What Happens When You Receive Grace? (Psalm 51:13-19)
GIST: Experiencing restoration and grace should lead to instruction, worship, perspective, and community concern.
This morning, we’re returning to Psalm 51. Like I said last week, the depths of this psalm are so rich, I feel—even in two services—we’re barely scratching the surface. It’s worth coming back to again and again and again. Last week, we started by setting the stage. I won’t rehash all of that today, but just as a reminder, this psalm was written after David was confronted by the prophet Nathan for sleeping with Bathsheba—the wife of Uriah—and trying to cover that up by having Uriah killed in battle. The first part of this psalm builds a picture of both David’s brokenness and his understanding of God. In fact, our gist last week was→Knowing the depths of your brokenness and the depths of God’s love and power will properly direct your desires. He knew he’d screw up massively. He knew he needed the grace, forgiveness, and complete heart-transformation only God can provide. So he called out for this. Aware of his sin, aware of God’s goodness, he wanted to be with Him.
Specifically, he asked God to: “9 Hide Your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities. 10 Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. 11 Cast me not away from Your presence, and take not Your Holy Spirit from me. 12 Restore to me the joy of Your salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit.” We talked about this as a beautiful picture of the gospel. Today, we’re going to pick up where David left off. ‘God, draw me near→
“13 Then I will teach transgressors Your ways, and sinners will return to You. 14 Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God, O God of my salvation, and my tongue will sing aloud of Your righteousness. 15 O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare Your praise. 16 For You will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it; You will not be pleased with a burnt offering. 17 The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, You will not despise. 18 Do good to Zion in Your good pleasure; build up the walls of Jerusalem; 19 then will You delight in right sacrifices, in burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings; then bulls will be offered on Your altar.”
What we’re coming to today is this wonderful “then”, so the guiding question for today was: What happens when you receive grace? Here’s our gist: Experiencing restoration and grace should lead to instruction, worship, perspective, and community concern. And, yes, I know several of those will take some explaining ☺️, so let’s dive in!
I. Instruction
“13 Then I will teach transgressors Your ways, and sinners will return to You.”
Experiencing the restoration and grace only Jesus can provide should come with a desire to share that with others. You guys know I’m passionate about teaching, so I could probably stretch this out for a while, but the big picture is that this verse points to both the importance and power of instruction and example. I have three observations here to try to keep me under control ☺️.
1. Teaching His way is important. I don’t want to skim past the content of what’s being taught here. David isn’t moved to just teach. He’s moved to teach people stuck in sin God’s way. He’s pointing them away from destruction and toward hope and salvation. This is so key. Yes, this is my “read your Bibles” moment ☺️, but really, it’s so vital. David isn’t coming out of this experience with a new self-help book. He’s coming out of it with a renewed value of God and His ways. We are broken people living in a broken world. We don’t need more motivational speeches. We need Jesus. We need His ways and His direction. We need to know His word and spend time talking about it and wrestling with it together. I love being able to walk verse-by-verse through God’s word with you guys every week. This is one of the greatest joys of my life. Over the past several months, I’ve also loved being able to do that in the new Sunday School class we started, and it’s been awesome to do that with you guys in the park Bible studies this summer, as well.
David knows being in God’s word brings the joy and hope he needs. That’s true for all of us. When people start digging into God’s word, it grabs ahold of them and changes everything. I’ve watched people get hungry for His word. Their eyes are alive and on fire. That’s what the world needs, and we should want to share it with them. Teaching His way is important.
2. So is showing what He’s done in your life. Why should David, this man who has sinned so terribly, ever teach others about Jesus? Because he has witnessed first-hand the power of God’s work in his life. Your story is part of His plan. It’s so exciting for me to see God working in each of your lives because you each bring unique experiences. What you have gone through, the struggles you’ve had, the obstacles God has pulled you through, those are a vital part of your witness. God wants to use you and has put you in specific places for specific reasons. You might not feel like you have anything to offer, but you do. What God is doing in your life is worth sharing.
3. God uses these to change lives. Notice that David says he’ll teach transgressors God’s ways, and sinners will return to Him. God’s word does not return to Him void but accomplishes exactly what He purposes for it to accomplish. It’s amazing. He takes broken people and uses them to point other broken people to salvation!
So, when we experience restoration and grace, we’ll want to share it. We’ll also want to→
II. Worship
“14 Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God, O God of my salvation, and my tongue will sing aloud of Your righteousness. 15 O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare Your praise.”
