over in Jeremiah chapter 3 and
in Psalms chapter 51. I want to speak to
you for just a few minutes, the Lord being gracious to us and
allowing us and enabling us on confession of sin. In Jeremiah 3, verse 13, only acknowledge thine iniquity,
that you have transgressed against the Lord your God, and you have
scattered your ways to the strangers under every green tree, and you
have not obeyed my voice, saith the Lord. In Psalms chapter 51, have mercy upon me, O God, according
to thy lovingkindness, according unto the tender multitude of
your tender mercies brought out of my transgression. Wash me
thoroughly from my iniquities, and cleanse me from my sin. I
acknowledge my transgression, and my sin is ever before me. Against Thee, Thee only, have
I sinned, and done this evil in Thy sight, that Thou mightest
be justified when You speak, and clear when You judge. Behold,
I was shapen in iniquity, and sin did my mother conceive me.
Behold, You desire truth in the inward parts and in the hidden
you will make me to know wisdom. Purge me with hyssop, I shall
be clean. Wash me, and I shall be whiter
than snow. Make me to hear joy and gladness,
that the bones which you have broken may rejoice. Hide your
face from my sins, and blot out all mine iniquities. Create in
me a clean heart, O God, Renew a right spirit within me. Cast
me not away from your presence, and take not your Holy Spirit
from me. Restore unto me the joy of thy
salvation. Uphold me with your free spirit.
Then will I teach transgressors thy ways, and sinners shall be
converted unto you. Deliver me from blood guiltiness,
O God, thou God of my salvation, and my tongue shall sing aloud
of your righteousness. O Lord, open my lips, and my
tongue, my mouth shall show forth your praise. For thou desirest
not sacrifice, else would I give it. Thou delightest not in burnt
offerings. The sacrifices of God are a broken
spirit, a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise. Do good in your good pleasure
unto Zion. Build thou up the walls of Jerusalem. and then thou shalt be pleased
with the sacrifices of righteousness, with burnt offerings and whole
burnt offerings, then shalt thou they offer bullocks upon thine
altar." The title to this psalm tells us that this is when David
had gone into Bathsheba and committed that awful sin of adultery. and
then secretly conceived to kill Bathsheba's husband, Uriah, and
then hide it and lie and play the hypocrite. The Lord sent
his prophet to David, confronted David with the whole situation.
David was suddenly brought to the conviction that I have sinned
against God. The title tells us this is written
by David's pen concerning his sin, and he says here in verse
3, ìI acknowledge my transgression. Against thee and thee only have
I sinned.î David never says anything about his sin against Bathsheba. Of course he sinned against Bathsheba.
Of course he sinned against Uriah. But he knew that his sin ultimately
was against God. This is why you and I are never
allowed to avenge ourselves personally. What wrong has done us is not
against us. It's against God. He that rejecteth
you rejects me. They're not speaking evil of
you, Moses. They're speaking evil of me.
Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord. I want this evening, for
a few minutes, to look at three things concerning David's confession,
his acknowledgement. First, I want to look in verse
3 at the confession of sin itself. He says there, I acknowledge
my transgressions, I confess them, and my sin is ever before
me. And then, number two, he seeks
and finds in the heart of God a cause of forgiveness. And he pleads that. Thy love,
thy kindness, thy tender mercy. And then David's faith in the
Son of God and his atonement. Wash me. Cleanse me. First of all, then, I want you
to look with me at David's confession of sin. I acknowledge my transgressions. I have sinned against the Lord. All have sinned against the Lord.
But very few realize it. You and I, I'm sure, cannot begin
to relate to this. At least, I can't. Most of my
conscious life five years old or so. I was made conscious that
I had sinned. I was made aware of that. But
there are a few people in this life, no doubt, that go through
this life and they're never aware in their conscience that they
have sinned against God. David spoke of them as those
who are not in trouble like other men They're not in trouble in
their conscience. They live at ease. The rich man
was never said to lift up his eyes until the flames of hell
lifted them up. I don't understand that, but
there's men that way. Paul said he had not known sin
until finally God brought the law to his heart and let him
see what sin was. Some people confess their sins,
but never obtain forgiveness. Pharaoh said, I have sinned against
God. Even said, I'm a wicked person,
and my people are evil. I don't know if the Lord drowned
him or not, but he died in his sins as far as I know. Wicked
Balaam says, I sinned against God. They cut his head off. King
Saul said, I've sinned against God, and as far as I know, died
in his sins. And Judas said, I've sinned against
God, and went out and hanged himself. All of these confessed
their sin, and yet died in their sin. Notice some things here
about David's confession of his sin. He knows something about
his sins. He's thought about it. It's not
as if David said, Lord, if I've done anything. There's nothing
at all like that in David's confession of sin. He's thought about this. He's meditated upon his sin. He knows something about it.
