Confession

Have your Bibles with you turn with if you would to Psalm 51 to start with verses one through three. Have mercy on me a God, according to your steadfast love. According to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions, wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, cleanse me from my sin, brought know my transgressions and my sin is ever before me that with me as we got our Lord in prayer. Heavenly father in second Corinthians 14 Paul told us that sometimes you allow us to go through times of suffering and affliction, so that we might be able to comfort others who were going through the same thing 3000 years ago, your servant David committed horrible sin.

He brought pain to himself to his family to his nation into your heart but you broke David and David genuinely repented. Then you inspired him to pin down the prayer Psalm 51 is a pleading for mercy is a confession of sin is a formula for repentance is the hope for restoration.

David prayed these words for himself but they were pin down for us.

First Corinthians chapter 10 verse 11 Paul said of these things happen to them as an example, but they were written for our instruction as we contemplate these words that David pin down. May we take our focus off of David and focus on our own heart, our own sin in our own need.

Help me to preach with clarity and faithfulness today. Please do for us what you did for David Ford is in the precious and holy name of Jesus that we pray. Amen. You may be seated. Last week we were studying the confrontation between the prophet Nathan and King David David a committed adultery with Bathsheba and then he had murdered to cover up his sin and for several months. David has just been living alive, but then on this particular day, the prophet Nathan walks into David's palace. He goes right up to the throne and he tells David this heartbreaking story. The story of a man who was extremely wealthy had all the money in the world. He had great herds of cattle. He had great flocks of sheep. The man that lived right next to him was a very poor man had almost nothing at all except one little ewe lamb that you lamb was a very special lamb. It was a path of the family and that whole family loved it with all their heart. It was like family to them and they cared for it dearly.

One day a traveler came by the rich man's house and and wanted to eat supper and so the rich man walked right at of his property right by all of his cattle. All of his sheep walked right over to the poor man's house, took his lamb and killed the lamb and they ate the poor man's lamb for supper when David heard this he was absolutely livid how you can see the steam coming off his head. He was seizing and he was ranting and raving's Mike and all these proclamations. These promises that if you bring that man to me. He will be judged and I will bring that man to his death is all that's going on. Nathan lifts his arm up reports that long bony profits finger right into the face of David and he says David thou art the man you're the rich man in the story David you committed adultery with Bathsheba and then you had her husband Uriah the Hittite killed to cover over your sin, and David absolutely lost it. I made all this false bravado. All this tough macho stuff I just just melted right then into it into a puddle. David fell prostrate before the prophet Nathan and he cried out. Oh my God oh my God, I have sinned against you. How long did it take how much time between this confrontation that the prophet Nathan had with David until David prayed this prayer that we call Psalm 51 did it take months. I don't think so. Did it take weeks. I don't think so then it take days.

I don't think so. Did it take hours.

I don't think so. I think it took minutes, I think Nathan got up. He walked out of the house and David immediately went to his bedroom and he told the soldiers to to that he was not to be disturbed and there he got on his face before God and he repented focused. This is the greatest chapter in the Bible on the subject of repentance is a tremendously important passage yes I will. What I have big a deal is repentance will John Mark was the of the man who wrote the very first gospel and the first words that we have from the words of Jesus in the very first gospel were these words repent and believe the gospel when Peter preached a great sermon on the day of Pentecost be a priest and the people were deeply under conviction and they came to Peter and they subpoena what must we do and Peter said repent and be baptized in the name of Jesus and then and in Luke chapter 13 verse five terrible tragedy happened in Jerusalem, a tower had fallen over an 18 people had been crushed and killed in that tower. The people on the street were talking about it and they were saying. Why did God allow these 18 people to be killed like this. Jesus went to them and said do you think that these people that were killed and that that you think they were worse sinners than you because a tower fell on them. He said, but I tell you no except European yet you shall all likewise perish. What is it mean to repent the word repent is a the Hebrew word shoe. It means that you turn it so your you're running away from God is fast as you can go. God brings conviction into the heart, and you turn around like 180° turn and run back to God as fast as you can go. That's repentance.

I think about the New Testament word met Inouye that word is repentance and what is that word means that that word means that it's a change in mind that leads to a change in heart that leads to a change in behavior that leads to a change in your lifestyle.

