will please stand as we read the entirety of Psalm 51. We'll pick up where we left off last time. We weren't able to get through David's confession. We only got through verse 4, and so by God's grace, I hope this morning to work through verses 5 through 12, but hear now the reading of God's holy word to the choir master. A psalm of David when Nathan the prophet went to him after he went to Bathsheba. Be gracious to me, O God, according to your steadfast love, according to the abundance of your mercies. Blot out my rebellions. Wash me thoroughly for mine iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. For I know my rebellions. and my sin is ever before me. Against you, you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your eyes, so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment. Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me. Behold, you delight in truth, in the inner being, and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart. purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean. Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Oh, let me hear joy and gladness. Let the bones that you have broken rejoice. Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from your face and take not your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and uphold me with a willing spirit. I will teach transgressors your ways and sinners will return to you. Deliver me from blood guiltiness, O God, O God of my salvation. And my tongue will sing aloud of your righteousness. O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise. For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it. You will not be pleased with a burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. Do good to Zion in your good pleasure. Build up the walls of Jerusalem. Then you will delight in right sacrifices, in burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings. Then bulls will be offered. on your altar. Let's pray. Father, we want to thank you for your word again. Thank you that we could begin the service with Psalm 86. Thank you we worked through Jeremiah 10. And thank you now we can spend some time working through and meditating and applying this glorious Psalm, Psalm 51. As we have sang, so now I would pray. Holy Spirit, be powerfully at work in us. cause dead bones to live, cause heavy hearts, Lord, to rejoice. This is a miracle that we cannot perform, but we know with you, triune God, all things are possible. And we know, Lord, that you delight to show steadfast love. You delight to forgive your wayward saints. You delight when they draw near to you with a broken and contrite heart. We know you will not only not despise it, you will gladly receive and accept it. O Lord, that you would rejoice with your angels in heaven, as your Son taught, when a sinner repents, this is the party of heaven. And we ask, O Lord, that there would be much rejoicing in heaven, but also, Lord, much rejoicing in our congregation. As we look through this psalm to its very fulfillment, the one to whom David was ultimately pleading towards, his greater son, his Lord, the Lord Jesus Christ. Show us Christ this morning, O Holy Spirit. Show us your glory, O Father, in the face of Christ, we ask in his name. Amen. Please be seated. As Pastor Nathan was up leading, the text that came to my mind was Galatians in chapter 3, and how Paul was reminding us that the law has not been just sort of thrown overboard with the coming of Christ, but actually it is like a tutor that leads us to Christ. And Psalm 51 is a wonderful tutor that leads us to the Lord Jesus Christ, And as the Puritans would have taught, so I am in full agreement, that David ultimately was looking through the sacrificial system, through the temple, to its greater fulfillment in his Lord and ours, the Lord Jesus Christ. Thomas Chalmers, another Puritan, said this, This is the most deeply affecting of all the Psalms, and I am sure the one most applicable to me. Now, why would Thomas Chalmers say that? Because he, like us, is a great sinner. And great sinners need a great Savior. And Psalm 51 reminds us that there is a great Savior, there is a great Redeemer, there is a great God who loves. to forgive his people. Last week, we sort of worked through the first four verses. We looked through the original context. We looked at that heading that this was a psalm written by King David. And the occasion for him writing this is after he had committed unthinkable, unspeakable, seemingly unforgivable sins. And were you to read the law, you would realize that there was no provision actually made for the sins of murder and adultery. I would encourage you, not only do the commentators highlight that, if you were to read through Exodus or Leviticus or Deuteronomy, you'd realize that no provision is made. Meaning what? That David has to go right to the source. The blood of bulls, the blood of goats, Not only can they not forgive murder, actually, the book of Hebrews says they cannot forgive anything. And so David is going, as it were, to the very end, or the telos, or the goal to whom the sacrifice is pointed. There's no bull big enough. There's no goat pure enough for his sins. He's appealing to God himself. And I would encourage us to do the same. David is not now banking. as it were, on the sacrificial system. He's going right to the source of the sacrificial system, the God who instituted it. He's going to God, and we saw, after the context, David's request is for grace. His request is for mercy. His request