Aug 24- Psalms 51

Hey everybody, welcome to Come Follow Me, Daily Doves. I'm Lindsay Hansen, and today is August 24th. Today we're going to continue in this week's Come Follow Me block in the Book of Psalms. And we're going to take a look at the 51st Psalm. Now this is a Psalm by David, and before we get into it, I just want to have you think about this. If you were to ask you to tell me something good that David had done, what would you think of? Most of us, I think, would probably think of David and Goliath, right? But if I were to ask you, tell me something bad that David did, most of us would probably think of Bathsheba or Eureia. And we would all be right with both of those things. The fascinating thing here is that throughout the Scriptures and throughout the story of David, we get the opportunity to see him doing everything right and everything good. And we get the opportunity to see him do everything wrong and everything evil. And it's interesting because a lot of times when we're looking at these people from the Scriptures, we do this with people like David, with people like Layman and Lemuel, sometimes we narrow them down to their very worst action. Truth be told, sometimes we do that to the people in our lives too. People who have heard us or sinned against us or offended us. Sometimes we narrow those people down to the very worst things that they've done. Sometimes we do that to ourselves. We narrow our vision of ourselves to the very worst things that we've done. When truth be told, each of us is very much a dual being filled with things that we've done good and things that we've done wrong. But the most important thing, what really matters is what do we do with our mistakes? What do we do when we mess up? How do we handle it? And here in the 51st Psalm, we're going to get the opportunity to see how David handles this. The 51st Psalm was written by David and it is him pleading for forgiveness after the conversation which he had with Nathan. If you remember Nathan came to him and he told him that story of the man who had all the things and all the kingdom. And he took the one little, lowly Ulam that this little poor man had. Remember David was enraged and he just thought how horrible this man was. And when he realized that that man was him, that he had done this horrible thing, this is the result that we're going to see. This 51st Psalm, we're going to have the opportunity to see David's true sorrow for sin. Now we're told in the scriptures and I believe it stopped during covenant section 132 that David has fallen from his opportunity for exaltation. But we're also told in the scriptures that God won't leave him in hell. That there is a form of redemption and forgiveness that David has experienced here. And I think that that is the beautiful thing about the book of Psalms is we get to see this forgiven David because all of these Psalms come after David has messed up after he has sinned. And so we get the opportunity to see that even though we make mistakes and even though we sin against God, even though we distance ourselves from him, we always have the opportunity to return, to come nearer to him, to worship, and to receive redemption from him. So let's jump into this Psalm. It is absolutely beautiful. And as we read this, please remember, this is David's reaction once he realizes how wrong his actions were starting in verse one, he says, have mercy on me. Oh God, according to thy loving kindness, according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies, plot out my transgressions, wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin, for I acknowledge my transgressions and my sin is ever before me. Now here we see this really important aspect of repentance and that is truly seeing ourselves and the mistakes that we've made, truly acknowledging them and turning to the Savior for forgiveness and for redemption. And that's what we see here. This just pleading for mercy from David as he recognizes what he has done as he sees himself for who he truly is in this moment. This is part of the broken heart in the contrite spirit that the Savior asks us to have as we come to him, a brokenness in seeing our mistakes, a contrite spirit in understanding that we have offended God and that we can't fix it on our own. Elder Funkant said, soil is broken to plant wheat. Wheat is broken to make bread. Bread is broken to become the emblems of the sacrament. When one who is repentant partakes of the sacrament with a broken heart and a contrite spirit, he or she becomes whole. This brokenness sometimes is all we have to offer God, especially in moments where we see ourselves for who we are. When we see our mistakes, sometimes our brokenness is all we can bring before him, but it's my testimony and my experience that God not that he enjoys our pain but he rejoices in that broken heart, knowing that he can make something with that broken heart. He can mold that broken heart. He can heal that broken heart and when he does, when he heals our brokenness, he heals us stronger and better and more like him than we ever were before. So continuing on, David's going to say something really interesting. He says, against thee and me only have I sinned and done this evil in thy sight. Now that's interesting because I bet your eye would be like, "No, you kind of sinned against me too, buddy," or her basheba, I'm sure she thought, "Yeah, no, I wasn't super happy with it either." He sinned against man, yes, but in saying this against thee, the only have I sinned, he's recognizing the source of redemption. Because of the completeness of the atonement of Jesus Christ, he felt all the pain, all the injustice that was done to Euryah and to basheba. He felt that. He experienced it all. He took it all upon himself and then not only that, he took all the pain and grief and sorrow for sin of David and he took that upon himself too. And so yes, even though he hurt basheba and he hurt Euryah in the process, when it comes down to it because of the atonement of Jesus Christ, all of that was transferred to the Savior and he was sinning against the Savior. It reminds me of the song, "This is the Christ by Elder Faust when he says how many drops of blood were shed for me. We have sinned against the Savior. In the actions that we take against others, in the mistakes that we make on our own, we sin against him because of the wholeness and the completeness of the atonement." For seven David says, "Purge me with his up and I shall be clean, wash me, and I shall be wider than snow." The his up reference there is super interesting. His up is only mentioned two other times in the Bible. The first is during the Passover. Remember they dipped his up in the blood of the lamb and put it on the doorpost so that the destroying angel could pass over them. And then the only other time we see it is when it makes reference to his up when the Savior is on the cross. My friends, when it says, "Purge me with his up." It's making reference to the blood of the Lamb of God, which when applied to the doorposts allowed the destroying angel to pass by the children of Israel. But when that blood of the Lamb is applied to us and to our lives and to our mistakes, our sins can be forgiven and the destroying angel can pass by us. Howling us to live and allowing us to live more abundantly. My friends, it's my testimony that the atonement of Jesus Christ cleanses. It strengthens. It heals. It restores. And it makes us new. My friends, the Savior is filled with mercy and with loving kindness. And when we approach Him with the understanding that only in and through and because of Him, we can be made clean. It's my testimony and my belief and my experience that He can heal and that His mercy will be applied to every aspect of our lives. [music]