"The Solution to Sin" - 2 Samuel 12:1-23

What can you learn from Nathan's rebuke and David's response about the solution to all sin?

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Cedar Street, it is so good to be with you. It's a joy of my heart to be with you. I love you all so very much, and I'm just grateful for our time together here this morning. I wish you would all know how much I think of each of you, and I wish I had enough time to tell you that. We are in the midst of a sermon series. I hope it's blessed you. I know it's blessed me at least. I know this has been one of my heroes of the faith who's taught me so much about what it is to want to be a man after God's own heart, and that's King David. We've been going through 2 Samuel verse by verse. Our series is entitled Faithful and Flawed. And I've said that from David we learn a man of great faith who ran after God's own heart, but also a man of great flaws who ran after God's amazing grace. And we've looked at a lot. This is our eighth sermon of the series. And I said, I've said that every week, right? So if you picture the life of David, it's like the pitch of a roof. First ten chapters, everything's going great. His ministry's exploding. He's king over Israel. Things are going incredibly well. They're bringing in the Ark of the Covenant. He's showing grace. They're winning military victories. And then you get to chapter 11, and one egregious sin leads to another, that leads to another, that leads to another, and it's a downward fall for the rest of his ministry. But having said that, I do want to say this today. We know David as Christians, we know him as a man after God's own heart, even though the sins that he committed were great. And I think the reason why we still believe that and still call him a man after God's own heart, no matter how flawed he really is, is because of what he shows us in today's passage. And what is true of him, I want to say is true of each of us. It's not the faith that you display when things are going well that speak about who you truly are. It's the way that you respond in faith when you are at your very worst that reveal your heart as a follower of Jesus Christ. All right. Anybody can praise God when the sun is shining. Anybody can praise God when you're in a time of what Christians call consolation, where God feels close and Bible reading feels fresh, and everything just, you know, God is just moving. Anybody can do that. But you find out who you really are when you've gone a place that you should not have gone, and you're in a sin that you don't know how you got there. When you respond the way that David responds today, it reveals that even though you and I are flawed, real faith comes when we're repentant before a holy God. I truly believe this, and this is why we remember him as a man after God's own heart. If you're new to the Bible and you're new to the church here today, I'll just say a little bit of context. We looked in the last two weeks about the sin that David committed, committing adultery with Bathsheba, a woman who was not his wife, and then being an accomplice to murder and sending his husband, her husband Uriah out to the front lines and being murdered to try to cover up his sin because she was pregnant. Today he's finally confronted. Today he finally confesses, and today God begins a healing in his life. And I want to say this to all of you. Perhaps you looked at the uh the title of the sermon on the bulletin and said, uh, Bo, let's move on to something different. I know, this is our third week in the topic of sin. I don't care what you're struggling with right now as you walked into the sanctuary. Perhaps right now you're struggling with somebody else's sin. Somebody is deeply hurting you and frustrating you. And I'm telling you, I don't care where you're at right now, this message is for you, and this message is for me. I believe what we're going to talk about today is rarely talked about in churches, and it's one of the great weaknesses of Christians, and it's something that we don't understand, and if we don't understand it, we don't do it. And because we don't do it, here's what I've seen: everybody's offended by everybody else. Everybody's offended at our country. Everybody's offended at people that don't call them or don't visit them or don't acknowledge their own pain. They're always offended that they're not being recognized. And anytime someone is that offended, they're not offended enough by their own fallenness and sin. They're not offended enough by their own thoughts and self-centeredness and their words that trickle into gossip and their attitudes that can be really short and hurtful to other people. You're here on planet Earth because you're in a process of transformation. You're not here to just vomit out how disgusted you are with the world. That doesn't change anything. God didn't keep you here just so you can tell everybody how bad the world is and how everybody else needs to change. No, you're here because you need to change. I'm here because I need to change. And the only way we're ever going to change is if we're honest with God. Let me just say this: God only deals with reality. God doesn't deal with illusion. And when you and I are not in a posture of continual repentance and confession of our own sin, we start to drift and detach from reality. And our problem is everybody else's issues. Our