Now, for a moment tonight, let's review what we have seen from the 51st Psalm and look at the next few verses. Will you turn in your Bibles, if you have them, please, to Psalm 51, everybody. Psalm 51, David's glorious psalm. Let us review the first few verses together from two weeks ago tonight. Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness. According unto the multitude of thy tender mercies, blot out my transgressions. Wash me throughly, it's not thoroughly, it's inwardly, throughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. For I acknowledge my sin, and my sin is ever before me. My transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Against thee and 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 desires truth in the inward parts, and in the hidden part thou shalt make me thine of wisdom. Now, let's review. We saw that there, it is necessary that for a man to have cleansing from God, and forgiveness of God, he has to have a right view of some things. He must have a right view of sin. He must have a right view of God. He must have a right view of himself. And we looked two weeks ago at the fact that we must have a right view of sin. And we saw that a right view of sin includes five things. One, it recognizes that sin deserves judgment. It recognizes that it pleads for mercy. We plead for mercy. We don't want God's justice. We don't want him to deal with us after the matter of our sins. Our only plea is to mercy. We saw that sin makes us dirty, and it demands that we be clean. Sin demands cleansing. Fourth, sin accepts full responsibility. It doesn't say the devil made me do it, or the woman that thou gavest me, she did tempt me. It exonerates God of all responsibility. It exonerates all circumstance of providence and says, My sin is ever before me. Against thee and thee only have I sinned. It accepts full responsibility for its sin. The fifth thing that sin necessitates in having a right view of sin, in order for forgiveness to be operative in our life, is that we recognize that sin proceeds from our nature. It is a part of our being. Thus, this innateness within us demands a very special kind of internal operation of the power and spirit of God. They talk about total depravity and human depravity. David was teaching congenital depravity when he said, I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me. And so we must have a right view of sin. It deserves judgment. It pleads for mercy. It demands cleansing. It accepts full responsibility. And it recognizes that sin proceeds from the nature. Now let's look for a moment tonight at the second thing. To have the forgiveness of God, David says to us that our sin demands a right view of God. We have to know some things about God and how God looks at sin. And we have seen that the New Testament word for confess means to say the same thing. It means that what God is saying about my sin, I say the same thing. It means to agree with God as to his opinion of. God looks at my sin like this. I look at it like this. I turn and look at it the same way God looks at it. I see the same thing, and I say the same thing, and I feel the same thing. That's what it means to really confess our sins to God. Now David, in the next six verses, talks to us about the right view of God. Let's read them together, please. Psalm 51, verses 6 through 12. Psalm 51, verses 7 through 12. Psalm 51, verses 7 through 12. 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. There's a little song. There's a little song. I don't know if we know it. I know there's a song about the 40s, I think. now is the hour that we must say goodbye. Well, they put some religious words to that. And it says, search me, O God, and know my heart today. Try me, O Savior, know my thoughts, I pray. See if there be some wicked way in me. And let thy purifying power cleanse me. I forgot the last little part. One of those verses says, O Holy Ghost, revival comes from thee. I like that part. The only way you can have a real revival is for God to search the hearts of his people. It's a beautiful song. Maybe we can learn that little chorus. Well, here's where it comes from. 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, not my salvation, that's critical, thy salvation, and take not thy Holy Spirit from me. I would say four things very briefly tonight about a right relationship to attitude in the matter of the forgiveness of our sins as it relates to a right view of God. Number one, David is saying that the right view of God in relationship to the forgiveness of sin demands that we recognize God's holiness. It demands that we recognize a right view of the holiness of God. Now David is saying that there is that about God which looks down on the inside. The Jews were preoccupied with external cleansing and the external purification rites. And it was all on the outside. And it really didn't matter what a man did as long as he went through the ceremony. They were so ceremonially oriented. But he's saying, look, we have to do with a holy God who looks on the inside. He says in the sixth verse, in the inward parts, in the hidden parts, God search my heart. God deal with my sin. My sin is on the inside. All of the external purification rites of all the religious ceremonies won't do a man