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We've been seeing in the life
of David, it is only in Christ, and as we walk in fellowship
with him, that we can enter into that power and that victory.
And we would be remiss if we left chapter 12 of 2 Samuel without
looking at Psalm 51. So if you'd turn to Psalm 51,
we're gonna begin reading from the title, the inspired title. To the chief musician, a psalm
of David when Nathan the prophet went to him after he had gone
into Bathsheba. Have mercy upon me, O God, according
to your loving kindness. According to the multitude of
your tender mercies, blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly
from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. For I acknowledge
my transgressions and my sin is always before me. Against
you, you only have I sinned and done this evil in your sight,
that you may be found just when you speak and blameless when
you judge. Behold, I was brought forth in
iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me. Behold, you desire
truth in the inward parts, and in the hidden part, you will
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 hear joy and gladness
that the bones you have broken may rejoice. Hide your face from
my sins and blot out all my iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O
God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me away
from your presence, and do not take your Holy Spirit from me.
Restore to me the joy of your salvation and uphold me by your
generous spirit. Then I will teach transgressors. Your ways and sinners shall be
converted to you. Deliver me from the guilt of
bloodshed. Oh God, the God of my salvation and my tongue shall
sing aloud of your righteousness. Oh Lord, open my lips and my
mouth shall show forth your praise for you do not desire sacrifice
or else I would give it. You do not delight in burnt offering.
The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite
heart. These, oh God, you will not despise. Do good in your good pleasure
to Zion. Build the walls of Jerusalem.
Then you shall be pleased with the sacrifices of righteousness,
with burnt offering and whole burnt offering. Then they shall
offer bulls on your altar. Amen. Father, we thank you for
this, your word and praise. We dig into it that you would
sanctify this, your people and cause us to rejoice in the wonderful
redemption and all of the blessings that you have given us to those
who are heirs of salvation. We love you and we commit this
continued time of worship to you in Jesus name. Amen. There
are a number of passages that speak of potential blessings
that we could get and of potential blessings that have been lost
that we will never get. And it really is kind of hard
to wrap your brain around the idea that there are contingencies,
very legitimate contingencies that the scripture lays out.
And yet God has predestined all things that come to pass. How
can both of those be true? But they are presented side by
side and we have to believe both sides of that equation. For example,
Luke 19 verse 41 illustrates both sides saying, Jesus says,
If you had known, so there is the contingency. Anytime you
see an if, it's a contingency. If you had known, even you, especially
in this your day, the things that make for your peace, but
now they are hidden from your eyes. So contingency and sovereignty. They had needless losses in one
sense even though God's plan was not overturned. So let me
give you a couple of examples and then we'll dig into Psalm
51. Haggai 1, 6 through 9 says that the post-exilic church had
become so selfish in their pursuits and were not at all interested
in building up the temple that their income decreased. Their
clothing began to wear out. They did not have adequate food.
And God says, look, if your priorities were right, I would establish
you in all of these things. And let me read what He says.
You have sown much and bring in little. You eat but do not
have enough. You drink but you are not filled
with drink. You clothe yourselves, but no
one is warm. And he who earns wages earns
wages to put into a bag with holes. Thus says the Lord of
hosts. Consider your ways. Go to the
mountains and bring wood and build the temple that I may take
pleasure in it and be glorified, says the Lord. You looked for
much, but indeed it came to little. And when you brought it home,
I blew it away. Why? Because of my house that
is in ruins. while every one of you runs to
his own house. So there was withheld blessing. And God makes clear that those
withheld blessings were needlessly lost by God's people and they
were very quickly restored when they took corrective action.