is for God's compassions, in the plural. And we saw that David's appeal for forgiveness is rooted in God's own character. Okay, you may have picked it up when we read through Psalm 86 providentially as we worked through the Psalter consecutively. that David in Psalm 86 appeals to God's character. He does it in Psalm 51, he does it in Psalm 86, and it's rooted in God's own self-disclosure in Exodus chapter 34. After Israel committed unthinkable, unspeakable, seemingly unforgivable sin, Moses reminded them who their God was, the Lord, the Lord, a God, merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, showing steadfast love to thousands, or you might even translate that to thousands of generations, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon children and children's children to the third and fourth generation. And the reason why I quote that is because if you have any hope of finding forgiveness this morning, it's not going to be rooted in your goodness or how you inflect your voice or how many tears. Could my tears forever flow? Could my zeal forever show? No respite, no? Thank you, thank you. All for sin could not atone. Thou must save, and thou alone. And so David, he is asking, his request is for forgiveness, and it's rooted and based upon God's own character, God's own self-disclosed character. Not a god David is making up, but he's appealing to the very God as he's revealed himself in scripture, and I would put before you an even greater revelation of who the Lord is than Exodus 32 is found in the Lord Jesus Christ, in John chapter 1. Perhaps you sit here this morning, heavy-hearted, feeling like maybe, David, maybe you've committed a seemingly unforgivable sin, and I would not so much take you to Exodus's revelation of God, but the New Testament. That grace and mercy has found its fulfillment in the Lord Jesus Christ as the Apostle John. Christ has shown us the extent to which God is willing to forgive sinners. We move from David's request in verses one and two to David's confession. This is David's confession in verses Three through six, David is fully aware and he feels his rebellions. We saw that word transgressions means more than just crossing a line, breaking a standard. It's more than you accidentally speeding on the way to church. It's like you seeing that it says 100 and nevertheless doing 120. David knows, he feels, he acknowledges, and therefore he confesses that he has rebelled against God. Not so much against Bathsheba, not so much against Uriah or the family, and not even against Israel. He has sinned first and foremost against God, his covenant God. that he has been perverse, that he has fallen short, and he has rebound. He has done not an oopsie, he has done actually great evil before God's eyes, in God's sight. And it's just a reminder that David thought perhaps that he could have committed this sin privately. No one will know. No one will see what I've done with Bathsheba. No one will see the letter that I sent by the hand of Joab to have Uriah murdered. No one will see that. And David teaching his people and teaching us this morning reminds us that God is not only all holy, he is all-seeing, and he searches and weighs the heart. No one might see the device by which you are committing perhaps adultery, but God sees. And I don't say that to spook or to scare you, but to remind you that God sees and yet he still is willing to forgive. He saw David planning this evil. Aren't you thankful that God is not like us? In the very previous Psalm, God reminds the psalmist, you thought I was like unto thyself. You thought I was just like you. And you should rejoice this morning that God is not like us, that he is not an idol that we make up because if God was like us, he would not have forgiven David. But with you is forgiveness that you may be feared. So let's continue on in David's prayer. Confession. David is not following right now in the footsteps of his forefather, Adam, or of his foremother, Eve. Do you remember that after they had sinned, they tried to cover it themselves? He who seeks to cover his sin, to conceal his sin, says Solomon in Proverbs 28-13, will not find favor or success. He who confesses and forsakes it will obtain mercy. And I just want to put before you that promise. If you try to hide your sin from God, he will not forgive you. If you confess and forsake it, you will find mercy. That's just a promise. He is faithful and just. to forgive us when we what? Confess our sin. 1 John chapter one verse nine. When we say the same thing, homo logeo, when we say the same thing of what God says, when I confess that I'm a rebel, that my sin against God flows from my depraved heart, that it's perverse and that I've fallen short of his law, when I confess what God has already declared, the Bible says he is righteous, he is faithful, And not just might, but he will forgive me of my sin. And he says the same thing to you as well. So let's pick it up in verses 5 and 6. We might say in verses 3 and 4, David confesses his sins. And in verses 5 and 6, he confesses his sinfulness. You see that? That David didn't make an accident, that he didn't do something that was outside of him. No, he is saying the very rotten source from which his rotten, wreaking sin emanated from was a heart that was corrupt and needed cleansing. Do you see that? Behold. In Hebrew, hineh, it's sort of bringing you to attention. It's like when a pastor unexpectedly raises his voice to kind of get you out of your stupor when you're sleepy on Sunday. That behold there is in Hebrew to remind us that the sins that he confesses of verse 3 and 4 flow from a source that is corrupted. Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity. There's that word avon, which means depravity. And most good commentators say that this is one of those verses that teach and reiterate the doctrine of total depravity. I wish I could bring one of my commentators here before and maybe scourge him. He says, this doesn't teach total depravity. Of course it does. David literally was writhed in iniquity. It's this graphic picture of childbirth going back to the curse of Genesis 3. Not the curse of childbearing, that was a gift God had given to his people to accomplish his purpose, but after Adam and Eve had both sinned, one of the curses, one of the consequent curses that God gave to Eve is that in childbirth there would be, sorry Mariah, there's gonna be much pain. And yes, afterwards, after the pain you will forget it as it were when a son is brought into the world, but even the word writhed in the Hebrew, it just says brought forth in our English text, but it says here I was writhed. Iniquity goes all the way back to that depravity which we have inherited from the garden where which Adam and Eve sinned against God. They transgressed, they rebelled, not only against his command, but against his person. And David is acknowledging that. And we need to acknowledge it. Otherwise our prayers would be superficial. We need to wrestle with our inherent sin nature, the way Paul does in Romans 7. He sees there's laws at work within him. If you don't acknowledge that, you're not going to actually pray for renewal and cleansing and grace to help fight sin the way you want. Paul says, oh, wretched man that I am. I see a lot at work. I want to do what is right. And if you're a Christian, you know that. You know that the law is good. You see, as it were, another law that is still fighting, still clutching after sin. It's that flesh that needs to be murdered and put to death and crucified, and that's what David is saying here. I want to honour you, and yet I see another law at work. Oh God, I am a sinner. Have mercy and forgive not only my sin, but cleanse me from my sinfulness. I see, like Paul teaches in Galatians 5, that there is the Spirit who is working, and I need to keep in step with Him. But there's also the flesh, and these two are warring against each other in the Christian. There are desires of the Spirit, and until the resurrection happens, there will still be, even in the Christian, desires of the flesh. A desire to look at the forbidden, to desire the forbidden, to delight even at times in the forbidden. And David is acknowledging this. He has confessed not only his sins, he and we must also confess our sinfulness. People don't like to hear this, but that's okay. The Puritans were mocked back in their day. They were known affectionately, or perhaps better, mockingly, as the repenters. And they wore that as a badge. The world, look at those repenters. Yeah, we are the repenters. Because until Christ returns, we will be the sinners. But God has given us a sign, a token, a pledge for good that he will forgive us. And I find it very appropriate that I can say that as I stand before the very table that we are going to pass out to sinners who confess as we partake of the Lord's table. Yes, we have sinned because we are sinners, but you are a God merciful and compassionate, abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness to your covenant people who have fled for refuge and cleansing to your Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, the one who can forgive even serial murderers and adulterers. The law couldn't forgive that, but Christ can. You cannot out-sin the sinless Savior. So as you are praying for your children, remember the doctrine of total depravity. I am reformed through and through. And this is, as it were, the foundation. Some of you struggle with what is known as the five points of Calvinism. If you get this first one, the T of the tulip, radical or total depravity, all the others make sense. The only way anyone can be saved if we are dead in our trespasses and sins, if we are radically infected by sin, the only way we can be saved is by God's unconditional election. It has to be unconditional. If it's conditioned upon goodness, then you're not totally depraved. There's still an island of righteousness that sin hasn't infected, but the Bible doesn't teach that. That if you are so infected with sin, that only the atoning blood of Christ for his elect can save you. That you must be irresistibly drawn through regeneration. And if you are a sinner through and through, only God's persevering grace will help you persevere to the end. Now, don't go around arguing the five points, but if you don't understand what the Bible teaches about total depravity, you will inevitably make light of God's sovereign grace, not only in your salvation, but also in your cleansing and perseverance to the end. Oh, how desperate we are of God's regenerating, cleansing, and persevering grace. Where, then, is boasting? If you're a Christian here, even if you disagree with the doctrines of grace, you must say that I was dead. How does a dead person make themselves alive? How does someone who is at enmity with God all of a sudden choose to love the very one he, by nature, hates. No, the psalm begins with, be gracious to me, oh God, in accordance with your covenant love which you made in eternity past when you gave your son a people