Mark Ordus: Good morning, everybody. How are we doing this morning? Good. Everybody doing good? Good.
Good. Good. My name's Mark. And on behalf of all of our staff, again, welcome to Ward Church. Welcome to our friends at Farmington Hills or wherever you're watching from this morning.
We're so glad that you decided to worship with us. You know, as we've been going through this series throughout the summer on the book of Psalms, I heard that I was gonna be looking at Psalm 51. And and when you think about Psalm 51, really, it's it's a prayer. As most of the Psalms are, they're songs or prayers, things like that. And this one is definitely a prayer moment.
So as I was getting ready for my sermon today, I started thinking about my own prayer life. See, from a really young age, I was taught, kind of a certain outline to pray, and it spells out the word acts. I think I might have even talked about it in a sermon here before. But basically, it gives me this outline for how you can structure your quiet time with God. And it's very simple.
It's just an acrostic. You start with the letter a, and that stands for the word adoration. So the idea when you spend your quiet time with God is that you begin by recognizing who God is. Whether it's maybe quoting one of your favorite worship songs or hymns, or maybe it's quoting a scripture you remember that talks about how good God is, and you just you take a moment to remember who God is and just stand in awe of his presence. And then from that place, you go to the c, and that one stands for confession.
And this is a time of kind of admitting to God all the time throughout the day or throughout the week where you kind of fallen short of who God's called you to be. Where where you've taken moments where you could have acted in love, living and loving like Jesus, but you decided to go another way, or you decided in that moment to sin. So when I was a kid, I would kinda during this confession time, I'd be kinda talking about whenever I treated someone bad, or whenever I back talked to my mom, or watched something I shouldn't have, that kind of thing. That was my time of confession for young Mark. And then we move into a time of thanksgiving.
And in this moment, it's literally that. It's giving thanks to God for all the things he's done in your life, everything he's blessed you with. So again, when I was learning to pray, my thanksgiving time probably would have included giving thanks for Taco Bell. You know? Probably not this year, though.
You know? But back then, you know, I would give thanks for Taco Bell. Would have given thanks for my Detroit Red Wings, because this you know, when I was younger, they actually made the playoffs back then, which was a lot of fun. But video games, you know, all that important stuff, I would give God thanks for. And then we come to this last word that I always kind of struggled with, knowing what it meant.
It's supplication. And, so for that one, several times throughout my life, I've had to go back and look up a definition. So I wanna share with you all the definition of this word supplication this morning. It's a humble and earnest request, prayer, or entreaty made to a person in authority or to a deity, or as young Mark would say, it's asking God for stuff. You know?
Like more Taco Bell, you know, for the Red Wings to finally get better someday. You know what I mean? All that important stuff. And honestly, I've stuck with this outline pretty much my entire life. The things have changed that I pray for or or that I confess or that that I give God thanks for.
Those things have changed over the years, but I've I've always kinda had this in the back of my head as a pretty solid outline for spending quiet time with God. And then I read this passage. It's not a passage I've never heard before. Psalm 51, even as brother David was reading it, you probably thought, oh, yeah. I've heard a song with these words in it before.
In fact, one of my mom's favorite worship artists was a guy named Keith Green, and he had a song based on Psalms 51 that was called Create in Me a Clean Heart. So I've I've heard this verse so many times in songs I've heard over the years that I think I could quote the majority of this chapter, and I'm guessing you probably could too. I knew this verse, but I had to stop and ask myself, how often do I actually pray this prayer? How often in the midst of praying for my kids or our finances or my family, etcetera, how often do I stop and say, God, create in me a clean heart? I don't say that to guilt anyone here today if you don't because, like I said, this is a prayer I've often overlooked, I think.
But I wanted us all to do a quick self reflection this morning. In the midst of our prayers for our health, for the health of our friends or family, for for our friends or family, or for finances, or all these other kind of things, how often do we ask God to create in us a pure heart and renew a steadfast spirit within us. The Psalm we're looking at today is heavy as a lot of them are because they all come from different places where David or the other psalmist were experiencing extreme highs and extreme lows. But Psalm 51 is unique in that it was written by David right after he was approached by the prophet Nathan about his sin with Bathsheba. If you don't know the story, it doesn't paint David in a really bright picture.
