Turn this evening, please, in your Bibles to Psalm 51. Psalm 51, the title of the psalm, to the chief musician of Psalm of David when Nathan the prophet came unto him after he had gone to Bathsheba. We read verse 1 through 12. Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness. According to the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions, wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. For I acknowledge my transgressions and my sin is ever before me. Against thee, 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. 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. Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean. Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Make me to hear joy and gladness that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice. Hide thy face from my sins, and blot out all mine iniquities. 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. Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation. and uphold me with thy free spirit. Amen. As it's our communion season this weekend, we ordinarily spend Wednesday evening devoted to a time of preparation for coming to the Lord's table. And our subject is focused upon humiliation. for sin. There are many aspects to preparation for the Lord's table. We stir up an appetite for the Lord Jesus Christ. We examine ourselves looking for evidences and marks of grace. But one of the things that we must do is stop and look ourselves in the eye. It's very easy as one was praying earlier to see the sins in other people. But we have to stop and essentially look at the man in the mirror who is looking right back at us. We need to see ourselves as we are before the Lord. Now we can paint the outside of our Christian profession up so as to present ourselves to others very differently than what we really are. Because when on the inside, there's a lot that is broken and corrupt. And as we preach the word to you this evening, you may find yourself under the power or the assault of a number of sins. And you know it, and you're not doing terribly well. in the fight against those sins. Or it may be just one, one obvious and perhaps serious sins. And when you're found in that position, you can try to put a spiritual guard up. You don't want other people to know what's really going on in your life. You can try to play safe in Christian conversation so that you don't feel especially awkward. But when you behave like that, it's not good for you. In fact, it's terribly dangerous for your soul. In Psalm 51, we are taught very clearly of the reality of sin in the life of a believer. Even a notable saint, the man who is described elsewhere as one who is after God's own heart. And here he pours out his soul to God and he recalls his fall into sin. And he describes a period of backsliding where his spiritual life was in bondage. And of course, he records his repentance. And the title makes it very clear. It's rooted in that period of life when David has fallen into sin with Bathsheba and Nathan the prophet came to him from God with gracious yet firm words of holy confrontation. And God blessed those words to David so that this backsliding believer now becomes a picture of the penitent believer. Well I would try by God's grace to confront you this evening, as Nathan did David. And though I don't know your sin and you don't know mine, to press upon your own soul, are you the man? Are you the woman? What has crept into your life? What iniquity has you in its hold? You know, sometimes you can hide the way David hid. There he was a believer in the grip of sin, and Nathan tells them the story about this person who steals a lamb. Nothing to do even with a human being. He steals a new lamb. And David becomes irate as though he were righteous, and yet he himself was in the grip of a far greater sin. And he's either blind to it, or his zealous response to the sin of another, which is often the case with us, is actually part of the cover-up for our own sins. David says, you're the man, and God graciously brings David to repentance. Brethren, God knows us entirely this evening. David had to come to the true knowledge of himself, but God's not learning about David. God knows us entirely. And what we want to do tonight with God's help is to work through these verses so that we might learn how to bring our sin to God as penitent Christians. We have to become this penitent for ourselves. Well, there are five things in these verses, and the first is we come with the petition, pity me, pity me. Look at verse one, have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy loving kindness, according to the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions. The first plea this penitent soul makes to God is for mercy. Have mercy upon me. Be gracious to me. Lord, pity me. But the reason for this is, of course, that he knows that he has offended God. He's fallen into various sins. He lusted, his lust broke forth into full-blown adultery. He lies to cover his adultery when that doesn't work, the snowball effect of sin. becomes even greater so that he will take the life of the man whose wife he has already taken. So he sinned against Bathsheba. He sinned against his own household. He sinned against Uriah. He sinned against those whom he sent with Uriah into the battle so that they might die. But in verse 4, none of these people are mentioned. And the thing that has gripped David's heart is his sin before God. Against thee, 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. Here's a man who sees himself alone before God and God is his judge and he is perfectly just in his judgment. If you turn back to 2 Samuel chapter 12, Nathan does not just say to David, thou art the man. He goes further than that. He goes on to specify the particular sins that David