Good evening. Well, tonight I'd like to direct your attention to Psalm 51. Psalm 51. You're probably aware, it's been our practice as we've been working our way through 1st and then now 2nd Samuel, that when we study a passage that has a known corresponding psalm, to take a break from, in this case, 2nd Samuel, and to study that psalm. And so today, Psalm 51. We can actually, if you're there, you can tell by the the superscription up at the top of the psalm that this is clearly related to the story that we've recently studied in 2 Samuel when we were in chapters 11 and 12. The story of David's sin with Bathsheba and everything that unraveled from there. Last week we looked at the part of the story where you'll remember the prophet Nathan goes to David and he confronts David about his sin, his sin with Bathsheba, his sin in killing Uriah. He does it by telling that parable, remember the parable he tells of the rich man who's got lots of flocks, lots of sheep, and then there's a a poor man who's got just one little ewe lamb that he loves dearly. And that rich man, he has a traveling guest coming to his house, and he's got to throw a banquet for the guy. And rather than kill one of his own sheep, he doesn't want to do that. And he seizes the one little ewe lamb that belonged to that poor man, and took it, and killed it, and served it to his guest. And of course, you remember David is outraged. hearing of what this rich man had done, and he said, the man deserves to die, and then Nathan looked David in the eye and said, you are the man. David eventually responds, and you remember at the end of 2 Samuel 12, He says, I have sinned against the Lord. He repents, he acknowledges, I have sinned against the Lord. And this Psalm, Psalm 51, obviously this is written at a later moment in time, during a time of later solitude and reflection, but it feels like it could have been written at that very moment. At that moment that David says, I have sinned against the Lord, perhaps even before he hears Nathan's next words, which are that the Lord has forgiven your sin. That moment when David says, I have sinned against the Lord, if you were to double click on that moment and unravel all that's going on in David's heart, maybe you would get Psalm 51. You're no doubt familiar with Psalm 51. Amongst the 150 psalms, Psalm 51 is certainly one of the better known psalms. It is considered the central text on repentance in the Old Testament. And it's a psalm that has consistently resonated with God's people. Thomas Chalmers, he was a Scottish pastor and theologian, He once said that this is the most deeply affecting of all the Psalms, and then he added with humility, he said, and I am sure it is the one most applicable to me. The one most applicable to me. May we have that same humility as we look at this Psalm this evening. Let's right now look at Psalm 51. I'm gonna read through the entire Psalm. Psalm 51, to the choir master, A psalm of David when Nathan the prophet went to him after he had gone in to Bathsheba. Have mercy on me, oh 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 in the inward being and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart. Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean. Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. 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. I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will return to you. Deliver me from blood guiltiness, O God, O God of my salvation, and my tongue will sing aloud of your righteousness. O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise. For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it. You will not be pleased with a burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. Do good to Zion in your good pleasure. Build up the walls of Jerusalem. Then you will delight in right sacrifices and burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings. Then bowls will be offered on your altar. That's the end of our psalm. Let me pray and ask the Lord to help our time in it. Lord, we pray that you would even now soften each of our hearts as we are forced to consider our own sin. and our need for repentance. Lord, would you keep us from having stony, hardened hearts? Would we have those softened hearts, softened to our own sin, so that we can truly repent of our sin? We pray in Jesus' name, amen. What kind of church do we want to be? Do we want to be the kind of church where everyone pretends to be perfect, where we all put on a false front and act like we have no struggles, no difficulties, no failings, no sins, or do we want to be a fellowship of forgiven sinners who are resting in God, who make no claim to perfection, but who boldly claim the mercy and grace and forgiveness of our Lord? You see, that second option, that is the ideal Christian community. Not a collection of people who tout our goodness and show off our spiritual accomplishments and pretend that we're all just fine, but a body of forgiven saints who fling themselves on the mercy and grace of God. And in this Psalm, Psalm 51, David shows us how to do that. You see, this Psalm is not just for David. As though we're suddenly given a private glimpse into his