We'll just hit a couple key points as we go through this. The long and short of it is David was king over all of Israel and God's anointed king over all of Israel. And one day he sees a woman bathing from his rooftop. He orders for the woman to be brought to him, and then he sleeps with her because, well, he wanted to and he was king, and nobody says no to the king. The problem was she was a married woman.
The other problem was well, not married to him, married to someone else, if that wasn't clear. But the other problem was she got pregnant. So then David realizes what he's done, so his first instinct is to try to hide his sin. So he sends her husband to the front lines of battle, knowing that he'll be one of the first to die in battle. Her husband dies, and then David immediately marries Bathsheba to try and cover up for his sin.
But then after all this went down, the prophet Nathan comes to David to let him know everything that had happened, that he knows everything that had happened. And in that moment, after his meeting with the prophet Nathan, David pens this Psalms, Psalm 51. If you wanna turn there in your Bibles, that's where we'll be hanging out a lot today. And this Psalm can basically be broken down into two parts. The first of which is David's cry for pardon, and the second is David's cry for purity.
So let's take a look at the first section, David's cry for pardon. We're gonna start right in verse one of Psalm 51. It says this, David writes, have mercy on me, o God. According to your unfailing love, according to your great compassion, blot out my transgressions. Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin.
There's a couple things worth noting right out of the gate in the first two verses of Psalm 51. First of all, did you notice how David uses a plural word for that first word transgressions? That's a plural word. See, in this moment, David knew he had screwed up in a whole bunch of different ways. To name a few, he lusted after a married woman.
He used his position of authority to take advantage of her. He slept with a married woman, and he had her husband killed in battle to cover his sin. So you see, David in this moment is acknowledging he made a whole lot of mistakes, and he knows that. He's well aware of that. There's a lot of different ways David had fallen short of the calling on his life from God.
He has many transgressions. But what's interesting is then he uses a singular word to talk about it. He says, cleanse me from my sin. So it goes from that plural of transgressions to a singular my sin. It's almost like David, after apologizing for all these isolated acts, but then then in this moment, he's tying them all together in one big knot that kinda has a hold on his heart.
See, because David, all the other transgressions pointed to something deeper, and he wanted that something cast out of his life. He wanted God to do a work to cleanse him from his sin. David recognized, I think, what we all do when we go into a time of confession, maybe even this morning as pastor Terence led us in a short time of confession, he realized what I think we all do when it comes to prayers of confession. We can come up with a laundry list of moments where we've fallen short of God's calling on our life, where we missed the mark. That's what sin means.
It means missing the mark. And we can come up with all kinds of instances like that. But those, just like for David, are not isolated instances for us either. They stem from something deeper within us, something that can only be uprooted by God's hand. It reminds me of the story in Matthew twenty three twenty five when Jesus confronts the Pharisees.
He says this, woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for ye make thee clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess. See, the Pharisees were really good at publicly confessing sin. They would stand where everyone could see them, and they would they would declare everything they had fallen short with so that they could be made clean and holy and new and all these different things. But what Jesus says to them in this moment is, yeah, that's great. That's great to admit times when you were wrong, but inside there's something deeper happening within you that you need to be cleansed from.
I thought of it like this. At my last church, I had this, ceramic coffee mug, which I really loved. And, one day I lost it somewhere in the church and, kinda forgot about it. And then I think it was literally, like, a year later, I found it in our sound booth at the church. And, outside, it looked beautiful, you know, my ceramic mug.
You know? But, man, when I took that lid off, you know, there was like something speaking to me from deep within that cup. There was fur and and and all kinds of things growing from this cup. I I threw it out because, you know, even ceramic, there's something something in there. You know what I'm saying?
But that's that's kind of what I think of when Jesus confronts the Pharisees. It's like, yeah, we can be really good at listing all of the times we've fallen short, but God desires to do something deeper. Notice in David's confession, he's taking full responsibility for the evil rooted in his heart. He says, blot out my transgressions and cleanse me from my sin. I think there's a lesson about forgiveness and what David writes here in Psalms 51.
