SPEAKER_00: If you are visiting with us today, we want to welcome you.
SPEAKER_00: We are glad to have you with us.
SPEAKER_00: We encourage you to use the connect card in the pew and rack in front of you.
SPEAKER_00: If you would like to share any information with us, we'd love to send you a little note and uh express our thanks for visiting with us.
SPEAKER_00: If any of the rest of you feel like you have something to share with us or a prayer request that you need to communicate, you can use that as well.
SPEAKER_00: But we are glad to have all of us together this morning to celebrate what Christ did on the cross.
SPEAKER_00: We do that this morning by celebrating the Lord's table.
SPEAKER_00: Over the last few months, we have been preparing to participate together in communion by looking at a handful of psalms that communicate various aspects of God's grace.
SPEAKER_00: So we begin by learning about the grace of God's righteousness in Psalm 143.
SPEAKER_00: And then in Psalm 130, we learned about the grace of redemption.
SPEAKER_00: And then in Psalm 32, we read about the grace of forgiveness.
SPEAKER_00: Today I would like us to consider the grace of repentance from Psalm 51.
SPEAKER_00: But there is another passage of Scripture that we need to hear before getting into Psalm 51.
SPEAKER_00: That passage is found in the Old Testament book of 2 Samuel.
SPEAKER_00: 2 Samuel 11 and 12.
SPEAKER_00: Now, 2 Samuel 11 begins with an unwise choice by Israel's king.
SPEAKER_00: You probably have heard of him.
SPEAKER_00: His name is David.
SPEAKER_00: And Scripture says that he was a man after God's own heart.
SPEAKER_00: Something that each and every one of us should desire.
SPEAKER_00: To be a man or a woman, that God can say, that is a person who exhibits my heart, who displays my character.
SPEAKER_00: That should be in each one of us.
SPEAKER_00: That was King David.
SPEAKER_00: And then we read what happened in 2 Samuel chapter 11 and chapter 12.
SPEAKER_00: In chapter 11, it begins with these words.
SPEAKER_00: But David remained at Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: David was about 50 years old at this point in time.
SPEAKER_00: And some have suggested that David was experiencing what today we call a midlife crisis, wrestling with perhaps some inner demons.
SPEAKER_00: Who is he?
SPEAKER_00: What's going on in his life?
SPEAKER_00: We don't know that, of course, but what we do know is what is recorded here.
SPEAKER_00: The king, when he should have been out leading his armies into battle, remained at the comforts of home and walked right into sin.
SPEAKER_00: You may know the rest of the story.
SPEAKER_00: David was walking on the rooftop of his palace and saw a woman bathing, and that led him into committing adultery with Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah.
SPEAKER_00: Bathsheba conceived, and David then ordered her husband back from battle lines to make it look like the child was Uriah's instead of David's.
SPEAKER_00: When that didn't work as planned, David did the next obvious thing.
SPEAKER_00: Send Uriah back to the battle lines to be killed.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, he sent him back with orders for his own death.
SPEAKER_00: David ordered Joab to send Uriah to the most dangerous location in the battle to ensure that he would be killed.
SPEAKER_00: David sought to explain the murder away by telling his commanders, oh, you know what, things like that happen in battle sometimes.
SPEAKER_00: Don't worry about it.
SPEAKER_00: Those things take place.
SPEAKER_00: People die in war.
SPEAKER_00: Because the king apparently believed that he had covered his tracks sufficiently enough to soothe his own conscience, to negate any guilt he might have felt inside.
SPEAKER_00: Now, before we pass judgment on this man after God's own heart, isn't that what we all do?
SPEAKER_00: Be honest with yourself.
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that what we all do?
SPEAKER_00: We seek to explain away our own sins.
SPEAKER_00: Now it may not be with sins in the category of murder and adultery, but don't we do things, whether purposely or unintentionally, to explain away our little white lies, our gossip, our attempts at deception, our anger, our worry, or any number of little sins, as though any sin is little.
SPEAKER_00: We don't like to feel guilt.
SPEAKER_00: We don't relish in shame, and we run from taking responsibility for our own sin.
SPEAKER_00: That's who we are by nature.
SPEAKER_00: We want to soothe our own consciences, and so we work to convince ourselves that what we have done really isn't that bad.
SPEAKER_00: Like all of us, when we try to explain away our sin, David hadn't planned on one little detail.
SPEAKER_00: He hadn't planned on God intervening.
