How Can I Be Truly Forgiven?
PSALMS THIRTY-TWO & FIFTY-ONE
In this lesson we see David’s humble repentance.
OVERVIEW
In 1970, Catherine Ann Powers was the driver in a bank robbery where one of her accomplices killed a hero policeman, the father of nine children.
As a fugitive, Catherine hid her past. She changed her name and moved whenever she felt threatened. She didn’t contact her family. She never drove faster than the speed limit. At age 44, after 23 three years on the run, she was consumed by guilt and was desperately tired.
Catherine suffered from chronic depression. She says she felt waves and waves of almost unbearable sadness, each one stronger than the one before. She tried to fight back with intense work, exercise, and even prayer. Nothing seemed to help. For 23 years she had fooled the FBI and every law officer in America, but she couldn’t escape her own guilt and shame. Finally she realized that this would never end until she gave herself up. Knowing she would have to spend the next ten years in prison, Catherine came forward and said, “I did it. I’m the one.”
Now that she is learning to live with openness and truth, she no longer experiences life with a distorted lens. She says being in prison is better than the emotional prison she had experienced for two and a half decades. Guilt is a powerful force.
David’s Sin
A man in Old Testament times experienced a similar situation. It didn’t take as long to come clean, but for one long year he tried to cover up what he had done.
David had a much different life before the crisis that plunged him into difficulty. He had walked with God for many years. He was the sweet singer of Israel, an incredible prophet, a man who understood the deep things of God. He had been the long-time spiritual leader of his people. Then suddenly, in mid-life, he committed a terrible double sin that almost rendered him useless to himself and to God.
He was on his palace roof one day when he should have been off to war with his troops. He looked into the courtyard next to him and saw a beautiful woman named Bathsheba bathing. David’s passion was aroused and he ordered that she be brought to him. He committed adultery. Then when he discovered that Bathsheba had become pregnant, he panicked and tried to cover up his sin.
Cover-up Plan A
Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah, was away fighting in David’s army. David wanted everyone to think Bathsheba’s baby was Uriah’s, so David ordered him home from battle. When Uriah arrived, David suggested that Uriah spend the night with Bathsheba. He sent a bottle of wine and nice food. Uriah didn’t think it was right to enjoy a night with his wife when his fellow soldiers were fighting the king’s battle, so Uriah slept on the steps of the palace. When David awoke the next day, he realized that his plan to cover his sin had failed. Uriah went back to battle, and David’s mind continued to churn.
Cover-up Plan B
David thought, If I don’t deal with this problem, it will soon be news throughout the kingdom and I’ll be discredited. So he told his faithful general, Joab, to send Uriah to the hottest point of the battle and leave him alone there so Uriah would surely be killed. This time the plan worked. As the mourning period for Uriah was over, Bathsheba moved into the palace and married David. The child of David’s passion was born and, as we read Psalms 32 and 51, is now about three months old. Only a few people know David’s crimes: David, Bathsheba, Joab the general. Oh, yes, there’s someone else who knows. Second Samuel 11:27 says what David did displeased the Lord.
Conviction
Like Catherine Powers, David went through intense, emotional upheaval. In Psalm 32 he speaks of the anguish of his soul, of his silence, of how troubled he was. In verses 3 and 4 he says his bones waxed old through his groaning all the day long. Physiologically, the guilt had begun to move out into David’s being and plague him. As Catherine Powers said, waves and waves of depression came, one right after the other.
For a year David tried to live with his bad conscience, then the Lord sent somebody to help him out of his sickness, sorrow, and anguish. At the time, David didn’t know this was help, but indeed it was because David moved from conviction to confrontation. Second Samuel 12:1 says, “The Lord sent Nathan to David.”
Confrontation
In 2 Samuel 12, God tells Nathan the prophet to confront the world’s most powerful man. Nathan decides to do it indirectly with this story: There were two men in one city, one rich and the other poor. The rich man had many flocks and herds, and the poor man had nothing except one little ewe lamb that had grown up with him and his children. It ate his food and drank from his cup, lay in his bosom, and was like a daughter to him.
