Good morning, chapel. Our sermon today comes from the second book, the Sultan. That is, we shall be looking at Psalm 51. Psalm 51. Now about this psalm, is a psalm when we see David confessing his sin, pleading with God for mercy. Because of the incident that had happened, Joseph and Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah, had committed adultery and also killed the man. And now after Prophet Nathan coming to him, confronting him about his sin, he breaks down. As a man of God should be, you have to break down when you sin and plead for God's mercy. So this is what David does here. And we are going to read that now, if you are there. Already we are going to commence reading God's word. Psalm 51. 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 in the inward being, and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart. Pledge me with his soul, and I shall be clean. Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Let me hear joy and gladness. Let the bonds 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. then 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 will 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 will you delight in right sacrifices, burnt offerings, and whole burnt offerings. Then bowls will be offered on your altar. Let's pray. Our Heavenly Father, we thank You for this moment when we come together to share Your Word, to be encouraged and edified as a body of Christ, as a family. Lord, we bless You. Always this moment is wonderful to feed on Your Word. I pray You help me bring out Your Word to Your people as You wanted to bless us and bless our meeting together. In Jesus' name. Amen. So David here, he knows something about himself. He discovers something here. He says that, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me. He knew that the problem with him was sin. You see, when you read scenes where maybe murder has happened, you know, a murder scene, investigators will come and they will start drawing some funny stuff. Then they will start standing. You know, if someone was shot facing this direction, which means the shooter was from the other direction. They start imagining according to what happened on the scene. Then they figure out what really took place. Doctors call it diagnosis. They take you through an examination, sometimes asking questions, to find out what is the cause of the sickness. Because when you don't treat the cause, you are only treating symptoms. And it means The sickness is going to, you are going to put it off for a while, but it will come back because it's not gone for good. And now, that's what David has done to himself. He knows that he's sinning because he's a sinner. This brings us to the original sin. The word original sin is a word not found in the Bible. It's not a biblical word, but it comes from St. Augustine. Original sin means that this is the sin we inherited from our father, Edda. When he sinned, since we come from him, we all sinned. As the Bible says, we've all sinned and fallen with the glory of God. We are shot. So, David knows this, that he's a sinner. He sins not because he wants to, but because he's a sinner. He was born like that. And you see, something with the original sin, it is something that has corrupted. all our faculties. Our nature is sinful. So, because our nature is sinful, all our faculties are sinful also. It means that your intellect, what you think, is full of sin. Your emotions, what you feel, is also sinful. Your will, your decision-making, is also corrupted. with sin. So that brings us to what is termed as total depravity. Total depravity means total inability. And it means that man is unable to believe in God and his wife. We are completely helpless, and we need someone to help us. Man cannot help himself. He needs a savior. So what is sin, then? Sin is trespassing God's law. It's rebelling against the laws of God. It's missing the mark that God has set for us. God has a standard. And I'm telling you, none of us can reach it because we are all found wanting. We are down here. We need someone to help us, get us up there. And that's why the Bible says that all have sinned and fallen from the glory of God. We are all sinners. And 1 John says that if you Say that you are without sin, you are lying to yourself, and you make God a liar too. So, sin is just in our nature. We sin because we are sinners. That's what we are or who we are. The sin you do is not what makes you a sinner, but you sin because you were a sinner. That's who you were born to be, because of the sin of our father Adam. Now, that's why Jesus Christ comes to save us. And even before you come to Christ, God has to perform what is called a rebirth, regeneration. such that we were born again, because the dead man cannot listen to God's voice. And before we come to Christ, our hearts are dead. That's what David is talking about here. Our hearts are dead. He needs to be born again. Actually, we shall see in front where David asks God to renew his spirit within him. So, David finds out, discovers that he is a sinner. Now what? What follows if he knows that he is a sinner? What follows? David is calling upon God to create in him a clean heart, to renew a right spirit within him. not to cast him away from his presence, not to take his spirit from him. The Bible says those who are born of the Spirit, they are the children of God. And you can't be a child of God without the Holy Spirit. You know, this is like excommunicating you from the