may graciously help me, I would
draw your prayerful attention to the second book of Samuel,
chapter 12, and the first part of verse 7. The second book of Samuel, chapter
12, and the first part of verse 7. And Nathan said to David, thou
art the man. Second book of Samuel, chapter
12 and verse 7. What brought me to this text,
particularly at this time, there was events that happened last
week in my life. On Tuesday, I was traveling back
on the train from work as usual. And events happened in that train
which were not good. Things were going on which were
very ungodly. And I stood up in that train to witness my disapproval of
what was going on. Later I came to chapel that night
and things went on and Some of you will remember perhaps
things that I said after that service, which were not good.
And I went to bed and at eight o'clock, or sorry, five o'clock
the next morning, I was going through my mind all these things
and it was like this word. And Nathan said to David, thou
art the man. It seemed that I was criticizing
this what was going on in the train and it was wrong. And yet
God showed me that actually, in a different way, I was just
the same. And I was wrong as well. And
it came very powerfully to me. Thou art the man. And I felt
that I was sinning against greater light than what was going on
in the train. They didn't know any better. They were from a
broken family, no doubt. And all sorts of wrong was going
on. But they didn't know any better.
But I did know better. And yet, I was in the wrong.
And that brought me to this point of needing to have mercy. Needing God's mercy. And so I
come to you this morning with this word. And Nathan said to
David, thou art the man. You see all the time, it's lovely
the hymn that dear Uncle John chose as the beginning hymn.
It goes through the need that God deals with us and we become
guilty before God. This is the great, very, very
important and vital in true godliness that we come to realize our sin
and realize that we are the sinners. You see, David was on the throne
and he'd covered up his sin, God had seen it. And yet for
nine months, this sweet psalmist of Israel, this godly man, This
man after God's own heart carried on in hardness of heart. He didn't
confess his sin. He tried to deny his sin. He
tried to cover his sin. He didn't confess it. Until God in his mercy and love
and long-suffering towards his dear servant David sent a Nathan. into his life. And then Nathan
came to me early in the morning. It wasn't a physical person,
it was what came into my mind. God showed me something. that
I was actually a great sinner. You can look down at others and
you see you can stand up against others and say, oh, you're so
wrong doing that. David did. I mean, what this
man did about the rich man taking the poor man's lamb, it was wrong.
It was wrong to take that sheep when he had loads himself. It
was wrong. But You see there was hypocrisy
in it too because David, it was clear that actually what he had
done was far less serious than what David had done. And David
needed God's mercy. And we've been through a lot recently.
All this accident that Josh Jemson has had and You young people,
you've listened to many prayers going up on behalf of the family,
on behalf of Josh for his never-dying soul. And it was lovely to be
united and to gather together in that way and to be concerned. But ultimately, you see, we each
have a never-dying soul. And it is my earnest desire that
today, there might be an arrow coming to your heart that, you
see, when a problem happens, everybody says, well, it's this
person's problem, or it's that person's problem, or they shouldn't
have been doing that, and somebody else shouldn't have been doing
something else. Everybody blamed, you listen to the politicians,
they're always blaming everybody else. How many people stand up
and say, I'm the person that's to blame? I'm the sinner. You see, David, David didn't
stand up and he, we've just sung of the heart is so deceitful
you see and David didn't see it. You say well surely this
man who was so godly couldn't he see for nine months what he
was doing? But he didn't until God brought that Nathan into
his life and it's a wonderful blessing if God sends Nathans
into your life to show you your sin and to make you realise your
need, personal need of mercy. You see, it's easy to stand up
and criticise others, and I felt, I don't know whether I was right
or not to stand up at that time, but I don't feel I stood up,
I don't think I had the effect on the person involved as the
Lord Jesus would have done. You see, when he stood up against,
in a sense, about the woman of Samaria, that she'd had five
