The explanation about the history  is part of the Psalm as is common in the Psalms. We know the original context. We can read the story in 2Samuel 11:1-12:25. I will not go into the details but David had adultery with His next door neighbour’s wife, attempted to cover up the pregnancy by bringing Uriah back from a battle to be with his wife. When that didn’t work, ha had Uriah killed in battle to keep any protests silent. God sends Nathan to David to spell out his sin. Adultery followed by murder. David is exposed for what he is.

 This Psalm is his response to God. It is a good example of understanding how we can relate to God. So let’s look at it and explore our own relationship with God.

 The core of the Psalm is in verses 1 and 2

 Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love;

according to the abundance of your compassion erase my rebellion.

Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin.

 

Mercy is God bending down to favour us in spite of what we have done. David’s sin was terrible but his cover-up is blown and before God he does not try to justify himself , excuse his behaviour. Instead he pleads to mercy.  Learn this you cannot earn God’s love. You cannot be deserving of his mercy and salvation. You can only cry for mercy. That is the bad news.

The Good News is that it is in the very nature of God to love you. There is no rationale for his love, but , as John put it, God is love. God can’t help it. Loving you is what he does.  So David faced with the enormity of his sin, does not ask for mercy because he is King, which he is, or that he is chosen by God, which he is. Or that he has done great things in God’s name, which he has. He asks for mercy on the basis of what God is like.  He asks God to act for the removal of anything, including guilt, which threatens the welfare of an individual (or people) for whom he, God, is responsible. Of course, we have no power to command such mercy, but it can be asked for on the basis of the confession and prayer which follows. It is an appeal to the character of God. The hope lies in God’s grace not any requirement for him to do so. To quote Barak Obama, last week, grace is undeserved but God gives it.

But there is more. He asks for forgiveness on the basis of the compassion of God.  God loves you. The word here refers to God being stirred up in his inner being. We would say the heart of God, Hebrew thinking was the womb or bowels are the seat of the emotions. He loves us as if he were a mother who gave you birth. He loves you like a father, who seeing his returning son, runs down the road to meet him. That is how much God loves you. That is the only basis for which you will ever be forgiven.

There are three pictures of sin and forgiveness here.

 Revolt erased. David had revolted over God’s way. He had chosen to go down the slippery slope of adultery although he knew it was not God’s way. He probably convinced himself he knew better. Let’s be clear he did not love his neighbour as himself. When Bathsheba announced the pregnancy he chose deception rather than honesty. That led to a cunning plan which was murder by deception. He kept choosing to revolt against God’s 10 commands and sought to solve the problem his own way. What a disaster. The lady he claimed to love lost her husband, his neighbour dead on his instructions, but he toughed it out until God sends the prophet to expose his revolt. 

 

Now he seeks God not to undo what he had done, that was not possible, but to erase the revolt from the records. On the basis of  the abundance of God’s compassion he asks for a wipeout! But not to wipeout his enemies but to wipeout the record of his revolt.

 

 Pervertion  washed off

His behaviour was perverted. He used his power as King to manipulate the situation without regard to right behaviour. He rightly felt dirty from the sins he had committed so he asks God on the basis of  the abundance of God’s compassion, certainly his was noticeably lacking, he asks for  his sin to be washed away.

 

 Offence (missing the mark) decontaminated or healed The word for sin here comes from missing the mark on target practise. He failed to measure up to God’s idea about how he should think and behave. Evil has entered his life, so he asks on the basis of  the abundance of God’s compassion to be decontaminated or healed. YOU have seen decontamination set-ups on TV Ebola required strict processes to prevent the desease escaping into the community. Sin is like that. It needs decontamination. And there is nowhere else to go but to God. There can be no cover up – God knows everything about and what you think and do. And he still loves you but to erase your guilt, to wash away your sin and decontaminate your life from evil he sent Jesus to die on a cross. David knew his only hope was that God would on the basis of  the abundance of his compassion forgive, erase the record, wash the perversion and decontaminate him of the evil in his soul.

 He continues

 For I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me.

Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight,

At first sight this is somewhat strange. Has he not sinned against Bathsheba and Uriah?  Yet this statement is quite specific.

First we need to understand that his sins were only sins against God because there is no other arbiter of what is right or wrong. The slide into the Secular Society idea of a God-less morality can lead any which way it chooses. Adultery is no longer a sin in the atheists world-view. Murder can be justified because it was David’s solution to a problem. The atheist has nothing to aim at, no 10 commands to follow, no Jesus to set the example, no God to answer to and no future beyond the grave. David knows that what he has done wrong is because God says so.  That is the ultimate measure of his actions. The 10 commandments would have protected, Bathsheba, Uriah and the unborn child . Without sin against God there was no sin. In our democratic processes we will argue the case for Christian values, but be careful you don’t think that they are negotiable with God.

