and get started. I want to begin with a word of prayer. Father in heaven, we come to you this morning knowing that in ourselves we cannot affect the change in our lives that we would seek. We can't produce the comfort, the peace, uh... the strength that uh... that we desire only you can provide that so lord we ask that you would uh... continue working in us to sanctify us to conform us more and more to the image of your son as we seek to know you and understand your word so lord we just pray for your power we pray for uh... the spirit's enablement and uh... we pray for our understanding that you would impress upon both our hearts and our minds this morning. In these things we ask in Jesus' name, amen. Well, I'll begin simply by doing, again, a quick recap of where we are. If you haven't been with us in previous weeks, recall or know that we're studying the mortification of sin. This is a book written by John Owen almost 400 years ago. And it really is an exposition of a verse in Romans 8, Romans 8.13, in which we read, For if you live according to the flesh, you will die. But if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. And in the first couple weeks we were speaking about what does this mean and what exactly, what is the reason why we must mortify the flesh or put to death sin in our lives. And we took a brief break last week as we came to chapter three where John Owen explained that ultimately the work of mortification is not a work that we can affect in our own power, in our own strength. but it's a work that God himself accomplishes in us, that the Holy Spirit does through us, and yet with means, with the study of scripture, with prayer, with fellowship with other believers who can speak to us. scripture, and can encourage us and rebuke us as needed. All of those things are means that help to accomplish our sanctification, and yet they are not the fountain, as John Owen puts it, but the fountain is God, the Holy Spirit working in us to accomplish mortification in our lives. Well, we're going to get back to the why do we mortify sin this week as we look to chapter 4. John Owen gives us this third and final reason why it's necessary to live a life of consistent mortification. That is a life where we're consistently putting to death the sinful flesh. And so the reason that he's going to give us is going to answer that why question. What he says is that our spiritual life, vigor, and comfort depend upon mortification. His strength, comfort, power, and peace, the realization of these, and thus the joy of our spiritual life depends greatly upon the mortification of sin. That's exactly how he puts it. So there's a couple things that we need to say. First off, let's understand what it is that we're talking about when we talk about things like spiritual comfort. There are really three things that he's concerned with. It's the strength or the power of our spiritual life, our comfort in it, and our peace with God. Those three things are the things that sin deprives us of. One author put it this way. He says, I take life to be the existence of the spiritual life, commenting on Owen's work, vigor to be the extent of it, and comfort to be the Holy Spirit's assurance of its existence. So what we mean here is in coming to faith, and knowing Christ, we experience communion with God. We experience the joy that accompanies knowledge of the benefits we have in Christ. We know that we're saved, that we're redeemed, that we're justified, and that our eternal state is one of joy in the presence of God. And this reality should give us joy in our life. It should give us comfort. It should cause us to be courageous. in the face of suffering, in the face of trial. And it should be a source of consolation to us when we experience suffering. And yet, when we have unmortified sin in our lives, when sin overwhelms us, we become numb to the sense of that reality. Owen is not saying that that reality is no longer present in our life. He's saying that we don't have the sense of it, and so we lack the comfort, we lack the peace, we lack the courage that should be consistent with the Christian life. And so it's important to understand what he's talking about. It's also important to understand that he says it depends on mortification, not it proceeds from mortification. This is a crucial distinction that Owen explains in his chapter in this text. What he's saying is at least two things. First, that that spiritual comfort and spiritual life are not necessarily the result of mortifying sin in our lives. He looks to an example in Psalm 88. You don't have to turn there, but there's a man named Heman. And in that psalm, Heman is crying out to God for relief. And yet what we don't see is a hint that the cause of his pain and his suffering is unconfessed sin in his life. Quite the contrary, what Owen says of Heman is, his life was a life of perpetual mortification and walking with God. Yet terrors and wounds were his portion all his days. And this is what he goes on to say about him. God singled out Heman, a choice friend, to make him an example to those who afterwards should be in distress. Can we complain if it is with us as it was with Heman, the eminent servant of God? This shall be his praise to the end of the world. And this is the conclusion that he draws from the example of Heman. God makes it his prerogative to speak peace and consolation. Citing Isaiah 57, he says, I will do that work, says God. I will comfort him. And so what Owen wants us to understand is that though our spiritual comfort depends on mortification, it is not the necessarily consequence of mortification. He's going to explain that if that is your experience, it's unlikely that your experience nears that of Heman, that your whole