Background
The superscription of Psalm 51 tells us that this is a psalm about David. When we think about David, two things usually come to mind: ‘Goliath’ - that David is a giant killer; and ‘Good King’: that King David was a man after God’s own heart. We find the story behind today’s Psalm in chapters 11 and 12 of the book of 2 Samuel, and as we read chapter 10, we see David coming out of a great victory against Israel’s enemies. He defeats Ammon and Syria, who have teamed up against Israel. And we wonder – what will this powerful king do next? This military hero, this great leader – what is his next conquest?
As we come to 2 Sam 11, we see a different side to David’s story. We read about David and Bathsheba, where David sees her bathing, enquires about her, and takes her to his palace and sleeps with her.
Now one way in which this story is told is that Bathsheba is a willing and able partner to David’s crimes. That she bathed on a rooftop, and so seduced Israel’s king. But a careful study of the text shows us otherwise.
(a) 2 Sam 11: 4 tells us that she had been ‘purifying herself from her uncleanness’ – that her washing was not an ordinary bath, but ceremonial washing in accordance with the Levitical code. Her bath was righteous.
(b) in fact, the way that the story is told is meant to call Genesis 3 to mind. Just like the fruit, Bathsheba is seen, is desired, and is taken. None of us would say that the fruit ‘seduced’ Eve and Adam. So the language that calls back to the fruit in Genesis 3 is meant to help us see that she is acted upon, an ordinary citizen summoned to the king’s palace and left with no choice.
The reason why this matters is that the more innocent Bathsheba is, the more David’s guilt grows. The contents of verse 3 should have stopped David in his tracks. Because Eliam and Uriah the Hittite were not strangers to him – in fact, 2 Sam 23 names them as part of David’s mighty men who stayed loyal to him when Saul turned on him. Unlike Bathsheba, David had a choice. And we see the king who conquers turn on his own to use his might against them. We are meant to be shocked by it.
Then 2 Sam 11:5 hits. Bathsheba is pregnant. We might wonder - is this where Psalm 51 was written? Did David acknowledge his sin when he was met with news that Bathsheba was with child? No. Because by nature, our response to sin is not to be washed by God, but to run.
(A) God’s merciful truth (Ps 51: 4-6, 1-3)
How David saw his sin
The table below summarises how David saw his sin::
What David does in response to Bathsheba’s pregnancy is that he calls Uriah home, and tries to send him home to sleep with his wife. When that plan fails because Uriah is too upright, he then calls the commander of the army to sacrifice Uriah at the war front. David saw his sin as a problem to be covered up.
The deeper into hiding David got, the more David doubled down by pushing away the responsibility for the death of Uriah. He says in 2 Samuel 11 that people die in battle. It is no one’s fault, and there is thus no need for guilt!
Why are we recapping David’s story in such detail? The simple answer is that we do not always recognise mercy when it appears. It does not come to the self-aware. It comes to people who are wilfully blind and who are running. To avoid facing up to his sin, David ran. And he had been on the run for so long that he was lost. Do you have friends who say: “I don’t have a problem?” – but they 100% have a problem? That’s all of us. In our own eyes, there is always an angle that makes sin small. We are so good at finding that angle! In Genesis 3, Adam points at Eve and blames her, running away from taking responsibility for his actions! As long as people run, there is no healing. But God’s mercy meets us in the details of our sin that we thought no one would uncover, and realising the truth helps us to stop running.
How God saw David’s sin
God saw David lost in his own house of lies, and sent His Word to David through the prophet Nathan. This is how we get Psalm 51! When God mercifully sends Nathan, David finally sees himself and recognises that he has sinned against God. He recognises that God is the only judge, and that God’s sight is what determines good from evil. So David turns to God in Psalm 51:6 and says that God is justified in his words, and blameless in His judgment.
In God's mercy, David's sin is confronted through Nathan the prophet. And David stops playing judge and surrenders himself to God who judges justly. So it is with us. The mercy of God turns our evasive hearts into honest hearts. The moment the truth came to David, it changed the way he prayed.
Truth changes our prayers
In Ps 51:6, he prays to God: “You teach me wisdom in the secret heart”.
David recognised that while the action of adultery and murder is sin, what drove it began in the ‘inward being’. It began in the ‘secret heart’. You see, David didn’t begin with sexual assault. He began with disobedience. Deuteronomy 17 commanded Israel’s kings not to acquire many wives, lest their hearts turn away. But David had wives and concubines long before the Bathsheba episode. He looked at women and possessed them. Along the way to adultery, David had made a thousand small decisions, all of them bad, so many of them hidden. And God’s merciful truth thus came to David in his self-made pit of darkness and lies that he could not escape from, and brought him into the light.
