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That being said, do I have any Jim Gaffigan fans? Okay. I really like Jim Gaffigan. Um he's he's a pretty funny guy. But uh one of the things, I don't know why this was in my brain last night. I was thinking about how God blesses us beyond what we deserve. And I had for some reason I had this word bonus in my my mind, and it reminded me of Gaffigan's spiel when he talks about the bonus fry. You know what I'm talking about? Those of you guys have watched Gaffigan stuff, you probably know I'm talking about. But uh so I'm a dad of six kids. Some of you that are new don't know that. I say that fairly often from the platform. Um, and and I just it it it constantly shapes the way I view the world. But one thing for sure, I know McDonald's kind of gets hated on by our healthy culture. Nobody likes to go to McDonald's anymore or eating this bad stuff, but I still just love their fries. I'm just like I'm like there's just times I'm driving down the road and I just have to whip in and grab some fries. And one of my favorite moments is when I whip in and get some fries, and there's the bonus fry. It's like the big long fry in the bottom of the sack, you know. And if my kids are with me, I don't tell them it's in there, right? That's that's dad's fry. That's mine. And I'm gonna enjoy every savory moment of eating that deliciousness uh with all the grease and salt on it. I know some of you are like gross. Uh but anyway, I was thinking about this idea of bonus, but you know, the reason why I was even on that trek of bonus was because God not only has offered us forgiveness, he's offered us new life, he's offered us so much more. Uh anything that we have uh in his blessings and benefits on top of what he's already done in forgiving us for our sin through the work of Christ on the cross is really bonus. I mean, we don't deserve one more good thing from God. We don't. In and of ourselves, we don't deserve one more blessing. I mean, if he never did another thing for us, he's already done everything that we could ever imagine, and that we've been given our greatest, our greatest need has been met in the person of Jesus, right? You agree with that? So every time he blesses us with other things, like when he answers our prayers, whether it be answer for prayer, and some of us maybe feel like he hasn't answered our prayers lately, but prayers for health or prayers for provision, uh, prayers for protection. I mean, God is just blessing us beyond what we deserve. It's a bonus, right? But the the good the good the thing about our God is that our God is a bonus God. Our God loves blessing his children. That's the kind of God he is. He loves benefiting us as his children. He's not stingy, he's a generous and he's a gracious God. And he wants to do more than just help us get by and survive life. He actually wants us to experience joy and he wants us to thrive in life. And so we're in the middle of a series right now, uh three-week series through the chapter 51 in the book of Psalms. So if you have your Bible, I'd encourage you to pull it out. But we're gonna be looking again at the text from Psalm 51. And I'm gonna give you a little bit of backdrop for those of you who weren't here last week, catch you up to speed. We'll go really quick, but I want to make sure that you understand the backdrop of this psalm. And I just want you to know last week as we ended our time together personally, I just was so thankful that I have a church family where we can be vulnerable. I know, let's be honest, being vulnerable is not comfortable. Uh and we have an enemy who would like for us to live in the shadows, to live in the dark, to not be honest about where we really are, to not share our struggles, our sin, our junk. But in Christ, we have freedom to be honest and to be real with one another. And I think, this is just my my my thought, I think the world, and when I say the world, I mean the people who aren't Christ's followers, and maybe some of you, that's you, maybe you're just here exploring faith, maybe you're not a Christ follower. But I think the world, they see our lives, they know we're not perfect. And so for us to set up this kind of facade, put on this mask and act like we have it all together, and because we're a Christian, that we've just got it all figured out, or that we we've we are not we're not sinners, like they see right through that, right? Uh and so I think it's it's great that in a church environment, a setting that like this, we can come together and sure, like there's an appropriate time to be honest and to be real, but we can come and we can show each other the grace and the mercy of God. We can help each other experience the grace that we all need, right? Uh, because we can show that to each other by showing forgiveness and love and support, encouragement as we struggle through life. And life is a struggle. In fact, the apostle Paul says it's a battle, it's a war. And if we don't see it that way, uh we're gonna get taken out and we're gonna miss uh the opportunity to really fight