Heart Cleansing

Have your Bibles with you turn with me if you would to Psalm 51 will be looking at two verses today verses 10 and 11 create in me a clean heart of God, and renew a right spirit within me, cast me not away from your presence and take not your Holy Spirit from that with me as we got our Lord in prayer. Heavenly father for several weeks we've been study in the fall of a great man of God. We have watched a John of the faith give into temptation and bring great destruction and heartache to his family to his nation and to himself. His sin also brought her to your heart.

But Lord you are sovereign over all this in today's message teaches us that you take our messes use them to whittle away the junk in our lives that don't look like Jesus in this Psalm we see David move from total despair to glorious hope and unbelievable joy we see how using Psalm delete David to pray some amazing words. In another Psalm Psalm 119.

David said before I was afflicted I went astray.

Now keep your word and it was good for me that I've been afflicted that I might learn your statutes while that spiritual maturity.

David is growing up as a child of God. Father do that kind of work in us today matures in the faith, may we pray for a transformed heart today and may review Joyce in your discipline that brings in about we assess prayer in your holy and precious name. Amen. You may be seated. I wish that I could start over. I just wish that I could start over those words were spoken to me. 40 years ago by 45-year-old man who was sitting directly across me in my desk and his wife was with him, his wife and him and been married for 25 years. They have very happy marriage. But now there was a problem with this man work. There was a young lady and they became friends and then they got involved with cheat with each other intimately. It was a sad sad situation happen one time and then this man when it happened was just broken down with grief.

I mean physically, emotionally and spiritually absolutely broken down the cost of such great depression that his wife started asking questions and finally confessed to her what he had done and begged her for forgiveness and she did forgiving, but the grief was just too much for this man to bear absolutely horrible, terrible grief and AA. I talked to them about it and he said you know my whites were given me, but I've hurt her so badly when I look into her face. It just destroys me. He said I wish that I could just take that memory and pull it from her mind.

I wish that I could just walk away from this and never have to think about it again. I wish the past would just go away. I wish I can start over. I just wish I could start over 2000 years ago the night before the crucifixion, Jesus stood before his disciples and he said to his disciples. You will all fall away from me this night. Peter poked at his chest said, Lord, I don't know about the rest of these guys but not me. I will not do that I would go to prison few I would die for you, but I would never deny you.

Jesus said Peter before the cockroaches twice, you will deny me three times taken Jesus out to tapas his house, Peter following got the cops's house, Jesus went on in the house Peter state outside and they begin to talk and then three times people came up to Peter and three times they ask him question, what is your relationship with this Jesus three times.

Peter denied that even knew Jesus the last time he cursed and swore.

And you know who Jesus was the cockroaches.

The second time and then Jesus walked out from the house and and he is he was turning the corner. Peter walked over to him.

Their eyes met and when their eyes met Peter absolutely melted. Never he felt such change. Such cowardice and such embarrassment. The Scripture says that Peter went out and that he wept bitterly. Jesus went to the cross. Three days later he was resurrected from the dead on that early that morning, Mary Magdalena, several women got to the a to the tune and when they got to the tomb I saw that the stone had been rolled away in the tomb was empty and then they looked over and there was an angel and the angel begin to give them instructions and the angel said, listen, you are to to leave here and you were to go to Galilee all the disciples and Peter wanted. They say it that way. I said all the disciples and Peter because Peter felt so unworthy that he did even consider himself to be a disciple any longer.

And all through the next few days. There's only one thing going on in Peter's mind and that is this I wish I could start over. I wish that the past could just be wiped away. I wish that this had never happened folks here were two different men that lived 2000 years apart, and yet the same cry came from barely ups as the as as David cried out 3000 years ago.

I wish that I could just start over.

I got to point someone to share with you today .1 is heart cleansing look in the first 10 verse 10 create me a clean heart of God, and renew a right spirit within me. This is a cry from David to God to forgive his past and letting start over. You see, David is learned some invaluable lessons during this very very difficult time in his life. He learned that he cannot trust his own heart this heart is desperately wicked and deceitful above all things. He is learned that term that this is not about turning over a new leaf and trying harder and trying to do better. He knows that's not working, they do need reformation.

He needs transformation the need to patch up job. He needs a cleansed heart. The praise Lord create me a clean heart work creates a very interesting word in the Hebrew it's the Hebrew word by raw and if you look in the in the Old Testament.