private journals, his private diaries, his poetic thoughts, and we're just supposed to think about David the entire time. No, this psalm is for us as well. We ought to make this psalm our own. You'll notice that the superscription actually begins by saying, to the choir master. That is an indication that this psalm was intended to be used in corporate worship. It was used for the public gathering of God's people to sing this and recite this together. And so we can pray this psalm. You, like thousands before you, can confess your sin using this psalm as your guide. In fact, this psalm is a fantastic guide. It shows us what true repentance looks like. True repentance is raw and earnest. True repentance is deep and penetrating. But most of all, it shows us that this true repentance is Godward. In fact, that's kind of my thesis for this evening. True repentance is Godward. We could say it this way. True repentance cries out to God knowing that he alone can cleanse and forgive. True repentance cries out to God, knowing that he alone can cleanse and forgive. In my ESV Bible, and I know you all don't have an ESV translation, and I don't know what yours says, but in my Bible, the editors have supplied a little heading for Psalm 51, a title, and the title they've put there says, Create in me a clean heart Oh God, it's actually taken right out of verse 10, and it's a great title. It really does capture the essence of this psalm because it's this desire to, repentance is this desire to be cleaned at the very center of our being and a recognition that God alone can do it. Create in me a clean heart, oh God. This cleanness. It doesn't come by rituals. It doesn't come by sacrifices. It doesn't come by scrubbing up your exterior and looking squeaky clean and convincing everybody that you're really actually a pretty decent person. It doesn't come by lying to the people around you and pretending like you never sin. It comes, this cleanness comes from God alone. So let me do this. Let me show you how this psalm is organized, kind of give you the big overview of the psalm. And then what we're going to do is we're going to walk through this psalm, starting in verse 1, and just walk through it all the way to verse 19, and use it as a guide for repenting of our sins. But first, let me just look at the bird's eye view. All right, so this psalm could be broken into five parts, and if you've got the ESV, you'll actually see those five parts because what they've done is they've included a stanza break between each of those five parts. Now, the dominant tone of this psalm might be captured by the word request. request. David keeps making his request of God. In fact, if this were a classroom, and I had a whiteboard behind me, this is the point at which I would ask you guys, I'd say, hey, could you shout out for me some of those requests that David is making? And you'd start shouting them out, like, have mercy on me, or blot out my transgressions, wash me thoroughly, cleanse me from sin, purge me with hyssop, wash me whiter than snow, let me hear joy and gladness, hide your face from my sins, and so forth, right? of the different requests that David is making. And really, of the five parts, the first, the third, and the fifth sections could all be labeled requests. He's making requests. Then they've got the second section. The second section might be labeled repentance. And then the fourth section might be labeled response. And so we end up with this request, repentance, request, response, request. And really that captures well how we should respond to our sin, doesn't it? When we sin, we should cry out to God for forgiveness. That's the request. so that our sins have been acknowledged. That's the repentance. And then we delight in what God has done for us. That's the response. Well, that's the bird's eye view. You'll get it as we keep going through, but let's now actually walk through this Psalm verse by verse. But as we do this, I want you to make sure that you make this your own. Let's not just think about David. Let's think about you. Let's think about your heart. Let's think about the stuff of this week. Like imagine you've come to me and you've sat down perhaps in my office and you've said, Pastor Craig, I'm guilty of fill in the blank. You've come to me and imagine I then take you to Psalm 51. How can you repent using Psalm 51? Let's look at it. On verses 1 and 2, David makes his initial request. It's a request. It's a request for God's forgiving mercy. Look at verses 1 and 2. He says, 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. Have you been there? Have you been to the point where you are crying out to God for forgiveness? That's where it's got to start. Notice that in these few short verses, David identifies the problem, he makes his request, and he offers the basis for that request. The problem, he identifies the problem. The problem is clearly his sin. The problem is not Bathsheba was a temptress, or Bathsheba was in the wrong place, or I was in the wrong place. The problem is not Nathan. And Nathan is ganging up on me, and he's picking on me, and he's always telling me about all my sins. No, he says the problem is his own sin. He actually uses