problem is everybody else that doesn't give us our credit or doesn't show us enough attention, and we don't recognize your problem is not political, your problem is not familial, your problem is not financial. You and I have a fallen nature that God wants to change, and he can't change it unless we are willing to be in constant confession and repentance. This is what it is to be a follower of Jesus Christ. Now, David's sins were great, but David was a true man after God's own heart because when he was confronted, we're going to see how he responds. We can learn a lot from this. So I want to get right after it. What's the big idea as we look at 2 Samuel chapter 12, verses 1 through 23? Nathan's rebuke and David's response to his secret affair reveal the solution for how we must deal with all sin. Nathan's rebuke and David's response to his secret affair reveal the solution for how we must deal with all sin. We're going to learn today, even though his sin was great, boy, his model for how we should deal with it is also something that we could say is great, and we need to model this. So if you want to know more about the solution to sin, turn with me to the book of 2 Samuel. If you're new to the Bible, it's in your Old Testament, it's after 1 Samuel, and it's before 1 Kings. If you don't have a Bible, grab the Pew Bible in front of you or beside you. We're on page 309 in your Pew Bible, and if you would stand at this time out of the reading of God's holy, infallible, inerrant, and fully sufficient word. We're in 2 Samuel chapter 12. Now I am going to read the first 23 verses, but I promise you, as we walk through the text, we're going to hit the high notes, and I'm going to tell you key sentences and even key words that you can underline if you're a note taker to really see what God is getting after in these passages. 2 Samuel chapter 12, starting in verse 1, hear God's word to us. It says, And the Lord sent Nathan to David. He came to him and said to him, There were two men in a certain city, the one rich and the other poor. The rich man had very many flocks and herds, but the poor man had nothing but one little ew lamb, which he had bought. And he brought it up, and it grew up with him and with his children. It used to eat of his morsel, and drink from his cup, and lie in his arms, and it was like a daughter to him. Now there came a traveller to the rich man, and he was unwilling to take one of his own flock or a herd to prepare for the guest who had come to him, but he took the poor man's lamb and prepared it for the man who had come to him. Then David's anger was greatly kindled against the man, and he said to Nathan, As the Lord lives, the man who has done this deserves to die, and he shall restore the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing, and because he had no pity. Nathan said to David, You are the man. Thus says the Lord the God of Israel, I anointed you king over Israel, and delivered you out of the hand of Saul, and I gave you your master's house and your master's wives into your arms, and gave you the house of Israel and of Judah, and if this were too little, I would add to you as much more. Why have you despised the word of the Lord to do what is evil in his sight? You have struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword, and have taken his wife to be your wife, and have killed him with the sword of the Ammonites. Now therefore the sword shall never depart from your house, because you have despised me and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife. Thus says the Lord Behold, I will raise up evil against you out of your own house, and I will take your wives before your eyes and give them to your neighbor, and he shall lie with your wives in the sight of this sun. For you did it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel and before the sun. David said to Nathan, I have sinned against the Lord. And Nathan said to David, The Lord also has put away your sin, you shall not die. Nevertheless, because of this deed you have utterly scorned the Lord. The child who is born to you shall die. Then Nathan went to his house. And the Lord afflicted the child that Uriah's wife bore to David, and he became sick. Verse 16. David therefore sought God on behalf of the child, and David fasted and went in and lay all night on the ground, and the elders of his house stood beside him to raise him from the ground, but he would not, nor did he eat food with them. On the seventh day the child died, and the servants of David were afraid to tell him that the child was dead. For they said, Behold, while the child was yet alive, we spoke to him, and he did not listen to us. How then can we say to him, The child is dead? He may do himself some harm. But when David saw that his servants were whispering together, David understood that the child was dead, and David said to his servant, Is this the child dead? And they said, He is dead. Then David arose from the earth and washed and anointed himself and changed his clothes. And he went into the house of the Lord and worshipped. Then he went to his own house. And when he asked, they set food before him, and he ate. Then his servant said to him, What is this thing that you have done? You fasted and wept for the child while he was alive, but when the child died, you arose and ate food. He said, While the child was still alive, I fasted and wept, for I