Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, vols. 13–63

Psalm 51:—This Psalm is dedicated to the chief musician—it was intended to be sung. Yet it is not by any means a joyous piece of music. It seems more fit to be sung—or sighed—as a solo for the solitary penitence of a broken heart than for the united songs of Believers. Yet, in God's ears it is clear that the voice of penitence is full of music, for this penitential Psalm is dedicated to the chief musician.

Verse 1. Have mercy upon me, O God, according to Your loving-kindness. No eye can spy out the tender attributes of God like an eye that is sore with weeping on account of acknowledged sin, so David prays, "Have mercy upon me, O God, according to your loving-kindness." This word, "loving-kindness," is a rich double word and it was specially suitable just then, for he who has a broken heart—bruised and broken on account of sin, needs double mercy from God.

1. According unto the multitude of Your tender mercies blot out my transgressions. ' 'They are on record and I cannot erase the terrible lines, nor can You erase them, O Lord, without displaying a multitude of Your tender mercies. It will need Omnipotence, itself, to get rid of this sin engraved in brass. Therefore, according unto the multitude of Your tender mercies, blot out my transgressions."

2. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity. "Wash me through and through, O Lord. Wash me thoroughly!" A hypocrite is satisfied with the washing of his garments, but the true penitent cries, "Wash me! Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity. It is almost the only thing that I can really call my own and it is most sadly mine. O Lord, wash my iniquity right away!"

2. And cleanse me from my sin. "If washing will not suffice, put me in the fire, but somehow, somehow, O Lord, cleanse me from my sin!" You notice that David's prayer is not concerning the punishment of his sin, but concerning the sin itself. That is the one thing which is eating into his heart—look how many words he uses to describe it—"My sin, my iniquity, my transgressions." He cries to God to help him to get rid of that which is the source of all his sorrow. The thief dreads the gallows, but the penitent fears not the punishment of his sin—it is the sin, itself, that terrifies him!

3. For I acknowledge my transgressions: and my sin is always before me. "I cannot get away from it and I cannot get rid of it. It stares me in the face. It haunts me in my lying down and my rising up. I am obliged to acknowledge my sin, for it is always before me."

4. Against You, You only, have I sinned and done this evil in Your sight ' 'It is true that I have grieved others and that I have done much injury to others by my sin, but in all this, I have sinned most against You. The virus—the essence of my sin is that it has been committed against You, O my God!"

4. That You might be justified when You speak, and be clear when You judge.''My sin was committed within Your jurisdiction and against Your Law, O Lord and, therefore, as I am summoned to appear at Your court, I cannot disobey the summons. I am compelled to give an answer to the charge brought against me—and my answer is that I am guilty, without any extenuating circumstances that I can plead before You, O Lord! I am guilty through and through."

5. Behold, I was shaped in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me. David does not say that by way of making an excuse for himself, but rather to aggravate his own guilt. He admits that his guiltiness is really a part of himself. He does not say, "Lord, I was acting contrary to my nature when I committed this sin. You know that it was not like me to do that." Oh, no! He says, "Lord, You know that I was acting quite in accordance with my nature. It was just like me to fall into this terrible sin." We have sometimes heard people say that they were surprised to find that they had been guilty of certain sins—let it not be so with you, but rather be surprised to find yourself kept from guilt, amazed when you are preserved from sin—for the whole tendency of unrenewed human nature is towards iniquity. "In sin did my mother conceive me."

6. Behold, You desire truth in the inward parts: and in the hidden part You shall make me to know wisdom. As much as to say, "Lord, that which You desire" to see in me is not there, and though You have made me also to desire it, yet I fear that I have not at present gone beyond the desire, for still within me, in my secret soul, there lies a tendency to evil, and unless I keep a strict watch over myself, I soon go astray. Lord, make me inwardly clean! I cannot bear that it should be otherwise with me."

7. Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean. As the priest purges the unclean man by dipping the bunch of hyssop into the blood of the sacrifice, and then sprinkling him with it, so, "purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean."

7. Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. "That is to say, I shall be clean if You do wash me, O Lord! My own washing makes me no cleaner. My own cleaning make me fouler than I was before, but if You will purge me and if You will do it with the sacrificial blood, then I shall be whiter than snow." This is grand faith on David's part! I cannot help calling your attention to it—that he, with a sense of his sin heavy upon him and bowed down to the very earth with the consciousness of his great guilt, yet dares to say, "Wash me"—adulterous, murderous David—"wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow." No faith brings greater Glory to God than the faith of the audaciously guilty when they dare to believe that God can forgive them! Not even the unfallen seraphim can render to God purer homage than when you, a defiled and condemned sinner, dare to believe in the mercy of God in Christ Jesus and so believe as to say, with David, "Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow."