whom he would come into the world and redeem and save and raise and keep and bring a new heavens and a new earth. Where is boasting? Not in us, but in Christ alone. Behold, I was writhed in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me. David is not saying like the liberals are saying that he was born out of fornication. No, he is saying I was conceived from Adam all the way till now. I am in that line. I am a sinner through and through. There's only one who can ever boast that he was not writhed in iniquity nor conceived in sin, and it is the Lord Jesus Christ, which is why we must believe in the virgin birth. Behold, on the one hand, right, here's the dilemma. Behold, in the other hand, is another dilemma. It seems so unfair. I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin was I conceived. And behold, you delight in truth. That's a problem. He's demanding something we can't by nature give. And some people think that's unfair, right? When we get to Romans 5, when we see the imputation of Adam's sin to all of his progeny, we think that's not fair. But actually, the unfairness is, is that in that state, God would impute to us something far greater than what Adam gave us. He would impute to us Christ's righteousness and indwell us with his own Holy Spirit. But here's what repentance looks like. Confessing sins and confessing sinfulness. Perhaps you're an unbeliever. I never, ever want to teach what is called cheap grace. You're not going to see this in many churches, where they say, just accept Jesus into your heart. Whether you mean it or not, repeat this, parrot it. Here, listen to my words and repeat after me. I just don't see that in scripture. If you want to teach someone, what does biblical repentance look like? You don't have to get into Hebrew. You don't have to get into alliterated sermons. Take them to Psalm 51. If there's one thing you remember in the three weeks I preach this, Psalm 51 is a beautiful gift to the church as it teaches us what does true repentance look like. What does repentance unto life look like? Not only for the unbeliever becoming a Christian, but also for the Christian being renewed and restored and revived. When you have sinned, where do you go? Go to Psalm 51. I told you he's a good friend I wanted to introduce you to. But I can't force you. But text him. Remind him. Run to him when you fall into sin or when someone has broken over their sin. What do you say? Accept Jesus into your heart? Take them to Psalm 51. Tell them to run to the God of all grace and covenant love, the one who will forgive if they will confess. What does God want? He wants truth in the inner being. He wants transparency. He doesn't want a hypocritical prayer. He doesn't want whitewash. He doesn't want what we see in Jeremiah, these people with their fluffy lying promises. These people wash them on the outside but do not cleanse the inside. No, God wants us to be true in the inner being. Parents, you know this. You know it when you know your child has sinned and you confront them. All you want is for them to confess. And it grieves you more than anything when they begin to make half-truths or when they begin to lie. God doesn't want that. Some of you right now, you know that you've sinned. And I want to remind you that God knows. And it grieves Him when you try to excuse yourself or justify yourself or blame someone else. That's not true repentance. You own that you are a sinner. You own that you've rebelled. You own that you've fallen short of the glory of God. But you also own that God promises to forgive you when you come to him like this, a broken and contrite heart. God will not despise. That's a fancy term in Hebrew for litotes. Not only will he not despise it, he will gladly receive it. But only the Holy Spirit can help you to see this. Only the Holy Spirit can not only enable you to see God this way, that he loves when you come to him confessing your sin and not hiding it, not concealing it. What does God delight in? And sometimes we think that God is some grumpy old guy up in heaven, kind of like Zeus, trying to throw lightning bolts at those who sin against him. That's not him. Perhaps this afternoon, I'm always giving you homework, you thought you were on summer vacation, but go and read Luke 15, which we often call the story or the parable of the prodigal son. Another pastor actually helped me to see it far better as the parable of the prodigal father. Does anyone know what the word prodigal means? It means lavish. Right? The son went away and he prodigaled his money in loose living and prostitutes. That's where we get prodigal from. He was prodigal with his money. And one preacher said, actually, the prodigality is of the father and his grace. And when the son comes to himself, that sovereign grace, and he begins to sort of rehearse his speech as he's coming home with his head down low, What does the father do? What does the father delight to do? The father runs to him. Something that was very shameful for dignitaries to do back then. My girls like this, because I remember when I preached on this years and years ago, I, for some reason, said it was like the father, you know, they didn't wear skirts, but they wore robes, and they'd have to lift it up to go running. And the father has chicken legs. I'm not being irreverent, but that was shameful. He lifts up his robe and he runs to his son and all the neighbors are like, you see that? What's going on here? The father doesn't care. The father loves his son. He delights and