Well, it's certainly good to be back with you again. It's always a joy to be here. It's like being with friends. And I always enjoy it. I always enjoy your pastor and his lovely wife. I enjoy spending time with them. And I'm so glad to be with you again. And I'm glad I actually have one of mine here too from New Jersey. She's not from New Jersey either. We're some of the odd ones, you know, most people move from New Jersey South, we move from the South North. So, let's turn now to Psalm 51. Psalm 51, if you read the heading here, It says, to the chief musician, a psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet came unto him after he had gone in to Bathsheba. Now this psalm is David's prayer as a penitent sinner, as a sinner to whom God had granted repentance. Repentance is all of God. We can't glory in repentance. God exalted Christ to be a prince and a savior to give repentance to his elect Israel and forgiveness of sin. Paul instructed the preacher to preach in meekness, instructing those that oppose themselves that God, peradventure, will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth. Now David here at this time, he was a sanctified child of God. Many years before this, God had granted him eternal life. He had regenerated him and given him repentance and brought him to faith in Christ. And David was a believer. He had walked with God for many years. He had endured many trials. He had written a lot of Psalms at this point. God, speaking through the Spirit, moved David to pen these Psalms. But a sanctified child of God is still a sinner. He's still a sinner. You know this. You that know him. In the regeneration, the Spirit of God comes and creates a new man in us that was not there. Ephesians says it's a new man which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness. It's created after Christ our Savior in righteousness and true holiness. But there's an old man that's after Adam. And he's corrupt according to the deceitful lusts. The Apostle Paul was a sanctified child of God when he wrote in Romans 7 and said, I know that in me that is in my flesh. In that part of me that is of Adam dwells no good thing. So David was a believer. He was a man who had these two natures within him, these two men within him. But because of that, sin was always present with David in everything he did. Sin is present with us in everything we do. Now, understand this, and I want young people to get this, that we're the servant of somebody. We're either the servant of sin or we're the servant of righteousness. We're somebody's servant. But when the Lord comes and gives you life, He makes you to no longer be the slave of sin, the servant of sin. Sin shall not have dominion over you. You're not under the law but under grace. He frees us from being the slave of sin, from sin having dominion over us, so that we become servants of righteousness. A believer hates sin. We conduct our lives in a way that honors God and that God says is right. But sin is still present with us. And sometimes, sadly, because we have this old man of sin, We commit terrible acts of sin. And that's what had happened with David. David committed adultery and murder. And the man that he was responsible for murdering was a loyal friend to David, the husband of Bathsheba. Well, God might suffer His child to sin. He may suffer us to go a great while in sin. David went almost a year thinking he had gotten away with this. But God chastens those He loves. He's a faithful Father and He corrects His children. And He will come in time and He will correct His child and grant us repentance. And that's what we have here. We have the prayer of a penitent sinner. Now, if there's anybody here to whom God is just now granting repentance for the first time, as we go through this psalm, you're going to hear the words that are in your heart. You're going to recognize it because if He's granted you repentance, these are the words, these are the things you ask God for. And for believers here that have been a long time in the faith, we're familiar with this psalm because we pray these words often. We pray these words often. Our subject is the prayer of a penitent sinner. And there's three things here. I'm going to try to make this as simple as possible. There's three things a repentant sinner asks for. One, he asks for mercy. He asks for mercy. Lord, withhold from me what I deserve. Two, he asks God for justification. Put away my sin so that the record is gone. You remember my sin no more. And three, he asked God for sanctification. Create in me a clean heart. Renew in me a right spirit. Wash me throughly. This is what he prays for. And here's the thing. If we can be brought to ask God for these three things, God's already done this for us. It's the only way you can come asking God for this. He's already worked this. Now let's begin here. First of all, a repentant sinner is going to come to God asking mercy. Everything else we see here is all under the heading of mercy. We want all this by mercy. By mercy. He