said, Who knows whether the Lord will be gracious to me that the child may live? But now he is dead. Why should I fast? Can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he will not return to me. Let's pray. These are painful words, Lord, that we've read. They're painfully true. They're not prettied up, Lord. Your Bible says some very difficult things. And you have spoken some very difficult words to your people in times of sin. But Lord, help us to hear that these are the words of a loving Father, holy and loving, full of grace, but also justice. Lord, help us to see the model of David. Help us to see that you can begin to do a mighty work if we would get dead level honest with you and bring to light what we love to keep in the darkness. And Lord, help us also to remember we have something that David did not. We are on the other side of the cross. And even though our sin has great consequence here on earth, there is no condemnation for those who are covered in the blood of your son. And so we can face our sin if we face it holding the hand of Jesus. And we can face your discipline, knowing that you work all things together for good. Be with us right now. Lord, I just pray right now, whatever distractions we might have in these last few minutes, remove them. However much we want to look at the person sitting next to us and blame them for where we are right now. Lord, help us to say this message is for each of us. We need to hear these words for our lives. We need to confess our sin. We need to be cleansed by you. And I know that you're waiting for each of us to come to you with that level of honesty and transparency. Be with us right now, I pray. In Jesus' name, and God's people said. Amen. Wow. Yes, we're talking about sin. I promise that's not the only thing we're going to talk about the rest of the series. But I tell you, in the last three weeks, starting in the beginning of chapter 11, which we took two weeks to look at, chapter 11, and then today, starting in chapter 12, if you want the absolute template for how sin is started, what happens when sin is not dealt with, and then how it is that you and I should deal with sin, remember 2 Samuel 11 and 2 Samuel 12. You'll find no other place in Scripture that gives more evidence on how sin affects the people of God. We said again back in chapter 11, in the first five verses, we saw the stages of sin. We said that sin doesn't happen in a vacuum. It doesn't. There's things that happen. First, there's a condition of the heart that sometimes we're hungry and angry and lonely or tired. We're idle and we're bitter towards other people. And when our guards are let down, that's when we ourselves give ourselves license to sin with our thoughts and our words and our actions. Right? And then there's the criteria God or Satan likes to use the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life. That's pleasure outside the will of God. That's acquiring possessions outside the will of God. That's being obsessed with professional success and goal achievement and filling up the trophy case and climbing the ladder and getting the highest degree and doing the very best you can to have a legacy and a career and doing all those things and making that the goal of your life, goal-driven. Boy, that's the heart of the lust of the eyes. And then the pride of life, seeking power and honor and recognition and wanting to be center stage in your life. When you start doing those things, now, granted, everything I just mentioned in God's will is a good thing. Pleasure came from God. All right. So in the covenant of marriage between one man and one woman, that's a safe place to enjoy that pleasure. All right. The lust of the eyes is possessions. Things are to be enjoyed if they're consecrated by the word in prayer. God may give you great possessions to enjoy. And then honor and power, God may make you very powerful with the job that He's given you. He may give you great honor for a job well done. But when you are seeking that as the primary motivation of your life and making that your idol, man, your heart is prime time soil for sin. Prime time. And then it happens, sin is conceived when we see something that God does not want us to have, and we either say, Yes, I must have it, or maybe I'll go after it. Even the maybe is as bad as yes. Because when you move towards sin, it gets its hook in you. And then we said the consummation is when we actually commit the sin and then the consequence that comes after that. Those are the five stages of sin. If you want to know more about that, the previous sermons up on the website, the first five verses of 2 Samuel 11. But last week we said, if you will not deal with sin, it's a cancer and it will spread. It will spread. You'll drift like swimming out at Tybee Island, and you're not paying attention to the current and you're not paying attention to where you put your towel in your beach chair, and all of a sudden you don't recognize how far you've drifted off the shoreline. That's what happens with a Christian that is not confessing sin daily in prayer to the Lord. You just start drifting. And you become a person that you don't even know how you became. You know, there's people that I know in my life, they're just bitter. It's everybody else's fault why they're so unhappy. It's somewhere along the lines they started getting, again, more offended with the world than with