Themes of the Bible: Confess (Psalm 51)

 

Themes of the Bible: Confess (Psalm 51)

We are progressing through this series, where we're looking at God's message to humanity, and just so you know, for next week we’ll be in Psalm 139, for anyone who wants to do the homework and pre-read. And you're going to love this Psalm. It's very encouraging, you're going to love it, you're going to want to read it multiple times this week in preparation for next week, but this week, we're in Psalm 51. So, if you’ve got your Bibles, you can flip open to Psalm 51. Just so you know, in this sermon, it'll take me over half of the message for my introduction. Okay, just so we are prepared for that.

If you've grown up in a church like this one, a Bible-believing, Bible-preaching, Christ-centered church, where you take communion regularly, and if you're like me in that regard you have heard this verse that Paul says to the church in Corinthians, multiple times, and you've heard it explained far better than I will explain here briefly, in those meditations, this call to examine yourself, you will be familiar with this passage. 1 Corinthians 11:27-30, “Therefore whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner, shall be guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord. But a man must examine himself, and in so doing he is to eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For he who eats and drinks, eats and drinks judgment to himself if he does not judge the body rightly.” Okay, and again, I’m sure you've heard this expounded upon in ways greater than I will today, but what Paul is saying is that you cannot really celebrate the cross, and what it means, if you are not aware of your own faults and failures and sin in your life. You can't really celebrate the cross, you can fully celebrate what Jesus has done for you, if you are entertaining sin in your life and letting it go unaddressed. That's what Paul is saying, if you are living in unrepentant sin, if you were enjoying things that are sinful, and you are not concerned about confessing them and moving in a new direction, you need to examine yourself before you remember the cross. Because if you don't, that is hypocrisy, and you bring judgment on yourself in the process.

So, we need to examine ourselves before we approach the cross of Christ, and it's necessary in order to live a celebratory Christian life, acknowledging who we are, and that is why I picked out Psalm 51 for our study today. It's the perfect mirror into the heart of a believer, that's what David was, and he is examining himself and confessing that self to God. In Psalm 51, the essence of this chapter is the confession of a believer.

 Let’s look to one of the fathers of the reformation for a moment: Martin Luther. Okay, at that point in church history when you get to Martin Luther, Christianity was being for the most part, administered by the Catholic Church and Martin Luther has some real problems with the way the Catholic Church was doing things. In fact, he comes up with 95 things and he says, that the church is doing, it's church hierarchy, its church rules, that has nothing to do with Scripture, and that the church has moved away from the authority of Scripture, and we need to get back to that, and he lists these 95 problems that he has. It’s called his 95 Thesis. And among these complaints, number one on his list of 95 theses, is this right here. “When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said ‘Repent,’ he intended that the entire life of believers should be repentance.” What Luther is doing here is echoing the words of Scripture. It's what John said in 1 John, “if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.”

Ok, so, Luther is saying you got to live a life of repentance and John is saying the same thing, but from my perspective, this can lead to a tragic misunderstanding that I think some of us have and operate with. In fact, I would say that there are many in the church who have that tragic misunderstanding that can actually be debilitating to our faith. Again, that’s why we've picked out Psalm 51 for our attention today. This can lead us to a terrifying burden.

Okay, so as a camp director, you'll have conversations with young people, many of them are exceedingly dumb, but some of them are actually valuable, they will sometimes ask spiritual questions or theological questions. If they're a young person of faith, maybe they're struggling with something, so they'll ask me about it. And one of the questions that I've gotten a few times over the years goes something like this: “I pray at night. That's my prayer time, but sometimes when I pray at night and I'm confessing my sins, I'll fall asleep. Maybe I'm really tired and I won't even get the prayer started, and so I will go to bed and go to sleep with unconfessed sins, and if John is telling me that I'm going to be forgiven if I'm faithful and confess that, but I fall asleep before I confess, I have unconfessed therefore unforgiven sins.” Or what if I sin by thinking some bad thing about a terrible driver then die in a car accident. Am I going to hell because of my unconfessed sin?