When a traveler needed a meal, the rich man refused to kill any of his own flock or herd; instead, he took the poor man’s lamb and prepared it for the visitor. Do you get the story? The lamb is Bathsheba. The poor man is Uriah. The rich man who wouldn’t spare his own lamb is David.
When David heard the parable, he hadn’t put two and two together. The Scripture says David’s anger was greatly aroused. He told Nathan the one who did that would surely die, and in 2 Samuel 12:6, says, “He shall restore fourfold for the lamb, because he did this thing and because he had no pity.”
Nathan pointed his long, bony prophetic finger at David’s nose and said essentially, “You are the man. You’re the one I’m talking about.”
Along with the overwhelming anguish of knowing that his sin has been discovered, David probably also feels relief. The confrontation helped him. David didn’t push Nathan away, and it was David’s first step back.
Confession
David’s confession is Psalm 51. It is what David prayed to God at this moment. The superscription over it in my Bible says “To the Chief Musician. A Psalm of David when Nathan the prophet went to him, after he [David] had gone in to Bathsheba.”
In Psalm 51, in his own words, David comes back to God. How do you pray when you’ve been found out? How do you pray when your sin is so overwhelming that, like Catherine Powers, you just can’t stand it anymore and you’ve got to get it out in the open? Well, let me tell you two things about David’s confession. It was genuine and it was God-centered.
Notice what David says about what he did. In verse 1 he calls it transgression, which is rebellion. In verse 2 he calls it iniquity, which is perversion, distortion, acting unjustly, dealing crookedly. In verse 3 he calls it sin, which means to miss the mark. And in verse 4 he calls it evil, which is a vile thing that deserves condemnation.
Psalm 32:5 tells us what David said about this prayer after he wrote it. He says, “I acknowledged my sin to You, and my iniquity I have not hidden. I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,’ and You forgave the iniquity of my sin.” Psalm 51:17 says the Lord honors a broken and contrite heart. David recognized that what he did was wrong. One of the things that keeps many of us from ever knowing renewed joy and fellowship with God, knowing what it means to have the burden lifted, is that we’re always trying to make our sin look better so we don’t feel so bad about it. The only way you can get relief from sin is to confess. The word means to look at your sin and say the same thing about it that God would say. It’s painful and hard, but it’s the only way back.
In Psalm 51:4 David says to God, “Against You, and You only, have I sinned.” Now it’s not that he doesn’t understand that others have been affected. David hasn’t suddenly forgotten what happened. He knows Bathsheba has been hurt in this. Her purity was taken away. He knows that Uriah is dead. He realizes that Joab’s integrity has been compromised. But David now sees that ultimately his sin is an insult and injury to God, the God of grace. It is God’s love that has been wounded.
A person has taken a major step on his way back when he takes the attitude that God’s forgiveness is reckoned by his grace and mercy, and that sin is against God first of all.
Unfortunately, our concept of the holiness of God has eroded. If you did something big time that harmed other people, and you had the option to confess it to the people you harmed or confess it to God, which would you choose? Easy. Confess it to God; then nobody else knows. If you understood who God is, you wouldn’t feel that way.
When David confessed, something great happened. Let me hold this hope out for everyone. As far as sin goes, David did the biggies: adultery, murder, cover-up. There’s not much you could do worse than these. Yet David took the route back. His conviction prompted a confrontation, which brought a confession out of him. Now we’re going to see the cleansing happen in his life.