husbands, or the one who she now had was not her husband,
He reproved her in a way that drew her to him. I didn't draw
that one to me, I probably pushed them further away from my self-righteous
attitude. And you see, we need to come
back and Nathan said to David, thou art the man. And so as the Lord helps me,
I want to look at Psalm 51. Because Psalm 51 is a worked
example of what David, the sweet psalmist of Israel, spoke, and
how he, this broken-hearted sinner, this one who was the sweet psalmist
of Israel, who had committed murder and committed adultery,
two grievous sins. You might say well surely you
can never come back to God if you've done that. Psalm 51 is
a living proof that you can and you can obtain mercy. Doesn't
mean that it wasn't serious what David did. The sword didn't depart
from David's house as a result of it. Sin has tremendously serious
consequences. But you see, there is forgiveness
with God that thou mayest be feared. And David came back to
the God that he knew, the God that he loved, and he obtained
mercy. And you see, that's what each
of you need to do. All of you young people, as you think about
what happened with Josh Jemson and the necessity to be right
with God, we need to realise that we are the sinners. We are
sinners. The reason we die is not because
of an accident in one sense. The reason we die is because
we're sinners. And we fall short of the glory
of God. The wages of sin is death. In that sense, that could be
on everybody's death certificate. Why did they die? Because they
were a sinner. Psalm 51 you see is how David,
having realized his sin, he comes back to the God and confesses
his sin. So let us look then at this Psalm
51, this precious Psalm. He starts in verse 1, have mercy
upon me, O God. He pleads for mercy. His plea
is mercy. Mercy is undeserved favor. It's been said that, perhaps
said it before, but somebody came to Napoleon and Napoleon
had In his army there was a soldier
that had misbehaved and they were due to be killed because
they'd misbehaved. And the mother of this soldier
came all the way to Napoleon and said, have mercy on my son. And he said, your son doesn't
deserve mercy. To which she replied, if he deserved
mercy, it would not be mercy. David didn't deserve mercy. And
you see, when the arrow of divine conviction comes into our hearts,
we realise we don't deserve mercy. But have mercy upon me, O God. He comes back to God, and this
is the very nature of God, you see. God is merciful. You see,
if I've offended the God that is so high and so holy, I just
need to keep away from him as far as possible. I don't want
to go to him, I need to go away from him. nature of the gospel
is that he draws. A false repentance like Judas
Iscariot, he went out and hanged himself. Yes, he gave the money
back, he said he had betrayed innocent blood, but he then went
and hanged himself. He went away from God. But you
see a true child of God The way of the gospel is we come back
to the one that we've sinned against and ask for his mercy.
And why is there any possibility of doing that? Because God is
merciful. That's why. If he was not a merciful
God, it would be a waste of time. If you came to a judge that was
not merciful and said, have mercy, he'd say, no, I don't do mercy.
I do justice, but I don't do mercy. But that's the tremendous,
wonderful thing about the gospel is that we have a God that is
merciful and just. And the two come together at
Calvary, and that's why whenever we ask, have mercy upon me, what
are we saying? We cannot have mercy unless the
Lord Jesus Christ takes that punishment. So David could only
know mercy of God if the Lord Jesus stood in his place and
went to Calvary on his behalf. The two are linked, you can't
have mercy without justice being satisfied. David please have
mercy upon me O God. according to thy loving kindness
according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out
my transgressions. So here we see the pleading ground
of David. He doesn't say have mercy upon
me because I am the sweet son of Israel. Have mercy upon me
because I slew Goliath. Have mercy upon me because I
am the king of Israel. None of those things feature
in this psalm. His pleading ground was what
God is, not what he is. Have mercy upon me, O God, according
to thy lovingkindness, an attribute of God, according to the multitude
of thy tender mercies, an attribute of God, nothing to do with David.
So you see, when we come, this is what we're to plead. I had
a godly father. I had a minister as a grandfather. None of those pleading grounds
avail. Have mercy upon me, O God, according
to thy loving kindness, according unto the multitude of thy tender
mercies. Blot out my transgressions."