is guilty of. 2 Samuel chapter 12 and verse 8. And I gave thee thy master's house and thy master's... Sorry. thy master's wives into thy bosom and gave thee the house of Israel and of Judah and if that had been too little I would moreover have given unto thee such and such things. Wherefore hast thou despised the commandment of the Lord to do evil in his sight? Now what did he do? Thou hast killed Uriah the Hittite with the sword and has taken his wife to be thy wife. and hast slain him with the sword of the children of Ammon. There are the sins specified, but he goes further than that. Now therefore the sword shall never depart from thine house because thou hast despised me. Do you see that? All of these sins against men were a despising of God. Now, what does David say in response to this challenge? Against thee, thee only have I sinned and done this evil in thy sight. Yes, Uriah, yes, Bathsheba, yes, the other people I have killed. But when you bring God into the equation, then it's almost as though these people disappear. We're not saying it's insignificant. but it is incomparable in relation to our offense against God. All of our sin is against God, and each and every sin, as we've learned over the last number of weeks, deserves the wrath and curse of God for sin. And when you come to repent before God, Your sins may have collateral damage to other people, but repentance is you and God. You and God. He knows he has offended God, but he also knows that God is merciful. And so he begins the psalm by heaping up terms of mercy. He's pleading for God's mercy. One of the words that he uses is the Hebrew word chesed, which is translated in numerous ways in the Bible, sometimes grace, sometimes love, sometimes mercy. When William Tyndale came to translate this word, it is said he had to make an English word up because this word was so fully looked at it. And he says, does it mean love? Yes. Does it mean mercy? Yes. Does it mean kindness? Yes. How will I translate it? Loving kindness. That's the origin of the word. Loving kindness, trying to convey to us something of the fullness of this word. And David employs it. Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness. But he doesn't stop there. According to the multitude of thy tender mercies. This is what I need, Lord. I've sinned against you and you alone. I have offended you. And my only hope is this, that you are the God of mercy. and it's mercy that I need. You look into your heart and what do you discover? You discover not just one sin, but you find a multitude of sins, don't you? Well, what do you need in response to that? Is it not the multitude of God's tender mercies? So we face two problems when it comes to repentance in connection with both these truths, our offense to God and God's mercy. the penitent must know that God is both just and merciful. Because if you don't have a sense of the holiness or the justice of God, you will not have a proper sight of the seriousness of your sin and therefore you won't be compelled to repent of it. But then on the other hand, if you've no sense of the mercy of God, even if you see the greatness of your sins, you still won't repent of them. because there's nothing to encourage you to do so. So here's a man in the grip of deep conviction and where does he begin? It's like he's desperately, desperately trying to remind himself and plead before God everything that God is in relation to his mercy. Have mercy upon me according to your loving kindness, according to the multitude of your tender mercies. Brethren, this is the only thing that gives us confidence as sinners before God, so that when we are convicted of our sins, we do what we could hardly imagine doing. We actually come with confidence before a God who is merciful. Pity me. Secondly, Forgive me, forgive me. Verse one, according to the multitude of thy tender mercies, blot out my transgressions. And again, verse nine, hide thy face from my sins and blot out all mine iniquities. Now confidence in God's mercy does not make anyone play down the seriousness of their sins. And we see that in the rest of the petitions. They explain how David feels before God. It's like a sickening sense of horror has entered into his soul. Do you know anything like that in your own experience? He feels guilty. The first petition describes his sin, blot out my transgressions. The word transgression there refers to rebellion. It takes us to the legal nature of sin, that by our sins we have rejected the authority of God and we violated the law of God. Blot out my transgressions but then he uses other terms like in verse 9, hide thy face from my sins and blot out mine iniquities. When a man is brought under conviction of sin by God, God is the one who is bringing the force of the law upon his heart but when that happens It actually brings you to a sense or to a place where you sentence yourself before God. You say, I'm the rebel, I'm the lawbreaker. I'm the one who has incurred justly the penalty of a broken law. And this sense of guilt, it's powerful in the heart of David. And so it's on the back of that feeling of guilt, he comes with a prayer for forgiveness. Blood out my transgressions. That word simply means obliterate them, annihilate them. Verse nine, hide your face from my sin. Lord, I can barely look upon my sin and you are infinitely holy. Turn your eyes away, O God, from my iniquity. Forgiveness is, of course, that which everyone with a true sense of sin will seek from God. We live in an age where people don't want to feel guilty. They don't want to be shamed. So the worst thing that you can do is point something out and they'll say in our therapeutic age, You made me feel ashamed, as if that was necessarily a bad thing. You're trying to make me feel guilty. Yeah, maybe I am. As if