the battle well and to experience the victories that God wants us to experience. That being said, Psalm 51 is an incredible psalm where David is riding from a place of brokenness. He's riding from a place of real uh turmoil that he's experienced. And here's why. Because we said this last week, 2 Samuel 11 and 12 gives us the story of David. Uh he was a man after God's own heart, he was a warrior, uh, he was he'd done some incredible things, a man full of faith, right? I mean, this is the guy who took on a giant with a sling. I mean, that's crazy. I know we've probably heard that story so many times. We're like, oh yeah, that's the giant kid. Um, no, this guy took on a giant with a slingshot, right? Craziness. Insane. He did that uh because he was full of faith in God. Not because he thought he was awesome, but because he had faith that God would provide, that God would protect him, God would sustain him. And so David does that, but then David becomes king and he begins to rule and to reign and apparently was a great king. He was a godly king. But just like every other human being on the planet, David still had a sin nature. He still had the propensity, he even had uh the uh the desire to sin, and we're gonna talk about some of that today. And so he sees during the spring, he's up on his roof hanging out in his palace, he sees a lady taking a bath, he has his uh servant, one of his servants, go over and talk with her and uh do some some like research and figures out who she is. He has her brought to him, he sleeps with her, she gets pregnant, and then this whole mess, this kind of rat's nest of stuff starts to unfold because he then lies and he then he tries to deceive her husband, and then ultimately she he he kills, has her husband killed, uh Joe Joab, who's David's kind of right-hand guy, has this has this guy, Uriah, killed um in battle and try to make it look like it was an accident, but no, everybody knows it's not an accident. And so the the whole deal is that David is in a very dark place when he writes this song. He is really in a spot where he is in the hurt locker to say to uh to say what one of our elders loves to say all the time, the hurt locker. I don't know, that's his phrase, and now it's sticking with me. So what came to mind. And so here's the deal he's hurting, he's struggling, he's going through difficulty, he's going through challenge. And in this moment, he writes his psalm, and the first five verses that we talked through last week, we find David not just sulking and not just focusing on his sin, but we find David actually looking up to God. And we said last week that when we experience uh conviction for our depravity, when we experience hurt and we we see ourselves in rebellion, um it is real easy to make it all about us. Because there's two types of sorrow that we've discussed last week and we'll come back to in a minute again, and that there's a worldly sorrow and there's a godly sorrow. A worldly sorrow is the sorrow that says, I'm sad I got caught. Right? If you were with us last week, we talked about that. This is uh when it's all about the embarrassment, uh, the shame, uh, the fear of what people think about you. Like that's that's a worldly sorrow, okay? But then there's a godly sorrow, which is what David shows here, which is the sorrow that leads to genuine repentance and change. It's a sorrow that says, God, I've offended you, right? That I understand my sin is against you. I've hurt other people, I've wounded other people, I have offended other people, but I've sinned against God. Okay, that's where David is in this moment. And so uh many of the people who uh write about this story, write about David, and even this would say that Psalm 38 is uh is kind of the psalm that was written as David was was uh convicted of his sin and confronted. And so if you have time this week, I encourage you to even go read over Psalm 38. It's uh it's a painful chapter in the Psalms uh where David's talking about his his struggle and his pain, his sorrow that he feels for sin and his rebellion. But David doesn't try to deflect his sin. He doesn't try to like say, hey, it was their fault, he doesn't try to shove it off on somebody else. He owns his sin and in fact he even intensifies his sin. He doesn't just talk about what was going on with his sin in that moment. He says, I am full of transgressions. My transgressions are ever before me. And so David owns his sin. And he acknowledges that his sin, again, is against God and that it's grievous, that it's horrific. And he asks for forgiveness. He sees God as a source of forgiveness. Now, um, let me just say something on this. Uh, some people say that believers don't need to ask for forgiveness. That people, if you're a child of God, you don't need to ask for forgiveness because you already have forgiveness. And I would actually say, no, that's not true. Um, yes, we have forgiveness in Jesus, but we need to confess our sins to God and we need to verbalize and we need to say, God, forgive me for my sin. Not because he hasn't given us, but because he's promised