“O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise.”
Psalm 51:15
My Beloved Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Psalm 51 is one of the better known Psalms and chapters in all of Holy Scripture. It was, of course, penned by David in the horrific aftermath of his sin with Bathsheba. One Old Testament commentator has noted that this penitential Psalm springs from the king’s “blackest moment of self-knowledge, yet it explores not only the depths of his guilt but some of the farthest reaches of salvation.”
The inspired words quoted above from verse 15 suggest to us that David’s guilt, which he now understood with more penetrating clarity than imaginable, had pressed him into silence. We gain even greater insight into this unnatural silence when we consider the words of Psalm 38:13-14, which were also written by David in a similar context:
“But I am like a deaf man; I do not hear, like a mute man who does not open his mouth. I have become like a man who does not hear, and in whose mouth are no rebukes.”
All sins, especially of such nature as that committed by David, rob us of the ability to do the very thing which we were designed and created to do. It spoils one of the primary duties and privileges that we do not share with other creatures made by God; that of sounding our Father’s praise with our mouths.
Scripture teaches us that the praise of our sovereign and all-gracious God was mankind’s first assignment, daily responsibility, and ultimate destiny. Yet, due to our fall in the Garden of Eden, we’ve imposed a ‘gag order’ on ourselves. We’ve been shamed into silence. No longer is praise easy or ‘natural.’ It is, in one very real way, a matter of warfare.
Perhaps this is initially witnessed in the Garden episode of Genesis 3. There Adam and Eve hid from the presence of the Lord, being very careful not to make the slightest sound so as to expose their location and their heart-penetrating guilt.
What’s even more distressing is that sin’s power to silence praise is still operative even in the lives of those who have been redeemed by God’s grace. David, of course, was just such a man whose heart had been re-created by God’s life-giving Spirit. We rightly refer to him as one of ‘the Old Testament saints.’ Yet, when his sin became known and God broke his heart in the confrontation with the prophet Nathan, David’s mouth fell quiet. An awful spiritual paralysis overtook him, guilt swallowed him up, his joy was lost, his hope shattered, his vocal chords calcified, and Israel’s greatest king became terribly familiar with the silencing consequences of his transgressions.
David would sound a similar note in Psalm 32:3, also a penitential Psalm:
“For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long.”
As we seek our encouragement from Psalm 51 today, let us first make one very significant observation:
David’s loss of the ability to praise the Lord was actually a signal of the genuineness of his faith.
Those who have never believed upon Christ Jesus are not broken in this way over their sins. Rather than falling silent under the heavy hand of the Spirit’s conviction, the unredeemed man or woman announces their innocence, blames others, justifies or excuses their actions, and continues to cover their guilt with an abundance of deceptive words.
In stark contrast to this, a heart that has been brought under the power of the Spirit and born again ultimately becomes “broken and contrite” before the holiness and majesty of God (v. 17), and it follows Job’s lead in declaring:
“Behold, I am of small account; what shall I answer you? I lay my hand on my mouth” (Job 40:4).
In this case, silence is the ‘sound’ of repentance! Silence indicates that the guilty sinner is sensing the power of God’s Word to drill down even “to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Hebrews 4:12).
Yet, there is something very encouraging here as well.
While Psalm 51 is a case-study in the proper response to our sins (vv. 1-6), it also reveals the pathway to regaining our primary purpose in life, that of declaring the praise of our Holy God at all times and in all seasons (vv. 7-13).
When our hearts are broken by our sin and guilt, when we have experienced the convicting power of the Word as applied by the Spirit, when we recognize and admit that we have failed to do as our Father has commanded, we should eventually, and by faith alone, emerge from the silence and cry out to the One who loves us and whose Son has already fully paid for our sins! And our faith-empowered cry for mercy, one which runs counter to our tendency to remain in the silence which sin produces, should be modeled after David’s supplication in Psalm 51:
“Purify me”
“Wash me”
“Make me to hear joy and gladness”
“Create in me a clean heart”
“Renew a steadfast spirit within me”
“Restore to me the joy of your salvation”
Such a prayer will be answered, every time!
And the result is not only a fresh awareness of the infinite grace of Jesus, but the liberation of our tongues to announce the Good News of salvation (v. 13), to joyfully sing of His righteousness (v. 14), and to declare His praise to all the world without fear (v. 15).
When it comes confession and praise, silence in never golden!
Let us ask our Father to open our mouths today with the assurance of His infinite mercy! Let us praise Him from broken and contrite hearts that are of precious value to Him! Let us use our voices not only to confess our sins, but to confess His greatness and majesty! And because the tomb of our Savior is empty, let us not remain a silent people!
You are my joy and my heart’s desire, and I love you all dearly!
Mike
PS: Next up Psalm 69