Psalm 51:9-10

“Hide Your face from my sinsAnd blot out all my iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God,And renew a steadfast spirit within me.”
(Psalm 51:9-10)

I am particularly interested in four words of this piece of David’s repentant cry for cleansing: Hide, Blot, Create, Renew. Four loaded verbs. Four humble requests from a humbled King to a Worthy God. Four gems we can together mine from this beautiful psalm. Forgive me in advance for getting in the way of their luster.

Hide. Charles Spurgeon, in his uber-exhaustive work Expositions of the Psalms, explains how serious David seemed to be, saying “Do not look at them (David’s sins); be at pains not to see them. They thrust themselves in the way; but, Lord, refuse to behold them, lest if thou consider them, thine anger burn, and I die.”
If only David’s son Solomon could have given him Proverb (3:7) “Do not be wise in your own eyes; fear the LORD and shun evil.” before he failed and broke the entirety of the Ten Commandments in his adulterous and murderous affair with Bathsheba. After the fact, his fear was realized. He seemed to be (in vain) begging an omnipresent God to not look at him. It reminds me of when I would catch one of my kids red-handed in some indiscretion at my house…inevitably the same response from the guilty party…”don’t look at me Dad!” More than a caught with the hand in the cookie jar! He was caught spitting in the face of his Creator…and he knew it. Romans 3:23 makes it clear we share this with David. Yet, He died for us anyway! What amazing love, what amazing grace!

Blot. “Blotting” calls to mind a sponge. There was a glaring red blot in David’s recent past. He has absolutely failed and was sick about it. If you recall, the first verse of this psalm said “According to the greatness of Your compassion blot out my transgressions.” I have been told by many a wise Bible teacher that when something is repeated, examine it close…it’s probably very important. David not only requested a blottin’ twice, he added the word “all” to it to be sure none of the spot is left behind. Spurgeon wrote “All repetitions are not ‘vain repetitions.’ Souls in agony have no space to find variety of language: pain has to conceal itself in monotones David’s face was ashamed with looking on his sin, and no diverting thoughts could remove it from his memory; he prays the Lord to do with his sin what he himself cannot. If God hide not His face from our sin, He must hide it forever from us; and if He blot not out our sins, He must blot our names out of His Book of Life”. I think my sin required coarse sandpaper to grind away, but Christ’s paid the penalty for my failures on the cross and still had power to remove yours as well! What amazing love, what amazing grace!

Create. The word create here is the same as the Hebrew in Genesis’ Creation account. “Bara” transliterated means “to create from nothing”. Evolution can’t create something from nothing. Man can’t either. Oprah may seem to create money from nothing, but it actually comes from people, not from thin air. Only God can create something from nothing. J. Vernon McGee’s Thru the Bible Commentary explains eloquently saying “’I need a new heart,’ David said. ‘Create in me a new heart’ and the word create means ‘out of nothing’. In other words, there was nothing in David’s heart He could use. He was not asking for renovation or reformation. He was asking for something new. Sometimes we hear the invitation ‘Give God your heart.’ May I ask you, ‘What do you think God wants with that old, dirty, filthy heart of yours?’ He wants to give you a new one.” Switching languages but with the same idea in mind, Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:17 “Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.” I am so very thankful God replaced my old heart with a new one! What amazing love, what amazing grace!

Renew. Renew is similar but in a way opposite to Create. It implies a fallen version of the old good one. There is hope for a back slider here. I was saved when I was a pre-teen. I wasn’t discipled and remained a naïve Christian for nearly ten years. During that time I drifted further away from God and deeper into sin. I knew the sin I committed was against God but became calloused, yet self-righteous enough to it and did it anyway. I was spiritually overconfident enough to think God must overlook the sin in my life because I was such a good ole boy! At the same time, I longed for another mountaintop experience, but was in no spiritual condition to deserve one (if that’s possible anyway). Fortunately, at the birth of my first child I realized the depravity of my life and recommitted myself to driving out sin in my life. Have I got it all pushed from my life? Not hardly. Am I growing in holiness? Yes. Do I have a long way to go? Just like David! Join me when I ask God to “renew a steadfast spirit within me”. None of us are what we should be. None are beyond a “Bathsheba on the roof” experience. As sure as you think you are above it, the devil has a foothold on which to work.
To conclude, read through this Psalm and pray it to God. If it comes out insincere, evaluate your heart…are you as good as you think you are? I used to overlook my own sin especially as it compared to my neighbor. Is your and my sin a big deal to a Holy God? The big ones as well as the little ones are what Jesus was put on the tree as a replacement punishment for. Knowing fully that we would deliberately sin against Him with no remorse, He died for us anyway! What amazing love, what amazing grace!


Diet update…I lost 2.6 lbs this week. I have lost a total of 44.8 lbs, almost exactly what my 5 year old boy weighs. God is Good, All the time!

Bible verse of the week… John 3:16.