their own nature that God wants to change. And they didn't start off that way. But man, it's been years since they had an honest evaluation of their own life. It's everybody else's fault. I think that's the state of our country right now. It's everybody else's fault. And good old-fashioned hissy fit's gonna solve everything. And it just makes it worse. It deflects all the attention on other people instead of where it needs to be. And it spreads. And if we will not confess our sin, it leads to more damage, more deceit, and more death. Now, here it leads to physical death. The death of Uriah, the soldier, the husband of Bathsheba. He dies, and then we see we're gonna see further on the child dies, and then we see later on in the book, more people in David's house are gonna die. All is a consequence because David did not recognize the sin when it was there. Same is true with us. It may not be physical death, it may be spiritual death, it may be relational death. There may be relationships in your life that have been severed because your heart was not right towards them, and yes, their heart was not right towards you. And God wants to restore it. He wants to restore it, but it has to start with you. It has to. So, what's David's response? What's the solution? We know the stages of sin, how it happens. We know the spread of sin, how it can go like a cancer, but what do we do? Well, as we look at these verses, I'm gonna just give you some key words and key sentences. We're gonna look at four must-haves to pursue the solution to sin. This is for everybody in this room, every sin, great or small. Okay, the solution to sin is this. Number one, let's jump right in. Sin must be confronted. Sin must be confronted. Now, verses one through twelve show the confrontation that Nathan the prophet, God spoke to Nathan, and Nathan went to David on behalf of God, and Nathan confronted the sin. He tells this story, he tells a metaphor about a man who took advantage of another man who only had one ew lamb, and David gets all worked up, and right where he's ready to just drop the hammer on this metaphorical guy. What does it say? Underline this if you're a note taker, verse 7, underline these words. Nathan said to David, You are the man. He confronted David, and David had nowhere to turn. Right then and right there, everything that was kept in the dark, everything that was covered over, everything that was cleaned up, everything that David thought, well, Bathsheba knows this, and I know that God knows this, but I'm just gonna just tuck it under and keep plugging ahead because you know what? I got a good thing happening here in Israel right now. When Nathan confronted it for the first time, David had an opportunity to reconnect with reality. The real David standing before the real God, and Nathan is the one that did it. Nathan carried out the will of God. Now I want you to stop and think about this. Do you think, now I don't know for sure because it doesn't say in chapter and verse, but do you think with what happened, somebody else knew what happened? All right? David had servants that were bringing Bathsheba to the house, and Bathsheba was leaving and coming back, and then Uriah came and they tried to send him down to the house, but he's sleeping outside, and then he dies in the battle, and Bathsheba comes to stay in David's house. Somebody knew what was going on. They didn't have Facebook back then, but somebody knew what was going on. But nobody had the guts to talk to the king except Nathan. Now let me just say this. I'm being as dead level honest as I can be. In the last 10 years that I've been your pastor, I cannot tell you how many times I know a person who has somebody else in their life living in significant sin, and they come to my office and they say, I really need you to talk to this person. And I look at them and I say, Okay, have you talked to them yet? Well, no, that's why I need you to do it. But they're your friend. I I know, I know, but uh, it would just mean more coming from you. Let me just say this: confronting sin is not the job of the pastor, it's the job of the church. The Bible says in Ephesians that my job is to equip the saints to do the work. Now, that does not mean that I am not called to be a counselor. That does not mean that I'm not called on from time to time to knock on doors uncomfortably and confront people for things that they need to repent of. I've done it before, I'm gonna have to do it again. It's the least favorite part of my job. But you know what? I'll say this. 50 years ago, our community and every other community that was a Christian community, they didn't have to go to the pastor because the church dealt with the issues. There's a lot of things 50 years ago that would never make it to the pastor's desk because the deacons or Sunday school teachers would be at the doorstep dealing with the issue and nipping it in the bud. But we've become a society that sweeps everything under the rug, and the only time that we try to confront everything is by yelling in capital letters behind a keyboard on social media. And that doesn't that doesn't solve anything, that's not confronting sin. Rebuking people that don't agree with you on social media, that's how cowards respond. Anybody can have boldness on Facebook, but in love and in grace, going to people that you care about in grace, with gentleness and respect, not watering