This is a concern that a lot of people have, it's a burden that we carry. It's terrifying for some people, and it leads them into this sense of paranoia that you and I have to live lives where we are constantly confessing sin we think we may have committed. “I confessed that, right” “I made sure that I asked for forgiveness for that right?” Folks who think like this want to keep a list of everything that they did wrong and then start worrying and thinking, “was there a sin, maybe 10 years ago that we forgot to confess, and maybe it's sitting out there and it's unconfessed and God is waiting for me to confess it, but I don't even remember it.” Is that what Luther meant when he said we're supposed to live lives of repentance? Or is that what Jesus meant when he said to live a life of repentance? Not at all. You remember what Jesus said about the Christian life, “come to me all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest.” Not, ‘I will put a terrifying burden upon you.’ 

So, understand that this confession is not begging and groveling before God for forgiveness. Confession is not begging for forgiveness. If you are a follower of Jesus Christ, you are already forgiven. That's what the cross was about: your sin, the sins that you have committed, that you are committing, and that you will commit, were forgiven at the cross of Calvary. That's why when Jesus hangs on the cross, he utters the words “it is finished.” It's done every sin that you have ever committed or will ever commit, I am forgiving. My work on the cross, has now completed that task.

Now go back to 1 John, that passage that says if we will confess sins He will be faithful forgive them. This time read on a few more verses, and John stresses and says, “I'm writing this to you, little children, because your sins are forgiven for his namesake.” There it is again. You remember this phrase, we've seen it a number of times, we saw it last week, that God leads us in pathways of righteousness for his namesake, and why did we say that? Because when He guides us in pathways of righteousness, others will see that and it will glorify God. That’s why he is saying this for his namesake. He loves us, He rescued us from the power and penalty of sin, and when we live like His people free from the burden of sin, He is glorified in that.

So, do you really believe that it's that simple, that you just accept the gift from Christ, and you are safe. Do you really believe that in your hearts? Or do you believe that God will love you because of your good life. ‘Well, because I'm cleaning up my act, because I'm reading my Bible, because I'm saying my prayers, and my prayer life is better, God's going to love me for that.’ If you are under the impression that the love of God to you is dependent upon the way that you live your life, then confession and repentance, becomes a traumatic event. Think about this, if I believe that God's love for me and my heart is dependent on the way that I act, I don't ever want to confess that I don't act the right way, because if I do that, that is acknowledging maybe God doesn't love me the way that I really want him to love me, because his love is dependent upon the way that I behave. And, you're always going to worry: ‘did I grovel enough. Did I make sure God understood how sorry I was? Did I look and act miserable enough, long enough for him to believe that I really feel bad about it?’

Psalm 51, though offers us a totally different view of what a life of confession actually is. If you understand the gospel of grace, here's what you understand: That you are incredibly sinful and you are incredibly loved. In the fullness of your sin, while you were still sinners, Christ died for you. You are incredibly loved even in your sin, and now, knowing that, confession becomes something entirely different. If I know that God loves me, regardless of what I have done, or what I do, I'm no longer fearful about confessing what I've done or what I do because my standing before God is based on Christ, and it's not based on me. That's the concept of grace. Without it, the life of confession doesn't work. As Christians, we need to believe that God's love for me in Christ was so effective that I can live honestly, and I can confess freely, without fear.

So, what is confession. God, I have sinned. I thank you that you have already forgiven me, and I am turning from this, I want what you want, for me. I confess that the desires of my heart are so often sinful and corrupting. I want what you want, for me, in my mind the things that I'm thinking about in my mouth, the words that I speak. I'm tired of them being words like the world uses. Set me apart. And the actions of my body, I'm tired of doing worldly things. I want to live set apart for you, and I confess that none of that is in me. So, you come and take over. I'm giving this to you. True confession is a broken spirit. Your will is broken. I don't want my will anymore I want yours. It's not just a verbalizing apology, that you make to God every night. True confession brings a right view of sin. What sin actually is, and it brings a right view of God who he really is, and a right view of self who you really are. That's what you see in Psalm 51.

