Psalm 51:4:  “Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done [this] evil in thy sight: that thou mightest be justified when thou speakest, [and] be clear when thou judgest.”

There is no guessing as to who or what this Psalm is addressing.  We are told right in verse two that this Psalm speaks of that moment when Nathan the prophet came to David and declared his sin of adultery and murder.

This is an amazing story of a man of God, a man after God’s own heart who, in a weak moment, commits adultery with a woman and makes her pregnant.  Then to cover up this sin he has her husband murdered, he then marries the widow to make the whole thing legitimate.  Nathan the prophet in II Samuel 12 comes before David and tells him of a problem in the kingdom and ask for his ruling on what should be done to this man who committed a possible crime.  Nathan tells the story of a poor man who had one little ewe lamb that the owner and his family loved and treated as a pet. Then there was this rich man who had many flocks of sheep who had a visitor come and instead of taking from his many flocks of sheep, he takes this poor man’s one little ewe lamb, this family’s pet and slaughters it for his guest.  Nathan asks if anything should be done.  Actually, in II Samuel  12:6 we learn that David says the man should be punished because he showed this poor man no pity.  The word pity is chamal which is really a word that is used when one is indebted to another man and the debtor shows mercy and holds back his demand for payment.  This would  suggest that this rich man was merely seeking a repayment of the debt.  Yet in David’s mind this rich man was showing no mercy on this poor man. Having no pity and demanding repayment of this debt was tantamount to stealing as David declares he should repay fourfold.  Exodus 22:1 establishes that if a man steals another man’s sheep he is to repay that man with four sheep.

If David knew the law well enough to know that the payment for stealing another man’s sheep was a fourfold return, he obviously understood the law of adultery and murder.  We do not know what was going through David’s mind when he committed these sins but he obviously somehow justified it in his own mind.

It is interesting in verse eleven of Psalms 51 David says, “Cast me not away from thy presence; and take not thy holy spirit from me.” The word cast me is tashelikani which is in a Hiphal future tense form. The Hiphal shows a causative action. God had not yet cast him away yet. David is literally saying, “Do not let this sin cause me to be cast away from you.”  Even more curious is that he is saying, “take not you Holy Spirit from me.”   The word take is laqach which means to snatch away, quickly remove. Yet, this is also in a future or imperfect tense.  The Holy Spirit has not yet left David.

You would think that after committing adultery and murder surely the presence of God would leave and the power of the Holy Spirit would depart from him. Yet, it has not.  I remember when I was a camp director for a Christian camp for inner city children.  One of our counselors came into the staff house all excited.  She had just led one of her campers to the Lord. She commented, “I can’t believe God used me to do this.”  I asked why it was so hard to believe and she said, “I thought you had to spend hours in prayer and live a good pure life before God would use you.”  I felt like saying, but resisted, “Honey child, if God had to wait until we lived a perfect life before he could use us, He would not get anything done for His kingdom. He will make the rocks cry out.”  I have seen ministers prophesy, lay hands on the sick and watched them be healed and exercise other manifestations of the Holy Spirit and yet I knew for a fact they were living in sin and adultery.  We often make the mistake of sinning and just ignoring it and feeling it was justified because we still feel the presence of God and move in the power of the Holy Spirit. We begin to think that maybe we are getting away with the sin or it might not have been sin at all since surely God would not use to lead another person to the Lord if we had truly sinned.  If Psalms 51 teaches us anything, it should teach us that God does not abandon us and remove His Spirit from us when we sin.  We best not use that as a test or justification for whether we have sin in our lives or not.  God just might send a Nathan to us to totally humiliate us.  Numbers 32:23, “Be sure your sins will find you out.”

Let’s jump back to II Samuel 12 for  a moment.  Look at verse 13:  “And David said unto Nathan, I have sinned against the LORD. And Nathan said unto David, The LORD also hath put away thy sin; thou shalt not die.”  Note that the word for put away is the word he’ebir which means to put away or to pass over.  This is in a Hiphal perfect form it is in a past tense. Before David even asked God to forgive him, God already forgave Him. The work of the cross even reached back in time to redeem David. God doesn’t live in time so why could not the work of the cross be available for David?  Don’t answer that, that is a theological question and I am no theologian, so I will not go there.

What I do want to stress is this.  If David’s sin was already forgiven, it did not remove him from the presence of God nor did it remove the Spirit of God from him, then what is he belly aching about?  The answer lies in verse 4 “Against thee and thee only I have sinned.”  Adultery and murder is a sin against a person. Obviously killing the woman’s husband was as sin against him and her.  Covering up the sin was a sin against the nation, yet David is saying that it is only to God that he sinned.  David knew he had broken God’s heart when he sinned.

You see David was a man after God’s own heart.  That means he knew and understood the heart of God.  Even though he still felt the presence of God, the power of His Spirit and was forgiven, he was still grieved because he broke the heart of the God he loved.  We are afraid to tell people that they can sin all they want and God will forgive.  They can go out and commit adultery and murder and God will forgive them. We are afraid because that would give people the license to sin so we qualify it by saying that we may cross a line where God may not forgive us so that the person doesn’t get the idea that they can have their cake and eat it too.  Yet to qualify that forgiveness is not Biblical. God will forgive you if you keep committing the same sin over and over.  Matthew 18:22 tells us that we should forgive a person even if they sin seven times seventy in one day. That is just a Hebraic expression to mean, you must always forgive.  If God expects that from us, should we expect less from Him?

King Saul committed the sin of offering a sacrifice to God himself rather than waiting for the prophet to do it.  God would not forgive Saul even though he confessed the sin and offered to go before the nation to confess his sin.  Yet God forgives David even before he asks.  Is God playing favorites?  No way.  Saul confessed his sin when he learned it would cost him his kingdom, he repented to save his own gizzard.  David kept his kingdom, he was forgiven, he still had the presence of God and the power of the Holy Spirit, but yet he cried out in repentance not over fear of losing his kingdom or going to hell, but over the way he broke God’s heart.  Do you have the heart of Saul or the heart of David?   Go ahead, sin all  you want, God will forgive you. But like David, can you live with the grief and heartbreak you bring to the Jesus that you love? If so then you are not much of a Christian. It is only to Him that you sin.