down the truth, but not banging them over the head with the Bible, sitting Them and telling them, I love you and I'm concerned. Here's something we need to address. You know what? They may not respond the way that you want, but what you're gonna find in your life is God's gonna draw near to you and He's gonna honor it, and you're gonna have intimacy with Him, and He's gonna make you aware of issues in your life, and you're gonna have a sensitivity to the Holy Spirit. One of the reasons why churches are dying is because nobody's being real. Everything's just swept under the carpet. You know, laugh if you will. I most of you know me better than my own blood family knows me at this point. Uh I'm a Yankee born in Philadelphia. As uh Billy Trapnell used to say, you can always tell a Yankee, but you can't tell him much. Right? And I've been in I've been in the South most of my adult life. Now, I happen to believe that Meadow, Georgia, is a collection of some of the finest people I've ever met in my life. I want to die in this community. Not today, but I want to die in this community. Uh this is where I want to raise my family. But I will say this. I've learned that uh to use an analogy, where I was born, people are like uh coconuts. And where I live now, people are like peaches. Now, in Philadelphia, you'll meet a bunch of coconuts. We're hard shell on the outside, but if you break through, you get the real person, and they'll be dead level honest with you. What I've learned in the South is people are like peaches, they're soft on the outside. Hey, how are ye? How's your mama doing? But you don't know the real them because we're real good here in South Georgia about prettying up sin, spraying it with Febreze. And I'm just telling you this: God's not fooled. He knows what's happened. When the sun goes down in Candler County, when people are behind a computer clicking websites or putting extra numbers on Excel sheets, when people are getting underneath the covers, listening to country music with somebody they're not legally married to, God sees it. We're just really good about prettying it up around here. And I'm just telling you, until we get serious with God, he's gonna withhold more rain, physical and spiritual. Our issue is not a drought, our issue is unconfessed sin. God wants to do a great work in this church, but you mark it down, every great revival that you have ever seen begins with people with their face flat on the carpet at the altar. You look at what happened at Asbury Seminary a few years ago and Southeastern University this past year, these college revivals, you know how they all start, college kids start confessing sin. And I'll say this you may cast stones at millennials, but they're more honest about their sin than you are in your 70s. I'm telling you. They may not show up at work when they should, but they're honest about their sin, the ones that I've, you know, they because they want to really they want to have a real experience with a real God. Quit playing church. You must confront sin. Otherwise, you're not living in reality. David was not living in reality. This is a man who was worshiping God, he was leading great battles, he was showing grace, and somewhere one sin lent to another, and he was somebody that he did not want to be. And in this moment, Nathan, out of great love, shook him. Out of great love, he shook him back into reality. That's exactly what happened. And I just want to say, right now, in your life, who is somebody that you love that is living in sin and they need to be confronted in love. Not with anger, not with self-centeredness, not with condemnation, maybe with tears streaming down your face. Brother or sister, I love you, but I know what you're doing. You need to repent. God wants to bless you, but he can't until you turn back to him. We need to have more conversations like this. We need to confront sin. We also need to confront it in our own lives. We're gonna talk about that in a minute. But that's number one. Sin must be confronted. Number two, sin must be confessed. When you are either confronted by somebody else or better, if you're confronted by the Holy Spirit and you're willing not to ignore it, you need to confess sin. It never gets better if you ignore it. Now, look at the first part of verse 13. This may be a huge embarrassment to David, but he I'm sure in eternity he would tell you this was a changing moment in his life. In the first part of verse 13, it says, David said to Nathan, I have sinned against the Lord. It's almost as David said, Oh, I finally woke up from my dream. I'm finally with reality. This is who I really am, and this is what I really did, and I want to be real with God because I want to have real intimacy with him again. Yes, I have sinned against the Lord. And you would think that as believers, when we're confronted, that's how we always respond. Let me just tell you this. It's just not how it usually is. You know what I typically hear when people are lovingly confronted? Well, who are you? What about your life? Who are you to tell me? You don't know. You don't know what I've been through. No, it takes the grace of God, but if somebody comes to you in love and confronts you, you don't look at their life. They may have issues. Now, everybody loves to point out everybody else's sin. It's like body odor. Everybody can smell it on you, but you. Right? But even if