it in the cross. In fact, as a believer, say it this way: the cross is not the reason we do not ask for forgiveness. It is the basis for our confidence that when we ask for forgiveness, it's a yes. That in the cross, we know when we come to God, there's restoration, there's hope, there's mercy, right? So we come to God and we say, God, forgive me for my sin. You see, Psalm 51 shows us how we should think and feel about sin. It shows us how we should think and feel about sin. In fact, all the Psalms, these songs that were written, show us how we should think and how we should feel about life as a follower of God, as a person who is a Christian. Now, David wasn't a Christian in terms of what we talk about Christian because David lived before Christ comes on the scene, but David believed in God, he walked with God, he had a personal relationship with God, and David shows us how we should feel about sin. And here's what you notice in Psalm 51. Anyone who is following God and who loves God, when you sin, it should cause you grief. It should cause you hurt. It should, as even he's gonna say later in this psalm, it should sometimes crush you. That's a good thing. Did you know that? It doesn't feel good. It's not like we're like, God crushed me, I want to feel really bad. That's not how we pray about it, but we should feel remorse, right? Because we know in our heart this is not right. This is an offense to God. This is not what God has called me to do. This is not how God called me to live, this is not what God wants me to do in a way that it is dishonoring to Him. And so we should feel the horrendousness of our sin when we blow it, when we uh rebel. And so the Psalms teach us how we should think and feel. And we're gonna speak to that again because we know that um sin is much more than just uh than just an action. What makes a person a Christian is not that we don't sin. It's what we do with that sin, right? Because as I said a while ago, as a Christian, you're gonna continue, I'm gonna continue to struggle with the flesh that we have. Until Jesus takes us home, until he comes back, there's gonna be this struggle. There's a war, we have a sinful nature. God's given us a new heart, he's made us new, all those things. But there is still within us a war, a battle. And so in that, we need God's help. And David shows us how we should feel when that when those moments of rebellion and struggle come. So here's what I know to be true. When we are uh, if we're a believer, when we are when we are sinning or when we are in rebellion, and God convicts us, and he brings us to a place where we see the ugliness of our sin, and he even brings us to the place of forgiveness, I'm convinced that as a believer, we are not content with just being forgiven. Forgiveness is a huge piece of it, but I believe that forgiven people pursue God with even more passion, with more fervor, that forgiven people love even more. In fact, Jesus said it this way He said, He who is forgiven much loves much. And when we understand the depths in which we are forgiven, it moves us past just a, hey, God, would you fix this problem? Would you remove the consequences? Would you forgive me? Would you remove my guilt? Would you remove my shame? To an actual desire to be different, to be changed, to walk a new life in a new way. So I want to read this section of scripture that we're gonna look at today. It's from Psalm 51, begins in verse 6, and we're gonna read through verse 13. Here we go. Surely you desire integrity in the inner self, and you teach me wisdom deep within. Purify me with hyssop, and I will be clean. Wash me and I will be whiter than snow. Let me hear joy and gladness. Let the bones you have crushed rejoice. Wow, that's a powerful verse. Turn your face away from my sins and blot out all my guilt. God, create a clean heart for me, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not banish me from your presence, or take your Holy Spirit from me, but restore the joy of your salvation to me, and give me a willing spirit. Then I will teach the rebellious your ways, and sinners will return to you. Now I want us to look at verse six for a minute, because I've been really thinking a lot about this verse, and for some reason it's it's really stuck out to me more than any other time in my life. But notice what he says in verse six. He says, Surely you desire integrity in the inner self, and you teach me wisdom deep within. What is David talking about here? Well, I think David is talking about the fact that sin is at a much deeper level than just our behavior. Right? Sin is much deeper than simply our actions. In fact, we'd say sin is not just about our actions, it's about our desires. Sin is not just something we do in our behavior, it's something that we even want to do. We have a desire to, we have an attraction to. It says in the book of James that when we sin, uh, that it's because we have evil desires in us. We're tempted by the evil one, but he doesn't make us sin. Our evil desires cause us to want to sin. Does that make sense? And unless we get to that