Silencing a Guilty Conscience
Psalm 51,
We’re starting a new series today on the greatest Psalms.
Psalms is by far the most popular book in the Old Testament, quoted more often by New Testament writers than other book.
Some of the most popular literature in the world is found in the book of Psalms.
Psalm 23,The Lord is my Shepherd, Psalm 90, the oldest Psalm, written by Moses, Psalm 46, a favorite read at funerals, God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble.
The Psalms are actually “songs of praise.” That’s what the title means. This collection of 150 Psalms served like a songbook for the nation of Israel.
When they gathered for worship they sang the psalms. Most of them were originally set to music.
We don’t have any of the original music,
but many of the Vineyard songs we sing
are really Psalms set to music.
Today we’re going to look at Psalm 51.
And let me ask you as we start,
Have you ever had trouble trying to silence a guilty conscience?
I don’t think we have any aliens here this morning,
and assuming that you’re a human being,
then the answer is yes,
you’ve had to deal with guilt.
In fact, some people are experts at trying to produce guilt.
Like: the man who called his mother in Florida. "Mom, how are you?"
"Not too good," says the mother. "I’ve been very weak."
The son says, "Why are you so weak, are you sick?"
She says, "Because I haven’t eaten in 38 days."
The man says, "That’s terrible. Why haven’t you eaten in 38 days?"
The mother answers, "Because I didn’t want my mouth to be filled with food if you should call."
Its pretty easy to deal with guilt like that,
but many of us have done things
that have seriously bothered us for years afterwards.
And the guilt is always there in the back of our minds,
and it can drive us nuts.
And so people try all sorts of ways to deal with the terrible feelings of guilt
and the low self-esteem that comes after they’ve messed up.
Some people try to Deny it: “Well it wasn’t really wrong,
and lots of other people do the same kind of things?” So I’m not really guilty.
Or they try to ignore it: just stop listening to their conscience
Or maybe you try to Deaden guilt, by eating, drinking, inhaling, or injecting something to make the pain go away.
Or some people try to compensate for it: Do something good to make up for the bad they’ve done.
Guilt is a powerful motivator.
Did you know that the Fed Gov’t even has a conscience fund for people who cheated Uncle Sam and decide to pay up?
Of course they’ve had this fund for 160 years, and they’ve only received about $3 million, so guess a lot of people are still living with a guilty conscience.
Some people who sent in money to it enclosed notes like: “I’ll sleep better now”, or “I’d hate to burn in hell for a couple of bucks.”
Another guy wrote the IRS stating, “I can’t sleep; my conscience is bothering me. Enclosed is a check for $50. If I still can’t sleep, I’ll send you the rest.”
In recent history in the U.S.,
we’ve had at least two Presidents who got caught doing things they shouldn’t.
Now, I’m sure all the presidents have goofed up at times,
but not all of their sins got aired on national TV.
The first was Nixon,
with the Watergate scandal,
which eventually cost him the presidency.
The second is of course is Bill Clinton,
who engaged in sexual acts with an intern.
And of course, what is the first reaction when a president,
or anyone else for that matter,
gets caught in sin?
They immediately try to cover it up.
In fact, what Nixon really got booted from the presidency for
was the Watergate cover up,
the conspiracy and lies to cover up what had been done.
And of course Bill Clinton was caught in numerous lies as well.
He was trying to cover it all up,
and only when all the evidence was already out,
for everyone to see,
then he finally admitted it,
and apologized for what he’d done.
Let me ask you.
To what extent would you go to cover up a sin?
Maybe you’re covering something up right now?
Maybe there’s some habit or sin
that you are doing your best to make sure
nobody else finds out about.
The truth is,
Nixon and Clinton were just following an example from the Bible.
Because the most famous sin in the whole Bible is also one of the greatest cover-up stories of a man trying to hide his sin.
Who am I talking about? King David and his sin with Bathsheba.
You see, Psalm 51 is different from most of the other Psalms,
because we know the story behind it.
We know exactly what happened to cause David to write this Psalm.
David wrote this after his adultery with Bathsheba,
right after he’d been found out,
when his attempt to cover it up was blown.
The story is found in 2 Sam. 11. It’s a sad story of lust, adultery, deception, murder and cover-up.
Most of you know the story.
It starts by saying
In the spring, at the time when kings go off to war,
David should have been out with his armies,
who at that time were fighting against the Ammonites,
but he decides to stay home,
and so he’s got too much time on his hands.
Isn’t that when a lot of us are tempted,
when we’ve got too much time on our hands,
and we’re not working at the things we should be doing?