SPEAKER_00: 2 Samuel chapter 12 records a visit the king received from the prophet Nathan, sent by God specifically to confront David about his sin.
SPEAKER_00: Here's the record.
SPEAKER_00: And Yahweh sent Nathan to David.
SPEAKER_00: He came to him and said to him, There were two men in a certain city, the one rich and the other poor.
SPEAKER_00: The rich man had very many flocks and herds, but the poor man had nothing but one little ewe lamb, which he had bought.
SPEAKER_00: And he brought it up, and it grew up with him and with his children.
SPEAKER_00: It used to eat of his food and drink from his cup and lie in his arms, and it was like a daughter to him.
SPEAKER_00: Now there came a traveler to the rich man, and he was unwilling to take one of his own flock or herd to prepare for the guest who had come to him.
SPEAKER_00: But he took the poor man's lamb and prepared it for the man who had come to him.
SPEAKER_00: Then David's anger was greatly kindled against the man, and he said to the prophet Nathan, As Yahweh lives, the man who has done this deserves to die.
SPEAKER_00: And he shall restore the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing, and because he had no pity.
SPEAKER_00: Nathan said to David, You are the man.
SPEAKER_00: Thus says Yahweh, the God of Israel, I anointed you king over Israel, and I 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.
SPEAKER_00: And if this were too little, I would have given you much more.
SPEAKER_00: Why have you despised the word of Yahweh to do what is evil in his sight?
SPEAKER_00: 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.
SPEAKER_00: 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.
SPEAKER_00: Thus says Yahweh, Behold, I will raise up evil against you out of your own house.
SPEAKER_00: I will take your wives before your eyes and give them to your neighbor.
SPEAKER_00: 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.
SPEAKER_00: David said to Nathan, I have sinned against Yahweh.
SPEAKER_00: And Nathan said to David, Yahweh has also put away your sin.
SPEAKER_00: You shall not die.
SPEAKER_00: Nevertheless, because by this deed you have utterly scorned Yahweh, the child who is born to you shall die.
SPEAKER_00: Then Nathan went to his house.
SPEAKER_00: And we are left with this image of the king in all of his glory and all of his might, as we might imagine, sort of slinking down into his chair and hanging his head in shame.
SPEAKER_00: Have you ever been in a position where someone said to you, I know what you did?
SPEAKER_00: I remember times when when I tried to hide things from my parents.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it rarely ended well.
SPEAKER_00: The confrontation with my parents usually began with one of them asking me, Did you do such and such?
SPEAKER_00: How do you answer that?
SPEAKER_00: Well, immediately your gut fills with fear, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_00: There's instantaneous regret, there's uncertainty, there's shame.
SPEAKER_00: Trying to figure out, okay, if I say this, what will happen over here?
SPEAKER_00: If I say this, what will happen?
SPEAKER_00: Trying to find a workaround.
SPEAKER_00: Now imagine being the king of God's chosen people, being confronted by God's messenger about egregious sins you sought to hide.
SPEAKER_00: These are not the sins of children still maturing in their understanding of right and wrong.
SPEAKER_00: These are sins committed by someone installed specifically by God with the use of authority and power, intentionally choosing to sin.
SPEAKER_00: Under the Mosaic law of the time, there was no sacrifice to atone for these sins.
SPEAKER_00: The penalty was death.
SPEAKER_00: The king ought to die.
SPEAKER_00: But God was merciful to David and put away his sin.
SPEAKER_00: He would not die.
SPEAKER_00: There were still consequences to his sin, as there always are, and they were severe.
SPEAKER_00: But because of God's grace, David would not face the penalty of his sin.
SPEAKER_00: But what then?
SPEAKER_00: What does a man or woman or child do when confronted by God with the horror of their own sin?
SPEAKER_00: Well, Psalm 51 tells us.
SPEAKER_00: I'd like you to turn there with me.
SPEAKER_00: Don't overlook the small print descriptions at the beginning of some psalms.
SPEAKER_00: If you need a magnifying glass to see that, get a magnifying glass because they're important.
SPEAKER_00: They provide insight into the circumstances of the psalms, and this particular song really gives us some insight.
SPEAKER_00: It says in that small print at the top of Psalm 51, to the choirmaster, a psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet went to him after he had gone in to Bathsheba.
SPEAKER_00: According to your steadfast love, according to your abundant mercy, blot out my transgressions.