says, verse 1, Have mercy upon me, O God, according to Thy lovingkindness. And when a sinner's brought there and he's brought to pray and to confess his sin as David does here and to ask God for mercy, that's when sin has gone beyond being a teaching. Sin has gone beyond being a doctrine. You can learn doctrine and you can learn and listen for words like total depravity and election and particular redemption. and have your system of doctrine down. But when God has worked this in our heart, depravity stops being a doctrine and we become the depravity. That's when you find out you are the sin. So you come to God, not haughty, not arrogant, you come to God asking for mercy. You read through the Gospels and you find those that had a dire need and knew their dire need, they didn't come to God arrogant. They didn't come with their head up high and haughty to God. They came worshiping, means bowed down to His feet, and every one of them came asking, Lord, have mercy on me. That publican in our Lord's A parable, that publican would even lift up his eyes to heaven. He was spitting on his breast. His heart was broken. He was contrite before God. He was begging God, have mercy on me, a sinner. That's what I am. And a sinner can ask for nothing but mercy. God saves us. It's going to be in mercy. Mercy is what we do not deserve. It's God withholding from us what we, sorry, God withholding what we do deserve. And that's how we're going to be saved. Because we deserve condemnation. That's the only thing we deserve. And do we merit this mercy? Do we ask God to give us this mercy according to some work we've done? No. He says, according to thy loving kindness. The loving kindness of God is in the Lord Jesus Christ. And that's the only place it is. It's in Christ alone. God loves His people in the Lord Jesus Christ. He chose a people in Christ and He loves His people in Christ. And God's love never changes because it's in Christ who never changes. And it's His loving kindness by which God draws us to Christ in the first hour and every hour after that. We're not just drawn to Christ once. We have to be drawn to Christ continually. We don't just repent once. We repent throughout our life. We're constantly coming to Christ, constantly asking God for mercy, constantly begging God to have mercy on us. And this is because in His love and kindness, He draws us. And I'm thankful, and I know you're thankful, that loving kindness never changes. Nothing we can do, nothing we did made Him love us to begin with, and therefore nothing we do can make Him stop loving us. Jeremiah 31.3, the Lord hath appeared of old unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love. God doesn't love His people today and then stop loving them tomorrow and throw them in hell. No. He loves them everlastingly. And therefore, He said, in loving kindness have I thrown you. He never stopped throwing us. He never stopped throwing us. So that's the first thing, reverend, is we come asking mercy. You remember our Lord Jesus said, I didn't come to call the righteous. I came to call sinners to repentance. He said, go learn what this means. I'll have mercy, not sacrifice. He's not interested in you trying to sacrifice to Him and do something to make Him have mercy on you. God's mercy is free. It's free. Now secondly, the sinner comes to God in repentance asking for justification. The repentant sinner confesses our sin to God and we ask God to justify us. David says here in verse 1, He says, according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies, blot out my transgressions, wash me throughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin, for I acknowledge my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Now, one reason God has to grant repentance is because by nature a natural sinner is too proud to confess our sin. Our Lord Jesus said, this is the condemnation. Light has come into the world and men love darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil. They will not come to the light lest their deeds be reproved. We're too proud to come to God confessing what we are. We're too proud to come confessing that our best deeds are sin. So God has to grant repentance. The self-righteous cannot say, I am wrong. I have sinned. And we struggle with this. Believers struggle with this. It's a difficult thing for some believers to come to the point where they realize they're wrong and to just say, I am wrong. You're right, I'm wrong. Don't be too proud to say you're wrong and somebody else is right. If we're too proud to do that with one another, we're going to be too proud to do it for God. We have to come to God confessing our sin. Usually, it's the natural flesh to want to blame it on somebody else. This is how we vindicate ourselves, justify ourselves. We blame it on somebody else. We blame it on our surroundings, our environment. We blame it on how we were brought up. We blame it on things. We try to make sin to be in things. You remember after Adam fell, spiritually he died. And after he