I Have Sinned – Lord, Have Mercy, Psalm 41:4

Grace, mercy and peace to you, from God our Father, against whom we have sinned, and our Lord, Jesus Christ, who has had mercy on us.

Our Lenten series is based on Psalm 41, and tonight’s message is based on verse 4: As for me, I said, “O Lord, be gracious to me; heal me, for I have sinned against you!”

This is verse is King David’s confession of his sin. Believing as he did, it’s our confession, too.

David is feeling grief and remorse after having committed adultery with Bathsheba, using His power as king to force to her into his bed.

And then, when he found out she was pregnant, to have her husband killed in battle. What a terrible abuse of the office God had entrusted him with.

David sinned first, against God, who anointed him to serve as king of His people in His place, he also sinned against the nation he served, against  Bathsheba who he took advantage of, and he sinned against himself, as all sin does. Our sin isn’t for us, it’s against us. 

We’re no better than David was: we, too, have used our power and ability to sin against God… and to take advantage of others, which all sin does. 

With every sin, we put our selfish desires over others, and so we take advantage of them, using them to satisfy our sinful nature, as if they exist for us to selfishly sin against, for our worldly benefit, instead of them existing for us to love and serve. 

And so all sin abhors God, who doesn’t want anything bad or harmful to happen to those He created; He wants no one to be taken advantage of.

But His Son was taken advantage of by the whole world, in the sense that our sin caused His death. Jesus allowed Himself to be the One that all the sin of humanity was heaped upon, in order to heal us of sin. 

As King David prayed, and as we pray: “O Lord, be gracious to me; heal me, for I have sinned against you!”

And as our Lenten verse encourages us: Return to the Lord, your God, for He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.

And so God didn’t just abandon David to his sin, grave though it was… and grave though our sins are, our God does not abandon us. 

God had a heart-to-heart conversation with David, something David really needed, because, for a while there, he had lost his way.

We, too, can take a wrong turn in life and lose our way, lose sight of what our life is really about, and who it is we must follow if our life is going to be a true blessing to others, and an eternal blessing for us.

And so, in His Word, God calls us to correct course… and He brings others into our life to help steer us back to Him, who has the love and mercy to restore us. 

This is what God did for His fallen servant, David. God sent His prophet, Nathan, to confront him.

David still had enough of God in his life, and the Holy Spirit in his spirit, to take the words of the prophet to heart. 

David was struck with remorse; he recognized the wrong he had done, and took responsibility. Hecame clean and confessed: “I have sinned against the Lord.”

And Nathan replied with words of forgiveness: He said, “The Lord has taken away your sin.”

Nathan could say those words of absolution, because that sin, and all David’s sin, and all our sin, would be placed on the Messiah, and be atoned for. And so all the sin of all the baptized, whose faith in Christ, is taken away.

In the first chapter of the Gospel of John, the Apostle says that John the Baptist, saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!

And so David could say about His Lord in Psalm 103: He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward 

those who fear him; for as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us. As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him…

… those who recognize God’s righteousness, and so, take sin seriously, and with sorrow and remorse, confess their sinful ways to God, begging for the forgiveness and pardon we are so desperately need… 

… they are the ones God will not despise or turn away, as David writes in Psalm 51:17: The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.

While God fully forgives all the sins of all His repentant children… but the earthly consequences of our sins, we still have to live with.

After what David had done, it would cause conflict in His family, and would eventually lead to civil war in his kingdom.

We sometimes have to face the practical outcome of our wrong-doing and our grave mistakes, which is a good reason for us to try to get it right the first time. 

But in the weakness of our sinful nature, sometimes we don’t… we sin and hurt others, and God helps us to take responsibility for the wrong we’ve done, and to make amends as we can. 

God, in His mercy, allowed David to remain as king… and more importantly, to be the forefather of the promised Messiah, for whose sake David’s sin was completely forgiven, and our sin is fully forgiven.

And so with David we say, “I have sinned… Lord, have mercy on me. 

Or as our text says, “O Lord, be gracious to me; heal me, for I have sinned against you!”

We have sinned… but our gracious God has had mercy on us. 

His mercy for us caused Jesus to carry our sins to the cross, to suffer and die in our place, to take the death and punishment that was rightly ours and that we never would have survived, a death we could never have risen from, but that He could, and did! 

He rose in power and love, to have mercy on us, and to be gracious to us.  

As we are completely and sincerely forgiven by our crucified and risen Lord, let us sincerely grow in our disdain for sin and evil, our sin and all sin, all that is against God, and against humanity… sin is against and harms us all. 

Never has there been a sin that’s good for anyone… it’s always bad for us all.

But thanks be to God! For us all, Jesus died. 

Our Epistle says, 24He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By His wounds you have been healed.

Sin, our sin against others, and the sin of others against us, wounds us and others, scars and harms us. 

The forgiveness of our sins heals us, that we may help others who have been hurt or harmed in this fallen world, help them to be healed by God’s grace, in mind and in spirit…

… healed, as we forgive others who have trespassed against us…

… but most of all, healed by the Gospel, healed with the forgiveness of our Lord in our lives, and our hearts, and our relationships.

May God’s grace heal us all, heal us of that weakness of heart and mind that would love worldly ways and embrace sin, rather than embracing godly ways, and loving goodness and righteousness.  

More and more, may God’s love and mercy, His grace and healing, His truth  and His Spirit, change our hearts and minds to embrace the righteous way of His Word, which are the ways of true, authentic love, the ways that result in what’s good and best for us, and for all.

And finally, as we love and enjoy sin less, and love God and our neighbor more, His peace, which passes understanding, will guard our hearts and minds, in Christ Jesus, our gracious Lord, who has mercy on us. Amen.