SPEAKER_00: 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: Against you and you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment.
SPEAKER_00: Behold, I I was brought forth in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me.
SPEAKER_00: Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being, and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart.
SPEAKER_00: Purge me with hyssop, and I will be clean.
SPEAKER_00: Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
SPEAKER_00: Let me hear joy and gladness.
SPEAKER_00: Let the bones that you have broken 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: Cast me not away from your presence.
SPEAKER_00: Take not your Holy Spirit from me.
SPEAKER_00: Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and uphold me with the willing spirit.
SPEAKER_00: Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will return to you.
SPEAKER_00: Deliver me from blood guiltiness, O God, O God of my salvation, and my tongue will sing aloud of your righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise.
SPEAKER_00: For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it.
SPEAKER_00: You will not be pleased with a burnt offering.
SPEAKER_00: The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.
SPEAKER_00: Do good to Zion in your good pleasure.
SPEAKER_00: Build up the walls of Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: Then you will delight in right sacrifices, in burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings.
SPEAKER_00: Then bulls will be offered on your altar.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if a more personal psalm exists.
SPEAKER_00: This was produced from the darkest, most personal experience in the life of King David.
SPEAKER_00: And yet it was written for the choir to sing.
SPEAKER_00: It was given to the director of the temple choir for the choir to be sung in the presence of other worshipers.
SPEAKER_00: Talk about your sin being exposed.
SPEAKER_00: Here is the king opening his heart to all of his people and commanding that they be reminded of his sin and of his response to his sin.
SPEAKER_00: But there's an important nugget of truth there.
SPEAKER_00: While this concerns David's sin and repentance, because it's directed to the choir director, we can then make the application that this is intended by David to be for all of God's people, instructing us about our sin and our repentance.
SPEAKER_00: It's directed to all of God's people because our lives are so filled with sin that we need instruction in repentance and the grace that comes with it.
SPEAKER_00: In the very first of his 95 Theses, Martin Luther wrote, When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, repent, he willed that the entire life of believers be one of repentance.
SPEAKER_00: Repentance, first and foremost, is a desire to submit to the Lordship of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: In that desire to submit to the Lordship of Christ is an acknowledgement that what God thinks, what God says, and what God feels about my sin is right and true.
SPEAKER_00: Now that's contrary to the way our culture thinks.
SPEAKER_00: Our culture argues that whatever you feel is right.
SPEAKER_00: Whatever the individual thinks is true.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, if I don't feel that my actions are sinful, then I'm okay.
SPEAKER_00: If my opinion is that an action is okay, then it's okay.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't matter what you think, it doesn't matter what God thinks, what I think is what is right.
SPEAKER_00: Because our culture places the authority within the individual.
SPEAKER_00: And that has the result of eliminating an absolute.
SPEAKER_00: What God says no longer matters, unless, of course, I agree with him.
SPEAKER_00: Then it matters.
SPEAKER_00: Well, God disagrees with that.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know that there's a clearer statement of that truth than Romans chapter 9.
SPEAKER_00: You will say to me then, Paul says, Why does God still find fault?
SPEAKER_00: For who can resist his will?
SPEAKER_00: Then the apostle says, But who are you to answer back to God?
SPEAKER_00: Will what is molded say to its molder, Why have you made me like this?
SPEAKER_00: Has the potter no right over the clay to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use?
SPEAKER_00: It's Romans 9, 19 through 21, where the Apostle Paul just throws it back in our face and says, You have no right to question the absolute sovereignty of the living God.
SPEAKER_00: What he says goes.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, what God thinks, what God says, and what God feels about my sin must become what I think, what I say, and what I feel about my sin.
SPEAKER_00: That's the essence of repentance.
SPEAKER_00: That transformative way of thinking then moves me to turn and go in a different direction than I was traveling in.
SPEAKER_00: So that I'm thinking differently, I'm living differently, I'm feeling differently, and that ought to be the constant attitude of the believer in Christ, as Luther said.
SPEAKER_00: Whenever our sin is made clear to us, we submit to the Lordship of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: We mold our thinking about our sin to Him.
SPEAKER_00: And we allow that new way of thinking to impact how we live going forward.
SPEAKER_00: And then we repeat that.
SPEAKER_00: Again and again and again and again every time we sin.
SPEAKER_00: And slowly but surely, the work of God makes us more and more like Christ.
SPEAKER_00: That is what this psalm is intended to generate in us.
