Discussion Questions
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What is a “broken and contrite heart”? Why did David believe that God cared more about this than physical sacrifices?
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When you sin, are you more tempted to wallow in self pity? Or to brush it off quickly? What attitude did David have toward his sin?
- How should our awareness of our sin influence our willingness and eagerness to share the gospel with others?
- In what way does God's law "stop our mouths?" What is the purpose of the law?
- We now live in the age of the New Covenant! Jesus, the Son of David, has become for us the full and final sacrifice for our sins. We are no longer required to offer burnt offerings like ancient Israel. But as you think about the teaching throughout the New Testament, what kind of sacrifices should Christians now offer?
Manuscript
Have you ever had your mouth metaphorically shut? Have you ever encountered something so wonderful or horrifying; so unbelievable or terrifying, that you were at a loss for words? This happened to a reporter by the name of Herbert Morrison one rainy afternoon in May of 1937. He had been commissioned to provide a live radio broadcast of the Hindenburg Airship’s arrival in Manchester, New Jersey. What was supposed to be a quick layover for the passengers on this luxury transatlantic blimp ended in disaster as the airship, only 400 feet or so from the landing zone, suddenly burst into flames. As the Hindenburg fell from the sky in agonizing slow motion, Morrison, himself in shock, holding back tears, attempted to provide a play-by-play for his radio listeners of the unfurling tragedy. I want to read just a portion of the manuscript:
“Get this Charley! Get this Charley! It’s burning and it's crashing! It's crashing terrible! Oh my, get out of the way please. It's burning, bursting into flames and it's -- and it's falling on the mooring mast and all the folks agree that this is terrible. This is one of the worst catastrophes in the world.
And oh, it's…burning, oh, four or five hundred feet into the sky. It's a terrific crash, ladies and gentlemen. The smoke and the flames now and the frame is crashing to the ground, not quite to the mooring mast. Oh, the humanity!”
After uttering these last infamous words, Morrison stammers a bit, “It’s—it’s… I—I can’t talk ladies and gentlemen… I -- I'm gonna step inside where I cannot see it. Charley, that’s terrible. I – I can’t....Listen folks, I -- I'm gonna have to stop for a minute because I’ve lost my voice. This is the worst thing I’ve ever witnessed.”
Morrison, in the presence of one of the worst tragedies the world had seen, had his mouth shut. It was too horrific, too dreadful for words.
Sometimes it is the tragedies of our broken world that can make us feel at a loss for words. But other times, we find our mouths shut not due to forces outside of us, but the sin inside of us. We see this theme all throughout the Bible.
Job, after expressing his desire to argue his case before the Lord is humbled into silence in the presence of God’s majesty. Seeing the Lord, he says, “Behold, I am of small account; what shall I answer you? I lay my hand on my mouth” (Job 40:4).
King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, only one year after witnessing God’s miraculous deliverance of Daniel from the lion’s den, finds himself walking on the roof of his palace one morning, saying, “Is not this great Babylon, which I have built by my mighty power as a royal residence and for the glory of my majesty?” And, immediately we read, “While the words were still in the king's mouth, there fell a voice from heaven, “O King Nebuchadnezzar, to you it is spoken: The kingdom has departed from you, and you shall be driven from among men, and your dwelling shall be with the beasts of the field. And you shall be made to eat grass like an ox, and seven periods of time shall pass over you, until you know that the Most High rules the kingdom of men and gives it to whom he will” (Daniel 4). Nebuchadnezzar thought of himself as God, and so the real God shut his mouth for 7 years.
