SPEAKER_00: Why don't you turn to your neighbor and say you look good?
SPEAKER_00: That was not very enthusiastic.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know who you're sitting by, but we are so honored that you're worshiping with us this morning.
SPEAKER_00: If we haven't had a chance to meet, my name is Clayton, the pastor here at the Ark.
SPEAKER_00: I'm excited to share with you this morning.
SPEAKER_00: We've been in a series on the book of Psalms, and I'm excited this morning to share with you from Psalm 51.
SPEAKER_00: So if you have your Bible, you can turn your Bible to Psalm 51, about the middle of your Bible.
SPEAKER_00: Has anybody ever blown it before?
unknown: Absolutely.
unknown: Today?
SPEAKER_00: Today.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, today.
SPEAKER_00: If you've ever blown something, you know that you find yourself in the midst of a very difficult situation.
SPEAKER_00: What do I do from here?
SPEAKER_00: The message today is not a matter of whether or not you're ever going to blow it or mess up.
SPEAKER_00: The question today is what will you do when you mess up?
SPEAKER_00: What will you do when you mess up?
SPEAKER_00: I sometimes I like to think I'm more handy than I really am.
SPEAKER_00: And if I get into the middle of a project, I just any men in the room testify to this, uh, you just think you can do anything.
SPEAKER_00: And you get in the middle of the project, you know about the part where after you've already torn down the wall and gutted stuff?
SPEAKER_00: That you start having this question Am I going to be able to put this back together again?
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you're an auto guy or and you start disassembling some parts and you think, I got this, and you forget which part went in which order.
SPEAKER_00: Right there, you are.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, don't go to his mechanic shop.
SPEAKER_00: Oftentimes I find that the hard part is not getting in the mess, the hard part is figuring out what to do when you're already in the mess.
SPEAKER_00: And this morning, Psalm 51, I believe, speaks to that.
SPEAKER_00: I um I was thinking this morning a little bit about a time in my life in 2020 in March of about March 1st of 2020.
SPEAKER_00: I went to the doctor because I had a lump growing on the side of my neck, and and uh when it you can feel it and see it, you start to think, I don't need a doctor to tell me I'm in a mess.
SPEAKER_00: And I remember going to the doctor, and the doctor said, Yeah, you have a tumor on your neck, it's a there's a mass in there, and we need to remove it.
SPEAKER_00: And um, he gave me some news.
SPEAKER_00: He said, It's actually wrapped itself around your vocal cords.
SPEAKER_00: And I don't know about you, but I kind of speak with my life.
SPEAKER_00: That's kind of what I and I remember feeling in that moment like, how are we ever gonna overcome this?
SPEAKER_00: And he began to explain it to me.
SPEAKER_00: He said, Uh it's easy, no big deal.
SPEAKER_00: I said, easy, no big deal.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, he said, I'm just gonna lift up your vocal cords and I'm gonna unwrap it from it, and then I'll put them all back together.
SPEAKER_00: That's easy for him, but for me, and about 10 days later, the world shut down to COVID, and that surgery that was priority was now no longer a priority.
SPEAKER_00: So I remember sitting in my house thinking thoughts in my head, I know you've never thought thoughts like this.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, God, I trust you, but God, I know you're a healer, but and I had a lot of reservation in my heart.
SPEAKER_00: How many of you know in that moment, I I'm well, right now I'm so thankful for a surgeon who was able to remove it.
SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm thankful that nothing was scarred or damaged.
SPEAKER_00: And here's what I realized in that process.
SPEAKER_00: I'm thankful for his skilled hands.
SPEAKER_00: Y'all, my hands shake, and it's not because I'm nervous up here, they just shake all the time.
SPEAKER_00: I don't want my shaky hands performing a surgery on myself.
SPEAKER_00: What I realized in this process, and as we talked this morning, is I think it's a lot like that.
SPEAKER_00: Because I didn't just need the surgeon to deal with my past medical issues, I didn't need him to just deal with my present medical issues.
SPEAKER_00: How many of you know it also impacted my future?
SPEAKER_00: And that's the thing about messes, is oftentimes we know our messes affected our past, and sometimes we carry our messes into our present.
SPEAKER_00: But how many of you know that the thoughts of what we had done and the things that had happened to us and the mistakes that we made, they can travel with us well into the future.
SPEAKER_00: That's why you can have had an experience 50 years ago, but still be living today as if you had made that mistake just yesterday.
SPEAKER_00: So this morning, I I've titled the message The Power of Restoration.
SPEAKER_00: I couldn't perform surgery on myself.
SPEAKER_00: I needed somebody who had a skilled hand to do what I could not do.
SPEAKER_00: And the power of this morning's message is the same.
SPEAKER_00: That when you find yourself in the middle of a mess, when you've made mistakes, when you've failed, when you've sinned, when when you have things in your life that need cleaned up, the truth of it all starts this morning with Psalm 51, and that is that you can't get out of it by yourself.
SPEAKER_00: The trap of sin is to get you to buy into or believe the lie that you can handle it yourself.
