Restoring the Joy of Your Salvation

Be gracious to me, O God, according to your covenantal love;

according to your abundant compassion, blot out my transgressions.

Wash me increasingly from my iniquity;

and from my sin cleanse me, because my transgressions I myself know,

and my sin is before me continually (vv 1-3).

[Prayer]

Heavenly Father, thank you for loving us in this way: Sacrificing your only Son on the cross, so that all of our sin would die with Jesus, and then raising him up, you grant us eternal life. Let this, Your Gospel and the faith it provides, continue to create in us clean hearts so that we will return to the joy of your salvation. In his name. Amen.

[Introduction]

Fish oil, red yeast rice, and something called CoQ10 ... whatever that may be ... You know what they have in common? The Internet says these things are known for creating a healthy heart. Do they do what the Internet doctors say? No clue.

5. But wouldn’t it be awesome if there was a pill that actually gave us a healthy heart ...

... that could cure hard-heartedness ... cleansing you of stubbornness and disobedience (Acts 19:9) ... of your sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalry, dissension, division, envy, drunkenness, orgies (Gal 5:18-21), covetousness, filthiness, foolish talk, crude joking (Eph 5:3-4) ... adultery, homosexuality, greed, theft (1 Cor 6:9-10) ... insubordination (Tit 1:6), murder, deceit, maliciousness, gossip, slander, hatred of God, insolence, faithlessness (Rm 1:29-31). And let’s not forget blasphemy, false witness, backbiting, gluttony, sloth ... as well as our desire to justify ourselves ... saying my sin isn’t a big deal ... that it is OK to live this way.

’Cause let’s face it: IT IS NOT OK. ... It is not OK to live this way or do any of this.

Ignoring our hard-heartedness doesn’t make it go away. Ignoring our hard-heartedness leads only to division and a lack of fellowship, tarnished reputations and hypocrisy, moral and ethical decline and then death. Pharoah learned that the hard way. Ignoring hard-heartedness destroys relationships and makes it easier to continue living that way with no remorse. Ignoring hard-heartedness perpetuates it, teaching children that it’s OK to live in sin ... teaching your neighbors your confession here is meaningless. A denial of sin is not only a denial of God (1 Jn 1:10), it is persecution and condemnation of God.

Every broken commandment is rebellion ... transgression ... against God. When you act selfishly, you are pushing God out of his No. 1 spot. When you abuse the Lord’s name, you’re abusing the Lord himself. When you fail to remember the Sabbath day, you despise God’s Word and sacraments. When you dishonor authority, you dishonor God who gave people authority. When you harm your neighbor or fail to help him, you reject God’s gift of human life. When you engage in wrongful sexual thoughts or behavior, you forsake God’s gift of marriage. When you take what doesn’t belong to you, you disregard God as the Giver of all things. When you gossip, you destroy the good name God has given a person. When you covet, you grumble against God.

These sins, and all the others like them, may start off against yourself or someone else. ... But first and foremost, they are against the Lord, him alone (v 4). This is David’s confession.

Against You, You only, I have sinned (v 4).

And let’s pull no punches today ... God hates sin. He hated David’s sin. He hates my sin. He hates your sin. He hates the world’s sin. He hates the denial of sin. He hates it ... because it separates us from him. It covers us in filth ... filth that has no part with our Holy God. It leaves us in despair ... alone ... isolated ... dying ... dead.

4. King David certainly felt that broken-hearted.

That’s why he wrote Psalm 51. He had ignored his sins of covetousness, trying to take another man’s wife ... He ignored his adultery with Bathsheba, adultery ... He ignored his deceit and debauchery with Uriah ... and then he ignored the murder (2 Sam 11). He tried to keep it all to himself, acting as though it would just go away. David was probably telling himself ... Well, you know, I’m a man after God’s own heart, after all. Besides, God likes to forgive. So what’s the big deal?

But just like you and me ... he couldn’t cover his sin. Just like you and me, he couldn’t pretend that he wasn’t a sinner. And neither can we! Because God knows.

In 2 Samuel 12, God sent the Prophet Nathan to call David into repentance. And now we have one of the most important Psalms in scripture ... Psalm 51 ... which is one of David’s penitential pleas (cf Ps 32) following Nathan’s proclamation of the Law and Gospel. ... Now we get to join David’s anguished words of confession.

