Here's something I know. I've
told people the older I get, it seems the less I know. When
I was younger, I thought I knew a whole lot. I just knew a whole
lot of things that weren't so. Here's something I know. Everyone who has been saved by
the lamb that was slain thinks he's worthy. And the one who can hold Christ
in low regard, dismiss him, ignore him, he doesn't understand who
Christ is and what he did. And thus far, nothing's been
done for them. The Spirit of God has not taken
the things of Christ and shown them to such people. He may. You know, so long as there's
breath, there's hope. So long as there's life, there's
hope. But I know that everyone saved by Christ thinks he's worthy
and is glad for him to have all honor. Perfectly satisfied. In fact, can't be satisfied in
any other circumstance. but that Christ be lifted high,
be held preeminent in all things. And they are quite happy to fade
into insignificance in his presence. He's everything, isn't he? That's why we meet like this. If he meant nothing more than
most people seem to think he is, it wouldn't be worth gathering
like this, would it? And I guess that's why when a
lot of people gather, supposedly for church service, it's not
Christ they're talking about. It's not Christ they're thinking
about. But he's worthy of all our thoughts. He's worthy of all that we can give and more. Now, that song inspires a little in
me. And I guess that's what hymns are supposed to do. If you'll turn to the 51st Psalm, and among the things that this
Psalm will show us, is why we count the lamb that was slain to be
worthy of honor, authority, power, every good thing. He's worthy
of it. He's not only worthy of it, he's
got it. We claim he's worthy of it, but the Father thinks
he's worthy of it too. And while we don't have the power
to give those things to Christ, the Father does. And He has given
Christ all those things. But I want to speak this morning
on the subject of faith and repentance. We know that wherever the gospel
goes forth in power, and the Spirit of God, using His sovereign
power, regenerates a heart, gives it spiritual life. We know that
the result of that spiritual life is repentance toward God
and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. Now those two things are not
really separate things. They're actually just different
ways of looking at the same thing. But it's easiest for us if we
kind of consider them as separate things. People most often think
of repentance as turning from things and faith as turning towards
God and Christ. And it'd be okay if we think
of it that way but actually repentance involves both because repentance
means a change of heart or mind. And a change of heart or mind
results in turning from something and turning to something else. Nonetheless, spiritual life,
that life that's created in God's elect by the Spirit of God through
the preaching of the gospel of Christ, that spiritual life always
expresses itself in repentance toward God and faith in the Lord
Jesus Christ. And virtually everyone who would
call themselves a Christian would agree with that statement. Here's
where the difference comes, determining what repentance and faith are. One of the problems that crept into the church, particularly
as it moved from using the Greek New Testament, and they used
a Latin translation, when they Greek word for repent would show
up. They used a Latin word that means
do penance. That's not the same thing, because
them doing penance, well, it generally ended up somehow or
another you're giving money to the church. In other words, repentance was
no longer a spiritual matter. Repentance was no longer a matter
of the heart and mind. It was in these actions that
you did because you were sorry for something you did. Well, that's completely different
from what the scriptures mean when they speak of repentance
toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. I want to look
at this scripture for this psalm as clearly and plainly as any
place else in the scripture is a demonstration of true repentance
toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. You know, we've
got the books that teach us doctrine. We've got books that teach us
the history of God's redemptive purposes being played out in
history. The Psalms are a book a collection of poems that teach
us the experience of these things. What is it to repent? Well, this is a psalm written
by man in repentance. What is it to believe? This is
a psalm of a believing man. And it's a psalm in which he
comes to terms with his sin. It was prompted by a particular
sin, but the sense of guilt that that
sin laid upon him resulted in him seeing and acknowledging
the very sinfulness of his nature and all that he had ever done. Now, sin is an awful thing. If we had any idea how awful
it was or how awful it is, we wouldn't play with it like we
do. We don't play with radioactive
materials. We don't play with nuclear bombs,
do we? Why? We know what they can do. They want to build a nuclear
reactor. They don't just put a reactor out there and cover
it with a tarp. They've got all kinds of safety
features. And they've got this huge dome
made of reinforced concrete, I don't know how many feet thick, in order to provide some level
of protection if that thing should get out of hand. But there is not. a nuclear bomb
of any sort that's ever been made or could be made that has
wreaked the havoc that sin has wrought on our race and on the
creation we live in. And the sin that brought it all
on wasn't what we would call a particularly evil sin. One man One individual ate a
