Psalm 51

I've been attending a Bible Study over the summer lead by a different person in the group every week, and the topic was recently prayer.  We discussed confession, and the person leading the study that night brought us to this Psalm.  It was written by David when God sent the prophet Nathan to convict him of his sin with Bathsheba.  The story can be found in 2 Samuel 11-12.

Verse 1 always sounds pretty presumptuous for me, obsequious at best (for the record and just as a side-note, I think this may only be the fifth time in my life I've been able to legitimately use that word!).  "Be gracious to me, O God... According to the greatness of Your compassion blot out my transgressions."  Sometimes when I see those words, I hear in my head the voice of a teenager who just stole her father's credit card and bought $200 worth of shoes or something saying "Dad, you are so awesome!  You are the world's greatest Dad!  And I know you've got plenty of money, so you won't even miss $200, right?"

Yes, God is loving and compassionate beyond belief, but when I first become aware of sin in my life, those aren't the first attributes of God I'm thinking about.  I'm thinking more about His justice, wrath, and perfection... You know, the things that made Him destroy the world in Noah's day and totally wipe out Sodom and Gomorrah?

But you know, maybe David's on to something here, because while I'm dwelling on that in the midst of my guilt, I generally start playing up my unworthiness in my mind and therefore stop praying all together.  Don't get me wrong, fearing the Lord is a good thing, and sometimes a reality check that deflates one's sense of self can be a pretty healthy thing--but "fear of the Lord" is to help us know more of Him, not to make us too scared to go on in our pursuit of Him.

So David doesn't do that.  In the midst of his guilt, he focuses upon who God is and how worthy of worship He is.

And that's only verse 1!  Where as I used to think verse 1 was just David trying to weasel out of his guilt, what follows proves that he isn't.  In verses 3 and 4, David acknowledges his guilt, along with the fact that God is "justified when You speak, and blameless when You judge" (verse 4).

Then in verses 2, 7-8, and 10, David is not just applying for forgiveness: he is asking God to change his heart.  David isn't just asking for a get-out-of-jail-free card, he's asking God to heal the root of the problem (because the Lord knows we can't do it without Him!).  Verse 10 says, "Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me."  I don't think this request is made to apply to the sin that David committed, but rather to apply his continued struggle with sin to come.  Saved or not, we are still human, and sin is a daily (if not hourly) battle.

Verses 16-17 then talk about how God doesn't care about the religion.  David was a wealthy ruler, he could have requisitioned a herd of cattle and taken them all to the temple to have them sacrificed because that's what the people in his day did about sin, but God doesn't care about the ritual, and He's not just a big Barbeque Buff.  God cares about the heart.  God loves us and wants a close, intimate relationship with us.  He wants us to be honest with Him and open to Him, and He wants to work in our lives and help us fight sin.

Sin separates us from God already, and guilt just complicates the process of letting His forgiveness restore the relationship.  Does that mean be the teenager that steals the credit card and assume that it will be okay?  No.  When we confess our sin, we need to also ask God to change our heart.  Mistakes are learning experiences, and we WILL make mistakes.  We have a choice: we can feel bad about those mistakes and let them take away from our intimate relationship with the Creator of the Universe, or we can ask Him to help us learn and transform us into a people more like Him.