So when we see our sin, we see that There's a block, there's
a barrier. You see, sin always brings a
barrier between us and God. It brings a barrier. When sin
was laid upon the Lord Jesus Christ, it made a barrier between
Christ and his Father. He couldn't look upon his son,
could he? Because sin was laid upon the Lord Jesus Christ. He couldn't look. There was a
darkening of the sun. He could not look upon his beloved
son. He didn't cry out on the cross, this is my beloved son,
hear ye him, did he? He couldn't look on him. You
see, sin separates. And if sin is on us, it separates
us from God. And David wanted that communion
with his God, blot out my transgressions, my transgressions. He doesn't
say, well, if Bathsheba hadn't have been bathing in such an
open place, we wouldn't have had this trouble. No, my transgressions. You see, he doesn't look at others.
He owns the problem himself. And you, as you think about it,
you dear young people, When you come with confession, you need
to confess your sin. Sin is what is going to separate
you from God. It's not somebody else's sin.
Somebody else's sin will have an effect upon you, true. But
that's not what's going to send you into everlasting judgment. It's your sin. And that's the
sin that needs to be dealt with. That's the sin that needs to
be confessed. Blot out my transgressions. Transgression is going... transgressing
God's laws, God's righteous laws, and we go over the limit, we
go over the boundaries of it, we transgress. If you go over
somebody's property, you're transgressing their property, you're going
over that line, that fence that marks the edge of their boundary,
you're transgressing. Blot out my transgressions. And then in verse 2 it says,
wash me throughly from mine iniquity. And it's really interesting we
don't pick up this in the English because in Hebrew there's two
words that are translated in the Bible as wash. And one of
those words is to do with washing clothes. So when you wash clothes
and put them in the washing machine or put them in a tub of water
you don't just say I'm washing the outside of my clothes do
you? you're washing the inside as well as the outside. The whole
clothes, your clothes are getting washed inside and out. And if
you wash your car, you just wash the outside of it, don't you?
You don't wash the whole, you don't wash inside as well as out, necessarily.
Or your bodies, if you have a bath, you don't wash the inside, you
wash the outside. Well, in the Hebrew, those two
words are distinct. A washing of the outside or a
washing of clothes, which is inside and outside. And it's
interesting that both places where wash appears in this psalm,
which is verse 2 and verse 7, both times it's talking about
the washing, the treading down of clothes underwater. That means
the washing internally and externally, and that's a great message, you
see, of David. The difference, as it were, between
David and Saul. Saul just wanted to say, keep
the outside clean. He didn't worry so much about
the inside. But David was a man that wanted his heart right.
Wash me throughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. He
didn't just want the outside cleaned he he did want that cleaned
he was worried about the outside but he was not only worried about
the outside because he realized that the inside was ultimately
god saw that wash me throughly from my iniquity you see he uses
so many words for sin uh in verse one it's transgression In verse
2, iniquity and sin. You see, he calls sin for what
it is. We live in a world which has
euphemisms for sin, which sound much more plausible, much more
pleasant. But David uses the words for
what they are. Wash me throughly from mine iniquity
and cleanse me from my sin. In verse 3, 4, I acknowledge
my transgressions and my sin is ever before me." So David
is heartbroken over his sin. He realizes it. For nine months,
you see, he carried on as a Christian man without repentance for that
particular sin. And that's why this is what we've
named as a text. And Nathan said to David, thou
art the man. There needs to be an application. of these things to our soul.