piece of fruit he wasn't supposed to eat and the entire creation
was made subject to corruption and death spread throughout the
entire human race. Every sorrow we endure came from
that one sin. Hell arose from that one sin. Every funeral that's ever been
conducted is because of that sin. Every heartache, every broken relationship, every tear ever shed came about
by that one seemingly insignificant sin. People think God is strict. They
haven't a clue just how strict he is. We might think it would have
been suitable if God had pronounced, you know, judgment
on the entire human race because the entire race had actually
mounted some kind of warfare against heaven. Maybe that would have been suitable
for him to react as he did, but eating a piece of fruit? Why should the Lord be so upset
about that? David writes, have mercy on me,
O God. In the Hebrew, they don't have
to use that auxiliary verb, have. So the very first word of this
psalm is mercy. And I think that's telling. David's
going to be talking about his sin, but he feels he dare not
mention his sin until he has set forth a plea of mercy. He has come to understand something
of the seriousness of God when it comes to sin and his reaction
to it, had understood something of his white-hot holiness in
which he is separate from everything wicked, his perfect righteousness, which
will not let a sin go unpunished. So before he even brings up his
sin, He drapes himself in a flag of mercy. Have mercy on me, oh God. Because I did the best I could. Well, he didn't do the best he
could, but that wouldn't have been an excuse anyway. He just
said, have mercy on me. Pure mercy. Nothing else. Pity. That's what the word mercy indicates.
When he says, have mercy, he's telling the God that he's offended,
pity me. Now isn't that something? Imagine if you did something
horrible to someone else. You killed someone they loved.
Would you go up to that person and say, pity me? He'd say, pity you? I'd kill you with my own bare
hands if I could get away with it. That's what most people say. Who else but God would ever have
pity on the one who had sinned against him? Who is a pardoning
God like you, said the prophet, who passes over the transgression
of the remnant of his inheritance? For you delight in mercy. Knowing that the Lord delighted
in mercy, David mentions it first. He says, have mercy on me, O
God. That was his whole plea right there, summed up. According
to your unfailing love, King James, I believe, says tender
mercies. It's the same concept. Your compassion. According to
your great compassion, He doesn't say, don't forget
how good I was up to the point that I have sinned this sin.
Don't forget that you one time called me a man after your own
heart. Don't forget that a temptation
was set before me that I did not want. He didn't say any of
those things. He did not call upon God's mercy because of anything
that could be found in him other than his need for mercy. And
he says, according to your unfailing love, he calls for God's mercy
based on something that's in God himself. According to your
great compassion, blot out my transgressions. They didn't have
erasers back then. And really, we don't have good
erasers for ink even in our day. I don't know if you ever had
one of those pens, you know, that you write in ink, but it
would have, like a pencil, it would have a rubber eraser on
the back of it. Well, the only way they could erase the ink
is really you rubbed part of the paper off. You rubbed too
many times, you got a hole in the paper. And it always left
smudges. Back then, if they wrote something,
but needed to eliminate, they blotted it out. They covered
it up with more ink until what was written couldn't be read.
And that's what he's talking about. There is a record of my
transgressions. There is a list of iniquities
blotted out. Cover it up. Make it unreadable
that the charge against me is not recorded. It says, wash away all my iniquity
and cleanse me from my sin. You notice here he's not making
any promises about doing better. A lot of people think that repentance,
you know, that's when a man realizes he's a sin and he straightens
out his life. That's not repentance. Now the
fruit of repentance may result in a change of conduct. But there are being many who
have changed their conduct and never repented. Because those
who repent no longer see any of their conduct as good. Never. blot out my transgressions, wash
away all my iniquity, cleanse me from my sin. It's not often that it's good
for us to refer to ourselves. If you read something that somebody's
written and the word I is in it a lot, or any form of the
word I, generally speaking it's a person that's, you know, stuck
on himself, always thinking about himself. But here's a time when
it's appropriate that we refer to ourselves, blot out my transgressions,
wash away all my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. Now here's one evidence of the
working of the Spirit of God within the heart of a person
in order to bring them to repentance toward God and faith in the Lord
Jesus Christ. They make no excuses for their
sins. They don't blame their sins on anybody else. Of course
the sin that prompted this psalm from the hand of David was when
he committed adultery with Bathsheba and then in order to cover it
up ended up killing her husband Uriah. You'll notice he did not
say, Bathsheba shouldn't have been out there on the roof taking
a bath where I could see her. That's not my fault. I mean,
what's a guy supposed to do? None of that. He does not lay his transgression,
his iniquity, his sin at the feet of anybody but himself.