Hosea 2 speaks of God hedging up a woman's, an adulterous woman's
ways so that she will not receive blessings that she could otherwise
receive. And it says she had needless
loss of corn, wine, oil, silver, and gold. And when I read through
Deuteronomy 27 through 29, I cannot help but wonder what kind of
blessings God would have bestowed upon the church in America if
the church had been faithful. So today we're going to be looking
at needless losses, and it's obviously not the only message
that's in Psalm 51, but we've been kind of alluding to different
messages in Psalm 51 as we've been going through 2 Samuel chapter
12. So that's the only thing I'm
going to focus upon, seven needless losses that David had. And each of the Psalms that David
wrote during the week of mourning that he was engaged in indicate
that this repentance restored not all, but it restored at least
some of those blessings and incredible joy for sure. The title to Psalm
38 is A Psalm of David to Bring to Remembrance. And if you remember
from, what was it, two weeks ago, three weeks ago, the things
he was bringing to remembrance, including the venereal disease
that he got, probably would make most people cringe. Why would
David bring those things to remembrance to God's people? And yet he realized
it was worth it. It was absolutely worth it because
of the blessings that were restored into his life. The title to Psalm
6 is similar. The psalm was given to the chief
musician, which means the chief musician was going to be leading
the whole congregation in singing about David's sins, right? And the title to this psalm is
very similar. It's also given to the chief
musician. It says to the chief musician,
a psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet went to him after
he had gone in to Bathsheba. So David again is being very
transparent before the people. He's confessing his sins, not
just to God, but he's confessing it to others. And as a result
of that, God restored not all, but many of the blessings that
were there. So we're going to look at seven
needless losses. And the first one was God's daily
mercies. Take a look at verse one. have
mercy upon me, O God, according to Your lovingkindness, according
to the multitude of Your tender mercies, blot out my transgressions."
So David had experienced the multitude of God's mercies previously. He wanted to get those mercies
back in his life. And you'll remember from the
previous sermon we saw that God's love covers a multitude of mercy,
a multitude of sins. Now if there's a multitude of
sins being covered, that means there's a need for a multitude
of mercies in his life as well. And when our sins are covered
over by God, we can get on with life. We're secure in our justification,
we're cleansed from our daily sins, and we can get on with
life with joy. But when God picks on every little
sin that we have, and He allows others to pick on those sins
as well, we lose that joy in our life. And Matthew 18 is an
incredible, incredible word picture, not only about the fact that
we have a multitude of God's mercies in our lives, but how
God can take those mercies away from us as well. And it's the
parable of the servant who was forgiven of a huge, huge debt. And remember that this parable
is talking about a forgiven, justified believer. Now just
to give you an idea of the lowest amount of money that that servant
was forgiven of, we're going to assume that it's 10,000 talents
of silver, not 10,000 talents of gold. And it probably was
silver that he was talking about. But each talent of silver was
worth 6,000 denarii. One denarius was the average
working man's wages, his one day's wages. When you're looking at 6,000
denarii, you've got approximately 20 years' wages for the average
working man. That's just one talent, okay?
But he's forgiven of 10,000 talents, which means that he had been
forgiven of 60 million denarii, or 20,000 years' worth of the
average man's wages. That's a lot of A lot of money
to be forgiven of, right? And yet it was forgiven. It was
overlooked by the Lord. That's speaking of the multitude
of mercies that we experience in our lives. Now that servant
went and he had a fellow servant whom he refused to forgive of
his debt, even though he begged him in the same way. And that
servant owed him 100 denarii. It's still a lot of money. It's
one third of a year's worth of labor, but he couldn't pay it
in the same way that the first servant could not pay it. And
so he threw him into prison and Jesus concludes his parable this
way. Then his master, after he had
called him, said to him, you wicked servant, I forgave you
all that debt because you begged me. Should you not also have
had compassion on your fellow servant, just as I had pity on
you? And his master was angry and
delivered him to the torturers until he should pay all that
was due to him. so my heavenly father also will
do to you if each of you from his heart does not forgive his
brother his trespasses." He's talking about believers here,
not talking about hell. He's talking about life here
on earth. He is saying if you do not forgive each other and
display the same kind of love that God has displayed toward
you, a love that covers over a multitude of sins, he's going
to say, look, I'm going to show you what it's like when I pick
on every little sin that you have engaged in. And I'm going
to allow demons to pick on you as well. And the word torturers
is a very appropriate word because it is a synonym for demons. And
yes, demons can be afflicting believers if they don't guard
themselves, 1 John says. And it's also an appropriate
term because of the inward torment that many times Christians experience
when they lack a forgiving spirit as well. And I've seen Christians
absolutely miserable because they're just like that servant.
