Theme: Exit of the Holy Spirit
Text: Psalm 51:10-12
Introduction: The Lord is good and his love endures forever.
Alders gate: 24th May was the history changing day. On the Alders-gate street John Wesley had the strong involvement of the Holy Spirit in his life. He said my heart was “strangely warmed”.
This month we had meditations on the involvement of the Holy Ghost. Today, we will mediate from Psalm 51. It is titled To the Chief Musician. A Psalm of David when Nathan the Prophet went to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba.
The incident found in 2 Samuel 11-12 is so horrific, tragic, painful and unwelcoming of a beloved of the Lord. So, it is a most eminent penitential psalm, and most expressive of the God’s cares and desires of a repenting sinner. Bible ref: “This confession was David's sins of adultery, deception, and even murder in his relationship with Bathsheba.”
Matthew Henry: “Those whose consciences charge them with any gross sin should, with a believing regard to Jesus Christ, the Mediator, again and again pray over this psalm, singing it, and praying over it, we may very sensibly apply it all to ourselves.”
William Carey, the great pioneer missionary to India, asked that it might be the text of his funeral sermon. “This great song, pulsating with the agony of a sin-stricken soul, helps us to understand the stupendous wonder of the everlasting mercy of our God.” (G. Campbell Morgan).
Today, in the light of this I would like to tell you, how to avoid the exit of the Holy Spirit. Rebellion leads to destruction, Repentance leads to Restoration, and Revival leads to reconciliation of one another and reconstruction of the world .
1. Rebellion leads to rejection
Rebellion leads to arrogance and pride. So, bible teaches us : Quench not the spirit, Tempt not the spirit, Grieve not the spirit.
Those who fight against God are ‘rebels’. People that fight against the norms, rules of the governments are rebels. God is the governor of the whole world, so people who fight against him are also rebels. How do we fight God? When we do not obey him and when we do what we want to do. Rebellion hurts many people in the community. It hurts God first, then your immediate friends, your admirers, your parents, your spiritual leaders, your community, at last you.
The Puritan pastor and writer Thomas Watson documented: “Till sin be bitter, Christ will not be sweeter”.
David’s great sins had undoubtedly "grieved" and vexed the Spirit; and, had been continued tempting the spirit and not repented of, would have caused him to withdraw himself; but they had not "wholly quenched the Spirit" (1 Thessalonians 5:19).
Bible ref: “The right spirit is one of humility and repentance, without making excuses or blaming others. Even so, we can be confident that God will forgive those who sincerely seek that mercy (Hebrews 4:15-16).
Spurgeon: “David is thunderstruck at the discovery of his inbred sin, and proceeds to set it forth. This was not intended to justify himself, but it rather meant to complete the confession of the repeated sins. The fountain of my life is polluted as well as its streams.” Here, David doesn’t mean that his mother was a prostitute or an adulteress woman. But he says of the nature of original sin.
David uses three different words for it in Psalm 51: “Iniquity,” “sin,” and “transgressions” (v 1-3). Each term has been deliberately chosen for its unique meaning in Hebrew. “Transgressions” implies a rebellion against God’s authority and law. “Iniquity” means a distortion of what should be, and “Sin” is a missing of the mark.
David is making it clear that his sin was so deep hurting, rebellious act. So, there is no minimising or excusing it. No one can minimise our sin, rebellious spirit lightly.
The virus of sin lies in its opposition to God: the psalmist's sense of sin towards others rather tended to increase the force of this feeling of sin against God. All his wrong doing centred, culminated, and came to a climax, at the foot of the divine throne. To injure our fellow men is sin, mainly because in so doing we violate the law of God.
David uses three times: “Have mercy,” “according to your steadfast love,” and “according to your abundant mercy.” This is what God had promised in Exodus 34:6-7. “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty.”
Rebellion never can be an end. But repentance leads to new life.
What sins are weighing on your heart? What guilt have you been trying to cover with distraction? Are you submerging yourself under the weight of it as a form of penance, rather than taking your sin to the cross, where it’s already been paid for? Take some time now to work through the steps above, and rejoice in the incomparable grace offered to you in Christ!
2. Repentance leads to restoration
“The soul that is truly penitent, dreads nothing but the thought of being rejected from the ‘presence,’ and deserted by the ‘Spirit’ of God. This is the most deplorable and irremediable effect of sin; but it is one that in general, perhaps, is the least considered and regarded of all others.” (Horne)
“The unhappy criminal entreats, in this verse, for the divine help and deliverance, as if he not only heard the voice of innocent blood crying from the ground, but as if he saw the murdered Uriah coming upon him for vengeance, like an armed man.” (Horne).