SPEAKER_00: Now, listen, I I know, yeah, some of you men are like, I can I can build a house, I can fix things.
SPEAKER_00: And so sometimes the mentality when we get to this is so hard to overcome because we're so used to trying to solve our own problems, fixing our own mistakes.
SPEAKER_00: I want to read Psalm 51 to you this morning because I believe it is the answer.
SPEAKER_00: I believe it is God's word of encouragement to us that it's not a matter of if you're gonna find yourself messing up, it's a matter of what will you do when you do.
SPEAKER_00: Psalm 51, verse 1 through 17.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what David, the psalmist, the writer, says.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Have mercy on me, O God.
SPEAKER_00: According to your steadfast love, according to your abundant mercy, blot out my transgressions, wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.
SPEAKER_00: For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me.
SPEAKER_00: Have you ever played your mistakes on a rerun in your mind?
SPEAKER_00: You didn't ask for it, but it's the first thing you thought of when you got up today.
SPEAKER_00: It's the last thing you thought of when you went to bed last night.
SPEAKER_00: This is what David's saying.
SPEAKER_00: I know my transgressions.
SPEAKER_00: My sin is ever before me.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, I know Courtney said, His goodness follows me all the days of my life, but some days it feels like my past follows me all the days of my life.
SPEAKER_00: Against you and you only, verse 4, he says, Have I sinned and I've done what is evil in your sight, so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment.
SPEAKER_00: Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity and in sinned, and my mother conceived me.
SPEAKER_00: Behold, you delight in truth and the inward being, and you teach me wisdom and the secret heart.
SPEAKER_00: If he didn't say it once, he's gonna say it again.
SPEAKER_00: Says, Purge me with hyssop, I shall be clean.
SPEAKER_00: I love this line.
SPEAKER_00: Wash me, and I shall be wider than snow.
SPEAKER_00: It's not just a song you sing, you're singing scripture when you sing that.
SPEAKER_00: Wash me, he says, I will be wider than snow.
SPEAKER_00: Let me hear joy and gladness.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know about you, but in the midst of my failures and mistakes, joy and gladness are far from me.
SPEAKER_00: In the midst of my failures, in the midst of sin, often the opposite is true for us.
SPEAKER_00: And he says, Let me rejoice.
SPEAKER_00: Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquities.
SPEAKER_00: Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Cast me not away from your presence and take not your Holy Spirit from me.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know about you, but if you've ever made a mistake, sometimes you feel far from God.
SPEAKER_00: And David is begging with God.
SPEAKER_00: He's pleading with God, please, I don't want to be far from.
SPEAKER_00: Don't take the presence of your Holy Spirit away from me because of what I've done.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Restore to me in verse 12 the joy of your salvation.
SPEAKER_00: Uphold me with the willing spirit.
SPEAKER_00: And then he goes on, he says, Then I will teach transgressors your ways.
SPEAKER_00: I know this is just David in the Bible, and none of y'all ever do this.
SPEAKER_00: Any of y'all ever say, Lord, if you'll do this for me, I'll do this for you.
SPEAKER_00: He's right there.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, it's on me.
SPEAKER_00: It's heavy.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know what to do with it.
SPEAKER_00: It's a mess.
SPEAKER_00: I'm in my sin.
SPEAKER_00: I'm in my pain.
SPEAKER_00: I'm in my shame and my guilt.
SPEAKER_00: But I promise, if you'll just take this away, I'll do anything you want.
SPEAKER_00: You can have me my whole life.
SPEAKER_00: David prays the same prayer that many of us have prayed.
SPEAKER_00: He says, I'll teach transgressors your ways.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, what he's saying is, What you did for me, I'll tell them what you did for me.
SPEAKER_00: That you can do it for them too.
SPEAKER_00: Deliver me from blood guiltiness, oh God, oh God of my salvation, and my tongue will sing aloud of your righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: Oh Lord, open my lips and my mouth will declare your praise.
SPEAKER_00: He's saying, God, if you will deliver me, God, if you'll set me free from this bondage, if you'll set me free from my sin, he's saying, then I'm going to be the loudest one at church.
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to be singing at the top of my lungs.
SPEAKER_00: I don't care what people think about me.
SPEAKER_00: I don't care what people say about me.
SPEAKER_00: I know where I've been and I know where God has brought me.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, I'm going to sing as loud as I can.
SPEAKER_00: You know, sometimes at church, I I love watching people who just got saved.
SPEAKER_00: You're like, that's kind of weird.
SPEAKER_00: No, it's not.
SPEAKER_00: I love at church, there are some times I will look over and I'll see somebody worshiping with such a fervor and such a vigor, and I'll say, they haven't been in church for 50 years.
SPEAKER_00: They've been in church for three days.
SPEAKER_00: How do I know?
SPEAKER_00: Because when you just get delivered from something that was painful, how many of y'all know you sing loud about it?
SPEAKER_00: And I'm I'm as guilty as the next guy.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes I'm like, I've been around church.
SPEAKER_00: I was born in church.
SPEAKER_00: I grew up in church.
SPEAKER_00: I live at church.
SPEAKER_00: I'm up here all the time.