But the most famous mouth-shutting story in the Bible is also a Christmas story. In the beginning of the book of Luke, we read of an angel’s visit to share good news with an unsuspecting father-to-be. But this isn’t Joseph’s story, it’s Zechariah’s. Zechariah and Elizabeth, his wife, had been praying for many years to have a child—it must have been “many years”, because Luke tells us they were both “advanced in years.” But the angel Gabriel appears, and tells Zechariah that their prayers had been heard, and they were to have a son. But not just any son. They would bear a son named John the Baptist who would be like a new Elijah, filled with the Holy Spirit who would turn many of the children of Israel back to the Lord. But most importantly, he would be the one to pave the way for the true and greater Son—the son of David and Son of the Most High who was coming to redeem his people from their sin.
Yet instead of taking the angel at his word, Zechariah doubts God’s promise. “How shall I know this? For I am an old man, and my wife is advanced in years” (Luke 1:18). Because of his lack of faith, Gabriel tells Zechariah, “Behold, you will be silent and unable to speak until the day these things take place, because you did not believe my words” (Luke 1:20). And so, for the better part of a year, Zechariah is completely mute. Then, the week after their son’s birth, Zechariah, finally humbled by God’s faithfulness despite his unfaithfulness, proclaims that the baby shall be named John, and we read that “immediately his mouth was opened and his tongue loosed, and he spoke, blessing God” (Luke 1:64).
These three Biblical stories are all very dramatic—but they all point to a central truth of Christianity that every person must understand: in order to be forgiven by God, restored by God, and used by God, our mouths must first be shut by sorrow over our sin.
We’ve been taking this advent season to work through Psalm 51, a Psalm of repentance penned by King David after he was confronted by the prophet Nathan for his sin with Bathsheba and the murdering of Uriah, her husband. Our goal in this series has been to show how Jesus Christ, the son of David, has come to save sinners like David” (and sinners like you and me). In the first sermon we examined the nature of sin and the nature of God’s mercy, and in the second sermon we examined how a Christian can live in the experiential reality of God’s forgiveness, even when it doesn’t feel true.
This morning, we’re going to consider how God opens the mouths of humbled-yet-forgiven sinners (like you and me) to serve and worship him.
We’re going to Read Psalm 51:7-19, but our focus this morning will be on verses 13-19.
I have three points this morning, offered in the form of three prayers. “God, open my mouth to:
1) Tell Sinners of Your Mercy
2) Praise you for your Grace
3) Offer Right Sacrifices
1. God, open my mouth to tell sinners of your mercy (13)
(v13) “Then I will teach transgressors your ways,
and sinners will return to you.”
I want to first draw your attention to the “then” in verse 13. This is a clue that should direct our gaze back to the preceding verses to help us understand the fuller context of what David is doing here. In verses 7-12, he spells out what he is asking God for, and in verses 13-15, he tells God what he plans to do in return. You might be forgiven for thinking that David is bartering with God—“God if you give me what I want, then here’s what I’ll do for you”. This is the transactional lens through which many view their relationship with God. But I want you to notice again in verses 7-12 what it is David is actually asking God for. He says, “purge me, wash me, hide your face from my sins (literally, don’t remember them against me), blot out my sin, give me a clean heart and new spirit, don’t remove your presence and your spirit from me, restore to me the joy of your salvation, and uphold me.”
What is David asking for? It’s not material things. And it’s not relief from the worldly consequences of his sin. After Nathan ‘drops the mic’ on David in 2 Samuel 12 with the withering one-liner, “You’re the man,” he tells David what God is about to do:
• “The sword shall never depart from your house.”
• “I will raise up evil against you out of your own house.”
• “I will take your wives before your eyes and give them to your neighbor.”
• And “the child who is born to you (the fruit of David’s sin with Bathsheba), shall die.”
David’s sin was devastating, and so the consequences for his sin were also devastating.
And so, we might have expected David’s greater concern in Psalm 51 would be for God to relent from the physical disaster that he was about to bring into David’s life. “God, if you spare my kingdom… if you keep my sons from rebelling against me, if you protect my family from foreign invaders, then I will praise you, and worship you, and offer sacrifices.” But this, in fact, is not what he asks for. In verses 7-12 he asks for the Lord to be gracious to forgive him, to give him a clean heart, and restore the joy of his salvation. What he wants most of all is to be back in right fellowship with God.