That word is never used at to describe human ability is only used to describe God's ability and how does God create God create sex in a halo. He creates out of nothing. When God created the world. How did he do it for and take up a blog of substance and then form it into the earth that we know you spoke it into existence, but he spoke it into existence. Now, one second, there was a absolute vacuum and in the next second, there was the earth that God just brought interest in the in a matter of seconds the earth that we walk on today. David is praying for that kind of God sent miraculous intervention at this so that his heart would be transformed so that he could become a new creation. Oftentimes I warned you from this pulpit not to fall into the quagmire of hero worship and the reason I warned you about that is because when we make heroes of Christians and then they stumble and they mess up then we get thrown for a loop so you don't need but one hero and that he rose Jesus Christ because he's absolutely sinless. There was no fault within him. He was perfectly without sin. He's not going to mess up so he is our hero. I don't think it's good for us to have heroes but I think it's great for us to have role models and that is people that we see who are really walking with Jesus, and we can file a they are example. Paul even said to do that with him and for script is chapter 11 verse 20 says imitate me as I imitate Christ. So it's okay to to look at Paul and where he's being obedient to the Lord follow him in that obedience 48 years ago God gave me a role model to follow. His name was Charles long Charles long is with the Lord today is one of the godliness. Me and that I've ever met my life amending the 1973 first time he was preaching it in the pulpit at Calvary Baptist Church. I was in the pew. Listening to him keeping a missionary to Vietnam for 17 years and they adjust close down Vietnam for the Americans and Americans. All were forced to get out and he had to leave when he got out of Vietnam. He was called to pastor Christian missionary alliance church in Raleigh, North Carolina, and when I went to seminary was in Wake Forest at Southeastern Baptist theological seminary and is very close to Raleigh and so if I would preaching on a Sunday.

I would go to Charles's church and we became very close friends while he was in Vietnam. He translated the New Testament and the hymnal into the Gira language. The mountain people of Vietnam and he got it printed and distributed four days before Vietnam fail and he was forced to get out. They tell a story that morning back in 1973 that touched my heart.

He said Vietnam is a very clannish land and he said there tribes of people in these different tribes of people always have a particular leader and they look up to their leader and they have great great respect for that leader. He said this one particular tribe that he went to was 100% professing Buddhist 100%.

They had a leader. He was an elderly man's name was Chow and Paul and and Charles Wood would go there about once a week and he made a friend with this mandate sent any talk with them and share the gospel with them. This man would never submit to Christ. Charles made a determination that he was going to pray for him and he was going to pray for him every single day and he did just that about a decade that had gone on and all of a sudden one day Charles was at his home and hear the banging on the door and he went to the door and it was a teenage boy and he said Mr. Charles Mr. Charles you gotta come sit in Chow is calling for you and we think he's dying. Charles jumped in his Jeep with the took the young man with the and they went into the village and there was in Chow at the very front of the village were there was a he had fallen into a sewage sewage ditch, and he was down there, and Charles got down in the Oxman you're with with Liam. The logic Charles. He said I am quickly losing breath he said I'm dying and I'm not prepared to die. He said I've been following a false god for 95 years, and he said now realize that God doesn't even exist piece of my heart hungers for your Jesus, he says, is it too late for me. Charles took his Bible layout is little New Testament and he began to share the gospel with an checkout down in that ditch, and shall begin to cry he right they are prayed with Charles repented of his sins and trusted Christ as Lord and Savior. Charles said that he reached in the picked up in Chow. After that, and he was carrying this man back to his home in Chelsea don't go to my home go to the assembly house. He started going to the assembly house and they got there and Chad looked over at one of the little children.

He said ring the bail and I started ringing the bell and and when they rang the bell. Everybody in the village came running up to see what was going on and when everybody was there in Chow look out over that that huge group of people and he said I want you to know that for 95 years I've been searching for peace and I found no peace at all.

He said today I finally found my peace and his name is Jesus. He should turn around and look at this man and he said I want you to know that this man's God is God and he said Charles would you share with them and Charles long. Got up. He said his pants were covered with Oxman, you're an said the sweat was rolling down off of his brown that hot jungle and he began to share the gospel as he opened his little New Testament up share the gospel with all these people.

Charles said something happened that day. The never seen before or since. He said as he was preaching.

