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God, thank you that it doesn't overwhelm you to have a room full of people praying to you at the same time. Or a whole world full of people. God, thank you that you are you are greater than we can imagine, even. And this morning, God, we want to just really ask that you would by your power, by your Holy Spirit, speak to us. God, would you guide my heart and my mind as I speak? Would you guide our hearts and our minds as we open your word? Would you speak to us this morning? God, I pray that you would take away distractions, that you would take away the things that are busying our minds this morning in our hearts. And you'd help us to connect with you. Thank you. Amen. I would like for us to consider a crazy concept this morning. I don't know where you stand theologically. Again, I'm not gonna assume that we're all on the same page this morning. Now we are in church, so I'm gonna assume that some of you are Christians, right? In the room? Okay. I'm just gonna assume that. So some of you believe in God, you believe the Bible, you believe there's a guy named Jesus who died for your sins. All of that is assumed knowledge. But I'm also gonna assume that in a room like this, there's people this morning who aren't sure where they stand, where they are spiritually. They don't know what they would say about Jesus or about God. And there's some people who say, I am sure where I stand, and it's not what you think. I'm not on the same page as you spiritually. If you fall in either of those camps this morning, just want to encourage you. Thank you for being here and engaging in this conversation. Like that's a really good thing to have to engage in this conversation and participate this morning. But wherever you stand this morning, I want for us together to think about something. So for some of you, I know that this may just require for you to use your imagination a little bit, but what for I want for us to think about is to picture a God, a supreme being, an intelligent designer who is all-powerful and all-knowing, and who is the creator of everything that we see. Okay, so just picture that there may perhaps be a being like that. And that he's been working throughout all of history and actually throughout all of time. And when he created, like I said, he is a creator God, when he created, he literally spoke and things came into being out of nothing. That's how powerful he is. Now picture that being, and this is the crazy concept that I want for you to think about. Think of that being as being someone who wants to actually draw near to us and have a relationship with you and I. To have a heart connection with you and I. That's a crazy concept. That's quite preposterous to think about this all-powerful God and this idea that He would actually want to have a relationship with you and me. Maybe a good thing for us to do today would be for all of us to get in a plane together and go up into the sky and look down on the earth. Because when you do that, I don't know about you, but when I do that, I look down at all these little cars like ants moving around, I realize there's tons of people. And I'm just a small dot on the planet. And yet, what I'm trying to say to you guys this morning is the God of the universe, the God of all history, cares enough about us to want to have not just a relationship where he acknowledges us, but he actually wants to have a heart connection with you and I. And not only that, he actually wants to draw near to us in our brokenness, in our mess, in all the things that we struggle with, in our sins. That's incredible. I mean, that's very different from other gods, or if you've studied other religions, most of those will tell you that God only will care about you, the God that they believe, will only really look at you or even listen to you if you are a certain level of awesomeness. If you achieve a certain level of goodness, then God, maybe on your best day, God will listen to you. But that's not what I'm talking about here this morning. What I want for us to think about is a God who is near to us even in our brokenness, especially in our brokenness. So I want for you to consider with me today, is this God real? And can I have, can you have a heart connection with Him, even in the midst of our brokenness? You don't have to look very far to find brokenness, do you? You turn on the news, it's all over the news, you look around you, you see it. You see it even in our world that seems to be falling apart in so many different ways. Uh, we see it even in our own bodies as we begin to age or when we get sick. I uh I got a haircut this week, and I'm like, man, I've got more gray hairs coming in than I did. Uh there's things that remind us that this world's broken, right? Death, sickness, disease, all of these things. And as we look at these things, we are reminded of the world in which we lived. And there's stories that tell about brokenness, right? There's many different stories. I actually want to tell you a story this morning of brokenness. In a certain city, there lived two men, and one of these men was a rich man. He had many sheep and many cattle. That's how you measured richness back in the day. Uh and so he had a lot of livestock. And then there was a second man who was very poor. He had nothing. And what he did was he scraped together everything that he had and he saved up and he bought a little baby male lamb, okay? Cute