So David is lazing around in the palace, and happens to see a woman taking a bath, and instantly lust takes hold,
and he tells his servant, bring her to me.
And one of his loyal servants told him,
“Uh, King, excuse me, but don’t you realize that’s Bathsheba? She’s married to Uriah the Hittite –
And it doesn’t tell us this,
but I can imagine the servant also saying,
and by the way, you remember Uriah – he’s one of your mighty men…
One of the highest ranking men in your army.
He’s helped you win many victories…
He’s your neighbor and your loyal friend.” You don’t want to steal his wife.
But David said
“Bring her to me!” and David had to be obeyed.
Can you imagine how his servants felt, knowing that their king was committing an act worthy of death according to God’s law?
And of course after this little affair,
Bathsheba gets pregnant,
and so now David starts the great cover up.
He brings Uriah home from the war,
and try’s several times to get him to sleep with Bathsheba,
but he won’t.
Uriah says, all my buddies are at the war,
living in hardship,
I belong there with them,
and I’m not going to sleep in comfort with my wife.
So then David goes to stage 2 of the great cover up,
and devises a plan for Uriah to die in battle.
The plan works, Uriah dies,
David immediately marries Bathsheba,
and it looks like the cover-up worked.
He’s home free.
Nobody will ever know about his adultery and murder.
8 months later Bathsheba has a son,
everyone’s happy.
End of story, right? Wrong
2 Sam. 11:27
“But the thing that David had done displeased the Lord.”
Do you think David had a guilty conscience?
It makes you wonder what those 8 months of Bathsheba’s pregnancy were like.
Do you think Bathsheba had any suspicions that David, her new husband was behind the murder of Uriah?
What was going on inside David’s head? Had he really forgotten these sins? Did he actually think that maybe God hadn’t seen it after all?
No.
He knew that God knew.
But remember the ways we talked about
that people deal with their guilt?
Well David was trying his best to ignore it.
He was trying not to think about it at all.
But God wouldn’t let him alone.
God sent the prophet Nathan to confront him.
Once David is confronted with his sin,
he says six crucial words, that changed everything:
2 Sam 12:13
“I have sinned against the Lord!”
So that’s the story behind Psalm 51.
This is the point at which David sits down,
and writes this Psalm.
It’s like we get to peek into David’s personal journal as he spills his spiritual guts out to God
You see, David discovered you can’t silence a guilty conscience by ignoring it,
And let me say to everyone here,
if you’re trying to deal with guilt by ignoring it,
you’ve already lost the battle.
That doesn’t work.
We can see the only thing that does work,
by reading Psalm 51,
so lets do that.
Psalms 51
For the director of music. A psalm of David. When the prophet Nathan came to him after David had committed adultery with Bathsheba.
Now before I start –
This is a prayer to God for cleansing.
So here’s what I want you to do.
Lets all stand together, and we’re going to pray this to God.
Forget for a minute about David and Bathsheba,
and I want you to think about that area of your life,
that has brought you guilt, either right now or in the past,
and pray this with me as I read it out loud.
1 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.
3 For I know my transgressions,
and my sin is always before me. 4 Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight,
so that you are proved right when you speak and justified when you judge. 5 Surely I was sinful at birth,
sinful from the time my mother conceived me. 6 Surely you desire truth in the inner parts;
you teach me wisdom in the inmost place.
7 Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean;
wash me, and I will be whiter than snow. 8 Let me hear joy and gladness;
let the bones you have crushed rejoice. 9 Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquity.
10 Create in me a pure heart, O God,
and renew a steadfast spirit within me. 11 Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. 12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.
13 Then I will teach transgressors your ways,
and sinners will turn back to you. 14 Save me from bloodguilt, O God,
the God who saves me,
and my tongue will sing of your righteousness. 15 O Lord, open my lips,
and my mouth will declare your praise. 16 You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it;
you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings.
17 The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;
a broken and contrite heart,
O God, you will not despise. 18 In your good pleasure make Zion prosper;
build up the walls of Jerusalem. 19 Then there will be righteous sacrifices,
whole burnt offerings to delight you;
then bulls will be offered on your altar.
Amen.
You can be seated.
Lets look at three things David does with his guilt.
The first thing David did was to 1. Admit it to God
Some of you are thinking:
I’m glad I haven’t murdered anyone like David.
If I ever do that, then I’ll definitely need to deal with my guilt.
Matt 5:21 Jesus said,
"Under the laws of Moses the rule was, ’If you murder, you must die.’ But I have added to that rule and tell you that if you are only angry, even in your own home, you are in danger of judgment!
So that means all of us are in trouble,
certainly I am.
We all need to admit our guilt to God.
whether for small things or large.
