Psalm 51

51       Lamentation-Praise

            Be Gracious to Me, O God!

            1 Be gracious to me, O God, according to Your lovingkindness;

            According to the greatness of Your compassion blot out my transgressions.

            2 Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity

            And cleanse me from my sin.

·         Sin awfully blinds the mind and hardens the heart. To be at ease, to cry peace, to have no fears does not prove any man innocent.

·         This Psalm also gives us refreshing views of God’s grace. It tells us of mercy, of mercy to a great sinner, of loving-kindness, of the multitude of God’s tender mercies, of his blotting out transgressions, of his thoroughly washing a man that confessed he was very vile.

·         “As a Christian is the most sorrowful man in the world, so there is none more glad than he. For the cause of his joy is greatest: in respect his misery was greatest, his delivery greatest, therefore his joy greatest: from death and hell is he freed, to life in heaven is he brought. What can make men more glad than this, if we believe?” (Symson)

·         After a Christian hath mourned he will rejoice. He, who never sorrowed for sin, will never rejoice for grace.

·         No man can prove that God is better pleased with innocence in an angel than he is with penitence in a sinner.

·         Let us always give God the best of everything.

·         If you would know the nature of true repentance, study this Psalm. It is full of wisdom and sound doctrine.

·         God is merciful. You need no more mercy than he is fully willing to bestow. If your faults are many, he will give you double for all your sins. He will abundantly pardon. His mercy reaches to the heavens. He never cast away any that came to him through Christ Jesus.