little lamb. And he gets this lamb and he brings it home and he looks after this lamb like it's one of his kids. It grows up with his family. And so it eats from the table with them, it drinks out of his cup, it goes everywhere he goes, and it even as he rests at night, it's there beside him, this lamb. And it grows up, becomes a sheep. And then later on in the story, what happens is very interesting because this traveler comes into town, and when this traveler comes into town, he visits with the rich man, and the rich man can't bring himself, he wants to prepare a meal, a nice meal for this man, and he can't bring himself to kill one of his sheep. So he goes to the poor man, takes his sheep, kills it, and gives it to this traveler. How does that story make you feel? A little bit frustrated, upset, and you're like, that's not right, right? There's something in all of us that when I tell a story like that, there's something in you that should say, Yeah, that's not right. That's not the way that things should be. It's broken. There's a certain level of brokenness to it. And King David, when he heard this story, he got it. He was mad. He was upset because this story was actually told to him several thousand years ago when King David, ancient king of Israel, when he was told this story, he got angry. Because he used to be a shepherd, and he, I'm sure, was picturing this beautiful little lamb and all of this. And he said, You know, that man deserves to die. And he said, you know, this is a messed up story. Now, a little bit of backstory to how David got into this. David, king of Israel, has been an amazing king, but he has this one black, well, one in particular black spot in his history, in his story, which is the story of him and his interaction with Bathsheba. Okay? And we've been studying this the last couple of weeks. It's and it's this story where he doesn't go to war with his army. He's kind of just chilling at home, and he looks across from his castle roof one day, from his palace, and sees a lady bathing. He inquires after her, finds out that she's married, and he asks her to come over anyway. She comes over, he sleeps with her, she gets pregnant, and it's this whole mess. He tries to cover it up, he lies, he ends up getting her husband killed. He arranges for his death. And then he thinks that everything's kind of smoothed over. Things are maybe going back to normal, except for 2 Samuel chapter 12. Nathan the prophet walks in and tells him the story that I just told you about the rich man and the poor man and the sheep. And when David hears the story, he hears of the unjustice, and he kind of you picture him in the story in 2 Samuel 12, leaping out of his throne and saying, Who is this? Because he actually thought it was a real story about something that had happened in his kingdom. He says, That man deserves to die. Nathan swings around, looks him in the eye, and says, It is you. And in the moment he all of a sudden gets it. God has sent Nathan his prophet to tell him, Hey, you and your sin is all messed up, and I have seen it and it offends me. And Nathan brings this message of truth, and David is brought to a breaking point. He breaks down and realizes the depravity of his situation, the messed upness of his sin. And as he breaks in this moment, we have this beautiful moment where he breaks before God and he seeks reconciliation and to try and to make things right in the situation. And the story is all laid out, 2 Samuel chapters 11 and 12. And as you read through it, it's a really interesting read. But the cool thing is we don't just have an account there, we also have an account in the Psalms. And the Psalms give us an account of how David felt. It's the story, it's the song of what he experienced in that journey and process. And we know that Psalms 51, the Psalm that we've been studying, is specifically about how he felt in this particular circumstance. With this whole thing with Bathsheba and Uriah, her wife her husband, that he got killed, and all that went on with that. And so Psalms 51 has been a great passage for us to look at. We've looked at it in three specific groups. Well, we've looked in two groups. This is our third week. But we looked at the first third and the second third, and now we're going on to look at the last third of this psalm today. And as we do that, we're going to get to really see some interesting things from the text. John Piper, he's a preacher and a theologian. He says this of Psalms 51. You find a psalm like this, and you find the gospel. And I believe that that's true. As we look at Psalms 51 today, and I'm going to ask you guys to turn there with me in your Bibles, as we look at Psalms 51 today, what we're going to see is the gospel. We're pointed towards God's grace. We're pointed towards the forgiveness found in Jesus. So if you guys have a Bible, please grab Psalms 51 with me. Would encourage you to just kind of put your thumb in there because we're going to keep coming back to Psalms 51 today, okay? So Psalms 51, if it's on your phone, don't put it in there. That would be bad. Psalms 51, verse 14. That was a joke. Let's read. Psalms 51, 14. It says this save me from the guilt of bloodshed, God, the God of my salvation, and my tongue will sing of your righteousness. Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise. You do not want a sacrifice, or I would give it. You are not pleased with a burnt offering. The sacrifice pleasing to you, God, is a broken spirit. God, you will not despise a broken and humbled heart. In your good pleasure, cause Zion to prosper, build the walls of Jerusalem, then you will delight in righteous sacrifices, whole burnt offerings, then bulls will be offered on your altar. So what's Psalms 51 all about? If you've been here the last couple of weeks, you may say, well, Psalms 51 is about sin and it's about forgiveness. And that would actually be a very good answer. But I believe that there's actually more here because Psalms 51 is really about sin, forgiveness, and response. Another way to put it, and the way that I'd have you put it in your notes, is this Psalms 51 is about sin, forgiveness, and worship. The response of worship. Now, worship's an interesting thing. When I say that word worship, some of you are automatically already thinking of Alex playing a guitar up here and leading us in singing, right? Or maybe some people singing kumbaya. I don't know what you picture, but something about singing and songs. And that is a part of worship, but worship is so much bigger than all of that. Worship's an interesting thing. We worship all of the time. Worship is a feature that we come pre-packaged with. We cannot turn it off. It's a part of our default operating system. All of us, Christian or non-Christian, we are worshiping all of the time. Here's a definition I found this week on worship. When we look to something for significance, acceptance, approval, satisfaction, fulfillment, joy, security, that very act is worship. So worship is us looking to other things. We're looking to things for significance, acceptance, like it said, satisfaction, joy, all of those things. Something we come pre-packaged with. This week I got to hold a brand new baby. I don't know if you guys have had that experience before, but it's pretty cool holding a brand new baby. Our good friends, they're actually life group leaders in our church, Ben and Jen, Elvira, they had their first child this week. They had a little guy and they called him Ewan. He's a cute little man. And as I got to hold him, he was only a couple of hours old. We went up to the hospital and I was looking at him and he was so cute. You know, he's he's like just newborn, he's kind of helpless. But as I got to holding him and then going home later on, and I was working on the message for this week, I got to thinking he's already worshiping. He worships comfort, he worships security, he worships food already. Those are the things that give him significance, give him security, give him joy. And he's worshiping already. Even though he's just a few hours old. And as I'm saying all of this, I also want you to think worship isn't a bad thing. I know I'm making it sound bad, but what you've got to see is that God designed us to worship, it's sin that has come in and distorted worship. That's why we have an issue with it, is because sin distorts our worship. We worship all sorts of things that are not most important. Instead of worshiping God, we worship a hobby, we worship um comfort, we worship uh power or sex or all these different things that are meant to be gifts from God and meant to point us ultimately towards Him. There's a Bible study I've done a couple of times, and it says uh and it has an interesting statement about worship. It says this we worship our way into sin and we worship our way back out of sin. Now, some of you are like, What? That's interesting. Think about it with me in light of David. David worshipped his way into sin. He was worshiping comfort, he was worshiping pleasure, he was worshiping sex, and he worshiped his way into this big mess of sin. And his way back out, the only way back out, was to worship rightly, to worship God and to point his heart and his love and his affection of God. And Psalms 51, especially this back end of Psalms 51, that's exactly what it's about. It's about David getting an idea of what not just wrong worship was, but true worship, what right worship looked like in his life. And I want for us to kind of dissect Psalms 51 and look through it in different segments, but as we do that, I'm gonna talk about David's worship and he's turning towards true worship. And the reason I'm gonna use true worship is to remind us that when I say that, we're talking about worship pointed towards God, not other things, okay? So true worship, first thought is this as we turn to Psalms 51, is that true worship is a byproduct of salvation. True worship is a byproduct of salvation. Now it's interesting because at the start of verse 14, David owns his sin. And we've already talked about this in the last couple of weeks, but it's important to note that he doesn't try and belittle it. He owns it. He takes on the guilt and the bloodshed that he calls it and owns it. Now we shouldn't attract and just want to remind you, we shouldn't attempt to shrink our sin. It's something that we do as humans. Sometimes we do this by excuses or by comparison. We're like, well, you know, um if if we were David, we may say, well, I I've been working really hard the last few years, so I just needed to stay at home. I needed a break. I deserved a break. And that's why I ended up in this position, just wrong place, wrong time. That's an excuse. That's belitting belittling the evil of our sin and the evil of our hearts. That's not a good thing. Or we may compare ourselves. David may be like, Well, I'm not like the other pagan kings. They're doing bad stuff all the time. Like, I can give you a list of all the things that they're doing. We do that too. I'm not as bad as such and such. Well, at least I didn't do that. You know, we've got to own our sin. That's the first thing. But then we also see David claiming that his salvation leads to worship. Let's read verse 14 again. It says, Save me from the guilt of bloodshed, God, the God of my salvation, and my tongue will sing of your righteousness. Listen to verse 15. Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise. Basically, what David's saying is, as you've saved me, as I'm basking in all your grace and your goodness towards me, God, when my mouth opens, nothing but praise and worship and adoration can come out of my mouth. Like my default uh things that are gonna just come out of my out of my lips are praise and worship towards you. Imagine with me that I I'm driving downtown, and uh, as I'm driving downtown, my phone's next to me in the seat, and it just starts, you know, all these messages coming in. You know, it's a group group text or something like that. It's ding-ding, you know, like when when it's really annoying like that. I look over at my phone for a second and bam, I hit the car in front of me. And my car's really messed up. The car in front of me is really messed up, a little bit scared. I hop out of my car, and a big gentleman hops out of the car in front of me, and it turns out to be Coach Charlie Strong, a UT football head coach, okay? He hops out of the car in front of me. And I'm like, I'm so sorry. I got distracted by my phone, I didn't see you stop. I'm really sorry. And he looks at the damage for a second for a minute. And then he looks at me, imagine with me, he looks at me and says, you know what? It doesn't matter. I'm gonna take care of it. I'll take care of the costs, I'll take care of the repairs, and in the meantime, I'll give you a car to drive around. I've got a spare and you can drive it. How would I feel about Coach Strong if that's what he did for me? No matter what my school affiliation is, right? I'm gonna think that he's like awesome. I'm gonna declare his praise to whoever I come in contact with. So, you know, whenever he comes into my mind, I'll be thinking good thoughts of him. Whenever he comes up in conversation, I'll be saying good things about him. And God has done so much more for us than what what I articulated in that story. His forgiveness of our sins, his grace covers us from our depravity. And so, what David's saying is as salvation is weighing on us, as that is on our hearts, as that is on our minds, nothing but praise and adoration should come out of our lips, we are naturally going to worship. That's gonna be a byproduct of what God is doing in our lives. Verse 16 is an interesting one as we move on. Verse 16 says this you do not want to sacrifice, or I would give it. You are not pleased with a burnt offering. Now, when we read through this earlier, if any of you have some Bible background or understanding of the God of the Old Testament, you should have read that and been like, Burt, what? What's going on here? You do not want to sacrifice? The thought here is this true worship isn't always displayed by sacrifice. True worship isn't always displayed by sacrifice. Now, the reason this should cause us to pause is because if you have any background, you should understand that the God of the Old Testament seems to be all about sacrifice. Think about Noah. Noah goes through this crazy flood, gets off the boat, and the first thing he does is what? Offers the sacrifice. Abraham has this crazy interaction with God where God comes to him and says, you know, I want to use you and bless the whole world through you. What does he do? He sacrifices. Uh Moses takes all these people out of captivity in Egypt out towards the wilderness. What's the first thing they do? Offer sacrifices. There's a trend here, right? And so when David says, you do not want to sacrifice, that should cause us to be like, what? What's going on here? But there's also some stories that kind of should lead us to thinking, well, maybe this does make sense a little bit. Consider with me the intriguing stories of Cain and Abel. You got Cain and Abel, there's two guys, Genesis chapter 3, they both offer a sacrifice to God. One is pleasing and one is not. Interesting story. Not going to go down that rabbit trail right now. You go on into uh the story of King Saul and Samuel, 1 Samuel chapter 15 tells us this story where Samuel comes to Saul as he's just been trying to sacrifice to God without Samuel and trying to appease God. And Samuel says to him, Hey, God doesn't want your sacrifices, he wants your obedience, he wants your heart. Another really intriguing story, right? And so it shouldn't completely surprise us that verse 16 is in the text. And thankfully, verse 17 is there because David explains what he's trying to get at here. Verse 17 holds the key. It basically reminds us that true worship begins with submission. Let's read verse 17 again. Verse 17 says this. So he's just come off saying, You are not pleased with a burnt offering. In verse 17, it says, The sacrifice pleasing to God is a broken spirit. God, you will not despise a broken and Humbled heart. This is the key. True worship begins with submission, having a broken and humbled heart. Some translations put it as a contrite heart. Basically just means being in a space where we're given over to the fact