SPEAKER_00: And I can take for granted the very thing those who just remembered their deliverance are so willing to say, thank you, God.
SPEAKER_00: So what David is saying is, I'm going back to that place.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not going to be the guy that forgot what you did for him.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not going to be the guy who gets in the pit and stays there.
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to be the guy that comes out the other side that still has a future.
SPEAKER_00: And here's what he goes on to say, for you, God, do not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it.
SPEAKER_00: You will not be pleased with a burnt offering.
SPEAKER_00: It's not that God doesn't want offerings.
SPEAKER_00: This is the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_00: They made offerings and sacrifices before the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: And what David's saying is it's not that those don't matter at all, and throw the baby out with the bathwater.
SPEAKER_00: What he's saying is, none of that matters if I don't have a broken spirit and a contrite heart, he says.
SPEAKER_00: That's a good word.
SPEAKER_00: Psalm 51.
SPEAKER_00: It's David's story.
SPEAKER_00: Now I don't know about you, but when I think I think about the guy who has it all together.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, David, I mean, put him up there.
SPEAKER_00: You got Abraham and Moses, maybe Joshua gets thrown in there, but I'm if I'm judging by myself, I think, you know, I think David's pretty up there.
SPEAKER_00: This is why we can't come to church and look at somebody and think they got their life all figured out.
SPEAKER_00: This is why you're not the judge.
SPEAKER_00: This is why you can't judge somebody based off what you see, because how many of you know David was going through it?
SPEAKER_00: What I love about David is we remember him as this.
SPEAKER_00: This is the tagline that we remember David by in the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: A man after God's own heart.
SPEAKER_00: You know what David is remembered for?
SPEAKER_00: He's remembered for what he got right.
SPEAKER_00: And what he got right was not what he did, what he got right was his heart.
SPEAKER_00: His heart and his posture before the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: And here's what I'm here to tell you today.
SPEAKER_00: I'm thankful my life isn't in the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: Anybody else?
SPEAKER_00: Because I'm about to read his real story today.
SPEAKER_00: Y'all know the king.
SPEAKER_00: Y'all know the guy who followed after God's own heart, but what about the guy who royally messed it up?
SPEAKER_00: You see, David wrote Psalm 51.
SPEAKER_00: I was thinking about this this morning.
SPEAKER_00: You know, we don't really do journals a lot as much anymore.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I used to journal a lot, and uh, but now I do it all on my iPad.
SPEAKER_00: And I hit this lock button, and ain't nobody reading my diary.
SPEAKER_00: This morning, this week, I my iPad was and I had to write most of my sermon out on paper.
SPEAKER_00: Hadn't seen paper in years.
SPEAKER_00: And uh all my papers were scattered all over.
SPEAKER_00: So I hope this sermon doesn't come out backwards today because it's all out of order.
SPEAKER_00: But I got to thinking this morning as I was gathering my papers together.
SPEAKER_00: You know, there was a day when somebody would pass away and you could open up their desk and their files and you could read everything they ever wrote.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm thinking that because that's how I feel this morning as we read Psalm 51.
SPEAKER_00: I feel like we're reading David's papers.
SPEAKER_00: Papers I don't know that he ever thought everybody was going to read.
SPEAKER_00: And in Psalm 51, we're reading about the story of David in Bathsheba.
SPEAKER_00: If you've been around church for a minute, you know.
SPEAKER_00: If not, I'll jog you here to help you catch up to what we're talking about this morning.
SPEAKER_00: But David, when he was supposed to be out at war, most people, most theologians would say David's first mistake was he should have been at war instead of at home.
SPEAKER_00: He sent out his men, he didn't go with them to battle, and he stayed home.
SPEAKER_00: And when he got bored, he saw a pretty woman on the rooftop over there.
SPEAKER_00: He invited her over, and next thing you know, they're having a baby.
SPEAKER_00: And David's thinking, oh no.
SPEAKER_00: What do I do now?
SPEAKER_00: Have you ever been in a situation like, how did I get here?
SPEAKER_00: Oh no.
SPEAKER_00: What do I do now?
SPEAKER_00: He asked the same question we all ask when we make mistakes, and that is, what do I do next?
SPEAKER_00: The problem is not that we made the mistake, often the problem is that we now make another mistake because of the first mistake that we made.
SPEAKER_00: We counsel people all the time, and as we talk with them, we say, hey, listen, listen, one bad choice is not permission to have a series of bad choices.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, just because you heard wrong or got it wrong or didn't step in the right direction doesn't mean you should keep going in that direction.
SPEAKER_00: Well, I guess I'm already here, I gotta keep going.
SPEAKER_00: I guess I gotta commit because I already I already fell this way.
SPEAKER_00: No, no, no.
SPEAKER_00: Part of what David we're gonna understand with his story is he's a lot like us.
SPEAKER_00: And he had a response to make.
SPEAKER_00: And how many of you know he tried to cover his tracks?
SPEAKER_00: And so after they're gonna have a baby, and he thinks, what am I gonna do?
SPEAKER_00: And so David does the best he can do.
SPEAKER_00: He comes up with his best bride idea.