fell and God came to him, what did he say? The woman you gave me. And the woman said, the serpent, the serpent you created, he begot me. They blame God. That's our nature. That's our nature. You ever find yourself doing this? You know, we can sit here and we know this is so. We hear it, we know it's so. We go out there into the world, And we'll do this sometimes and not even realize we're doing it. We're justifying ourselves. We're justifying ourselves. But when God makes us behold His holiness, His holy character in the face of the Lord Jesus Christ, when we behold Christ crucified and behold how holy God is that He sent His Son and crucified His Son, That's when a sinner will start confessing his sin to God. The Lord brought David here, verse 4, He said, Against thee and thee only have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight, that thou mightest be justified when thou speakest, and be clear when thou judgest. How did he come to that point? He beheld Christ through faith. He beheld something of God's holiness. You know, when Isaiah, remember Isaiah, when he beheld the Lord and he heard him cry, holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of his glory. The next words out of his mouth was, woe is me. I'm undone. I'm a man of unclean lips and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. For mine eyes have seen the Lord of glory. God said this, that this was how He was going to bring us to confess our sin. He said, I'm going to pour out the Spirit of grace and supplication, and they're going to look on Me whom they pierce, and they're going to mourn for Him as one mourns for his own less honor. The legalist will come under conviction, and he mourns because he doesn't want to suffer hell. He doesn't want to suffer the punishment. comes under conviction, and we mourn because we know this sins against our Lord. This sins against our Redeemer. There's all the difference in the world. David speaks here of three kinds of sin. He speaks of transgressions. That's our evil works. That's our continually breaking the law, either in thought, word, or deed. And in our flesh, we're continually breaking God's law. In thought, word, and deed. Then he speaks here of iniquity. That's our good works. That's our best righteousness, falling short of the glory of God. Iniquity. It's not equal to God's glory. It's inequitable. It does not measure up to God's glory, God's requirement. And then he mentions here sin. That's my being. That's what I am. That's my nature. Sin's not just what we do. Sin's what we are. And He confesses all three of these. He confesses my transgression, my iniquity and my sin. I need to be justified from all of them. Can you imagine the multitude of our transgressions? Can you imagine from conception until the last breath, can you imagine how many transgressions and how much iniquity and how many sins there is? However, whatever astronomical number we might come up with, I guarantee it's more than that. And however wicked we think it might be, it's worse than that. But the good news is, though we have a multitude of sins, God has a multitude of tender mercies. And who's it for? Who's it for? It's for those who can come to Him with the spirit and heart that David came to Him, confessing sins all I am. Lord, have mercy on me. I need You to justify me. I guarantee you, you come to God like that, He won't cast you out. He's never rejected one sinner that came to Him begging mercy. He delights to show mercy. Can you confess your sin? Can you confess you need to be justified by God? Scripture says if we say we have no sin, we're deceiving ourselves. You're not deceiving the person in the pew next to you. We're not deceiving God. We're deceiving ourselves. And the truth's not in us. God's Word's not in us. But if His Word's in us, Scripture says if we confess our sin, He's faithful and just. to forgive us our sin and to cleanse us of all unrighteousness. He's faithful to do it. He's merciful to do it. And He's just to do it. How can that be? How can God be merciful to me, the sinner? How can He reserve mercy for thousands and at the same time, by no wise, clear the guilty? By no means clear the guilty. How can He kill me and have mercy on me? He sent His only begotten Son. He sent His only begotten Son. He became His people. He took our place. He became His people. He was made flesh because we were flesh. He was made under the law. The God of glory, the God who gave the law, made Himself under His own law. Became a servant under His own law. and proving himself to be spotless without sin, to be one who would never sin against God, he presented himself to the Father, and the Lord laid on him all the iniquity, all the transgressions, and all the sin of those thousands for whom God reserves mercy. And our Lord bore separation from God, he bore the strict, unyielding justice of God in place of his people until justice was honored, until God's justice was upheld and it was honored, so that the law looks upon everyone for whom Christ died