he wants to show his son favor. And here comes his son and he doesn't think he's worthy of forgiveness. And we see actually that the one who is prodigal in the parable is not the son with his loose spending, but with the father and his lavish forgiveness. That's our God. Prove it, Pastor. The table, if you're a Christian, you're reminded that you can't out-sin Christ. The Father delights in truth, and here comes the Son not hiding it. He has sinned against his Father. He has sinned against high heaven. And the father doesn't relegate him to some distant room like one of the servants. He actually has a big party, and he gives him all of these signs of kingship, robes and rings and sandals and fattened calves and parties. This is what God delights in. But the son didn't celebrate this delight until he returned home confessing his sin against his father. I know how it grieves God when we don't confess our sin. We think that he's actually grumpy, but that's not God. He's brokenhearted. because we're actually trying to do what only he has promised to do and cleanse us by Christ. So God delights in truth. Do you want God to delight in you? Then tell him the truth. Tell him the truth that you have sinned. Wonderfully, it says you teach wisdom in the secret heart. And it's hard to interpret this, but I'll tell you at least where I'm landing. One of the Puritans said that this is the grace of God, that David has been taught by God about his holiness and his willingness to forgive sin. Because he's rustling, should I return? Is God going to lay the beat down on me? No, you've taught me wisdom in the secret heart. This is wonderful, Charles, that you picked. Actually, we sang from the Psalter in Psalm 16, and God loves to instruct us in the night. And some scholars say that this is the conscience, some say it's actually the law. It's both. God gives us a conscience, and then in His grace, He gives to His covenant people the law, and the law says, return to me. Return to me. I have provision for your return. I have covering for your sin. And that's what we teach when we preach the gospel. God's teaching you in your secret heart there is provision for sin. For those who fear the Lord, who believe him and take him at his word, there is provision. There is what we would call atonement. Can I encourage you this morning, if you're not a Christian, to confess your sin to God in faith? I said it last week, that repentance is the first fruit of faith. If I preach to you from the Word of God that God is holy, and you believe that, and if I teach to you from the Word of God that you are a sinner who's fallen short of the glory of God, if you believe one and you believe the other, You will stop running from God because you believe He is holy, and you believe you're a sinner, and you believe that He has provided Christ for your forgiveness of sins. If you believe those things, you will return to God. You will repent, and He will forgive. And that's why I'm going to keep preaching the gospel. Because if you don't believe this Lord's Day, perhaps in God's mercy you will believe next. The sower went out to sow one day, and he keeps sowing. And for some of you who are parents, keep preaching those truths of God's ineffable holiness that he will not compromise. Preaching the doctrine of total depravity, but also teaching the glorious gospel of grace. Preach those things, and God will turn sinners back to himself, and I would invite you, as God is inviting you, return. Return to him. Return to him with a repentant heart that believes the gospel, believing that he is not only just, but the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. If you believe that, the Bible says, and confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, you will be saved. Interestingly, we move from his confession back to his request. He goes to the CRCR church. I guess they're extra-reformed. But look at his request in verse 7 and verse 8. It's very similar, actually, to verses 1 and 2. Why does he repeat it? And I didn't find a commentary that explained it, but here's what I think it is, and you can test this. and see if it'd be true, you can be a good and noble Berean, right? You'll look at, like, purging, clean, washing, blotting out, what's going on here? Why is he using the same requests here? And I will say this, that in verses one and two, his requests flow out of the character of God, and I believe that in verses seven through nine, his requests flow out of the promises of God. This is who you are, cleanse me." Verses 7 through 9, this is what you've promised, cleanse me. Where do you get that from? He's now using actually temple language or what you'd call sacrificial language. In verses 1 and 2, he's appealing entirely to the character of God. But as you study theology, who God is, his promises flow out of his person. So he appeals to his person in verses 1 and 2, and verses 7 to 9, he appeals to his promises. These are great to have. David would say, this is what you promised in Leviticus, when the world is hyssop. Well, you can get a good study Bible. It can go online. But it was a kind of a plant that enabled one to either dip it in things like blood or in water, and it was used in cleansing. Perhaps some of you are familiar, on the eve of the Passover, when Moses instituted it in Exodus 12, they were not only to kill the Passover lamb, but they were then to do something very interesting. They were to take this plant called hyssop and they were to do what? Dip it into the blood and