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Psalm 51
51:1 Have mercy on me,1 O God,
according to your steadfast love;
according to your abundant mercy
blot out my transgressions.
2 Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,
and cleanse me from my sin!
3 For I know my transgressions,
and my sin is ever before me.
4 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.
5 Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity,
and in sin did my mother conceive me.
6 Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being,
and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart.
7 Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean;
wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
8 Let me hear joy and gladness;
let the bones that you have broken rejoice.
9 Hide your face from my sins,
and blot out all my iniquities.
10 Create in me a clean heart, O God,
and renew a right2 spirit within me.
11 Cast me not away from your presence,
and take not your Holy Spirit from me.
12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation,
and uphold me with a willing spirit.
13 Then I will teach transgressors your ways,
and sinners will return to you.
14 Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God,
O God of my salvation,
and my tongue will sing aloud of your righteousness.
15 O Lord, open my lips,
and my mouth will declare your praise.
16 For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it;
you will not be pleased with a burnt offering.
17 The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;
a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.
18 Do good to Zion in your good pleasure;
build up the walls of Jerusalem;
19 then will you delight in right sacrifices,
in burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings;
then bulls will be offered on your altar.
(ESV)
Redeemer exists to celebrate and declare the gospel of God as we grow in knowing and following Jesus Christ.
Good morning everybody. My name is Josh Howson, and for those of you who don't know me, I am the executive pastor here at Redeemer. And it's my joy to be up here before you today because this is not typically the role I play. I'm usually doing a lot of behind the scenes things, so it's really great to be up here. If you will, begin by turning in your Bibles to Psalm 51.
Speaker 1:We're gonna be looking at it today. It's also found in your worship guide if you have that with you. As we look at these words, listen carefully because these are the most important words we will see and hear all day long. Psalm 51, to the choirmaster, a psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet went to him after he had gone into Bathsheba, Have mercy on me, oh God, according to your steadfast love. According to your abundant mercy, blot out my transgressions.
Speaker 1: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 and 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.
Speaker 1: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 of my iniquities.
Speaker 1:Create in me a clean heart, oh 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 bloodguiltiness, oh God, oh God of my salvation, and my tongue will sing a sound of your righteousness.
Speaker 1:Oh, 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, oh god, you will not despise.
Speaker 1:Do good to Zion in your good pleasure. Build up the walls of Jerusalem. Then will you delight in right sacrifices, and burnt offerings, and whole burnt offerings, and then bulls will be offered on the altar. This is the word of the Lord. Pray with me.
Speaker 1:Heavenly Father, we pray that you will guide us and instruct us through your word today. We are a people who are desperately in need of you. Please teach us how to lay all of our lives before you at the foot of the cross. And ultimately, we pray that you will receive the glory and honor in this place today. Speak to us now and open our hearts to hear your truth.
Speaker 1:In Jesus' name, Amen. Now I hope that most of you were able to join us last week as Joel Busby introduced our new sermon series we're going to be going through this summer in the book of Psalms. And in this book, in this sermon series, we're going to be looking at what John Calvin calls the anatomy of the soul. And what we mean by this is that in the Psalms, we believe that you can see into so many aspects of the human experience, and not only can you see into those aspects of human experience, but the Psalms actually speak into them for us. And from the beginning of this series, I want to put a disclaimer out there, a warning for all of you, is that there's actually a lot of heavy topics that we're going to look at over the next few weeks.
Speaker 1:We're going to look at topics like brokenness, like depression, like anxiety and loneliness. These are really heavy topics that we're going to look at, and I probably don't need to tell you about that, cause I would assume many of you are sitting in those aspects of the human experience right now today. But rather than running from them like we tend to do, I actually want us to look at what scripture says about them and speaks into them. In fact, I want to shine a spotlight on these hard aspects of the human experience. And the only way we can do that without being crushed by the weight of them is by keeping our vision on Christ the whole time.
Speaker 1:And what can we learn from Christ in these experiences? Number 1, we can learn that Christ walked through them too. He knows what it feels like to be human, and he can sympathize with us. There's great comfort in that. But then also, we know that because he's risen, he's sitting at the right hand of God, that he is in the process of restoring all things and making all things new, and in that, we have great hope, even though it's hard today.
Speaker 1:So today, the topic we're gonna look at is brokenness. And I'm gonna start by making a statement that I think is important as we go through the text today is that I don't want us just to look at brokenness from above as this abstract idea. Instead, I want us to look at brokenness as a necessary part of the Christian experience. We see this in verse 17 of the text I just read. It says, The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit.
