Monday Club Sermons Psalm 51:1-19 Have mercy on me, O God, according to your loving kindness… 1. The true penitent sees sin as against God. 2. The penitent sees in his sin a corruption of nature. "Behold, I was shapen in iniquity." 3. The penitent acknowledges that all his religous acts are a mockery of God. "Thou desirest not sacrifice .... Thou delightest not in burnt offering." If religious acts, offerings, prayers, labours, penances, could cover sin, how gladly would he bring them! We have made clean the outside. God desireth truth in the inward parts. 4. The penitent sees that sin deprives him of joy, and thus of spiritual power. 5. The penitent sees his sin as destructive to the Church. To the opened eyes of David his sin had, as it were, thrown down the walls of Zion. "Build thou," he prays, "the walls of Jerusalem!" Every backslider's sin has this destroying power. 6. The true penitent offers no extenuation for sin. Beware of palliations. They may exist. Let others find them. Let God allow for them if He will. But in the penitent they always indicate that the work in him has not been thorough. 7. The penitent sees that the evil of sin is its sinfulness. He felt himself, by his sin, separated from God. 8. The penitent sees that public sin demands a full and public confession. Perhaps there are sins in our lives, which in our confessions we have slighted. They were known to others; they had publicity. And men who knew us said, "If he ever repents he will confess that sin. That shall be the test with us of the genuineness of his repentance." But we did not confess. We tried. Often it troubles us. 9. The true penitent justifies God in His judgment upon sin. 10. The penitent acknowledges that sin requires a great remedy. He needed inward cleansing. " Purge me with hyssop " refers to the Levitical sacrifice which prefigured the atonement. Only when we make sin great do we give the sacrifice of Christ its due honour. (Monday Club Sermons.) Parallel Verses KJV: {To the chief Musician, A Psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet came unto him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba.} Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness: according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions. |
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