1. Have mercy upon me, O God. He appeals at once to the mercy of God, even before he
mentions his sin. The sight of mercy is good for eyes that are sore with
penitential weeping. Pardon of sin must ever be an act of pure mercy. According
to thy lovingkindness. Show mercy congruous with grace. What a choice word
is that rare compound of precious things, “lovingkindness.” According unto
the multitude of thy tender mercies. Reveal all the gentlest attributes in
my case. Vast is thy grace; let me be an object of thine infinite mercy. Blot
out my transgressions. Erase the lines. Obliterate the record, though now
it seems engraven in the rock forever. Thou hast a multitude of mercies, and
therefore, I beseech thee, erase my sins.
2. Wash me throughly.
It is not enough to blot out the sin; his person is defiled. He would have God
cleanse him; the washing must be thorough, it must be repeated, and therefore
he cries, “Multiply to wash me.” The hypocrite is content if his garment is
washed, but the true suppliant cries, Wash me. The truly
awakened conscience desires a real and practical washing, and that of a most
complete and efficient kind. Wash me throughly from mine iniquity. It is
viewed as one great pollution, and as all his own. He desires to be rid of the
whole mass of his filthiness. And cleanse me from my sin. Rid me of my
sin by some means, by any means, by every means, only do purify me completely,
and leave no guilt upon my soul. David’s loudest outcries are against the evil
of his transgression, and not against the painful consequences of it. When we
deal seriously with our sin, God will deal gently with us. When we hate what
the Lord hates, he will soon make an end of it, to our joy and peace.
3. For I acknowledge my transgressions. He sees the immense number of his sins, and makes open
declaration of them. My pleading guilty has barred me from any appeal against
the sentence of justice: O Lord, I must cast myself on thy mercy. Thou hast
made me willing to confess. O follow up this work of grace with a full and free
remission! And my sin is ever before me. My sin as a whole is never out
of my mind. Lord, put it away both from thee and me. To an awakened conscience,
pain on account of sin is intense and permanent; this is a sure preface of
divine favor.
4. Against thee, thee only have I sinned. The virus of sin lies in its opposition to God. And done
this evil in thy sight. David felt that his sin was committed in all its
filthiness while Jehovah himself looked on. None but a child of God cares for
the eye of God, but where there is grace in the soul it reflects a fearful
guilt upon every evil act, when we remember that the God whom we offend was
present when the trespass was committed. That thou mightest be justified
when thou speakest, and be dear when thou judgest. He could not present any
argument against divine justice, if it proceeded at once to condemn him and
punish him for his crime. His own confession, and the judge’s own witness of
the whole transaction, placed the transgression beyond all question or debate.
5. Behold, I was shapen in iniquity. He is thunderstruck at the discovery of his inbred sin, and
proceeds to set it forth. This was not intended to justify himself, but it
rather meant to complete the confession. It is as if he said, not only have I
sinned this once, but I am in my very nature a sinner. And in sin did my
mother conceive me. He goes back to the earliest moment of his being, not
to traduce his mother, but to acknowledge the deep tap-roots of his sin. It is
a wicked wresting of Scripture to deny that original sin and natural depravity
are here taught. David’s mother was the Lord’s handmaid, he was born in chaste
wedlock, of a good father, and yet his nature was as fallen as that of any
other son of Adam, and there only needed the occasion for the manifesting of
that sad fact. In our shaping we were put out of shape, and when we were
conceived our nature conceived sin.
6. Behold.
God desires not merely outward virtue, but inward purity, and the penitent’s
sense of sin is greatly deepened as with astonishment he discovers this truth,
and how far he is from satisfying the divine demand. The second Behold
is fitly set over against the first; how great the gulf which yawns between
them! Thou desirest truth in the inward parts. Reality, sincerity, true
holiness, heart fidelity, these are the demands of God. He cares not for the
pretense of purity; he looks to the mind, heart, and soul. He rightly judges
that the essential character of an action lies in the motive. And in the
hidden pert thou shalt make me to know wisdom. The penitent feels that God
is teaching him truth concerning his nature, which he had not before perceived.
The love of the heart, the mystery of its fall, and the way of its
purification—this hidden wisdom we must all attain; and it is a great blessing
to be able to believe that the Lord will “make us to know it.” No one can
teach our innermost nature but the Lord, but he can instruct us to profit. The
Holy Spirit can put the fear of the Lord within; he can reveal Christ in us,
and he is essential wisdom.
7. Purge me with hyssop.
Sprinkle the atoning blood upon me with the appointed means. Give me the
reality which legal ceremonies symbolize. Nothing but blood can take away my
bloodstains; nothing but the strongest purification can avail to cleanse me.
