I'd like you to turn in your Bibles to Psalm 51 before we have the Lord's Supper. One of the glories of the Scriptures is the reality of the manifestation of our Lord and the reality of the manifestation of us. And if it's not one of your favorite verses in all the scriptures, it ought to be. This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, 1 Timothy 1.15, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the chief. If you have time to read Romans 7, you'll have a glorious description of what it is to be a sinner in this world. For I know, Paul says on so many occasions in Romans 7, I know that the law is spiritual. I know that in me, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing, for to will is present with me, but how to perform that which is good I find not. For the good that I would, I do not, but the evil which I would not, that I do. Sinners. Sinners are a sacred thing, because sinners So here's a psalm to send us on our way out into this world. It's a psalm and it's a prayer. Now it's a prayer that's certain to be heard. I'll just read it and then we'll just look at it briefly because I just think it's so glorious. It's to the chief musician, a psalm of David when Nathan the prophet came unto him after he had gone into Bathsheba. So we know the context very, very clearly. And I love how this psalm begins. Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness, and according to the multitude of thy tender mercies. Blot out my transgressions, wash me thoroughly from mine iniquities, and cleanse me from my sin. For I acknowledge my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. "'Against thee and thee only have I sinned, "'and done this evil in thy sight, "'that thou mightest be justified when thou speakest, "'and be clear when thou judgest. "'Behold, I was shapen in iniquity, "'and in sin did my mother conceive me.'" He's not talking about the act of conception, he's talking about his birth from Adam originally. "'Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward part, And in the hidden path thou shalt make me to know wisdom. Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean. Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Make me to hear joy and gladness, that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice. hide thy face from my sins, and blot out all mine iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from thy presence, and take not thy Holy Spirit from me. Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation, and uphold me with thy free spirit. Then, then will I teach transgressors thy ways, and sinners shall be converted unto thee. Deliver me from blood guiltness, Guiltiness, O God, thou God of my salvation, and my tongue shall sing aloud of thy righteousness. O Lord, open thou my lips, and my mouth shall show forth thy praise. For thou desirest not sacrifice, else I would give it. Thou delightest not in burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit. a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise. Do good in thy good pleasure unto Zion, build thou the walls of Jerusalem. Then shalt thou be pleased with the sacrifices of righteousness, with the burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings. Then shall I offer bullocks upon thine altar. That's a prayer that's been prayed by sinners for 3,000 years. It's still a prayer prayed by sinners. And it's a prayer which the Lord answers in the most wonderful way. Don't you love the honesty of the scriptures? Don't you love the fact that before God We can be honest about what we are, about who we are, and we don't need to make any pretense, and we don't need to put on any show in any way whatsoever. Obviously there's no excusing the horrible sin that David did. And this is a man after God's own heart, so there's no licentiousness involved in this at all. But this is a great guide, and it's a great comfort, isn't it? What a prayer, what a prayer. Paul said, by prayer and supplication, Present, let your requests be made known to God. Our God said, ask and it will be given to you. Seeking you shall find knock on the door and it shall be open to you. And here, let's just recite David's petitions and may they be our petitions. The first one is in verse one. What a great cry of a sinner. Have mercy upon me, O God. It's mercy we seek. We don't want rewards and we don't even want pity. We just need mercy. Lord, be merciful to me, the sinner, the publican, the Canaanite woman. But his mercy is based on his lovingkindness. According to thy lovingkindness, according to the multitude, unto the multitude of thy tender mercies, blot out my transgressions. That's mercy, isn't it? What great mercy from our God. Our mercy. There is a multitude of tender mercies. Tender mercies. And that's his plea, isn't it? This is what mercy does, isn't it? Blot out my transgressions. How great they are. How innumerable they are. But what great mercy there is to cover the sins of all God's elect children. What a great plea. He says, blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity. Cleanse me from my sin. David wants the mercy of pardon, but he wants that mercy in such a way that the sins are gone forever. He wanted them blot out. He wanted them erased from the record completely. And that's a miracle and a wonder of the gospel of God. God can blot out our iniquities. In the Lord Jesus Christ, he's blotted them out. Isaiah 43 verse 25, it says, I, even I am he that blotteth out thy transgressions. And why does he do it? For mine own sake. And I will not remember thy sins. Just over the page if you're in Isaiah in verse 21 and 22. Remember these, O Jacob, in Israel, for thou art my servant, I have formed thee, thou art my servant as Israel, thou shalt not be forgotten of me. I have blotted out as a thick cloud thy transgressions, and as a cloud thy sins. Return unto me, for I have redeemed thee. Sing, O heavens, sing, what's the song of heaven? You've washed us from our sins in your blood, and you've made us kings and priests unto God. Sing. Obliterate them. Obliterate these sins. Let none remain. What a wonder the gospel is, isn't it? The God in the Lord Jesus Christ. on the cross of Calvary has blotted out my sins. Wash me thoroughly, says our pleading David. Wash me. Wash me thoroughly. Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquities and cleanse me from my sin. How defiling sin is. What defilement David had brought to Bathsheba, to Uriah, to his family for generations to come. Sin defiles. It defiles the soul, defiles the body. It makes us corrupt. What a shocking time David had in the corruption of that, in the deceitfulness of sin, and in the pain of his separation from God. Nothing was going to fix it. Nothing was going to fix it except the tender mercy of God. He couldn't go back to the law, he couldn't go back to his obedience, he couldn't go back to his record, he couldn't go back to the fact that he was a sweet psalmist of Israel, he couldn't go back to the fact that he had slain Samson, Goliath, he couldn't go back to any of those things. He just went back to God. That's what sinners do. They go back to God. He pleads, wash me, cleanse me. Wash me and cleanse me. Washing is a work being done. Cleansing has to do with a work that's accomplished. He's washed his people from their sins. And I love how he owns the transgressions as mine. He says, wash me thoroughly from mine iniquities, from my sins, for I acknowledge my transgression and my sin is ever before thee. And he says, against thee and thee only. And David's plea to God is, you take away the sins. You take away the sins. Where was David looking? David was looking to the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross at Calvary. against thee. Behold, he says, I was shapen in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me. He's acknowledging the fact that sin is a noun before it's a verb. Sin is what we are before it is what we do. If sin is just what we do, then fixing things and doing all sorts of remedial work can help an awful lot. If sin is what you are, then you need a new creation. So I love the reformation of lives, and I love the fact that in the events of this world, given what's happened in America in the last couple of weeks, there might be a moral reformation. And good on it! If it does happen, there's a moral reformation. But that's not what God's children need. We need to be cleansed from what we are. Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts, and in the hidden part thou shalt make me to know wisdom. David wasn't looking to any outward things at all. He was looking to his heart. He says, make thou desirest truth in the inward part. God's looking at our hearts. He does see all that happens on the outside, but he sees our hearts. And I love how he finishes, doesn't he, saying, a broken heart, in verse 17, the sacrifices of God, the sacrifices God, are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not desire. He's being honest with God. He's being honest with God. But I love what he goes on to say. Purge me with hyssop. and I shall be clean. Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. What a gracious, gracious God. Hyssop was that plant that was used to apply the blood to the doorposts. And if you're in the house with blood on the doorposts, what was God looking for that night when he passed over, he kept in judgment? He was looking for the blood. Exodus 12, when I see the blood, I will pass over you. Purge me with hyssop. God sees the blood. All the blood sacrifices are offered and sprinkled in all of these Old Testament pictures, the pictures of Christ the Lamb. Purge me, purge me. Make me to hear joy and gladness, and the bones which thou hast broken, that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice. isn't it wonderful that our God is a faithful father who chastises us and he's a faithful God that says in sin you can go this far and go no further and I'll chastise you and I'll cause you to come back to me as David did in this psalm and you'll keep coming back The bones that thou hast broken, the very core of our being is broken. The very structure of our lives is broken down by the reality of our sin against God. And listen to what he says, hide thy face from my sins and blot out all my iniquities. He keeps wanting them to be blotted out. He doesn't want them just dealt with in any other way. He wants them dealt with so completely that they've gone altogether. And then he says, create in me. clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me." David didn't ask for a changed heart. He didn't have a heart where these modern people say, well, open your heart to the Lord Jesus Christ, or give your heart to the Lord. He doesn't want our hearts. David wasn't praying that sinner's prayer. He was saying, give me a new heart. creating me a new heart, a clean heart, oh God, and renew a right spirit within me. He wanted his salvation and the blotting out of his iniquities. what was not there by nature, and then you renew in me what you've created. You renew it again and again. Renew a right spirit within me. And listen to what David's great concern was in his sin. He says, cast me not away from your presence, and take not thy Holy Spirit from me. What was David's great anguish in his sin? The removal, the separation he felt between himself and God because of his sin. He says, cast me not away. Take not thy Holy Spirit from me. Restore unto me the joy of my heart. of thy salvation, and uphold me with thy free spirit. You do it freely. Don't you love what Hosea says about our great God? He says in Hosea chapter 14, he says, I will heal, verse 4, I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely. And why does he do that? Don't you love the fact that he brings us back to