Cleansing
The same intensity of words that David uses about his sin he now uses to describe forgiveness. In Psalm 51:1, he asks God to blot out his transgressions. That’s like taking a black marker and wiping out a whole sentence. In verse 2 he asks God to wash him from his ini-quity and cleanse him from his sin. He sees his sin as a stain on his soul. The word “cleanse” he uses in verse 2 is a technical term for cleansing a leper. That’s as if he said, “God, take away the leprosy of my soul.” In verse 7 he prays to be purged with hyssop. That was an Old Testament ritual that the law required after contact with a dead body. It was like David said, “God, I’ve had contact with a dead body. I’m the cause of that death.” I believe he was talking about Uriah. When David says,” Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me and I shall be whiter than snow,” the word for clean means “unsinned.” It’s like saying, “God, unsin me.”
The Joy of Forgiveness
No wonder David said, in Psalm 32:1, that the man who goes through this process is blessed and happy. If you’ve been forgiven, you know what David means. His prayer was answered; God restored the joy of his salvation.
The great news of the gospel is that we have a forgiving God. When we come to him, open our hearts, and tell Him what’s happened, God does hear us and forgive us. He’s just waiting for you to come and ask him. God puts confessed sins behind his back as far as the east is from the west. He buries them in the deepest sea.
God forgets what He forgives. Yet there’s a postscript: the Lord won’t erase history. Some consequences may be set in motion while we are out of fellowship with God, and we must reap what we sow. Even when we have been restored to fellowship through the forgiveness process, sometimes we have to “pay the piper.”
In the Catherine Powers case, a policeman lost his life, his wife lost her husband, his children lost their father. Catherine’s husband and son lost her to prison.
David gave back fourfold, like he said the man in Nathan’s story must do. Bathsheba’s child died. David’s daughter, Tamar, was raped by his son, Amnon. Another son, Absalom, retaliated and killed Amnon. Then Absalom started a rebellion and forced David out of the kingdom. Later you see Absalom hanging by his hair from a tree, and he’s dead. There are consequences.
It is impossible to get away with sin. You can’t do it. Numbers 32:23 says it this way: “Be sure your sin will find you out.” Just as surely as you can’t get away with sin, you can’t get away from God’s love. No matter how bad what you may have done is, God loves you. The reason you have that hurt in your heart right now is because you’re God’s and He doesn’t want you out of fellowship with Him. To have it back the way it should be, you’ve got to come clean. David’s given you the plan. You can even borrow his prayer if you like. Whatever you do, don’t go on living unforgiven. God waits for you with wide open arms, and He will accept you back if you’ll come.
APPLICATION
1. What does 1 John 1:8 reveal about people who say they don’t sin?
2. What does John 8:34 say about people who sin?
What do you think he means?
3. Are you hiding from the Lord? Read Jeremiah 23:24. What does Luke 8:17 say about hidden and secret sins?
4. If you feel that the Lord is rebuking and chastening you, what does Revelation 3:19 say this means?
5. According to 2 Corinthians 7:10, what are the different results of godly sorrow and worldly sorrow?
Godly sorrow produces …
Worldly sorrow produces …
6. According to 1 John 1:9 what is God faithful and just to do if we confess our sins?
7. Study Jesus’ parable in Luke 18:10–14. What was the difference in the attitude of the two men?
8. In Matthew 5:7, whom did Jesus say will receive mercy?
9. Praise God’s mercy as you read Psalm 103 and answer these questions.
Vs. 3: Which iniquities does He forgive?
Vs. 4: From what does He redeem your life?
Vs. 4: With what does He crown you?
Vs. 11: As the heavens are high above the earth, so great is His mercy toward whom?
Vs. 12: How far does God remove our transgressions from us?
Vs. 17: How long does God extend His mercy to those who fear Him?
10. What does 1 John 2:12 reveal is the reason our sins are forgiven?
What does 1 John 1:7 say cleanses us from all sin?
11. What does Luke 15:10 say about when you repent?
DID YOU KNOW?
The New Testament quotes the Book of Psalms more than any other book of the Bible. Christ used the psalms many times in His teachings. See if you can find references to the Psalms in the Sermon on the Mount, the Last Supper, and the cleansing of the temple. After Christ ascended, the Psalms continued to be an important part of Christian life and the primitive Church, often being sung as a regular part of worship.
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