SPEAKER_00: That movement towards repentance, towards submitting to the Lordship of Christ again and again and again.
SPEAKER_00: And God speaks to us from the ancient but very real and painful experience of a man after God's own heart, so that we too might be drawn to repentance.
SPEAKER_00: So, what do we see?
SPEAKER_00: What do we see coming from the pen of one whose sin has been made painfully clear to him?
SPEAKER_00: What should be our first, our initial response to knowledge of our sin?
SPEAKER_00: Well, what we see from David, from this convicted king, is a plea for mercy from a guilty heart.
SPEAKER_00: Have mercy on me, O God.
SPEAKER_00: And I don't know if you noticed, but David doesn't even have the heart to call God by name.
SPEAKER_00: The Psalm does not have the personal name of God Yahweh in all capital letters.
SPEAKER_00: He refers to him as Elohim, as God and Lord.
SPEAKER_00: He can't bring himself to say, Yes, my personal relationship with you applies right here.
SPEAKER_00: He says, No, there's a massive wall here that needs to be broken down.
SPEAKER_00: He says, I need your mercy.
SPEAKER_00: According to your steadfast love and your abundant mercy, blot out my transgressions, wash me thoroughly, cleanse me.
SPEAKER_00: David knew he deserved nothing but death for his sin.
SPEAKER_00: That was the judgment decreed by God centuries before when the law was given through Moses.
SPEAKER_00: He had earned judgment from his sin.
SPEAKER_00: That's why he cried out for mercy, an action he did not deserve.
SPEAKER_00: He cried not just for any kind of mercy, but.
SPEAKER_00: But a mercy based in the unchanging character of God.
SPEAKER_00: You and I have no greater friend than the unchanged, unchanging nature of our God.
SPEAKER_00: We change all the time.
SPEAKER_00: We shift, we move.
SPEAKER_00: He remains unchanging.
SPEAKER_00: God had declared himself all throughout the Old Testament to be a God of grace, of mercy, of abundant loving kindness, a covenant-keeping God full of loyal, steadfast, and unchanging love.
SPEAKER_00: And David knew that God's loyal love overflowed with mercy, and that never changes.
SPEAKER_00: Like a bathtub filled with water overflowing the lip of the tub and running down the side, covering the floor of the room, God's mercy is abundant and overflowing.
SPEAKER_00: Remember that, child of God.
SPEAKER_00: When your guilt and your shame brings you into knowledge of the judgment you deserve for your sin, remember your God is overflowing with mercy.
SPEAKER_00: What is that mercy for?
SPEAKER_00: Well, David desperately wants it to be applied to his transgressions.
SPEAKER_00: To his transgressions, for his blatant rebellion against God.
SPEAKER_00: Blot it out, the king cried.
SPEAKER_00: Blot out my transgressions.
SPEAKER_00: Before the ease of paper or electronic pages, ancient scribes who did not have access to fresh leather upon which to write would take an old piece of leather that had been written on and scrub off the old writing so that they could reuse it.
SPEAKER_00: The guilty heart comes to God asking for his abundant mercy to scrub out the sin from our lives.
SPEAKER_00: In cultures and times where there was no soap, people would take clothes and submerge them in water and walk on them in order to clean them.
SPEAKER_00: It was David's picturesque way of asking God to make sure that he was completely cleansed from his sin.
SPEAKER_00: It would be like asking God to take our spirits and wash them in his divine washing machine.
SPEAKER_00: Make sure, God, that I am absolutely clean.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Cleanse me in verse 2 from my sin.
SPEAKER_00: Cleansing was a term taken from the Old Testament laws about uncleanness.
SPEAKER_00: A leper, for example, who was healed of leprosy, would go to the priest to be examined to make sure that the skin condition was completely cleared up.
SPEAKER_00: And if it was completely cleared up, he would offer a sacrifice.
SPEAKER_00: And the priest would take hyssop, a plant that was likely from the marjoram or thyme family, and sprinkle or symbolically cleanse the individual.
SPEAKER_00: That process symbolized that God had completely cleansed the person from their uncleanness.
SPEAKER_00: David pleads for God to scrub sin out of his being, to thoroughly wash him and declare him clean so that he would be holy before God.
SPEAKER_00: That is the plea from a guilty heart.
SPEAKER_00: And that plea comes from a full recognition of guilt before a holy God.
SPEAKER_00: The language changes in verse 3.