they're living in unrepentant sin, if if they speak to you about something and it's true, your response should not be, who do you think you are? Your response should be Amen. I did make a mistake and I need some help. It is amazing when those words are spoken. God says, Whoo, there's a place I can work. There's some soil I can work in. Man, we gotta we gotta pull up some weeds, but at least that soil is fertile enough. I can do some work when there's at least a little bit of humility. Maybe, maybe somebody is gonna confront you this week, and it's not gonna feel good. Don't look at their life, listen to their words, and if what they're saying is true, receive it. Receive it and be willing to confess it. Now, first we need to confess our sins to God, but as part of the church, it is very clear we're also called to confess our sins to one another. It says in James 5.16. Now, if I was to ask you, what's James 5.16, most of my faithful saints would give me the King James. I love how it sounds in King James. It just sounds better in the KJV. They'll tell me the end of the verse, but they won't tell me the beginning. Well, Bo, the effectual, fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much. You're exactly right. What's the beginning of the verse? The beginning of the verse is, therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another that you may be healed. Yes, you need to confess sins to God, but you also need other brothers and sisters to come alongside because they're gonna give you perspective. They may tell you that it's worse than you think, or they may tell you, man, that's not what you think it is. You're being harder on yourself right now than you need to be. They can give you perspective. Now, again, as a pastor, I'm honored to partake in that type of ministry. I've counseled a lot of people over the years, but it's gonna be a lot more effective if you have a brother or a sister. Women need women, and men need men. You need to confess to somebody about what you're dealing with in your life. And you need somebody who's not just gonna tell you what you want to hear. You need good, godly friends that are gonna say, listen, you did mess up, but it's okay. I love you. God loves you. We're gonna pray, God's gonna heal this because you're being honest, we're gonna deal with this thing together. Man, that kind of church, God's waiting for that. God says, that kind of church is gonna receive this blessing that I've been holding on to because everybody else is playing games. When sin is being confessed and people are getting real, the blessing that God has been holding back is gonna get poured down through the windows of heaven. I believe it. If you want revival, pray for confession. Pray for confession. You pray for confession, you will get revival thrown in for free. You pray for revival, you may get neither one. Confession always comes before revival. It does. And here's the third thing: sin must be confronted, it must be confessed, and it also must be corrected. Now, God is a perfect father. All right, a perfect father is filled with compassion and also consistency. Someone who's going to love and forgive, but also discipline and correct when necessary. The best fathers that you ever thought of are ones that were good at discipline, but they always did it with love. David certainly is under severe correction. Why is he receiving this level of correction? Well, when you are in a place of great leadership and you commit great sin that affects a lot of people, it brings great consequences. There are so many people that want to be the top 1% of their field. And what I would say is do everything you can not to be that person, because when you are, you will be more accountable, and your mistakes will bring with it more consequences and more correction. Too much is given, much is required. For those of you right now that wish you could climb the ladder of whatever corporate area that you're living in, be happy where you are. If God wants to advance you, he will, but just know if you knew that what came with that extra zero in your paycheck, you might not want it. Great consequences. And he had to face them. He had to know that there was going to be more issues in his family the rest of his life. His sin brought physical death, and it was going to bring more death. Not just the death of the baby here later in the passage, but again, we'll see later on in his family, things continue to happen. But let's just say this: when you're in a place of confessing sin and being honest, whatever consequences happen, you have to hear this. God is not just some angry judge that can't wait to zap you when you make a mistake. He knows you better than you know yourself. He wants what's best for you better than you do. And his correction is always gonna be for your better good and for his greater glory. He's always gonna do what's best for you, even in the short term if it's painful. That's who God is. I, you know, I'm at the point where I don't want his discipline, but I trust that if he brings it, I need it. He's all his will is always gonna be better than mine. Always. I really believe that. That's not just a doctrine on a dusty old Bible. I really believe that. That when when I'm being under the discipline of God, it's for my good. He's changing me to be more like his son. He brings correction, and that's third, fourth, and finally, as we're