SPEAKER_00: How about I just pull her husband Uriah off the battlefield?
SPEAKER_00: I am the king after all.
SPEAKER_00: And and as her husband Uriah comes home and he says, Hey, I'm just thinking, if he'll go home for the weekend, it'll all be good.
SPEAKER_00: They'll be having a baby in nine months and nobody will ever even know.
SPEAKER_00: Uriah was a man of integrity.
SPEAKER_00: Uriah was a man of upright heart, and he said, No, no, listen, all my men are out fighting at war in battle.
SPEAKER_00: I will not go home and enjoy myself while they're out there fighting.
SPEAKER_00: And so Uriah decides to sleep outside the palace, and Uriah doesn't go home.
SPEAKER_00: And David thinks, what am I gonna do now?
SPEAKER_00: So Uriah gets invited by King David over to his palace for a nice buffet dinner.
SPEAKER_00: All the wine he could drink, and David thinks this will solve the problem.
SPEAKER_00: Now he's happy and merry, he'll go home, and we'll all be blessed.
SPEAKER_00: Uriah refuses to go home.
SPEAKER_00: Now David thinks, What do I do now?
SPEAKER_00: Have you ever been so far in a pit?
SPEAKER_00: You feel like the only way to go is to keep going?
SPEAKER_00: So David makes this decision.
SPEAKER_00: He writes a letter and signs it with the king's stamp and seals it and sends it off to his commander, Joab, in the hands of Uriah.
SPEAKER_00: Uriah delivered his own death sentence to his commander.
SPEAKER_00: King David said, Hey, listen, I want you to put Uriah out in the front of the battle, and when in the heat of the battle, here's what I want you to do.
SPEAKER_00: I want you to call the armies off and call them back and leave Uriah out in the middle.
SPEAKER_00: And King and Joab, the commander of the army, did just that, and Uriah died in battle that day.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, David's sin led to more sin, and that sin was having a man killed who did nothing.
SPEAKER_00: An innocent man.
SPEAKER_00: And King David then covers it up.
SPEAKER_00: He goes, he goes to Joab, he said, Hey, listen, it's war.
SPEAKER_00: Stuff like this happens in war.
SPEAKER_00: What is he trying to do?
SPEAKER_00: He's trying to wash his hands of his mistakes.
SPEAKER_00: I want to encourage you this morning.
SPEAKER_00: I'm thankful my life's not in the Bible, and so are you.
SPEAKER_00: But I just want you to know that David messed it up big.
SPEAKER_00: Anybody in your life ever feel like if I'm gonna mess it up, I just somehow, somehow, I always mess it up big.
SPEAKER_00: And David is in this situation.
SPEAKER_00: And his life is in the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: And I want to point out a reminder to you before we dive into this this morning, that it's not about what you've done, it's about what you're going to do next.
SPEAKER_00: This is where David got it right.
SPEAKER_00: We're putting his life on blast this morning, not because we care to talk about where he messed up, because we care to talk about what he did right.
SPEAKER_00: And all of Psalm 51, as hard as it may be to read, and as hard as that story may be for you to hear, or as hard as your own pain and your own past may be, I want you to know it's not what has happened to you that determines your future, it's what you do right now.
SPEAKER_00: It's not just about the things that you've done in your past that are gonna stay with you forever.
SPEAKER_00: It's about what you're gonna do right now.
SPEAKER_00: And David in Psalm 51 says everything about what he chose to do in the midst of his mess.
SPEAKER_00: I got three things for you this morning on how to write a wrong.
SPEAKER_00: How to right a wrong.
SPEAKER_00: We took my wife on a date this week.
SPEAKER_00: Um, it was her birthday, and I got the kids together and I said, Hey, what do you want to do for mom?
SPEAKER_00: And my son said, I want to go to Target.
SPEAKER_00: And I said, Okay, and trying to buy her Batman and all this stuff.
SPEAKER_00: I said, Son, this ain't for her, this is for you.
SPEAKER_00: And I looked at my daughter and I said, What do you want to do for mom?
SPEAKER_00: And she says, I want to get fancy.
SPEAKER_00: Mom likes to get fancy.
SPEAKER_00: So she wanted to go home and get dressed.
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, it used to be that my kids would think that chilies was fancy, you know what I mean?
SPEAKER_00: So, like, I was really winning those days, but this one's for mom.
SPEAKER_00: So I took, I did something that was a little risky.
SPEAKER_00: I made reservations for Perries for my entire family.
SPEAKER_00: Praise God, the pasta for the kids still only cost$10.
SPEAKER_00: But we go to this fancy restaurant, and I'm just like, dear Lord, please let my prayers work.
SPEAKER_00: Let my kids for one night just act like they're 10 years older than they are.
SPEAKER_00: There's not another kid in the restaurant, but I was enjoying my steak thoroughly.
SPEAKER_00: We get to the end, and uh we had kind of been teaching them how to have fancy things, your napkin and your lap, and where the silverware goes.
SPEAKER_00: And at the end, I looked at Cohen and my four-year-old and I said, Hey son, now we, the boys, we pay for the meal.
