Peter Barnes | Psalm 51:13-19
SERMON NOTES
THE SACRIFICE ACCEPTABLE TO GOD
Psalm 51:13-19
1. Plead for renewed usefulness.
– 51:13. Like Peter in Luke 22:31-32. After they were restored, they could both say to sinners: ‘Look to the Lord for grace and mercy.’
– this is not to say that the greatest sinners necessarily make the greatest evangelists. But David is hoping to make use of his fall.
– 51:14. ‘Deliver me from bloods’. Calvin refers this to the sentence of death, but it more likely the guilt incurred through the deaths of Uriah and the other men.
– 51:14b-15. Charles Wesley wrote: ‘And can it be that I should gain/ An interest in the Saviour’s blood’. The saved soul wants to sing – Ps.40:3; 95:1; 96:1; 98:1. Sin makes us grateful for grace.
2. God will not despise true repentance.
– 51:16-17. David is not rejecting the Old Testament sacrificial law completely – 5:19. Nothing that David can do or offer can please God. All David can do is repent. Ps.34:18.
3. Sin destroys, forgiveness builds up.
– 51:18-19. Some point to the fact that the walls around Jerusalem were not yet finished – 1 Kings 3:1. The walls are surely metaphorical. David means that his sin has weakened God’s covenant people.
– this was David’s darkest hour – 1 Kings 15:5 – but it leads to one of his greatest Psalms. John ‘Rabbi’ Duncan: ‘There is nothing but Christ between us and hell; and, thanks be to God, we need nothing else.’