All of a sudden he said there was just a moving of the Holy Spirit. He said it like a gentle way that one of the people and he said they began to sob and they begin to weep and then I got up and they begin to leave, Charles. You know what was going on and looked over it in Chow in Chow said you sit down and just wait. After just a few minutes. The people started coming back and they came back with little idols in their hands and they came back little stone idol since and little wooden idols, and they came back with books of Buddhist women and holy books. Their holy books and there was a huge wooden statue of Buddha, and he took it out, they took it all there there there idols and books and laid them at the feet of Buddha and then they took a torch and they said it all on flame and he completely burned up 750 people fell on their face before God. Trying out crying out to the Lord Jesus to forgive them of their sins and to save them from all for all of eternity. I didn't tell that story quite like Charles did, because Charles made sure that we didn't think he was the hero of that story. He wanted Jesus to get all the glory. It was sent in that pew. That particular Sunday I looked up at him and I and you that I was looking in the face of a man of God, a man who had been given a clean heart and I member walking out of that church building that day begging the Lord that I might have a cleansed heart to heart. That wasn't phony heart that was just deeply in love with Jesus folks I have failed many many times since then I have come short of the glory of God. More times than I won't even think about, but I want you know I have never been the same since that service. I was just turned around as I looked at the example of God taking a man just like me in creating and him a clean heart you know is a pastoral Council. A lot of people who are struggling with problems and when I realize that the problems they are having is problems in spiritual warfare. One of the things I want to share with them is the necessity of a transformed heart and I will share with them. Look AAF. If you have a desire in your heart to please Jesus more than anything else, then there's not a whole lot.

Satan can do to you is not a whole lot Satan can defeat you with if that's where your heart is and I will share with them a great passage in second Corinthians chapter 10 verses three through seven. For though we walk in and in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh, the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down strongholds, casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ and having a readiness to revenge all disobedience when your obedience is fulfilled. Books that last verse describes the transformed heart. The person is a transformed heart disease still see in OEA still stands. Does he still have have wrong thoughts that come into his mind absolutely does.

But here's the difference when those things happen. He is quick to respond. He is quick to repent. He is quick to to take those things and return from them. He has a readiness to revenge all disobedience successful. God desires of us. Christianity has never been meant for just 11 o'clock on Sunday morning Christianity. All the work at 7 o'clock on Monday morning. It all to work at at 10 o'clock on Friday night and it will. If we are seeking that God might create in us a clean heart. David not only asked God to create within them a clean heart, but he also says this, Lord, Lord, renew a right spirit within me. Verse 10 a right spirit is a spirit that hates sin. This all of the our prayer folks with this all to be our prayer Lord, if I get lazy in my thought life didn't break me, Lord, if I come short of your commandments then showed me Charles Spurgeon uses illustration of truth situation that happened a couple of his church as a couple in his church that had been praying for a baby for a number of years and finally got the baby and the baby was born and they just love that little kid. They would play with them all the time. They just enjoyed being around them. They would even bring a babysitter because I want to spend all your time withing and waking him up in the middle, not just to play withing loves a little kid when I think putting to bed in this little bedroom is pretty open and out. They went on the sleep in their bedroom and that it was very hot night so they had the window raised up and during the night. Somehow poisonous snake climbed up the wall through the window slithered across the floor primed. It climbed into the the Creole for the baby wasn't called itself up during the night the baby make some quick short sharp little movies and the snake struck three times and within just moments. The baby was dead. The father came running in the next morning to get his little baby and picking him up and reached down to get that bubbly little child that was so filled with joy and always had a smile on his face and when he reached down, there was nothing but little blue license form of a child.

He took that baby and he held into his chest and he began to weep like crazy. What in the world happened. He said how can this happen and then all of a sudden he looked over in the corner that Creole and he saw the snake. What did he do with that snake you think he might have gone to got the cage and taken that snake and gingerly placed them in the cage brought out the living room to display it before his friends on the every fiber in that man's body moved out and hatred toward that snake and he went and got his acts and he hacked it into a million pieces folks that snake is a picture of our sin and would to God that we would see our sin. In that light. When David prayed for right spirit. He is praying that God would give him the ability to hate his sin. Listen to what David said some hundred 19 and verse 67 before I was afflicted, I want to stray but now I've kept your word in verse 71. He said it is good for me that I have been afflicted that I might keep your statutes. Verse 133. Keep steady. My steps according to your promise and let no iniquity get dominion over me. David said I'm glad that I was afflicted. While I'm glad that I was afflicted you… This is what he saying he said I'm glad that Nathan confronted me. I'm glad that Nathan brought me to my knees with that story. I'm glad that Nathan embarrass me before my friends.

I'm glad that God's hand was heavy upon me.

I'm glad I went through this brokenness. I'm glad I went through this trial. Glad that God did this on my heart because it drove me back to the Lord and it made me hungry for the word of God again. That's repentance. David is not grieving over the consequences of his sin. He is grieving over his sin like that takes us to point to assurance restoration. Look at verse 11. Cast me not away from your presence and take not your Holy Spirit from me. The Scriptures teach us that there is a twofold presence of God and one of them is his omnipresence, which no one can get away from David spoke about at some hundred 39. He said it is absolute futility to try to run away from God and hide your sin is not gonna work.

He said here's a guy that that that says I can't get away from God if I will go to heaven is layer if I go to Haley's layer. If I bury myself in the deepest sea. He is there. I cannot get away from its as absolute effort in futility to try to do that what Francis Thompson was saying in his great polling that he wrote called the hail from heaven.