level, we will never really fix the root problem in our sin. You see, we have an issue going on that's below the surface. There are symptoms in our lives that we see on the surface that are pointing to a deeper issue. And the scripture would even say that we need to be really guarded about what's going on in our in the area of our heart. If we're going to experience freedom, if we're going to experience a new life on this side of our rebellion, if we're going to see a change in our behavior, then we need God to do something significant in our heart. You see, because what's going on in our heart will come out. Jesus said it this way, out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks. That stuff that's in here is going to come out. And David says, you desire integrity. You desire for what's in here to be consistent with what's out there, and what's out there to be consistent with what's in here. And what I'm telling you is that honestly, whatever's in here is eventually going to come out out there. Even if you can maintain and control it for a little while, eventually what's in your heart is going to come out. Now there's an interesting thing that happens, and uh this word heart throughout the Old Testament, uh, like what does it mean? What when we say heart, we know we're not talking about the physical organ of the heart. When we talk about below the surface, what are we really getting at? Well, we're getting at in according to the Hebrew language, the idea of the mind, the mind, will, and emotions. So again, this place where what we're thinking and what we're feeling, uh, and what even what we're desiring, like all kind of comes together. And I don't know about you, if you're aware of this, if you're cognizant of this, but you've always got a conversation going on at that level, right? All of us are thinking and processing life, and we have an ongoing dialogue with ourselves. We're talking to ourselves all the time. We're processing what we see around us, we're processing what we're hearing, we're processing different things. And here's the thing: if we are going to walk in purity, if we're gonna walk in truth, if we're gonna walk in light, if we're gonna walk in a way that honors God, we have to pay close attention to what we're telling ourselves. We have to pay really close attention to that dialogue that's going on below the surface. You see, I don't know what you're thinking right now. I don't know what's going on in your heart, but God does. He sees it. And he wants to change us at the heart level. He wants to change us at the level of that conversation that's going on. In fact, think about it this way: Romans 12, 1 and 2 is a great passage of scripture that talks about how that in view of God's mercy we should present ourselves as living sacrifices. But in verse 2, he says something very profound. He says, Do not be conformed to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. What's going on in that subconscious level, we have to pay close attention. In fact, the apostle Paul would even say, we've got to take every thought captive. Because if we don't, that stuff will eventually come out in our behavior. Now, this is significant even for those of you who are parents in the room. Um, uh, as we raise our children, uh, we realize that behavior is not the ultimate problem. Behavior is not really the issue. Behavior is a symptom of the bigger issue. There's some belief problems going on down in the heart. There's some problems that are below the surface. There's a conversation that our kids are telling themselves. There's conversations in my life that I'm telling myself, which is why my behavior gets out of whack. And if we don't pay close attention to what we're speaking to ourselves, things that are not true, things that are not consistent with scripture, things that are not about God and about his love and about his intent and about light, and then we will naturally drift towards sinful desires. Because, like I said a while ago, even though God's made us new and our deepest desire is to please him, there still is this sin nature that's warring. Warring against us, battling. We're battling. And so sin is not just this act we do, it's a desire, and we need God's help. But here's the great thing God doesn't want to only forgive us of our sin, he wants to actually heal us, he wants to make that stuff under the surface new. He wants to change that. He wants to help reformat the way we think about life. He wants to help help us see things in a new, he wants to even change our affections for him. So, how does David actually do this? Because notice, David moves. Uh David, it says that he knew, or he says there, he's you teach me wisdom deep within. Um, David was a man who knew what was right. So we know that it's not just a knowledge issue, it's not just an intellectual issue. We know it's not just an information issue, right? Because David grew up and he was a Hebrew, and I can guarantee you that as he was a Hebrew growing up, he heard all the stories about the Exodus. He heard all the stories about how God