finishing up here, sin must be confronted, it must be confessed, it must be corrected, it also must be cleansed. God loves to do this. God loves to do this. Now, as you look at uh verses 15 through 23, just look at verse 16 and look at the first few words. It says, David therefore sought God. Right there, just stop right there. David didn't just tell Nathan, yeah, you're right, man. I messed up on this one. And he didn't just hear a sentence that he didn't run away from God after he heard what was going to happen. He ran towards God with everything he had. Now, in this prayer, we know that he was praying for his son. He was praying that his son would not die, but he did a lot more than that. How do I know that? Because I had the whole Bible to look at. And Psalm 51 tells us what he was praying that night. And it was a lot more than just praying, Lord, help my son not to die. That was part of it. It wasn't all of it. When we seek God with our whole heart, we open the heart to be cleansed. Change can finally take place. Now, I want to show you something before we sum it up. If you're a note taker, this will be huge. I want you and I to see a portrait of cleansing. All right, so look at this with me on the screen. Uh, there's three verses. There we go. A complete portrait of cleansing. This is life-changing if you write this down. Write this down, go home and read these verses. What was David doing when David was praying all night long for his son? Well, Psalm 51 says the kind of prayer that we pray for cleansing. As he was praying for his son, Psalm 51 says he was crying out, Created me a clean heart and renew a right spirit within me and restore to me the joy of your salvation. I pray that over us every Sunday when we confess sin. Psalm 51 shows us how to pray for that kind of cleansing, to get that real with God. And then the power of cleansing is Psalm 32. Now, in the first couple of verses of Psalm 32, David, who's now been forgiven and cleansed, talks about what it was like before he was cleansed. And he said, Oh, my bones were wasting away, and your hand was heavy upon me. I want you to picture the hottest day in South Georgia and that humidity just covering you like a blanket you can't shake off. That's what sin does when you don't confess it. You just kind of drift. You're just kind of not really there. It just weighs on you day after day. David says, When I was cleansed, I realized all the extra weight I was carrying around. And then Psalm 30, 139 is the protection. If you look at the last two verses of Psalm 139, verses 23 through 24, and I want to be practical for a minute. He says, Search me and know my heart, try me and know my thoughts, see if there be any anxious ways in me, any grievous ways in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. Now let me be dead level practical. Okay. I am as messy a sinner as anybody in this room, but there is something God has been doing in my life now for the past few months, and I've begun to notice a little change. Not a lot, but a little. So I don't know how you end your days. Everybody's got their bedtime routine. Can I tell you what my routine has been most of my ministry? Go, go, go, go, go, go, go, get home at nine o'clock, reheat something in the fridge, get in my recliner, put on ESPN, and pass out. And then climb to my bed and wake up exhausted and pray in the shower for strength and start the day all over again. Well, a couple months ago, and I always knew this, but I just wasn't willing to do it. A couple of months ago, I found myself inching to my recliner, and I had the remote and I was about to turn on YouTube or ESPN, I'm not sure what it was. And for the first time I felt God just say, No, Bo, you know, you know I've been wanting to have this time with you. I know you're tired, I know you're stressed. Put the remote down. And what I began to do, and I don't do this seven nights a week, although that's my goal, is I don't care how tired I am, I want to spend at least 30 minutes in dead silence, the last 30 minutes before I go to my bed and I review the day with God. I think through the day, and then when I recognize areas where I've sinned, conversations. Now, I think I'm a lot more sensitive to it now than I used to be. You know, when I'm hanging out with friends and we're having a good time, but yet as the good time continues and we begin to talk about things we've been struggling with, it inches into gossip, and I say, Lord, I gossip today. Or, Lord, I'm really irritated at this person today. Or I'm just so frustrated that no matter how hard I try to be a better pastor, there's always somebody that complains and I recognize that's my issue. Because if I receive their complaint and if there's truth in it about how I can be a better pastor, then Lord, let it let it humble me. Or maybe I am really frustrated with somebody and I'm not particularly living in sin right now, but I can I can lift that frustration up to God instead of thinking I need another person to vent to to feel better. When God is your comfort, when he's the one that you go to, and he's the last one that you speak to before your head hits the pillow, you know what he gives in return? Intimacy. He may not fix your situation, but you can wake up the next day and you feel like you got a partner with you that's helping you. I have found when I try to numb it with food or I try to numb it with sports, and