You see, there's a gracious dynamic in the Christian life. There
should be holiness being pursued in our lives, a seeking after
holiness. But then the arrow of God's conviction
comes and we realize that we've stumbled, we've fallen, we've
said the wrong thing, we've been wrong in what we've done or said
or thought. Then there's a need, you see,
for repentance. Then there's a need for, you're
seeking for forgiveness. And then you see there's the
exercise of faith to lay hold upon the hope set before us in
the gospel. Then there's holiness pursued,
and then the stumbling again, and you go round and round. A
gracious dynamic, the Christian life, hungering and thirsting
after righteousness, and yet daily coming short. And that's
what Jesus said when he said, give us this day our daily bread
and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those that trespass
against us. It's a daily, it's not expected
to you see what we're talking about here is a conviction of
sin in David's case this was not his the beginning of his
Christian pathway he was a godly man had been had known God's
mercy had written so many of the Psalms already I think David
was in his 50s perhaps similar age to myself when he committed
this with Bathsheba and Uriah but you see It wasn't at the
beginning of his, but he is showing us how to come back to God. But
this can also be how we come to God for the first time. We
need God's mercy. We need to plead for his mercy
on what he is, because he has said, come unto me, all ye that
labour and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. One of the hymns the children
are hoping to sing in the Sunday school, O Lamb of God, I come.
And that hymn is showing how that you come as you are, with all your barrenness, with
all your sinfulness to come, come to the Saviour and come
to know him. for I acknowledge my transgressions
and my sin is ever before me." See, David didn't say, well,
I got worried about it for a few moments, but then the guilt sort
of left me and I didn't worry too much. No, this was sin, you
see, becomes exceeding sinful when you realize who it's against. You see, I do feel this in that
sense, that the Lord's people can sin more grievously than
the world because they sin against the one they know. See if I can just point this
out in Psalm 73. Psalm 73, a Psalm of Asaph. He
was looking at the ungodly and he envied them because they seem
to be getting on very well. But one of the verses in Psalm
73, it says, and they say, how does God know? And is their knowledge
in the most high? Well, the ungodly don't really
know God. Yeah they're saying that but when you analyse what
Asaph's going through here, he is doubting, he's speaking against
God, he's saying it's vain to serve God. He is actually himself
sinning against God as he's looking down at these ungodly. And you
see later on he comes to say, so foolish was I and ignorant
I was as a beast before thee. He realises his foolishness but
you see the world sin against God and they don't really know
God. When Christians sin against God, they sin against the one
they love. That's a greater sin. Have mercy
upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness, according
unto the multitude of thy tender mercies. Blot out my transgressions. So transgressions is that need
to blot out, that's like the record in heaven that we've done
something wrong. But then in verse 2 it's really
dealing with wash me freely from mine iniquity and cleanse me
from my sin. So there's a difference here
between what is our record in heaven, so if there's a sin in
heaven that we've done and it's It's separating between us and
our God. That needs to be blotted out.
But if we don't have our heart changed, we're just going to
go out and sin like that again, aren't we? So David didn't just
want the record of his sin deleted or blotted out. He wanted the
heart. And of course, later on, he says,
creating me a new, a clean heart and renew a right spirit within
me. We need a heart changing. And therefore, you see, so that
if you if you just say to a murderer where that will acquit you and
they might go and murder somebody else. You see, they need their
heart changing. And David realized that. For
I acknowledge my transgressions, and my sin is ever before thee.
Then in verse 4, there's a really interesting and important point.
Against thee, thee only have I sinned. You might say, come
on David, you've sinned against Bathsheba, you've sinned against
Uriah, you've sinned against your position as king, you've
sinned against Israel, you've sinned against many people on
a horizontal level. And he had. But in verse 4, David
goes back to the absolute fundamental of what sin is. Sin is a transgression
of God's law. So when you sin, ultimately,
first and foremost, you're sinning against God. Against thee, thee
only, have I sinned. And that's really important,
particularly in today's society, because the message goes out
to the young people, provided you've got two people and they're
both happy to do what they want together, it doesn't matter who
they are or what they are, they can just carry on and do what
they want together, provided both are consensual, that's fine.
against thee, the only have I sinned, the one that set the commandments,
that's the one first and foremost we sin against, and therefore
it's not just up to whether two people are happy to do whatever
they're happy to do, and that's acceptable. Is it right according
to the word of God? That's what the standard is.
