He, a married man with children, seduced and slept with another man’s wife and then arranged to have him murdered. Can you imagine what the headlines would read if the current Prime Minister of Canada was guilty of these sins? He isn’t, as far as I know, but the leader of another country was. I am, of course, talking about the Goliath-slayer, King David. When David’s sins against Bathsheba and her husband Uriah became known, how did the king handle the political fallout? Did he get his chief of staff to deny the charges or call into question Bathsheba’s moral character, as if David’s fall was her fault? No. David openly confessed his sins, not on national television but once before his pastor and then before everyone in at least two poems that he wrote. We’re going to look at one of these poems today, Psalm 51, because it serves as a model confession of sins for us all. We’ll learn that confessing like King David means admitting, “I am the problem, Lord. But you, Lord, are the solution.”
“I am the problem.” How rarely do we admit that when we finally do confess our sins. Like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, we find it easy to blame someone or something else for our sin. And so my cutting remarks aimed at my math teacher are blamed on her for giving so much homework. My late-night tirade is blamed on my tiring day. My uncaring attitude towards family is blamed on their unconcern for me. Oh, we know that we’re sinners. We’re willing to admit that and say, “I have a problem, Lord.” But that’s not how David’s model confession went. He said, “I am the problem.” David put it like this: “Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight…Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me” (Psalm 51:4a, 5).
In Psalm 51 you won’t find any shifting the blame to Bathsheba for bathing in the open. Nor is there a downplaying of the sin saying that others were doing the same thing so why didn’t God send the prophet Nathan to call those sinners to repentance? There was only an honest acknowledgment by David of what his sin was - not “poor judgment” nor a “mistake” but evil.
David’s model confession should be familiar to Lutherans, for in our worship service we first confess what we are before we confess what we have done. My lack of love for others, my treating God’s Word with indifference only proves that I am a sinner and have been from the moment I was conceived in my mother’s womb.
“So what’s the big deal?” Satan whispers in our ear. “You were born a sinner. It’s only natural that you should sin… Don’t let it bother you.” But David explains well why sin is a problem. In Psalm 51 he used three different picture words for sin: “missing the mark,” “crossing the line,” and “twisting away.” When David lusted after Bathsheba, he had well missed the mark of being pure in all of his thoughts. He crossed the line (again) when he took Bathsheba into his bed, and kept twisting away from God when he arranged to have her husband murdered. In the words of our sermon text last Sunday, David failed to deny himself but instead gave into his sinful passions. He and he alone was the problem.
Because David understood that he was the problem, he knew that there was only one solution. That solution wasn’t promising to try harder to be good in the future. That would be like promising your eye doctor to try harder to read the smallest letters on your eye exam. If you didn’t get it the first time because your eyes are bad, you’re not going to get it the second or third time either. You need outside help. You need a pair of glasses if you’re going to be able to read those letters.
This is why it’s so important that we confess in regard to our sins, “I am the problem, Lord.” Until we do, we won’t ever truly turn to the only solution available to us for our sins. And what is the solution for our sins? Listen to David’s poem: “Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions. 2 Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin… 7 Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow...9 Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquity” (Psalm 51:1, 2, 7, 9).
“I am the problem, Lord, but you are the solution.” That’s what David confessed as he threw himself on God’s mercy and steadfast love. David didn’t beg for a second chance to prove his worthiness of God’s love. Nor did he list the “good” things he had done to convince God that he wasn’t such a bad guy in spite of what he had done to Bathsheba and Uriah. No, the only solution for a problem like David was a God who would blot out his sins.
“Blot” is the same word used to describe what God did to all the land animals that didn’t make it unto Noah’s ark: they were blotted from the face of the earth. Yeah, but didn’t a lot of those animals end up as fossils? Could it be that when God blots out our sin they simply become “skeletons” in our closet that could one day come back to haunt us? No, with the other descriptive words for forgiveness, David assures us that that won’t happen. David asked God to wash him and was convinced that he would become whiter than snow. David also trusted that God would hide his face from his sins. David’s confidence was not misplaced because when, on Mt. Calvary, God the Father turned his face away from his sinless Son, Jesus, he was in effect turning his face away from our sins forever. There is now no need for us to suffer guilt from past sins. Or as David put it in our text: “Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones you have crushed rejoice” (Psalm 51:8).
God’s love for David made him realize that he didn’t want to stay the way he was. He wanted to change, not just a little bit, but radically from within. David put it this way: “Surely you desire truth in the inner parts; you teach me wisdom in the inmost place” (Psalm 51:6). But how would David accomplish this? David knew that God not only forgives sins but works the radical change within sinners. That’s why he also prayed: “Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me” (Psalm 51:10). David’s heart was impure. It was lazy, lustful, and lacked love for others. There was no way he could become less sinful on his own. What he needed was a heart transplant and so do we. Thankfully this is just the thing God works in us when the Holy Spirit comes to us in Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, as well as through the spoken Word. Through the working of God’s grace we now have the power to be more forgiving, more patient, and more pure.
Oh what a wonderful gift God has given to us in the words of Psalm 51! Here is a king, who like many leaders today, proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was a sinner like the rest of us. But he didn’t make light of that sin, deny it, or blame others for it. By his Spirit-inspired words David leaves us with a model confession so that the next time you sin, don’t waste your time blaming others for it. Confess: “I am the problem, Lord.” Only then are you ready to benefit from the second part of David’s model confession: “You, Lord, are the solution. Wash me and I will be whiter than snow.” God has already done this through Jesus. And now through the Holy Spirit he is working a radical change in your heart. Show it in the way that you treat one another with divine love and grace. Amen.