Speaker 1:A broken and contrite heart, oh God, you will not despise. We learn in this short little statement that the Lord demands brokenness in our worship. And we will see today that the reason the Lord demands brokenness is that it's only in our brokenness that we can truly trust in our need for a savior. It's only when we make much of our sin that we can make much of what Christ accomplished for us on the cross. But before we get there, what do we mean by brokenness?
Speaker 1:This is an important question as we look at the topic. And as I started thinking about it in preparation for today, my mind went to a lot of the areas you might think. I started thinking about the brokenness that we see in the world today. I thought about war and famine and all the things that we tend to think of when we think of brokenness. I went beyond that and started thinking about the condition of man, thinking about all the horrible things different people can do throughout the world, but also, like, the horrible things that are happening in our own community.
Speaker 1:Right? There's a reason we can't watch the local news before we go to bed. It's because of all these horrible things that they focus on. And then finally, kind of self confession for those of you who know me, I thought about the last year of my life. We've walked through a lot of brokenness.
Speaker 1:We've walked through death and hurting, and things have been really hard. And those are the things that I think about when I think about brokenness. But I've got a confession to make in front of all of you today, is that the very last place that I looked, the last thing I thought about was the brokenness that resides in my own heart. You see, it's much easier for me to look at the brokenness around me than to think anything about that sin and brokenness that's going on in my own heart, and this is the brokenness we're looking at today in Psalm 51. We see in David that brokenness is actually this devastation that we feel over our own sinfulness.
Speaker 1:It's this overwhelming feeling that we are sinners in front of a righteous and just God. And what I I want to put this out there is we're not talking about this casual recognition of sin, which I I know that I'm guilty of more often than not. I say, yeah, I'm a sinner, but God's forgiven me. Let's move on. We're not talking about that today, and it's important that we realize that.
Speaker 1:Instead, we're talking about this overwhelming recognition that we are sinners in need of a savior. And this is what Psalm 51 speaks into. But I wonder, I've got a question for you. I want you to really think about this. How often do you think about your own sinfulness?
Speaker 1:How often do you think about the fact that you're broken? It's a real question I want you to think about today, and I have a feeling there's these 2 polar opposite sides that you might fall on. The first one is that you might say, why would I think about my own sinfulness? If I look at the world around me, I'm actually pretty good. I'm a lot better person than a lot of the people I know, and there's no reason I would focus on my sinfulness.
Speaker 1:I try really hard. That's one answer that you might give. The polar opposite that some of you might say today is, of course I think about my own sinfulness. It's all I can think about. In fact, something I did last night is on my mind right now, and I can't get away from it.
Speaker 1:Regardless of which side you might be on and probably somewhere in between, Psalm 51 speaks to that today. And for those of you who find yourself like me who have trouble recognizing your own brokenness, I wanted to ask a question, why is it so hard? Why is it so hard for us as individuals to admit that we're broken? And I think the answer can be pretty simple. It's that we spend so much of our energy, so much of our time, so much of what we do is in an effort for the world to not know that we're sinful.
Speaker 1:And we do such a good job at it that we actually convince ourselves that it's true. I don't know if you can identify with that, but we spend so much time trying to convince each other that we have it all together, that when you look at my social media presence and you look at my family and you look at my life, that's a guy who has it all together, that I don't even realize that it's not true. We have trained ourselves so much to push our sinfulness into these dark regions of our lives deep down that our sin has become unrecognizable to us. And for some of you today, we're in a sad state. The sad state is that we're broken and we don't even know it.
Speaker 1:The good thing is is that Psalm 51 speaks into that. We get to see in Psalm 51 what the bible has to say about our brokenness. So let's turn to Psalm 51 right now. Let's look at Psalm 51, and I wanna start by just looking at the introductory sentence. It says this.
Speaker 1:It says, To the choirmaster a psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet went to him after he had gone into Bathsheba. That's it. Right there, we get a lot of information that's important for us as we look at Psalm 51. We get a list of characters. We see David and Bathsheba and Nathan.
Speaker 1:We get a context, a storyline out of which Psalm 51 is written, and most importantly, we get an introduction to why David is crying out to the Lord over his sins. And in order for us to understand this, this, I actually want to invite you to turn back in your Bibles a few books to 2 Samuel 11, if you have them. And in this chapter, we're gonna hear from a story that you've probably heard a lot of times in your life. It's the story of David and Bathsheba. And if you're anything like me, you've probably heard the Sunday school version of that.
