Psalms 51:9-13 Spring Cleaning

In these next few verses we see a frail man honestly and openly seeking God’s cleansing. As you read, you sense that he truly believes in God and His ability to make him new.

9 Don’t keep looking at my sins. Remove the stain of my guilt. 10 Create in me a clean heart, O God. Renew a loyal spirit within me. 11 Do not banish me from your presence, and don’t take your Holy Spirit from me.

12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and make me willing to obey you. 13 Then I will teach your ways to rebels, and they will return to you.

Verse 9; Don’t keep looking at my sins. Remove the stain of my guilt. What is it that you think David is talking about in this passage? Who is looking repeatedly?

Guilt and shame had gotten the best of David. He was dwelling (self absorbed) in his sins. Yes, plural! Look back at what God’s chosen one had done. Idolatry, covetness, adultery and murder top the charts. For David it looked as if there was no hope, no going back and only a future promise of hell fire and brimstone.

Just imagine how different life would be if we understood the real significance of sin and what the results of our actions can gain us, eternal separation from God. Even as Christians we down play the dangers of sin.

Can you give examples of how society and even Christians have down played the significance of sin in our life?

Why do you think we play off sin?
Many of us have unconfessed sin. Those dark private thoughts and desires that we harbor in our hearts. The ones we think about, dream about and yet maybe haven’t physically acted upon, but yet are sin. See Matthew 5:28, 1John3:15

Verse 10: Create in me a clean heart, O God. Renew a loyal spirit within me. Let’s look first at the word create. It is defined as: To cause to come into being, as something unique that would not naturally occur. This is the same word used in Genesis 1:1, In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. In other words David is asking not for regeneration of his heart, but a new heart.
Who could do such a task other than God? No one.

So let’s paraphrase this verse. David is saying, God I beg you to give me a brand new heart. Replace the first heart gift you gave me. The one that I trampled all over out of selfish lust and desire. Give me a heart that’s desire is only of you and you alone.

See 2 Corinthians 5:17, Do you see the parallel in your own life?

Verse 11, 12; Do not banish me from your presence, and don’t take your Holy Spirit from me. 12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and make me willing to obey you.

First point of business! Thank God that we cannot loose our salvation. We can abuse it and even ignore it. Which is common amongst young Christians (not age but spiritual maturity). We can even reject the gift, but to loose it, don’t think so.

A better understanding is this, once we begin to harbor sin, the Holy Spirit becomes less operative and can get to a point of being inoperative. This is the true nature (danger) of sin. Think of it as compromise, which is to make vulnerable or expose to danger. When you expose yourself to sin, you become vulnerable to it.

Let me illustrate it this way. You place a large cooking pot on the stove filled with cool tap water. You then place a frog in that cool water. What happens? Nothing the frog just swims around enjoying himself. Now turn on the burner under the pot to high. Has anything happened? Yes, the frog is now exposed to sin, yet he happily swimming around like nothing is happening. As the water heats the frog continues to swim around. See, he is being sensitized to his surroundings and is not aware of the fact that he is in danger of dying. And as you guessed, the frog soon dies from the very thing he thought was his safe haven.

To really appreciate how far God will go with (yes with us) each of His children (Christians) you need to look at the life of Lot.

Lets fast forward the story. Lot losses his immediate family and uncle Abraham takes him in. Abraham, being childless cares greatly for his nephew and over time they are blessed greatly. So blessed they had to split up. Their herds were so large that the land could not sustain them all. So Abraham gave Lot first pick of the land. So Lot being young and ambitious chose with his eyes (Gen 13:10-13) the land surrounding Sodom. Soon Lot was living amongst the people of Sodom. Angels come, and the men of the city come to Lot’s home, where the angels were staying, and try to have sex with the angles. Lot goes so far as to offer his virgin daughters in exchange for the safety of the two strangers (he became so comfortable with the sins around him that he became spiritually blind). At this point the angels pronounce God’s judgment on the city and the next day Lot, his wife and daughters are dragged away by their hands as everyone and the city is destroyed.

Now look at 2 Peter 2:6-9; 6 Later, God condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah and turned them into heaps of ashes. He made them an example of what will happen to ungodly people. 7 But God also rescued Lot out of Sodom because he was a righteous man who was sick of the shameful immorality of the wicked people around him. 8 Yes, Lot was a righteous man who was tormented in his soul by the wickedness he saw and heard day after day. 9 So you see, the Lord knows how to rescue godly people from their trials, even while keeping the wicked under punishment until the day of final judgment.

2 Peter 2:6-9, paints a picture of Gods grace and patience for all of us. But the warning is how far is to far, do not test the Lord. Lot’s wife did not head the warning and looked back and was destroyed.
Luckily for Lot the fire under his pot hadn’t gotten to the boiling point in his life. So there is hope for all those that have called on the Lord as their savior, yet have been blinded by the darkness of sin.
Look back at David’s life, once he had great joy in his heart, but because of the sin in his life he lost that joy.

Joy is a result of salvation, not the condition of. So David lost joy, because the Holy Spirit had become inoperative in his life. Not that he had lost his salvation and the Holy Spirit.

Read Galatians 5:16-26

If the Spirit is flowing so will His fruits.