that were a bad thing. You see, we can't know the forgiveness of our sins unless we feel guilt for those sins and an accompanying sense of shame for them before God so that we humble ourselves with the desire that in his mercy he would take away all of the guilt and the shame of our sins. So here's an unbeliever and God ransacks his life and opens his eyes and he comes under the power of the law. And he begins to feel an experience which is a little bit like hell is going to get him. It comes into his soul. And from that sense of just guilt and condemnation, He cries onto God, forgive me. And this holy and just God hears the cry of this guilty sinner. And then he continues as a Christian and he falls into sin repeatedly. And he goes through cycles of feeling guilt and shame in his Christian life. And he has to come back to the same place knowing that God has said, if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins because the blood of Jesus Christ, his son cleanses us from all unrighteousness. So it's not like this sermon doesn't apply to anyone here this evening. Or you can say, well, that's for everyone else. I'm doing quite well in the Christian life. No, the Christian life is a life where we keep sinning. Therefore, we must keep confessing and God has to continually forgive our sins. That doesn't question our justification. That's just the reality of life as an imperfect, sinful Christian in the world. Some Christians behave as if all my sins were forgiven in the past, and I don't have to trouble myself with sin anymore. Not so, my friend. If your ongoing sins Don't produce shame in your experience. There's something terribly wrong with your experience. John gives us that wonderful statement of fact if we confess our sins. God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and we rejoice in that. But David gives us the same fact in Psalm 51 by way of a picture. Blot out my transgressions. Annihilate them. Take the atom bomb and drop it upon the guilt of my sin. Hide your face from it. Don't hold this sin against me forever. It's but one of a number of pictures that you know well in scripture. As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us. Isaiah chapter 43 verse 25, beautiful words. I even I am he that blotteth out thy transgressions. The very thing that David prayed for, blot out my transgressions. That's the kind of God I am, he says. I even I am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own name's sake and will not remember thy sins. He doesn't say that he does not remember your sins. God can't forget anything. He chooses not to remember your sins against you. Who is a God like unto thee that pardoneth iniquity? that passeth by the transgression of the remnant of his heritage, who will not retain his anger forever, because he delighteth in mercy. Brethren, when you repent of your sin, you come seeking mercy, then you ask God to forgive you. But when you pray, God, forgive me, this is what you're asking for. and asking in faith this is what you receive. I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions. Pity me, forgive me. Thirdly, cleanse me. Cleanse me. Look at verse two. Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity. and cleanse me from my sin. Then, verse seven, purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean. Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. The sense of guilt drives us to pray, forgive me. But the sinner doesn't only feel guilty, he feels dirty. And so he prays, cleanse me. Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity. Uses another word for sin. This word in Hebrew speaks in a peculiar way of depravity and perversity. And he uses it well. He's asking God to cleanse him from his sick and twisted and loathsome and corrupt soul. Then verse seven, purge me, which simply means purify me. Purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean. Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow. Lord, I am before you as one who is unclean. Some of you are embarrassed to go out. If you are emitting, even a small odor. You get self-conscious, don't you sometimes? You have one of those little sniffs just to see if you're smelling. You come in from yard work, you're sweating, the first thing that you want to do because you're not clean is go to the shower. And that is for a little bit of uncleanness. a little bit of stench. And then you look into your soul and you see a soul that is utterly tainted and affected and corrupted by sin. And you become sick of the spiritual stench that your soul sends out. Old Testament saints of course were taught their defilement in sin by the law. That's why God appointed all these laws of uncleanness. Don't eat that food, it's unclean. Nothing in itself was unclean as the New Testament teaches us, but God is teaching us about uncleanness. Don't touch a dead body. You do this, you can't go into the presence of the Lord. You're ceremonially excluded. You have to wash. You need to purify. And David lives and moves in that kind of environment, and he picks up that language. but he's speaking of his moral guilt before God. He's not speaking about ceremonial uncleanness that merely excludes from the sanctuary. And he casts himself as the leper in these verses. Why does he pray, purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean? Well, if you go back to Leviticus chapter 14 and look there at verse four, you'll find your answer. because this was the ceremony that was prescribed by God for the cleansing of the leper. Leviticus chapter 14 verse 4, And the hyssop was to be dipped in the blood And the person was to be sprinkled with the blood and the water. And David is saying, I've sinned before you. Against thee, the only have I sinned. I am the spiritual leper. I am the unclean one. The