three different words to identify his sin. His sin was transgression. You see that there. That's a word that indicates that it was rebellion. It was a refusal to follow God's ways. He transgressed God's law. You know, of course, that's really true of any sin. Anytime you or I sin, we are rebelling against God. We're rebelling against his standards. Transgression. It's also iniquity. He uses the word iniquity. This word refers to the twistedness of human nature, the perversion that's deep within us. We want what we ought not want. We do what we ought not do. And then it's sin. This word has the idea of missing the mark. Anytime we fall even the tiniest bit short of God's commandments, anytime we don't get an exact bullseye, that is sin. You could have been a little kinder to that person, that's sin. You could have been a little bit more patient, that's sin. You could have done your work with a little more gusto, that's sin. What that means is, if you're sitting there and you're thinking, I don't know what I should be repenting of. Pastor's up there telling me I got things I gotta repent of, but I don't know what I should be repenting of. If that's what you're thinking, it means you have not really understood sin. Sin is any lack of conformity to or transgression of the law of God, any. It could be the smallest deviation. If you've not hit the bullseye exactly, that is sin. As you can imagine, that ends up being a very, very wide category. So David here, he understands his sin, but he doesn't just sit there in hopelessness, he makes his request. It's a request for thorough washing. And again, notice it's threefold. He uses three different terms here in these two short verses. He says, blot out my transgressions. That's a request that his transgressions should be wiped away, erased, the way that a debt might be canceled in a record book. He says, blot out my transgressions. Then he says, wash me. Wash me. It's a word used for laundering, where you scrub that piece of clothing, and you scrub and scrub until the stain is gone. He says, wash me. And finally, he says, cleanse me. This word cleanse, it's a word that might remind us of the ritual purifications under Old Testament law. The other word as well, wash. Wash and cleanse both remind us of Old Testament Levitical law. You know, someone would be made unclean, perhaps they touched a dead body or perhaps they touched some bodily fluids they shouldn't have touched and they're considered unclean. And you remember what they would do, they would sometimes have to leave for a little bit of time and then they would come back and they would make sacrifices and then they would go before the priest and the priest would declare him to be clean. It's that idea. And so you see the picture here. You see what David is saying about sin. Sin dirties us. It pollutes us. It sticks to us. It makes us feel gross and tarnished and yucky. And so we cry out to God to make us clean. But on what basis? On what basis would we ever cry out to God for cleansing? Well, these short verses also offer us that. On what basis can God make us clean? Look at what he says. He says, according to your steadfast love, according to your abundant mercy. David appeals to the love and mercy of God. You see, really, that's all that we can do. We have nothing to offer. We don't deserve, we can't demand God's love and compassion, and so we can do nothing but cast ourselves on the mercy of God. But listen, we have every right to do so. Because after all, that's how God has revealed himself to be. You know, it's evident that David is thinking of God's self-revelation in Exodus 34 as he's writing this psalm. Exodus 34, it's there that God on Mount Sinai is talking to Moses and he's declaring who he is and he's describing who he is. Famous passage. And you remember, he says that he is a God merciful. and gracious, slow to anger. He says he's abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. It goes on to say, get this, that he's forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin. Those same three words that we have. in Psalm 51. So David's got Exodus 34 in his mind, and that, Exodus 34, is who God has said he is. And so when we come to him with our sins, we gladly appeal to his self-revelation. We say, God, God, I'm a wretched sinner. I know my sin. But God, I also remember who you said you were. You told us who you were. God, you are a God who is merciful and gracious and compassionate. That's the adjectives that you've assigned to yourself. So Lord, please forgive me on the basis of that, according to your abundant mercy, according to your steadfast love. Well, after verse two, there's a stanza break, and then comes the next section. This is verses three through six, and here we see David's repentance, his repentance. He's made his request, and now he repents. He confesses. He owns his sin as actual sin. You'll notice the same threefold sin, transgression, iniquity. They're a little bit rearranged, but you'll see those three same words in this stanza. But now he's no longer appealing to God for mercy. He is now focused solely on the sin itself. He is acknowledging the horror of his sin. Verse three, he says that it's ever