Against thee, the only have I sinned. You see it was like with Joseph. Joseph was tempted by Potiphar's
wife, But he said, how can I do this great wickedness and sin
against God, first and foremost? Yes, it was also against Potiphar's
wife, and it would have also been against Potiphar. But first
and foremost, our sin is against God. And that's the one that
we've got to have mercy from. That's the one that we need forgiveness
from. It doesn't mean that it doesn't affect others, it does.
And we need to seek their mercy too. Against thee, the only have
I sinned and done this evil in thy sight, that thou mayest be
justified when thou speakest and be clear when thou judgest.
This is an important point. David was saying, if you pronounce
me guilty and send me, as it were, to everlasting judgment,
that is right. it's not palatable to me it's
a it's a terrible outcome but it's right because I've sinned
you see and that's a very important principle you see the dying thief
recognized that on the dying thing that the dying thief what
the one that was saved said does thou not fear God seeing thou
art in the same condemnation and we indeed justly he didn't
say we don't deserve to be crucified we Indeed justly for we receive
the due reward of our sins if you like he was totally agreement
with verse 4 and done this evil in thy sight that thou mightest
be Justified when thou speakest and clear when thou judges. He
said it's it's right. The judgment is right and One
of our hymn writers picks that up. Hymn 761, verse 5, it says,
should sudden vengeance seize my breath, I must pronounce thee
just in death. And if my soul was sent to hell,
thy righteous law approves it well. It's actually a correct
judgment. But David pleads for mercy. See,
mercy isn't saying the judgment's not fair. He's not saying that
God is not just, that sin isn't too bad. You see, you can have
a gospel whereby you think, well, God is not that high up, really. He's not that different than
us. And we're not that sinful. And therefore, we can have some
communion between us because we're not that bad and he's not
that great. So we have communion. But you see, the word of God
never presents sin and salvation in that way. David is painting
an accurate view of sin, that it's against God, that it deserves
eternal punishment. And he's also showing that God
is holy. And therefore, how can these
two ever come together? Well, that is where the gospel
comes in. You see, it's not all bad news. But we have to clarify
the seriousness of the situation. That thou mightest be justified
when thou speakest and clear when thou judgest. You see, all
these, the things that we're talking about in Psalm 51 will
mean nothing to you unless the arrow of God's righteousness
and his condemnation as it were is shot into your heart and you
realise that you are the person. Not the person sitting next to
you, not your friend at school, not Josh Jemson, it's us. We are sinners and we as sinners
are ripe for judgement. And if God sends any of us to
eternal judgment, that's actually right. It's very terrible, but
it's right. Therefore, we need to come and
realize that there's a way back to God from the dark paths of
sin, and it's found in seeking God's mercy. And this is where
the gospel is so precious that this one, you see, this is why
it never ceases to amaze me, the gospel, because we have the
holiness of God. And you think, well, if somebody
is so holy and so righteous, they're the last person you want
to go to if you feel sinful. And yet, because the very attribute
of God is loving kindness in his tender mercies, He draws
sinners to himself. How can you square that? How
can somebody who loves holiness and hates evil attract and draw
sinners to himself? It's because he not only was
there at Sinai giving the law, he was also at Calvary paying
the consequences of that law for his church. so that he could
be merciful. He could be just and the justifier
of the ungodly. A very strange mix. are very
different than everything we'd have here below. Just, and the
justifier of the ungodly. The two don't seem to mix, and
yet they do at Calvary. And that's why the gospel is
a wonderful message of mercy for sinners. But you see, unless
that hour of divine justice has come into your heart and you
feel that you are the person, not the person sitting next to
you, not your friends, not somebody else, but you are the sinner.
Don't look at others and criticise them. I did it earlier, this
last week. You look down on them and you
see, oh you're so much better than so I thought. And yet you
see that same seed of evil in your own heart. The same sin
which does so easily beset us and then we need to cry for mercy. Well, in verse 5 and 6 of Psalm
51, they both start with the same word, behold. David wants us to look in two
different directions, and they're two extreme opposites. In verse
5, he says, behold. I was shapen in iniquity, and
in sin did my mother conceive me." Now, I don't believe that
means that there was a wrong relationship between his mother
and father that led to his conception. That's not what he means here.