any good. We have to understand that this is what Jesus was trying to deal with when he came and taught us. That he must die on the cross that the blood might be applied in faith to the hearts of sinful men. It's not just what a man is on the outside. He's trying to get into the inside. They were so accustomed to going through ceremonies with no internal heart commitment. You know, when that priest went into the Holy of Holies, simply the fact that he lay his hands on the head of the Passover, the lamb. Simply the fact that he dipped the hyssop in water and blood and anointed. Simply the fact that he went through the physical ceremony didn't make any difference. He not only had to believe, but they individually had to believe that that was symbolic of the fact of God's cleansing of their sin in which they trusted. Now the same thing is true in baptism. Just going through the water and externally touching the outside of your body doesn't do any good. You can live in the baptistry till you grow web feet and scales and waddle like a duck. And all that water isn't going to wash away your sins. Never will it do that. But only as you have faith in that as the priest did, which it symbolized. And that is the symbolism that it is a picture of the burial of the old man and the resurrection of the new through faith in Christ. Of the cleansing of the word that Jesus died on the cross. Why? To shed his blood and rose in triumph over sin and the power of sin, death, hell and the grave. And faith in what it symbolizes is what gives us saving power. He's saying all the external purification rights with which they were so preoccupied don't do any good. He says it's when you have faith in its symbol, in the inward parts, in the hidden parts. He says that's where I've got my problem. That's where God you have to deal. You're a holy God. You look on the inside. Over in James, you don't need to turn. Let me read for you a very wonderful verse in James chapter 4, verse 8. Draw near unto God and he will draw near unto you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts. When he says cleanse your feet, that means you walk the way you walk. Cleanse your hands. That means what you do. But he says go beyond that to the heart. When Jesus Christ came and taught that which was the moral and ethical application and the social ramifications of all of the gospel of Jesus and stamped the word love across all of the writings of the Jews as they interpreted what all the law meant to cover every situation. He said, look, let me boil it down to you. And in just two or three brief chapters in Matthew 5, 6, and 7, he writes it all down and reduces it to the simplest terms and says that human behavior is not necessarily important because of what it does, but because of why it doesn't. And God is over and over again being much more merciful on men and women who are desperately in need of Him, who sin desperately, but who long so desperately not to. And those who walk around like quieted sepulchers and appear to be so pious and religious on the outside, but on the inside they wish they could live like the devil, their hearts are filled with lusts and adulteries and deceit and lie, He is very hard on them while He is very tender on the man who is good on the inside but finds it hard to be good on the outside. He says, you have heard of them of old that it was said, He says, thou shalt not swear and thou shalt not lie and thou shalt not lust and thou shalt not kill. He says, but let me tell you the truth. And He goes to the heart of the issue. He who hates, he who looks, he who lusts, he who feels, He says it's what a man is on the inside. And that's because God is a holy God. He's not concerned with looking through human eyes as men see on the outside. Nothing can be hidden from Him. He sees on the inside, He sees the motive, He sees the secret place, He sees the intent of the heart, and He says, Oh God, get down on the inside of me and work because I'll never change what I am on the outside until you change what I am on the inside. In 1 John chapter 3, John talks about committing sin and he says, he that committeth sin is of the devil. He says, he that is born of God cannot commit sin because his seed remaineth in him and he can't commit sin. What does that mean? It means that he will never do a single sin. No, but it means that his nature has been so transformed that he cannot, that's a linear action verb, it's repeated again and again. That means that he that committeth sin gives a committal over to sin. When a man is born of God, he simply cannot do that. The outside will be changed when the inside is finally transformed. That's what David is praying for. Oh God, you're not externally concerned with how many candles I light and how many baptistries I am baptized in and how many times I sign a card and have good intentions on the outside. The inward part, the inner self, God, you're holy, you see that and so only you can deal with that. And he understands that. Well, secondly, David is saying that a right view of God as far as his relationship to the forgiveness of our sin entails a right view of his power. He says, not only do I have a problem that is on the inside, Lord, you are the only one who can get down on the inside. In verse 