present. He constantly is feeling the weight of it. Verse three, for I know my transgressions and my sin is ever before me. It's ever before me. You ever had sin stick to you like that? You can't shake it. It's always in front of you. You can't put it behind you. That's what David is saying. He says, I know my transgressions. The word for no, it doesn't mean he's simply cognizant of, and if you ask him about it, he'd be like, oh yeah, I think that's right. No, no, it has this idea of he's deeply aware of his sin. We said last week that we need to see our sin as sin. We need to see our sin in all of its ugliness, and that's the idea here. That's how David is seeing his sin. You know, we can find it so easy. It's so easy for us to see the sins of others. We're really good at seeing the sins of others. We might even rewrite verse three, for I know their transgressions and their sin is always before me. I can remember when I was a boy, my father, and I'm sure this happened many times, but sitting me down with my brother, there'd been some sort of argument, there'd been some sort of spat, and my dad saying to us that, you know, when there's a fight, you are both guilty. You've both done something wrong. And me being like, nuh-uh. He was the one that was throwing things at me. Right? He was the one that pushed me or punched me or whatever he did. My dad saying, oh, Craig, no. You were taunting him. You were leading him on. You were guilty. You were both guilty. But you see, I find it so easy to see the sins of others, so much harder to see my own sin. I need to feel the weight, like David here, I need to feel the weight of my own sin. I also need to see that ultimately, my sin, it's not against my brother. Ultimately, my sin is against God. You see that in verse 4. He says, against you, talking to God, you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight. It kind of matches what David said in 1 Samuel 12, when Nathan is talking to him, when David says, I have sinned against the Lord. Very few words, but notice half of it is him saying that it's against the Lord. Now, did he sin against others? Well, yes, of course, for sure. He did sin against Bathsheba. He did sin against Uriah. But ultimately, his sin was against God. I mean, think about it. The things he was breaking, the commandments that he were breaking, were God's commandments. It was God who said thou shalt not commit adultery. It's God who said thou shalt not steal, or sorry, murder. He did steal as well, didn't he? And then you think about it even further, okay, he's sitting against Bathsheba's body, and in so doing, he's sitting against the God who owned that body. He sins against Uriah's body. He's sinning against, he's killing a body that was made even in the image of God. He's killing that. It's an offense to the God in whose image Uriah was created. You see, this is why when you sin, it's not good enough to just apologize to the person you've offended. You should do that. But you, you must also repent of your sin before God. Don't just go to that person and you know, sorry brother that I was taunting you. Sorry brother that I threw things at you and just leave it there. You need to go before God. Don't just keep short accounts with others, keep short accounts with God. Against you, you only have I sinned. Second half of verse 4. David knows that since he is the sinner, that that means that God's judgments against him are indeed just judgments. If he were faultless, then God would have no right to be judging him. But he says, but the very fact that I am at fault means that your judgments against me are just. And then in verses five and six, he confesses the very depths of his sin. I look at what he says in verse five. He says, behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me. Now, this is not talking about the act of birth or the act of conception itself, as though those things are here being labeled as sinful. No, that's not what's going on. This is saying that even that far back, I was a sinner. From the moment that I popped into existence, from the very moment of my conception, I was a sinner. This is the doctrine. What do we call it? It's the doctrine of original sin. This is original sin. We are born as sinners. Why? Because we've inherited the sinful nature of Adam. Some don't like that. Some like to think that we are born innocent, that we are born a blank slate. That's probably the popular idea that you'll hear out there today, that that little baby is just a cherub of innocent goodness. It's really a modern day Pelagianism. But listen, if you want to deny the doctrine of original sin, you've got to ask yourself what you're going to do with this verse. Because David says, look, even from the moment of my birth, like what had I done yet? I was a sinner. Even from the moment of my conception, just the tiniest, eenie, littlest thing, I was a sinner. Of course, David's point is a significant one. He's saying, I'm not a sinner because I've sinned. I sin because I'm a sinner, right? It was the reality of my ontological state that led me to sin. It was me being a sinner that led me to sin. The sinful nature comes first. It's the very reason that we sin. As you look