What he means, I believe, is, and in sin did my mother conceive
me. Right from conception, I was a son of Adam, and I was fallen. I was a sinner. And so you see
the thing is you start off is a person fine until they have
some outburst of sin and then they're wrong. Well David was
saying no I was wrong right from the start. I had sin in my heart
right from the beginning. And that is why it manifests
itself in this event of Bathsheba in Uriah. Now you might say but
that's a huge sin. Yes, but all sin. You see, we're
not good judges in the sense of what is a huge sin and what
isn't. If I said, do you think taking one piece of fruit that
you were told not to take is a huge sin? You might say, well,
not too bad. Well, that was a sin that meant
Adam and Eve had to leave the Garden of Eden. That was the
original sin, transgressing God's law. And so Behold, I was shapen
in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me. I was formed.
I was a sinner right from the word go. And then I was born,
and then I acted as a toddler and as a teenager, as a sinner.
And I did sinful things because I was a sinner. So that's one side. You say,
well, if you're really coming to a judge and asking them to
be merciful to you, Would you say that? Would you say that,
well, I've not only broken this, I've not only had this sin with
Bathsheba and Uriah, it's not just that I'm worried about,
it's in here. It starts right from the beginning
of my life, the beginning of my conception. I'm a sinner.
And these things are just a manifestation of that sin. You say, well, not
looking good here. You're just digging a bigger
hole for yourself. But you see, he's coming and confessing. And
you see, to confess our sin is to say of sin what God says of
sin. If you say, well, that wasn't
really a problem, that was okay, then you're not confessing sin,
because sin is confessing and saying about sin what God thinks
of it. And David here is confessing
sin. He is confessing that right from
the word go, he was a sinner. He was in agreement with God. See, elsewhere, God says that
this is true. Every imagination of their hearts
is only evil continually. This was true. God was saying,
yes, this is true. But David is confessing it rather
than saying, well, I'm quite good, really. I come from a good
family. My mum and dad were good. No. Behold, I was shapen in iniquity
and in sin did my mother conceive me. He's showing sin in all its
blackness. then another behold in verse
6, behold thou desirous truth in the inward parts. That doesn't
mean he doesn't desire truth on the outward parts but it means
that to start at the beginning. You see David sinned internally
before he sinned externally. He had lustful thoughts towards
Bathsheba in his heart before he ever got to doing anything
And so you see here, behold thou desire is truth in the inward
parts. David saw that right from conception
he was sinful and that God's requirement was that he should
be pure. Thou desirest truth in the inward
parts, and in the hidden part thou shalt make me to know wisdom.
You see, the opposite, the two opposites, verse 5 and verse
6. You say, well, however are we going to get on? However are
these going to come together? Well, then we come to verse 7.
Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean. Wash me. and I shall be whiter than snow. You see, sometimes with clothes
you get perhaps a beetroot stain or something like that on a nice
white shirt or something and you say, I don't think it's ever
going to come out. It's just such a deep dye. You
can wash it and wash it but there'll still be the stain there. Purge
me with hyssop and I shall be clean. Wash me. and I shall be
whiter than snow. David had tremendous faith in
what God could do. You see, we might think, well,
you know, if you're not too dirty, then the washing machine will
get that clean. But if it's really black, if it's got oil all over
it and tar all over it and like, you can wash it, but it won't
get it clean. But you see, when Jesus, because Jesus hadn't yet
done this, but in the mind of God, he was going to do this,
when he was going to come to Calvary and Jesus was going to
say, it is finished. It really was. It really was. Sin had been dealt with. And
though this blackest, darkest sin that David was so sad about
and so mourning over, He recognised that that darkest sin could be
washed to such an extent that it's whiter than the whitest
thing we know, which is snow. Wash me. Again, the same washing,
internal and externally. You see the Pharisees, Jesus
said they're worried about the outside. They would want to be
washed on the outside so men would look up to them and think
how great they were. They weren't worried about if
there was all wrong going on inside provided the outside was
clean. David was a genuine child of God. Genuinely wanted the
presence of God. Genuinely sought his favor. Purged
me with hyssop. Hyssop was used, you see, Hyssop
was that plant, a bit like a sponge, really, and they used it, you
could say, almost like a bit of a paintbrush. When they painted
the blood on the doorposts on the day of the Passover, they
used Hyssop, I believe, to put it on the doorpost. You see,
it purged me with Hyssop, so the application, of the precious
blood of Christ. David wants that. He doesn't
minimize his sin. He doesn't say, well, I've been
the sweet psalmist of Israel. I stood up for Goliath. I've
been such an honorable man while Saul was chasing me as a partridge
on the mountains. And David was very honorable
and very gracious. None of those things are his
bleeding ground. What a message that is for us.