I am to blame. when psychotherapy first started,
became the popular thing, quite often they would say, well,
you're acting this way because of things that happened in your
childhood. Well, that's true. There's no question the things
that happened to us in our formative years have an effect on how we
act in our later years. And if we are trying to stop
a particular bent in our lives, it can sometimes be helpful to
know, well, how did that particular sinful bent arise in me? Because sometimes if we can see
the source of it, then we can better deal with it. But knowing what may have prompted
us to have a certain way that we approach life and certain
sinful directions within us does not excuse us from the fact that
it is sin. Not in the sight of God. I suppose
it's good for us to have mercy on people when we see them acting
out because of the trauma they experienced or whatever. We can
understand that. We see somebody that's especially
angry, and we might say, well, you know, if you were raised
in the house he was raised in, you'd probably have a temper
problem too. We can do that, human to human. But you stand before God, there
is no excuse. And if God grants you repentance,
you wouldn't say something like, Lord, forgive my anger. After all, look at how I was
raised. No. It's my anger. Nobody else's. It's my covetousness. It's not
anybody else's. It's my selfishness, my lust,
my blasphemy, my sin. But here is The next two verses
are what really attracted me to this particular psalm today. For I know my transgressions and my sin is always before me. I am of the opinion and I think it could
be backed up scripturally, that the man or the woman who is not
troubled and troubled deeply by the sin that yet resides within
them, that that person who can act out, as they call it today,
sinfully, and walk away from it unmoved. Such a one has never been brought
to repentance toward God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
I'm not talking about that we always go around with a hangdog
expression and woe is me and never have a moment of joy. But David, the man after God's
own heart, Here's one way he proved he's after God's own heart.
His sin, and particularly this notable outbreak of his sinfulness,
crushed him. We don't know how long it had
gone on, but for some time he'd tried to ignore it. He really
had tried. He'd swept it under the rug.
He thought, well, not many people know what happened, and the ones
that know what happened, they're within my circle of confidants.
They're not going to tell anybody. So we'll just go on, you know,
and we won't confess, and everything will be all right. Even believers
can think that that which is hidden from the eyes of men is
also hidden from the eyes of God. But the prophet Nathan,
who was not there when the sin happened, didn't see it going
on. And I suppose no man told him. But God did, because God
saw it. And Nathan came to him and confronted
him with his sin. And the moment that happened,
what did David say? I have sinned against the Lord. I know my transgressions. My sin is always before me. This I know. Our sin will always
be before us until it's taken away by the blood of Christ. Our conscience, which tells us
our guilt, is a product of actually the law of God written on the
heart And it will not be satisfied with anything less than a perfect
sacrifice for sin. And the children of God-I'm going
to get Southern on you-the children of God, bless their hearts, in
their flesh they still think they can remedy their own sin.
and their sins brought up before them, and their natural reaction
is going to be to try to reform their ways. Their natural reaction
is going to be, oh, look what I did, boy, I better make sure
I never do that again. And they walk out the door, OK,
putting that behind me won't work. You can't put sin behind
you by any other means than the way God casts our sins behind
him. That's through the blood of Christ. And so as he writes this psalm,
and I'm sure he's expressing, well, some feelings that were
going on in his mind right at that point, but also the way
that it was before when he was trying just to cover up and hide
his sin. In spite of all that, he says,
I know my transgression. My sin is always before me. Now, I suppose I know you all
pretty well, but I don't make it my business to snoop around
in your private life. I don't know what things, which
kinds of sin are most attractive to you and the ones to which
you're most likely to fall. It's different for each one of
us. And I'm not particularly interested
in finding out. I got enough to handle with knowing my own. But I know that it's in all of
us. And I know that every child of God struggles with it. I can
tell you this, until you are brought to repentance toward
God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, your sins will be right
here, looking you right in the face. Because God will not allow
his people to live in sin. And by that I
mean sin on purpose. We say there's sin in everything
we do. We understand that. But I'm talking about, I mean,
when David took Bathsheba, he knew right then it was wrong.