Speaker 1:That tends to pull out of it all these hard aspects of the text. So today, I want us to listen to it, and I want you to open your ears to the horrific nature of the story of David and Bathsheba. I'm gonna begin in verse 2 of 2 Samuel chapter 11. It says this, it happened late 1 afternoon when David arose from his couch and was walking on the roof of the king's house that he saw from the roof a woman bathing. And the woman was very beautiful.
Speaker 1:And David sent and inquired about the woman. And one said, is not this Bathsheba, the daughter of Iliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite? So David sent messengers and took her. And she came to him and he lay with her. Now she had been purifying herself from her uncleanness.
Speaker 1:Then she returned to her house, and the woman conceived, and she sent and told David, I am pregnant. Just in case you didn't track with that part of the story, David, the anointed king of Israel, the one who had defeated Goliath, has just been involved in some horrific events. He has slept with a married man's wife, and out of it, a child is conceived. And to make this worse, at this point in the story, David is not remorseful for his sins at all. In fact, he does what so many of us tend to do.
Speaker 1:He tries to cover it up. This is our instinct, isn't it? To try to prevent people from knowing that we're sinful. And the way he plans on covering it up is actually by inviting Uriah to come back from the battlefield so that he can go spend the night with his wife, and hopefully, he'll think that this child that was conceived is actually his own. It's a horrible plan.
Speaker 1:And in this, we actually get to see the righteousness of Uriah compared to the sinfulness of David, because Uriah refuses to go home to his wife. He realizes that the ark is out on the battlefield, God's people are out on the battlefield, and there's no way he's going to go home if that's the case. So he sleeps at the doorstep of David's house. He does that again another night, and David realizes that he's in this downward spiral that we can often find ourselves in of covering up sin after sin after sin, and he gets to the point that he realizes he must do something incredibly drastic if he's gonna cover it up. And in his final act of desperation, he has Uriah murdered.
Speaker 1:He has Uriah murdered by having him sent to the front of the battlefield. And he has him sent to the front of the battlefield and has the rest of the troops withdraw so that no one knows that David was in charge of his killing, but he's struck down by the opposing army. We get to the end of this chapter, and we have David having commit this adulterous act, and on top of that, he has had a man murdered. Do you feel the weight of that? I invite you to feel the weight of that today.
Speaker 1:Picture that in our modern context, if you knew someone who had committed those acts, you would want them thrown in prison. And we can't look at this narrative the way we tend to do it often as as this fiction or fable. This is a real man in real history who really sinned against God. And worst of all, David is not repentant at all. But fortunately for David, it doesn't end there.
Speaker 1:The Lord is gracious. But the Lord's gracious to David in a way that he might not have recognized and in a way that we tend to not recognize ourselves. The Lord is gracious to him by exposing his sin. How does He do this? He does this by having the prophet Nathan sent to him, which is what we see in the introduction to Psalm 51.
Speaker 1:Nathan goes to David and he tells this parable of a rich man who took a poor man's lamb, this prized possession of him. He had it killed for his own gain. And at the end of the story, David looks at Nathan and says, that rich man deserves to be killed for what he's done. And we've reached this climax of the story, where Nathan the prophet looks at David and he points at him and says, you are that man. You're that man.
Speaker 1:You've done the same thing. And it's only at this point that David gets to the point where he can confess that he has sinned against the Lord and he's done what is evil in his sight. Through the transparency of his sin, he is broken. And this is what we mean by brokenness. That David's horrible sins have been exposed before God, and in it, he's broken and he repents.
Speaker 1:Do you see the importance of understanding the backstory? If you didn't know this, we wouldn't know what Psalm 51 is referencing. But now that we understand it, we can understand the text better. But I want to invite you to do one thing more than just understand it. We can do this with scripture a lot, is look at it from above as if we're just trying to cognitively get at what's going on here.
Speaker 1:I wanna invite you into this text, and I want you to identify with David. It's hard. It's hard to identify with him. And something that has helped me think through this as I've been going about, preparing this week is there's a song that's been ringing in my head, over the past few weeks, and if you know this song, you are going to feel really bad for me because it's probably the most depressing song I've ever heard, and it is the song John Wayne Gacy, Jr. By Sufjan Stevens.