Charles Spurgeon wrote one of the greatest commentaries it's ever been written on the book of Psalms is called the treasury of David and Charles Spurgeon preached on all 150 Psalms. He said the hardest one he had to preach on was the Psalm 51 and he said the reason for that was because he came to realize that the pride of David was also his own cry. Spurgeon said when we read Psalm 51. We are standing on holy ground and we need to understand that David is a picture of every single one of us and we need to be where David was and where was David.

Where was David. At this point in time. I'll tell you where he was.

He was prostrate before the Lord. He was broken in his pride, he was humbled in his heart. He was open and honest before God, and he was more dependent upon God than he had ever been before.

That's why Spurgeon was so wild.

By this particular Psalm what it did to Spurgeon brothers and sisters. It needs to do to us what you hear the us because God's call for our repentance is not a call to turn over new leaf is not a call to just try to do better. You see when God calls us to repentance is a God initiated soul cleansing, life changing, Christ exalting, turning in the heart. Repentance is God empowering you to turn from sin not heard preachers to alter calls and assail the altar call, I will.

You just need to come and walk down the aisle and you need to express faith in repent and if you do that God will give you the gift of a being born again folks don't believe that you don't repent and express faith in order to be born again, but you repent and believe because you are born again, a spiritually dead man can't believe a spiritually dead man can't repent PSD but only God the Holy Spirit can regenerate only God the Holy Spirit can bring a lost person to life.

Only God the Holy Spirit can make you hate sin that naturally you love.

In Ephesians chapter 2, the apostle Paul said this as he said and you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins, for by grace are ye saved through faith and that not of yourself is the gift of God not of works lest any man should boast. So what does that tell us votes.

It tells us that God is the author of our salvation. It tells us that God ought to be the one who gets the glory for our salvation, not us as individuals, got out to get the glory. P out to be the one that is lifted up, but siding get saved because I was smarter than somebody else because I was I was more spiritual than somebody else, or because I was better than someone else.

The only reason I was saved is because God reached down from heaven spiritually rent resurrected me and gave me a heart to book to turn eyes to see and ears to hear it all of God and God should be the one who gets the glory for our salvation. The folks if that is true, does that mean that there's no need for repentance know that does not mean that it all our faith and repentance are not human works to 202 merit God's favor, but our faith and repentance are spiritual fruit or spiritual evidence that we are genuinely saved Jesus, and you will know those that are here is about what by their fruit and the fruit first and primarily is faith and repentance. But it is a work of God and we need to understand this if there is no repentance then there is no salvation Richard Owen Roberts wrote one of the most powerful books that I've ever read on repentance and wanted to share with you what he said here listing this carefully.

There is an increasingly common failure in the church in understanding the mandatory nature of repentance. Some seem to be of the persuasion that repentance is an option.

One can't repent. They say and maybe even should, but it certainly isn't mandatory in consequence multitudes of salt to turn to Christ without ever turning from their sins. Thus, it is becoming increasingly difficult if not impossible to distinguish the church from the world. Others have developed the preceding era into a pernicious doctrine that is being widely taught and preached this grievously erroneous viewpoint insist that repentance has nothing whatever to do with salvation. That repentance is described by these false teachers is a work.

They insist we are not saved by works. We saved by faith alone. The air is not so much in stressing salvation by faith alone, as it is in failing to understand the irrevocable link that always exist between repentance and faith to assume that centers can turn to the righteous one without attorney from their own unrighteousness is the height of theological nonsense in attempting to describe repentance as a work. These teachers are much more successful in proving their ignorance of the holy one, sad to say, this grievous error is responsible for incredible damage throughout major portions of the church and all I can say to that is a man that's pretty much the attitude of the modern day church in it and what is it why think it's the us in a nutshell, we have lost our all of God folks.

God doesn't wow us anymore sin to so many people even claim to be Christians is just a joke, it's a joke, because we haven't seen and we haven't felt the holiness of God and when we do it hurts folks before a person continually repent. He's going to feel deep conviction over his sin. This is what the apostle Paul calls worldly grief, I was talking to. Excuse me godly grief, not worldly grief layer of talking to a missionary a few years ago and he'd come home on furlough been gone for about four years. He was in a country that is kind of backward, only 5% of the nation claim to be Christians, and he told me some amazing things. He said that when I preach there. He said the people want to hear. He said there open and he said they they feel conviction and there's repentance and and there's brokenness. They are, he said. Very seldom do I preach that somebody doesn't come to know Christ as Lord and Savior. He said I got back home to the United States. He said I could not believe the hardness of the hearts of the people in America. He said there is a spirit of spiritual apathy here that is absolutely scary. AAA said it seems that nothing moves the hearts of the people in America anymore.