that we are desperate and needy and nothing without God. Now, a good question for us to ask ourselves at this point is this Does this mean that all of us should live in a perpetual state of brokenness? If that's what God wants, if God wants a broken and humbled heart, should we perpetually be in that state of brokenness and of humility? I think that's a really good question to ask. Does that mean that we should always just be walking around with our head down, always just, you know, because of who we are, realizing that we are desperate and depraved and nothing without God? Well, I'm gonna let John Newton hopefully answer that a little bit for us. John Newton is a theologian and a pastor and a former captain of a ship from a couple of hundred years ago in England. Interesting guy. He's actually the guy who wrote a whole bunch of hymns that we sing, and one of those includes Amazing Grace. Okay? So he's the guy who wrote Amazing Grace. He's got a really crazy story in that he used to be a captain of a slave ship before the abolition and before God really got a hold of his heart. Okay, so he's got a very incredible testimony. But uh, but as as we look at him, he's written this letter to a young man who's struggling with perpetually being in a state of brokenness, with with with always struggling with where he stands with God. And and I want to read for you what he wrote to him in a letter. He said this. You say, this is John Newton writing, you say you feel overwhelmed with guilt and a sense of unworthiness. Well, you cannot be too aware of the inward and inbred evils you complain of, but you may be, indeed you are, improperly controlled and affected by them. You say it is hard to understand how a holy God could accept such an awful person as yourself. Now here is the key, listen to it. You then not only express a low opinion of yourself, which is right, but also too low of an opinion of the person, work, and promises of the Redeemer, which is wrong. So what I'm saying to you guys here this morning is this. Yes, we should be perpetually broken. Yes, we should live in a place of humility before God, but yes, we also need to at the same time be aware of the grace and the love of Jesus. Verse 17 of Psalms 51 needs to be held in tension with verse 12, the one we looked at last week, which talked about the joy of our salvation. Another theologian, one that's still alive, uh, he's a preacher up in New York, a guy named Timothy Keller says this, and we've we've used this quote before, but I love it. It says this the gospel is this we are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dared believe, yet at the very same time we are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever dared hope. You see, worship flows out of a heart that is broken and humbled, yes, but also joyful. We have to hold those things in tension. And here we see, in this section of the Psalm, we really see some good wisdom coming from David. As we look at Psalms 51, we're reminded why David was known as a man after God's own heart. Have you guys heard that before? David was a man after God's own heart. Well, the reason that we see that is because David's understanding what's going on here. He understands that he's been in this ditch of sin over here, okay? He's been wallowing in his sin and it's all messed up. God brings this moment of confrontation and he breaks and says, God, I'm desperate, I'm nothing without you. But then he also realizes that his tendency as a human, as you and I have this tendency, is to say, okay, I'm gonna move from my sin to earning God's approval, to this other ditch where I'm gonna fall in of just sacrificing to God without not realizing that God doesn't want my sacrifices. He doesn't obviously doesn't want my sin, but he doesn't want my sacrifices. He wants my heart. David got this. God obviously abhors our sin, but he is also, listen to this, repulsed by our dutiful sacrifices aimed at appeasing him and earning his approval. Think about Luke chapter 15 with me. Luke 15, we've got the story of the lost sons. Jesus told this parable. He liked to talk in stories. And there's two sons, we've talked about this before. There's the first son who comes to the father and says, Hey, I want my inheritance now. Basically, I wish you were dead. And he says, I want my inheritance now. And the father sadly gives him his half of the inheritance. And so he goes and he uh squanders all of his money, his father's money, and he comes back and says, I've sinned against you. Would you forgive me? Would you take me in? And the father gladly accepts him. But there's also a second son. The second son comes back and hears a party going on at the house because the first son has returned. And he says, What's going on? I've been here the whole time. This son of yours spent all this all this money, his inheritance on wild living, and you've accepted him back. You've never even thrown a party for me. And he says to the father, and what we see here is both sons just wanted the father's stuff. They didn't want the father's heart. And so the caution that we see here in Psalms 51 in this response is that we are to pursue and to worship the Father's heart. That's what God is calling us to. To not fall in this ditch of just doing the duties and the sacrifices, but also obviously not just wallowing in our sin. God wants us to seek him and to seek his heart. It's interesting, David doesn't just have a heart for God, he