SPEAKER_00: The urgency found in verses 1 and 2 shifts to a pained recognition and a prayerful desire.
SPEAKER_00: For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me.
SPEAKER_00: Do you see the shift in thinking?
SPEAKER_00: David did not see his actions as sin when he was trying to cover them and explain them away.
SPEAKER_00: He didn't fully acknowledge them.
SPEAKER_00: But now he sees his actions in light of God's holiness and he sees them as rebellion, as transgression, going beyond God's standards.
SPEAKER_00: No longer is the king seeking to hide in his guilt and his shame.
SPEAKER_00: He's agreeing with God that what he has done is sin.
SPEAKER_00: That's the essence of confession.
SPEAKER_00: Author Trevan Wax wrote, confession is the expression of repentance in which we name our sin for what it is.
SPEAKER_00: We turn away from sin and turn toward a merciful God.
SPEAKER_00: The difference between a Christian and a non-Christian is that the non-Christian sins is not, I'm sorry, not that the non-Christian sins and the Christian does not, because we know that we all do, but that the Christian sins and repents.
SPEAKER_00: While the unbeliever hardens their heart toward God, either by refusing to admit sin or by trying to deal with it in some other way.
SPEAKER_00: Notice the elements of confession in David's statement.
SPEAKER_00: Here we see how clearly he understands his guilt.
SPEAKER_00: Against you, and you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight.
SPEAKER_00: Now it's easy for us to understand that statement, and we might take Bathsheba's side and say, hey, wait a minute.
SPEAKER_00: But it's not saying that he didn't do anything wrong against Bathsheba or Uriah.
SPEAKER_00: That's not what David is claiming.
SPEAKER_00: He's saying that sin, any sin, whether it be against a specific person or completely in private, is ultimately against the sovereign God Himself.
SPEAKER_00: All sin is against God.
SPEAKER_00: Ultimately, He is the primary one we offend.
SPEAKER_00: Think about that for a minute.
SPEAKER_00: If you got angry with your parents this morning, you sinned against God.
SPEAKER_00: If you yell at your spouse in anger, it's as though you are sinfully yelling at the holy God.
SPEAKER_00: If you take it easy at work, instead of giving your all, or if you fudge on your taxes a bit, it's as though you were stealing from the king of the universe.
SPEAKER_00: A key element in repentance is acknowledging that any and all sin is against God.
SPEAKER_00: But David goes even further.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me.
SPEAKER_00: There was never a time in David's life when sin was not present.
SPEAKER_00: Sin existed in him from the moment of conception on.
SPEAKER_00: He was born into sin as we all are.
SPEAKER_00: We're not sinners because we sin.
SPEAKER_00: We sin because we're sinners.
SPEAKER_00: And we have not fully grasped repentance until we can acknowledge that truth.
SPEAKER_00: The starkness of sin is vividly clear in verses 7 and 8.
SPEAKER_00: Purge me with hyssop, and I will be clean.
SPEAKER_00: Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
SPEAKER_00: Let me hear joy and gladness, let the bones that you have broken rejoice.
SPEAKER_00: The sinner is not clean, but dirty.
SPEAKER_00: Around here we have snurt in the winter.
SPEAKER_00: Wind-driven snow that's been mixed with dirt.
SPEAKER_00: That dirt needs to be removed.
SPEAKER_00: In his guilt, the psalmist even feels as though his bones have been broken under the weight of the guilt he feels.
SPEAKER_00: But he longs desperately to be rid of that so that he can rejoice.
SPEAKER_00: The recognition of his guilt before a holy God has crushed him.
SPEAKER_00: But he longs for cleansing.
SPEAKER_00: He longs to be made white like snow.
SPEAKER_00: He desires the promise of God stated by the prophet Isaiah, though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.
SPEAKER_00: Though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool.
SPEAKER_00: The language changes again in verse 9.
SPEAKER_00: The broken man returns to how he began the psalm with pleas.
SPEAKER_00: And here we see the humble plea for grace.
SPEAKER_00: The moment our sin is exposed, we cry out for mercy because we know our sin demands judgment.
SPEAKER_00: We know that justice is due, but we know our Father is overflowing with mercy.
SPEAKER_00: And processing his mercy brings us to a point of full acknowledgement for our sin, laying it out before him, saying, Yes, Father, I'm now thinking about this the way you are.
SPEAKER_00: It is wrong, it is rebellion, it is transgression.