had saved his people. He are he heard the Ten Commandments. They're probably posted in his room, right? He grew up hearing those things. And you know what's interesting about that is that David knew that the Ten Commandments said, Thou shalt not lie. And did he lie? Yeah. David knew that the Ten Commandments said, Thou shalt not covet. Did he covet? He coveted another person's wife? Yes. David knew that the scripture said, Thou shalt not commit adultery. Did he commit adultery? Yes. David knew that God did God's Ten Commandments said, Thou shalt not kill. Did he kill? Yeah. And even in a sense, he broke the first commandment by simply deciding he wanted to be in charge instead of God, right? I'm gonna have I'm gonna be God instead of God. What am I saying to you? It's not just knowing the right things that changes who we are, right? It's not just information, it's not just knowing the law, the rules. It's about God changing our hearts. And when he says, you teach me wisdom in the inner parts, you know what wisdom is? Wisdom is not just knowing the right thing to say, not even knowing the right thing to do. Wisdom is actually acting on that. It is living from God's perspective, it's doing the things that are consistent. And God wants to change us in that way. God wants to heal us, He wants to make us new, He wants to bring a transformation in us that doesn't just give us more information, doesn't just give us more rules to follow, but actually changes the way we feel about God, changes the way we feel about life, changes the way we feel about sin and the things that are maybe in our lives that we look to other than God. So I want you to notice what David says here. In verse 7, he says this purify me with hyssop and I will be clean. Wash me and I will be whiter than snow. Here's where we start to see David is interested in more than just forgiveness. He wants to be, number one, he wants to be pure. He wants to be pure. He wants to have a pure heart. Now, I don't know if you know what hyssop is, but hyssop was uh a branch that they would use. Uh in fact, in the in the Exodus story, when God takes his people from Egypt out of slavery, and he takes them out, and of course they spent some time in the wilderness, but he takes them out of slavery, and one of the last things that happens is the Passover. You guys know the story? And what would happen is God told the people, he said, I'm gonna send a death angel over. And for those families who put the blood over their doorpost, I'm gonna pass over. I'm not gonna kill your firstborn. I'm gonna pass over you. And so the the priests and the leaders, they took the branches and they took the blood, they were his branches, and they put the blood over the doorpost. And so when the death angel came, they uh the death angel passed over those families that had the blood on the doorpost. It's a great visual, right, for what Christ ultimately is gonna do one day. That his blood was gonna be shed, and now instead of God judging us and pouring out his wrath on us, he pours it out on Christ, and so he passes over us in a sense. But know this that this hyssop that David's talking about here uh was not only used for that, it was used for um any kind of like ceremonial cleaning, uh cleansing. Uh the the something funky or defiled happened, and the priest would go in and take the hyssop and he would uh use the hyssop to clean and purify an area. And David says to God, God, you purify me with hyssop and I will be clean. You wash me and I will be whiter than snow. You see, David is saying, God, I don't need an earthly priest. I want you to be my priest. I want you to wash me clean. I want you to make me new. David wanted a pure heart. You know what he's praying for? He's praying for a heart that won't sin. That's a good prayer, isn't it? God, would you give me a heart that won't sin? A heart that is pure and desires you and doesn't desire this stuff that so many times I can feel this war, I can feel it, I can feel myself drifting, I can feel myself wanting. And for him, David says, God, give me a new heart, purify me, wash me clean, wash me wider than snow, change my desires. In fact, in verse 10, he says, God create in me a clean heart. David wants more than forgiveness. He wants renewal, he wants to be restored. The second thing that David wants, he prays for here, it's really powerful. He's he prays for joy in his salvation. Now, verse 8 and then verse 12, he's gonna say this, this, speak to this issue. He says, Let me hear joy and gladness. Let the bones you have crushed rejoice. Again, there's pain that comes when we're convicted of sin. But notice he says, Let me hear joy and gladness. Let the bones you have crushed rejoice. And then goes on verse 12, restore to me the joy of your salvation. Now, as I was thinking about that, um, what's interesting about Psalm 51 is nowhere in Psalm 51 do you see sex, murder, or lying. It's not in there. Not once. He doesn't address any of those things in this psalm. But we know this is a psalm about him, what? He lied, he had sex with a lady that wasn't his