then at verses 5 and 6, you'll notice, do you see there the double behold? Verse 5, behold, and then verse 6, behold, and it kind of creates something of a contrast. It's forcing us to compare those two verses. Verse 5, behold, I am this. Verse 6, behold, you desire that. Right? Verse 6, behold, you delight in truth. In the inward being, you teach me wisdom in the secret heart." God here, notice the depth of that. God does not want some surfacy repentance. He wants repentance even at the level of our hearts. Before we go on, just a quick observation. Verse five, it offers an irrefutable argument for protecting the life in the womb. It is clear that from the moment of his conception, an unborn infant is a moral and a personal being. That's how David's talking here. It is an actual personal being. And of course, to kill a personal being is what we call murder, okay? Well, now we go on, let's move into verses seven through 12. And here David once again makes his request. There's another request, but here we're going to see that his request is not just for cleansing. That's where he's going to start. So it's not just for the removal of something, but he goes on to say that it's also for the creation of something. Don't just take something away, but I want you to create in me something new. So in verses 7, 8, and 9, we see again the request for cleansing. It's the same one we've seen before. In fact, you'll see the very same three words that we found in verses 1 and 2. If you had highlighters and stuff, you could start highlighting and connecting lines and stuff. Because look, there's again cleaning, washing, blotting out. We've already seen those concepts. The imagery of Old Testament Levitical cleansing is here once again, but it's even strengthened this time by his reference to hyssop, not necessarily something familiar to us. He says, he says, purge me, verse 7, purge me with hyssop. So hyssop was a plant in Israel that had these kind of hairy leaves, and so it was useful for sprinkling water or sprinkling blood. You could kind of dip those leaves in whatever liquid and then kind of carry it somewhere and use it for sprinkling that liquid. It was used to sprinkle the blood of the sacrificed animal at Passover, and it was also used in daily cleansing rituals at the tabernacle. And so David is drawing from that rich imagery of cleansing, cleansing from uncleanness so that you could go into the presence of God. And he's saying, if you, God, if you purge me with hyssop, I'll be clean. In fact, he says, I'll be whiter than snow. Of course, we can't help think of what that blood is that will do that sort of cleansing for him. It's the blood of Jesus Christ. But notice how David longs for this cleansing. Oh, he feels the dirt of his sin. He feels the ugliness, the vileness of his sin. He feels the weight of his sin, and he longs for this cleansing. Verse eight talks about how his bones have been broken. It's an image that seems to convey the interior effects of sin. It breaks you down to the very core. It breaks your very inner bones. In fact, David, I think, uses this same language in Psalm 32, the psalm that Luke read for us earlier. It's possibly even a psalm, we don't know, but it's possibly even a psalm that's written out of these very same circumstances. But remember, he says there that my bones are wasting away under my sin. My bones are wasting away. And here, David says, He longs for those bones to be able to rejoice. Oh, I just want something to rejoice about. He's feeling the achiness of all his sin. He longs to, he says, to hear joy and gladness. I wonder if perhaps that's possibly the joy of hearing the welcome from others when the outcast is brought back into society. That's what he wants to experience. But as we move on, we see that he wants more than just cleansing. He wants more than just the taking away. He wants something new, something new added on. The old heart, you know, it may be cleaned up, but even then, he knows that it's prone to failure. Because of original sin, which makes him, in very essence, a sinner, he knows that his old heart could fall once again. It will fall once again. And so he asks God, verse 10, to create in me a clean heart. And it's interesting, that verb create. That verb create is the very same verb that you find in Genesis chapter 1. And what's God doing in Genesis chapter 1? He's creating ex nihilo. He's creating something out of nothing. He's making new creations. He's creating something new. And that's what David is asking here. Lord, give me something new and different. Create something that's never existed before and put it in me. In fact, when he says renew a right spirit, it's really the same thing. It's not renovation of something old. That's how we often might think of the word renew, take something old and kind of buff it up and make it a little bit nicer. But no, that verb indicates the creation of some new entity, the creation of some new thing. Give me a new spirit. Listen, if you are not a Christian and you're repenting of your sin, I'm really thankful for that, that's good. You should be turning from your sin, but understand this. You have no hope for future success in fighting sin