life is one where you have a lack of comfort. But it just proves the point that it's not the necessary consequence. And the second thing that he says is that it's not the direct cause of our comfort. This is an important thing to understand. The direct cause of our comfort is the Spirit Himself bearing witness to our spirit that we are adopted as children of God. We see that in Romans chapter 8 going a bit further from verse 13. Verse 16, the apostle writes, the Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God. And if children, then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him. If you are familiar with the rest of chapter 8 in Romans, you know that Paul goes on to this majestic description of all the benefits that we experience in Christ. That because of our relationship with Christ, because we are justified, because we know that the Father did not spare even his own son, Therefore, we can be courageous in the face of trials. Therefore, we know that our eternity is secure with Christ. We know that nothing can separate us from the love of God and Christ Jesus, Paul concludes. Not trials, not tribulations, not angels, not rulers, nothing in all this world. And what Owen is saying is that when the Spirit communicates that to our heart, communicates that truth to us and impresses it upon us, that is the direct cause of our spiritual comfort. And so we have to have those qualifications before we go on because we're going to say nevertheless that if we leave sin unmortified in our lives, we don't put it to death, it's going to numb us to that reality. That the ordinary experience of the Christian, as Owen puts it, is one where un-mortified sin leads to a lack of comfort, or deprives the Christian of comfort, of power, of strength in his life. He puts it this way, in our ordinary walking with God, and in the ordinary course of his dealing with us, the vigor and comfort of our spiritual lives depends much on our mortification. Mortification not only bears a cause and effect relationship to our joy, but it works effectually to bring it to pass. The vigor of our spiritual lives is not possible apart from mortification. One more phrase, he says, mortification prevents sin from depriving us of health in our spiritual life. Every un-mortified sin will certainly do two things. And so the rest of our time together, we're going to look at the two things that un-mortified sin does. The first thing is that it weakens the soul. And the second thing is it darkens the soul. But in weakening the soul, the result is that we are like David in Psalm 51, who speaks of his bones being broken, that we have this inability, ineffectiveness in our lives as believers. And the darkening of the soul is the kind of sense of a cloud over our lives, the numbness that we might experience to God's graces. So as we look at this issue of weakening the soul first, I want to turn to the Psalms, and we're going to see the testimony that various Psalms give us of the effect of sin in our lives. My hope is that we'll see that this is not just John Owen, but John Owen is pulling this from scripture and showing us what sin does to us. So if you would turn to Psalm 6, and we're going to turn through a few different psalms. So just be ready to thumb through it. But we'll start in Psalm 6. It's rather short. Here David writes, O Lord, rebuke me not in your anger, nor discipline me in your wrath. Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am languishing. Heal me, O Lord, for my bones are trouble. My soul also is greatly troubled. But you, O Lord, how long? Eternal Lord, deliver my life. Save me for the sake of your steadfast love. For in death there is no remembrance of you. In Sheol, who will give you praise? I am weary with my moaning. Every night I flood my bed with tears. I drench my couch with weeping. My eye wastes away because of grief. It grows weak because of all my foes. Depart from me, all you workers of evil, for the Lord has heard the sound of my weeping. The Lord has heard my plea, the Lord accepts my prayer, and my enemies shall be ashamed and greatly troubled. They shall turn back and be put to shame in a moment. As we look at that psalm, our clue that David is crying out to God in the midst of repentance from some sin in his life is in verse one, where he asks God not to rebuke him in his anger, not to discipline him in his wrath. We see a very similar thing in Psalm 32, if you would turn over there a few pages. In Psalm 32, we won't read it all, but this is also very clearly a psalm where David is extolling the importance of repentance, of confession of sin. In verse 3 and 4, he writes this. When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night, your hand was heavy upon me. My strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. So in these two Psalms that we've looked at, David is speaking of the effects of sin in his life as one who's languishing. And you can envision someone who's in prison, maybe a prisoner of war in a dirty, damp prison and languishing with no relief and no comfort. He speaks of the physical effect that it's had on his life. and not just a spiritual effect, but physically, my bones are wasting away, that I'm grieving and my eye is wasted because of my weeping, because I experience no comfort. In other words, he's not experiencing the nearness of God, of the communion that he once enjoyed with God. Again, in Psalm 38, and Owen references this psalm at some length here. In Psalm 38, He begins, O Lord, rebuke me not in your anger, nor discipline me in your wrath. For your arrows have sunk into me, and your hand has come down on me. There is no soundness in my flesh because of your indignation. There is no health in my bones because of my sin. For my