The first part of verse 14 is a sort of restatement of that “then”. David was 100% guilty of bloodshed. Only the work of Jesus Christ could do anything about that. He knew he needed forgiveness. The result of that forgiveness is praise. There are two statements used here, but the heart behind them is pretty similar.
Sing Aloud & Declare Your Praise. Both are the result of God’s movement. God delivers and opens the lips. We praise openly. That’s the idea here. We’re not ashamed. This isn’t closeted worship. We’re not members of a secret society. We are sinners saved by amazing grace, and we will joyously recount all He’s done and who He is.
But that’s not our default mode. Our default mode is to protect ourselves from ridicule. I get it guys. I live in the same world you do. It’s so much easier to just go with the flow or to stay under the radar. And really, I’m not saying you need to go around just upsetting apple carts willy-nilly. The focus here is on telling people about the love and rescue of Jesus and praising the One who saved your soul. Those realities might sometimes ruffle feathers, but that’s not why you do it. Like I’ve said before, we’re not called to be jerks for Jesus; we’re called to be His children. And we have an awesome Heavenly Father. If we’re ashamed of Him, we’re missing out on who He is—maybe we’ve never really come to know Him, or maybe we’re letting the lies of this world blind us from His truth. Either way, our perspective is wrong.
Which actually segues nicely into the next point ☺️. Encounters with grace will lead to instruction, worship, and→
III. Perspective
“16 For You will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it; You will not be pleased with a burnt offering. 17 The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, You will not despise.”
I feel like I kind of forced these last two into my list a bit this week ☺️, so I get that I need to explain them more (sorry!). Last week, we talked about how the right view of our needs and God’s character will positively impact our desires. The same can be said about our perspective. What we have here is a because statement. David will teach and worship because he understands the heart of God. He says God doesn’t desire empty offerings. If it was just about giving God “stuff”, David is clear—he’d do that! However, he knows it’s not about that. God doesn’t want stuff from us; He wants us. A broken and contrite heart is a heart that realizes its need, a heart seeking God, a heart coming to the feet of Jesus. That kind of heart, will not be turned away. Meaningless motions will.
We need that perspective, and grace gives it! It’s not about us. It’s all about Him. That change leads to the desire to share, and the longing to worship. It also leads to→
IV. Community Concern
“18 Do good to Zion in Your good pleasure; build up the walls of Jerusalem; 19 then will You delight in right sacrifices, in burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings; then bulls will be offered on Your altar.”
Last week when we were talking about David saying his sin was only against God, we address that this wasn’t David somehow ignoring the impacts his sin had had on others. Instead, he was just emphasizing the universal core of sin—rejecting God. David is actually very much aware of the impact his sin had on others. In fact, he is concerned for the community as a whole. I think this is something we see in Scripture so often that is largely lost on our me-centric society. Even in Christian circles, we tend to talk more about the personal aspects of Christian living, but ignore the community side of things. If they do get brought up, I think they’re often seen as a ploy by pastors to just guilt people into coming to church.
But it’s not about obligatory acts of service. It’s about being part of the body of Christ. It’s about being part of His people, His family. Community is important, and sin jacks it up—especially when the community leader is at the root of it. David gets this, and he’s burdened for the people of God. He asks God to do good to Zion and build up the walls of Jerusalem. It’s this picture of providing for and protecting His people. Then, and only then, will the offerings be right sacrifices. Remember, God doesn’t want empty rituals, but a community of people turning their hearts to the God of their salvation… that’s, well, Heaven.
Ok, let’s hit some→
TAKEAWAYS
And let me just clarify. This isn’t a list of commands designed to make you feel bad about yourself, or a checklist for saving yourself. These are heart changes God makes in our lives, and we should desire them.
Share God’s word and what He’s done in your life. It makes all the difference. On that same note→
Pray for a hunger to keep learning at His feet. Everything in our sin natures and in this world will fight against this, but we need the foundation that only comes from being saturated in God’s word.
Worship without shame. This could be a whole sermon in itself I’m sure. There are probably things, as Baptists, we could learn about freedom in worship. I’ve watched people my entire life look over their shoulders when they feel the urge to raise their hands in praise. I’m not trying to imply raised hands are a better worship than lowered hands. The point is we’re even restricted sometimes in the places we should feel most comfortable praising. What about at work or school or on the highway? Is our love for Jesus on full display wherever we go? That’s public praise.
Offer the sacrifice of self. Come to Jesus with a heart that remembers its need and truly wants to be with Him.
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