Speaker 1:If you know it, you feel bad for me. And in this song, Sufjan is singing about a man from Illinois named John Wayne Gacy, Jr. And in it, you hear about a man who was actually adored by his community. He had a business that was thriving. He was involved in community events.
Speaker 1:And according to the people in his neighborhood, he seemed like a guy who had it all together. But as the song goes on, you realize that there's something to this. And he starts singing about some horrific acts that this man has done. And we realize that John Wayne Gacy junior is actually one of the most prolific serial killers in all of American history. In all, he killed over 33 people.
Speaker 1:And the real sad truth is that a lot of them were even kids. It's horrible. It's a really horrible thing. And at the end of this song, you're like, how could he sing about this? I'm sad.
Speaker 1:I'm depressed even thinking about it right now. But as I was thinking about it, isn't this what a song about these events in David's life would have sounded like? If we were really raw and honest about these events, a song would be really sad and depressing. And as this song comes to a close and you're sufficiently sad, Sufjan makes a declaration about himself. He speaks into the song, and the song ends at a whisper, and he says this.
Speaker 1:He says, even in my best behavior, I am really just like him. Look beneath the floorboards at the secrets I have hid. It's a bold statement, isn't it? The song has something important, though, for us to realize, is that we are all like him as well. We are all sinners without exception and the amount and severity of our sins doesn't change this.
Speaker 1:This is what we read about in Romans chapter 3 when Paul says that there is no distinction. All have sinned and all have fallen short of the glory of God. Paul is pointing that even though we are all different in many different ways, we have one thing in common, we are all sinners. We've all sinned and we've all fallen short of the glory of God, and we are all like David in this situation, aren't we? And so as I was thinking about this song, I was thinking the lyric could actually be changed to, even in my best behavior, I'm really just like David.
Speaker 1:Do you believe this? Like seriously, think about this. Do you believe that you're a sinner just like David? The answer to this is very important. It's very important for us to realize that even though we might not have committed murder or adultery, that we have all sinned and we have all fallen short of the glory of God.
Speaker 1:Now, this is the starting point of the Christian life, isn't it? Recognizing that we are sinners and we have nothing left to offer, and that we are broken, and that the only hope for us is to turn that over to Christ. That's where we start in the Christian life, and I want to challenge us today to actually say that that's not where we start in the Christian life. This is a daily routine in the Christian life, that we need to confess that we are sinners, and we need a savior. We need the gospel daily.
Speaker 1:That's what this idea of speaking the gospel daily, remembering the gospel daily really means. We need to realize we're remarkably like David, And this is what brings us to Psalm 51. What does Psalm 51 teach us? It teaches us how to respond to our sin. It teaches us about the importance of confession.
Speaker 1:And not only does it teach us about how important it is, it teaches us how to do it. So if you will, turn with me to the first two verses of this chapter. They say this. They say, have mercy on me, oh God. According to your steadfast love, according to your abundant mercy, blot out my transgressions.
Speaker 1:Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. And what we can see in these two verses is actually a summary of what's going to come throughout the rest of the chapter. We see David do a few things. The first thing that he does is he confesses his sin. He says that he recognizes his iniquity in his transgressions, but he doesn't stop there.
Speaker 1:He actually petitions the Lord to forgive those sins, but he doesn't do it at this point based on anything he has accomplished in himself. Instead, he does it based on the character of God. Because he realizes, right, that the Lord is gracious and merciful and abounding in steadfast love, and he knows that that is really his only hope. He's no longer running from his sins as we saw him once do. He's now running to God.
Speaker 1:And the Psalm, Psalm 51, will take this shape throughout the rest of it. We'll see in verses 3 through 6 that David confesses his sins before the Lord. We'll see then that he petitions the Lord in verses 7 through 12, and then the remainder of the chapter is David worshiping out of this context. And one of the most important things we learn from these verses and from the rest of the chapter is the necessity of brokenness in the Christian life. Because we see that our brokenness over our sin leads us to confession, and confession leads us to trust in the Lord as our only hope.
Speaker 1:David understands this because he's so desperately low. And I wonder if you're anything like me, but I know that it's in my lowest moments that I realized that my only hope is Christ. Think about the times that you've learned the most lessons about trusting in the Lord. For me, it's rarely when I'm at the peak of doing well. It's almost always when I've been brought down to my knees.