David knows this , he acknowledges his sin and recognises that the bottom line is that he has sinned against God.

 

 Verses 5-6 bring up another matter about sin.

Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me. Surely you desire truth in the inner parts; you teach me wisdom in the inmost place.

It was not his actions that were wrong but his thinking and heart.  And that was not just something that developed in him, it was part of his DNA. Theologians call this idea ‘original sin’. We are tainted by sin traced right back to the sin of Adam and Eve. We inherited a bias for sin from our parents and pass it on to our children. But the grace of God offers each generation a way out of the fatal flaw in our being. God offers forgiveness and a new birth into a new eternal life. Reversing the introduction of death as a result of sin and opening the way to the tree of life. Please note that sin in our DNA is not used as an excuse. Blaming our parents makes no sense because we choose the same rebellion, the same wrong choices. David takes responsibility for his sin but seeks the record to be rubbed out because of God’s grace.

 Verses 7 & 9 are a reflection on verse 1 and 2

Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean;

wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.

Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquity.

 

Restoration

Then David, led by the Holy Spirit, takes forgiveness to a completely new level. Notice that I have separated out the two strands but they are interlinked in the Psalm. This is not two steps but a development as the realisation and release of forgiveness takes effect.

Let me hear joy and gladness;

let the bones you have crushed rejoice.

Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.

Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me.

Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.

 

Too often we think that confession is a negative experience. We stand before God and wallow in self-pity. The purpose of confession is to receive forgiveness. The purpose of forgiveness is to do some re-creating.

There seem to me to be 5 aspects of a restored relationship with God here

1.     Joy, gladness and rejoicing in salvation

2.     Pure heart

3.     A steadfast and willing spirit

4.     The presence of God

5.     The indwelling of the Holy Spirit

 

1.       cause me to hear Joy, gladness and rejoicing in salvation

What are you hearing this morning? The human mind has the great capacity to exclude all but what is considers significant. We have selective hearing . If you don’t have this capacity you have some sort of  autism. But the downside is you become conditioned to hear what you want, a baby’s cry, a shout through the sound of roaring traffic, bad news, sorrow, anxiety. And you blot out the joy and the gladness and the rejoicing because you have lost your interest in it. So pray for God to cause you to hear the joy and gladness, experience for yourself the rejoicing in salvation. We sing open our eyes, Lord, we want to see Jesus – open our ears, Lord and help us to listen because we believe in this prayer.

 

2.       We ask God to create a pure heart in us. This is more than simply washing us clean and decontaminating us from evil, it is transforming our motivation and our thinking to be pure. A truly repentant person wants to think and feel pure thoughts and emotions so we ask God to change the way that we think or be transformed by the renewing of your mind as Paul puts it in Romans 12:1

This motivation change is underlined by

3.       A steadfast and willing spirit

Your spirit, the inner you which is created by Jesus to respond and relate to God needs to be steadfast and willing so that ‘Your will be done’ is not lip-service but a real desire in you.

4.       The presence of God

There is only one fear above all others and that would be if God turned his face away from you. That would be hell! Jesus suffered it on the cross and cried out ‘My God, My God, why have you forsaken me’ He suffered so that you do not need to. So we pray

Do not cast me from your presence

For many of us there is a real desire not only to be assured by faith of God’s presence but to sense it in our spirit. Feeling that God is not listening is bad enough. Only by faith and crying this prayer certain of his promise never to leave us or let go of us, can we enjoy life.

5.       The indwelling of the Holy Spirit

The means by which God lives with us is his Holy Spirit. Our prayer is

Do not take your Holy Spirit from me.

From the moment you accept Jesus as your Saviour he gives you a new heart and Spirit and connects you online to the Holy Spirit. And God’s connections are superfast and secure. To live as God would have us live we need his Holy Spirit living in us day by day.

 

The Church of England Prayer book’s general confession is largely this Psalm because it is a model for us to think through how we move from being overcome by remorse for yesterday’s sin to enjoying God today.

I commend it to you because we all need ,more than anything else, to know the joy, a pure heart and steadfast willing spirit, the presence of God and the indwelling of his Holy Spirit.  Seek him today. If there is sin in your life confess it to God and trust in his grace. If past sins have depressed you, seek to hear the joy and gladness, by faith live in the presence of God and walk by faith, alert to what the Holy spirit leads you.

 

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