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[0:00] 2 Samuel chapter 12 verses 1 to 14 So some time has passed since David has taken Beesheba to be his wife and sent Uriah, Beesheba's husband, to his death in the front lines of the battles.

[0:26] And he's confronted about his sin by Nathan. So 2 Samuel chapter 12 verses 1 to 14 And the Lord sent Nathan to David.

[0:46] He came to him and said to him, there were two men in a certain city. The one rich and the other poor. The rich man had very many flocks and herds.

[0:59] But the poor man had nothing but one little yow lamb which he had bought. And he brought it up and it grew up with him and with his children.

[1:10] He used to eat of his morsel and drink from his cup and lie in his arms. And it was like a daughter to him. Now there came a traveller to the rich man.

[1:23] And he was unwilling to take one of his own flock or herd to prepare for the guest who had come to him. But he took the poor man's lamb and prepared it for the man who had come to him.

[1:35] Then David's anger was greatly kindled against the man. And he said to Nathan, as the Lord lives, the man who has done this deserves to die.

[1:45] And he shall restore the lamb fourfold. Because he did this thing. And because he had no pity. Nathan said to David, you are the man.

[1:58] Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel. I anointed you king over Israel. And he delivered you out of the hand of Saul. And he gave you your master's house and your master's wives into your arms.

[2:14] And gave you the house of Israel and of Judah. And if this were too little, I would add to you as much more. Why have you despised the word of the Lord?

[2:28] To do what is evil and in his sight. You have struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword. And have taken his wife to be your wife. And have killed him with the sword of the Ammonites.

[2:42] Now therefore the sword shall never depart from your house. Because you have despised me and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife. Thus says the Lord, behold I will raise up evil against you out of your own house.

[3:00] And I will take your wives before you rise. And give them to your neighbour. And he shall lie with your wives in the sight of this son. For you did it secretly.

[3:12] But I will do this thing before all Israel. And before the son. David said to Nathan, I have sinned against the Lord. And Nathan said to David, The Lord also has put away your sin.

[3:27] You shall not die. Nevertheless, because by this deed you have utterly scorned the Lord. The child who is born to you shall die.

[3:40] Then Nathan went to his house. Thanks be to God for the reading of his word. And to his holy name be the glory forever. Amen. This evening is taken from the book of Psalms.

[3:52] From Psalm 51. So this evening we'll look at the psalm that we had just sung. And we'll close our service with the last part of that psalm.

[4:04] Later this evening. So Psalm 51. Reading from verse 1 to the end of the psalm. And this is the psalm that David has written in response to being confronted with his sins by Nathan.

[4:21] To the psalm. To the choir master. A psalm of David when Nathan the prophet went to him after he had gone into Bathsheba. Have mercy on me, O God.

[4:36] 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.

[4:49] For I know my transgressions, my sin. Is ever before me. Against you and you only have I sinned. And done what is evil in your sight.

[5:00] So that you may be justified in your words. And blameless in your judgment. Behold I was brought forth in iniquity. And in sin did my mother conceive me.

[5:14] Behold you delight in truth in the inward being. And you teach me wisdom in the secret heart. Purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean.

[5:25] Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow. Let me hear joy and gladness. Let the bones that you have broken rejoice. Hide your face from my sins.

[5:37] And blot out all my iniquities. Create in me a clean heart O God. And renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from your presence.

[5:51] And take not your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation. And uphold me with a willing spirit. Then I will teach transgressors your ways.

[6:05] And sinners will return to you. Deliver me from blood guiltiness O God. O God of my salvation. And my tongue will sing aloud of your righteousness.

[6:19] O Lord open my lips. And my mouth will declare your praise. For you will not delight in sacrifice or I would give it.

[6:31] You will not be pleased with a burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit. A broken and contrite heart.

[6:42] O God you will not despise. Do good to Zion in your good pleasure. Build up the walls of Jerusalem. Then will you delight in the right sacrifice.

[6:55] In burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings. Then bulls will be offered on your altar. Thanks be to God for the reading of his word. In his name be the glory and praise forever.

[7:08] Amen. Amen. The title for this evening was You'd heard the theory. Now for the practice. So this morning we looked at the teachings of Paul in the synagogue.

[7:26] And he talked about how we gain the forgiveness of sin. How God casts it away from us when we accept Christ as our saviour.