And it's so needless. All it would take is humility
to confess our sins and say, Lord, I want to be free from
my sins, but I know my sins are ever before me. Please forgive
me of them. be open and transparent about
them and forgive others in the same way that God forgave you.
So it's needless loss. The second loss that David experienced
was a loss of feeling clean. Now that may not seem like such
a significant loss until you yourself have experienced that.
And for David, it was something that was an absolute misery. He was a justified man. He was
secure in his salvation. He was headed toward heaven. But despite that, he felt yucky
inside. He could not get rid of this
sense of an unclean spirit. Verses 2 through 3. wash me thoroughly
from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. For I acknowledge
my transgressions and my sin is always before me." Prior to
confessing his sin and praying this psalm, David just could
not get rid of this sense of sin. It didn't matter what he
was doing, all he could think about was that sin. It was always
in front of his face and it sort of reminds me of Shakespeare's
play about Macbeth and Lady Macbeth and you remember in there how
they're constantly washing their hands trying to get rid of the
the stain of the bloodshed and they can't do it always washing
their hands and to me that's a such a powerful figure of how
in ourselves we cannot get rid of that of that sense of yuckiness
as it were. a very powerful image. And I've
experienced that. David experienced it. I'm sure
you've experienced this from time to time as well, that my
sin is always before me. Anyway, David continues on in
verses 7 through 10. saying, Purge me with hyssop
and I shall be clean. Wash me and I shall be whiter
than snow. Make me hear joy and gladness
that the bones you have broken may rejoice. Hide your face from
my sins and blot out all my iniquities. Well, when David confessed his
sins, he felt like a new man. He felt clean. No longer did
he have that sense of yuckiness. His preoccupation now was joyful
worship in the face of God rather than averting himself from the
gaze of God upon him. And it's such a blessing. In
fact, it's such a blessing, it is simply not worth it to cover
over our sins. And so if you've lost the wonder
and the joy of being totally transparent and open before God
in worship, it is a needless loss. The third loss was divine
fellowship. And that's in verse 11. He says,
do not cast me away from your presence, and do not take your
Holy Spirit from me. Now we've seen in the past, he's
not talking about the loss of salvation. We've already seen
he was secure in his salvation. But he wanted a restoration of
the fellowship and the empowering of the Holy Spirit. And you could
just look by way of illustration at King Saul. When the Holy Spirit's
anointing left Saul, He no longer felt this fellowship with God. It was not only a lack of restoration
of fellowship, but he lost all empowering, lost all joy. And
when you lose the empowering and the fellowship of the Holy
Spirit and the joy of the Holy Spirit, it can absolutely drain
you in your ministry. Several years ago, Chuck Colson
told the story of Pat Novak, a Protestant chaplain. And let
me just read what he had to say. Pat was making his rounds one
summer morning when he was called to visit a patient admitted with
an undiagnosed ailment. John, a man in his 60s, had not
responded to any treatment. Medical tests showed nothing.
Psychological tests were inconclusive. Yet he was wasting away. He had
not even been able to swallow for two weeks. The nurses tried
everything. Finally, they called the chaplain's
office. When Pat walked into the room, John was sitting limply
in his bed, strung with IV tubes, staring listlessly at the wall.