SPEAKER_00: And we can then confess or agree with God that He is right and we deserve nothing.
SPEAKER_00: But all of that brings us to an interesting place, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_00: If our repentance has followed David's pattern, then we will realize we can't fix it.
SPEAKER_00: If we are conceived in sin and born into sin, if sin is a result of who we are at the core, then we can't escape it without a certain kind of rebirth.
SPEAKER_00: And like Nicodemus would argue a thousand years later on a dark night in Jerusalem, we cannot re-enter our mother's womb to be born a second time.
SPEAKER_00: So David asks for grace.
SPEAKER_00: Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquities.
SPEAKER_00: In his omnipresence and omniscience, God knows all.
SPEAKER_00: And he sees all.
SPEAKER_00: My sin, your sin.
SPEAKER_00: He sees not only our sinful actions, whether they're done in private or in public, but he sees the attitudes and the thoughts at the sinful core of our being.
SPEAKER_00: The king then asks for something he does not deserve.
SPEAKER_00: He pleads with God to be blind to his sin and to take it upon himself to scrub out the sin from David's life.
SPEAKER_00: David can't do it.
SPEAKER_00: I can't do it.
SPEAKER_00: And you can't do it.
SPEAKER_00: We must have God Himself take us to the tub and scrub us until we are whiter than snow.
SPEAKER_00: Of course, sinfulness is not an outward thing that can be washed with soap and water and scrubbing, is it?
SPEAKER_00: Those are metaphors.
SPEAKER_00: God's scrubbing is something that God does on the inside that displays itself outwardly.
SPEAKER_00: That's why David asks, create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit in me.
SPEAKER_00: Heart, spirit, clean and right and renewed.
SPEAKER_00: And the Bible uses this term for create.
SPEAKER_00: It always refers to an action performed only by God.
SPEAKER_00: Man cannot create in the way that God creates.
SPEAKER_00: Every person conceived and brought forth in sin needs God to recreate them.
SPEAKER_00: Now that creating is not ridding ourselves of bad habits or trying harder to be a good person.
SPEAKER_00: That's something that we would do.
SPEAKER_00: We can't create.
SPEAKER_00: God must do that.
SPEAKER_00: This is an action that only God can do.
SPEAKER_00: Only God can create a clean heart and a right spirit within the sinful person.
SPEAKER_00: And nothing that we have done deserves that.
SPEAKER_00: We have not done enough good to earn a newly created heart.
SPEAKER_00: We need it desperately, but it only comes through grace and creation.
SPEAKER_00: The repentant person knows that God has every right to drive them out of his presence, to never have anything to do with them again, like he did with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, driving them out and blocking entrance into his presence.
SPEAKER_00: The repentant person knows that's what I have earned, that's what I deserve, that's the justice.
SPEAKER_00: The repentant person understands that God's justice should take away every grace and mercy and blessing of his presence in our lives.
SPEAKER_00: And so we cry for grace.
SPEAKER_00: Cast me not away from your presence.
SPEAKER_00: Don't take your Holy Spirit from me.
SPEAKER_00: See, this repentant man understands that his only hope, his only rescue is if God does his creative work through his spirit within a sinful person.
SPEAKER_00: That is grace.
SPEAKER_00: Repentance is a submission to the Lordship of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: It's an acknowledgement of who we are before him and a cry for him to do what only he can do.
SPEAKER_00: David knew that under the crushing realization of his sin.
SPEAKER_00: This is the exact same truth that the Apostle Paul would tell the church a thousand years later.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.
SPEAKER_00: The old is passed away, behold, the new is come.
SPEAKER_00: All this, Paul says, is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself.
SPEAKER_00: In Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself.
SPEAKER_00: How?
SPEAKER_00: By not counting their trespasses against them.
SPEAKER_00: In David's words, hide your eyes from my sin.
SPEAKER_00: The guilty who have arrived at full recognition of their guilt should be moved to humbly plea for grace.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because it's overflowing from the God of grace.
SPEAKER_00: The same God we have offended in our sin is the one to whom we must go for a new heart and a renewed spirit.
SPEAKER_00: That grace is found in the God who restores our souls.
SPEAKER_00: But what then?
SPEAKER_00: An often ignored aspect of repentance is the display of repentance.
SPEAKER_00: When our mindset about sin becomes like God's, when we begin to think about sin as God thinks, and then his spirit graciously transforms us to make us more like Christ through the washing of his word, the inevitable result of genuine repentance is a different life.