himself? We know, those who know his presence know what it is for him to be absent as it appeared from us. I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely. What's the cause of his love? God loves because he loves, Deuteronomy 7. He just loves because he loves, and all of his love is in the Lord Jesus Christ. I will love them freely, for mine anger is turned away from him. Restore unto me. And so this not only is a prayer for a sinner, but this is a prayer of the preacher. is a prayer that every true God sent preacher will pray. He says in verse 13, Then will I teach transgressence thy way. I'm not here, and none of God's servants are here to stand above other people and say, look how I behave and look how you ought to behave. We just are beggars. We are mercy beggars who And we just hand out the manna and say, this is our God, this is our Saviour, this is what it is to be in relationship with Him, this is how He draws black sliders back to Himself, this is how He saves His people and keeps His people saved. God hates clergy laity. The whole notion of clergy laity, God hates. I was chatting to someone in the break that the Church of England has just appointed a female, a woman to be the Archbishop of Canterbury. And of course there'll be a whole bunch of Anglicans on many, many sides of the debate and all of them will be we know, we know, we know sort of people. And none of them will be asking that the Lord asked, who do you say that I am? What is the gospel? None of them will be asking, where on earth can you find a single hint in the scriptures about something like this denomination to be established and maintained by human beings for the last 500 or 600 years. None of them will ask that. May we come like David. Listen to what he goes on to say. I will teach transgressors thy ways, and sinners shall be converted unto thee. A broken-hearted preacher who knows the glory of a broken-hearted Lord who came into this world to save his bride from her sins by his sacrifice on the cross of Calvary. That's why we're just proclaiming him. He is the gospel. We keep proclaiming him. We keep proclaiming the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. What glory there is in the restoration of his people to himself when they have sinned as grievously as David did. When they had sinned as grievously as Saul of Tarsus and others had done. Lord have mercy on people. Deliver me from blood guiltiness, O God, thou God of my salvation. And then my tongue shall sing aloud of what? Thy righteousness. David didn't have an ounce of righteousness in himself. And what are we declaring up with? They'll sing, they'll declare, thy righteousness and thy righteousness only. There is only one righteousness. It is the righteousness of God in the Lord Jesus Christ. My tongue shall sing aloud. I pray that this is the portion for us in this fellowship of ours, that we will sing aloud of the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ. O Lord, open thou my lips, and my mouth shall show forth It's then, after all of this confession, and all of this blotting out of our transgressions, and all of this abundant multitude of tender mercies, and His mercy, and the washing, and the cleansing, and the creating of a new heart, then, then we'll sing. Then we'll... Praise Him for who He is and for the glory of His salvation. For thou desirest not sacrifice, else I would give it. Thou desirest not burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart. O God, thou wilt not despise. What a remarkable promise. A broken and contrite heart. O God, thou wilt not despise. Why don't we close by going to Isaiah chapter 57. I can read it for you if you like, but there's just an amazing verse that relates to this psalm and God's answer to the prayer and the pleas of a sinner like David. Verse 59, Isaiah 57. For thus saith the high and lofty one that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is holy. I dwell in the high and holy place with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit. to revive the spirit of the humble and to revive the heart of the contrite ones. Don't you love the fact that God Brothers and sisters, we have a glorious gospel. We have a particularly glorious gospel for sinners. Let's pray. Our Heavenly Father, we do thank you that the Lord Jesus Christ came into this world to save sinners. And we praise you, Heavenly Father, that it is a work of your sovereign grace and your tender mercy and your absolute sovereign command and rule over all things to cause us to come to you as broken-hearted and contrite-hearted sinners. Oh, Heavenly Father, we thank you for the promise of the fact that you dwell with such people. eternally in eternity we thank you heavenly father that such can come into your presence and look again and again and look only and look always to your dear and precious son and the wonder of what transpired on the cross of Calvary when he was made sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. Oh, our Heavenly Father, we thank you for the communion and the fellowship and the glory that comes to you All being the Gospel, the Gospel of God, the Gospel of your dear and precious Son. Heavenly Father, as we eat and drink these elements, that we do so in remembrance of Him. And we do so, Heavenly Father, proclaiming His death to thee come again. Cleanse us, wash us, renew us, create in us clean hearts that we might eat and drink in the simplicity of faith. Just trust in your dear and precious Son and Him only in all things. We thank you, our Father, for who you are. Heavenly Father, we love to think that the good work that you have begun is a good work that you will carry on until the day of the Lord Jesus Christ. Hasten that day for us, Heavenly Father. Cause us to rejoice in Him and His coming. We pray these things for your glory and for the good of your people, Heavenly Father. And we pray and thank you in