Psalm 19

¹²                Who can discern his errors!

            Declare me innocent from hidden faults.

¹³                      Restrain Your servant also from willful sins.

Let them not have dominion over me!

                        then will I be held blameless,

                        acquitted of great transgression.

¹⁴                         Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart

be acceptable in Your sight,

O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer.

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Saints & Sinners

For the Lord’s Day:  the 18^th of July 2004

Introduction:  The story is told in my county of a semi-retired farmer who lived on a main road.  Another road cut across behind his place and his barn was visible there from a different angle than one he normally sensed.  For the first time in years, the old man cut across the seldom used road to get home from an auction.  As he drove by, he noticed an old barn that was leaning away from the wind so dramatically that he realized it was about to fall down.  Then it dawned upon him: that was his barn that he had so seldom seen from the back at any distance at all.  When he got back home he took a closer look with a level in hand and immediately began the necessary and extensive repairs!

 

My friends, we are all kin of that farmer and it isn’t any material structures that have bent with the wind, but it is indeed our own hearts and minds – afflicted all too well with the social storms of our own day and time.  Years ago, I discovered a timeless tome by a student of C.S. Lewis, the author was Harry Blamires and the title and theme of several of his books was the difficulty with which we put off the worldly education, thoughts, desires and sins which if we studied them in relation to the Word more closely – we must realize that they are incompatible with a life lived in submission to the Lord Jesus Christ.

 

But of course the sensitive spirit and soul granted to David brought this phenomenon to light many generations earlier than we could have supposed.  Well does David confess before the Lord God of creation:”Who can discern his errors?”  Would there be any need for a new birth, or the work of the Holy Spirit if the seed of the first Adam were capable of naturally knowing the all too human flaws with which we are all infected?

 

Spurgeon observes of this first phrase, that it is “a question which is its own answer.  It rather requires a note of exclamation than of interrogation.  By the law is the knowledge of sin, and in the presence of divine truth, the Psalmist marvels at the number and heinousness of his sins.”  Calvin speaks more sternly still:  “the exclamation shows us what use we should make of the promises of the law, which have a condition annexed to them.  It is this:  as soon as they come forth, every man should examine his own life, and compare not only his actions, but also his thoughts, with that perfect rule of righteousness which is laid down in the law.”

 

Paul, the Apostle speaks in the same way when he admonishes the New Testament converts to “examine themselves” in preparation for the Lord’s Supper.  In Presbyterian tradition – it was once common to bring in the pastor of another congregation on Saturday evening to preach a preparatory service to the congregation and to hand out tokens so that only those who took the trouble to hear a stranger read them the “riot act” could participate in the communion service the next morning.

 

In David’s mind, this question is serious indeed – and we likewise should and could profit from a more thorough and intense review of the multitudinous opportunities to fall into sin and error.  Calvin reinforces this understanding:  “Satan has so many devices by which he deludes and blinds our minds, that there is not a man who knows the hundredth part of his own sins.  The saints , it is true, often offend in lesser matters, through ignorance and inadvertence; but it happens also that, being entangled in the snares of Satan, they do not perceive even the grosser faults which they have committed.”

 

Development:  All of this and more is the proper preparation in David’s mind for the next two lines.

 

“Declare me innocent from hidden faults.

Restrain Your servant also from willful sins.”

 

In Calvin’s translation, which comes from the Hebrew into the Latin and then into our own English translation these lines read:  “Cleanse thou me from my secret sins,” and “Keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins.”  And how may we be cleansed?  Only by and through the gracious mercy of our God in Christ – who paid the just penalty of death on our behalf.  Of course, David writes this poignant poetry only in expectation that in time God Himself may indeed declare his innocence from faults he little knows.

 

Calvin notes the absurdity of the Romish Lateran Council whereby everyone was commanded “to confess all his sins once every year, and at the same time declares that there is no hope of pardon but in complying.”  At least the Church of Rome recognizes that pronouncement of forgiveness must come from one in authority, otherwise – who could be saved?  However, as Protestants – we would raise the bar of declaration a lot higher: indeed even to the throne room of heaven alone!  After all it is only in and through Jesus Christ that we can be forgiven, not only of those sins with which we are aware – but also all of those we have conveniently forgotten or never ever realized!

