David sinned—no matter the reasons or circumstances. He bears full responsibility for his sin. David’s sin hurt his relationship with God, which is one of the best on record. That relationship needs to be fixed, cleansed, and restored (2, 7-12). David’s sin must be confessed, and so he throws himself on God’s mercy.
Likewise our sin, which is foremost an offense against God that requires reconciliation, is not little, not inconsequential, not trivial. None of us—not even king David—are above reproach. All of us—even king David—are in need of God’s mercy, with no excuses.
And here’s the twist: Confession itself is not enough to restore the relationship! We bring nothing that qualifies us for God’s mercy but a broken and contrite heart (51.5, 15-17). Not even blessed David, God’s chosen, was better qualified.
David’s prayer is our prayer.
– He is desperate—he understands his need and the truth of his sin.
– He is humble—he understands his place before God. He may have acted out of presumption as king, but confesses in humility.
– He is hungry—he desires restoration with whole being.
– And he is hopeful—he trusts in God and his steadfast love (hesed).
None of us escapes this prayer. None of us wants to escape this prayer—if we really understand who we are.
God fulfilled his promise and heard David’s prayer—as man and as king—through Jesus Christ! Through one man’s prayer for a very specific sin, Psalm 51 is every person’s prayer for right relationship with God in Christ, an orientation to life and a relationship for life with God, his kingdom, and with all he is doing to bring light and redemption to the world.
Are we ready to pray this prayer and to be restored to God’s people and his purpose for us? Are we
– Desperate—do we fully understand our need? Are we broken?
– Humble—do we really know before whom we stand? Are we aware of our creatureliness? Do we want the benefits of God’s forgiveness but not responsibility? Are we really shocked enough by who we are and awed enough by who he is to really desire reconciliation?
– Contrite—do we approach God with remorse and penitence? Are we honest about our sin,? Are we sorry we have grieved God?
– Hungry—do we really want to be reconciled? Do we yearn for him and for his peace? Do we truly desire to serve him?
– Hopeful—do we really trust God to be true to his promise? Do we ask but never trust? Do we keep on asking but continue to sin because we think nothing will change?
Part of what made David special—as man and king—was that he rested in God’s promise, even when he suffered consequences. Hear it in his petition,
Restore to me the joy of your salvation,
and sustain in me a willing spirit.
Then I will teach transgressors your ways,
and sinners will return to you.
Deliver me from bloodshed, O God,
O God of my salvation,
and my tongue will sing aloud of your deliverance.
O Lord, open my lips,
and my mouth will declare your praise.
For you have no delight in sacrifice;
if I were to give a burnt offering,
you would not be pleased.
The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit;
a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. (Psalm 51.12-17)
Can we dare to be so honest about our sin, so hungry for God’s forgiveness, and so trusting in his promise?