He knew it was wrong before he did it. This wasn't something
that, oh, I didn't realize I shouldn't do that. I know my transgressions. Now,
the law of God does serve a purpose. His purpose is not salvation.
The law does not bring a man to repentance. The law can make a man know what
sin is. The law can make a man realize
that he has sinned. And the law of God can make him
afraid because he has sinned. The scriptures say, for by the
law we know sin. Now what does it mean to know
sin? To know what sin is? Well, I suppose it does that,
but it's more than that. Because it described our Lord
Jesus Christ this way, as the one who knew no sin. Now our
Lord is the one who gave the law. sure he knows what sin is. As the lawgiver, the one whose
finger wrote the law on the tablets of stone, I'm sure he realizes
when somebody sins. And I'm sure he knows what kind
of fear ought to come upon a person when he realizes that he sinned
against God and that God is a just and righteous God who will never
let the guilty go unpunished. Our Lord knew all those things
better than you and I do. So what does it mean that he
didn't know sin? Well, the best way I can illustrate
it is this. And I've used this illustration before. Some of
you may remember it. But imagine that a little boy sees his mama, and
she's baking some cookies. And I'm going to make it chocolate
chip cookies, because there aren't any better than that. And she bakes a bunch of chocolate
chip cookies, and she gives him one, puts the rest of them in
a cookie jar. Well, he eats that cookie. And
then she needs to go on and do something else. And she says,
now, don't you eat any more of those cookies. Because there's
other people that need cookies and I want some of them for tonight. She leaves the room. He looks
at the cookie jar. He knows what's in the cookie
jar. He just had one. He loves it. And there's nothing
wrong with the cookies. He just had one. There was no
sin in him having that cookie that had been given to him. But
the same cookies are up in that jar. If he's anything like me,
it's like the cookies are calling out to him. Hey, I'm over here. He looks around. Now he already
knows that it's wrong to take one of those cookies. So knowing sin doesn't just involve
knowing what sin is. But then he gets a kitchen chair
and scoots it over to the kitchen counter. Climbs up on it so he
can reach that cookie jar. And he can smell them because,
you know, they're recently baked and that smell's coming. Oh,
he's enjoying this. And he takes the top off of that.
And he reaches and puts his hand in the cookie jar. And he's pulling
one out. And right then, mama walks in. And he hears her and he looks
at her and she looks at him. And he sees in her that look
of disappointment and anger mixed together. That's what it is to know sin.
Why did Jesus Christ know no sin? Because he never did any.
And he never had to look into the eyes of his father and see
there the anger and disappointment in what he'd done. You and I
know sin, don't we? If the Spirit of God has worked
in us, we know sin. I know my transgressions. I know that they are transgressions.
I know that they always bring about punishment of some kind.
But more than this, I now see them as offenses against the
God who's been so good to me. And I can't get my sin out of
my sight. I can't do anything that will
relieve me of the sense of guilt and of betrayal that was included
in this transgression that I have done. You ever been there? Sometimes I think I live there. As I read this last night, brought me to tears. Oh, brothers and sisters, what evil there is in the sin
of God's people. For we not only sin against the
God who made us, we sin against the God who was gracious to us
and forgave us all our sins. And what do we do in return?
We turn right around and did some more. If somebody stole from you and you just frankly forgave
them and said, don't worry about it, you don't have to pay back.