In his confession, notice it's not only a pardon he's asking for. David makes no distinction between forgiveness and cleansing. It's like in David's mind, the two go hand in hand. And forgiveness is not only a pardon from sin, but it's a deliverance from sin. Jesus didn't die on the cross so we could curse in front of our moms and and feel okay about it.
Jesus died on the cross to deliver us from the drive of sin, to give away for us to be free from sin. That snare that so easily entangles our hearts from which all sin stem. Forgiveness is God reaching within us and removing our sin by the root. We were, on our mission trip in Detroit last week, and one of the things we were doing one day, was pulling weeds with a mission organization we were working with just trying to beautify their, the place where they were a little bit. And, one of the students yelled at me for how I was pulling weeds.
I'm not a gardener nor the son of a gardener, you know. But, she's like, Mark, you're not getting the roots. And I was like, who cares? It looks great. And she's like, no.
You gotta get the roots. And I thought about that in relation to this message. See, what what we can do is we can pluck the heads off those dandelions. We can say, God, here's a time where I spoke to my spouse harshly. Here's the time I spoke to my parents harshly.
But what God desires to do in our hearts is to cleanse us from within, from the root of sin that is inside all of us. It's such a simple illustration. But think of what David is asking for. He knows he screwed up royally, no pun intended, but it's not enough to just pardon my sin. God, cleanse me from within.
Remove the desire for sin and the roots of sin in my heart. So you're starting to see the weight of these two short verses. See, Psalms can be heavy, and this one is no different. And now again, confessing our sins to God is absolutely important. Acknowledging times we miss the mark is absolutely important.
But beyond that, God root out the sin in my life. Remove the desire of sin from my heart. Cleanse me from my sin. So now as we move, we're gonna jump down a couple verses to get to the second part of this Psalm, and this picks up in verse 10. This is what David read for us earlier, but this turns around and goes towards David's cry for purity.
He made his cry for pardon. Now he's asking for purity in verse 10. He says this, create in me a clean heart, o God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me from your presence or take your holy spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and grant me a willing spirit to sustain me.
See, there's a really obvious problem with David's story. The problem is he was an adulterer. The problem is he was a murderer. We'll just call it what it is. And actually, as I was doing some, online research for this, I I stumbled upon an article where someone said, it's not fair to refer to David as a man after God's own heart because he was a terrible person.
And I mean, at first glance, it sounds almost heretical, but think about this in modern terms. Right? Someone very influential and powerful uses that power to get a married woman to sleep with him, and then to cover up the adultery he has her husband killed. Pretty rotten. Right?
But see, the Bible has a funny way of not hiding the faults of people, but it does have a way of talking about the restoration of the faults in those people. I wanna read a quote from Alexander McLaren. This will be up on the screens too. This is from the exposition of the holy scriptures. And Alexander McLaren writes this, it is not innocence which makes men good.
This is your man after God's own heart, is it? Runs the common shallow sneer. Yes. Not that God thought little of his foul sin, nor that saints make up for adultery or murder by making or singing Psalms. Not that righteousness as a standard of conduct is lower than morality, but that having fallen, he learned to abhor his sin.
And with deep entrusting God's mercy and many tears struggled out of the mire and with unconquered resolve and strength drawn from a divine source sought still to press towards the mark. It is not the attainment of purity, not the absence of sin, but the presence and operation, though it be partial of an energy which is at war with all impurity that makes a man righteous. And that is a lesson worth learning. Did you catch that? Because I know I know for a long time I've struggled with this.
How how can the Bible refer to David as a man after God's own heart? But McLaren, who is a theologian, he also wrote a lot of commentaries on the scriptures, and, he was also a Scottish pastor, which I know pastor Scott would love that I'm quoting a Scottish guy. You know? And, but he contests that it wasn't David's sin or lack thereof that made him a man after God's own heart. It was his never ending pursuit of God to remove the sin from deep within him.
It was his passion for God to remove all things that were not pursuing God. He throws in one more line, in verse verses 10 through 12 when he says this. He says, do not cast your do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. See, before David, there was a king named Saul. And and Saul was God's anointed.