and says, the wages have been paid in full. They died. They died. Paul said, It's not as though I was crucified with Christ. He said, I am crucified with Christ. As real as I was in that garden, as real as that was me that disobeyed God in that garden, in the person of Adam, that real, I was in Christ on Calvary's cross, and I was crucified on the cross, and my old man of sin was destroyed. And so were yours if you're His. And so now God is just. He's just. He's not doing something that's inequitable. He's just to shower his people in mercy. He's just to do it. You notice there that David asked that the record of his sin be blotted out. He does not want to be cleared just from the guilt of his sin. He does not want to be cleared just from the punishment of his sin. David wants the record blotted out. That is why Christ was made sin. He not only took away our punishment. He not only took away our guilt. He took our record away. That's justification. That's what justification is. And now, to everybody that comes confessing their sins to God and begging God for mercy, begging God to justify them, he says, I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake and will not remember thy sins. That's good news. If you find yourself in the place where David was and you come to God, And you've been there, believer, where your heart's just... You know the good thing when God brings us to where we can't get comfort from our spouse, we can't get comfort from our children, we can't get comfort from the preacher, we can't get comfort anywhere. You have to go to God. And He reminds you, I don't remember your sin. It's just as He said it would be in that day. Their sins will be searched for and there won't be any. He's put them away. Now, I realize the first time you come and you repent, you believe on the Lord Jesus, Acts 3, I believe it is, says, repent and come to Christ that your sins might be blotted out. And the Lord makes you know they're blotted out. They were blotted out by Christ. But He makes you, through faith, know they're blotted out. But I'll tell you, every time He brings us to this place, every time He brings us back to this place, this is what He reminds us of, they're blotted out. They're blotted out. That's the only thing that will make you quit working. And then what He said in Hebrews 10, He said if those sacrifices were to put away sin, they would cease to be offered. And if a man has no more conscience of sin, if he knows his whole record of sin is blotted out, he'll quit trying to work to please God. It's the only thing that will do it. Now thirdly, the penitent sinner begs. He begs for mercy, he begs for justification, and he begs for sanctification. And just like justification, when he sanctifies us the first hour, holiness is a state that God makes us to be in when he creates a new man in us. That new man is holy. That thief on the cross had the holiness without which no man would see God, and he had both his hands and his feet nailed to a cross. It wasn't by what he did, it's by what Christ was made under him. He was made sanctification under him. And he was fit to be a partaker of the inheritance of the saints in life right then. But in that state of holiness, we do grow in grace and knowledge of him. And that's what this process is for. That's what these trials are for. That's why God allows us to fall on our face in sin, is so he can bring us and grow us in grace and knowledge of Him. So when He brings you to Him, you're praying for Him to give you a right heart, a right spirit. You already have one. David had one. He was regenerated. But he wanted a new spirit. He wanted a right spirit. He wanted God to purge that defiled conscience. Look here. He says, verse 5, Behold, I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me. Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts. And in the hidden part thou shalt make me to know wisdom." Our problem is not only before the law of God, our problem is within as well. Out of Christ's side came water and blood, blood for justification, water for sanctification. We sing, let the water and the blood from thy wounded side which flow be of sin the double cure, save from wrath Justify me and make me pure. Sanctify me. And the wisdom God makes us to know from the first hour and in every trial that He brings us here, the wisdom He makes us to know is Christ. Of God are you in Christ, who of God is made unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, redemption. He's everything. He's this wisdom. And the work of creating this clean heart, this work of continuing to renew our new man, to purge our conscience, this works all of God through the blood of Christ. He says, verse 7, Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean. Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. He's speaking of inwardly now. Verse 10, Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from Thy presence, and take not Thy Holy Spirit from me. Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be whiter than snow. Purge me with hyssop, and I'll be clean. You remember on the doorpost the night of the Passover in Egypt. First off, remember this, the elder of the house applied the blood. Christ is the elder of the house. He applies the blood. And he used hyssop to do it. Hyssop was like a a plant, but it had like tassels on it, you know, and they would dip it in there and they could sprinkle it. And he put it all on the doorpost. And when those were in the house, he passed over them when he saw the blood. And then again, there was this, God made a law and he said, if you touch, if you touch a dead body or you're in the room when a dead, somebody dies, you're defiled. He said, if you touch a bone, you're defiled. He said, if you're out walking in a field and you don't even know there's a grave there and you walk over that grave unknowingly, defile. If you take a sip of water and it was an open vessel and there's all kind of dead things in there that you can't even see, but you drank that water, defile. And the point of it is this. When he got finished, there was no place they could turn without being defiled. And the point of it is, brethren, is our dead flesh defiles us. Constantly. Constantly. And so God said, now take a red heifer, a substitute, and this red heifer dies in the place of the defiled. Picture Christ. And then they burn this red heifer, and they take the ashes, and with those ashes, they mix it with water, and they make a water of purification. And then you take this hyssop, and you dip it in that water of purification, and you sprinkle the defiled with that water of purification. And ceremonially, God said, that cleanses their flesh and they're clean. Now what is all that picture? Go to Hebrews chapter 9. Hebrews chapter 9, verse 13. It says, I'm sorry, Hebrews 9 verse 13, for if the blood of bulls and of goats and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling the unclean sanctifyeth to the purifying of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience? Not just flesh, inwardly. Purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God. God never ceases cleansing His people, purging our defiled conscience so that we can worship God. I can prove that to you in a very easy way. You come in here, you hear this Gospel preached. God takes the blood of Christ that you hear preached, and He's not going to sprinkle physical blood on you, The blood of Christ that we here preach, God applies that message inwardly by the Spirit, and it purges our defiled conscience, and you begin to rejoice in the Gospel. You go out of here, and things come along, and you start doing things, and you forget what you heard, and you get into situations at work, and, oh boy, if I don't meet this deadline, it's just going to be the end of the world, and if I don't do this and that, Company that's been around 200 years is just going to fail tomorrow if I don't do what I'm supposed to do. You know, all these different things. Dead works. It doesn't have to just be religious work. It's just everyday works that we do. They defile us. Our dead flesh defiles us. We forget everything we are. Next thing you know, we act like we've never even heard of the gospel. You come back in here, you hear the gospel preached. And God purges that conscience again, and you rejoice in Christ. This is why we have to constantly keep coming in here in the Gospel of Christ. Every time you look through the Scriptures, and the Gospel is presented to us as things we need. It's the bread. Job said, I need it more than my everyday food. It's life to us. It's the cleansing blood that cleanses our conscience. It's everything we need to live. And we have to constantly come and hear. We not have to, we get to. We want to. Because this is where we want to be. We don't want to be defiled. We want to be seeing the Lord and rejoicing in Him. It's a new man which is renewed in knowledge after the image of Christ that created him, where Christ is all in all. Now, when he does this work, And we truly hear this Gospel, then we start rejoicing again. Look here in verse 8. Make me to hear joy and gladness, that the bones which Thou hast broken may rejoice, restore unto me the joy of Thy salvation, and uphold me with Thy free spirit. You know, we get to feeling like we can walk on our own. We get to feeling like we're trying to run out away from beyond what God would have us to do and what have you. And so God sometimes just removes his presence and just makes you feel like he's gone. I was in a mall one day and there was this little boy, I don't know how old he was, but he was a young little fellow and he kept running out ahead of his father. And his father would call him back and he'd sit there a little bit, then he'd take off running out ahead of his father again. And so in a little while, I was sitting there on the bench watching him. And the father just stepped over the column. He just stepped behind that column and hid. And the little boy just kept on running. He didn't even know his father had