SPEAKER_00: And so he got my wallet out to pay, and my wife leaned over to my daughter and she says, Hey, sweetie, who's sick?
SPEAKER_00: She said, Hey, sweetie.
SPEAKER_00: She goes, if a boy ever says he forgot his wallet, what do you say?
SPEAKER_00: And she goes, without skipping a beat.
SPEAKER_00: That's not my responsibility.
SPEAKER_00: Oh boy.
SPEAKER_00: At six years old, I don't know how you raise them in your house, but that's how we raising them in my house.
SPEAKER_00: So all you all you with boys my daughter's age, you just start training them now, okay?
SPEAKER_00: Uh that's not my responsibility.
SPEAKER_00: I thought that that was heaven right there.
SPEAKER_00: That bill is not mine.
SPEAKER_00: How do you how do you overcome the mess that you're in?
SPEAKER_00: The key to overcoming the mess that you're in is understanding what's your bill to pay, what's your part to play, and what's somebody else's responsibility.
SPEAKER_00: That's the key.
SPEAKER_00: As you deal with this, as you grapple with this, part of the challenge oftentimes that I see in Christian, God-fearing, loving circles who are trying to be doing good or do what is right, here's what happens.
SPEAKER_00: They will try and play God's part for God.
SPEAKER_00: That if I can clean this up, then it'll all be alright.
SPEAKER_00: That's not your part, that's God's part.
SPEAKER_00: The challenge this morning that we that we learned from Psalm 51 is we learn what your first step should be.
SPEAKER_00: And number one, it's repentance.
SPEAKER_00: What do you do when you messed up?
SPEAKER_00: It's not if you mess up, it's when you mess up.
SPEAKER_00: What is your part to play?
SPEAKER_00: Now, David said, My sin is ever before me.
SPEAKER_00: My sin confronts me all the day long.
SPEAKER_00: What's he keenly aware of?
SPEAKER_00: His guilt and his shame.
SPEAKER_00: What's he keenly aware of?
SPEAKER_00: He's aware of his mistakes.
SPEAKER_00: Listen, how many of you know you can think about your mistakes and your failures all day long, but thinking about them does not make it right with God.
SPEAKER_00: Repentance is not the same thing as guilt.
SPEAKER_00: I can be guilty for something, I can feel bad about something, but still not make it right.
SPEAKER_00: And what David got right, what I love about David is even in the big pit of mess that he was in, he made the decision.
SPEAKER_00: He said, Against you, verse 4, against you, Lord, have I sinned?
SPEAKER_00: In other words, what's he doing?
SPEAKER_00: He's confessing.
SPEAKER_00: He's owning it before the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, I did this and it was against you.
SPEAKER_00: Now, some of you may be thinking, no, this is against Bathsheba.
SPEAKER_00: How many of you know, how many of you know you can sin against yourself, you can sin against your neighbors, but no matter what the sin is, all of it is rooted in sin against God.
SPEAKER_00: At the root of it, everything that you would do to harm another person, to go do something that is derogatory towards someone or hurtful or harmful, all of that is to the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: And what David is acknowledging in this moment is saying, Lord, I have I have sinned against you.
SPEAKER_00: Now, I want you to be encouraged by this today.
SPEAKER_00: Like, I uh this is not a point-your-finger message.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not, I don't have my Bible in my hand for one specific reason.
SPEAKER_00: I don't want to start wagging it at you today, you know?
SPEAKER_00: Maybe some of y'all grew up hearing a message on sin and this was all that was ever done.
SPEAKER_00: Uh this is supposed to be an encouragement to you today.
SPEAKER_00: Because this isn't about your past, this is about your future.
SPEAKER_00: This is about what you do today.
SPEAKER_00: It makes a difference.
SPEAKER_00: And I want you to see David's progress because David didn't start good.
SPEAKER_00: In the middle of all of this, David is trying to cover his tracks, and he moves from covering his tracks.
SPEAKER_00: To confessing his failures.
SPEAKER_00: And that progress is key to your healing.
SPEAKER_00: It's key to your growth.
SPEAKER_00: It's key to your spiritual health.
SPEAKER_00: It's key to your relationship with God.
SPEAKER_00: He was trying to cover his tracks.
SPEAKER_00: What did he do?
SPEAKER_00: He had Uriah killed in battle.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because he thought, man, if I just take Bathsheba to be my wife, guess what?
SPEAKER_00: It's mine anyway.
SPEAKER_00: It won't matter.
SPEAKER_00: That is covering your tracks.
SPEAKER_00: And then David's greatest gift came walking through the door.
SPEAKER_00: The prophet comes walking through the door and says, The Lord told me what you did.
SPEAKER_00: How many of y'all are thankful for your spouse?
SPEAKER_00: Until they say something like that.
SPEAKER_00: But in this moment, the greatest thing to help him was actually this very strong hard word.
SPEAKER_00: Because David made a realization I've been trying to do everything I can to cover my tracks.
SPEAKER_00: But the problem was trying to cover sin is you can't cover sin with sin.