Look at David’s opening plea in Ps 51: 1-3. He asks for 3 actions: to blot, wash and cleanse. Wash and clean are similar, but blot might be confusing to us. Blotting carries the idea of covering with ink or paint. Unlike covering something with your hand, when you blot, it is an irreversible action that effects permanent change. David pleads for God to take permanent actions to remove his sin.
The reason for this is that David feels like his sin is hanging before him at all times, inescapable and haunting him. He says in Ps 51:3, “For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me”
He is not saying that he merely “knows about” his sin, but that he knows it deep inside and that he is deeply affected by it. He cannot undo what he has done. He also claims it as his own sin. He is speaking not as the king, but as a person who has messed up.
While God’s merciful truth saves us, it is not soft. Sometimes, when we are on the run, we wish that God would sprinkle mercy on us mid-run. Psalm 51 does not show us a man on the run. It shows us David stopped dead in his tracks.
When God’s truth comes to us, it shows us that repentance is not a one off thing, but a gift to those God loves. David wrote the Psalms. He slayed Israel’s foes. David might have thought that he was above the law and above sin. But when God’s truth came to him mercifully, it put an end to his lies and brought him back to God. David would not be writing Psalm 51 if God had not mercifully and graciously sent Nathan to him.
However, we should know that Nathan can only reveal sin. He can only show that David is a sinner. What do you do with a broken man?
Thankfully, God’s merciful truth is accompanied by His merciful washing.
(B) God’s merciful washing (Ps 51:7-17)
Something is happening here as the truth is soaking in. David is coming to see, and to say, that it is not the outside that needs fixing. He does not need to look better. He needs the cleaning to be in the heart, or the next time something happens he will run again! He asks God for something only God can do. He asks the creator God to create a clean heart within him. He has tried to fool people, but he does not want that any more. He asks God to change the root of his actions and desires.
David is talking to God in this Psalm. He is coming before God. He admits to his sin. That is repentance: having honesty about his sin, and asking God to wash him through His mercy. There is still the action of going before the nation and repenting, but the start of the fruit of repentance is what is happening here. Repentance is turning away from sin and turning towards God for his cleansing. Turning to God is an essential part of repentance. If David just turns away from sin, it could look like running. For it to be repentance, he has to turn to face God. These are not the words of a grand king, but someone who is speaking from the heart. We get the sense, as we read these verses, that we are not hearing some king making his National Day Rally. This is from the heart. This is a man who has stopped pretending, and who is honestly repenting before God.
David is not just asking to be clean, but he is asking for God to be with him. To the eternal mighty God, David requests, “cast me not away!” He knows that God can cast him away in a moment, but he asks for the joy and gladness of God’s presence. As we hear David make his request from God, we see that we can do that too. We can ask for God to save us into his presence, where there is fullness of joy.
God the eternal, mighty, merciful God
God’s merciful washing is set firmly in the context of the past two studies. Looking at Psalm 90, God is eternal and everlasting. In Psalm 33, God is the almighty God. This matters as we read about God’s mercy. God’s mercy is only good news if He is also the eternal, all-knowing God. If God only saw some of our sin, then He would only remove some of it. But if none of our sin is hidden in God’s sight, then David can be sure that he is clean.
Mercy is not the work of a small sovereign. If we have a small picture of God, we get a small picture of His mercy (like a sprinkle of water which doesn’t clean). But if mercy is the mercy of God the eternal Judge, then we do not get the mercy of a small god granting limited pardon, but an eternal, almighty, all powerful, all knowing God granting full pardon.
A life for a life
“Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God”
As David prays in Ps 51:14, he asks for deliverance. The blood guiltiness here refers to Uriah. Uriah is the man who was pushed into battle and abandoned to die. David’s prior response was not to be troubled over Uriah’s death, alleging his own clean hands. But in this Psalm there is an about shift. He asks for deliverance from blood guiltiness. We know the punishment for murder is a life. For David, to admit this is to pass a death sentence on himself. How can it mean anything but destruction?