also has a heart for his people, his family of Israel, the nation that he's called to shepherd. And so in verse 18, he moves on to asking for grace for Israel. You'll see that there. He asks for grace for Zion, which is Jerusalem, and then he says that word Jerusalem again. And as he's asking for that, there's a sense that David is reawakening to his responsibilities. It's like he's getting it again. And understanding that his failures are probably going to impact his ability to lead and to lead well this nation that he's called the shepherd. Now, think about it with me. As Nathan told him that story of the rich man and the poor man, he is the rich man. He's the one who has all those sheep and all that cattle that he's responsible for. And so he's probably thinking about that and reminding himself that yes, he is a shepherd of God's people and a king at the same time. Just as we think about him being a shepherd king, David isn't the only one who's talked about as a shepherd king in scriptures. As we go to the scriptures, we see that there is another shepherd king who is Jesus, God's Son. How do we see that? Well, John chapter 10, verse 11, Jesus said explicitly, I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. As Jesus was being crucified, prophetically, they put a sign up above his cross that said, the King of the Jews. Jesus too was a shepherd king, but he was the better shepherd king. The reasons that we should look at Jesus is because he gives us a better example than David, a much better example than David. I'll give you just two reasons why, though. First reason that Jesus is the better David is because, firstly, he was tempted and did not sin. He was tempted and did not sin. We've got a whole record of how Jesus was tempted. Obviously, David was tempted and sinned, but Jesus didn't. Second reason is that he didn't struggle with worship. He understood worship. He understood how to have this heart connection with God that we're talking about today. He understood it completely. We've talked about how we need to, when we we we worship God, there needs to be a thought of we're broken before God in our struggle and we're also joyful. Well, we see both of those things in Jesus, right? We see brokenness as he goes to the cross. He broke, his body, he said, was broken for us. When we take communion, that's what we remember. You know, we take that cracker, it reminds us of his body that was broken for us. So he got this idea of brokenness way more than any of us ever will. And he also got this idea of joy at the same time. When we read Hebrews chapter 12, it tells us that who for the joy that lay before him endured the cross? Jesus, who for the joy that lay before him endured the cross and the suffering. So he was perfect. Jesus was perfect in it in every way, and so much better than King David, which is interesting to note because if we were to sit down and talk with somebody who is Jewish today and say, who was the greatest king Israel has ever had? Who would they say? They'd say David, right? They'd say David is the greatest king, and here we are looking at his life, and it's a mess. Jesus is so much better than David, and so because of that, I think it's important for us to look to Jesus today because he's a better example, a way better example than David. And so what I have for you to jot down in your notes here this morning is Christ is our perfection and our example. Christ is our perfection and our example. When we are in the middle of sin and when we're in the middle of struggle, Jesus comes in and can forgive us in that struggle and help us, just like he did David. And when things are going well, or even when they're not, he can be an example on how we're meant to live. Better than David, he's a better example of David. So when we look at Christ, we see his forgiveness, his perfection, and we look at his example of brokenness and joy, then everything starts to click. Then right worship starts to happen. And we see that in verse 19. Let's look back to verse 19. So David's kind of gone through all of this stuff about, you know, you don't want to sacrifice, you want a broken and humbled heart, and God, would you restore Jerusalem? And then in verse 19 it says this then you will delight in righteous sacrifices, whole burnt offerings. Then bulls will be offered on your altar. What David's showing us here, and what God is showing us here through his word, is the right order. Notice that it says then. There's this idea that once we get these things in place, God is then able to move and act. And he doesn't say, then I will sacrifice. He says, then you will delight in righteous sacrifices. There has to be the right priority. God, yeah, we should sacrifice for God, but the priorities have to be right. Our heart needs to be in the right place before we attempt to love and to serve Him. How amazing is it that God would take delight in us? I don't know if you noticed that word in the text. When it says that in verse 19, it says, Then you will delight in righteous sacrifices. Think about the fact that David previously was in a place where he was like his sin was repulsive and disgusting to God. He's moved from this repulsive, disgusting place to this place of delight. That's the God that we serve. That's how amazing and absurd his grace is. That he would move us from being nothing to being loved. That's incredible. And I want you, I don't want for us to just slip straight past