Psalm 51 is the best known of the penitential Psalms, which are prayers of confession.

This prayer has one of the most powerful back stories of all the Psalms. The title informs us that David wrote these words after Nathan challenged him with the words “Thou art the man”, which cut the King deep in his heart. Up to this time David had committed adultery with Bathsheba, sending her husband Uriah to his death in battle on discovering that she was expecting their child. As he married Bathsheba, he reckoned he had gotten away with his sin; unknown to David, however, his lifestyle had become the gossip of the nation with even his enemies blaspheming God because such a “holy” man had fallen. When Nathan pointed out his sin with the parable of the rich man who stole the poor man’s pet lamb David still didn’t see his own sin until the man of God pointed the incriminating finger in his direction.

From that moment David’s life took a downward spiral, which began with the death of the precious infant which Bathsheba bore. Stricken with guilt and with the enormous weight of his sin David began to pray – Psalm 51 is the record of his praying.

This Psalm is important because it illustrates most graphically that Christians sin, that we are capable of the most monstrous and scandalous actions. This Psalm also shows us the way back to God, the path that the backslider must tread.

This sin of David’s is recorded for a warning to all, that he who thinks he stands may take heed lest he fall.

Matthew Henry

The truth is – we all sin and we all must have a sensitivity to the darkness and deceitfulness of our spirits. If David had been sensitive to his heart and to God when he looked from that roof and saw Bathsheba bathing – he never would have stooped to the depths that he found himself to be in.

Therefore this Psalm is for us all – it’s both a preventative and a remedy. It unmasks the facade that we can wear most deceivingly. It analyses our hearts, our thoughts, our attitudes as well as our words and deeds. It shows us a God who sees all and who holds us accountable. We learn that there is a path to forgiveness but it’s a tough road; one of tears and heart searching. This is also the highway to revival because only when we see our sin in its blackness will we seek the Lord for His grace and His fullness as we have never done before.

This Psalm shows us that David is not an excuse for our sin. Some have fallen like David but have never shed his tears in God’s presence. David does not excuse our sin – he causes us to fear and hate the destructiveness of wicked pleasure. This is the lesson we must get from the 51st Psalm.

This is the most deeply affecting of all the Psalms, and I am sure the one most applicable to me…My God, whether recent or not, give me to feel the enormity of my manifold offences, and remember not against me the sins of my youth. What a mine of rich matter and expression for prayer! Wash, cleanse me, O Lord, and let my sin and my sinfulness be ever before me. Let me feel it chiefly as sin against thee, that my sorrow may be of the godly sort.

Thomas Chalmers;
Spurgeon’s Treasury of David

1: DAVID’S PENITENCE; v.1-6

This opening is an intense and broken cry for mercy as the enormity of David’s sin rises up before him like a great and a black mountain. Like Christian in Pilgrim’s Progress he approaches God with an intolerable burden upon his back as he pleads for release.

David recognised what sin was – ultimately God was offended.

“against the and thee only have I sinned and done this evil in thy sight”.

He was praying not because he had been exposed, not because he had hurt others – he was praying because he recognised that God knew.

David, being convinced of his sin, poured out his soul to God in prayer for mercy and grace…Whither should backsliding children return, but to the Lord their God, from whom they have backslidden, and who alone can heal their backslidings?

Matthew Henry

Therefore David as the true penitent dealt with his sin courageously with truth. God must have the truth and David must be made to know wisdom in the hidden part. What he had hidden, tried to cover up – he must now expose and own.

We can only step forward after sin when we honestly face what we have done – facing our sin before a holy God.

2: DAVID’S PETITIONS; v.7-15

After his initial cry for mercy David makes certain requests of God that we also can take ownership of, praying them into our own lives:

1. Purge me with hyssop
2. Wash me
3. Make me to hear joy and gladness
4. Hide thy face from my sins
5. blot out all mine iniquities
6. Create in me a clean heart, O God
7. and renew a right spirit within me
8. Cast me not away from thy presence
9. and take not thy holy spirit from me
10. Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation
11. and uphold me with thy free spirit
12. Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God, thou God of my salvation
13. O Lord, open thou my lips

This long list of petitions draws from ancient ceremonies (1 & 2), focuses upon the need of the heart (6 & 7), longs for the favour of God (8 & 9), seeks the return of joy (10), looks for the restoration of ministry (13), and acknowledges the God of mercy and grace (12).

It is significant, however, that the first request David made was for the application of the hyssop. This was used on the night of the Passover when the Jews painted the blood of the lamb upon their doorposts and lintels. David understood that he would be forgiven only on the basis of the blood atonement. Our basic need continues to be for the cleansing of the blood of Christ:

For if the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh: How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?

Hebrews 12:14-1

These petitions, taken as a whole, indicate what the backslider has lost and the comprehensive need of restoration. Do they also not point us in the direction of what we must be praying for today if we are to see God working in this land in revival blessing? The Church is losing ground, the devil is gaining territory, the ignorance of the Gospel is growing in Ulster and it seems our burden is very light. May God grant us a vision for His blessing today? That we would have clean hearts created by God, that sinners would be converted and lives transformed and history reversed.

3: DAVID’S PROMISES; v5-15

David in his praying also pleaded the promises. Very often these petitions were accompanied by pledges from God that the King held onto in His broken state. This is why we pray – God hears, He forgives, restores, transforms. This is our encouragement today.

1. Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean:
2. wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
3. Make me to hear joy and gladness; that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice.
4. Then will I teach transgressors thy ways and sinners shall be converted unto thee.
5. my tongue shall sing aloud of thy righteousness.
6. my mouth shall shew forth thy praise.

David moves from heart cleansing to joy and onto converting sinners. There would be no joy and he would not be used in the converting sinners if his heart was not washed. He claimed the promise for his own heart before he claimed the promise for ministry. These promises end with a tongue singing of God’s righteousness and a mouth showing forth His praises. Somewhere in the midst of backsliding he had forgotten his purpose in this world – the glory of God. Instead he indulged in self gratification, the indulging of his own lusts. Now he is restored and so he returns to God’s ultimate plan. For this he claims the promise but only from a penitent heart. God will not take us into blessing without true repentance – the promises are not to be viewed in isolation.

The need for a new spirit, the creation of a clean heart, is the most basic need of all. Just as God came to a formless empty void and created so He must come into the barrenness of our destitute lives and create clean hearts, correcting what is most wrong about our spiritual anatomy.

A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.

Ezekiel 36:26

4: DAVID’S PRESENTATION; v.16-20

The Psalm ends with the sacrifices that God was desiring. In the 50th Psalm the people are rebuked for bringing their offerings without a heart; the prided themselves in their physical performances of religion as if God needed their goats and their cows forgetting that He owned the cattle on a thousand hills. David had been guilty of this hypocrisy thinking He was right with God when patently He wasn’t. He had brought His offerings while he was hiding a terrible sin. Now he brought the one offering that God wanted – the presentation of a broken heart:

The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit:
a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.

Psalms 51:17

David learned that God would only be pleased with the physical sacrifices when the heart was first on the altar. Before we attend Church, keep the Sabbath, pay our tithes, read our Bibles let us bring our hearts honestly to God – confessing, repenting, making restitution, apologising, paying our bills and dealing with whatever else is robbing us of fellowship with the Lord – then and only then will God be pleased!