iniquities have gone over my head like a heavy burden. They are too heavy for me. My wounds stink and fester because of my foolishness. I am utterly bowed down and prostrate all the day I go about mourning. For my sides are filled with burning and there is no soundness in my flesh. I am feeble and crushed. I groan because of the tumult of my heart. O Lord, all my longing is before you, my sighing is not hidden from you. My heart throbs, my strength fails me, and the light of my eyes, it also has gone from me. My friends and companions stand aloof from my plague, and my nearest kin stands far off. Those who seek my life lay their snares, those who seek my hurt speak of ruin, and meditate treachery all day long. But I am like a deaf man, I do not hear, like a mute man who does not open his mouth. I have become like a man who does not hear, and in whose mouth are no rebukes. But for you, O Lord, do I wait. It is you, O Lord, my God, who will answer. For I said, only let them not rejoice over me, who boast against me when my foot slips. We'll stop there. And what I want to impress upon you is, again, the vivid way that David describes the effect of sin in his life. We see it very explicitly in Psalm 38 that he ties all of these things specifically to his sin. He speaks in verse 4 of how he's burdened almost by his iniquities, that they're so overwhelming that it's as if he's drowning in them. And he says, my wounds stink and fester because of my foolishness. You see again and again, he's tying his plight to sin in his life. in a really a prayer of confession, in him coming before the Lord and seeking salvation and his help in the midst of his failings. I also want to emphasize the way that the psalm speaks of David's senselessness or his numbness. On the one hand, he talks about his enemies and how they plot against his life, and yet he doesn't hear it. It's meaningless to him. He can't even think about this threat because he's so numb because of his sin. And similarly, he's numb in many ways to God. He doesn't experience the joy of his salvation. And so we'll look at one more psalm in Psalm 51. Again, we see what David does here as he speaks in the wake of his sin where he had Uriah killed and took his wife. and sought to hide it, and he was confronted by Nathan the prophet. And in that sin, David cries out to God for mercy, saying, Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love. According to your abundant mercy, blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Against you, you only have I sinned, and done what is evil in your sight, 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 and the inward being, and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart. Now here, look at what David says, what he asks God to do for him. Purge me with hyssop, and I will be clean. Wash me, and I will be whiter than stone. 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 presence, and take not your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit. So what you see there is that David recognizes that the result of his sin was separation from God, that he did not sense the presence of God, the communion that he once enjoyed with God. It's also the sense of a even physical ailment, the bones that you have broken. And whether or not he's speaking metaphorically there or literally of some kind of ailment, he's crying out to God that he might restore him from whatever this suffering is in his spiritual life. so that he might restore to me the joy of your salvation, he says. And ultimately, that's what he's seeking, is the comfort, the joy that one experiences knowing that we are saved, that we are delivered by God, and that we have communion with him because he is our father and has adopted us as his sons and daughters. So we see, again, just to summarize all that, as we looked through several Psalms, we saw vivid descriptions of the effect that sin has in our life. Owen is going to go on from there, and he's going to explain why it has this effect. Why does sin weaken us? So if you would turn to 1 John, and as I say a few words, I'll give you some time to get there. But the first reason that he gives us as to why it weakens the soul and deprives it of its vigor is that it untunes and unframes the heart itself by entangling its infections, excuse me, affections. I love the way that he puts it. It untunes and unframes the heart. It's like a musician who's given an instrument that's out of tune, and no matter what that person does, they can't get it into tune. We become like that when sin is left unmortified in our life. When we nurture sins and allow them to grow and to fester, we're like an untuned instrument or a machine that is unframed, that is unable to operate properly. So in 1 John, Owen cites 1 John 2, verse 15, we get a reason why this is the case. The Apostle writes, do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the desires of the flesh, and the desires of the eyes, and pride of life is not from the Father, but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires. But whoever does the will of God abides forever. So what we see here is a corollary, if you will, from what we saw last week. If you recall, last week we looked at Galatians chapter 5, and we noted the way that Paul describes the fruit of the Spirit. and the fruit of sin, or the fruit of the flesh. That these two things, they can't coexist in a friendly relationship, but they are enemies. They're opposed to one another. And last week what we said is that one of the principal ways that the Spirit sanctifies us is by causing us to abound in spiritual fruit. Because as we abound in spiritual fruit, the fruit of the flesh has no room or is crowded out or is pushed out of our life because