Psalms 51

3. If you would have assurance, cherish the Holy Spirit of God. When David would have assurance, he prays, Take not away your Spirit from me (Psalm 51:11). He knew it was the Spirit only that could make him hear the voice of joy: The Spirit is [〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉], the Co…

2. God lets men go on in sin and prosper, that he may leave them more inexcusable, (Revelation 2:21) I gave her space to repent of her fornication. God adjourns the sessions, spins out his mercies toward sinners, and if they repent not, his patience will be a witness against the…

Is your heart hard, he can with a word create softness. Is it unclean, he can create purity; Create in me a clean heart, O God (Psalm 51:10). Is the church of God low, he can create Jerusalem a praise (Isaiah 65:18).

Then follows that dismal sentence (Matthew 25:41): Ite Maledicti, Depart from me you cursed into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels. He that said to God, Depart from me (Job 21:14), and to religion, Depart from me, must now hear that word pronounced from his…

The Word is a glass to show us our spots, and Christ's blood is a fountain to wash them away. 2. Pray for a holy heart (Psalm 51:10). Create in me a clean heart, O God.

O be upright! Be what you seem to be: God loves plainness of heart (Psalm 51:6). The plainer the diamond is, the more it sparkles: the plainer the heart is, the more it sparkles in God's eye.

Not only is the guilt of Adam's sin imputed to us, but the pravity and corruption of his nature is derived to us, as poison is carried from the fountain to the cistern. This is that which we call original sin; (Psalms 51:5). In sin did my mother conceive me. Adam's leprosy cleav…

When David presumed upon God's paternal affection, and began to wax wanton under mercy, God made him pay dear for it, he withdrew the sense of his love; and though he had the heart of a Father, yet he had the look of an enemy. David prayed, Cause [reconstructed: me] to hear the…

It is called the adorning the hidden man of the heart (1 Peter 3:4). The dew wets the leaf, the sap is hid in the root; the religion of some consists only in externals, but Sanctification is deeply rooted in the soul (Psalm 51:6): In the hidden part you will make me to know wisd…

This sin of blood lay heavy on David's conscience. Though he had sinned by adultery, yet that he cried out of most was this crimson sin of blood (Psalm 51:14). Deliver me from blood-guiltiness, O God.

A soul steeped in the brinish tears of repentance, and bathed in the blood of Christ, is made pure. (2.) Pray much for pureness of soul (Psalm 51:10). Create in me a clean heart, O God.

Second, a natural man cannot perfectly keep all God's commandments, because he is so interlarded with sin. He is born in sin (Psalm 51:5; Job 15:16) — he drinks iniquity as water. All the imagination of his thoughts are evil, and only evil (Genesis 6:5).

(Ephesians 2:4): Rich in mercy. (Psalm 51:1): Multitude of mercies. The vial of wrath does but drop, but the fountain of mercy runs.

The sincere Christian may fall short of some degrees of grace, but he never falls short of the Kingdom; God will pass by many failings where the heart is right (Numbers 23:21). True gold, though it be light, has grains of allowance (Psalm 51:6). You desire truth in the inward pa…

If we are members of the body mystical, we cannot but have a sympathy with others in their wants, and this sympathy sets us a praying for them. David had a public spirit in prayer (Psalm 125:4): Do good, O Lord, to those that be good: though he begins the psalm with prayer for h…

(Genesis 6:5) God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart, was only evil continually. (Psalm 51:5) Behold, I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me. (Romans 3:23) For all have sinned and…

Q. How is this sinne propagated? A. It is conveyed from parents to children not by imitation but by generation (Genesis 5:3; Psalms 51:5; Job 14:4; John 3:6). Q. What do you understand by actual sins?

And in Job 33:23, to raise up one whose soul draws near the grave is said to be the work of 'one among a thousand' — which is easily granted if you consider the danger of such distress. In Scripture it is called the breaking of bones (Psalm 51), because the strength of a man's s…

As it is likely David did in the case of his murder of Uriah: he had done it so cunningly that he thought he could clear himself and wash his hands of it, for it was but 'the chance of war,' he said, that cut him off — 'The sword devours one as well as another' — and so he excus…

There is much guile and falseness of heart, which in those disturbances (when our consciences do boil within us and are stirred and heated to the bottom) does like the scum come up and float aloft. Thus in David, when he was under the rod for his sin of murder, as the guilt of h…

So it is easily found out; you will find your sin to be the thorn in your foot, the stone in your shoe, that grated and vexed you. David knew in Psalm 51 what it was for which God broke his bones, for his very sin was the instrumental cause itself of God's executing it upon him.…

Thus David in Psalm 38:18, being in great distress (verses 2-5): 'I will declare my iniquity and be sorry for my sin' — and he makes it an argument to God to pardon him. When his bones were broken (Psalm 51): 'Cleanse me from my sin' (verse 2), 'for I acknowledge my transgressio…

You have seen the wonders of God in the deep; now that you are ashore, tell men of the rocks and shoals and storms they are likely to meet with in such and such courses — of uncleanness, worldliness, and the like. David says that when he should have his broken bones healed again…

And hence it follows that our communion with Christ may be diminished, but that our union cannot be dissolved. There remained in David after his fall the seed of true faith and regeneration: as appears by his words (Psalm 51:11), Take not your holy spirit from me. It is also the…

Surely, he felt in himself this original sin, which did straiten his good affections, so as he could not put them forth so much as he would toward the Law of God. And when he says, Psalm 51.12, Stablish me oh Lord by thy free spirit; he would give us to understand, that by origi…

The more the Spirit of Christ opens the eyes of their spiritual understanding, to look up by faith upon a Jesus, who for their sins was pierced, the more will their hearts be pierced with godly sorrow for their sins, which brings repentance to salvation, never to be repented of…

That when God justifies us (that is, when he first declares, and pronounces us to be righteous) he does declare his own righteousness, that he might be just, as Paul speaks (Romans 3:26), and the justifier of him, which believes on Jesus. And it is the speech of David, that when…

Indeed many of the saints of the Old Testament did greatly rejoice in the Lord, and had the joy of his salvation abiding with them. See (Psalm 51:12; Isaiah 25:9; Habakkuk 3:17, 18). But they had it not by virtue of the Levitical Priesthood.