wife, and he murdered somebody. But he doesn't address that. And here's the thing: again, as I said a while ago, the bigger issue for David and the bigger issue for us is actually an issue of where do we find our joy? Where are we looking to to really satisfy our needs, to satisfy our hearts? That's the bigger issue. Our behaviors, they are a symptom of the real issue. And when we start to lose our joy in God, when we're not excited about God, when we're not thankful for our salvation, when we're not aware of what he's done for us, when we forget the cross, guess what? We're gonna naturally drift towards other things. When we forget that Jesus Christ laid down his life for our sin and he has given us abundant life, full life, we will naturally look to other things to satisfy us, to meet our needs. Are you with me? Is that true in your life? Do you notice how that when you forget, you take your eye off of Jesus and you forget who he is, and you've you've losed the joy that you will naturally start to drift. Another way to say this is um think about this phrase or this sentence. When our joy in God fades, I you fill in the blank. When our joy in God fades, I go buy something. When our joy in God fades, when my joy in God fades, I binge eat. Uh when my joy in God fades, I go look at porn. When my joy in God fades, I go and you fill in the blank. You see, all of those things are directly connected to what's going on in our heart. And the moment we aren't satisfied in God, we will find we will go try to find something else. Here's the deal. Don't buy the lie. Don't buy the lie. Because there is nothing that will satisfy your heart like God. There is nothing that will bring you joy and satisfaction and pleasure like our God. Are you with me? See, here's the problem. Anytime I buy the lie, this is all the way back to the Garden of Eden, isn't it? Here's Adam and Eve. They've got everything they need, but they buy the lie of the enemy that they need something else. How many of our lives would be so much better if we would believe that God is the only one who can really satisfy? Not another house, not another job, not another spouse. You guys remember the story of the woman at the well? John? Jesus meets this woman at the well, and this woman has been caught up in adultery. She is convinced somehow in her mind that if she can just find the right man, she can be satisfied. And guess what? It ain't there. And Jesus says that. He says, you know what? You're looking for something to satisfy, but what you need is living water. You need something that will satisfy your soul at the deepest level. Listen, teenagers in the room. You guys, I know you are tempted to put so much emphasis on how you appear. We live in a culture that puts so much pressure on you to how you appear, or even how you perform in a classroom or on a sports field or something else. Listen, your worth and your identity and your value comes from Jesus. He created you, he made you, he loves you. As school starts this year, don't buy the lie that you're gonna find it in something else. No boy, no girl, and them liking you or not like that doesn't define you. You see, the issue that David is wrestling with is the same one we wrestle with. We have to see that Jesus is our joy, He is our satisfaction, He is who we were made to. We were all wired for pleasure. We were all wired to want that. We just look to the wrong things to meet our need. And it creates all kinds of issues, sin and rebellion in our life because our hearts wonder. You guys, uh, when I say that word wonder, I'm reminded of the one of the songs we sing fairly often here to him. Come thou, fountain of every blessing. It's one of my favorites. But every time I sing that song, we get to that line where he says, prone to wonder, Lord, I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love. And I and I feel that weight. God, that is my heart. I'm so tempted. I'm so it's so easy to drift, to look to something else. But the next line is so huge. He says, Take my heart, God, right? Take and seal it. Seal it for your courts above. And so David wants God to restore the joy so that nothing else is attractive to him. That he's not, he's he's no longer attracted to sin because he is so excited and thankful and consumed with the things of God. Listen, there's no avoiding. Some people have told me that, have told me that in David's story, that if David had just not been in the wrong place at the wrong time, he wouldn't have sinned. Now, maybe there's some credence to that, but let me tell you this. The problem is that David's with David. Right? So David's with David, and so David's heart is with him, and he has to deal with those issues. I'm what I'm saying to you is that there is no accountability group, there are no avoidance tactics, there's no internet filter that can fix what's broken in our heart. We need God to rescue us. We need God to give us the joy that only He can give. Now, the next thing that David prays for is an interesting thing in verse 11. He says, Do not banish me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. Anybody