Create in Me a Clean Heart, O God (2 Samuel 12:1-12)
For the choirmaster. A Psalm of David. When Nathan the prophet came to him after his adultery with Bathsheba.
“Have mercy on me, O God, according to Your loving devotion; according to Your great compassion, blot out my transgressions. Wash me clean of my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. 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, so that You may be proved right when You speak and blameless when You judge.
Surely I was brought forth in iniquity; I was sinful when my mother conceived me. Surely You desire truth in the inmost being; You teach me wisdom in the inmost place. Purify me with hyssop, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow. Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones 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 renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from Your presence; take not Your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of Your salvation, and sustain me with a willing spirit. Then I will teach transgressors Your ways, and sinners will return to You. Deliver me from bloodguilt, O God, the God of my salvation, and my tongue will sing of Your righteousness.
O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare Your praise. For You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it; You take no pleasure in burnt offerings. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart, O God, You will not despise. In Your good pleasure, cause Zion to prosper; build up the walls of Jerusalem. Then You will delight in righteous sacrifices, in whole burnt offerings; then bulls will be offered on Your altar.”
“For the choirmaster. A Psalm of David. When Nathan the prophet came to him after his adultery with Bathsheba.” If you had just committed adultery with one of your best friends’ wives and had then arranged to have him killed to cover up the problem, would YOU write a psalm of praise to God? “But,” you say, “David was a man after God’s own heart!” Yes, he was….mostly. One of the great things about the Bible is that it doesn’t sugar coat anything.
The terrible story of how David committed adultery with Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah, the Hittite, one of David’s “mighty men” is found in 2 Samuel 11-12. It was springtime, when kings go off to war, and David’s men were out in the battle field. But David remained behind in Jerusalem, and one evening when he was walking on the roof of his palace to relieve his boredom, he saw Bathsheba while she was bathing. Bathsheba was drop-dead gorgeous. David summoned Bathsheba to the palace, had sex with her, and then when she turned up pregnant, tried to get her husband Uriah to return to Jerusalem and stay with his wife, hoping that Uriah would sleep with his wife and the pregnancy would be attributed to Uriah. When none of David’s schemes worked, he arranged for Uriah to be sent into the heat of battle where he perished. Now David had a perfect reason to console a grieving widow, a pregnant grieving widow.
David thought he was getting away with everything when God sent Nathan the prophet to confront him. Nathan told David a heart-breaking story about a rich man with all kinds of sheep and a poor man with a single ewe lamb that he loved like a child. When the rich man needed to slaughter a sheep for guests, he seized the poor man’s ewe lamb. David was furious and demanded Nathan to tell him the name of the man, so that he could punish him. Nathan told David, “YOU are that man!” By the time the story ended, Bathsheba’s baby died. David was broken-hearted over his failure to honor God in this matter and over the realization that he could betray one of his best warriors in this fashion. This psalm is the result of David’s repentance.
“Have mercy on me, O God, according to Your loving devotion; according to Your great compassion, blot out my transgressions. Wash me clean of my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. 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, so that You may be proved right when You speak and blameless when You judge.” David is owning his sin and begging God for forgiveness. David realizes that when he sinned, he sinned against God and not against Uriah and Bathsheba. As one of God’s representatives, David has just given God an undeserved bad name.
“Surely I was brought forth in iniquity; I was sinful when my mother conceived me.” David acknowledges that he was born a sinner; only God can redeem him.
“Hide Your face from my sins 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; take not Your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of Your salvation, and sustain me with a willing spirit.” David realizes that nothing he can do will blot out this sin; God is the only One who can cleanse and redeem. These verses have echoed through the years and many churches have incorporated these verses into their regular Sunday liturgies.
“Then I will teach transgressors Your ways, and sinners will return to You. Deliver me from bloodguilt, O God, the God of my salvation, and my tongue will sing of Your righteousness. O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare Your praise.” Sin blocks our ability to tell others about God or to praise Him. Only God can blot out sins.
“For You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it; You take no pleasure in burnt offerings. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart, O God, You will not despise. In Your good pleasure, cause Zion to prosper; build up the walls of Jerusalem. Then You will delight in righteous sacrifices, in whole burnt offerings; then bulls will be offered on Your altar.” David realizes that no amount of blood offerings will atone for the horror he has brought on himself and on his nation as its head. When leaders sin, whichever group they are leading will also suffer.
APPLICATION: Nobody makes it through life without sinning. “But,” you ask, “I’ve never done anything as bad as David did. Do I REALLY need to repent?” Yes. God doesn’t grade on a sliding scale. To the most holy God, all sins grieve Him. We would love to re-classify sins into categories, with our pet sins demanding a smaller punishment than those of others. When we gossip, when we become angry, when we make cutting remarks, when we utter our prejudices as though we are speaking for God, we are grieving God’s heart.
One problem many of us face is a lack of understanding the fatherhood of God. Our fathers may have been demanding, abusive, emotionally absent, or completely absent altogether. But children with loving fathers want above all else to please their fathers and not cause them pain. Even though David’s relationship with his own father wasn’t the best, David had come to accept God as his Heavenly Father. Now David’s sin had separated him from God and David couldn’t stand the pain of that separation.
There’s a good reason that part of this psalm is used routinely in many churches. As congregations repeat this psalm, those present can insert their own sins into the confession, rather than fumbling for words themselves.
Jesus told his disciples a story about two men who went up to the temple to pray. One was a religious leader while the other was a tax collector. The religious leader stood up in the center of the temple and proudly boasted, “God, I thank You that I am not like other men—extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I possess.’ And the tax collector, standing afar off, would not so much as raise his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me a sinner!’ Jesus told his disciples that it was the tax collector who went home justified while the religious leader simply returned home in a cloud of self-righteousness,“for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.” (Luke 18:9-14)
If you had asked the religious leader in this story to repeat Psalm 51, he might have told you that he had no need to do so, that he was righteous and had nothing to confess. It was the lowly tax collector, shunned by polite society, who realized his need for forgiveness. Also notice something else: The tax collector didn’t speak out a long list of sins. The Holy Spirit was probably convicting the tax collector of specific sins; however, the tax collector simply described himself as sinful. When we are truly repentant, God will tell us those sins we need to repudiate.
As you read this psalm today, you may find God speaking to your heart about specific things you have done wrong. Don’t despair! Allow God to bring those things to mind, confess them as sin, and then receive God’s forgiveness. A clean heart feels wonderful!
PRAYER: Father God, thank You for loving us and for caring for us. Lord, we do confess that we have sinned and grieved You. Open the eyes of all who read these words to see that You are a loving Father and that You stand ready to forgive as soon as we stop playing games and confess our sins. In the mighty and precious Name of King Jesus. Amen.
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