The passage may be read as the voice of faith as well as a prayer: “Thou wilt
purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean.” There is such power in the
divine propitiation that my sin will vanish quite away. I shall be admitted
again into the assembly of thy people, while in thy sight also, through Jesus
my Lord, I shall be accepted. Wash me. Let it not merely be in type that
I am clean, but by a real spiritual purification which removes the pollution of
my nature. And I shall be whiter than snow. Snow soon gathers smoke and
dust, it melts and disappears; thou canst give me an enduring purity.
8. Make me to hear joy and gladness. His ear has become heavy with sinning. No voice could
revive his dead joys but that which brings the dead to life. Pardon from God
would give him double joy—joy and gladness. Some joy is felt but not
heard, for it contends with fears; but the joy of pardon has a voice louder
than the voice of sin. That the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice.
He was like a poor wretch whose bones were crushed by omnipotence itself. He
groaned under no mere flesh wounds; his firmest and yet tenderest powers were
“broken in pieces all asunder.” Yet if he who crushed would cure, every wound
would become a new mouth for song, every bone quivering before with agony would
sense intense delight. He seeks joy for a sinful heart. Preposterous but for
the cross where Jesus bore our sins in his own body. If when prodigals return
the father is glad, what need can there be that the restored one himself should
be wretched?
9. Hide thy face from my sins. Be at pains not to see them, lest if thou consider them
chine anger burn and I die. Blot out all mine iniquities. He repeats the
prayer of the first verse with the enlargement of it by the word all. David’s
face was ashamed with looking on his sin, and no diverting thoughts could
remove it from his memory; but he prays the Lord to do with his sin what he
himself cannot. If God hide not his face from our sin, he must hide it forever
from us; and if he blot not out our sins, he must blot our names out of his
book of life.
10. Create.
Has sin so destroyed us that the Creator must be called in again? What ruin
evil works among mankind! Create in me. I, in my outward fabric, still
exist; but I am empty, desert, void. Come, then, and let thy power be seen in a
new creation within my old fallen self. A clean heart. In verse 7 he
asked to be clean; now he seeks a heart suitable to that cleanliness; but he
does not say, “Make my old heart cleans”; he is too experienced in the
hopelessness of the old nature. He would have the old man buried as a dead
thing, and a new creation brought in to fill its place. None but God can create
either a new heart or a new earth. The work in us as much as that for us is
wholly of Omnipotence. The affections must be rectified first, or all our
nature will go amiss. Renew a right spirit within me. It was there once,
Lord, put it there again. Remove the evil as I have intreated thee; but replace
it with good, lest into my swept, empty heart from which the devil has gone for
a while seven other spirits more wicked than the first should enter and dwell.
11. Cast me not away from thy presence. Throw me not away as worthless; banish me not, like Cain,
from thy face and favor. Permit me to sit among those who share flay love. I
deserve to be forever denied admission to thy courts, but permit me still the
privilege which is dear as life itself to me. Take not thy Holy Spirit from
me. Withdraw not his comforts, counsels, assistances, quickenings, else I
am indeed as a dead man. Keep up the union between us which is my only hope of
salvation.
12. Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation. He had known salvation as the Lord’s own; he had felt also
the joy which arises from being saved in the Lord, but he had lost it for
awhile and therefore he longed for its restoration. None but God can give back this
joy; he can do it; we may ask it; he will do it for his own glory and our
benefit. This joy comes not first, but follows pardon and purity. And uphold
me with thy free Spirit. That Spirit is able to make us walk in all the
uprightness of holiness; and he will do so if we seek his gracious upholding.
Holiness is liberty, and the Holy Spirit is a free Spirit. In the roughest and
most treacherous ways we are safe with such a keeper; in the best paths we
stumble if left to ourselves. The praying for joy and upholding go well
together; it is all over with joy if the foot is not kept; and, on the other
hand, joy is a very upholding thing, and greatly aids holiness.
13. Then will I teach transgressors thy ways. It was his fixed resolve to be a teacher of others; and
assuredly none instruct others so well as those who have experienced the
teaching of God themselves. Their matter will be good, and their manner will be
telling, for they will speak sympathetically. If unworthy to edify saints, the
psalmist would creep in along with the sinners, and humbly tell them of divine
love. The mercy of God to one is an illustration of his usual procedure, so
that our own case helps us to understand his ways, or his general modes
of action; perhaps, too, David under that term refers to the preceptive part of
the word of God, which many have broken, and suffered thereby, and which he
could urge upon other offenders. And sinners shall be converted unto thee.
My fall will be the restoration of others. Thou wilt bless my testimony to the
recovery of many who, like myself, have turned aside unto crooked ways.