except that you have a new heart. Your old heart is broken. It's gonna keep falling and falling. Your turning from sin also needs to be a turning to God and ask him to create in you a new heart. Before we go on, let's just deal with what's happening in verse 11. And so verse 11, David prays, cast me not away from your presence and take not your Holy Spirit from me. And the question here is, of course, is this something that we should pray? Should we be afraid that perhaps God might take his Holy Spirit from us? Well, first of all, let's just remember that David is praying this in light of recent history. He's praying this in light of what has just happened to the previous king, what happened to King Saul. Saul, like David, not in the same sin, but like David was a sinner, he had sinned against God. It's addressed to him, and Saul did not repent, and we're told 1 Samuel 16, that quote, the spirit of the Lord departed from Saul. Saul lost the Holy Spirit. And David is saying, he's pointing out the difference. He's saying, Lord, I'm repenting. Unlike Saul, I'm repenting. Please don't take your Holy Spirit from me. But also we need to remember that we can't lose the Holy Spirit. If we are genuinely Christians, if you are genuinely a Christian, you cannot lose the Holy Spirit. We have We have the Holy Spirit in a new covenant way that David never had under the old covenants. In the Old Testament, the Spirit was often given to a particular person for a particular task or for an assignment. David, as the anointed king, of Israel would have been anointed with the Holy Spirit as he served as King of Israel. But one of the blessings of the New Covenant is that the Holy Spirit belongs to all of God's children. To be a Christian is to have his Holy Spirit. It's not something that's select for extra-special Christians. All Christians have the Holy Spirit and they have the Holy Spirit permanently. He's not going to leave you. He's not going to forsake you. Of course, we can grieve the Holy Spirit. We can quench the Holy Spirit, and so we must be careful not to do that, but we cannot lose him, if you're genuinely a Christian. Well, after making these requests of God, and of course I haven't even gone into everything here, David says, then. He says, Lord, once you've done this, then I will do this. And so here in verses 13 through 17, we see David's response. This is David's response. It's a beautiful response to experiencing the cleansing, washing of God. I'll put out to you three of his responses, three responses. First response, you desire to tell others. See that there? You, it's the first response, you desire to tell others. If God has forgiven you, if God has cleaned you up, you have a strong and compelling desire to tell others about it. Look at verse 13. He says, then, if you've done this, then I will teach transgressors your ways and sinners will return. to you. You see, having experienced the joy of God's salvation, David wants to share it with everyone else. You noticed back in verse six, God was teaching him. Now he wants to go and teach others. And of course, this text has been used by untold numbers to do just that. I mean, how many people, groaning under their sin, have been helped by Psalm 51? I wonder too, even Psalm 32 that Luke read earlier, was that written so that sinners would learn to repent of their sins? Is that David trying to do this very thing here in verse 13? You know, it's so good for us to hear the stories of others who've been rescued from their sins. Don't we delight in those stories? Don't we love it when someone shares with us God's amazing working in their lives? I was here. This was me. This is what I was doing. And God rescued me out of that. We love to hear those stories. It's one of the reasons that we have people publicly share their testimonies here at GRBC. We love when people get up front and share with you. It's part of our membership process. We want them to share with you God's working in their lives. And we do it with this very same hope that sinners will then return to God. The second response, you praise God. So first you tell others, but also you praise God. When God has cleansed you of your iniquity, what can you do but praise him for it? Verse 14, he says, he says, deliver me from blood guiltiness, oh God, blood guiltiness, perhaps that's even referring to the guilt of having killed Uriah. Deliver me from blood guiltiness, O God, O God of my salvation, and my tongue will sing aloud of your righteousness. O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise. David is moved to praise God, and actually considering verse 13, this is probably a corporate gathering. This is not just David in his room putting on a worship song and having a private time of singing. No, this is David gathering with God's people and singing God's praise in a public worship service. And listen, we too should do the same thing. If God has done a marvelous thing in our lives, we should love to gather with God's people and open up our mouths in song to Him. You know, those who are aware that they have been forgiven the guilt of their sins should be the very people who are singing most robustly. Those who are most aware of what