The speaker in this psalm is utterly engulfed by a sense of worthlessness, the stain of sin felt so deep as to be irremovable.
Create in me a clean heart, O God: David anticipated one of the great promises to all who believe under the New Covenant: I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh (Ezekiel 36:26). Repentance seeks for a new life. David not only prayed for a clean heart but to have a newly created heart. It’s not the changed heart, transformed heart but a created heart.
Boice says: “The word used here is the Hebrew verb “Bara”, which is used in Genesis 1:1 for the creation of the Heavens and the Earth by God. God created “ex nihilo”, out of nothing, only God can do it.” Kidner says: It’s a prayer for nothing less than a miracle. It is an act for what God alone can do. (Kidner). Repentance leads to the original image and likeness of God in Christ.
A new heart really means a new person altogether. Paul wrote in his Second Letter to the Corinthians: "If anyone is in Christ he or she is a new person" (2 Corinthians 5:17). "New person" here is "a person that God has created again" or "a new creature".
David wrote Psalm 51 a thousand years before Paul wrote Corinthians. Christians understand what David was looking for was "born again" experience.
David further seeks to “Clean with the Hyssop plant”. The Jews used its leaves to paint blood on the wood over their doors when they remembered the Passover. It is the blood of Jesus that makes us clean. "Whiter than snow" is a Jewish way to say "very, very clean".
The cleaning ceremony, in which hyssop is dipped into the blood of a sacrificed bird and sprinkled on the person who has been healed, enables that person to be reintegrated into the community.
Unconfessed sin brings distance from God and distance from godly people, from the loved ones. It pulls you down. It puts you into permanent depression. Proverbs 28:13 says concealing leads to destruction but confessing and forsaking the evil, sin lead to mercy.
David wants God to wash away the bad feeling. what we call the guilt. David says that when he was born he had a tendency to sin. This means that he often wanted to sin even though he knew that it was wrong. We are all born with this tendency. Christians call it "original sin".
He sought the Restoration of joy, position, ministry, relationships and everything through his repentance. Remember that David recovered all in 1 Samuel 30:7 after he strengthened himself in God. David realised that in his sin he did not only fail as a man, a husband, and a father. He also failed as a king over God’s people. He humbly asked God to restore His favor to the kingdom. Steadfast love and abundant mercy heal us not only of the stain of sin, but also of the lie of our worthlessness.
3. Revival leads to rejoicing
Do not take Your Holy Spirit from me: “The likely background to this fear of being a castaway was the example of Saul, from whom the Spirit of the Lord had departed (1 Samuel 16:14)”(Kidner).
Samson didn’t know that the spirit of God left him (Judges 16:20). Now the spirit of the Lord departed from Saul (1 Samuel 16:14, 18:12).
Ellicott says the formal rejection of Israel by the God of the covenant (2 kings 13:23, 17:20, 24:20, Jeremiah 7:15).
Uphold me by Your generous Spirit: This expresses again David’s confidence in God for his future. He did not dream of upholding himself. Such self-confidence is what typically leads even good men into sin.
The text begins with this cry for mercy, and is rooted in the speaker’s prior experience of who God is. The Hebrew word hesed, translated in verse 1 as “steadfast love,” refers to the covenantal relationship between God and the people of Israel, the covenant is a mutual promise to “be for” each other. The word translated “abundant mercy,” raham, is rooted in rehem, or “womb.” The speaker is calling on God’s “womb love,” the overflowing, eternally connected love, compassion, mercy and grace that a mother has for her child.
The “womb sin” of a mother is compared with a “womb love”of God. The sin has irreparably broken that unbreakable covenant bond.
God would be justified in removing the divine presence from the sinner (verse 4), and God casting away (v 11). The psalmist’s pleas for God to “blot out his transgressions” (v 1) and to “hide his face from his sins” (v 9). The psalmist pleads multiple times for God to “wash him” (verses 2 and 7b), to “cleanse him from his sin” (verse 2), to be made “clean” (v 7a and 10). Revival can only take place if sin is dealt seriously and vigorously.
Spurgeon: “Withdraw not his comforts, counsels, assistances, quickening, else I am indeed as a dead man. Do not leave me as thou didst Saul, when neither by Urim, nor by prophet, nor by dream, thou wouldst answer him. Drive me not away from thee, neither do thou go away from me. Keep up the union between us, which is my only hope of salvation.”
No voice could revive his dead joys but that which quickens the dead. Pardon from God would give him double joy—"joy and gladness."
Amen.