Speaker 1:And if this is the case, if we are learning more on how to trust in god more in our brokenness, why is it that we avoid our brokenness at all cost? Instead, we need to shine a light on our brokenness because it leads us to the gospel. And this is why confession is such an important part of the Christian life. It has always been important because confession regularly reminds us of our desperate situation, and it turns our attention alone to God for our salvation. Now, this is an often overlooked spiritual discipline.
Speaker 1:When I think about spiritual disciplines, I frequently think about prayer and reading my bible, and I rarely list confession on that list. But it's been important in church history throughout for this very reason. Therefore, the for those of you who are like me who have trouble recognizing your brokenness, I invite you to look at Psalm 51, verses 3 through 6 with me now. They say this. For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me.
Speaker 1:Against you and 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 inequity, 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. Picture David crying out these words to the lord. They're desperate words from a desperate man who desperately needs a savior.
Speaker 1:And we learn a few important things about confession in these verses. In verse 3, we read that David said, for I know my transgressions and my sin is ever before me. And what David's referring to is this breadth of sin. Even by reading in 2nd Samuel, we don't realize the extent of his sinfulness, his thoughts that led to his actions. He knows them, and they're ever before him, so he confesses that to the Lord.
Speaker 1:He goes on in verse 4. He says, against you, in you only, have I sinned. We know that that's not actually true. Right? Because we just read the story.
Speaker 1:He sinned against a lot of people. But what he's realized is that his sin is first and foremost a sin against God. He's been called to live according to the law of the Lord, and he's turned away from it. And he realizes that this righteous God, his only hope before him is to appeal to his mercy. Finally, we see in verse 5 that David talks about the extent of his sinfulness when he says that he was brought forth in his iniquity.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of theology behind this idea, but the reality is that he realizes his sins go back all the way to his birth. He realizes that he has always needed this. It's not just about this acute situation right in front of him. It's about his whole life, and he knows he needs to confess that to the Lord. So if you're anything like me and you don't know where to begin with the practice of confession, I urge you, start here.
Speaker 1:Spend time in Psalm 51. Spend time reading it and praying through it, and ultimately, spend time confessing these words that we just read. Because this psalm will speak words for you that you might not even know that you need to pray. And if you're still kind of skeptical about confession, because I I get it. It's not something we talk about a whole lot.
Speaker 1:An illustration that I've thought about a lot in the past years has to do with, in my time at Beeson Divinity School, I was asked to go and just participate in, an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, and it was a really great experience for me. And the room that I went into might be what you expected. There were all kinds of people there. There were the people there who had built going to these AA meetings into their regular routine. They knew it was good for them, and it was their lunch break, and they were just there, and it was good for them.
Speaker 1:There were also people there that you could tell were in the throes of addiction. They needed that very meeting to be able to hold off their temptation, and they needed the accountability of people around them. Beyond that, you saw people sitting on the back wall who had probably just gotten in trouble with the law and were being forced to be there. They didn't want anything to do with it, but they were in that room because they had to be. And as the meeting got going, you could tell that there was one man who was leading that conversation.
Speaker 1:And he stood up, and and what he did was really amazing. What he did is he talked about all of the horrible things that had happened in his life as a result of alcohol. He talked about the ways he had hurt his family. He talked about the ways he had hurt himself, the ways he had broken the law. He talked about all of the horrible things he had done as a result of alcohol, and his brokenness was readily available for everyone in the room to see.
Speaker 1:And as that became clear, I realized what this man was doing. He was confessing. This was an act of confession for him, and he realized that he needed that for himself. And as I watched him, I realized something that I I didn't expect to realize, was that he was actually the freest person in the room that day. He was free because he could recall the times that he had been brought low, and he could recall the joy of being brought out of that.
Speaker 1:It was so good for him to remember the joy of being brought out of it. He did not have to pretend to be something he wasn't at that point. Instead, he freely admitted his brokenness, and by the very act of admitting it, he was liberated from the bondage. And as I left, I remembered that man, and I was thinking about it, and I was talking to my friends, and I remember thinking, why isn't the church more that way? Why can't we be a people who are broken but who confess that and who are liberated from it by admitting our brokenness before god and before others?
Speaker 1:And this is the good news of Psalm 51. It doesn't stop with confession. If it did, we would be sorrowful. We would be sad because it's heavy. But it moves on to freedom, and we realize that through confession, we're actually cleansed and forgiven.
Speaker 1:This is why we turn to verses 7 through 12, if you'll look at those with me now. They say this, they say, 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.