He describes it in these three ways, as the Scriptures often
do. He calls it sin. He calls it
transgression, and he calls it iniquity. Now, that's not repetition. There's a meaning to those words.
When Moses asked the Lord to show him his glory, he said,
I keep mercy for thousands, and I forgive transgressions, iniquities,
and sins. There's a distinction to be made
in these things. David knew it, and he confesses
all three. Sin, as you and I know it, it
simply means to come short of what God requires. God has set
a standard, and when we shoot at it and do not come up to that
standard, God's requirement, then we have sinned. And ever since the fall of Adam,
no man apart from the Son of God in our flesh has ever lived
up to that standard. The scripture says, All have
sinned. What is it to sin? Come short
of the glory of God. A man may wish it not, Moses
said. A man may not be aware of it.
Or a man may be aware of it. A man may do his best, but David
said, in our best state, when we worship, when we prayed, when
we read, we come short with sin. But David used another word here
in verse 2. He said, iniquity. Iniquity. This has to do with being the
servant of sin. It's not just shooting at the
mark and saying, my, I've missed it. It's not even trying to hit
the mark. It has to do with serving sin. It has to do with just going
on in sin. Be bound by it. Obey it. And
that's what he had done. He lusted. He looked. And then
he committed the act physically. And then he connived and committed
murder. And then he lied and covered
it up. Leave it in hypocrisy. And now here he is, confesses
that he has been the servant of sin. And this word, transgression,
it goes even farther still. It has to do with lawlessness.
It has to do with revolting, to rebel. I've rebelled. It's not been a mistake. No,
it's more than shooting at the mark and missing it. It's more
than just serving my sin. I've been a rebel against you.
I've sinned against your word. I've sinned against the light.
I'm a transgressor. And David said, I'm responsible.
He doesn't lessen his guilt. He doesn't seek to shift it to
someone else. He says, it's my transgression. It's my iniquity. It's my sin. Secondly, about his confession
is this. He recognizes his sin and confesses
it from God's perspective. He sees it through God's eyes.
God opens David's eyes and lets him look through his eyes. And
he says, I've done this evil in thy sight. That changes everything, doesn't
it? I lived through my teenage years, and I often seen sin in
my sight or in my parents' sight, until God opened my heart. Then
I saw what it was to sin in God's sight. When I was lusting, God
was looking. When I was secretly conniving
the death of Uriah, he was open and naked in God's sight. He was looking on. My motives,
my deeds, my words. It was as though he was standing
there looking at me and saw everything that I did. And now David sees
it in a whole different light. How does it appear now, David?
It's evil? It's evil. Oh, it's offensive
to God. It's hateful to God. It's soul-polluting. It's soul-destroying what is
sin. It depends on whose eyes you're
looking through. I have no problem. I have more
problem believing in heaven than I do hell. Since I've saw sin
in God's eyes. There has to be a hell. It has
to be eternal. Because sin is evil in God's
eyes. David sees something else here.
He not only acknowledges his sin against God. He goes farther
than that. He said, God has made me to know
that he knows. God has made me to know that
he knows. It's not hid from God. And David
said, here's how he makes me to know how he feels about my
sin. He comes to me and he says, David,
you've done this, and you've done that, and I've seen it,
and I want you to know I've seen it. And then he lays him down
and breaks his legs and said, that's how I feel about your
sin. He drove it home to David's heart.
Your sin is not just against Uriah. Your sin is not just against
Bathsheba, it's against me. And it's hateful and offensive. I love righteousness and I hate
iniquity. And he smites David and breaks
his bones. Can you imagine someone laying
you on the ground and putting your leg upon a stump and taking
a sledgehammer and busting your knees? How would that feel? That's
the way David's heart felt. That's the way his conscience
felt. cause the bones which you have broken to rejoin." Thirdly, David's confession of
sin was this. He acknowledged the root cause
of his sin. David doesn't say, Lord, you
know that I'm basically a good man. I've just done some evil
things here. He doesn't say that at all. He
doesn't go downstream and see that it's been muddied. He goes
to the fountainhead. He goes to the cause of what
he's done. How could I do this? Why did
I do this? What caused me to do this? And
he finds the cause. And he tells us here in verse
5, Behold, I was shapen in iniquity. And in sin did my mother conceive
me. I am more afraid of myself than
I am of the devil. I am a worse enemy to myself,
and you are too. You are too. David was a young
lad. The Lord was with him. A lion came out, and a bearer
came out to get some of David's little lamb. And David rose up
against them and slew them. A blasphemous giant came out
against the armies of the Lord, and little David with his sling
and some stones went out and slew the giant. I come to you
in the name of the Lord God of Israel. Oh, here was a man the
Lord had saved. He was a man after God's own
heart. But here he is now laying in
the arms of a strange woman and plotting the death of her good
husband. Sinning against God. How could
he do such a thing? What would cause a man to do
such a thing? He tells us. Here's the cause
of it. And he didn't smile when he said
it. He didn't wink with his eye to
use this to excuse his sin. This is the cause of it. It's
in me. The devil didn't make me do it.