The early church father Athanasius told Christians that when we wake up in the middle of the night, we should recite Psalm 51 for the comfort and guidance it provides, especially when we feel vulnerable or troubled. Luther taught that Psalm 51 is the one from which we never graduate as catechumens, which is probably why Psalm 51 is at the heart of the Divine Service today and why the Sacrament follows it as an answer to our prayer. A lesser known Lutheran Reformer named Victorinus Strigel said: “This Psalm is the brightest gem in the whole book.” It contains “a doctrine so precious that the tongue of angels could not do justice to the full development.”

3. Psalm 51 begins with the only words a sinner with a broken heart can say in faith.

Be gracious to me, O God, according to your covenantal love;

according to your abundant compassion, blot out my transgressions (v 1).

God is not obligated to be gracious ... or show mercy. He is not obligated to do anything. He does not forgive you just because you asked. That’s not how it works. You don’t get to say, well, I have faith, therefore, I am off the hook ... that I don’t need anything from him.

Remember, our sin is like the sea: It’s vast and endless. You can drift forever. There are certainly days when everything feels calm and still, and we feel safe. But tomorrow that sea may be as chaotic as the Drake Passage between South America and Antarctica, where 50 mph winds and 50 foot swells are as common as cows in west-central Missouri.

We need something that is not of ourselves. We need a savior, who comes and calls, someone who delights in truth and causes us to know wisdom ... himself. Our destiny rests upon him.

2. This is why David begins appealing from the heart to the promises of God.

Only God can deliver on those. Wash me increasingly from my iniquity (v 2), David says. The word we translate as thoroughly is actually a word of multitude. It is the word רָבָה (ra.vah). It means to multiply at its basic level. Here, in the Psalm, it has the additional meaning of increasingly, exceedingly with causation. As David confesses: My sin is before me continually (v 3). David acknowledges that he never stops sinning ... that he’s in a state of continual iniquity ... or we should say, immorality ... constantly rebelling against God and his Word ... doing evil (v 4) ... a state of transgression. He is saying ... How do I stop, Lord? I was born this way. As David confesses: In sin, did my mother conceive me (v 5). I need more forgiveness than ever before.

Therefore, we need repentance. And by that, I don’t mean merely saying “I’m sorry.” Repentance is not about simply feeling bad about what you’ve done and saying forgive me in a corporate confession. Genuine repentance is much more. It is hating your sin ... hating it like God does. It is then receiving what God gives: His contrition and faith ... his means of grace.

1. And God is so incredibly gracious in that along with a clean heart ... a new heart.

His means of grace take us to the cross of Christ. God hated your sin so much he destroyed it for you on the cross of Christ ... so he could turn you to him in faith. God sent his only son, the son he loved, to live without sin for you, to shed his blood for you, to die for you, and to rise for you out of the tomb and fulfill his promises to you ... so you could have faith in him. God hid his face from our sins when he laid them upon Jesus and nailed them to a cross that no one wants to see. As Peter teaches us, Jesus himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live in righteousness. By his wounds, you have been healed (1 Pt 2:24). And ... Hallelujah! He is now risen! ... There is no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus (Rm 8:1). We now live in Jesus continually (Col 2:20). Nothing can separate you now from the love of God in Christ. That’s how far God turned our sin away from us.

[Conclusion]

Which brings us back to David’s psalm. Now we know why we can plead with God to create in us pure hearts, renewing a right spirit within us (v 10). The Holy Spirit has called you by the Gospel, enlightened you with his gifts, and he sanctifies and keeps you in the true faith. He will continually give us new life through holy baptism, covering you with the garment of salvation to wear to the Marriage Feast of the Lamb that never ends. He will continually speak his word of peace ... the word of forgiveness. He will not take his Spirit of Holiness from you (v 11).

JESUS IS CREATING A NEW HEART WITHIN YOU, RESTORING TO YOU THE JOY OF YOUR SALVATION, AND CAUSING YOU TO HEAR JOY AND GLADNESS.

Then you can say, I will give thanks to the Lord, call upon his name, and make known his deeds among the peoples ... in Jesus’ name (Isa 12:4). Amen.

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