then sprinkle it on the people. You can also read about Leviticus or Numbers that lepers who were healed, they would have this hyssop dipped into water and it signified ceremonial cleansing. So it's not only for blood or for water, but it signified cleansing. Those who had touched dead people, they needed to be cleansed. And so the priest would take a hyssop. You can get a picture of it on your phone, I'm certain. But the way God had created it was that it could then be dipped into some liquid and then sprinkled on people. And it always signified God's willing and ability to forgive the unclean, the unclean leper, the unclean through touching death, the unclean who needed covering with blood. That was God's promise through the Levitical system, through the sacrificial system. David is appealing to God's promise. And if you come to God, appeal to not only his forgiving nature in person, but appeal to his forgiving promises. All that come to me, says the Lord Jesus, I will in no wise cast out. Does he mean that? A promise is only as good as the one who makes it, but he's the unlying God. He does not make promises in vain. He keeps every single one of them. If you call upon the name of the Lord, God promises, you will be saved. If you confess your sin, and I've quoted it, but memorize 1 John 1, 9, it's great for your heart and it's great as you're sharing the gospel. God is righteous and he is faithful to forgive us of our sins and to cleanse us of all of our unrighteousness. That's a promise, and so David is appealing to the promises God made through the Levitical system. Purge me with hyssop. Hopefully I'll be clean. What did God promise? He would clean, He would cleanse. You can write, perhaps if you don't have a study Bible or a Bible with references, it's the same word used in Isaiah 118. Let us reason. Come, read Isaiah 1 and realize how God likens the covenant people to Sodom and Gomorrah. And yet, nevertheless, he says, let's reason. Let's think this out. Let's understand who I am and the promises I've made. If you come to me in repentance, I will cleanse you. Your scarlet sins that no amount of detergent can wash out, I will cleanse. I will purge you from the deepest stain, and I will cleanse you from the deepest sin. I've made provision. I've promised provision. And we probably don't have time to go there, but read the book of Hebrews, especially chapter 9. What God promised in the law could never truly affect the cleansing promised in Psalm 51. Only Christ can. Only Christ can. Wash me, and hopefully I'll be whiter than snow. No, this is an imperfect tense in the Hebrew. This is what faith looks like. It makes no sense to me. Do you know what I've done against God? Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Isn't that wonderful? His request in verse 8, most scholars and I agree with, is this picture of gathering together. It wasn't like your typical fundamentalist Baptist church where you gather on Sunday, or we would say the Lord's Day, where we just sort of commiserate together. Now, I'm not making light of the pain that we go through, but the gathering at the temple was a time of celebration as well. That's what the psalmist missed in Psalm 42 and 43, how he would lead the worshipers in this triumphant, jubilant worship service, where they'd make good on their vows publicly, where the people of God gathered to remind themselves they're forgiven. Let me hear joy and gladness. Let me hear the piano play. Let me hear the hallelujahs. David wants to return to temple worship, and God made promises that you could through cleansing. What was, right, if you go and study the temple, it's not only its architecture, but the geography of everything before the priest himself and before the worshiper could even get near to the holies and the holy of holies, they needed first to be washed, cleansed. And we learn here that that's through confession and repentance predicated on faith. David misses worship. David misses worship. He misses corporate worship. This isn't David saying, forgive me and I'll continue to stream online. No, I get it. Sometimes we have to do that. But the new heavens and the new earth is full of corporate joy and gladness. Let the bones that you have broken rejoice. David, as it were, could not truly from a pure heart worship, because he had not from a true heart confessed. And this came to mind last night, and I don't agree with everything Charles Stanley preached, but God used him even mightily in my own journey out of charismatic theology into Baptist theology, and I'm now Reformed Baptist, but God still used Charles Stanley, and he said this, The most miserable person on the earth ought to be the unrepentant Christian. And it seems like a paradox. No, no. If you are a Christian and you are holding on to some cherished sin, your bones ought to feel broken. Psalm 32 says you ought to be sick in your stomach. There ought to be a misery and a miserableness about you. If you can sin, Without feeling remorse or having your bones broken, the author of Hebrews would challenge you and say, are you a Christian? Not morbid introspection, but if you can sin with no remorse or no heaviness, if your bones aren't broken, if you don't feel sick to your stomach, if there's no battle going on, I would ask, are you a Christian? But if you are sick to your stomach, if it feels like you cannot sleep and your bones have been broken, can I just command you and encourage you to just let go of that sin? Because you will continue to be miserable, Christian, until