He said it's almost like God is drawn a line in the sand and should go no further and that America's step over that line will do what we want to do. He said preaching here is like preaching to a brick wall is that I don't see godly grief but I see a lot of worldly grief. What's the difference. Second Corinthians chapter 7 Paul does a very powerful job explaining the difference between worldly grief and godly grief this morning in Sunday school is asking Larry Oldham what is to be preaching on tonight I have a funeral this afternoon and I'm supposed to pre-preach and myself. I call Larry up and told mom got this funeral and I'm afraid it's going to run a little too long and I might not be able to get back your own time, could you preach for me and and he he very happily agreed to do that is asking us to what he preached on the ice and preaching on repentance. I said what what what passage and he said second Corinthians chapter 7. That's exactly what I'm reading you here talk about God put things together. You come here tonight and you can hear a whole lot more better representation that when I'm given you in this section, but this is what Paul said, for even if I made you grieve with my letter. I do not regret it. Though I did regret it for us see that letter grieved you the only for a little while as it is. I rejoice not because you were grieved, but because you were grieved into repentance for you felt a godly grief so that you suffered no loss to us for godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death for see what Arnesen is the godly grief is produced in you but also what eagerness to clear your sales, what indignation, what fear, what longing was seal what punishment and every point you have proved your sales innocent in this matter, books, worldly grief is regret in its remorse is being sorry that you got caught. It is not being sorry for your sin. It's being sorry for the consequences of your sin and worldly grief never leads to genuine repentance godly grief and sorrow over your sin, because it is dishonored God, but Psalm 51 is the opposite of worldly grief is the greatest chapter in the Bible on the subject of repentance and praise God. It tells us if there is hope for every single one of us here to point someone to share with you very quickly.

Number one, a plea for mercy.

Look at verse one. David said, have mercy on me. Oh God, according your steadfast love. According to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions unto the picture David if if you will. After his confrontation with Nathan the prophet Nathan just turned around. He walks out of the building and David immediately gets up. He heads off to the bedroom.

He says to the soldiers. I do not want to be disturbed and I can just picture him. They are as he goes into his bedroom. He falls on his knees. He begins to pray.

Then he realizes that's probably not where he needs to be any moves from a kneeling position to a prostate prostrate position at Annie's line on his face with his nose down in the dust and he's just got a puddle of tears out in front of him and as he is lying there in the floor. I can imagine the Lord just bring into his mind the many blessings that God has given him to his life. I can imagine him remembering that flood that he heard when Goliath hits up hit the gray on when he failed day out on the battlefield.

I can imagine him thinking about the that the day that his first son was born I can imagine him remembering the time when he was out there in the pasture watching over his sheep in a line tried to attack the sheep in God spiritually empowered him and he went any tour that line apart with his bare hands. And then there was a bear that did the same thing and got empowered him again and he tore the bear up with his bare hands.

I think David probably remember back to the day that they brought the ark of the covenant back to Jerusalem. I took it to Mount Zion and I placed the ark of the covenant in the a.m. in the tabernacle of David, I can imagine David thinking of that day that the cabin the ark was in the tabernacle and in the people were all there and they were worshiping and all of a sudden the Shekinah glory of God start shining out of the entrance of that tabernacle and what David felt like during that time. I can imagine what David that David remembering back to that that time when he was out in the shepherds pasture and any was working in and nobody else was.

They are just him. The sheep in God.

It was during that time that the Lord inspired him to write so many songs sure David. Remember that time when a garrison of Philistine soldiers took him and were ready to kill him and David was scared and all of a sudden that fear just left his heart. God took it running his God reminded him David. You're to be the next king of Israel. I promised you that, and you will not die because I never break my promises with all those memories of God's goodness in God's gifts in God's grace.

He remembers that awful night when he walked out onto the roof of his his palace and he looks down on the building next to him and there's the beautiful Bathsheba bathing herself. He feels the tug of the Holy Spirit on his heart to turn to get away.