And how instructive is this for us! How often are we more horrified by the possibility of what we might lose materially because of our sin than what might be lost spiritually? “Oh God, don’t let me lose this relationship! Help my wife to forgive me! Let me keep my job! Don’t let this come back to bite me later!” Or maybe our prayer is, “Oh God, I just feel so guilty and ashamed. Help me not to feel this way anymore.” Now, is it wrong to pray for God to deliver us from the worldly consequences of our sins? No. After David and Bathsheba’s first child became sick, David fasted and wept before the Lord all night that the child might be saved. Even though the child ultimately died, David knew that God was merciful. And yet what we see in Psalm 51 is that what devastated David the most was not the consequences of his sin, but his inner sinfulness itself, and the trauma it produced in his relationship with the Lord.
Brothers and sisters, I want to just take pause here to ask, what disquiets you the most when you sin? Is it the fear of being caught? Or the pang of a guilty conscience? Or are you broken by your very brokenness? Your sinful heart? And how your sin has broken the heart of God?
Create in me a clean heart, O God! Restore to me the joy of your salvation. This is what David asks God to do for him. And this is what God does for him! As Marc pointed out last week, when David was confronted for his sin, he immediately repented and was told by Nathan, “God has put away your sin.” And praise God, this is what God does for each of us who place our faith in Jesus. God “puts away our sin,” not due to any merit of our own, but because of who he is: a God of “steadfast love” and “abundant mercy” (v1).
So, this is what David has asked the Lord for. Before he attempts to open his mouth to do anything for God, he knows that God must complete the first work inside of him. Let’s turn back now to verse 13:
(v13) “Then I will teach transgressors your ways,
and sinners will return to you.”
True Christians—those whose hearts have been radically transformed by grace—are those most eager to see others transformed by this same grace. In Marc’s first sermon on Psalm 51, he said, “You will only grow in your faith to the degree you understand God's love for you, and you will only understand God's love for you to the degree you understand your own sinfulness.” I think we could also say it this way: “You will only grow in your love for sinners to the degree you understand God's love for you, and you will only understand God's love for you to the degree you understand your own sinfulness.”
Perhaps our reluctance to share the gospel with unbelievers is partly because we find their sin so offensive. In comparison, maybe our own sin doesn’t seem that bad. Maybe you have an intellectual understanding of the gospel, that you’ve sinned against God and deserve his wrath, and that your only hope is Jesus’ death for your sins on the cross. And yet practically, you live as if you are who you are in life, and where you are in life because of the choices you’ve made. Maybe it’s difficult for you to comprehend how someone could end up in such a broken state—adultery, drug addiction, gender confusion, homelessness. But friend, this way of thinking actually reveals more about your brokenness than theirs. The person who thinks this way doesn’t understand how heinous their own sin is. One of my favorite passages is Titus 3:1-5:
“Remind them to be submissive to rulers and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready for every good work, to speak evil of no one, to avoid quarreling, to be gentle, and to show perfect courtesy toward all people. For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another. But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit.”
This is such a good reminder for us. How can we show perfect courtesy, love, and compassion toward all people, even those whose very lives seem repulsive to us? By remembering that we too were once great big foolish sinners! But when the grace of God showed up in our lives, everything changed. This is a truth with which David was intimately familiar. It was not his sinlessness that qualified David to share the good news with sinners. No, on the contrary, it was his very sinfulness that qualified him to share with other sinners of the grace he found in God.
Perhaps your hesitation to share the gospel doesn’t stem from a false sense of superiority, but despair over your own perceived brokenness and spiritual poverty. Perhaps you are intimately acquainted with the depth of your sin and fear that God has no use for a person like you. If this is you this morning, can I ask you a question? Has God been merciful to you? Have your sins been paid for by the blood of Jesus Christ? Now we are moving out of the realm of self-focus and looking outside of ourselves to who God is and what He has done for us. You may not have a very high opinion of yourself this morning, but who is God to you? If you are a broken-down sinner who has found mercy and forgiveness outside of yourself, you are exactly the kind of person God loves to use.
