“Have Mercy on Me, O God!”
Psalm 51:1-13 (Ash Wednesday)
2/25/09
With Ash Wednesday we enter into the Lenten season
in the Church year. But unlike any other season (such as Advent,
Christmas, or Epiphany, which we enter into with joy), we enter into
this season with words of a curse spoken over us: “Dust you
are, and to dust you shall return.” Far from being any good
news, these words are a sentence of death from God Himself, spoken to
us on account of our sins. The black marks of ashes upon our
foreheads remind us of this. They remind us that we bear a mark
that is much worse than any made by ashes. We are marked with
sin, a stain that is much blacker and much harder for us to cleanse
than the simple stain of ashes. The stain of sin is, in fact,
impossible for us to cleanse ourselves, though we often try. Some
of our home remedies for getting out this stain include attempts at
living a good life, being nice to others, going to church often, and
generally trying to obey the ten commandments. But none of these
remedies help; they just end up revealing that we are worse sinners
than we thought we were, as we try to justify ourselves rather than
rely on Jesus and His righteousness alone.
No, we are marked men and women, sitting here with
the sentence of death hanging over our heads, powerless to do anything
about it ourselves. Were you to die right now, these would be the
last words that you would hear. It’s these kinds of words
that King David himself heard from the prophet Nathan after David had
committed both adultery and murder. David had thought that since
nobody else was aware of his sin that God, too, was ignorant of
it. But God sent Nathan to confront David with his sin by telling
David a story. It was a story about two men - one rich and one
poor. The rich man had all kinds of flocks and herds, but the
poor man had only one lamb which he loved like a daughter. One
day a traveler came to be a guest at the rich man’s house, but
instead of taking an animal from his own flocks, the rich man took the
poor man’s lamb, slaughtered it and fed it to the traveler who
had come to him. Hearing this story, David was furious. He
said, “As the LORD lives, the man who has done this deserves to
die, and he shall restore the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing,
and because he had no pity.” But Nathan responded,
“You are the man!” David’s sin had not escaped
God’s notice, and what he deserved for that sin was spoken from
his own mouth - death. And that is exactly what God’s Law
demanded.
But David was not put to death. Upon
confessing his sin, David was not given what he deserved. Rather,
Nathan said to him, “The LORD has put away your sin; you shall
not die.” Though David should have been put to death, the
Lord had mercy upon him and spared him, putting David’s son to
death in his place.
All this is the background and occasion for Psalm
51. It is a psalm that David wrote as a man who recognized that
he was a sinner with the sentence of death written over him and that he
could do nothing to save himself from that penalty. All he could
do was plead to God to be merciful to him and spare his life, which is
just what God did.
He begins his prayer with the words, “Have
mercy on me, O God!” David knows he has no right to this
mercy. God would be righteous and just if He did put him to
death. But David appeals to God’s steadfast love and His
abundant mercy, and asks for the sake of these that God blot out his
transgressions, never to recall them to mind again. He asks the
Lord to wash him thoroughly from his iniquity and to cleanse him from
his sin. In those days the priests were ceremonially cleansed as
they washed in water before entering into the tabernacle.
Garments, too, were washed to remove stains. David wants such a
washing for himself, that the stain of sin might be removed from
him. David confesses that he knows his transgressions and that
his sin is ever before him. He also confesses that it was against
the Lord alone that he sinned and had done what was evil in His
sight. This might sound a little odd to us, given the fact that
David had sinned against Bathsheba by committing adultery with her and
that he had sinned again her husband by having him put to death.
But David realizes that ultimately all sin is against God, because it
is contrary to His commandments. And for this sin and evil which
David committed, God is just in declaring David a sinner worthy of
death.
But David goes even further than this and says that
he was brought forth in iniquity and that his mother conceived him in
sin. David did not suddenly become a sinner when he committed
adultery and murder; he committed adultery and murder because he was a
sinner conceived and born in sin from his mother’s womb.
What God wants is truth in the inward being and wisdom in the secret
heart. But as a sinner, David doesn’t have these things by
nature. Though the Law is written on David’s heart, just as
it is written on the hearts of all people, as a sinner David closes his
ears to the Law and acts according to his lusts. David must be
changed, in order to walk according to God’s truth and
wisdom. So he returns to the theme of cleansing. He prays,
“Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall
be whiter than snow.” In the O.T. hyssop was used to
sprinkle the blood of the animal sacrifices both upon people and things
in order to purify them and make them holy. It is no coincidence,
then, that a hyssop branch was used as the cross of Jesus, whose blood
cleanses us from all sin.