SPEAKER_00: You can't cover mess ups with more mess ups.
SPEAKER_00: You can't cover failure with failure.
SPEAKER_00: My son, when he was a little bit littler, he uh was on the kitchen counter one day.
SPEAKER_00: Mom must have been out at Target or Parry's, apparently.
SPEAKER_00: Uh my son was on the kitchen counter.
SPEAKER_00: I was in the room next door paying a lot of attention, and uh all of a sudden I hear glass breaking on the floor.
SPEAKER_00: He had thrown the flower or a vase or something off of the countertop just for fun, you know, just boy being boy.
SPEAKER_00: He had thrown it off.
SPEAKER_00: By the time I could get situated and ready and I ran in there, he was already down on the floor sitting in it, trying to pick the pieces up himself.
SPEAKER_00: Now, how many of you know I ran into the room and when I saw him, my first response was, stop why?
SPEAKER_00: Because what he was doing in that moment was only going to make it worse, it was only going to bring more pain.
SPEAKER_00: It was not how you pick up the pieces.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because he's not skilled in how to pick up glass.
SPEAKER_00: He's one.
SPEAKER_00: It's only gonna make more of a mess.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because he doesn't know how to dispose of this issue.
SPEAKER_00: It's only gonna cause more pain.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because he's not trained, he doesn't have the skill set to handle a problem this big.
SPEAKER_00: And I think God oftentimes is doing the exact same thing.
SPEAKER_00: He's watching us, and we're just sitting in the pile of saying, if I just do this and move this lever and pull this and try this and tell them that and do this, and the Lord is saying, if you'll just stop right where you're at.
SPEAKER_00: Because you don't want to make a mess even messier.
SPEAKER_00: And so what David did in this moment is he had to come to a point where he was no longer going to cover his choices, he was going to confess them.
SPEAKER_00: And I uh what I love about this is Adam and Eve did the same thing.
SPEAKER_00: So the point of this message today is this they messed it up, and so do we.
SPEAKER_00: We're all in the same club.
SPEAKER_00: Let's have a good time on the other side.
SPEAKER_00: Adam and Eve did the same thing when they disobeyed what God told them to do, and the Bible says that they realized that they were naked and they were ashamed, and so what did they do?
SPEAKER_00: They covered themselves with fig leaves.
SPEAKER_00: They covered themselves with leaves, and what did they do?
SPEAKER_00: They went and they hid from God.
SPEAKER_00: This is the interesting part about it.
SPEAKER_00: That when you don't do what David does, your first response is to hide from God.
SPEAKER_00: And they tried to cover their own problems with what they knew to do.
SPEAKER_00: What's so interesting and powerful about this is the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ starts in Genesis chapter 1, when God said, forget the fig leaves.
SPEAKER_00: And what God did was he knew something that you don't cover sin with sin, you cover sin with blood.
SPEAKER_00: And God, in Genesis chapter 1, killed the first animal himself.
SPEAKER_00: And what did he do?
SPEAKER_00: He took their skin and he covered them.
SPEAKER_00: The shedding of blood happened right away.
SPEAKER_00: Why am I telling you this is important?
SPEAKER_00: Because you need to know something.
SPEAKER_00: The only way out of your messes and your failures in life is not by you digging with a shovel your way out.
SPEAKER_00: The only way out is through the covering of his blood.
SPEAKER_00: Psalm 51, verse 17 the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, contrite heart.
SPEAKER_00: Oh God, you will not despise.
SPEAKER_00: Here's where David got his steps right.
SPEAKER_00: Repentance is this.
SPEAKER_00: Repentance is I'm walking in this direction.
SPEAKER_00: And it's not that I just feel bad, it's that I make the decision, I'm gonna turn around and go the other way.
SPEAKER_00: And here's what David did.
SPEAKER_00: David was going this way, saying, I'm gonna do whatever I can to cover this mess, and he had to make the conscious decision, Lord, I've sinned against you.
SPEAKER_00: And when he did, he was able to turn around and start walking the other way.
SPEAKER_00: My challenge for you this morning is this your part in the middle of the mess starts with your repentance.
SPEAKER_00: Unless you think it just happens on the day you said yes to Jesus for the first time or came to the altar, I want to encourage you.
SPEAKER_00: Repentance is a daily practice.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because I don't know about you, but I messed up yesterday and today and probably tomorrow.
SPEAKER_00: And so repentance is a part of keeping a healthy communication with God, of keeping a healthy relationship with God.
SPEAKER_00: And I want you to know this, it's not complicated.
SPEAKER_00: Don't make this complicated.
SPEAKER_00: You don't have to come up to church on Monday morning.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not a priest.
SPEAKER_00: You don't have to come tell me as the priest all the things you ever did.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because you telling me doesn't make it right between you and the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: When you believe in Jesus, you have the Holy Spirit, right?
SPEAKER_00: You don't need a confessional, you already have the Holy Spirit, and you and him can have a conversation.
SPEAKER_00: It's not hard, it's not complicated.
SPEAKER_00: Listen, sometimes people get locked up.
SPEAKER_00: I've talked to people all the time.