God, open my mouth to tell sinners of your mercy. That’s our first prayer, here’s our second:
2. God, open my mouth to offer you praise (14-15)
David goes on in verses 14 and 15,
“Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God,
O God of my salvation,
and my tongue will sing aloud of your righteousness.”
O Lord, open my lips,
and my mouth will declare your praise.,
He prays, in the words of one commentator, “Open my lips which are shut with shame, and grief, and horror. Nothing so effectually closes the mouth as a just sense of our sins” (Plumer). Isn’t it striking that even here, David is still bringing up his sin to God? You might want to ask, “David, do you have a complex or something? Don’t you understand that God has already forgiven you?” No, I think David understands the inner workings of God’s grace perhaps better than most of us do. He knows that God must be the one not only to forgive his sins, but to deliver him from the despair his sins had produced, and to open his mouth to praise him once again.
But don’t miss this—you cannot open your mouth to worship God until it has first been snapped shut by a deep humiliation and remorse over your sins. This metaphor of “mouths being shut” extends further past Isaiah 6. Paul picks up this theme in Romans 3:19 when he says, “Now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God.” What does this mean? It means that God’s law, his perfect righteous standard, functions like a mirror that reveals to us the depth of our depravity and our utter inability to keep God’s commandments. When we are confronted with this inconvenient reality, all possible excuses, justifications, and defenses melt away. Our mouths are stopped.
This makes me think of another person in the Bible who had his mouth shut in the presence of God. In Isaiah 6:5-6, Isaiah gives us a glimpse of the terrifying majesty of God in his throne room. In the presence of God’s holiness, Isaiah confesses,
“Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts! Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar. And he touched my mouth and said: “Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.”
Our mouths must first be shut by despair over our sin. But praise God that this is not where he leaves us! His heart is not to let us wallow in the guilt of our sin, but to forgive us, restore us, and use us! What a good God we serve! What a relief that he is not like you and me! When we are sinned against we withhold forgiveness until we are satisfied that they demonstrate what we deem to be an appropriate amount of sorrow and remorse for the pain they caused us. Even then, we might remain distant and cold to make sure they’ve learned their lesson. But not God.
You are likely familiar with this famous passage from Isaiah 55:8-9: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” But are you familiar with the verse right before? Look at verse 7: “let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the LORD, that he may have compassion on him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.” So, in what way are God’s thoughts not like our thoughts? And his ways not like our ways? In that he is spring-loaded—ready at a moment’s notice—to show compassion to the sinner who returns to him, and abundantly pardon. Not reluctantly, not under compulsion, not with strings attached—but abundantly. God is not like us.
And why does God do this? To the praise of his glorious grace. In 1 Peter 2:9 we read, “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” Notice the order that Peter follows in this verse: You are this—"a chosen race, royal priesthood, a holy nation”… that you may do this—"proclaim the excellences of him who called you out of darkness and into his marvelous light.” Our praise for God follows our forgiveness from God, not the other way around.
Marc mentioned this last week, but I thought it was too good not to say again: perhaps lack of joy in the Lord this season, your lack of desire to worship and praise Him is stemming from gospel amnesia—you have forgotten just how heinous your sins were before a holy God, and the immeasurable price that was paid to cleanse you from it. Brother, sister, if your heart is cold toward the Lord this morning, remember your sins, and praise God that he remembers them no more.
3. God, open my mouth to offer right sacrifices (16-19)
“For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it;
you will not be pleased with a burnt offering.
The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;
a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.”