He was a tall, grandfatherly man, balding a little, but his
sallow skin hung loosely on his face, neck, and arms where the
weight had dropped from his frame. His eyes were hollow. Pat was
terrified. He had no idea what to do. But
John seemed to brighten a bit as soon as he saw Pat's chaplain
badge and invited him to sit down. As they talked, Pat sensed
that God was urging him to do something specific. He knew he
was to ask John if he wanted to take communion. Chapel interns
were not encouraged to ask this type of thing in this public
hospital, but Pat did. At that, John broke down. I can't,
he cried. I've sinned and can't be forgiven.
Pat paused a moment, knowing he was about to break policy
again. Then he told John about 1 Corinthians 11 and Paul's admonition
that whoever takes communion in an unworthy manner eats and
drinks judgment to himself. And he asked John if he wanted
to confess his sin. John nodded gratefully. To this
day, Pat can't remember the particular sin John confessed, nor would
he say if he did, but he recalls that it did not strike him as
particularly egregious, yet it had been draining the life from
this man. John wept. as he confessed and
Pat laid hands on him, hugged him and told John his sins were
forgiven. Then Pat got the second urging
from the Holy Spirit, ask him if he wants to take communion.
He did. Pat gave John a Bible and told
him he would be back later. Already John was sitting up straighter
with a flicker of light in his eyes. Pat visited a few more
patients, then ate some lunch in the hospital cafeteria. When
he left, he wrapped an extra piece of bread in the napkin
and borrowed a coffee cup from the cafeteria. He ran out to
a shop a few blocks away and bought a container of grape juice.
Then he returned to John's room with the elements and celebrated
communion with him, again reciting 1 Corinthians 11. John took the
bread and chewed it slowly. It was the first time in weeks
he had been able to take solid food in his mouth. He took the
cup and swallowed. He had been set free. Within
three days, John walked out of that hospital. The nurses were
so amazed, they called the newspaper, which later featured the story
of John and Pat appropriately, in its Life section. And really,
there is nothing so debilitating to a true Christian than the
sense you don't have God's fellowship anymore. You don't have His presence
and His power in your life. And I know when God has seemed
to be absent in my life, the vitality has just been drained
away. I don't enjoy ministry. I don't
enjoy the things that I'm doing. And it's such a needless loss
when God has promised if we confess our sins, He is faithful and
just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from what? all
on righteousness, right? In John 10, verse 10, Jesus said,
I have come that they may have life and that they may have it
more abundantly. You don't want to lose the abundance
of life that comes from walking in fellowship with God. And of
course, that leads to point four, the needless loss of joy. Verse 12 says, Restore to me
the joy of your salvation and uphold me by your generous spirit. Okay? Now, he didn't lose his
salvation. He lost the joy of his salvation. But David was
not a fool. When his mind got straightened
out, he knew where to go to get that joy restored. He didn't,
you know, fail to repent and to turn to the God who is the
source of our joy, that joy that Nehemiah says is our strength.
But too frequently, we have this tendency to want to fill the
void with something from creation. It might be eating things, buying
things, but creation becomes a substitute for that joy in
our life. A Turning Point magazine listed
all of the miserably failed attempts to restore joy and found that
joy is not found in, first of all, unbelief. It says, Voltaire
was an infidel of the most pronounced type. He wrote, I wish I'd never
been born. Not in pleasure. Lord Byron lived
the life of pleasure if anyone did. He wrote, the worm, the
canker, and grief are mine alone, not in money. Jay Gould, the
American millionaire, had plenty of that. When dying, he said,
I suppose I am the most miserable man on earth. And you could go
through a whole list of other things that people have tended
to try to restore that sense of joy from. And we can't generate
it in ourselves. We can't say, I'm going to be
more joyful. There was a conference at a Presbyterian church here
in town. I won't tell you which Presbyterian church it was. During
the service, everybody was handed a helium balloon, and they were
told, when you feel the joy rising up within you, let your balloon
go. And when I was reading the article about that, they said
at the end of the service, one third of the balloons were still
in people's hands. And even though I think that's such a silly experiment
that they went through, I'm using it as an illustration because
there is a sense in which there are things that bind our joy
down. And it is so needless. It is
something that God wants us to have, the joy of the Lord. Let
me give you some scriptures. 1 Peter 1 8 speaks of joy inexpressible
and full of glory that the Christians that he was writing to were experiencing.