7, he says, cleanse me and wash me with hyssop and purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean. Hyssop is a little scrub kind of a bush, a little scrubby bush that was used by the priest in the purification process and it was dipped twice into a solution. The first was the blood of the Lamb and the second was with water and they were mixed together again and again and after you dipped them repeatedly in both, then it was applied in faith. You see, that was a foreshadow. That was a preview of the fact that when Jesus died on the cross, remember the gospel writers say that blood and water erupted from his life. Medical doctors tell us there's only one time that blood and water erupt simultaneously from a wound in the human body. That is, when the heart has been ruptured, Jesus, Isaiah said, would be wounded for our transgressions and he bore every wound known to man. The laceration when they whipped his back, the incised wound, the internal wound, the puncture wound in his hands, the abrasion by the tearing and shredding of the flesh, all the wounds Jesus suffered. But it was the internal wound, the incised wound, which punctured his heart. But I think somehow that that heart must have been broken for the sins of the world long before it was pierced by the lance on the Roman soldier's spear in the sight of Jesus Christ and blood and water came forth. And he said, it is finished. He was crucified. He was dead. It was a preview. And all of it was for the sins of the whole world. That's why they dipped that hyssop in blood and water. It was a foreshadow of the broken body of Jesus Christ on the cross. And he said, I'm going to have to have that. I am going finally to have to have the cleansing that can only come from the rock of ages. You must understand that the only way a man is saved by faith today is to look back in faith to the fact that Christ died, the Messiah died for our sins. And the only way that they were saved was to look forward to the fact that one day the Messiah would come and provide salvation for their sins. The only difference is we know his name and they didn't. The name was called Wonderful Counselor, the Mighty God, Joshua. I think they could have known, but somehow they did not. No, they weren't saved any differently than we. All of the ceremonies did no good. It was only as they believed in faith that it was symbolic of God providing sin for them. The whole concept of the slave of a cross on a, of a lamb and sacrifice as it symbolized in faith, the remitting of their sins was one on which the entire Jewish system of ordinances and feast was built. No question. They knew well what that lamb meant. That's why when the last Old Testament prophet came, John the Baptist, after 400 years of silence for God, his first and only message to Jesus was behold the lamb of God, the one lamb, the only lamb, the last lamb that taketh away the sin of the world. And all of the power of Satan and all of the guilt of the conscience can never stand against the power of that blood. I think the most exciting morning I remembered around our church, I, a long time as I preached on the exorcist a year ago, last month, the place was packed. 54 were saved, 47 adults were saved. And remember we came out, we had a song and a prayer in the sermon. That one song, like I've never heard a song sung was power in the blood. It seemed like Satan was here and demons were here. Boy, there was an overcoming sense of the power of the blood of Jesus. That's what the Romans, that's what the revelator meant when he said that they, Oh, these are they which are washed wide in the blood of the lamb. These are they that shall stand faultless before the throne in judgment and say, these are they that overcame him by the blood of the lamb. Our faith is in the blood of the lamb. Satan cannot stand against the blood. He says, resist the devil and he'll flee from you. There is power in the blood. What do you mean there's power in the blood? Simply this. It means when your heart races with the wind with temptation, when your soul is crushed with guilt, when you are discouraged and alone and afraid, when Satan is oppressing you, you can reject him. You can resist him. You can rebuke him. You can say, Satan, you cannot stand against the blood of Jesus. My sins are under the blood. My savior is in Jesus Christ. He died for me. He is my hero, my savior, my strength, my champion. I rebuke you in the name of Jesus on the grounds of that shed blood. Get thee behind me, Satan. And you'll find Satan to cowl like a coward before you, put his tail between his legs and crawl off and he'll leave you alone for a while anyway. He'll be back. You just go get your fresh dose of faith in the blood of Jesus and just feed him again. Oh, listen, there's wonderful power in the blood. David had no question, no question about that. He said, my soul, my conscience down on the inside is in trouble. Deal with it. Make me a new heart. Make me all over. Remember how Peter, when Jesus won, to wash his feet, he said, Lord, not just the feet, my head, wash all of me, Lord. He was, he didn't need that. He'd already, already had a blood bath on the cross. That's what you get, but you have to keep coming back and have your feet washed. Jesus said, no, just