Here, David strikes at the heart of what the Old Covenant sacrificial system was supposed to produce in the people of God. The blood of bulls and goats would never fully cleanse the people of God from the guilt and condemnation of their sin. The writer of Hebrews says it well in 10:1, “For since the law has but a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities, it can never, by the same sacrifices that are continually offered every year, make perfect those who draw near.”
But why then, did God require such sacrifices? Friends, we have to understand that God was never ultimately concerned with the sacrifice itself (grain, birds, lambs, bulls). What need does God have for food? Look at what God says about himself in Psalm 50, the psalm right before this one: “If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world and its fullness are mine. Do I eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of goats? Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving.” God isn’t after the sacrifices—he’s after what the sacrifices represent—a broken and contrite heart.
David knew that the scope and depth of his sin could not be easily done away with by burnt offerings. He knew, unlike many in his day and in our day, that God cannot be fooled. You might pray before meals and frown at cursing; and avoid R-rated films, and give to the poor, and serve in church, and tithe 10% of your income and yet have a heart that is far from the Lord. You can spend your life performing the duties of religion and yet reach the end and hear these terrifying words from Jesus in Matthew 7:23, “I never knew you; depart from me, you worker of lawlessness.”
So, what does God want from you? He wants you to offer to him a “broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart.” The kind of heart that feels true remorse—true grief—over sin, and true faith in the God who can forgive your sins. In the words of the famous hymn, “All the fitness He requires is to feel your need of Him.”
I love an analogy that John Piper gives in his book, Desiring God:
“Suppose you are totally paralyzed and can do nothing for yourself but talk. And suppose a strong and reliable friend promised to live with you and do whatever you needed done. How could you glorify your friend if a stranger came to see you? Would you glorify his generosity and strength by trying to get out of bed and carry him? No! You would say, “Friend, please come lift me up, and would you put a pillow behind me so I can look at my guest? And would you please put my glasses on for me?” And so your visitor would learn from your requests that you are helpless and that your friend is strong and kind. You glorify your friend by needing him and asking him for help and counting on him.”
So, this is the kind of sacrifice that God truly delights in. And yet, strangely, in verses 18-19 we read,
"Do good to Zion in your good pleasure;
build up the walls of Jerusalem;
19then will you delight in right sacrifices,
in burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings;
then bulls will be offered on your altar.”
Doesn’t this seem undermine the gospel of grace that Ps 51 ultimately points to? Isn’t the point that God doesn’t really care about the physical offerings, but simply what they point to? Why go back to burnt offerings?
“The meaning is that when God shall build up Jerusalem, and cause true religion to flourish, then all its outward expressions, divinely appointed, will be pleasing to him because they will be the fruit of piety and not a substitute for it. They will be sincere, hearty, and pure, not formal and so offensive to God. The sacrifices, then will be those of righteousness not of deceit and hypocrisy, such as prayer, praise, penitence, doing good to the poor and afflicted, as well as burnt offering or burnt sacrifice.” (Plumer)
These burnt offerings would never be able to fully atone for the sins of God’s people. But when offered in true faith and from a broken and contrite heart, they would please God.
Yet the greater significance comes when we understand who these burnt offerings ultimately pointed to: This is another man whose mouth was shut, but not due to any guilt in himself. A man who was crushed and put to grief, not for his own sin, but for the sins of his people. A man who needed no sacrifices offered on his behalf but came to be the sacrifice himself.
Isaiah 53:7, 10-11
“He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,
yet he opened not his mouth;
like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,
and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent,
so he opened not his mouth.Yet it was the will of the LORD to crush him;
he has put him to grief;
when his soul makes an offering for guilt,
he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days;
the will of the LORD shall prosper in his hand.
Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied;
by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant,
make many to be accounted righteous,
and he shall bear their iniquities.
This is Jesus Christ, the Messiah-King, the Son of David, the once-for-all sacrifice for sins. Let us offer to him the sacrifice of love, praise, and honor that is due his name.