In 1980 New York City was in the middle of a huge financial crisis
and Mayor Ed Kotch appeared on a local news program.
Koch had spent over a quarter of a million dollars to put up bike lanes in Manhattan, and they turned out to be a disaster.
Cars were driving in the bike lanes, pedestrians were walking in the them, and bikers were getting crowded out. It was a mess and many people in New York were irate about it.
Koch was coming up for re-election, so a handful of journalists cornered him on this show, planning to tear him to pieces for spending money foolishly when the city was nearly broke.
So a reporter started the show off by asking, "Mayor, in light of the financial difficulties New York City is facing, how could you possibly justify wasting $300,000 on bike lanes?"
The stage was set for a half-hour confrontation. They were ready to chew him up.
But then, Koch said, "It was a terrible idea. I thought it would work, but it didn’t. It was one of the worst mistakes I ever made." Then he stopped.
The journalists were caught with their mouths hanging open.
They were expecting him to squirm and make excuses, but he didn’t even try.
The next journalist stammered and said, "But Mayor Koch, how could you do this?" Koch said, "I already told you. It was a stupid idea. It didn’t work." Then he stopped.
There was still 26 minutes left to go on the news show, and the reporters had to find something else to talk about. Because the last thing they expected that day was for the mayor take responsibility for his actions.
Ultimately, of course, Koch went on to receive both the Democratic and the Republican endorsements for re-election.
The principle here is that we can’t blame our sin on anyone else. We are responsible for our own lives.
It does no good to blame other people, or blame my circumstances.
David could have said, "It was Bethsheba’s fault—
look what she was wearing at the time."
Or he could have blamed God. Or he could have blamed his other wives Oh my hundred other wives just weren’t being sensitive to my needs.
Instead David says “I’m guilty! I admit it!”
And he says it in about as many ways as he possibly could.
In Hebrew there are 3 basic words for sin.
One has the meaning of rebellion against God,
NIV translates that transgressions.
You see that in verse 1:
“blot out my transgressions”
The second word has a meaning of perversity or sexual sin,
and the NIV translates that as iniquity.
You see that in Verse 2 “wash away all my iniquity”
The third Hebrew word for sin,
is the one used for any sin that required a sacrifice,
or a sin offering, under the Hebrew law.
You see that word used at the end of verse 2,
“Cleanse me from my sin”
So David uses every word there is
to describe his sin,
and then he uses all three of those words over again,
in verses 3,4,5, and 9.
He wants to make sure he confessed it all.
You can sense his great guilt.
He feels totally dirty – inside and out.
In Verse 3 it tells us that this guilt is haunting him; it won’t leave him alone,
He says,
my sin is always before me.
He couldn’t shut it out of his mind.
Do you remember Edgar Allen Poe’s story, “The Telltale Heart”?
I had to read that in High School English.
In that story, the main character has committed murder and he buries the body under floorboards in his house. But the murderer can’t escape the guilt of his deed.
He begins to hear the heartbeat of his dead victim. A cold sweat pours over him as that heartbeat goes on and on, relentlessly, getting louder and louder.
Finally the noise in his head is driving him crazy, he can’t take it anymore, he’s sure everyone else must hear it too, and they’re just taunting him by ignoring, it,
just playing with him.
and so finally in a fit of desperation he confesses everything and shows policemen the body.
You get the feeling that that’s how David felt when he committed the sins of adultery and murder.
The guilt he felt became almost unbearable.
Its weighing him down with guilt,
and the only way to release it is to admit his guilt,
which is what he does next in v 4.
David says a surprising thing here.
“Against you and you only, have I sinned.”
What about Bathsheba? Uriah?
David realized something about sin.
When we sin,
it is against God.
Other people are obviously hurt by our sin,
but our sin is against God,
and it doesn’t do us any good to try and make it right with other people,
unless we start by making it right with God.
David committed adultery with Bathsheba, he murdered Uriah but his sin was against God.
Let me say one more thing about guilt,
before we go on.
This may surprise you.
Guilt is good.
Most of you are saying,
Ken, what are you talking about,
Guilt is good.
Are you crazy?
Let me explain.
A famous doctor named Paul Brand wrote a book,
with co-author Philip Yancey,
called The Gift of Pain.
Dr. Brand spent much of his life in India
working with leprosy patients.
And he made some major discoveries
that changed the way these patients are treated today.
Dr. Brand noticed early in his work with leprosy patients, that they felt no pain. The leprosy caused the nerve endings to decay and lose the ability to transmit feelings of pain to the brain.
By the way, the same thing happens with diabetics.