If you don't know what's going down in Psalm 51, David writes this after an event in his life, most of you are familiar with the event, where David is king over Israel, he is in the height of his power, and he should be out at war with his soldiers, one of whom is Uriah the Hittite, a great soldier of his, but David is not out in battle, He is back in Jerusalem, and he's walking around the palace on an outside overlook, and he happens to see a naked woman, Bathsheba, bathing on her roof-top patio. David finds her attractive, brings her into the palace, and commits adultery with her. She becomes pregnant and he does his best to try to conceal the sin, but his efforts to conceal the sin, don't work. Uriah is not going to sleep with his wife so they can pass it off as Uriah’s baby. So now David has to make the choice of what he’s going to do, and David decides to send her husband Uriah on a suicide mission in the battle, and he goes on the suicide mission, and he's killed. At which point, David gives him a military funeral, then marries his widow that he had already impregnated. And what you come to find out, is it haunted, David, he became obsessed with his sin, and in his obsession over the sin that he had committed, he pours out his broken spirit in Psalm 51.

That's what you're reading in this Psalm. It's after this horrific sin, he cannot stop thinking about it, he can't get it out of his heart or his mind. He is constantly haunted by the thoughts of what he's done, and it isn't going to go away until it is confessed. David realized that.

Remember what a broken and a contrite and a confessing Spirit brings a right view of sin, a right view of God, and the right view of self, and now the introduction is over. Look at verse four. Alright, verse four of this passage of Psalm 51, “Against You, You only, I have sinned and done what is evil in Your sight, so that You are justified when You speak and blameless when You judge.” That's what that is, it's a right view of sin and what it does, it's a right view of God and how just he is in punishing that sin, and it's a right view of self, that's who I am in my nature now.

Look back at verse 1 and see what David appeals to. “Be gracious to me, O God, according to Your lovingkindness; according to the greatness of Your compassion blot out my transgressions.” That's the only appeal that he can make. Be gracious to me, have mercy on me. David is asking for grace and compassion. On what grounds can a man like David who has committed that sin ask for God's grace and compassion. He can't appeal to justice. He can't appeal the law, he can't appeal to merit, he can't appeal to achievement, he can’t say, ‘I've earned this from you, God, so please give me what I deserve.’ He understands what he deserves. Do you, as a sinner, know what you deserve? Do I know what I deserve?

Psalm 103:10 says, “He has not dealt with us according to our sins, nor rewarded us according to our iniquities.” Thank God that we have not received what we've earned. If any of us received what we deserved, we would all be in hell right now. That's what we chose, we chose rebellion from the very beginning. It's what the Psalmist means when he writes, “If You, Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand?” (130:3). Of course, this question is rhetorical. Nobody, nobody could stand if judged justly by God.  

Acknowledge where you would be without him. Learn to practice this humility because it runs completely contrary to everything that our culture teaches. You and I deserve the wages of our work. You go to work, and you get paid your wages for the work that you do. So, spiritually, what have you and I done, what is our work amounted to: sin. That's what our work is, and what are the wages, according to scripture, the wages of sin is death. That's what you earned, and that's what I earned. This realization is where true confession begins, we realize where we are, all we can ask for is mercy. Look at David's words, verse 1, “according to your unfailing love” or “according to Your lovingkindness”. That's all I can appeal to God, that He loves me, that's all I have to hope for, according to His great compassion.

The Lord saw that David’s heart was genuine, and the king was forgiven. If you truly want to confess your sin and repent to God, His love and mercy and compassion will never run out and are waiting to take you from being a wretch like me and transform you into one of His very own sons or daughters.

Let’s pray.