And in response to that, they turn right around, stole from
you again. It'd probably make you double mad, wouldn't it? Brothers and sisters, when we
sin, that's exactly what we're doing. We are sinning right in
the face of God's goodness toward us. And we can make all the excuses
we want. We can say things like, well,
but we got this flesh and it's still going to struggle. You
know, we're still going to have this. Yes, we are. But that doesn't
excuse us from the fact that when we sin, there is a double
sinfulness in it for it is not only a violation of his law. It's a violation of his goodness
and his grace and his mercy towards us. Nobody knows sin like a believer
does. here's why he knows it. Verse
4, against you and you only have I sinned and done what is evil
in your sight. Well, what about poor Uriah? You're saying that he didn't
sin against Uriah? After a manner of speaking. But
Uriah was another sinner. And while Uriah did not deserve
to die at David's hand, he did deserve to die because he was a sinner like
everybody else. And David had no right to take
Uriah's wife from Uriah, had no right to kill Uriah in order
to cover up, try to cover up his own sin. We understand all
that. But here's something that spirit
wrought repentance brings about, the realization that sin is against
God. Actually, as I was looking at
this scripture, I was writing a bulletin, I mean, an article
for our bulletin. And that's why there's not one
from me in the bulletin this week, because after I got done
writing and I said, no, that's tomorrow's message. But I was
writing over the fact that there are no small sins. I know that
as we look at sins among humanity, you know, we say murder is worse
than theft. Neither one of them is good,
but I'd a whole lot rather somebody steal from me than kill me. And we don't imprison a thief
for as long as we would imprison a murderer. We make distinctions
in sins. But when you realize that your
sin is against God, there's no such thing as a small sin. Brother
Mahan said there are no small sins because there's no small
God to sin against. The infinite, the infinite wickedness
of our sins does not arise from how much destruction they cause
among the sons of men. That's not what makes them evil.
What makes them evil is that they are sins against an infinite
God. Therefore, they are infinitely
evil. Our children, you know, as you're
raising them, you tell them to do this, that, and the other.
You know, anybody who doesn't believe in original sins never
raised kids. You know, sin's in us from the
moment we're born and David mentions that. And I tell you, our children
come and we love them and while they're just sitting there and
they can't talk, they can't do anything, we think they're wonderful.
But as soon as they're able to show their will, the first thing
we find out is they got a will just like ours. It's corrupt.
But sometimes we'll laugh at their disobedience. Because,
well, because we are what we are. You know, and when I say
disobedience, I'm talking about, you know, you tell a kid not
to do something and then you see him, you know, looking around
trying to sneak and do it. And it almost makes us laugh,
probably because we remember doing the same kind of thing.
And we kind of laugh because We realize they're thinking they
can get away with this, you know, and they don't realize we know
everything they're gonna do because we did it too. And we just kind
of laugh. But when we realize that our
little children, sweet as we might think they are, much as
we may be ready to excuse and even chuckle over their sinfulness,
that little child, when he disobeys his parent, that is seen by God
as a sin as wicked as Hitler's Holocaust. Why? Well, we kind of laugh because
they're a little like the disobedience isn't going to affect us much.
And we measure sin by how much it affects us. We need to learn
to measure sin by how it affects God. And that's why we pray for our
little children and our young ones and our teenagers, because
we know as much as we may think they're good and decent people,
God does not. And even though by human standards
they may have lived upright lives up to this point and make us
proud, we realize that they need the blood of Christ to put away
their sins as much as anybody else. I'm against you and you only. When we realize true repentance
wrought by the Holy Spirit always brings a realization that our
sins are not against the people we may harm, our sins are against
God. That's why he knows all of them. I may read in the news that somebody
punched somebody else in the nose, but if I hadn't read it
in the news, I wouldn't know about it. Why? Because it wasn't
my nose. It's God's nose. And because
it's God's nose, he knows what we do. every time, because every sin,
whether we think it's small or big, we punch God in the nose. He knows it. And this repentance wrought in
David caused him to justify God in condemning him. Against you, you only have I
sinned and done what's evil in your sight, so that you may be
proved right when you speak, and justified when you judge. Now, if in the end of all things,
I end up condemned, I'll be surprised. Because it means I will have
misunderstood what the scriptures are saying. But there's one thing
that I won't be able to do. I will not be able to condemn
God for condemning me. He has every right to. You know, when the spirit of
God works repentance in a man or a woman, that man or woman
will not argue against God's justice. That person will not say, well,
yeah, I've done some things bad, but I don't deserve to go to
hell. He says, no, if God judged me, if God punished me according
to his judgment of me, he would be justified. He would be right
in doing that. And I couldn't speak a word against
him. And now this repentance in David
expands, not considering only the transgression that brought
all this to a head. He says, verse five, surely I
was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived
me. People talk about innocent children.