the two live in opposition. We're seeing the corollary of that. When we nurture sin in our lives and we nurture a love for the things of the world, it deadens our love for the Father. and for heavenly things, you see? And that's essentially what John is saying here in 1 John 2. He's saying don't love the things of the world. Why? If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. Again, in 1 John 3, he says in verse 17, if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him? So he's putting a more specific point on it, saying, if you have the worldly goods, if you're wealthy or you have much, and you see a brother who's in need, and you close your hand to that person, what does it tell me? What does it tell John? It tells us that you love your possessions so much that you won't even be merciful to your brother. And how can the love of the Father dwell in that person, you see? So Owen points us to these two passages to show us how sin impacts our affections and prevents us from living with a love for God and for heavenly things. Well, he goes on also to note that it fills our thoughts and consumes us. The way he puts it is this. Sin fills the thoughts with its enticements. First, it captures the thoughts. And if unmortified, it then seeks to make provision for and fulfill the lusts of the flesh. What Owen is talking about is how sin begins very much in the mind. If you turn to James chapter 1, as I say a little more about this, that sin doesn't just, oftentimes it doesn't just happen. There's not just an action of sin, but there's a heart attitude, a desire, there's thoughts that are indulged, and if they're left unmortified, what Owen is saying is that they grow and they fester like weeds in a garden, and they take over our life, and so that we are totally focused on this very thing. If we need a biblical example for what Owen is saying, we need only look to James chapter 1 and verse 13. This is what James writes, let no one say when he is tempted, I am being tempted by God. For God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire, when it has conceived, gives birth to sin. And sin, when it is fully grown, brings forth death. And you see this progression where it starts with desire and temptation that is not rejected. that then brings forth sin in our lives, an action of sin is what James is referring to, and which overtakes our life in such a way that if it's not dealt with and not put to death, that it produces death in us, just as Romans 8.13 says. If we don't put to death the deeds of the flesh, we will die. And so there's this effect, the weakening of us happens because of the way that sin spreads in our life, like a virus or a sickness. And then thirdly, it weakens our soul. It weakens us because it breaks out and actually hinders duty. What Owen means when he speaks about duty is he speaks about the means of grace that God uses in our life, the means that he gives us to mortify sin. You think namely of prayer, of the reading of scripture, of fellowship with one another, and the the kind of interactions that we enjoy in that fellowship, where we encourage one another to love and good works, where we rebuke each other as necessary. This is what he means when he speaks about duties. and sin breaks out and hinders us in that duty. He writes, the ambitious man must be studying, the worldling must be working or contriving, and the sensual vain person providing vanity for himself, when they should be engaged in the worship of God. I think that there's a wonderful example of this in the Gospel of Mark. There's a parallel in Matthew's Gospel, but in Mark chapter 10, you don't need to turn there, you can listen, or you can turn there if you like, But in Mark 10, we see the example of a rich young man who comes to Jesus. This is what he says in verse 17 of Mark 10. As he was setting out on his journey, a man ran up and knelt before him and asked him, good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life? And Jesus said to him, why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. You know the commandments. Do not murder. Do not commit adultery. Do not steal. Do not bear false witness. Do not defraud. Honor your mother and father. And he said to him, teacher, all these I have kept from my youth. And Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said to him, You lack one thing. Go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. And come, follow me." Disheartened by the saying, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions. You see what Jesus does there. First he says, well, obey the commandments. And the man says, well, I've done all of these things from my youth. What Jesus is going to show him is that he has not, in fact, done those things. He hasn't honored the chief commandment, love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind. And why? Because when Jesus says, go and sell all that you have and give it to the poor and follow me, He couldn't do it. Why? Because he loved the things that he had. He loved his worldly possessions too much. He loved them more than God. And in so doing, he broke the chief commandment. And he could not follow God, could not follow Christ, but he went away disheartened because he had great possessions. Now, for each one of us, it might be a very different thing that draws us away from God, that causes us not to want to follow Him. But it's the same pattern in our lives, that sin, when we nurture it, when we leave it, unmortified, it has this effect of drawing us away from God because we feel the constant need to always pursue those things. And so Owen speaks of the ambitious man in terms of studying, but we can apply that in our own context. Suppose I'm an ambitious person and I go to work