None of these things are our reason why we can say, have mercy
upon me. Purge me with hyssop. The application
of the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ that cleanses from all
sins, that one who gave the law, who then kept the law. made it
honorable, so that Satan and all his hellish hosts, when they
would come and say, this is a sinner that needs to come with us to
the pit of eternal damnation. And Jesus says, I've paid the
price. There is therefore now no condemnation
to them which are in Christ Jesus. Satan, you've lost your claim.
It's all gone. They're mine. I've purchased
them. They're my bride. Purge me with hyssop, and I shall
be clean. Wash me, and I shall be whiter
than snow. You see, David realised then
the power and the ability. And you see, that's what we need
to do. When we sit there, as it were, smarting under our sin,
and the enormity of it, and the sinfulness of it, and we hate
it, and we, like Job was able to say, therefore I bore myself,
and repent in dust and ashes, as we go back as a broken-hearted
sinner. Comes on to that later on in
the chapter that we hope to look at later, God willing. But you
see, the broken-hearted, there's such a vitalness in that. It's interesting that the uncle
John chose that as the opening hymn, the necessity of a broken
heart. And what brought David to a broken
heart? You see, he didn't have a broken
heart when he said, as the Lord liveth, the man that has done
this thing shall surely die. He didn't have a broken heart.
He had a very hard heart. He had a very proud heart. He had a very censorious heart,
perhaps like I did, standing up and looking down on others. But you see, when the finger
swung round and pointed at him, thou art the man. He needed God's mercy. He needed
God's mercy. He couldn't then carry on. And
you might say, but you see, this is the true pathway of a child
of God. a true pathway of the child of
God. Not that you go out and murder somebody and have adultery
with somebody, but you transgress God's law. Any one of God's ten
commandments. When you do not love the Lord
your God with all your heart, your soul, and your mind, and
your neighbour as yourself, you are transgressing God's law.
You are a sinner. You need a saviour. you need
one to stand in your place. And if you don't have that one
to stand in your place, you will bear that punishment forever.
Well, may the children and young people and each of us then, may
this arrow come into our hearts. Thou art the man. You're the
one that needs to repent. You're the one that needs to
change and I'm not telling you that as looking down on you. I experienced that very same
thing last week. I was convicted and I fled for
mercy to the Lord Jesus Christ and I obtained mercy. You see,
he is a gracious God. He delights to hear our cries.
He has said, come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy
laden, and I will give you rest. He's not a liar. He is the truth,
the way, the truth, the life. This is the way. Walk ye in it. A way of confession. A lifestyle
of repentance. not just repented once 20 years
ago when you came to a knowledge of the truth and then you walk
in pride the rest of the time looking down on others and thinking
how much better you are and more godly you are than they are.
Now you see David had to come as a penitent, as one that had
a begging bowl with nothing to plead but what God was and his
need of God's mercy and that's the way we come. And Jesus says,
if you come unto me like that, you will not be disappointed.
May the Lord have his blessing. Amen.