Bathsheba didn't make me do it. The cause is in me. And here's
what it is. I'm evil by nature. I read an
article about Adolf Eichmann. He was Hitler's right-hand man.
And there was a young lady and her family were hiding out, and
he personally with some of his soldiers came in, and before
that young lady's eyes, he killed her entire family. And when the
war was over, they finally caught him, and he was getting ready
to go on trial, and she was a young lady then, and she asked to sit
down and speak with Adolph Eichmann. And she came away from that interview
with him. And the reporters ask her about
it. Why would you want to do this? What did you learn from
this? And she says, the thing that scares me the most, as I've
just left him and sat and talked with this man, he is perfectly
normal. You can seem normal. You can
be very religious. You can seem that way to others. And you can really be that way.
But down beneath the religious facade, we teach our children to be polite,
to say yes sir and no sir. And that's well and good. We
should do that. But down underneath that manner
and behind that little sweet tongue lies deceit. Down underneath that morality
and smooth tongue and fair speeches is a cesspool of iniquity. is a heart that's deceitful above
everything, and desperately wicked, and nobody can know it. And I think sometimes, brothers
and sisters, if you and I didn't forget it so easy, we'd never
leave our house to see the face of man until we first saw the
face of God. We're destructive. Misery are
in our way. Why? Because of what we are. What's your trouble, David? It's
what I am. That's my trouble. David acknowledges this in verse
4. Whatever judgment God was going
to bring, it would be just. It would be right. God would
be clear in it. And David said, I'll clear you
myself. Isn't that what he said? Against thee and thee only have
I done this evil in thy sight, that thou mayest be justified
when you speak, and clear when you judge. If you forgive my
sins for Christ's sake, you're right. If you punish me for them,
you're right. He clears God. I was talking
with a dear friend of mine this week, and he said, you know what's
amazing to me? how God can let evil people just
go on and on and on and live and live and live. Or to destroy
them all, he said. I said, if He did, He'd begin
with you and me. Oh, we can look at mass murderers.
We can look at open and profane sinners. And we can say, boy,
they're going to get just what they deserve. But what about
us? What about my sin? Will God be
just in punishing my sin? What about my hard heart? What
about my pride? What about my unbelief? What
about my lust that I keep cooped up? Will He be just in putting
me in hell? Will I call for a verdict? Well,
I say, here it is, this evil, here it is. Render a verdict. Either punish me or forgive me,
but you cannot do both. And we call for a verdict. We
call for a verdict. Why do so many good things, bad
things happen to good people? David didn't feel that way, did
he? Am I willing to say to God, you
render the verdict, and I'll justify you? Boy, that's a difficult thing,
isn't it? That's a difficult thing. Fifthly
is this. I've got to hurry. And here's
the most important aspect, I think, of what I've got to say concerning
this point. David acknowledges his sin and
he stops there. The verse I read to you in Jeremiah
chapter 3 verse 13 says this, only acknowledge thine iniquity. Only acknowledge thine iniquity. And David says here in verse
3, my sin is ever before me. I've acknowledged my sin, I've
confessed And he did a pretty good job of confessing sin. He's
articulated his confession very well. He knows something about
sin. David, don't you feel better?
I mean, confession is good for the soul, you know. I tell you
what, confession of sin can be a very dangerous thing if we
trust in that confession to remove the guilt. Let me go to some man in a little
booth and confess my sin and heal my wounds slightly and deceive
my heart. That's dangerous. I confess my
sin and now I want to be baptized. I confess my sin and now I'm
going to join the church. I confess my sin and now I'm
going to start getting my act together. I confess my sin and
now I'm going to start reading a lot. Only confess your sin. Only acknowledge it. And stop
that. Don't do a thing to ease your
conscience. You think that's not difficult
to do? You've never had guilt upon your conscience. The last
thing a conscience wants to do is bear the guilt with no relief
in and of itself. But here the Lord says, that's
what confession is. And that's what you're going
to do. Only acknowledge it. What does David do here? He cuts
himself off of any hope of forgiveness. He cuts himself off of any hope
of forgiveness of sin if the cause of that forgiveness is
found in himself. He has no cause. All he sees
in him is evil. He confesses it, and he only
confesses it. Now, if there is any hope of
forgiveness, he must look away from his guilt. He must look
outside of himself and what he can be or what he can do. And
he must find some cause in the heart of God. to cause him to
hope for forgiveness. And he finds it. He finds it. He finds it in verse one. Thy
love. Thy love. Thy kindness. Thy tender mercies. Covenant
mercies. Sheer mercies of David. The sheer mercies of one greater
than David. David sets these three evils
that he sees in himself, his sins and iniquities and transgressions,
and he sets them over against what he sees in the heart of
God, love and kindness and tender mercy. And he says, now, let's
see which one is the greatest. My evil is great. Is God's love
greater? Is His kindness greater? Is His
mercies greater? Paul did this very thing himself
when he was writing to Titus. And he said, Titus, you remember
your life and I remember mine. In our days of the flesh, we
were disobedient. deceived, serving divers lust
and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, hating one
another. But after that, the love, there
it is, and kindness, there it is, of God our Savior towards
man appear, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according
to His mercy. There you have it. We see what's in our own heart.
