The Heart of a Righteous Person 4

Psalm 51:10-19.  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on January 29, 2017.

Today we will finish up our look at David’s repentance in Psalm 51.  By way of reminder, David wrote this psalm after he was confronted by the prophet Nathan about his sin with Bathsheba and the murder of her husband.  If we learn anything in this psalm, I pray that we learn this: the heart of a righteous person will be broken by God’s conviction of their sin.  They will repent of it and seek to restore relationship with Him. 

This is an extremely important point because it is becoming common to act like sin is not a problem for Christians, due to the fact that they are covered by Jesus.  However, the Bible tells us to not be deceived.  God will not be mocked.  If Christians sow to the flesh they are going to reap destruction from the flesh.  Sin negatively affects our relationship with God and with other people.  Yes, God can cover it with His grace.  But, we should never use that as a license for sin, and apathy towards the damage it does.  Some worry that warning against sin will create a mentality in which a person thinks they have lost their salvation each time they sin.  Of course, poor leadership could teach this or give this impression.  The truth is that sin detrimentally affects our spiritual relationship with God.  If we do not deal with it by repenting in our heart and doing the actions of repentance then it can eventually shipwreck our faith.

Desires its relationship with God to be fixed

We left off dealing with how God fixes our heart and mind.  David declares that God gives His wisdom to our minds, cleanses the heart stained by sin, and deals with the guilt of our sin.  In verse 10 he adds another thing that only God can do and that is to renew a steadfast spirit within us.  David knew that something had gone wrong in his own spirit.  He used to resist all manner of temptations and steadfastly long for the Lord’s way.  But the seduction of this sin broke through all of that.  Thus he asks God to repair it in such a way that it would be firmly established as it should be, AKA “a right spirit.”  This is a lesson to us about our hearts.  Just because your heart desires something doesn’t mean you should give in to it.  You can want the Lord and His ways more than the desires of your flesh.  In fact it is impossible to please all of the sinful desires that flit through your heart.  There are so many of them that you quickly get into a conflict of interest, which forces you to choose one over another.  David was not some kind of unfeeling, super-spiritual boy growing up.  He had a heart filled with sinful desires just like you and me.  He had done a good job of rejecting them and choosing the Lord’s way, but not at this point in his life.  When he gave in to the desires of his flesh, he found himself in bondage to sin from which only the Lord could free him.

I am going to skip verse 11 for now and look at verse 12 because it gives us two more areas where the Lord fixes our heart and mind.  First, sin had robbed David of his joy.  No matter how good it felt to give into temptation, it left him miserable in the end.  He lived in fear of discovery and hatred of his own weakness.  He had ceased to walk faithfully in the way of salvation and had taken an exit ramp to Pleasure Island.  The Bible tells us in Hebrews 11:25 that the pleasures of sin are passing, or temporary.  No matter how good they are in the moment, they cannot replace the eternal joy and peace we have when we walk in right relationship with God.  David tried to walk the fence of looking righteous, and hiding his wickedness.  This will never bring joy and neither will going all out after sin.

The second item in verse 12 is the need for God to uphold us.  Literally we need something to lean on and only God can be that thing.  David knew that his life was falling apart.  His spirit alone was not enough to hold everything up.  In fact, David was in danger of becoming exactly like Saul who had persecuted him for so long.  This concern is not just for holding his external life together, but also for holding his internal mind and spirit together.  Our spirit was not meant to walk life without the upholding strength of the Spirit of God.  We will find that things eventually fall apart without Him.

