Thoughts on Psalm 19

Today’s reading: Psalms 19-21; 2 John

Knowing the story of David and his life makes the end of Psalm 19 really stand out to me.

Psalm 19 is all about how God and His ways are good, and righteous, and glorious, and simply beyond us in every way. David rightly, and humbly, recognizes that he is not a good source of truth, and his inclinations do not declare morality or justice, and so he leans on the Lord for understanding that is beyond himself. And honestly, who among us doesn’t need more of this understanding? Especially in a time and culture that says that your heart is clearly a good and righteous guide to life (as long as you’re not visibly harming someone else by your choices), we need, more than ever, this attitude and humility to say, “This is not what I want to do, and I don’t see why what I want is wrong, but the Lord’s ways are so far above my own that I will trust He is right and my heart is wrong, and I will listen and obey His voice.”

However, as true as that is, it’s not what made me want to write about this Psalm this morning.

At the end of the Psalm, David asks God to keep him from hidden and presumptuous (or flagrant) sins. The hidden sins aren’t things he is doing in secret, hidden from other people, but things he is doing without realizing they are sinful, while the presumptuous sins are those things he knows are opposed to the Lord and is choosing to do anyway. David wants his whole heart and life to glorify God, and if God grants him these protections from sin, he will be “innocent of great transgressions.”

But obviously David was not completely innocent of great transgressions. One of the stories he is most known for is his affair with Uriah’s wife, Bathsheba, and his orchestration of Uriah’s murder to try to cover up that affair. Clearly this falls into the category of “great transgressions.”

The reason I point this out is twofold:

On the one hand, I bring this up as a warning to all of us to keep our eyes on the Lord. David didn’t fall into great sin because his heart never really belonged to the Lord. Clearly David loved the Lord and rightly revered His instruction; he spent years faithfully following the Lord, trusting in Him, and growing in faith; and yet, he still fell into “great transgression.” No matter how much we love the Lord, our flesh is still at enmity with God, and our adversary is still prowling around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. No matter how much we love the Lord, we can still start to wander, or be led, astray. It’s no wonder that the New Testament authors warn so often against sin. Sin will not cost us our salvation, but the effect of sin, over time, is to turn our hearts away from the love we had at first. If we treat sin flippantly, we should not expect that we will necessarily continue to follow the Lord faithfully through to the end. We need to be faithful to continue our pursuit of Him all throughout our lives.

But on the other hand, I bring this up as a reminder of how David responded when he did fall. Think about the contrast between David and Saul in 1 and 2 Samuel to being confronted about their sin. When Samuel confronted Saul for his presumptuous sin of offering sacrifices to God himself, and for his sin of keeping back the spoils God had placed under the ban, Saul excused both. He doubled down on his actions, arguing for the reasonableness of his faithlessness. But when David was confronted about his sin with Bathsheba, he admitted he had sinned against the Lord and repented, seeking forgiveness, and he was forgiven and restored. That’s not to say there were no consequences for David’s sin, but it did not spell the end of his faithfulness and usefulness to the Lord like it did for Saul.

We need, like David, to have the humility to trust and seek the Lord, recognizing that His ways are good and right, even when they conflict with how we feel. And when we have this heart and attitude, the effect is to protect us, in significant ways, from sin and a wandering heart. But even when our hearts are given to the Lord, it doesn’t mean we will never fall into even major sin. But if we stand guard over our hearts, even in the midst of sin, repenting and turning back to trusting the Lord, it doesn’t have to spell the end of our life and faithfulness to the Lord.