With his cleansing David asks that he might hear joy
and gladness and that his bones, which the Lord had broken with His
sentence of death, might rejoice. A guilty and terrified
conscience takes away joy and gladness. There can be no rejoicing
while the sentence of death hangs over us. So David prays that
God hide His face from his sins and blot out his iniquities.
David can’t remove the stain of his sins himself, but the Lord
can. “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right
spirit within me,” he prays. A sinner’s heart by
nature is not clean, and his spirit is perverse. He must be given
a new heart and a new nature, one which loves God and wants to walk in
His ways, in order to bring glory to His Name. David knows that
on account of his sins he does not deserve to stand in God’s
presence and that the Lord would be justified in taking His Holy Spirit
away from him. But he prays that this not be the case.
Instead, he asks the Lord to restore to him the joy of His salvation
and to uphold him with a willing spirit. When the Lord does this
for David, it will result in teaching other sinners His ways, so that
they too might return to Him in repentance and faith.
And the good news for David is that he was given
everything he prayed for. According to His steadfast love and His
abundant mercy God did blot out David’s transgressions, and He
did cleanse him of his iniquity. He did not cast David away from
His presence and He did not take His Holy Spirit from him, but did
restore to David the joy of His salvation and upheld him with a willing
spirit. But all of this again came at the cost of David’s
son. David’s son died in David’s place, so that David
might live.
This was partially fulfilled when the child that
David had begotten with Bathsheba in this adulterous affair died.
But it was more perfectly fulfilled when the Son of David, Jesus
Christ, came to die not only for David’s sins, but for the sins
of the whole world - for your sins and my sins. David’s
psalm, then, becomes your psalm and my psalm. Tonight with the
imposition of ashes we are reminded that we are just like David, guilty
not only of the sins of adultery and murder, but of all sins, whether
we’ve committed them in deed or just in our own hearts and
minds. Like David we must confess that our sin is always before
us, that we’ve sinned against God alone, and that we’ve
done what is evil in His sight. He’s just and right in
condemning us and sentencing us to death. We’ve been
sinners from our conception, ignorant of the Truth, ignorant of the
Lord’s wisdom and His Word, repressing the knowledge of His Law
that we have written in our hearts.
But for the sake of David’s Son, God’s
Son, Jesus Christ and the abundant steadfast love and mercy that are
found in Him we ask that God blot out our transgressions. There
is nothing we can do for ourselves. You and I cannot remove the
stain of our sin. And so we ask that He wash and cleanse us,
which He does for us through our Baptism. There, as when the
hyssop branch was used in the O.T. to sprinkle the blood of the
sacrifices upon the people to make them holy, you and I are sprinkled
with the blood of the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the
world. This sprinkling is applied to you daily as the Lord
continues to work through your Baptism. The stain of your sin is
removed. God hides His face from all your sins and blots out all
your iniquities. He speaks words of joy and gladness to you and
heals the bones broken by His Law. He creates in you a clean
heart and renews a right spirit within you, so that you might love Him
and His Word and live according to it. He does not cast you away
from His presence nor take His Holy Spirit from you, but restores to
you the joy of His salvation and upholds you with a willing spirit.
In the place of the sentence of death, you are given
the promise of life, eternal life. “Dust you are, and to
dust you shall return” are not God’s final words to
you. Jesus Christ has the final Word, and that is that He has
redeemed your dust by taking your dust into Himself, offering Himself
as the sacrifice for your sins on the cross. And on the Last Day
He will raise your dust from the grave, just as His dust was raised
from the dead, and you’ll go to live with Him, the Father, and
the Holy Spirit forever in His kingdom of glory.
As you wash off the stain of the ashes this evening
before going to bed, remind yourself that God has washed you with the
blood of His Son in your Baptism and cleansed you far better than
you’ll ever be able to get that stain off of your forehead.
And remember that that stain is also in the form of the cross,
reminding you that the stain of your sin was put upon Jesus, for whose
sake God is merciful towards you and blots out all your
transgressions. The Lord has put away your sin; you shall not
die. Amen.