8. Make me to hear joy and gladness; that the bones which You have broken may rejoice. If a good man ever goes astray, he may depend upon it that his sin will be very costly to him. And the better a man is, the more expensive will his sin be to him in the long run. God breaks the very bones of His children when He chastens them for their sin. I do not doubt that many a time their pilgrim way has been all the more weary in their later days by reason of their sins in their earlier days. There is many a pain that shoots through old bones, that is meant to remind the old bones what they were when they were young. God will certainly chasten us for our iniquities if we are His own people.

9. Hide Your face from my sins,' 'Lord, do not look at them. Refuse to see them! Hide Your face, not from me, but from my sins."

9. And blot out all my iniquities. See how he comes back to that note again and again? He is never far away from it. There are certain tunes in which one note is constantly repeated, so is it here. David prays, "O God, put away my sin, blot out my sin, forgive my sin." He cries for nothing else but that—"Hide Your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities." He longs for the time when not one of them shall be in existence!

10, 11. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from Your Presence; and take not Your Holy Spirit from me. These are the groans of a true child of God. Never has a man, without the Spirit of God within him, prayed to God in this fashion. David, therefore, notwithstanding all his sin, still had the life of God within his soul and when Nathan came to reprove him, the sacred fire began to burn again. Here are some of the sparks of it—and some of the smoke of it, too "'Cast me not away from Your Presence'—

"'Dismiss me not from Your service, Lord.' "Say not, I can no longer use you. You shall no longer stand in My courts, for you have disgraced Me. Get away from My Presence.' 'Cast me not away from Your Presence; and take not Your Holy Spirit from me.'"

12. Restore unto me the joy of Your salvation; and uphold me with Your free Spirit David longs for his Lord to come back to him. When God flogs His children, they still cling to Him and they cry to Him. They do not wish to run away and hide themselves from Him. No, their only comfort is to weep upon their Father's bosom and to wait for the kiss of forgiveness from His lips. So David prays, "Restore unto me the joy of Your salvation; and uphold me with Your free Spirit."

13. Then will I teach transgressors Your ways; and sinners shall be converted to You. Do you not see, Brothers and Sisters, that we must be in a right state of heart if we are to serve God well? We cannot teach transgressors His way with a confident hope that they will be converted to Him unless we, ourselves, possess the joy of God's salvation and are upheld by His Holy Spirit! If we go to God's work out of order, we shall make a mess of it and accomplish nothing that is really worth doing. But when God gives us His comforting Grace within and His upholding on every hand, then shall we teach with power and sinners shall learn to profit—"Then will I teach transgressors Your ways, and sinners shall be converted to You."

14. Deliver me from blood-guiltiness, O God, God of my salvation: and my tongue shall sing aloud of Your righteousness. None sing so loudly the praises of Redeeming Grace as those who have been forgiven great sins. There is no music, outside Heaven, that has such a volume of God-glorifying praise in it as the song of the man who loves much because he has had much forgiven—"My tongue shall sing aloud of Your righteousness."

15. O Lord, open You my lips. He felt as if he could not be trusted to open his own lips and, certainly, he was not to be trusted to open his own eyes, for when he had opened them before, he had looked on that which led him into sin. So now he would have God to keep his very lips, that he shall never speak again except as he shall be guided from on high— "O Lord, open You my lips."

15, 16. And my mouth shall show forth Your praise. For You desire not sacrifice; else would I give it. Very naturally David's mind began to think of the multitudes of bulls, lambs and rams that were burnt upon Jehovah's altar. There is nothing that makes a man so spiritual and so Evangelical as a deep sense of sin. You cannot be a Sacramentarian and a ceremonialist very long if you have a broken heart. Those pretty toys do very well for the kind of "miserable sinners" who do not know what either misery or sin means! But he who really has had his heart broken on account of the guilt of his sin cannot be content with the mere outward sacrifice—he must have that which is spiritua—"You desire not sacrifice; else would I give it:"

16, 17. You delight not in burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, You will not despise. David has to feel that it is better to have one genuine sigh for sin than to make ten thousand bulls shed their blood upon the sacrificial altar! And if you are truly broken from your sin—if you do really hate it, and cry to God for the pardon of it—if the Spirit of God has really given you complete cleansing from your guilt by the precious blood of Jesus—this is better than all the material sacrifices offered in all the temples that were ever built and overlaid with gold! "The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart, O God, You will not despise."