SPEAKER_00: They're like, I just, you know, I dealt with it with God a long time ago, but I don't know if I really dealt with it.
SPEAKER_00: Listen, there's no formula.
SPEAKER_00: It's not a one, two, three.
SPEAKER_00: If you don't hit all steps, then you missed it and it's wrong.
SPEAKER_00: You better go back 50 years and do it again.
SPEAKER_00: No, no, no.
SPEAKER_00: With God, it's a broken spirit and a contrite heart.
SPEAKER_00: A heart that says, God, I'm wrong in this and I'm I'm laying myself down before you.
SPEAKER_00: I didn't do it right.
SPEAKER_00: Will you help me put the pieces back together again?
SPEAKER_00: The first step is repentance.
SPEAKER_00: The second step is not your step.
SPEAKER_00: The second step is God's step, and that's restoration.
SPEAKER_00: Restoration is God's part.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what David says over and over.
SPEAKER_00: He says these words.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Have mercy on me, blot out my transgressions, wash me, cleanse me, purge me, make me be clean, wash me, blot out all my iniquities, create in me a clean heart, renewal right.
SPEAKER_00: What is he doing?
SPEAKER_00: He's saying the same thing over and over and over again.
SPEAKER_00: Because if you've ever been in the pit, you know I don't just need washed, I need washed and then washed again and washed again.
SPEAKER_00: Like it's this idea that David has this heart to say, listen, I don't just want to kind of deal with it now, I want to really deal with it.
SPEAKER_00: If you've ever been in a situation in your life where you're like you kind of bring something to God, but you kind of hold back.
SPEAKER_00: That's not washing.
SPEAKER_00: That's not cleansing, that's brushing stuff off.
SPEAKER_00: And what David is doing is he's coming to the Lord, he's saying, Clean me, clean me, clean me, wash me, wash me, wash me until there is no sign of anything that has ever been there before.
SPEAKER_00: That's the power of our God.
SPEAKER_00: For those of you in the room who think your past is too big, here's what I want you to know.
SPEAKER_00: He can wash you and wash you and wash you until it all comes out.
SPEAKER_00: When I think about this in my life, here's a practical example.
SPEAKER_00: You know, I don't know why as a grown adult I still haven't learned.
SPEAKER_00: But some days I will go out wearing the wrong outfit for the day.
SPEAKER_00: And in Houston, Texas, that's pretty much every day if I'm not wearing shorts.
SPEAKER_00: And uh yesterday I went out and I came to the church.
SPEAKER_00: I was doing some stuff outside, and I had a white t-shirt on.
SPEAKER_00: An expensive, nice white t-shirt, not just a casual everyday shirt, a nice white t-shirt.
SPEAKER_00: And I sweated and I sweated and I sweated and I got dirt on it, and I got I made a mess, and I came home and I realized what I had done.
SPEAKER_00: And I am I'm stressed, I'm like, what did I just do?
SPEAKER_00: Have you ever, men, have you ever been in this situation?
SPEAKER_00: You know what to do.
SPEAKER_00: You take it and you put it on the washer, and all of a sudden it's hanging in your closet and it looks brand new.
SPEAKER_00: Sorry, I didn't mean that offensively.
SPEAKER_00: Here's my point.
SPEAKER_00: I would take that shirt and I would put it in the washer and it would come out and it would still be messed up.
SPEAKER_00: I've done it before.
SPEAKER_00: I don't just need to throw it in the wash and just hope it all comes out.
SPEAKER_00: No, no, no.
SPEAKER_00: My wife gets this little kit out from up on top of the shelf.
SPEAKER_00: It's a magic box.
SPEAKER_00: And with shout and a brush, she goes to war on that shirt.
SPEAKER_00: And when it comes out of the washer, it doesn't just come out the way, you know, better than went in, it goes comes out way better than it went in.
SPEAKER_00: And as I think about this message today for you, that's what you have to know.
SPEAKER_00: This is why this isn't your part, this is God's part.
SPEAKER_00: That when his blood covers you, instead of you trying to cover yourself, here's what happens: you come out white and washed, you come out cleansed, purged.
SPEAKER_00: Which means this the thing that you still think is with you, the Lord says, I don't even see it anymore.
SPEAKER_00: You know sometimes you're the biggest problem?
SPEAKER_00: Don't tell that to your neighbor.
SPEAKER_00: You know sometimes you're the biggest problem?
SPEAKER_00: And what I mean is this, that sometimes it is your mind that's getting in the way of what Jesus already did.
SPEAKER_00: And what he says, and what he means is he is going to reconcile you.
SPEAKER_00: Now listen, in order to understand this message on restoration, here's what you have to know.
SPEAKER_00: In order for something to be restored, it must first be reconciled.
SPEAKER_00: Here's another R-word.
SPEAKER_00: It must first be reconciled.
SPEAKER_00: It has to be put at rights, and then things can go back to then good.
SPEAKER_00: It reminds me of this nursery rhyme.
SPEAKER_00: You ever heard this?
SPEAKER_00: I don't know why we do this to our kids.
SPEAKER_00: Humpty Dumpty.