In verse 11 David’s greatest fear is that God will abandon Him and no longer speak to his heart by the Holy Spirit.  This sense of the presence of God was in jeopardy.  Saul’s sin and lack of repentance led God to reject him as king and to refuse to speak to him.  David recognized that he was in that same dangerous place.  His only hope was to repent with a broken heart and plead with God for mercy.  Saul’s wickedness was not that he lacked faith in God.  His wickedness is that when he was confronted with it, he refused to soften his heart and repent.  David is showing us proper repentance.   There is nothing more precious than the reassuring presence of the Spirit of God in our life.  Even when the Spirit is rebuking and correcting us, we can still take joy in the fact that God does so because He loves us.  Hebrews 12:5-6 says, “My son, do not make light of the Lord’s discipline, and do not lose heart when He rebukes you, because the Lord disciplines the one He loves, and He chastens everyone He accepts as His son.”  A parent who does not discipline their child does not care about them and only has a superficial love.  David knew he had stepped over the line.  For him this was not a debate with other scholars about whether it was possible to lose one’s salvation.  For him it was a desperate sense that, no matter what, he didn’t want to go forward without sensing that the Spirit of God was with him.

Desires to help others

From verse 13 on, we see a change.  David is still pleading with the Lord, but he is also declaring what he wants to do for others.  His sin has done a lot of damage in the hearts of people throughout the nation.  His sin against the people could not be undone.  But, if God would forgive him, David would lift up the Lord before them.  There are some things that failure in sin teaches us.

In verse 14 David recognized that his past righteousness wasn’t enough.  He would teach people God’s ways.  God’s ways are righteous.  My ways are only righteous as much as I walk in His ways.  It is easy to promote self before others, especially when we are successful and our station in life is elevated.  People love to look up to successful people.  David’s “right” choices had led him into horrible actions and possible destruction.  However, the ways of the Lord lead to life.  The Bible says in Proverbs 14:12, “There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death.”  I would have to agree with David.  No pastor, evangelist, or missionary can point people to God’s ways because of how great they are.  Rather, we have all personally learned that following the desires of the flesh led to death, both physically and spiritually.  But God’s way leads to eternal life.

In verse 15 David says, “My mouth will show forth Your praise.”  He promises to publicly praise God’s righteousness.  Think of it.  David sees that his time is up and the “bridge is out” up ahead.  When God delivers him from his own sin, he will be filled with joy and the desire to praise God.  We praise God as an exalted form of acknowledgment.  But, we also praise God by way of encouraging each other.  It is important to rejoice in what God has done in your life and share that with others.  As we do this we lift God up and encourage others not to harden their heart, but instead break down in repentance before God and our fellow man.

In verses 16-17 David tells us one of the lessons he had learned.  This is an important part of repentance.  When we receive the forgiveness of God, we want to share with others the lessons we have learned.  Recognize that you don’t have to learn everything the hard way.  God has surrounded you with brothers and sisters who can share with you what they have learned, on top of the vast amount of lessons shared with us in the Bible.  David learned that God is not interested in our sacrifices at His temple.  He is interested in the sacrifices that are happening in our heart.  God wants a broken and contrite heart.  Self-righteous sin tells us to sacrifice everything but our own flesh.  Many people approach this same place as David and they harden their hearts.  Saul had continued to offer sacrifices, but he refused to let his heart be broken before God.  He hardened it all the more.  Yes, we should gather together and sing, hear the Word, read the Bible, and pray.  But all of these things are meaningless if our hearts are hardened towards God.  At the end of the day, all God wants from you is a heart that stops hardening itself and softens towards Him.  The heavenly Father loves you more than you can even imagine.  Don’t harden your heart towards Him.

In the last two verses, we may miss what David is really doing.  In a sense God hasn’t answered in the psalm, yet.  David knows that his sin has affected the nation.  Saul’s sin had caused the nation to descend into 40 years of chaos.  In a sense David is saying, “Whatever you do with me, God, have mercy on the people of Zion and Jerusalem.  Sin has consequences, and many of them affect the people around us.  Part of repentance is recognition of what we have done to others.  David had messed things up and the nation would pay a price.  We all have to own up to our own part of the problem without saying, “Yeah, but they did such and such.”  No matter what, I do not want to put the work of God in other people’s lives in danger.  My sin could snuff out the flame of God’s work in the life of another.  This is a horrible thought.  May God help us to deal with our sin and take the passion that David pours into this psalm as a template for our own act of breaking down in full repentance before God.

Heart of a Righteous Person 4 audio