There isn't any such thing. Before they had brains. that
they could ever have a cogent thought when they were nothing
but a single cell within the womb of their mother. Children
are sinful. Why? It's just the way things
are because of Adam's sin. It makes all of us sinful. And if we haven't committed any
sins, it's only because we haven't had the opportunity. And he said in another place,
he says, I came forth from the womb speaking lies. How does
a baby lie? They can't even talk. Well, they
may not be able to talk with words, but they communicate.
Preacher I knew once said, I may not have been able to tell a
lie, but I could cry a lie. Babies will cry when nothing's
wrong, just because they want attention. They cry like they're hurt, but
they're not hurt. They just want somebody to pick
them up. You say, well yeah, but that's
just babies. Yeah, that's just babies. That's just babies born
of the lineage of Adam. And therefore they're sinful. And then David's repentance also
led him to understand his sin didn't exist in just what he
did. He says in verse six, surely
you desire truth in the inner parts. You teach me wisdom in
the inmost place. Our problem is not out here. My sin is not in these hands.
It's not in my feet. They taught us a song when we
were little kids. Be careful little feet where you go. Be
careful little feet where you go. For the Father up above is
looking down with love. Be careful little feet where
you go. Be careful little hands what you do. And so forth. Be
careful little mouth what you say. All of this, as though sin's
out here somewhere. It's not. It's in here. That's
why it's such a problem. If it wasn't in here, it'd never
get out here. Why does a person steal? Because they want to. Because
inwardly, they are thieves. Why do people kill? Because inwardly,
they're murderers. And you could follow the pattern
in any way that a person may be able to express their sinfulness,
commit transgression. It all started in the heart. And that's where the work has
to be done. Well, repentance toward God and
faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. Now, again, as I said, repentance
and faith really are not separate things. But now we see him begin
to call on God to do something about his sin. And inasmuch as
he's calling on God to do something, that means his faith is in God. You don't call on somebody. You
don't trust. His repentance had already brought
him to turn from any hope in himself, and now he turns it
to God, and he says, cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be
clean. And there isn't any other way.
You will not be clean in the record before God, and you will
not be clean in your own conscience until God And he's referring
here to ceremonies of the law. Takes the hyssop plant and dips
it in the blood and puts it on you. They cleansed everything
in the temple with blood. And this blood was what they
used kind of as a paintbrush was a piece of this plant called
hyssop. And that's what he's saying.
Oh, with the blood I can be made clean. In another place, he says,
wash me. Well, right here, the next line,
wash me. I'll be whiter than snow. And if he does, you will. Isn't that wonderful? If he washes you, you're white
as snow. He can do that. You can't. You can scrub till the day you
die, and you'll just be scrubbing more dirt on yourself. The man
who tries to... elevate his status with God by
his own reformations and efforts is doing nothing more than increasing
his guiltiness in the sight of God. But the man who says, wash
me, wash me, such a one is sinless in the sight of God. Because
if God washes a man, he's clean. He says let me hear joy and gladness,
let the bones you have crushed rejoice. When we pursue sin, and let's
face it, we do, it will silence our heart to
the gospel. You cannot refuse to listen to
God in his instructions on how you should think and live, and
then expect that you're going to hear from God when you show
up at church. and listen to the gospel. Now there may be times we hear
the gospel preached and it seems to have no effect on us and we
don't hear the joy and gladness of it and it has nothing to do
with any particular sin we've had. We got all kinds of things
that can come up and prevent us from rejoicing in the truth
of the gospel. But here's one thing, and we
ought to think about it, if we go for any extended period and
can't find any joy in the gospel, are we regarding iniquity in
our hearts, as the psalmist put it another way? Have we sinned
and it's been, our conscience is laid at our feet but we refuse
to acknowledge it? We try to hide it? And we just want to keep doing
it, so we keep trying to act like it's not sin? Well, don't
be surprised then if you cannot hear with joy and gladness the
message of cleansing of sin. Because that message is not joy.