God has done for them should be those who are most exuberant in their praise of God. If we understand all that God has done for us, how dare we kind of just slink through worship? Just kind of like, well, I hope I get through today's worship service. No, we of all people should be the ones ready to explode in praise to God. And then our third response, you value genuine brokenness over ritual. You value genuine brokenness over ritual. In verse 16, David says, for you will not delight in sacrifice or I would give it. You will not be pleased with a burnt offering. Now, of course, this is not an indication that all sacrifices are pointless. God is not here contradicting his commandments in the ceremonial law, saying, oops, I kind of got that wrong. No, in fact, even a quick look ahead at verse 19 reveals that God does delight in sacrifices. But notice that those are right sacrifices. You see, the problem is not sacrifices. The problem is heartless sacrifices. The problem is empty, ritualistic sacrifices. religion that's just pure, plain old religion with not an ounce of heart in it. That's why in verse 17, he says that the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart. Oh God, you will not despise. God wants genuine brokenness. You know, even as you come to him desiring restoration of relationship. And of course, in the Old Testament, this was something that was actually done through sacrifices. As you come to him trying to restore that relationship, he wants to see that you are truly broken over your sin. That this is not just some external band-aid trying to make things pretty between you and God. That you're actually affected by the awfulness of your sins. And that, of course, a worldly repentance. You know, I'm sorry that I got caught. I wish I could just kind of make this stuff go away and make things get better. No, not a worldly repentance, but a godly repentance where you're broken over the ugliness and awfulness and offensiveness of your sin. We finish with verses 18 and 19. And here we see once again, David making a request, but this time the request is much broader. Here, it's not just a personal concern, but notice it's a concern for the nation at large. He desires God to bless not just him and not just give cleansing to his own soul and to his own heart. He desires God to bless all of Zion. Zion, of course, refers to Israel. He wants to see Zion prospering. build up its walls, in other words, protect Zion. Maybe even it has this idea of keep it from being polluted by the world outside it. You see, David here understands that, especially as a king, he understands that his actions affect others. His sin affects the nation as a whole, and so his repentance will therefore affect the nation as a whole. That's so good for us to hear. We may not be kings of Israel, whose sin affects the nation as a whole. We need to understand that your individual spiritual health is linked to everyone else's. Your repentance of your sin will not just be a blessing to you, but it will be a blessing to your family. It will be a blessing to your church. Which kind of brings us back where we started. What kind of church do we want to be? Do we wanna be a church of fake facades, put on perfectionism? Or do we want to be a church of saints who still struggle with sin, but who are quick to repent of that sin, who are quick to run to the cross? Because that's what we must do. We've gotta run to the cross with our sin. These sacrifices of verse 19, When you read that, you're reminded of Christ, aren't you? The sacrifices remind you of the ultimate sacrifice. The Old Testament sacrifices were meant to point forward to the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. And so when we sin, we don't try to cover it over, kind of like David with all his stratagems to try to cover over his sin with Bathsheba. No, when we're confronted with our sin, we repent of it and we rest in Christ's atoning work. We think of what kind of church we would be. Think what kind of church we would be if we were just open about our sin, repenting of it, and finding the delicious grace and mercy of our God. The Lord delights, it says. He delights in right sacrifices. In Luke chapter 18, there's that parable. It's a parable that Jesus tells. It's the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector. Do you remember that one? The Pharisee goes to the temple, and he prays before God, and he prays about how great he is, and about how much good he's done. But what does the tax collector pray? Do you remember? He stands far off, he beats his breasts, and he says, in words that seem to be almost stolen from Psalm 51, he says, God, be merciful to me, a sinner. That's how we should pray. That's how you should pray. That's how I should pray. You see, true repentance cries out to God for only he can cleanse and forgive. Let's pray. Lord, would you have mercy on us? Lord, would you wash us thoroughly from our iniquity, blot out our transgressions, cleanse us from our sins. And Lord, we ask this, we claim this, according to your steadfast love, according to your abundant mercy. God, you have said that's who you are. So Lord, forgive us our sins. We pray in Jesus' name, amen.