Psalm 51:13-19 - "My Mouth Shall Show Forth Your Praise"

“Then I will teach transgressors Your ways, And sinners shall be converted to You. Deliver me from the guilt of bloodshed, O God, The God of my salvation, And my tongue shall sing aloud of Your righteousness. O Lord, open my lips, And my mouth shall show forth Your praise.' In this great prayer of confession and repentance that David poured out before God, he first asked to be washed and cleansed (vv. 1-7). Then David prayed for the Lord to renew and restore him by once again filling him with the Holy Spirit (vv. 8-12). Now in verses 13-19, David is praying that God will use him once again to teach others how to be forgiven of their sins and live for the Lord. As I begin to prepare for this chat today, I had a verse of Scripture that immediately came to my mind in Isaiah 1:18. "Come now, and let us reason together," Says the LORD, "Though your sins are like scarlet, They shall be as white as snow; Though they are red like crimson, They shall be as wool.”  Isaiah lived over 500 years after the time of King David, and no doubt had access to Psalm 51. When you read the entire first chapter of Isaiah you might get the idea that Isaiah patterned his first message to an idolatrous and sinful nation from Psalm 51. The people and religious leaders of Isaiah’s day were going through the outward rituals of worship with their many sacrifices, but they had unconfessed sin in their hearts.  They were committing adultery on God as they shed the innocent blood of their children to the pagan gods of the heathen around them. Adultery is known as the “scarlet sin” and murder is “red like crimson”.  The devil tries to convince you that you are so bad now that God won’t forgive you. But God gives us an invitation to “come and reason with Him”. Like the father in the story of the prodigal son in Luke 15, God is waiting with open arms for you to return to Him today! He has already provided the sacrifice that covers your sin, and He will cleanse you “as white as snow”, as if the sin had never been committed in His sight (Romans 5:1). It is really hard to be a witness to others when we have unconfessed sin in our lives. But once we acknowledge our sin and ask forgiveness from the God we have offended, and we experience His forgiveness we can’t wait to share with others what He has done for us! God can’t use people to share His good news who think they are perfect. He uses forgiven people who are now using their “tongue to sing aloud of His righteousness” (v. 14), and their “lips and mouth that show forth His praise” (v. 15). Years ago, I wrote this quote in the front of my Bible: “This Book will keep you from sin or sin will keep you from this Book!” Just like sin will keep you from wanting to look into the mirror of God’s Word, it will also keep you from being a witness to the lost world around you. An amazing thing happens when we experience God’s forgiveness for our awful sins, even as believers! Paul reminds us in Romans 5:20: “But where sin abound, grace did much more abound”. What the devil intended for evil, God can redeem and restore, and in His grace use for His glory. It has always been so interesting to me that Solomon, the child eventually born to Bathsheba, was chosen by God to be David’s successor and the one who would supervise the temple construction. And on top of that, of all the sons of David, Solomon would be in the line of Christ the Messiah. And Bathsheba would also be mentioned in the genealogy of Christ in Matthew 1:6. Today, if we will confess our sins, and experience God’s forgiveness and cleansing, He will restore us in His grace.  And who knows what amazing ways God might use us for His glory in sharing His story in our lives with other sinners who desperately need His grace! God bless!