side and weight of my sin makes me feel sick. So that when I look in, I have to cry out. I'm abominable. Then you come into the New Testament and you find the Apostle Paul describing himself in very similar words where he's wrestling for holiness and the things that he wants to do he doesn't do and the things that he doesn't want to do he so easily falls into doing and He finds this war in his soul, a principle of new life, warring against an inner principle of indwelling sin. And at the end of it all, he cries out, despairingly so, it seems, oh, wretched man that I am. He's like David in Psalm 51. I'm the leper. I'm unclean, I'm corrupt. What can I do with my wretchedness? That's a Christian experience, brethren. We bless God there's an answer. I thank God through Jesus Christ my Lord. The sight of your sin makes you feel spiritually dirty. But the knowledge of God seeing yourself like that again draws you to come confessing your uncleanness before him. Knowing that he has prescribed cleansing for the leper. Verse two, wash me thoroughly. Oh God, wash me entirely from my sins. Take all of my corruption away and make this black and wretched soul white. Hide thy face from my sins, verse nine, blot out all of mine iniquities. My friends, this isn't just a sinner coming to God in these terms. Like we saw before, God saying, I, even I am he that blotteth out thine inequities. He comes to us in these terms. Indeed, precisely these terms. He says, come and let us reason together, saith the Lord. Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. Though they be red as crimson, they shall be as wool. And so it's right to be taken up with a sense of guilt and corruption before the Lord, but we're not doing anything that God doesn't invite us to do when we bring that filth and corruption and ask him to do what he said he will do. Lord, pity me, forgive me, cleanse me. Fourthly, Restore me. Look at verse 8. Make me to hear joy and gladness that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice. Verse 12. Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation and uphold me with thy free spirit. So he's guilty. He's corrupt. He's broken. He's miserable. Sin has taken everything from her. Sin has become the great joy thief. He once had it, but sin has now stolen it all away. So he describes himself or his soul as a body with broken limbs. make me to hear joy and gladness, that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice." Broken limbs hurt, don't they? A soul doesn't have bones. But metaphorically here, it is as though it does. Because David is saying the pain of my wounded soul is far greater than any pleasure sin has given me. The joy of my salvation is gone. My peace and my sense of peace with God has gone. I once walked comfortably, but now I have no comfort at all. Turn please to Psalm 32, verse one through five, which I would take to be written of the same experience that David went through. And he comes out the other side and he rejoices that God has forgiven all of his sins. Verse one, blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. But where did he learn this blessedness? By going through the valley of humiliation, through his experience of backsliding. And he describes what it's like in verse three and four, when I kept silence, when I didn't repent, when I wouldn't go to God and confess my sins. My bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long. For day and night, thy hand was heavy upon me. My moisture is turned into the drought of summer, Selah. Isn't it madness that when we fall into sin, we don't go to God? Look what we're choosing. But we're saying in our mind, it would be so hard to go to God and confess my sins, even though God has promised to blot out all of mine iniquity. And when we're sitting spiritually stupid thinking that, this is what we're enjoying. Brokenness, barrenness, drought, pain of soul, no joy. And God says, come to me. Are you in this desert this evening? This barren place of joyless Christian living? Miserable because of the fruit of your sin? What a merciful God God is to actually take us into this desert when we sin. It's like he says, I will not allow my people to be happy in sin. I will make them taste the bitterness of it because I'm good. But on the other side of that, That means for us that sin always leads to misery, which is why we ought to avoid it. So you here this evening as a believer, you say, well, I remember times in my Christian life where I've tasted the joy of fellowship with Christ, but it's gone. I remember times in my Christian life were to strive after holiness was really my sincere happiness. But it's gone. Because I believed the lie of the joy thief. Sin came to me and said, I will make you happy. And the end of it all was misery. Do you find that in your own experience? I think we all find it in our experience to some degree. You look at your Christian life and you say, I'm miserable. I am a miserable and not a happy Christian. The question for you this evening is why? Why are you not a happy Christian? And there are two main reasons why Christians aren't happy. The first is you're not appreciating Christ the way you ought to. The second is you've fallen into sin and sin has stolen your joy. Thank God for that. If you're sitting here this evening and you've fallen into sin and you're miserable, thank God for that. What a horrific thing to be living in sin and you think you're happy. That's the misery you find yourself in. Then what do you do? You come as this penitent, don't you? You come with these petitions. Lord, my joy has gone. Restore unto me the joy of my salvation. My bones are broken. Heal the broken bones, Lord, and make me rejoice. All of my moisture is dried up like the drought of summer. My soul's like the Sahara