40 Days of Prayer, Day 14
Day 14, Saturday, September 3
Psalm 51:14-15 Deliver me from the guilt of shedding innocent blood, O God, the God of my salvation; Then my tongue will joyfully sing of Your righteousness. O Lord, open my lips, that my mouth may declare Your praise.
Deliver Me from the Guilt of Shedding Innocent Blood
With this request, David likely had in his mind the specific sin of the murder of Uriah the Hittite. Spurgeon said this about David’s statement in verse 14. “Honest penitents do not fetch a compass and confess their sins in an elegant periphrasis, but they come to the point, call a spade a spade, and make a clean confession of all. What other course is rational in dealing with the Omniscient? … He confesses sin more plainly in this verse than before, and yet he deals with God more confidently: growing upward and downward at the same time are perfectly consistent. None but the King can remit the death penalty, it is therefore a joy to faith that God is King, and that he is the author and finisher of our salvation. And my tongue shall sing aloud of Your righteousness. One would rather have expected him to say, I will sing of Your mercy; but David can see the divine way of justification, that righteousness of God which Paul afterwards spoke of by which the ungodly are justified, and he vows to sing, and to sing joyfully of that righteous way of mercy. After all, it is the righteousness of divine mercy which is its greatest wonder...A great sinner pardoned makes a great singer. Sin has a loud voice, and so should our thankfulness have. We shall not sing our own praises if we be saved, but our theme will be the Lord our righteousness, in whose merits we stand righteously accepted.”
The Joyful Praise of Forgiven People
Joy enters the equation again in this psalm. David requested the restoration of joy. “Restore to me the joy of my salvation.” David connected the joyful praise of God with that of God’s mercy. God is a God of relationships. In our relationship to Him, He loves it when we praise Him. He has made much of our relationship with Him by sending His Son into the world to save us. But we have been created with a purpose. We have been created to make much of our relationship with God. Praise and worship provide for us an outlet of the purpose for which we have been made. David understood the hindrances to individual and corporate worship. Sin destroys both individual and corporate worship. When mercy flows from the heart of God, worship flows from the heart of the forgiven. Today, Saturday before another corporate day of worship, is a good day to focus our hearts and minds on joyful worship. Tomorrow morning, may we enter with the congregation, hearts engaged and minds prepared, for a joyful worship of our righteous and gracious God. He gives to us eternal salvation and then He keeps giving by providing His joy for daily living. Let’s come before Him with songs of loudest praise.
Prayer Focus
Thank You God for the restoration of joy. I praise You for You are infinitely worthy of my praise. I praise You for Your forgiveness. I praise You for Your mighty works in salvation. I praise You for everlasting faithfulness. All of this to the glory of Your name, Amen.
From Bunyan’s The Acceptable Sacrifice
The instrument with which the heart is broken, and with which the spirit is made contrite, is the Word. 'Is not my word like as a fire, says the Lord; and like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces?' (Jer 23:29). The rock, in this text, is the heart, which in another place is described as harder than flint (Zech 7:11, 12; Eze 3:9). This rock, this stony heart, is broken and made contrite by the Word. But it only is so, when the Word is as a fire, and as a hammer to break and melt it. And then, and then only, it is as a fire, and a hammer to the heart to break it, when it is managed by the arm of God. No one can break the heart with the Word; no angel can break the heart with the Word; that is, if God forbears to second it by mighty power from heaven. This made Balaam go without a heart rightly broken, and truly contrite, though he was rebuked by an angel; and the Pharisees die in their sins, though rebuked for them, and admonished to turn from them, by the Savior of the world. Wherefore, though the Word is the instrument with which the heart is broken, yet it is not broken with the Word, till that Word is managed by the might and power of God.