But Dr. Brand was the first one to make the connection:
Because these patients felt no pain, they were constantly injuring themselves, and they didn’t take care of the injuries, because there was no pain, and so the injuries would never heal, and typically it would result in amputation of the foot, or finger, or whatever part of the body.
The medical community had thought up to that time
that the disease of leprosy just naturally led to limbs becoming diseased and having to be amputated.
But that wasn’t true. It was the lack of pain that caused the problem.
And so Dr. Brand learned that a life without pain is a dangerous life. Because we need that warning system to tell us when something is wrong.
Guilt, is exactly the same kind of warning system that pain is.
Guilt tells us that something is wrong,
not physically, but emotionally and spiritually.
Without guilt, you would have no warning sign
that you’re messing up your life and your relationships,
and that you’re going the wrong direction.
Guilt is just as important to our lives as pain.
It’s a warning sign that helps us know that something needs to change.
But just like pain,
the idea is not to just ignore it,
but to remove what’s causing it,
so that the guilt will go away.
The first step to silencing a guilty conscience,
is admit your guilt to God. Second,
2. Appeal to God’s mercy.
Look at verse 1. Have mercy on me oh God.
There are 3 terms in the Bible,
that we sometimes get confused.
Mercy, grace, and justice.
The Bible tells us that God has all three of these,
He’s a God of justice, mercy, and grace,
but their meanings are very different.
So let me ask you first,
why would David ask for mercy, not justice?
Because justice demands payment for a crime committed.
David had committed crimes worthy of death, So if he started out this Psalm by saying,
Lord, please treat me with justice,
let me receive what is fair.”
It would be just like he’s asking God,
hey, could you just kill me right now,
because that’s what I deserve.
If God was only a God of justice,
he’d have to just instantly kill David,
or you or me,
the moment we sin.
In the Psalms, you never see David asking for justice for himself.
You want your enemies to receive justice.
You want them to get what they deserve.
But when you’re talking about yourself,
you don’t want justice,
you want mercy.
Mercy withholds the punishment we deserve.
Mercy withholds justice.
Without mercy we would all be sunk.
We’d all be under the death penalty for our sin.
So we are fortunate that God is not only just,
but also merciful.
So then what is grace.
Is that the same as mercy?
No.
Mercy is when God doesn’t give us what we deserve -- in other words he doesn’t give us punishment when we sin.
but Grace is when God does give us what we don’t deserve --
In other words,
When he blesses us,
even though we don’t deserve it.
When he gives us eternal life,
and heals us,
and protects us,
and meets all our needs
and gives us his Holy Spirit,
and blesses us in every possible way,
even though we don’t deserve it,
that’s grace.
Mercy means withholding the negative,
Grace means giving us the positive.
That’s why Hebrews 4:16 tells us,
Let us therefore draw near with confidence to the throne of grace , that we may receive mercy and may find grace to help in time of need..
You need mercy and grace.
Mercy to escape the bad,
and grace to be given the good.
Now here’s the great part.
You get both grace and mercy,
because of what Jesus did for you.
You get mercy because of his death on the cross.
You get grace because of his perfect, sinless life,
that becomes a substitute for your imperfect life.
You see,
God is a God of justice,
and he can’t just forget about justice,
and let us get away with anything without ever having to pay for it.
No, when you sin,
somebody’s got to pay.
Somebody’s going to get punished.
But because of God’s mercy,
that somebody is Jesus, not you.
Forgiveness does not come cheaply: it will cost someone’s blood.
David understood this: In verse 14 he says,
save me from bloodguilt oh God.
And in verse 7 he talks about Hyssop.
What is hyssop?
When God gave the OT law to the people of Israel,
there were a bunch of situations where blood had to be applied or sprinkled on something.
and it was always done with hyssop,
which was a sponge-like plant.
(Picture)
So for example at the Passover,
they dipped hyssop in the blood of sacrificed animals and applied to the altar or doorposts over the house.
When someone had an infectious disease,
the priests would use hyssop to sprinkle blood on the man to cleanse him.
So David is saying,
that’s what I need.
I need to be cleansed,
7 Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean;
wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.
He’s saying,
I know that only sacrifice of blood can pay for what I’ve done,
and wash me clean.
And the same thing happens when you or I sin.
If Jesus is our Lord,
then our sin is paid for
by his death on the cross and his blood is what washes us whiter than snow.
Now some of you are probably saying,
Ken, what is all this talk about blood,
and sin, and punishment,
I mean, we’re in the 21st century here.
What does this have to do with anything?
It helps to understand this,
if you understand what are
some of the most powerful forces in the universe.
I like to read about physics,
and how the universe is put together.