stopped. And he went on up a good way. And in a minute, he turned around, and he didn't see his father. And he looked around. You could see the worried look on his face. And it didn't take long, and he was big old tears coming out of his eyes. And he went to calling out for his father, crying out for his father. And his father stepped out from behind that column. And that fellow ran as fast as he could run to his father and latched on to him. And when they walked off, they was hand in hand, and that little fellow wasn't running out ahead of him anymore. That's what he's talking about. It's painful. It feels like a broken bone. And God does it to bring us back to Christ, to sit us down at Christ's feet, to restore the joy of His salvation to us, that we might rejoice in Him and look to Him alone. Now, there's another reason God does this, though. You remember when he told Peter, he said, you're going to be sifted as wheat, Peter. He said, but when you're converted, when you've been converted from this pride that you're in right now, and you've been brought down and you've learned this lesson, when you're converted, strengthen your brethren. He said, feed my lambs. He said, teach them what you've learned through this trial. Look here, David said, when you've done this for me, Lord, verse 13, then will I teach transgressors thy ways, and sinners shall be converted unto thee. That's what, when he's done this, you know who you're going to speak of? You're going to speak of him alone. I'll teach sinners thy ways, Lord, and they'll be converted to you. Look here, let's just read it, verse 14. Deliver me from blood guiltiness, O God. He's saying, justify me where I've broken your law, thou God of my salvation, and my tongue shall sing aloud of thy righteousness. This is what God chastens us to bring us to teach our brethren His ways. Teach Christ our righteousness. teaches free justification in him. He says, O Lord, open thou my lips, and my mouth shall show forth thy praise. Where does the tongue speak? It comes from the heart. Look here. For thou desirest not sacrifice, else I would give it. Thou delightest not in burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise. When he does this work and breaks our heart, Then we're brought to teach sinners that God resists the proud. We're not going to get anywhere trying to be proud and railing back at somebody that rails at us and trying to accomplish something through our pride and our strength and all that. God resists the proud. And if God resists you, you ain't making no headway. But He gives grace to the humble, a broken and a contrite spirit. Because that's a heart that comes to Christ, and God will meet His people in Christ. And then He says here, this, Do good in thy good pleasure unto Zion. That's what we declare, God's will. We preach God's will. Build thou the walls of Jerusalem, then shalt thou be pleased with the sacrifices of righteousness, with burnt offering and whole burnt offering. Then shall they offer bullocks upon that altar. He's saying, when God builds up His child, and makes us a living stone to offer up spiritual sacrifices, calves of your lips, a walk that's honoring to God, that wants to please God, a heart that is constrained by the love of Christ. All those sacrifices are acceptable by Jesus Christ. Acceptable by Jesus Christ. They are full of sin in themselves. They are acceptable by Christ. Brother John heard me tell this in Tennessee. I have one of the young men in our congregation. We had a tree fall on our fence and he came over and helped us cut this tree up. He took the biggest portion of that fence and he made a table for me out of that fence. It was very rustic, but he was getting into carpentry. He made this table. But he forgot to let the table dry before he put it together. And so it cracked. Cracked right to the middle. He went ahead and just varnished it and gave it to me with this crack in it. It goes right to the center of the table. And I just put a piece of glass over the top of it. You can see the crack and everything. But I put a piece of glass over it so nothing falls through the crack. He did that because he loved his pastor. And he just wanted to do something because he was grateful to me for preaching the gospel to him. You think I would turn that table down because it had a crack in it? That's the prettiest table. It's beautiful to me. I've had it by my recliner to this day. I love it because I know the heart that gave it. Our little old crack works that we do, They're perfect when they're presented in Christ. And because they're done from a heart of love that just wants to do something for Him, even though they've got spots on them, God says, well done. Well done. This is where He brings us. This is where He brings us. This is what He, after the trial, brings you to teach your brethren this. It's all of Him. You come to God asking mercy, confessing your sin, asking Him to justify it. Asking Him to create a clean heart in you. He'll never turn you away. Never. Amen.