desert. Lord, open the windows of heaven and flood this desert with your strains. I can't pursue holiness the way that I should. It seems to be such a fight. Lord, I need this work of restoration. Pity me, forgive me, cleanse me, restore me. It's really quite interesting, isn't it? Sin comes to us and says, I'm going to make you happy, but the fruit of sin is always misery. And then the believer looks at repentance and he thinks, oh, what a miserable thing. But the fruit of repentance is joy. Oh, how we ought to choose repentance. Repentance before God. Fifthly, renew me, verse 10. Verse 10. Create in me a clean heart, oh God, and renew a right spirit within me." This really takes us to the root of the problem. David, why did you commit adultery with Bathsheba? Why did you lose your mind and just continue with one sin after another sin, spiraling out of all control? Why was that, David? Well, ultimately, verse 10, it was a heart problem and a spirit problem. My spirit was not right within me. The word right here means fixed. And when David saw Bathsheba, his will was like a leaf on the wind. And off he went to pursue his own lust. And now it's like he takes it back to that root problem. And he says, I don't just need forgiveness. I don't just need cleansing. I don't just need my joy restored onto me. I need to have my heart fixed. Creating me a clean heart so that I don't desire the sin that brought so much misery into my life. Take the desire away. Give me a clean heart rather than a perverted and twisted heart. And give me a right spirit. It's like reset, Lord, this compass of my soul. It's been pointing in the wrong direction and I followed it. I need you to fix it. where it needs to be. It's another reminder that the Christian is renewed, but not perfected. Because of indwelling sin, we're going to be pulled in the opposite direction to which we ought to go. Therefore, we don't just need to be renewed in regeneration, we need to be continually renewed. in the ongoing work of sanctification. And one way God does that, brethren, is through the recalibration of repentance. And that's why Wednesday evenings in our communion week are so important, because the Lord brings us face-to-face with our sins, in a sense, for that recalibration of our souls. through repentance. It's the Spirit's work. But again, we find David praying for things that God has promised. Blot out mine iniquities, I'm he that blotteth out thy transgressions. We've seen it, haven't we? Wash me throughly, I'm the one who's going to make your scarlet sins as white as snow. Create in me A new heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Has God not promised that to his people? Ezekiel tells us that God is going to take away the heart of stone and he's going to give us a heart of flesh. And he's going to put his laws in our heart and he will make us to walk in his way and keep his commandments. You have every encouragement to come to God with those petitions tonight. I need the things that you know I need and you know them so well that you have particularly promised them to me. Without the work of your Holy Spirit, Lord, I'm going to continually go astray. I know that. But bring me back and fix my heart and make it firm. All our sin and its consequences are ours. But all of our hope is in God. He must renew. He must restore. And he does renew. And he does restore. And he replaces misery with joy once again. And he takes away all of our confusion of face and he gives us peace of conscience once again. And here's a man who falls into horrific sin and yet he teaches us to hope in the mercy of God through Jesus Christ. On the Lord's Day you'll come and you'll sit at the table of the Lord And all of these things that we've considered tonight will be represented to you and they'll be sealed to you in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. But what can we do in preparation as we come to the table of the Lord? Well, I've given you five petitions this evening of the penitent soul. If you include tonight, you've got five days. inclusive of the Lord's Day. You could go home and you could take one petition a day. Lord pity me and then Lord forgive me and then Lord cleanse me and then Lord restore me and then Lord renew me or you can just take these five prayers and you can focus on them all every day leading up to this communion. You have a framework. that shows you what penitence is like in the life of a believer. Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness, according to the multitude of thy tender mercies. Blot out my transgressions that stand for prayer. Oh, Lord, our God, teach us our sin and the greatness offered and teach us your mercy. Indeed, Lord, when we exalt your mercy, we also recognize the greatness of our sin because our sin needs that mercy. Lord, this applies to us tonight, these petitions, all in different ways, with different sins, different degrees of brokenness, different degrees of backsliding. We all need to be forgiven and cleansed and restored and renewed. According to the multitude of your tender mercies, deal with us, Lord, and not after our iniquities. Send forth the Holy Spirit to press these truths into our hearts that we might know joy, that we would not believe the lie of sin that promises us happiness but gives us only misery, and the lie of the devil and our own deceitful hearts that tells us repentance is a miserable thing and would keep us in that barren wilderness. where all of our moisture is turned into the drought of summer and all of the bones of our soul are broken and all of our joy is gone. Why would we choose that rather than repentance and the blotting out and the cleansing of all of our sins? Lord, teach us the joy of sins forgiven. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.