Even the usual sacrifices do not save. Ps 51:16 tells us “For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it; you will not be pleased with a burnt offering”
The animal on the altar is not as important to God. What’s important is that there is change in David’s heart. Inward obedience, not just ritual. But this is also incomplete. As we read these verses, there is something bigger. With great power comes great responsibility – now that David has grossly abused his power as king, where is the great responsibility falling? Uriah’s blood is calling for David, and Bathsheba’s grief is still wailing. How can David get out of this without losing his life! The act of burning an animal was always just a concession. If the price of taking someone’s life is death, how can David get away without paying with his life?
In 2 Samuel 12, Nathan’s reply is that the LORD has put away David’s sin. God is not condoning what David does. David has no excuse. His sin has been laid bare. What then is God doing here? So who bears the price of justice? How can God be just??!?
When we read Nathan’s parable again, we see that poor man’s innocent lamb who has done nothing wrong is sacrificed to cover David’s sin. The merciful truth of God reminds us that if we are soft on sin, it does not just kill us but those around us whom we treasure. The innocent lamb dies for the rich man’s sin. Isaiah 53 tells us:
“All we like sheep have gone astray;
we have turned—every one—to his own way;
and the LORD has laid – put – on Jesus the iniquity of us all.”
David’s sin can be put aside because and only because God has put on Jesus the iniquity of us all. God can put away our sin because He has put our sins on Jesus Christ. Jesus was oppressed and afflicted like a lamb to the slaughter. The cost of mercy is an innocent life! It is also what leads us to sing:
What can wash away my sin?
Nothing but the blood of Jesus
For my cleansing, this my plea
Nothing but the blood of Jesus.
When I come to God for mercy, I have just one plea: that Jesus died, and He died for me. God’s mercy is a mercy that washes by the blood of Jesus Christ. Because our sin has been put away onto Jesus Christ, we have been washed with His blood and are whiter than snow.
(C) God’s merciful promise-keeping (Ps 51:18-19)
We have seen how deep into sin God’s mercy goes. Now I want to show us how wide and how wise and faithful God’s mercy is. God’s tender mercies are not just given to David, but to a people. In Ps 51:18-19, David knows that his personal sin has an effect on all of Israel. His plea is directed away from himself, and outwards onto the nation of Israel. He asks God not to hold his sin against the people. To do good to Zion. To build up the walls of Jerusalem. He wants Jerusalem to be safe. David is saying that if God does not answer his prayer, then Israel cannot sacrifice rightly. God must help his people to worship him rightly. God must act first before Israel can act rightly. It is for God’s good pleasure that his nation is secure.
Friends, this is not the story of one man’s forgiveness. God through the prophet Nathan makes a prophecy about David in 2 Samuel 7: that through David, he will give Israel a safe place. He will give Israel a kingdom that will last forever, and a righteous king to rule this kingdom. How can God still honour this promise when David has acted dishonourably? The things that David has done are awful! Surely God does not come through this kind of king who takes. This king who runs away. This king who kills his friend.
Yet on the very first verse of the first gospel, we see this term: Jesus, the son of David. The Messiah, the promised king, is identified as the son of David. It is incredible that God keeps his promise. Through Matthew’s genealogy, we even see in Jesus’ family tree the mention of Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah.
There are two things that we are to take away. Firstly, Scripture by no means condones what David does. Scripture condemns what David has done. With every word on every page from 2 Samuel to Matthew 1, we see that God’s record hates violence. It hates lust. It hates murder. It hates lies. But even as David the proud king is crumbled, God is careful with the broken man, because the full condemnation falls on Jesus Christ.
Secondly, and shockingly, the victim Bathsheba is also cared for! In the past, nobody would have batted an eye to this sequence of events. It is not shocking in those times that a woman would be taken to satisfy a man’s desire. But God hates it. And God is merciful to Bathsheba. Her story does not end with loss. Her name is not just the name of a victim taken by a king wickedly. Each time we hear this story, we are to remember that God is not ashamed of or shy about Bathsheba because she is from a broken family, and it is not her first marriage or her first husband. God’s own Son is not ashamed of His family tree.
Through Bathsheba, the Messiah, Jesus, the Son of David comes. God honours his promise and Israel gets a righteous king, so that we can look at Jesus Christ, God’s promise to us kept through all the broken and shattered promises of Israel and her kings, and say: great is God’s faithfulness. God pardons sin and gave us a peace that endures. Strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow. As we study Psalm 51, we can rejoice over the sea of God’s mercy, and we learn 3 things about him:
That there is no lie that God cannot stop with his truth;
That there is no sin that by the blood of Jesus cannot be washed clean; and
That God keeps his promise even to a people who does not keep theirs!