[7:38] Tonight we will look at the practice of that. In the first passage we looked briefly in Samuel. We looked at in Samuel.

[7:51] How David was confronted with his sin. Time had passed. He probably thought he had hid it. It was all covered up. And then Nathan comes to him and confronts him with his actions.

[8:06] That he had committed adultery. that he had sent his loyal subject Uriah to his death. And he had covered it all up.

[8:20] In Psalm 51 we see or hear David's response to those sins once he is confronted with them. In the Psalm we see that forgiveness of sin is by God alone.

[8:35] it is done out of his love and in his mercy. We see that as sinners we must repent.

[8:47] We need to acknowledge the depth of our sin and of a contrite heart. There is no good of spouting certain words if our heart is still hard and unrepentant.

[8:59] And we see that by God's grace and the power of the Holy Spirit we are renewed. We are transformed.

[9:12] We hear David's plea for his heart to be renewed and his life to begin again. And there is many ways of looking at this Psalm.

[9:25] As we were looking at different commentaries etc. some were suggesting that we should split it into two. One looking at the confession of sin and the renewal of the individual.

[9:37] Others were suggesting that we split it into nine different sections. I thought that's maybe a wee bit much for the night. If you want out here verse seven or the back of seven. But however many sections we split it into however we look at this Psalm the one thing that comes from it is the painful reality of sin.

[10:04] The pain that it causes and the hurt it causes and the wonders of God's mercy and that no matter what our sins our sins are forgiven by him through his son our Lord Jesus Christ.

[10:22] the Psalm is relevant to all of us today just as it was when David wrote it after being confronted about his son's sin.

[10:33] Some of us may feel that it isn't relevant after all David's sins were in a plane that many of us would never understand and therefore it's irrelevant we just wouldn't be there so what's the purpose of it to us?

[10:54] Some may even think we're self-righteous and so it's irrelevant to us. However scripture tells us that all men sin at some point not just the great and the good but all men at some point and therefore it has a relevance to us and some may feel it's irrelevant because their sin is so great that it cannot be forgiven.

[11:27] Yeah yeah it's okay for you you can say you can go before the Lord and repent but my sins are too bad nobody's going to forgive what I have done and yet when we hear the story of David we see how false that thought is.

[11:48] David committed adultery he basically committed murder he caused deceit and yet his sins were forgiven he even thought his sins were beyond the knowledge of any man but God knew of them God in his omniscience knew exactly what David had done he knew why he had done it and he was still prepared to forgive out of his love and his grace so Psalm 51 comes to us as a psalm of repentance and of confession and it's something that's relevant to each and every one of us it's written by King David a man that we heard this morning was a man after God's own heart a man who would do God's will and it's the result of the Lord's dealing with

[12:51] David's sin and forgiving David's sin that allowed David to pour his heart out and talk about forgiveness so you may still think that it's not relevant to you tonight but I say it's relevant to each and every one of us because no matter how good we try and live all of us will sin at some point in the past and in the future none of us are sinless the Psalm however gives us an opportunity and a cause for hope sin has not conquered us rather we have conquered sin through our Lord Jesus Christ one of the first points that sprung out to me when I looked at this Psalm was how it's not all nicely orchestrated as in it doesn't go A

[13:53] B C D but rather it goes back and forwards so often when we pray or we're asked to pray we try and think that we take things in a sequence but not so here we see that David starts in verses one and two by asking for forgiveness forgiveness he immediately pleads that God will forgive him but he then raises it again in verses seven verses nine and again in verses fourteen he doesn't simply say it once and move on to the next thing say it and move on to the next he's driven by the feelings that are in his heart and outpours him time and again as he asks for forgiveness in verse one and two

[14:58] David is clear that forgiveness is not something that he earns at no point does he say I will do this if you will give me no he's clear that forgiveness comes from God have mercy on me oh God according to your steadfast love so according to God's steadfast love according to God's abundant mercy blot out my transgressions it is God who forgives it's not anything that we earn for ourselves it's because of God's steadfast love and God's mercy verse two is clear forgiveness is in God's power it's his act to fulfil it goes we wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin there is nothing in those two verses of what