SPEAKER_00: Not a perfect life.
SPEAKER_00: But one that is molded more and more like Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what we see here in Psalm 51.
SPEAKER_00: There is the full display of repentance before God and others.
SPEAKER_00: Notice what David says he will do.
SPEAKER_00: Instead of covering up his sin, instead of delighting in his sinful experience, in verse 13, he says, I will teach other transgressors your ways.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 14, I will sing aloud of your righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 15, I will declare your praise.
SPEAKER_00: Verses 15 through 17, he says, I'm going to worship appropriately.
SPEAKER_00: See, the sin-burdened king knows that simply going to the temple to offer a sacrifice isn't genuine worship.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 16, you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it.
SPEAKER_00: Now wait a minute, isn't that what God commanded them to do?
SPEAKER_00: To go and to offer a sacrifice?
SPEAKER_00: Well, yes, he did.
SPEAKER_00: But David knows.
SPEAKER_00: He understands that simply physically going to a location and performing an action isn't true worship.
SPEAKER_00: That is not genuine repentance.
SPEAKER_00: The worship with which God is pleased is that which begins with his work of grace on the inside.
SPEAKER_00: And that begins with an acknowledgement of sin that leads to repentance.
SPEAKER_00: In Psalm in verses 18 and 19, ends with a prayer that God would do that same work that he did in the king in the entire city of Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: That God would do something so great that an entire city would respond with genuine worship.
SPEAKER_00: Wouldn't we love to see that?
SPEAKER_00: How can our prayer be any less?
SPEAKER_00: How can our personal response to sin be any less?
SPEAKER_00: You see, beloved, we know what David did not know.
SPEAKER_00: We know that our sin would lead God the Son to a cross, and that there he would die.
SPEAKER_00: So that I would not have to die in judgment for my sin.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus told his disciples, It is written that the Christ should suffer, and on the third day be raised from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations.
SPEAKER_00: Beloved, the grace of repentance is based on the cross of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: You may have entered these doors and come and sat down and hoped to be ignored because you are just broken and weighed down under the weight of sin.
SPEAKER_00: I've been there.
SPEAKER_00: Plea for mercy from the God who overflows with mercy.
SPEAKER_00: Acknowledge your sin and come for cleansing to the cross of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you came this morning thinking that this is something I have to do.
SPEAKER_00: Well, if you're doing it because you have to do it, then you're doing it out of ritual, and that is not genuine worship.
SPEAKER_00: Open your heart in repentance to the God who desires to refresh you, to renew you.
SPEAKER_00: Come to him for the grace of repentance.
SPEAKER_00: Be relieved of that burden of requirements so that now you come to him with the joy of your salvation.
SPEAKER_00: Beloved, there is hope in Christ because of the grace of repentance.
SPEAKER_00: Follow David's course and find cleansing in the blood of Christ shed for you.
SPEAKER_00: Not repenting this very moment is like standing in front of a traveling bus driving directly towards you, but believing with all of your heart that it will not hit you.
SPEAKER_00: It will.
SPEAKER_00: And hard.
SPEAKER_00: That's what sin does.
SPEAKER_00: But God is gracious.
SPEAKER_00: The prophet Nathan told the king.
SPEAKER_00: God has heard you.
SPEAKER_00: You will not die.
SPEAKER_00: But God did.
SPEAKER_00: As though he were a slave.
SPEAKER_00: And being found in appearance as a man, he died.
SPEAKER_00: A death on a cross.
SPEAKER_00: So that you might have the grace of repentance.
SPEAKER_00: Would you pray with me?
SPEAKER_00: Our Lord Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Humble us.
SPEAKER_00: Humble us so that we might receive the treasure of you.
SPEAKER_00: In coming to you for cleansing, for for a new heart, for a renewed spirit.
SPEAKER_00: It's not coming to you for an object.
SPEAKER_00: We come to have you.
SPEAKER_00: And in having you, we have forgiveness.
SPEAKER_00: Having you, we are granted repentance.
SPEAKER_00: And in being granted repentance, you do a work of creating that we can never imagine.
SPEAKER_00: How wonderful it is, then.
SPEAKER_00: Lord Jesus, to gather together as your children who have been graced in this way, to celebrate what you have done for us.
SPEAKER_00: To be reminded, yes, of the cost of our sin, but also to celebrate the freedom that comes in forgiveness and repentance.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, what joy there is in that.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.