All of a sudden the Lord begins to bring Scripture to his mind. Psalm 101 verse three.

I will set in a wicked thing before my eyes. Maybe the words of Job and Joe chapter 31 verse one. I made a covenant with my eyes. Why should I look upon a made he remembers that still small voice of God speaking to his heart warning him to stop right where he was and yet David just dismissed all of that conviction to remember thinking to himself.

It couldn't hurt just to look. That's no big deal in your member to have the Holy Spirit was just grieved down in his spirit. He then thought a Bathsheba had he taken advantage of her event thought of Uriah the Hittite who and how he had betrayed Uriah the Hittite's great loyalty to him.

He remembered what in this it does his own wives and heritage shamed all of them and he remembered what it is done to God. Not only broken God's law. Broken God's heart.

The first thing David does as he's getting ready to repent is to cry for mercy.

Folks, if you're going to repent. If it's going to be real if it's going to be what God wants it to be.

It needs to start with a cry for mercy right point to specific confession. Look at verses two and three wash me thoroughly for my sin and cleanse me for my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin front of my transgressions. My sin is ever before me. What kind of confession is the innocent specific confession. He's not using generalizations here he is not using a euphemisms here he is confessing specifics to God have ever heard anybody pray this way all Lord we done a whole lot of stuff wrong, please just forgive us for all the junk that we done. Not much conviction there is. It not much detail, specifics, and that both when we are praying and it's a prayer of repentance, then we need to pray specifically, we need to pray personally to this God.

God wants us to. For this to be a personal matter. Listen to David's personal pronouns that he uses here. He said wash me, cleanse me. I acknowledge there's none of that we stuff here when I pray privately asking God for forgiveness and I start saying we and us, all I'm doing is shifting the blame only say something like that. We in this church often almost every Sunday.

Have a confession of our sins.

And I think that's a good thing we say before the Lord corporately.

We confess we repent we forgive and I think that's good because nobody is compelled to do that when I'm confessing sin publicly. I am not speaking for you. I'm speaking with you huge difference between corporately confessing our sin privately, confessing our sin if him privately confessing my sin.

I leave just not say weed but I I need to say I because I don't know what's in your heart. I don't know what you're thinking or if you're really repentant. All I knows what's going on in my own heart. Folks, it's wrong to pray.

We if you're pray and privately, because that's just shifting blame. Notice how specific and detailed. David is here he is describing his failure to God and he doesn't just just play all Lord I was wrong but he he shares three different ways in which he has sinned. First of all, he peacefully speaks of iniquity is seen as iniquity aces wash me for my iniquity.

What does that mean I I remember back when I was in seminary went to southeastern field Baptist theological seminary in Wake Forest, North Carolina.

We would meet our classes in these buildings that were built back in the 1920s and I had these old right steam radiators knows radiators would get hot as a firecracker. One day my good friend, my Dickey column came into class late and he brought in the end of the class a plastic vase with plastic flowers in it he was. It was a gift that is going to give to his wife. He was really thinking he reached over there and he put it on the radiator and when he put it on the radiator just forgot about it.

Dr. Cook, our professor got up to teach and he started teaching the lecture got into his lecture and all of a sudden the radiator came all and after the radiator came on for just a few minutes. I mean everybody started smelling the strange smell and Dickey looked over there and there was that that that vase and those flowers that he just melted down into a garbled mess, and he ran a very took his knife and he scraped it all off, he was holding it like this in and a Dr. Cook to Mr. Cullum which you come up here and and Dickey started walking up there, his face red as a beet, and he said, Dr. Cook said let me have that and he handed that garbled Emmaus over to Dr. Cook and he held it up in his hands and he said students do you see this, he said I don't want you to ever forget this. What we have here is a picture of iniquity. What is iniquity iniquity the word iniquity means twisted or perverted out of shape iniquity always has to do with moral sin. David was saying my sin is not just a sin of of of dishonesty is not just a sin of a lack integrity. My my sin is a moral sin committed adultery if I took an act that God created to only be enjoyed in the context and into the boundaries of marriage. And I twisted it and I perverted it and I cheapened it and I made something ugly out of something that God intended to be beautiful.

My sin was an iniquity. It was a moral sin.