your feet will do, Peter. So you see the blood, the faith in the blood that this hyssop symbolized understood that he had a right view of God, that only what God could do in the cleansing of his sin was his only plea. And he pled it and trusted in it. That hyssop was a view of Calvary. Number three, this is good. It hurts a little bit, but it's good. A right view of God recognizes a right view of his chastisement. And not only his right to chastise us, but the worth and appreciation we should have of chastisement. I want you to look again back at Psalm 51. He says, against thee and thee only have I sinned. Now listen, come down. Let's see a verse eight, verse eight. Make me to hear joy and gladness that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice. The little book, none of these diseases talks about how sin affects our, our body. And we can call it psychosomatic illnesses. If we want to, we might ought to call it Christosomatic illnesses. but the truth of the matter is that when we're not right with God spiritually, we don't feel right with ourselves physically. The little book talks about how so much of guilt and so much of judgment and so much of God's dealing with us makes us hurt so badly that we hurt down to the very marrow of our bones. And many times we can't feel well until we are well spiritually. Well, that's good, and it's a beautiful spiritualization of a very real truth. But what is the real truth? Well, look at it again. There's really not anything symbolic here. This is a very literal psalm. He is saying, make me to hear joy and gladness that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice. Now, whether they were actually broken, I don't know, but they did more than hurt. David felt like they were just broken. What does that mean? Well, there was a little custom they used to have. When the shepherd, and David was a shepherd and writes all of this from the perspective of a shepherd and his sheep. When the little shepherds, when the little sheep would get away from the flock, when they had a little, some of them would have a habit of wandering off. The shepherd had two things. He had a crook and then a point on the end of that staff. And the point was to defend off the wolves and the lions and to protect the sheep. And the crook on the end of it was to pull them back. And when he'd use that crook and pull them back in line, sometimes they just wouldn't come back. And sometimes the shepherd would take the sheep and break its legs. And then he would wind up one or two of the legs that he had broken. And he would carry it for a month or two or three. Now, what happened? During the process of carrying the little sheep, it became very near to him. Consequently, it became very dear to him. And learned through sorrow and suffering what it meant to rest on the bosom of the shepherd. And it began knowing the shepherd, to love the shepherd, and to be the most intimate of all of them. And when it finally got well and the shepherd put it down and let it run along with the other sheep, guess which one followed the closest to the shepherd? The little sheep that had had its leg broken and learned to love him. Now, David said, Lord, you've done what was right. You've broken me. Lord, you've done what you had to do. You've done what I deserved. My only plea is to mercy. But, Lord, I do plead for that mercy. I repent. Have mercy on me. Lord, enough is enough. Now, let me have fellowship with you again. Lord, I've learned my lesson. And when he receives that new fellowship and that new joy, what happens? Look, he says, Lord, restore to me the joy of my salvation. A kind of neutral, neutral ground relationship to God that is free from guilt is not enough. He said, I don't want to just be free from guilt. I don't want to just be neutral. He said, I want to have a positive, abundant, abounding joy. Give me joy, Lord. I want a bubble. I want to be happy. There's a great difference in peace with God and the joy of the Lord. David said, Lord, I've paid my price. I want my joy back. David learned to go on from there. Now, you remember, of course, that this experience, I think, became the great catalyst to David's holiness. Did he not go on to live such a pristine life of power and effectiveness that he was recorded in the annals of faith as a man after God's own heart? Well, he said, I've learned that lesson. I'm not walking down that road again. Yeah, the joy of the Lord came back. The power of God came back. And listen, if you will, let me show you another wonderful thing here. When that power came, the fourth word I want you to notice is he really learned to have a right view of the forgiveness of God. Look in verse 9 and verse 11. Oh, there's power. You see, when a man is neutral, when he's emptied, then he can be only, then he can be filled again. He said, Hide thy face from my sins. Blot out all mine iniquities. Cast me not away from thy presence. And take not thy Holy Spirit from me. The prophets had a good view of the forgiveness of God. David had read the prophets. He was learned in the prophets. Let me read just two of you that are favorites of mine. Isaiah 43, 25. It's come to mean so much. I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions. For mine own sake. You say, for his