[16:01] David done as in what he did to earn his forgiveness because other than confessing his sins there was nothing he could do it was in God's power to forgive his sins it's the same action that God forgives our sins when we accept Christ as our saviour when we accept the gift that he gave us in his son our Lord Jesus Christ and Jesus continues in the same theme in verse seven in verse seven we see the images of the Old Testament blood sacrifices purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean wash me and I shall be whiter than snow for me immediately came to the idea of the Passover feast that first Passover feast when the lamb blood was dabbed on the doors and above the mantles so that the angel of death would pass over but also the fact that each year the high priest would make a sacrifice for the sins of the nation that the nation would be cleansed of its sin so we see here those

[17:20] Old Testament sacrifices but it's not David or the high priest that's doing it he's calling upon God to cleanse his heart that if God does it he'll be whiter than snow wash me clean not something that I can do for myself but which God had to do for him David continues throughout the same again in verse 9 David calls upon God to hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquities now if we think God cannot look on sin God sin is a barrier between us and God and our right relationship with him so for David once more to have a right relationship with his heavenly father his sins have to be overlooked they have to be blotted out so that

[18:31] God can see beyond them he's not looking here for God to turn his back on him in fact he's asking the very opposite later on in verse 11 rather that the sin be blocked out so that the path that allows him to have a right relationship with his heavenly father is once more open he asks that God will remove his sin from him this morning we heard how our sins are cast from us and the same is true here this evening they aren't stored away waiting to be cast up the next time we get it wrong it's not a case of I'll forgive you this time and then when we do the same thing in a month's time God goes I knew you were going to do that I remember the last time you did that no our sins are taken from us and they are gone they are not to be cast up they are not going to be used to pillory us in the future when we come to the cross and we confess our sins our sins are washed from us they are gone forever and in verse 14 again

[19:59] David declares deliver me from blood guiltiness oh God again he asked that his sin his wrongdoings be removed from him that his guilt be removed so that he can come into a right relationship with his heavenly father he repeats the call for forgiveness and he then declares at the end of verse 14 oh God of my salvation so he's recognizing here that it's God who brings about his salvation it's not him it's not anything he does it's not by great acts of sacrifice it's not by the noble deeds remember he is a king he can do things far beyond our abilities no his forgiveness comes through God alone and isn't that reassuring for you and

[20:59] I might sound a bit negative but isn't it reassuring that we are not in control of our own salvation we aren't tasked with earning our salvation but it comes through God's love and God's mercy to us it's a gift that he offers us through faith in his son our Lord Jesus Christ then if we go back a wee bit to look again at verses 3 and 4 we see for I know my transgressions and my sins before me so there it is David sees his sins in front of him day and night if you think about it when we have truly sinned when we know we have done the utmost wrong we can try and put things behind us we try and make things right and we try and move on but in our conscience things still come forward it's still there in our heads it still comes to the forefront of our minds and

[22:14] David is experiencing that very challenge here as he says for I know my transgression and my sin is ever before me but what a blessing when we come to faith in Christ our sins are gone and no more can Satan continually throw them to our minds no more do they appear in front of us Satan may try and throw them up in front of us but we can now condemn him we can say it's fixed the penalty is paid there may still be apologies that need to be made to people who have been hurt but no longer do they have power over us in verse 4 we read against you and you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight now when I first read that I thought if you do something wrong if you have injured someone and it says I have sinned only against

[23:24] God but then I sort of read a bit further and yeah we do only sin against God if you think of this morning when we spoke about what sin was sin is a violation or an omission of God's law there may be times that when that omission or that violation cause hurt to others but we don't sin against others we only sin against God because it's only his law that we break others may be hurt if we commit adultery then our wives or our husbands are hurt if we speak harsh words others on the receiving end of our tongue can be hurt but we sin against God because we break his commandments David takes on the responsibility for his sins he doesn't try and escape and blame someone else he doesn't say it's not my fault it's the way I was brought up it's not my fault it's the way I am we look at verse 5 he says behold

[24:39] I was brought forth in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me you could almost expect him to start saying it's not my fault here but no he's recognising rather the depth of his sin the depth of his wrongdoing and how it transpires throughout his whole nature but he takes responsibility for it because if we go back to verse 4 against you and you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sights but goes on to say so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgement so what he's saying is that any consequence that God brings forward for our wrongdoing is justified because it's not someone else's fault it's not the way we were brought up it's not what society allows us to do it's what we chose to do it's what and how we chose to act against