And what were they going through? They were going through incredible
persecution and the loss of property and all kinds of things. Yet
they had that joy inexpressible and full of glory. If you've
lost joy, you might want to read 1 Peter and see what their secret
was. Or John 1511, Jesus said, these things I have spoken to
you that my joy may remain in you and that your joy may be
full. So if the joy of Christ is not
been remaining in you, you might want to read John 15 and see
what it is that is the secret of remaining, having that joy
remain in us. When he says that my joy may
remain in you, he's implying a couple of things. He's implying,
first of all, that that joy can evaporate very easily. You can
lose that joy almost instantaneously, actually, just like that balloon.
You let it go and it's gone. But it also implies that the
loss of that joy is so needless. We need not lose our joy in the
Lord if we will abide in Christ. Or you can think of 1 John 1.4,
and these things we write to you that your joy may be full. So if your joy is not full, I
would really urge you to read and reread and reread 1 John,
the whole book. And as you're reading it, read
it prayerfully and ask God, Lord, make my life conformed to this
word. Apply your word in my life. Transform
my life by your word. I want that fullness of joy. But the problem is people like
to avoid 1 John because, man, it's a convicting book. It has
the same message that Psalm 51 has. It's a message of repentance
and cleansing and restoration and walking in the light. Okay,
the fifth needless loss was the loss of power and passion in
witness. And that's verse 13. Then I will
teach transgressors your ways and sinners shall be converted
to you. Now Satan will try to tempt you
to think the exact opposite. Man, if unbelievers knew the
sins that I've committed, they'd mock me. They wouldn't believe
the gospel. They would think terrible things about me. If
they knew about me just like they're going to find out about
David after David writes this psalm, it's going to ruin my
witness. It's going to ruin my testimony.
But the reality is actually the exact opposite. When we are transparent
and we have no sins to hide and we're not afraid of our sins
because we're secure in Christ and they point out sins in your
life and you say, yeah, I had those sins and I am so grateful
that God has forgiven me of those sins. It gives you a boldness
in witness. Like we said two weeks ago, it
is some of the men and the women who have repented of the sin
of abortion and have been found cleansing, who have made some
of the best post-abortion trauma counselors out there. It is former
addicts who have been restored to the Lord or even converted
to the Lord, who are sometimes the most aggressive and passionate
in their witness for others. So it's the exact opposite of
what Satan really tempts you to think about. And David's psalms
show a God-engendered desire to keep others from falling into
the same sins that he fell into and show a compassion for people
who have already so fallen. Now, on the other hand, if you
hide your sins, what are you doing? you're running from the
light. You're not going to have any
desire to draw people into the light. I mean, witnessing is
the last thing you're going to want to do unless you're just
sharing, you know, in general ways. But really drawing people
into an acknowledgment of their sinfulness, applying the law
of God and then applying the grace of God, that feels just
too uncomfortable. So if you have the needless loss
of power and passion in witnessing, Psalm 51 shows the remedy. It's probably the most famous
confession of sin. Okay, the sixth loss is the loss
of a desire for worship. And let's read verses 14 through
17. Deliver me from the guilt of bloodshed, O God, the God
of my salvation. Here's the result. And my tongue
shall sing aloud of your righteousness. O Lord, open my lips and my mouth
shall show forth your praise. For you do not desire sacrifice
or else I would give it. You do not delight in burnt offering.
The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite
heart. These, O God, you will not despise."
Now, God does despise worship that is offered up by hardened
hearts. He does not enjoy or like worship
that is offered up with stained hands. That's why 1 Timothy 2,
8 says that when we pray, we men need to be lifting up, what?
Holy hands before God. And so God doesn't like that
kind of worship. But neither did David like his worship when
he was hiding his sin, at least until the time that Nathan confronted
him. And like Jonah, he was running
from the light. He was not attracted to the light.