you confess it. But there will be great joy and gladness. The very bones that are mourning will rejoice. So confess it and repent of it. Verse 9, hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquities. Again, the same language, but that's what the temple signified. All of that boring literature that you're tempted to quickly run through, or why does the priest have to have, you know, these shoulder pads on, and why does he have to have, like, these jewels with Israel's name on it? That's all glorious theology reminding us that God delights to forgive those who repent, and that there is access into the presence of God through confession and repentance and sacrifice, God's sacrifice. And so David wants a restoration here. He doesn't only want forgiveness of sins, he wants restoration of fellowship. And so I wrote it down somewhere here. David's first pleas deal with the judicial effects of sin. Forgive them! His second plea deals with the relational effects of sin. Do you get what I'm saying? It's not enough. The Christian isn't happy just to sort of have the beef removed. He wants the intimacy restored. And if you're married, you've perhaps had that, where maybe you or your spouse has sinned against the other. And you ask for forgiveness, but you're not content with, well, okay, I'm no longer angry because you sinned against me. What you want, if you truly love that person, is you want that intimacy restored. You want that relationship restored. Right? This isn't not only...it's not only a prayer for forgiveness, it's a prayer for restoration. Right? John Owen said this, your sin, Christian, can never sever your union with Christ. but it can sever your communion with him. And so David's not content merely to have his sins, as it were, put away. He wants the positive aspect. He wants that relationship renewed and restored. He wants intimacy, and that's what the temple signified, that God was willing to draw near to his people through sacrifice, that God wanted to be near his people. And as long as David was confessing it, he was faking it, right? Sometimes we've done that. We've come to church clinging on to some secret sin, and worship seemed dead and hypocritical. There was no real rejoicing, at least not at the bone level, we might say. But when he confessed his sin, when he gathered with God's people that sacrifice, oh, how precious it must have seemed to him. He would gather at the temple, but it seemed as though God had hidden his face. And when David confessed it, he's saying, hide your face not on me, but on my sins. Restore to me the joy of your salvation. Verse 10. We move now from David's repentance to David's renewal. And we will quickly rip through this. But notice, and I was so thankful last week of the songs Nathan chose and of the songs this week that Charles chose, verses 10, 11, and 12, if you're a highlighter or an underliner or a circular, verses 10, 11, and 12 each use the word spirit. You see it? Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from your face, and take not your spirit of holiness from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit. And this is where I'm sort of alluding to that repentance leads to renewal. That it's not just an outward transactional. Salvation is more than transactional, it's relational. We just sort of treat, okay, I throw my sins on Christ, his righteousness is imputed to me, done. No, that's a means to a greater end. Right? Justification is glorious. But, says J.I. Packer, the doctrine of adoption is the crown jewel of salvation. And so we're not only asking to be forgiven, but we're asking that God would restore and renew us inwardly unto fellowship with the Triune God. Create in me a clean heart, O God. David, through his sin, had defiled his heart, right? And we know that from the doctrine of total depravity, but he's saying, I want something to be done on the inside. We always saw sin isn't an oopsie. It's not something external to us. Joe preached on it from Proverbs 4, 23. Above all guarding, guard your heart for from it flows the issues of life. The issues of adultery and murder were not external to David. David couldn't even, as it were, blame the devil. He made me do it. No, says Jesus in Matthew 15, which Matt preached a couple years ago. It's from the heart that all these things flow. And so what does David say? Yes, forgive me. Yes, wash me. But get to the heart. I don't want to be merely whitewashed. Don't heal me lightly like the false prophets teach. I don't want cheap grace. I want transforming grace. So create in me a clean heart. Is David asking to be saved? No. He's asking that God would do a work of recreation. This Hebrew word to create, it's used only of God, and it's used in Genesis 1 and 2 where God creates the heavens and the earth. He does a new work. And what is David saying? I want renewal, or as Rod taught in Sunday school a couple months ago, continued renovation. Make me more into the image of Christ. We might interpret that. Cleanse me, yes, but create in me a clean heart, oh God, and renew a right spirit within me. You should pray that. If you're an unbeliever, pray that God would regenerate you. But as the Puritans taught, sanctification is sort of like ongoing regeneration. It's not like you're getting saved, losing your salvation, getting regenerated. No, no, no. But they're saying that your sanctification is this picture of renovation, renewal, restoration, regeneration. Sanctify me, you might pray, by your word. Make me more like Christ. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Verse 11, cast me not away from your face. And that's why David wants to be restored to temple worship, because the temple signified God's willingness, as it were, to look upon his people. Go and read number six, and the Aaronic blessing was upon a forgiven people. The Lord bless you and keep you and make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. When did they invoke that? upon sacrifice at the temple. The priests would put God's name upon them. And that's what David wants at the temple, to remember God's smiling countenance upon him, giving him peace, shalom, restoration, renewal of relationship. That's what David's asking for. Cast me not from your presence. Let me come back to the temple. Do not take your spirit of holiness from me as you did Saul. David's not teaching you can lose your salvation. Some of the hyper-dispensationalists would have said something silly like that. That under the Old Testament you could lose your salvation, but in the New Testament you can't. I just don't see that in Scripture. Those who are united to Christ by faith in God's promise, none will be lost. So David's not saying, please don't let me lose my salvation. He's saying, please do not Stop your Holy Spirit from working powerfully in me. Or you might say in the language of Paul in Ephesians 5, do not let me grieve the Holy Spirit from whom I have been sealed unto the day of redemption. Do not quench him. Let your spirit of holiness continue to renew and renovate and sanctify and transform and change me. The Spirit did come upon prophets and priests and kings in the Old Testament. I thought I put it on mute. but do not take the Holy Spirit from me." David needed God's Holy Spirit to do God's work, and so do you. This is not talking about losing your salvation, but it is about losing your effectiveness to serve and minister. And that alone should be a reason for you to repent of your sin, Christian. Not only will you be miserable, but you will be ineffective, and may I dare say, useless. And God will not be mocked. And so say, Lord, please, let me not grieve your spirit by my lack of confession, by me holding on to some secret sin. Please don't take his influence from my life. Lastly, he's asking that he be restored to joy. We saw that again in verse 8, and David has no problem repeating. He'd make a good Baptist preacher, he'd preach long, and he'd keep saying the same things over and over, and then he'd almost land the plane, but then he'd say the same thing again, and he asks, O Lord, restore me. Turn me. That's that Hebrew word again we saw for repentance. Restore to me the joy of my salvation. Ah, ah, ah. Pastor, I have my Bible open this morning, and that's not what it says. Restore to me, yes, the joy of your salvation. And uphold me with a willing spirit, a voluntary, generous spirit. What will make you voluntarily want to serve the Lord, to be generous with your time and your talents and your treasures? being blown away afresh by God's amazing grace. Salvation is not something that we sit and mourn over. Yes, we mourn over our sin, but there ought to be dancing at times and celebration and jubilation that God, this holy God, this thrice holy triune God, is willing and delights to show steadfast love in forgiving us. And so maybe you're a Christian, And maybe these are words you can take to heart and begin to pray this summer. You'd make a good friend with Psalm 51, and you would say, Lord, restore to me the joy of your salvation. And would you uphold me with a voluntary, generous spirit? How are you upheld by a generous, voluntary, willing spirit? Well, you're made willing in the day of his power, and if you were to read Exodus chapter 25, the people were giving to Moses willingly, generously, because they remembered God's grace to them. And it's fitting. That Psalm 51 is ultimately, I believe, pointing to the Lord Jesus Christ, to whom David was looking forward to, to whom we're looking back to, and waiting eagerly for. What is a token, a sign of God's goodness to you? How can I promise you that God will forgive you if you repent, if you believe his promise of who he is, what he has done in Christ? How can I guarantee that? Because the table declares that. This is the lengths and the cost to which God is willing to go to make his promise yes and amen. He will cleanse you and forgive you if you humble yourself and repent. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your goodness to us in Christ. And as we prepare our hearts for the table, Lord, we would ask, yes, purge us with hyssop, cleanse us, make us whiter than snow, create in us a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me, Lord, that you would not take away the blessing-enabling presence of the Holy Spirit. But Lord, that you would make us willing, and you make us willing when we are reminded of the gospel. to which Psalm 51 so clearly points. Thank you for sending Christ into the world, and we would remind ourselves for every look at our sinful self, help us to look ten times to our sinless Savior, that you delight to forgive, that you will not despise a broken and contrite heart. So give us faith, Lord, to, with Abraham, once again, hope against hope, that you are as good and generous and glorious as your word says you are. And help us to see this most clearly in the face of your Son. Father, forgive us and cleanse us. And as we partake of the table, renew us and revive us, we ask for Jesus' sake and in his name. Amen.