[25:47] God's desire for us so God has given his law to us and we are the ones who decide to break it and the penalty for that is death you see in Romans 6 23 Paul is quite clear the penalty for our sins is death but rather I'm saying that that is unfair that's not what should be happening I don't deserve that David tells us that whatever God decides because of our wrongdoing is just it is fair but this isn't a story of gloom and damnation because as well as bringing that judgment God has also brought a solution he offered us the gift of his son and our

[26:52] Lord Jesus Christ that if we accept him as our saviour our sins are cleansed and forgiven and we can move on with our lives with hope for all eternity that we will have a right relationship once more with our heavenly father with hope for all eternity rather than fear and foreboding of what lies ahead so we said in verse 5 we see the depth of our sin and it pervays every single part of our being it's with us from the moment of our conception and birth through to our death we've seen how in verse 7 God can cleanse us and we've seen how we have a solution through

[27:53] Jesus Christ we then see that the next section almost sees the renewal we see that David asks for a new heart creating me a clean heart oh God and renew a right spirit within me cast me not away from your presence and take not your Holy Spirit from me restore to me the joy of your salvation and uphold me with a willing spirit we are transformed if we accept Christ as our saviour if we confess our sins we are cleansed and we have a new life it's the very same thing sorry David requests that God the creator transforms him and so he can transform us that the

[28:58] Holy Spirit resides within him and at the point of our acceptance of Christ the Holy Spirit comes into our life and resides within us if we are transformed like David pleads we should also show the fruits that David shows we see in verse 13 for example as he asks to be nude then I will teach transgressors your ways and sinners will return to you so if we have repented of our sins and we wish to walk more closely with Christ in our lives we have a responsibility to also show and declare that message to the people we meet we have a duty to tell others of the joy that we have found in life and the salvation that awaits them through

[29:59] Jesus Christ in verse 14 he says my tongue will sing aloud of your righteousness we now have a reason to praise him not a reason to hide away and be fearful we have a reason to be joyful and to come into his presence because we have a right relationship with our heavenly father and in verse 15 oh lord open my lips and my mouth will declare your praise again we should be singing joyfully to him we should be sharing it with all whom we meet after all if you have the most wonderful thing in the world don't you want to tell people about it don't you want to share it with them rather and try and hide it away in closing forgiveness is only possible because of God's love for us it's not by what we do it's by his grace that he pours out on us there is no need for him to do it he does it out of love and mercy verse 16 and 17 for you will not delight in sacrifice or I will give it you will not be pleased with a burnt offering the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit a broken and contrite heart oh God you will not despise here we see

[31:35] God or David laying out the Old Testament sacrifices which people would have brought to the altar we see that these are not the most important thing and this isn't the only part of scriptures in the Old Testament refers to the fact there is something more important than the actual sacrifice itself in 1st Samuel in Jeremiah and Hosea it says that what is far more important is our hearts there is no point in bringing the sacrifices which God has demanded if we come with a hard heart a heart that is still self centred and based on our desire rather we should come before God with a contrite heart a heart of apology a heart that realises our wrongdoing and confesses our sins and a heart that looks to change that looks to be renewed that we may be of service to Christ an act of sacrifice without contrition and a true heart is meaningless it's like telling someone that God loves them and then having harsh words to say to them about their situation we have to show a change in our hearts we have to show that we have truly absorbed what our mouths are pronouncing and so we don't need to be a king we don't need to be a melty man each of us can have salvation by simply repenting of our sins and believing in Jesus

[33:46] Christ as our saviour forgiveness is a free gift from God it's not something we buy it's not something we earn it's something that God has given us and I want to finish just with a reading from John 3 John 3 16 to 18 for God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life for God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world but in order that the world might be saved through him whoever believes in him is not condemned but whoever does not believe is condemned already because he has not believed in the name of the only son of God so God so loved the world that he gave us the gift of his son that our sins can be forgiven that we can walk once more in God's ways and have communion with him but if we reject

[34:57]  Jesus Christ as our saviour we reject that offer of forgiveness and it is not God who condemns us but it is our own actions which condemn us it is us who have turned our backs in God so we have a God who loves us we have a God who has shown his mercy to us in the gift of his Lord Jesus Christ it is up to us to accept Christ into our hearts and it is up to us to then model our lives upon him let's bow our heads in prayer him I love you my brother God he would tale we love you are