Church. When you are excommunicated for a while, you cease to be part of the family of God until you repent and then you are restored back into the congregation. It's also like a prison. is a punishment they give you, you know, after breaking the law. When you break God's law, they give you that punishment. They exclude you from society and keep you somewhere. They are punishing you emotionally because you are away from everyone. You are detached to your normal life. And that will punish you. It will bring transformation. And everybody knows that when the Holy Spirit is taken from me, my life will be like a living hell. I'm not going to live. Because I can't imagine a life of a Christian without the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit who tells us everything, who helps us in this life to help us live like children of God, like the people of God. So David pleads with God, not to take away His Spirit from me. Don't take away Thy Spirit from me. I need Your Holy Spirit, and create in me a new heart, a heart that obeys Your commandments, that knows Your laws. And in Jeremiah, God promises that in the later days, He will give them the heart of flesh and remove the heart of stone, the heart that follows His law. That's what David yearns for. That's what he's asking God to give him, a heart that will obey Him, a heart that is renewed, a heart that is transformed, a changed heart. Now, David knows that if God doesn't help him, he won't make it. And he's pleading with God to help him, give him that heart. It's a prayer. Now, when we read this, we might think that that should be only God's prayer. But if you notice, we all go through what David went through. It might not be a particular sin he committed, but we are sinning every day. And we need God to help us, to give us that heart of flesh. And he says, for you will not delight in sacrifice or I will give it. You will not be pleased with a burnt offering. The sacrifices of God, a broken spirit, and a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise." That's what God requires, a broken and contrite heart. When we sin, we have to be broken and go to Him and ask Him for forgiveness. One thing comes into my mind. When Peter had denied Jesus for three times. His heart was broken, and he walked out of the meeting crying, and he went and repented. He cried bitterly, and he said to God, I've sinned against you, please forgive me. This is a man, a righteous man, who has loved me, who has been there for me. We've worked together, we've lived life together, but here I am denying Him. All because of what? To save my... I saw all my life, you know, it was something bad. But he broke down and cried to God to forgive him. No wonder Jesus, later on, chooses him as the leader of his fellow apostles. Says, on that rock, he will establish his church. And Peter was not that righteous, or this David we are talking about, but it's because of the brokenness of the heart. When we sin, we have to reach that moment where our hearts are broken and repent our sins. We ask God for his forgiveness. Very important for a Christian to do. And we see a perfect example here from David. We see he has lost peace. He's unsettled because of this sin he has committed. He needs to find forgiveness from God. He's pleading with him. to forgive him. And as this psalm starts, David opens with asking for God's mercy on him. 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. He asks God to forgive him according to his steadfast love. God is a God of confidence. And he had loved them not because of who they were or something, but he had made a covenant with them to be their God. And he reminds him about that. And he asks for mercy. You see, Sinners deserve death. They don't deserve forgiveness. That's all they deserve. Death should be the punishment. And no wonder the Bible says the wages of sin is death, because that's what a sinner deserves. But this merciful God rewards sinners with forgiveness. Now, that is mercy. Mercy is giving you what you don't deserve. And that's what God gives us, mercy, forgiveness. So David asks God to forgive him, to have mercy on him. And indeed, God forgives him. The Bible encourages us that if we confess our sins, He's faithful enough to forgive us. And here, David receives forgiveness from God. Now, there were consequences, as we know, but God forgave him because he was supposed to die. When you read 2 Samuel chapter 12, he was supposed to die. But God preserved his life, but the consequences are still there. It's also something we need to know. When we sin, God forgives us, but you can't take away the consequences. That's why we need to think through our decisions, our choices, our actions, what will result, what will follow after you've taken that action. And even though our intellect, emotions, and will are corrupted with sin, but we can also still hang on Christ. who can help us do the right thing, perfect us into who we were created to be. So this morning, I'm challenging us to be repentant, to have broken hearts that can repent to God, to ask for forgiveness, to ask for His mercy, just like David had the man after God's own heart. Let's pray. Our Father, we thank you for your word. Now that it's shared, we pray that you help us act according to it. Help us be the kind of people you want, the people you desire to have. Turn us into the people who make you proud, the people who worship you in truth and spirit. Bless even our time, the rest of the day. In Jesus' name.