14. Deliver me from bloodguiltiness. He had been the means of the death of Uriah, and he now
confesses that fact. Besides, his sin of adultery was a capital offense, and he
put himself down as one worthy to die. Honest penitents do not fetch a compass
and confess their sins in an elegant periphrasis, but they come to the point,
call a spade a spade and make a clean breast of all. O God, thou God of my
salvation. He had not ventured to come so near before. It had been O God
up till now, but here he cries Thou God of my salvation. Faith grows by
the exercise of prayer. He confesses sin more plainly in this verse than
before, and yet he deals with God more confidently. None but the King can remit
the death penalty; it is therefore a joy to faith that God is King, and that he
is the author and finisher of our salvation. And my tongue shall sing aloud
of thy righteousness. David can see the divine way of justification, that
righteousness of God which Paul afterwards spoke of by which the ungodly are
justified, and he vows to sing lustily of that righteous way of mercy. It is
the righteousness of divine mercy which is its greatest wonder. David would
preach, and now he will sing. If we could be preacher, head, doorkeeper,
pew-opener, foot-washer and all in one, all would be too little to show our
gratitude. We shall not sing our own praises if we are saved, but our theme
will be the Lord our righteousness, in whose merits we stand righteously
accepted.
15. O Lord, open thou my lips. He fears to speak till the Lord unstops his shame-silenced
mouth. This prayer of a penitent is a golden petition for a preacher. But it
may stand for anyone whose shame for sin makes him stammer in his prayers, and
when it is fully answered the tongue of the dumb begins to sing. And my
mouth shall show forth thy praise. When vanity, anger, falsehood or lust
unbar the door, the foulest villainies troop out; but if the Holy Spirit opens
the gate, then grace, mercy, peace, and all the graces come forth like the
daughters of Israel when they met David returning with the Philistine’s head.
16. For thou desirest not sacrifice. This was the subject of the previous psalm. The psalmist
saw far beyond the symbolic ritual; his eye of faith gazed with delight upon
the actual atonement. Else would I give it. Anything which the Lord
prescribed he would cheerfully have rendered. We are ready to give up all we
have if we may but be cleared of our sins; and when sin is pardoned our joyful
gratitude is prepared for any sacrifice. Thou delightest not in burnt
offering. He knew that no form of burnt sacrifice was a satisfactory
propitiation. His deep soul-need made him look from the external rite to the
inward grace.
17. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit. When the heart mourns for sin, thou art better pleased than
when the bullock bleeds beneath the axe. A broken heart is an expression
implying deep sorrow, embittering the very life; it carries in it the idea of
all but killing anguish in that region which is so vital as to be the very
source of life. So excellent is a spirit humbled and mourning for sin, that it
is not only a sacrifice, but it has a plurality of excellences, and is
preeminently God’s sacrifices. A broken and a contrite heart, O God,
thou wilt not despise. A heart crushed is a fragrant heart. Men condemn
those who are contemptible in their own eyes, but the Lord does not see as man
sees. He despises what men esteem, and values that which they despise. Never yet
has God spurned a lowly, weeping penitent, and never will he while God is love,
and while Jesus is called the man who receives sinners.
18. Do good in thy good pleasure unto Zion. Zion was David’s favorite spot, whereon he had hoped to
erect a temple. He felt he had hindered the project honoring the Lord there as
he desired, but he prayed God still to let the place of his ark be glorious,
and to establish his worship and his worshiping people. Build thou the walls
of Jerusalem. This had been one of David’s schemes, to wall in the holy
city, and he desires to see it completed; but we believe he had a more
spiritual meaning, and prayed for the prosperity of the Lord’s cause and
people. He had done mischief by his sin, and had as it were polluted down her walls;
he therefore implores the Lord to undo the evil and establish his church. God
can make his cause prosper, and in answer to prayer he will do so. Without his
building we labor in vain.
19. In those
days of joyful prosperity thy saints will present in great abundance the
richest and holiest thank offerings to thee, and thou shalt be pleased to
accept them. A saved soul expects to see its prayers answered in a revived
church, and then is assured that God will be greatly glorified. Though we bring
no more sacrifices for sin, yet as priests unto God our solemn praises are
thank offerings acceptable to God by Jesus Christ. We present him with our best
possessions—our bullocks. In this present time we are able to fulfill the
declaration of this verse; we also, forecasting the future, wait for days of
the divine presence, when the church of God with unspeakable joy will offer
gifts on the altar of God, which will far eclipse anything beheld in these less
enthusiastic days.
Excerpt from:
The Treasury of David
By Charles H Spurgeon