He said this, there is no hole deep enough. There is no closet dark enough. There is no town far enough away to get away from the convicting presence of God and is his omnipresence is not what Dave is talking about here in this passage when David talks about the presence of God here. He's talking about conscious communion and fellowship with the Holy Spirit of God. David remembered what it was like he remembered how held the spirit of God would undergird him and strengthen him when he went out to do battle and giving the power and the confidence that he needed in God to get that battle one he remembered what it was like when a loved one was had died and he was breathing Holy Spirit of God would give to him that piece that passes all understanding.

He remembered what it was like with the Holy Spirit. What would would call him to write down the dust Psalms that he wrote down and he would get Revelation he would get illuminations in the Holy Spirit and he would write down those as God inspired him to write down those precious words he remembered what it was like to go to the goat of the tabernacle of David, and to worship the Lord and how exciting it was to to experience that worship at the tabernacle, but now for several months that presence of God has been evading David.

David scared now to go out to battle because he doesn't know the gods can undergird him or not, he doesn't know what's can happen and he knows what it's like nail took to experience our death of a loved one and and what it's like not to feel that piece that passes all understanding the river what it was like to to study the word of God, and it went as he studied before the word of God would just pop out at him and give them illumination and giving guidance and giving direction to giving joy. Now he reads the word of God's light written an obituary is just dry and barren team members what it was like to go to the temple, but now he goes and he just going through the motions and there's no joy and there is no touch from the spirit of God. I believe that what David is talking about here is the first stage of chastisement. The first stage of chastisement is God removing the joy in the conscious presence of his spirit from the believer but then look what else he says verse 11 take not the Holy Spirit from me is that ever happened to a person loses salvation to a person who is regenerated born again by the spirit of God, can God take that away from him and so that when he dies, he's going to spend forever in hail the answer to that. Thank God and praise God is no, no, absolutely not. Romans chapter 11 verse 29 system the gifts and the calling of God are without repentance.

They are irrevocable.

It cannot happen if you been genuinely born again then no one knows saying will ever pluck you out of the father's hand. David had not lost his salvation but he lost the assurance of salvation.

He remembers back to his predecessor, King Saul.

Hey, remember how King Saul was at first King King Saul look like a child of God. He talked like a child of God.

For the most part even acted like a child of God. He was going through all that and he looked real but his heart was apostate and he was rebellious against God, and he gave the end to defiant deliberate disobedience, but only God had to speak to him and said Saul I have rejected you, and I've chosen for myself a man after God's own heart. Saul was like those who Paul spoke of in Romans chapter 1, who had been given over to a reprobate mind now. Paul understands what's going on here and Paul understands that there is genuine true assurance of salvation and he talked about that in second Timothy chapter 1 verse 1220 said, for I know whom I have believed, and persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed in the him against that day. That's true assurance.

That's glorious assurance but is their fault assurance. Absolutely there is in first Corinthians chapter 9 verse 27 Paul said, for I discipline my body and keep it under control.

Last, after I preach to others, I myself should become a castaway. The word castaway is the Greek word doc, you must and it means reprobate. It means one who's been cut off from God.

While was Paul saying that he thought he could loses salvation. No Paul was saying that if he could get off into sin if he could live with it. If the Holy Spirit did not chasten him and bring him back to repentance. And that would not prove that he lost his salvation, but it would prove that he had been deceived by about eight.

He had been deceived by sin and that he had not lost his salvation but the heat he had been deceived by this been deceived by sin and and that is not lost that he had lost it had not lost a salvation I say in his right. It would prove even deceived by dwelling sin have never been saved to begin with.

That's what David is praying the Lord. He said I don't want to be another King Saul. I don't want to be given over to a reprobate mind.

I don't want to run from you I will run to you, even if it means discipline and trials and heartaches, folks, that's a transformed heart far from sinless, far from perfect but loyal and faithful and hungry for Jesus that is genuine repentance is pray.

Heavenly father we saw today the importance of assurance David CN caused him to die out your chastisement of his CN drove him to repentance where you remove the doubt. What a glorious and hot you are. It is amazing us that you love us too much to let us be happy in our sin.

Father, we need the transformed heart, we need to hate sin like you hated, we need to look at our own sin and then look to the cross at the payment that Jesus made so that we could be forgiven. Sin is a deceiver Lord. It makes us focus on self. It takes our focus off Christ.

Forgive us, transform us and use us to bring you glory, may we go to our death. With Paul's testimony. I thought a good fight, I finished my course, I have kept the faith. We asked this prayer in the precious and holy name of Jesus. Amen