that this morning. Think about how amazing his grace is. You and I are terrible. I mean, let's be honest this morning. Thinking back to what we've been talking about, we are more terrible than we would ever dare imagine hope or say. And yet God's is amazing amazing and gracious, more gracious and loving loving than we can fathom. There's a couple of scriptures that came straight to my mind as I was thinking about this this week. First one is this Psalms 103 says this. David moved from being repulsive in his sin to being a delight. You and I can are offered that same grace. That's absurd. Here's another scripture I really love. It's it's a scripture written to uh the early church, Ephesians 3. It says this, I pray that you, being rooted and firmly established in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the length, the width, the height, and the depth of God's love, and to know the Messiah's love that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. I love this text. It always makes me smile because what is said here is an oxymoron. It says, I pray that you would have a knowledge of something that you'll never have knowledge of. Basically, you can't get your head around what I'm trying to tell you. The love of God, the grace of God, the fact that He would love us that much. So, how do we respond to the message today? How do we respond in worship as we've been talking about? And I don't mean just in a general sense, I mean specifically. How do we respond? Well, if you're not a Christian or if you're not sure where you stand with God or with Jesus, my challenge to you this morning is this seek God's heart. Seek God's heart. Maybe you're in a position where you need to stop rebelling and acting and denying that there is no God. Maybe there's some of you in this morning who struggle to believe that there even is a God. And you're like the first son in Luke chapter 15 that I was talking about, the rebel, the one that's like, whatever, it doesn't matter. I'll just live how I want to live and I don't really care. Or maybe some of you need to stop striving to be good like the second son. If I was to ask you this morning, I, you know, how do you get into heaven? You say, well, I'm trying to live a good life. I believe I'm a good person, what does that mean? No, none of us are good. Not even one person has ever been good outside of Jesus. And so you're if you find yourself in that position, you're really acting like the second son in Luke chapter 15. Come like David, broken at your sinfulness and joyful about his redemption that's offered you. That's my challenge to you. If you're not a Christian, talk to the person who came you. Come and talk to me or to Nick. We'll be here up the front in our response time. We'd love to talk to you about what it means to be a Christian, to move from being in this place of despair and brokenness to being in a place where God is delighting in us and there's joy in our salvation. If you're a Christian, my challenge is actually exactly the same to you. Seek God's heart today. Don't seek his stuff. Don't be like those two sons. Seek his heart. Prayerfully, find yourself in a place of simultaneous brokenness and joy. That's the challenge. May you and I this week perpetually find ourselves in that. Because when we're in that place, we're experiencing the gospel. We're reminding ourselves that, yeah, I've got nothing. I, you know, without God, I'm a lost cause. But man, God is good. His grace is good, his mercy is new every morning. Man, I can share his love with the people that he's put around me today. That's what we're talking about. Having this heart connection with God so that his love is flowing through us like a conduit. Whatever space you find yourself in today, I pray that you would realize that God is looking for true worshipers. He's looking for you and I to worship him and those who would seek his heart. And so I just really more than anything want to challenge us to be a church of people who are seeking the heart of God, like David re-found himself. And so if you're in a place of brokenness and sin like David was, seek God's heart today. If you're in an awesome place with God, seek his heart either way. Let's seek his heart. Let me pray for us. God, thank you. That you are an amazing God of grace. We see that all throughout scriptures and specifically in this story of David and his struggle. Thank you for that. Thank you that there's hope in this. That you wouldn't just leave us in our filth and in our mess and in our sin. But God, you would actually seek reconciliation with us. That you would draw near to us in our brokenness. How incredible is that! God, I pray that today people would just across this room would be reminded of your amazing grace and the fact that you want to have a heart connection with them, that you want to have a relationship with them, you want them to know and experience your love, that you want to have a relationship. And that's incredible. We don't under fully understand that, God. That you, the creator of the universe, the all-powerful being, would desire to know us? What a mystery. And yet we believe that that's true. Without that, we've got nothing. Life doesn't make sense. And so, God, I pray that right across this room today, no matter what space we find ourselves in, in a good space or in the worst day of the worst year, God, would you meet us today and remind us of the heart that you have for us, God? Amen.