Speaker 1:Hide your face from my sins and blot out all of my iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, oh 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. In these verses, we realize that we don't stop with confession, but that we move on to petitioning the Lord for the thing that he is faithful to provide for us, grace and mercy.
Speaker 1:We see one of the most beautiful illustrations of this in all of scripture in verse 7, where he says, wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. You see, David understands that his sins have tainted him. That he's dirty, that he's filthy, and that he needs to be washed. And he realizes that the only way to be made pure, to be made whiter than snow, is to confess his sins and present them before the Lord who is faithful to forgive him. And I invite each of you in the room today to think about this.
Speaker 1:If we really can identify with David, we realize that we are filthy and dirty, and we need to be purified and washed white as snow. So I ask you to consider confessing and presenting your sins before God because he will forgive you. And though David didn't have this, we actually have the full revelation of scripture that speaks to this further, don't we? We realize that the only way that we can be made washed whiter than snow is through the blood of Christ that was shed for us on the cross. For while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Speaker 1:This is the gospel, that through the life, death, resurrection of Christ, he has paid for our sins. He is our only hope and we must turn to him and trust in him. We see in verse 10 that David says, create in me a clean heart, oh god, and renew a right spirit within me. The only hope that we have for this clean heart is Christ. And you see, this is why we confess our sins.
Speaker 1:It's because by confessing our sins, we make much of our sins. And by making much of our sins, we make much of the cross. There's this Charles Spurgeon quote that I want to read now that I think speaks to this as clearly as I ever could, and he wrote this in his autobiography in 18/90. So here are these words from Charles Spurgeon. He said, too many people think lightly of sin, and therefore, they think lightly of their savior.
Speaker 1:He who has stood before his God convicted and condemned with the rope about his neck, he is the man to weep for joy when he is pardoned, to hate the evil which has been forgiven him, and to live to the honor of the redeemer by whose blood he's been cleansed. We hear kind of a graphic illustration here by Charles Spurgeon. He describes a man standing with a rope around his neck ready to die, and it's only at the last minute that he is pardoned and forgiven, and it's that man that weeps for joy. Because he was so low, he can be brought so high. And this is David's story, isn't it?
Speaker 1:He was that man with that rope around his neck, and he can now weep for joy because he was saved. And we see that in verse 12 when David says, restore to me the joy of your salvation. You see that he realizes that out of brokenness, we have the opportunity for immense joy. He actually realizes that brokenness and joy are intimately connected. That's hard for us to see sometimes, but he realizes that it's out of this brokenness and out of the restoration he receives that he can truly worship his savior and and rejoice in his salvation.
Speaker 1:This is where we sit today. We are people in a desperate state, but we are people with such a great hope that is found in Christ. If we confess our brokenness to the lord, he is faithful to forgive and restore us. So how do we respond to this passage today? I think there's a few ways.
Speaker 1:First off, if you have never given your life to the Lord, I urge you to do it today. This is a heavy text if you don't have Christ in the cross to turn to. Please give your sins to him. He was faithful and just to forgive you. He has done the work on the cross that you could never do, and I invite you to believe that today.
Speaker 1:If you're already a Christian in this room, I invite you to follow the pattern that you began at your conversion. Make much of your sin. Make much of your brokenness. This is something that we don't do in the church often enough. We try to hide our sins from one another.
Speaker 1:I ask you, confess your sins to God and to one another, and in this, the gospel will be made real in your life. We will understand the joy of our salvation by doing this daily. Do this hourly if need be, but confess your sins to the Lord. Finally, if you are in the group in the room that just doesn't know where you fall on that spectrum, I urge you turn to Psalm 51. Psalm 51 can speak the words for you that you might not even know that you need to speak for yourself.
Speaker 1:So pray it this week, read it this week, think about it this week. And now in this room, we actually get the opportunity to respond the way David did after he confessed his sins to the Lord and asked him for forgiveness. We now get to worship the God who has saved us. And so I ask you to join me in responding as a people who are free. Pray with me now.
Speaker 1:Heavenly father, we are broken people, and we need you today. We confess our sins before you and ask for the forgiveness that comes from you alone. We pray that the Holy Spirit will work inside each of us to convict us of our sins, and to point us to Christ who shed His blood on the cross, to heal our brokenness, to wash away our sins, and to restore the joy of our salvation. I pray that you will be glorified in this place as we respond by worshiping you for all that you have done and all that you are going to do. In Jesus name, amen.