And he also declares wherein the excellency of covenant obedience does consist. It is not in the conformity of our outward actions to the law that is required therein also; but it principally lies in the inward parts, where God searches for, and regards truth in sincerity (Psalm…

The water was used as the means of its application. Being so mingled, any clean person might dip a bunch of Hyssop (see Psalm 51:7) into it, and sprinkle any thing or person that was defiled. For it was not confined to the office of the Priest, but was left to every private pers…

(1.) In that it was beaten and pounded before it was used. So does acceptable prayer proceed from a broken and contrite spirit (Psalm 51:17). (2.) It was of no use until fire was put under it, and that taken from the altar.

David upon his fall, brings his renewed repentance into that solemnity as if it had been his first conversion to God. On that account he deduces his personal sins from the sin of his nature (Psalm 51:5), besides many other circumstances whereby he gave it an extraordinary solemn…

The principal qualification of the persons exhorted to this duty, is a true heart. God in an especial manner requires truth in the inward parts in all that come to him (Psalm 51:6). Especially he does so in his worship (John 4:24).

We render it in the Psalm, you did not desire. [⟨ in non-Latin alphabet ⟩] is, to will, but always with desire, complacency and delight, (Psalm 51:6). Behold [⟨ in non-Latin alphabet ⟩], you desire, you will, or are delighted with truth in the hidden part, ver. 16.

But Baptism is our entrance, and the lowest degree of grace will serve here in the judgement of charity." Worthy Hildersam on Psalm 51:5, pag. 257, says, The infants of the faithful are said to be holy, not because they are without sin, but because (in the judgement of the Churc…

A soul enriched with the treasures of grace, may yet be in the dark of desertion, and so tossed as to think it shall be cast away in the storm. David in a state of disconsolacy prays, Take not away thy holy Spirit from me, Psalm 51.11. He doth not pray, saith Austin, Lord, Give…

If we confess our sins, he is faithful to forgive us. And it was practiced by David (Psalm 51) and (Psalm 32:5). The manner of making confession is this: known sins, and those which trouble the conscience, are to be confessed particularly; but unknown sins generally (Psalm 19:12…

Commonly men are like the swine that run with their grunts and eat up the mast, but never look up to the tree from where it falls. But the godly are with David, to feel this want in themselves, and to beseech God to open and as it were to unlock their lips, that they may endeavo…

1. In this petition we are taught first that we are to have a fervent desire, and to hunger, that God would give us his Spirit to reign and rule in our hearts, and to bow them to all obedience and subjection of his will: and further, whereas our hearts have been as it were filth…

The contrary blessing to be desired, is that God would establish us by his free Spirit (Psalm 51:12). Which is so called, because it sets us every day more and more at liberty out of the reach of sin and Satan.

This is the sacrifice which God accepts. Psalms 51:17. When Ahab abased himself, though he did [illegible] in hypocrisy, yet God had some respect to it.

Direction 5. Study sincerity, Psalm 51. 6. thou desirest truth in the inward parts; be what you seem to be; be not like the Waterman, that looks one way and Rows another; do not look Heaven-wards by a profession, and Hell-wards by your conversation; do not pretend God, and love…

His neck is out of the Devil's yoke; he is freed from the law of sin (Romans 8:2). He has God's free spirit (Psalm 51:12), which makes him free and cheerful in his obedience; the will is not compelled but changed; a regenerate person is drawn indeed by the Spirit, but sweetly, a…

Yet further, the operations of grace may be obstructed for a great while: a fit of swooning is not a state of death; there may be no acts, and yet their seed remaineth; this may last for a long time. David lay in a spiritual swoon nine months; for he awaked not till Nathan came…

If so, why did Peter weep so bitterly — Matthew 26:75? Why did David cry out of broken bones — Psalm 51? I hear what you say of the pleasure of sin, and I have read what David said of the terrible effects of sin in his Psalm of remembrance — Psalm 38:2-8: 'Your arrows stick fast…

To renounce all false props and confidences with Paul (Philippians 3)? To confess the iniquity of your sin with David (Psalm 51:32)? To cry out with them, What shall we do? (Acts 2:37).

I no way doubt, but that in his temptation with Bathsheba, his mind was possess'd with defiling imaginations. Therefore on his repentance, he not only prays for the forgiveness of his sin, but cries out with all fervency, that God would create a clean heart in him (Psalm 51:10).…

Such terrible things as wherein he will take vengeance of their inventions (Psalm 99:8), though he do forgive them. So David affirms of himself, that God in his dealing with him, had broken all his bones (Psalm 51:8). I fear this is the present case of many churches and professo…

Answer: Prayer must proceed from a broken and contrite heart. This is the sacrifice which God accepts (Psalm 51:17). When Ahab abased himself, though he did it in hypocrisy, yet God had some respect to it (1 Kings 21:29).

5. Also we note, that before prayer for pardon of sin, must go a confession of sin: for whereas we say, forgive our debts, we confess before God, that we are stark bankrupts, and not able to discharge the least of our sins; this appears (1 John 1:9): If we confess our sins, he i…