each day and I want to do well, not a bad thing in and of itself, but work gets very busy. and many demands are made of me. And it gets to the point where in order to fulfill the demands of my supervisor, I have to work every day, all the time, and I neglect things like caring for my family. I neglect things like studying scripture, like fellowshipping with all of you and enjoying the benefits that come through that. I neglect all of my spiritual duties or disciplines or the means of grace, we can say, that God provides. Because what's wrong? I love something more. And that's my ambition or my desire to earn the praise of people at work, you see. And we can all apply that in our own lives in various ways. But this is the effect of unmortified sin in our lives. As it draws us away from God, it weakens our soul. It weakens us in our spiritual life because we become masters to the thing that we love so dearly. And so just to summarize all of that, Owen's first point was that sin unmortified weakens the soul and deprives it of its vigor, its vitality. Well, he goes on then to say it also darkens the soul. It darkens the soul and deprives it of its comfort and peace. And we saw the vivid imagery of this described in the various Psalms that we looked at, the way that David spoke of his life as though he were in a flood or in a cloud of darkness and numb to the experience of God's grace, numb to his salvation, unable to sense the communion that he once enjoyed with God. But sin has this effect of darkening the soul and depriving it of comfort. He gives us this wonderful image, and I just want to read it for you, this analogy or metaphor of a plant in a garden. This is what Owen writes, mortification prunes all the graces of God and makes room for them in our hearts to grow. The life and vigor of our spiritual life consists in the vigor and flourishing of the plants of grace in our heart. Now as you may see in a garden, let there be a precious herb planted and let the ground be untilled and weeds grow about it. Perhaps it will live still, but it will be a poor, withering, and unuseful thing. You must look and search for it, and sometimes can scarce find it. And when you do, you can scarce know it, whether it is the plant you look for or not. And suppose it is, you can make no use of it at all. But let another of the same kind be set in the ground, naturally, as barren and bad as the other. But let it be well weeded, and everything that is noxious and hurtful removed from it. It flourishes and thrives. You may see it at first glance into the garden, and have it for your use when you please. So it is with the graces of the Spirit that are planted in our hearts. If they abide in a heart where there is some neglect of mortification, and they are about to die, they are withering and decaying. The heart is like the sluggard's field, so overgrown with weeds that you can scarce see the good corn. Such a man may search for faith, love, and zeal, and scarce be able to find any. If he does discover that these graces are there and alive, yet they are so weak and so clogged with lusts, that they are of very little use. They remain indeed, but are ready to die. But now let the heart be cleansed by mortification and the weeds of lust constantly and daily rooted up as they spring daily, nature being their proper soil. There will be room for grace to thrive and flourish. The graces that God gives will act their part and be ready for every use and purpose. And so I I wanted to read that at length because I thought that the imagery was so rich and such a beautiful picture of what mortification is. It's the removal of, as it were, weeds from a garden. So that not because in our own effort we're enabling ourselves to be sanctified or we're causing ourselves to experience communion with God, but so that the graces that God imparts to us, the means of grace that he gives us, Key on that word, grace. So that God's work has its effect in our lives. And so all of this, as we said last week, and we say again, that even in the work of mortification, we see very clearly that this is God's work in our lives, just as the very work of mortification is the work of the Spirit. So too, in mortification, it allows God to continue his work of speaking comfort to us. and assuring us of our adoption as children of God. Well, I want to close, as it were, with with a question that was on my mind as I read through this. And it had to do with, what's the difference between mortification and repentance? What's the difference between mortification and repentance? Because I was thinking through these things and saying, well, if I have sin in my life that I've nurtured, sin that's not been dealt with and that's un-mortified, that is festering in my life, what do I do? What's the first thing that I do? And as I looked at the Psalms that we read, it was very clear. The first thing is to begin with repentance. And just to put a finer point on it, Psalm 32. I love this psalm and the way that it depicts our need to repent. I read verses three to four earlier where David speaks of the effect that sin had on his life when he was silent, that is, when he left his sins unconfessed. Well, the psalm begins this way. Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit. So in verse 5, he says, I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity. I said, I will confess my transgression to the Lord, and you forgave the iniquity of my sin. Therefore, let everyone who is godly offer prayer to you at a time when you may be found. Surely in the rush of great waters, calling images of the flood forward of God's judgment, surely in the rush of great waters they shall not reach him. You are a hiding place for me. You preserve me from trouble. You surround me with shouts of deliverance. So what we see is this picture in David's life where he responded to the effect of sin in his life by saying, I will go to the Lord and I will confess my sin. And then he takes that as a lesson for others, saying, do this as well. This is the character of the godly person, to offer prayer to God at a time when he may be found, to seek his deliverance, to repent of one's sin, And so when we find sin that's festering in our life, the first thing that we must do is go to God like this, in confession and repentance. But that led me to that question, what is the difference between mortification and repentance? And I was very helped to look at systematic theology written by Michael Horton. He writes this. Often repentance is more broadly defined to include actual change in character and behavior. But scripture describes this as the fruit in keeping with repentance. You see the difference? That the change in character is really the fruit that is produced through repentance. And so in our lives, Horton goes on to say, our lives ought to be characterized by a continual pattern of confession and repentance. And the fruit that flows from that is the character change that we see, the effect of mortification in our lives, if you will. We see this again in James, and you don't have to turn there, but very briefly in James chapter 5. James encourages his readers to be confessors of sin, even to the point of having brothers or trusted friend in fellowship to whom they can confess their sin. In the context at the end of chapter 5, He speaks about the possibility that one might be suffering in the community, and that that suffering may, not necessarily, but may be caused by sin. So he says, have the elders pray for them, and anoint them with oil, and if they've committed sins, he'll be forgiven. He goes on and says, therefore, confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed. And I think that as we're talking about the effect of sin in our life and the pain and the suffering that it causes in our lives, it's a great encouragement to have this promise that through confession we can be healed, that God will heal our sin. And so it begins there with repentance. And then what flows from that as we develop a habit of repentance in our life is fruit that is in keeping with repentance. So that was just, I think that's a helpful clarification and distinction. At least it was helpful in my life. Well, let me say one final word before we close. The Psalms that we looked through, there are others as well, but the Psalms are, I think, a great help to us, a means that God has given us when we're struggling with sin, specifically those Psalms where David or others speak of their sin and confess to God and speak of the the result that God produces in their lives. In Psalm 51, I think if you're like me, it may be near and dear to your heart. I think for a lot of Christians as they wrestle with this, this is the, with sin in their life, this is the first Psalm that they go to. We talked earlier about how un-mortified sin makes us useless, if you will, or ineffective. Well, what we see here is by contrast, confessed sin and the healing that God brings in our life makes David or can make a person effective and give strength and vitality to their spiritual life. And so what we see, when I read Psalm 51, I left off at verse 12. Well, let's look then at verse 13 and see what David says. In the wake of this confession, as he prays that God would cleanse him and purify him, he says this. Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will return to you. Then I will teach transgressors ways, and sinners will return to you. Deliver me from blood guiltiness, O God, O God of my salvation, and my tongue will sing loud of your righteousness. O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise. For you will not delight in sacrifice, for 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." And so what we see there David saying is that ultimately what God seeks is that broken heart, that contrite spirit, And the result in his life will be that he teaches others and brings others back to repentance and that he praises God aloud so that others will hear of it and they'll give praise to God. And you see, you know, coming full circle is that picture of the vitality in his spiritual life restored through repentance and establishing that consistent pattern of repentance in his life that leads to mortification, that leads to fruit in keeping with repentance. Well, let's close with a word of prayer. Father, we come to you again this morning praying that you would impart these truths to our hearts and to our minds, that you would teach us what it means to live lives of continual repentance, that you would give us broken and contrite hearts. broken spirits that come to you acknowledging our sin, knowing that our sin is great and yet your grace is greater. Lord, assure us of the truth that we are adopted. Assure us, we pray, of the truth that you have made us your children through the sacrifice of Christ on our behalf. through his death and his resurrection so that he is the chief of our brothers, of us as brothers, and that you are our father. Lord, we rejoice in these truths, and we pray that you would give us joy, just as your servant David said so many years ago, restore to us the joy of your salvation, Lord. And if there is, and certainly would be, sin in our lives, Lord, we pray that you would root it out. We pray that you would teach us to mortify it, that you would enable us to that end. you would send your spirit among us so that we might grow in greater Christ-likeness, that we might be sanctified in your spirit. We pray all these things in Jesus' name, amen.