18. Do good in Your good pleasure unto Zion: build You the walls of Jerusalem. As much as though David said, "I have done great hurt to Zion, I have pulled down the walls of Jerusalem by my sin. Now, Lord, build them up again. Undo the mischief which Your poor foolish servant has worked by his backslidings." So may any backsliders among us pray to the Lord, "Visit Your Church so graciously, Lord, that my sin may not injure her!"

19. Then shall You be pleased with the sacrifices of righteousness, with burnt offering and whole burnt offering: then shall they offer bulls upon Your altar. Oh, yes, we are sure to bring to God the best that we have when we once get our sins forgiven! After we have looked to Christ, who is the one great Sacrifice for sin, then we bring to God all that we can, to show how grateful we are for His pardoning mercy!

Psalm 142. Maschil of David. A prayer when he was in the cave. This "Maschil of David" is instructive to us, for the experience of one Believer is very edifying to another. We are so much alike that as in water, face answers to face, so the heart of men answers to man—and what one Believer has felt awakens sympathy in the rest of God's people.

Psalm 142:1, 2. I cried unto the LORD with my voice: with my voice unto the LORD did I make my supplication. I poured out my complaint before Him; I showed before Him my trouble. David mentions that he prayed with his voice. This is an unimportant matter compared with praying with the heart, but when the heart is full of prayer, it is often very helpful to be able to use the voice to give expression to the emotions of the soul. To have a room in which, without disturbing others and without ostentatiously revealing your private experiences to others, you can speak aloud unto the Lord, will be found to be a great advantage in prayer. Some men's thoughts become more concentrated and flow more freely—and their hearts are better able to pour out their deepest and fullest expressions when they can pray aloud. So David says that in the cave, where he would not be likely to disturb anybody, he cried with his voice unto the Lord— "With my voice unto the Lord did I make my supplication."

You can see from verse 2 what was the style of his prayer. "I poured out my complaint." The figure is a very simple one. Just as you pour out water from a bottle, so David let his heart's complaint flow out before the Lord. In pouring out water, it sometimes comes slowly and sometimes fast—at times with a rush, followed by a pause. There is no prayer better than that which naturally flows from the renewed heart without any strain or effort, it was so with David—"I poured out my complaint before Him, I showed before Him my trouble." Just as a patient shows his wounds to the surgeon, so take away the covering from your broken heart and wounded spirit and set your trouble before the Lord, who already sees it! It will be no novelty or cause of surprise to Him and He desires you to manifest such trustfulness in Him as will lead you to lay before Him your complaint and your trouble.

3. When my spirit was overwhelmed within me, then You knew my path. "My spirit was so overwhelmed within me, that I did not know where I was, or what I was. I could not make heads or tails of myself. I seemed to be like a skein of silk or wool in a tangle. My thoughts, as George Herbert would have said, were all a case of knives, sharp to cut and wound. I could not make myself out! I was a puzzle even to myself, but You knew my path even then."

3, 4. In the way wherein I walked have they privately laid a snare for me. I looked on my right hand and beheld, but there was no man that would know me: refuge failed me; no man cared for my soul. This is a terrible condition for anyone to be in—to have every friend forsake you—to find that those who used to know you best, do not want to know you any longer, but turn their heads away as if it would be a disgrace to them to be known to have been your friends. This is a grand opportunity for testing the reality of your faith! Can you believe God now? Can you take Him to be your Friend now that you have not another friend in the world? Fine-weather faith is very cheap and easily obtained—but the faith that can stand fast in the time of the storm and tempest—that hardy mountaineering faith which hides in God in the coldest winter and finds its summertime in Him alone—that is the faith that is worth having and worth keeping!

6. I cried unto You, O LORD: I said, You are my refuge and my portion in the land of the living. "I left the broken reeds alone and leaned upon my God. I said, You are my refuge and my portion in the land of the living."

6, 7. Attend unto my cry; for I am brought very low: deliver me from my persecutors for they are stronger than I. Bring my soul out of prison, that I may praise Your name: the righteous shall compass me about; for You shall deal bountifully with me. This is a beautiful metaphor, suggesting that when the saints heard that God brought him out of prison, they would gather round him, gaze upon him as a miracle of mercy and ask him to tell them his wonderful tale. He would be the center of their delighted observation and their own faith and hope in the Lord would be greatly increased. As a little imprisoned bird might long for emancipation, David says, "O Lord, open my cage door and let me fly and I will sing, as I mount, to the praise of Him who gave me my liberty! 'Bring my soul out of prison that I may praise Your name: the righteous shall compass me about, for You shall deal bountifully with me.'"