ever struggle with sin to the degree that you questioned whether you were truly a child of God? If you're alive and well, you've got a you've got a heart beating and you've you're you're uh you've got air filling your lungs, and you're a Christian, a Christ follower, my guess is that you've probably sinned and you've failed, and you felt at times like maybe I'm just not a believer. Maybe I'm not really a child of God. Notice what David says here. He says, What? Do not banish me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. He feels some of that, right? He feels some of that. Now listen, I want you to understand something. David is in a different place, he's in a different covenant. He's in the old covenant. So he doesn't have the Holy Spirit indwelling him. He's not putting his trust in the cross because the cross hasn't happened yet. But David has walked closely with God. He knows what it's like to be close to God in a relationship with God. David also had a man who was anointed by God. God to put his hand on him and said, David's my king, he's gonna lead my people. And David is fearful that because of his performance, God's gonna walk away from him. He says, God, don't leave me. Don't abandon me. In fact, what's interesting again is David never asked in here, God, remove the consequences of my sin. But what he does say is, God, don't leave me. Because more, he could endure the hardship of his consequences. What he couldn't endure is God abandoning him, believing him. Now, thankfully, God is not a God who abandons us in our sin. He doesn't leave us. He doesn't just say, Well, you screwed up. See you later. I gave you three strikes, three strikes, you're out, you're done. That's not how God works. I'm thankful for that. Grateful for that. And so, David, he prays for this assurance of salvation. Do you guys understand? We are not mechanical. We are not machines here, right? We think and we feel things. We we have to fight, we have to war, we doubt, we struggle, we wrestle with what we believe. And when we do that, we need to come to God and we say, God, help me to believe that your salvation is constant and it's true. We need to wrestle with that and we need to pray that out. The only way we can maintain confidence in our salvation is through prayer, through walking with God in prayer and being confident that what his word says is true, that we are not saved. Hear me out, guys. We are not saved based on our performance. We're saved based on the basis of Christ's perfection and his sacrifice on the cross. Fourth thing we see from David, he prays is he prays for commitment. He prays for a willing and steadfast spirit. David wants to stay connected to God. He wants to follow through and walking out this new way. He wants to be a person who is walking in truth. And he asks for that. It's a good prayer to pray. When you wake up in the morning, God, would you help me to be committed to you today? Would you help me to follow you today? Would you help me to obey you today? Because commitment is more than a feeling, it is a choice. And again, God is gonna have to change us. He's gonna have to help us with this issue of our hearts wandering. And so he's asking God, God, give me a willing spirit. God, give me a spirit that is steadfast, locked in on you. Fifthly, God asks for ministry. Or David asked for a ministry. Um, I think this is really encouraging. It's also really challenging. Here's David, and he has blown it, he's messed up, he has sinned, like we've been saying. But notice he says in verse 13, then I will teach the rebellious your ways, and sinners will return to you. I asked you all ago if you've ever struggled with believing you're a Christ follower because you were struggling with a sin. Maybe it just keeps reoccurring, maybe it's an addiction, and you just feel like, okay, I can't be a believer because I keep struggling with this. Another thing that the enemy wants to do and he wants to attack us in, is sometimes he wants to say that if you have ever failed, you can never be used by God again. You've been there? If you have failed, if you've struggled, if you have, if you've sinned, that you you are no longer usable by God. Now understand this. There may be some consequences of that sin that will limit what you can do. There may be some issues that come into your life. There may even need to be a season of time. But our God is a gracious and redeeming God. And notice what David says. He says, Then when you restore me, God, when you make me new, then I will teach others your way. He's already thinking about how God's going to use his brokenness and his mess to help others. How God's going to use his mess and his rebellion to bring healing to others. And there's two ways that that can happen. You know, one is a sense that he can warn others, don't go there, don't do this. Parents, have you ever said this to your kids? You say, uh, I've been there and you don't want to do that. And they're like, yeah, right. You don't know what, you know, you don't know my struggle. You're like, yes, I