 

In the first line of verse thirteen, David prays for what we would call the fruit of God’s Holy Spirit in our lives:  “Restrain Your servant also from willful sins.”  These “presumptuous sins” in Calvin’s lectionary are all of those “known and evident transgressions, accompanied with proud contempt and obstinacy.”

 

As I remember growing up in a community that had a practical theonomy under the oversight of the two churches in the township – I remember that it was almost impossible for young people to get into too much trouble within the community because all of the adults understood their responsibility to restrain the natural impulses and desires.  On a much higher scale David declares that modern phrase in observation upon the way of the worldly: “there, except for the grace of God – go I”  I can well attest from memory that my church friends and I were assisted not only by the church and community but also were hedged in by the power of the Holy Spirit as well.  Certainly, those young people on the periphery of the church found ways to sin to their hearts desire as they grew up and out of the faith to which they were barely acquainted.

 

But that is the worldlings desire and goal.  David here has a profound understanding of the grace of God and the Almighty’s work within us to prove His own glory as he attests in the last three lines of verse thirteen.

 

“Let them not have dominion over me!

                                then will I be held blameless,

                                acquitted of great transgression.”

 

Here, he first prays that the power of Satan will be broken and that the sins of the mind and flesh will have no permanent power over his thoughts, desires and daily living before the face of God.  “let them not have dominion over me!” he prays earnestly.  Only if I am delivered from the old man and life is there hope.  And only in the declaration of the Lord God can one be “held blameless” and “acquitted of great transgression.”

 

Here we may sense David’s understanding, unlike the contemporary Jewish cult – that the Church is not an ethical improvement society!  No indeed – it is a collection of the redeemed of all the earth.  Sainthood is not a merited title, but a descriptive term for those not held accountable for the reality of their ongoing, dismal performance.  Only by God’s grace is blame acquitted on the great day at the end of the age.  And our hope in this regard is, just as David knows and teaches: within the providence and purpose of our Creator God.

 

Application:  “Safe in the arms of Jesus,” as an old poem goes – we may like David find ourselves in His imputed state of grace.  What a great blessing it is to be known by the God of Creation.  Recently, one of my driving students asked me if I remembered her aunt, who was one of my first English students many years ago.  Surprised she was that I not only remembered her but pegged her essential personality exactly so.  She said her aunt would be thrilled that she had been remembered specifically out of several thousand students over two and a half decades.

 

Oh the glorious gospel that comes to us, when out of the billions of souls who have ever and shall live – that the Lord God of all creation remembers us and takes a merciful interest in our present life and the future one as well.

 

But, David is not through yet with this lovely poetic prayer that stands at the front of the collection which bears his name.  He closes with a prayer that I once saw inscribed on an old pulpit:

 

            “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart

be acceptable in Your sight,

O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer.”

 

Spurgeon notes on this popular quotation that we should realize the depth of understanding implied and celebrated here by David the king.  “We must in prayer view Jehovah as our strength enabling, and our Redeemer saving, or we shall not pray aright, and it is well to feel our personal interest so as to use the word my, or our prayers will be hindered.”

 

And only thereby if Christ be interested in us, so are we enabled to know Him, to pray to Him and to give Him acceptable worship, witness and works.  “Guide Thou me” we might have prayed when the King’s English was better known and spoken.  One last quotation to illustrate the work that Christ is doing in and through us: Calvin writes that “David asks still more expressly to be fortified by the grace of God, and thus enabled to live an upright and holy life. … Now, the rarer this strict control of the heart and of the tongue is, let us learn so much the more the necessity of our being governed by the Holy Spirit, in order to regulate our life uprightly and honestly.”

 

May we understand these things and may the Lord apply them all in our lives day by day, now and forever. 

 

“Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart

be acceptable in Your sight,

O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer.”

 

Amen.

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PREACHING RESOURCES

Calvin, John:  Commentary on Book of Psalms.

Delitzsch, F:  Commentary on the Old Testament – Psalms.

Spurgeon, C.H:  Treasury of David.

The Westminster Confession & Catechisms.

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