How could you be attracted to the light when you're hiding
your sin? The light of God's holiness is
going to expose that. So when you try to justify your
sin, the last thing you want to do is worship. But when David
finally confessed his sins, what does 2 Samuel 12, verse 20 say
he did? First thing he does, he goes
into the temple, he worships. He's got this restored desire
to worship God. And it makes sense when you understand
what worship is. Here's how William Temple defined
worship. Worship is the submission of
all our nature to God. It is the quickening of conscience
by His holiness, the nourishment of mind with His truth. the purifying
of imagination by His beauty, the opening of the heart to His
love, the surrender of will to His purpose, and all of this
gathered up in adoration, the most selfless emotion of which
our nature is capable, and therefore the chief remedy for that self-centeredness,
which is our original sin and the source of all actual sin.
So it's no wonder David did not enjoy worshiping when he was
holding on to his sin. It was not pleasant. and based
upon the testimonies of other Psalms that David wrote, it was
an incredible loss because he found great joy in his worship
when he was walking close to God. The last loss mentioned
in this text is a loss of concern for God's kingdom interests.
When we cover our sins, what happens is we tend to become
more and more self-absorbed And we tend to not be as interested
in praying, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as
it is in heaven. That's just not something that's
at the top of our radar. But as a result of David's repentance
and casting of his sins under the blood of Christ, God began
to stir within David this renewed passion and desire for God's
kingdom and his glory. So let's take a look at the last
two verses. Do good in your good pleasure to Zion. Build the walls
of Jerusalem. Then you shall be pleased with
the sacrifices of righteousness, with burnt offering and whole
burnt offering. Then they shall offer bulls on
your altar." Now can you see the kingdom vision that was restored
in David's life? He says, Do good in your good
pleasure to Zion. build the walls of Jerusalem.
He's no longer just interested in his own needs being met, but
he also has this desire to see God blessing Jerusalem, to bless
his kingdom as a whole, Zion as a whole. And I have found
that a similar passion for God's kingdom and God's purposes has
been released within my heart when I have confessed my sins
and I've put it under the blood of Christ. He just automatically
readjusts our whole thinking and actually worship every Sunday
is designed, it's covenant renewal, it's designed to refocus, readjust
our thinking so that we now are thinking in a God-centered way.
And so many though not all of the losses can be recovered when
we humble ourselves as David did in Psalm 51. So this morning,
if any of those seven things is present in your life, you've
got any of those seven losses, I would encourage you to say,
Holy Spirit, shine your light in my heart and expose anything
that I need to confess, anything that I need to do so that I can
be restored. And let me end just by reading
the poem of F.B. Meyer that you see at the bottom
of your bulletins there. One above another, And the taller
we grow, the easier we can reach them. Now I find that God's gifts
are on shelves, one beneath another, and the lower we stoop, the more
we get. May it be so, Lord Jesus. Amen. Father, I pray that we would
find this call to stoop, to humility, to confession, to realizing that
it is Our whole life is a call to have your will be done that
finds blessing in our lives when we are not consumed with our
own blessing, but we are consumed with blessing you and your purposes
and following after you with all of our heart, soul, strength,
and mind that we find ourselves blessed beyond measure. And I
pray that you would indeed cause each one here to have the humility
to acknowledge, to confess, to forsake their sins, to find the
cleansing from all the yuckiness inside, and to find that renewed
energy and joy and gladness of heart that we have, and lightness
when we are forgiven and cleansed from sin. Restore power to any
who have lost the power of the Holy Spirit. And Father, I pray
that you would be glorified in this, your congregation, in Jesus'
name. Amen.
Needless Losses
Series Life of David
This sermon focuses upon the needless losses that we have when we fail to confess our sins.
| Sermon ID | 9953161844170 |
| Duration | 33:17 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday Service |
| Bible Text | Psalm 51 |
| Language | English |
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