I mean, how can there be any joy
to the message that sins are cleansed if we've not bothered
to acknowledge that we need such cleansing? Let the bones you have crushed
rejoice. I had a broken leg. Wasn't crushed,
but it was broken. I've never rejoiced over that
fact. I've told the story because I like to tell stories about
me. Or I just like to tell stories and the ones about me are the
ones I know best, I guess. But I never found my broken bone,
actually two bones in my leg, broken, never found that as a
reason to rejoice. Here he talks about crushed bones
and he says, let these crushed bones rejoice. And here's one
of the oddities of spiritual things. The only bone that ever
rejoiced was a crushed one. And not one that had been crushed
by overbearing preachers or finger-wagging church members, but bones that
have been crushed by God. Because every bone God breaks,
he heals. And so David says, let the bones
you have crushed rejoice. Oh, do you feel like crushed
bones? Let me tell you, rejoice. Be
glad that God's not letting you wallow in your sin with joy. Instead, he's going to make you
rejoice that he broke your leg so you wouldn't run off. Oh, there's so much more could
be said from this scripture. Verse 12, I'll close with this. His prayer goes on to say, restore
to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit
to sustain me. David did not doubt that he was
a recipient of the grace and mercy of God. He was not calling
that into question. But he could find no joy in it
at this point. So he says, restore to me the
joy of your salvation. The scriptures say the fruit
of the Spirit is love, joy. Joy. I'm glad that whether or not
I can rejoice in the gospel, by the gospel I'm still saved.
But isn't it wonderful when we can rejoice in the gospel and grant me a willing spirit?
That is, he's saying, I realize there is within me a bent to
this sin, that I'm a violent man, and that I'm a a man filled
with lust, because those are the two particular transgressions,
lust and then murder, violent murder, that had brought about
writing this psalm. And he said, they're in me. I
know that. And as hard as I work to suppress
them, I can't unless you grant me the willing
spirit. not just willing to go along.
This is what I want from the inward person, that I not be
the violent man, that I not be that person led about by lusts
of all sorts and covetousness, anger, wrath, malice. The only way that conduct can
ever be changed is if you change what a person desires. We can, by natural methods, restrain
some of the outbreaks of our sinfulness, but what we're often
doing is it's kind of like trying You know, you got a pressure
cooker, and they always have that little weight on the top
that'll only allow it to get so high in pressure before it
lets off steam. And that's all we're doing. For
a while, that thing can cook, and no steam's coming out. And
we think, OK, it's holding. But eventually, psst! And that's
what happens when we try to restrain sin in the energy of the flesh.
All we're doing is building up more and more pressure, and then
all at once, boom! But if we could turn the heat
off, if we could be changed such that
within us that part created by God, reborn by God, rises up
to dominate that part of us that is still natural, the flesh. And you know how that's done?
It can't be done. I'm telling you because I've
tried over and over again. At least I can't do it, and I
figure probably you can't either. You cannot, with the will of
the flesh, restrain the lust of the flesh. You just can't
do it. That's like trying to arm wrestle with yourself. You need strength from another
source. And where does that strength
come from? Well it comes from God, but how is it mediated to
us? Gospel preaching. The declaration of Christ. He
said, cleanse me with hyssop. Whose blood's on that hyssop?
Christ's. Wash me and I will be whiter
than snow. By whose blood am I washed? Christ's. And it's
in the knowledge of these things that sin, its power, is diminished
in us. Or maybe we can say that the
alternate power is increased in us, but is it not true? The more that your mind is occupied
with Christ and what wonderful things he has done for you, the
less you are interested in those things which are contrary to
Christ. Repentance and faith, both of
them are brought about by a knowledge of our sin, that
it is sin, that it's against God, that it's beyond our power
to fix. And therefore we turn from ourselves
and turn to him, and in faith cry out, wash me, cleanse me. And you know what the fruit of
true repentance is? You know, people see someone
crying over sin. Oh, he's repentant. Well, he may be in the process,
but he hadn't done yet. Because repentance always results
in joy. Why? Because as long as you're
trying to carry that burden around, it's nothing but a burden. The
moment in repentance, you roll it off yourself and onto Christ.
Then are you free. Then the bones that God has crushed
will rejoice. Then you'll hear joy and gladness. And as another one of the prophets
says, and you will skip like a newborn calf out of the stall.
Well, may God use his word to our good. Scott, you and James,
if you'd come help us with the Lord's table.