See, when someone was anointed king over Israel, they received God's Holy Spirit. They received God's Holy Spirit so they could lead the people of Israel with wisdom and strength and power. And there was a time in Saul's reign as king where he stumbled into sin. And the difference between Saul's sin and David's sin was Saul was not repentant of it. He thought his way was better.
He thought he was doing the right thing, and he was unrepentant. And the Bible literally says he was cast out as king. And in one of the saddest verses in the Bible, it says, and the spirit of the Lord departed from Saul. David was in a pit just like Saul. But when he lifts up his prayer to God, he looks up from the pit of the grave he had fallen into, and he looks up to God and says, don't take your Holy Spirit from me.
Don't give up on me. And in this moment, David is recognizing his dependency on God as the only one who can lift him from this pit of blood and lust he had fallen into. So my question today is what about us? I wonder if you, like me, have ever found yourself in a place with your faith where, yeah, you do in fact pray, maybe even every single day, but maybe you never stop to ask God to actually make a change in your heart. Or what would it look like if you did?
What if we started every time we pray with God asking for God to cleanse us from within? Before we pray for our families, before we pray for our neighbors, or even our nation, what if the first thing we did every morning was to ask God for his pardon and purity to make our hearts pure? See, here's the thing. We often want God to do a renovation in our hearts, but God desires to do a restoration of our hearts. Not only to to take little broken parts of us and be like, oh, this part of Mark could use a little pain or this could use a new cabinet over here.
No. God wants to take us and restore us to his original design for us. We're good at asking God to forgive the things we see, but God is looking to do something so much more in our lives, to grab the sin in our hearts by the root and remove them completely. So this morning, friends, what would it look like for us to ask God not just to do a renovation in our hearts? What would it look like to ask God to restore our hearts?
Because even though I'm confident none of us have ever sinned quite like David did, even though someone came up to me after our first service and he said, we're just as bad as David did. We just didn't have the influence he did. And I said, oh, shoot. You're right. But if God could do this work in the life of a murderer and an adulterer, how much more could he do this work in us?
David, even with all his epic failures, was still known as a man after God's own heart. He recognized the sin in his life and asked God to take it all away and restore him. Restore his heart to be one of love and hope and joy and peace. And if God can do that in his life, he can do it in yours. See, even those of us in the room who are Christians, are already followers of Jesus, we are born with this natural propensity towards sin.
We are born with this rebellious spirit within us, and all of us need daily restoration to keep our eyes on Jesus. So my challenge to you is maybe even just for one week, what would your life look like if you started off reading Psalm 51 every day? Maybe you already have a Bible reading time and you could add this to it. Maybe you don't regularly read your Bible and this is a great time to start. What would it look like to start every morning reading Psalm 51?
I wonder if you'd be willing to commit to that today and just see what God does. See how it changes the way you interact with others. See if it changes your outlook on the entire day going into the day. See what difference a clean heart can make in your life. Maybe for some of you here, you've never taken that first step of inviting Jesus into your heart to begin that work.
My challenge to you is to think about this question. What would your life look like if God came into your heart, grabbed the roots of sin in your life, and removed them? What would it look like for your heart to be restored? Because when Jesus died on the cross, he did so. He sacrificed his own life so that we could be made new, so that our hearts could be clean.
So whatever your next step is today, either bringing this prayer into your daily routine or asking God to do a restoring work for the first time in your heart, I'd love to pray for you in this moment. So if you would bow your heads with me, let's go to God in prayer. God, I thank you, for David's heart. Thank you for David's, life and witness. Because, God, I think there are so many times in our own lives where we so many times stumble into sin and feel like we're unworthy.
We're unworthy of being saved. We're unworthy of good things happening to us. We're unworthy of being men and women after your heart. But God, thank you. Thank you for sending your son Jesus, so that no matter how great or small our sin is, we can come to you each and every day and ask to be made new.
Ask for clean hearts. God, in this moment, that's our prayer. Create in us a clean heart and renew a steadfast spirit within us, we pray. In Jesus' name, amen.