Folks idea of twisted says it pretty well. God is the one who ordained and instituted the sexual relationship between a husband and a wife. And when God did that. It was meant to be pure. It was meant to be the glue that would hold a marriage together, but sin causes twisted thinking that it when David saw Bathsheba bathing on a roof everything that he knew and believed about marital infidelity just flew right out the window. I he looked at this lady and while she was beautiful, yet so good looking wives or nothing like this.

She was beautiful. Besides that, he's the king of Israel. He's done a lot of these people he ought to be able to enjoy some pleasure. I ought to be able to forgive this in my goodness. She is so beautiful I mean she is such a temptation, not man would have turned this down, Joseph would have never Joseph the son of the patriarch Jacob who was sold into slavery and part of her balding and part of her as a very wealthy man. He may Joseph they steward the manager of always his household at this point in time Joseph was probably between 18 and 21 years old. He was a single man. He had no wife he was young he was in the very peak of his manhood and at Ed and at that very peak of his manhood. Potiphar's wife came to him and approaching Mattea. He's such a rich man I'll guarantee you she had to be just as beautiful as Bathsheba and she came in she propositioned Joseph even propositioned her. She came in she propositioned him so he could very well say this was not my fault he didn't do that.

He said there are no I can't do this. How can I sin against God and do this wicked thing. She was so mad that she lied about Joseph having thrown in prison. But let me take something that's godliness that is holiness. If David had turned his head if he had walked back into the palace that day, he would have honored God he would've saved countless lives and he would've had a testimony that would've spoken very powerfully to our world, but is thinking melted into a twisted mess and we are still bemoaning that today. That's iniquity. The second word that David uses is the word sin that's the Hebrew word, talk, talk, and it means missing the mark. It's a picture of a man standing before a target and he's got a bow and arrow and shooting the arrows at the target. Not only does it missed the bull's-eye booted that even get to the target just fall short and Romans chapter 3 verse 23 Paul said, for we have all seen on the come short of the glory of God. The Pharisees did not get this concept. The Pharisees were walking around their chest poked out, Bragg and all self-righteous because they had not committed the physical act of adultery by committing adultery with someone else's wife and stealing her they hadn't done that they felt like they were fine. Jesus corrected their thinking and Jesus said this to them you heard it said by them of all that shalt not commit adultery but I see in you. If you look upon the woman as to lust after her youth committed adultery already with her in your heart. David's physical relationship with Bathsheba was more heinous, more harmful and more hurtful than just his lust. But make no mistake about it. His lust was sin. It was coming short of the glory of God.

It was missing God standard.

One of the Pharisees hate Jesus so much. The Pharisees hated Jesus because they Jesus took them made them go further than just what was going on with their physical bodies. He went to their heart and folks, Jeremiah said, the heart of man is desperately wicked and deceitful above all things. Who can know it.

Truth of the matter is, none of us are so close to God that we view sin as it really is none of us hate sin like we ought to hate sin and none of us have consciences that are sensitive and tender as they need to be taught. David's third word of confession is transgression verse three for I know my transgression and my sin is ever before me. The word transgression means stepping over a boundary.

First John three forces. Sin is the transgression of the law, God drew a line in the sand and said no further. And then we purposely deliberately step over that line, probably the greatest example that we have of this is Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit in the garden so David just tried to send this is what he's confessing. He describes it in three ways. He said first my sin was a twisted moral sin. That's iniquity, he said. Second, I have come short of God standard and that is sin, and then third. I stepped over God's boundary and that is transgression.

Without that kind of confession.

There is no genuine repentance. David is doing what every one of us should be doing praying that God would restore to us a sensitive conscience folks. That was the need of David Ness. The need of dog I need a conscience is sensitive in God's hands so that he can lead, guide and direct me in the way that I need to go the spray heavenly father David was devastated and broken by his own sin you led him to repentance. This first step was confession he could do nothing until he was honest and open with you and himself. This confession was detailed and specific. He refused to be vague. He refused to cover up areas of his sin. He laid it on the table before you before himself and before us.

Father, we don't like that is embarrassing, so uncomfortable makes us look bad. But that's what we need.

We need to quit hiding sin start hating it.

We need to realize that striving for holiness is not an option in the Christian life. Father, let us learn from David that they are confession build humility into our hearts and make us more dependent on you board is in the precious and holy name of Jesus that we pray. Amen