I just want to forget about it until the next day, I wake up defeated because I didn't address it. All right, and when you pray Psalm 139, verses 23 and 24, and you think through your day and you say, Lord, let me think through the conversations of today. Sometimes I recognize there's words I should not have said. Sometimes I recognize there's people that I should have contacted and I miss them because I was too busy doing something else. And sometimes I recognize there's people I need to go and see. And I'm more sensitive the next day to what God wants to do in my life because I'm keeping short accounts with him. I'm just testifying in my own life. I don't know of anything in the last couple of months that's made any more difference in my life than just taking an extra 30 minutes. And I'm saying that's not Bible study. I love studying the Bible. That's not Bible study time. Sometimes we study the Bible to ignore our issues. No, no, no. This is evaluation time. God, take me through my day. What am I really dealing with? What are you really showing me in my heart? How can I be honest with you? And just pray honestly. If it's sin, confess it. If it's frustration, lay it at his feet. Be honest with him. His chest is big enough for us to beat on in full honesty about what we're working with in our life. He can deal with honesty. God only deals in reality. He only deals with you as you are, not as you wish you were. You be honest, and God can work with that. So let me sum it up. I know the hour's late here. I just want to sum it up in one sentence. In one sentence. We can seek the solution to sin with courage only when we remember Christ's promise to those who are his. We can seek the solution to sin with courage only when we remember Christ's promise to those who are his. What's the promise? Romans 8:1. You all should know this. If you don't write it down, remember it. There is thou, therefore, no condemnation for those who are in Christ. I can confess the worst sin of my life. Yeah, I can I can face very harsh earthly consequences. But you know what? If I have intimacy with Jesus, I can face any issue if I'm holding his hand. Jesus might say, Bo, I love you. Uh I've been waiting on this. Now we're gonna face some consequences. This may hurt a little bit, but we're gonna do it together. You know, the other day I was at the dentist getting a crown put on, and my dentist, Dr. Bray in Statesboro, is a faithful Christian. He had worship music playing in the background. He had 1 Corinthians 13 attached to the ceiling. So as I'm in the chair looking up, staring at 1 Corinthians 13 for an hour, it said, Love bears all things. Love never fails. And in that moment, it was like Jesus saying, I'm with you. We're gonna get this crown finished up. Uh and then it's like, I'm with you. Whatever you got to deal with when you go home, all the missed calls that you have while you were sitting in this chair, I'm with you. We're gonna do this together. If you are willing to spend that time and let God do dead level honest work in your heart, there's nothing that you will face that you can't face if he's with you. What a gift. What a gift. So as I pray, here's the invitation. What is God speaking to you right now about areas in your life that he wants to change? I know that your struggles right now are real, and I know it also has to deal with other people's sin and not just yours. I know that. Your issues in life are not just because of your sin, they're because of others, but it's easy to look at theirs and not yours. The invitation is this What sin in your life? What is irritating you and frustrating you? What is being done to you that God is using it to show you areas in your life? Maybe you're a control freak and right now you got a situation you can't control, and God's saying, I'm using this to show you. You need to surrender control to me and keep doing it, whatever the issue is. As we enter into this invitation, be honest with God. Be willing to confess your sins, be willing to ask for his help, be willing to seek his cleansing, and he will show you the solution to your sin. Let's pray. Oh God, you know you've put this on my heart. I want to say this as loud and as clear as I can. I believe that you want to bring revival to this community in a way that we've never experienced for anybody in this room since they've been on this earth. I believe that you want to pour out a revival on the parched souls, the way that we're praying for rain for our parched land. But I know this, it will not happen until the people of this community get really honest about what is happening when doors are closed and when the sun is set and when words are said and bitterness sets in, and all the things that we're dealing with, Lord, we cannot expect that you're gonna pour out revival until we pour out words of honesty before you. So as I pray right now, Lord, in your Holy Spirit, make us miserable until we get honest with you about areas in our life that need to change and give us courage to confess them to you and confess them to others that we can change and that we can experience clear. Cleansing and have 50 pound weights carried off of us for all that we've been carrying around because we've never had that time with you. Lord, I pray that honesty and confession would just be a wave that covers and just rushes through this room right now. I pray in Jesus' name. Amen.