SPEAKER_00: Ready?
SPEAKER_00: Humpty Dumpty, Humpty Dumpty, all the king's horses, couldn't put Humpty together again.
SPEAKER_00: Why do we read that to babies?
SPEAKER_00: My mom gave me a hand-me-down and it had that nursery rhyme in it, and I was like, what?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, we all know it, don't we?
SPEAKER_00: You ever feel like that in the middle of your mess?
SPEAKER_00: No matter what I've tried, no matter what anybody else has tried, nothing has worked.
SPEAKER_00: All the king's horses, all the king's men couldn't put Humpty together again.
SPEAKER_00: If there was a Christian version of that, here's what it would say.
SPEAKER_00: But the king's son can't.
SPEAKER_00: No matter what we've tried, I've tried it all.
SPEAKER_00: No matter what the people around me tried, trust me, if you're in a mess, you know.
SPEAKER_00: All the people around me have tried to fix me and they didn't fix me.
SPEAKER_00: So what do I do?
SPEAKER_00: Is it really as depressing as the rhyme, or is there an answer?
SPEAKER_00: And the answer is with reconciliation to God, it's possible through his son.
SPEAKER_00: Listen to probably my favorite verse of this second is this 2 Corinthians 5, 17 through 21.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.
SPEAKER_00: The old has passed away.
SPEAKER_00: Behold, the new has come.
SPEAKER_00: All this is from God, who through Christ Jesus, here it is, reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.
SPEAKER_00: That is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself.
SPEAKER_00: Listen, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, we are now ambassadors like David was.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna tell people of God, making his appeal through us, we implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.
SPEAKER_00: For our sake, he made him, Jesus, to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
SPEAKER_00: You may not care about the word reconciliation, but I trust you, trust me in this.
SPEAKER_00: Your spirit cares more about it than maybe your mind does.
SPEAKER_00: To be reconciled means this: that you didn't get what you deserved.
SPEAKER_00: Not because God said, ah, no big deal, forget about it.
SPEAKER_00: He didn't just didn't pretend like, uh, let's just pretend like we didn't see it.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe cover it up and no one will know.
SPEAKER_00: You didn't get what you deserved because Jesus got what you deserved.
SPEAKER_00: He paid the bill.
SPEAKER_00: It's not yours to pay.
SPEAKER_00: So stop trying.
SPEAKER_00: Somebody in the room, stop trying.
SPEAKER_00: You can't fix your past.
SPEAKER_00: But when God reconciles you to himself through the power of his son and the blood of Jesus Christ, here's what it does: it gives you the potential for restoration in God.
SPEAKER_00: If a couple has an affair, oftentimes they will split up, they won't live under the same roof, trying to sort things out.
SPEAKER_00: But to be reconciled in this example would mean this that they move back in together.
SPEAKER_00: I may not like it right now, but I belong to you and you belong to me.
SPEAKER_00: What are they doing?
SPEAKER_00: They're being reconciled.
SPEAKER_00: But anybody who's been married for three whole seconds knows this.
SPEAKER_00: Just because you live under the same roof and sleep in the same bed doesn't mean everybody's happy, doesn't mean there's joy, it doesn't mean there's health, it doesn't mean there's strength, it doesn't mean there's intimacy.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: So being reconciled, there's another piece to the coin.
SPEAKER_00: There's another side.
SPEAKER_00: God doesn't just want you reconciled.
SPEAKER_00: Reconciliation takes care of your past.
SPEAKER_00: Some of y'all need to know today Jesus paid for your past, but listen, he's just as concerned about your future as he is your past.
SPEAKER_00: What does that mean?
SPEAKER_00: Restoration can come, which is why David cries out, Restore to me the joy of my salvation.
SPEAKER_00: Take me back to where I was.
SPEAKER_00: The joy that I've lost, can it come back?
SPEAKER_00: Yes, it can through Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: The peace that went away because I invited chaos into this mess, the Lord can put the peace back.
SPEAKER_00: The relationships that have been broken, he can restore.
SPEAKER_00: Listen, his part is the restoring part, and everything about restoration has everything to do with your future.
SPEAKER_00: The question today is not just can I deal with my past?
SPEAKER_00: The question today is do I believe God still has a hope for my future?
SPEAKER_00: And the answer is yes, that he does.
SPEAKER_00: And David, of all people, understood this when he prayed this prayer.
SPEAKER_00: And I just want you to know, I say it all the time, but if it worked for him, guess what?
SPEAKER_00: It works for you.
SPEAKER_00: Would you stand as we close our service?
SPEAKER_00: The last part is this response.
SPEAKER_00: Repent, your part, restore God's part.
SPEAKER_00: But then he hands the keys over to you.
SPEAKER_00: And he asks you, What will you do next?
SPEAKER_00: And David's promise to the Lord was I will teach transgressors your ways, my tongue will sing aloud of your righteousness, and my mouth will declare your praise.
SPEAKER_00: The question is, are you gonna do that?
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna ask Jazz to sing this song.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna ask nobody to leave for just a minute.
SPEAKER_00: We just need one minute to just respond.
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