Create In Me A Pure Heart

             For the director of music. A psalm of David. When the prophet Nathan came to him after David had committed adultery with Bathsheba.

Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions. Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me. Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight; so you are right in your verdict and justified when you judge. Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me. Yet you desired faithfulness even in the womb; you taught me wisdom in that secret place.

Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow. Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones you have crushed rejoice. Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquity. Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me. Then I will teach transgressors your ways, so that sinners will turn back to you.

 Deliver me from the guilt of bloodshed, O God, you who are God my Savior, and my tongue will sing of your righteousness. Open my lips, Lord, and my mouth will declare your praise. You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it; you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings. My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart you, God, will not despise.

May it please you to prosper Zion, to build up the walls of Jerusalem. Then you will delight in the sacrifices of the righteous, in burnt offerings offered whole; then bulls will be offered on your altar. (Psalm 51)

We can’t leave the lament psalms without exploring this one. As the superscription at the top notes, this was the psalm David wrote after he was exposed as an adulterer and murderer. In other lament psalms, we’ve seen other people and God as the cause of lamentation, but in this case, the person singing the song is the one who has done wrong.

                David is clear about the sins he committed. He’s also clear that he was a sinner from the womb. He recognizes that, at least at the time he wrote the psalm, he was his own worst enemy, and perhaps that he had always been so. He also states that the sacrifices aren’t what God is after. An external performance wouldn’t help. What he believes God wants is a broken and contrite heart, which means an internal change.

                Perhaps what I like most about this psalm is that David doesn’t overcome his sin on his own. He doesn’t boast about never sinning again. He also doesn’t go down the “woe is me” path about himself. Yes, he had been a sinner from the womb, but God could cleanse him and then he would be clean. If God forgives him, he can forgive himself and move on.

                This is where I think we make mistakes with laments about ourselves. We might believe that God can forgive us. After all, it’s in His job description. But we sometimes presume that God is the one with the problem and we don’t really need forgiveness for ourselves. He needs to forgive us for to get past His issues. Other times, we presume that God’s forgiveness gets Him past His issues with our sin without doing anything about ours. Those aren’t good Sunday School answers, so we might not voice them, but that doesn’t mean they’re not there. But as we learn about lamentation from the Psalms, and as we pray them, our minds and hearts can change so that we can lament and repent better, and come to trust that we need to be forgiven and that when God has forgiven us, we can be clean.