Scientists 100 years ago thought that the most powerful force in the universe was gravity.
Gravity manages to hold the earth and all the other planets in orbit around a sun that’s millions of miles away.
Its got to be pretty powerful.
Well, then in the 1930’s as scientists studied the atom,
they discovered two other forces.
One is called the weak nuclear force,
which holds electrons in their orbit around the nucleus.
The other force they discovered is the strong nuclear force,
that’s what holds the protons together in the nucleus.
Now as you’d expect, the strong nuclear force is way stronger
than the weak nuclear force.
But what’s interesting is that,
even the weak nuclear force is
10 billion billion billion times as powerful as gravity.
That’s pretty strong.
That’s why when you split an atom,
you release some of that strong nuclear force
holding those protons together,
and it creates a nuclear explosion.
In fact,
here’s an interesting tidbit for you.
You may not feel like you’ve got much energy this morning.
But if you are an average sized adult,
then you contain within the atoms of your body,
about 7x10 18 Joules of potential energy
which is enough energy to explode with the force of 30 very large hydrogen bombs,
assuming that you knew how to liberate this energy,
and wanted to prove a point.
You might want to think about that next time you get angry and explode at someone.
Now, God is the one who put those powerful forces in place in our universe.
But there are 2 other powerful forces in the universe,
that scientists don’t really understand,
but we’ll understand it better one day.
One of the most powerful forces in the universe,
is God’s hatred for sin and evil.
God is so opposed to evil, that he has a plan,
which he’s told us about in the bible,
in the book of Revelation,
to eliminate evil from the earth,
and then create a new place for his people
where there is no sin or evil.
Because God hates sin and evil,
and that is a powerful force that influences everything that happens in this universe.
And that powerful force,
is why God sets a death penalty,
for anyone who sins.
But there is another force in the universe even stronger than that.
It is God’s love for you.
And we really don’t understand this one.
It is unexplainable,
why God would love you and me so much.
But that powerful love,
is what’s behind God’s grace and mercy,
and what’s behind the sacrifice of God’s own son for us.
And that powerful force of love,
is what makes it possible for us,
when we are guilty,
to ask God for mercy,
and He’ll say yes.
So, when we’re guilty,
we admit our guilt,
we ask God for mercy,
then the 3rd step
We let God Renew Us by the Holy Spirit
Verses 10-12
10 Create in me a pure heart, O God,
and renew a steadfast spirit within me. 11 Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. 12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.
In these three verses,
he talks about the spirit three times.
Why?
Because you need spiritual power
to get back on the right path,
and stay away from whatever caused your guilt in the first place.
Just feeling guilty isn’t going to change you.
Just admitting it to God isn’t enough to change you.
Your spirit needs to be renewed, by the Holy Spirit.
That happens through something called repentance.
Some people think repentance
is the same as feeling guilty.
I feel really bad about what I did,
I’m so sorry, I repent.
No.
Its not at all the same thing.
Repentance means A change of heart.
A change of mind.
and A change of direction.
Guilt may lead you to repent and change,
but guilt is not at all the same thing as repenting.
You see,
Repentance removes guilt.
In fact, that’s so important,
I want us to say it together,
Repentance removes guilt.
If you still feel guilty
after you’ve done these steps we’re talking about,
then its not real guilt,
its false guilt.
Some of you may feel like,
even though you’ve admitted your sin to God and repented, you feel like God hasn’t forgiven certain sins – because they’re just too big – and so you still feel guilty. That’s false guilt. That doesn’t come from God.
True guilt comes from God,
false guilt comes from Satan.
Because there aren’t any sins too big
for God to forgive.
Were David’s sins of adultery and murder too big for God? No.
But Satan would like to convince you
that your sins are too big.
So you need to be careful what voices you listen to. Don’t accept false guilt.
The Bible says,
If God sets you free, then you are free indeed.
We’re going to close in a minute,
But let me finish by asking,
What is the result when you go through these steps,
and let God renew your spirit?
Look at verse 12
Restore to me the joy of your salvation
Repentance results in joy.
You see,
this Psalm isn’t all about doom and gloom,
sorrow and guilt over sin.
Because David knows the result of repentance,
He knows the result of letting God Renew his Spirit.
He’s looking forward to the joy.
So he says, verses 7-15
I’m going to have a pure heart,
washed whiter than snow,
I’m going to hear joy and gladness again,
my tongue will sing of Gods righteousness,
my mouth will declare his praise.
David knows its going to be great,
when he repents,
and silences the guilt,
and the joy of his salvation returns.
If you’ve blown it, you need to get past feeling guilty and get back on track,
and get joy the joy of your salvation
back into your life.