sake? Doesn't he do it for my sake? No, not for our sake. It is for his own sake. For the sake of his integrity. That's what David meant when he said, Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation. There's nothing man does to merit or to contribute to the finished work of God. It's all in Jesus. It is for his sake. It is for Christ's sake that Jesus, God, forgives sins. We are accepted in the beloved. Outside of Jesus, we stand condemned. But in Jesus, God sees us covered under the blood, accepted in him. I can take this black Bible and go out in the sunlight tomorrow and it'll look even blacker as the sun exposes the blackness. But if I cover it with a piece of red cellophane and look through it, a miracle occurs and it looks white. That's what happens when our sins are exposed to the light of his holiness neat the crimson blood of Jesus. A miracle occurs and in the sight of God, they look white and holy and clean as the new driven snow. But outside of them, we are condemned and guilty. But in Jesus Christ, we're accepted in the beloved and he doesn't see our sins. He sees only what happens in the miracle neat his blood. That's why we stand in him. It's for Jesus' sake. No man can stand alone before him. That's what the prophet meant when he prays, I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake and will not remember thy sins. And Micah, another prophet, 7, 18, says it like this. Who is a God like unto thee that pardoneth iniquity and passeth by the transgressions of the remnant of his heritage? He retaineth not his anger forever. Hallelujah. Because he delighteth in mercy. He wants to cleanse. He wants to pardon. He wants to be merciful. He will not retain his anger forever if you, by faith, get neath the blood of Christ. David says, Lord, take not thy Holy Spirit from me. Was he praying as some of our friends would suggest that this verse proves that he didn't lose his salvation? No, no. You remember? On the day that Jesus died, the veil of the temple which symbolized the holiness of God beyond which man could not go was split from top to bottom. That means that now because of the cross man can go into the eternal presence of God and have constant and consistent relationship with him. What is the symbol of that? Well, Paul said it like this. Now that I am saved, now that I am cleansed, my body is the temple of the Holy Ghost. Christ lives in me. The Spirit of God's home is in my heart. I've been forgiven and cleansed by my sin and the Spirit has come to take up residence in the cleanness of my heart. In the Old Testament, because there was a repeated emphasis on cleansing, a constant coming for cleansing, and so many chances for mistake, they had to come to the right priest and the right time in the right altar with the right sacrifice. But Jesus is the priest and Jesus is the altar and Jesus is the sacrifice, man. And when your faith is in him, you have no chance for margin. There is no margin for mistake. There is no mistake, no possibility. It's all in him. And the ignorantest, the most learned, the best and the worst among us can come and plea just as I am without one plea, but that thy blood, the only plea that thy blood was shed for me, O Lamb of God, I come. Now, they had to do it over and over and over and over again. In Jesus it is done once for all. So the Holy Spirit comes in men to indwell them because they are made permanently cleansed in Christ. But in the Old Testament, there was a repeated cleansing. They did not come. They came over and over again. It wasn't a once and for all thing. Therefore, the Spirit of God did not indwell their hearts once and for all. And you find that the Spirit of God came upon men. He came on Samson. He came on David. He came upon Gideon temporarily to undo them, to empower them for service, but he didn't indwell them. David is saying, Lord, I'm going to lose my power. Don't let the Holy Spirit go from me. Don't let that undoing, that anointing leave me. And he stayed on his knees until he got his power back. And he got up rejoicing. And he was never again the same. And it was indeed the catalyst to his faith which made him a man after God's own heart. Remember when the prophet came to him and said, David, a certain thing has happened. And David, oh, right there, it was all on the line, wasn't it? He pointed out David's sin. What did David do? Had it been Mary queen of Scots, she would have abrogated the law. Lesser men would have simply declared themselves above the law. Still other emperors might have, might have fired the court for a reverend. You know, a canna, get a new preacher. There's somebody else. I don't have to stand for that. But not David. He bowed his head and said, I'm the man. I've sinned. Now that's what Peter did, you see. Judas didn't know how to deal with his sin. But the difference in Judas and Peter was that Peter knew what to do with his sin. And the difference in the failure in the Christian life and the succeeder in the Christian life is that the man knows how to deal with his sins. Not whether we sin, it's what we do with our sins. And the truth is that the man knows how to deal with his sins. And the truth is that the man knows how to deal with his sins. And the truth is that the man knows how to deal with his sins.