do. And you do not want to go there, right? You want to protect them from what you've done. That's a good thing, right? That's a good thing. But also, when they do screw up, when they do blow it, when we do blow it, we can speak into our others' lives. It's not over. It's not over. Just because you messed up, just because you blew it, doesn't mean it's over that you're done with. God can redeem that. That's good stuff, isn't it? God can redeem it. I don't know where all of you have been, what you have done, but I can tell you this: that there is nothing you could ever do that could keep God from loving you and pursuing you other than just your fact that you flat out reject him. You reject him and don't receive it. Don't receive his love, don't receive his grace, don't receive his mercy. He can redeem it. We think we've blown it so far, we can never be used, but that's a lie straight from the pit of hell. In fact, I would even say that some of our most powerful ministry comes from our most miserable failures. Now, I'm not saying you should go out this week and say, I'm gonna go fail real big so I have a good ministry. Right? Don't do that. That's not the point. I'm telling you this that God is so good that He can actually redeem our biggest messes. And some of you, your marriage has gone through hell on earth, and God has brought you to a new place, and God wants to use your marriage now to help other people who are going through hell on earth. Some of you have gone through addiction, and God has brought you out of that addiction. You thought it was never possible, and he's brought you out of it, and God wants to use you to help other people who are fighting through addiction right now. Some of you are going through some dark times. And I'm talking specifically again about sin in your heart. And God wants to say, Stop, come to me, let me restore you, and I'm gonna use that to help others. I can think about plenty of stories in my own life and how God wants to use even the stuff where I've totally royally screwed up. A believer is not just interested in being forgiven, he is passionate about being a change, being changed by God and becoming a change agent. In essence, that our lives as Christians would be a walking billboard of God's grace. That people would see our lives and say, you know what, they're not perfect, but God has been, you can see that they they walk in peace and joy and hope because God's because of God and because of what God's done, because of Christ. Here's just some questions as we close out today. Do you want to be forgiven only, or are you desiring God to transform you? Is Jesus, has he become your Savior and Lord? If you're a Christ's follower, do you look to him as your priest? Is he is he the one who you come to to purify your heart? Are you asking him to purify your heart, to give you a renewed spirit, to give you a restored joy in your salvation? Are you ready, believer, to let God use your pain, your failure, and your struggles to point others to the hope and life that's in Christ? Am I ready for that? Listen, um I love this psalm because again, he said on this front end, he teaches us how to think and feel about sin. And our prayer is that we would understand the horrendous offense that sin is, and we would also see the depth of God's graciousness and goodness, that he can redeem it, and he can somehow, in his godness, he can use it for good. If we will come to him, if we will be broken, if we will let him heal us, change us, make us new. Let's pray. God, thank you so much for the fact that we have a God in you that is merciful, that restores. God, I know that for some in this room they're walking in sin, still uh rebelling against you. They know in their heart that it's wrong. They know that they need to stop, but they're afraid to get honest, to get honest with you, to get honest with someone else. And God, I pray that they would not wait until you have to utterly crush them to get their attention because you love them so much that you want them to walk in freedom and joy, you want them to experience the joy of their salvation. I pray that today might even be a breaking point. That for some who've been walking in the shadows, walking in secrecy, struggling with filling in that blank we talked about earlier with something other than you, looking for joy, looking for satisfaction, worth, identity, and something other than you. God, I pray that you would help them today to see that you are a God who meets us in our mess, that we can be honest, we can be, we can be real and vulnerable, and that instead of kicking us out, you draw us near. You hold us, you help us, you heal us. And I pray for that today. God, I pray that we would choose to make this a moment in our lives where we lay down whatever sin we're clinging to and we we run to the cross. Run to the cross. We would show the same desire for genuine repentance that David shows. Thank you that you meet us there. And thank you, God, that somehow today you can even use our brokenness, our struggle to help others. Pray that you would do that.