And what is it? Evil. And we do nothing. We do
nothing but set therewith it upon our conscience. Then we
look out of ourselves unto the heart of God, and we say this
evil in us is evil indeed. But what's in God? Good. Does His good outweigh our evil? Yes. Then plead it. Plead it. Great misery, one said, draws
out great mercy. If that's so, then plead. Where
there's no merit to plead, then plead mercy. If there's merit
to plead, try to plead it. And all you'll see is God's bad
side. All you'll see is God's frowning
face. If there's no merit, then plead
mercy. Plead tender mercy. This is one of the most difficult
things I ever did in my life. When you've sinned, and you've
sinned, and you've sinned, and you're guilty, and you're guilty,
and you feel like you're deserving of the awful wrath of God, it's
difficult to see past all of that and see what's in the very
heart of God. It's God love. Does He delight in mercy? How
great are these attributes of God? Are they greater than my
evil? Oh, we lack it in our doctrine,
but put it in practice. You'll be a Christian indeed
if you can put that in practice. Get along with God. Who said
that? Get along with God and put this in practice. And if
you can do that, you're a Christian indeed. God's grace is in your
heart indeed. Thirdly and lastly is this. Notice David's faith in the Son
of God. The Son of God incarnate. The
Son of God in His atonement. Wash me from my iniquities. Cleanse me from my sins. Purge me, and I shall be clean. Wash me, and I shall be whiter
than snow. David's not speaking about the
blood of goats and bulls. He said, I'm not bringing a sacrifice.
He said that in verse 16. If you required that, he said,
I'd bring that. If you required blood, I would
bring that. You don't require that. David's
faith is not in a goat or a heifer. Who's his faith in? The Son of
God and His atonement. But you say, Bruce, Jesus Christ
hadn't even taken to Him flesh yet. He hadn't made the atonement
for sin yet. He's not gone to the cross and
cried, It's finished yet. Yes, He has. Yes, He has. I didn't lie. I didn't say anything. We hear
about two Gospels. Here are about two Gospels up
where I'm from. We've got one Gospel comes up to Matthew. It's saved by the law. Then we've got another Gospel,
three Gospels. We've got a Gospel for the Jews, Matthew, Mark,
Luke and John in the Acts. And then Paul comes on the scene
and we get another Gospel. No. Never been but one Gospel. One Gospel. Never been but one
whose blood could cleanse from sin. Never been but one way to
bring that blood to the conscience, and that's faith. That's the
faith David had. Same faith he had. David said, the Lord said unto
my Lord, said on my right hand, had that happened yet? in the
mind and purpose of God. Are we in heaven tonight? In
the mind and purpose of God. Be glorified. God calls those
things which be not as though they were. Jesus Christ in the
mind and in the eyes and in the esteem of His Father has always
been a lamb slain. The esteem of the Heavenly Father
for His dear Son does not increase or diminish according to time
or events. God always looks upon Him as
a Lamb freshly slain before the foundation of the world. Isn't
that what Peter said? And there on the cross He hangs. And He
is actually slain in our eyes. There He hangs in His blood. It's been 2,000 years later,
and He's in heaven in our glorified humanity. And the Father looks
upon Him. And those spirits of just men
look upon Him. And the angels look upon Him.
And you know how they see Him? Freshly slain. And David knows
this. So he pleads it. He pleases the
blood even though he knows in his own eye, according to his
own measurement of time, it's not shed yet. But he knows God
doesn't see as he sees. So he pleased the blood of God's
Son. For Christ's sake, wash me. For your dear son's merit clothed
by shame. when Abel took that lamb from
his flock without blemish and without spot and tuck it up in
his arms and put it between his guilt and his God, he was justified
and accepted. The same blood that washes us
from sin washed David from his sin. He loved us and washed us. David said, wash me. Wash me. The same blood that cleanses
us today, cleanse David. The blood of Jesus Christ, God's
Son, cleanses us. David said, cleanse me. His faith
was in the same person. The same glorious person. The
same blood. Jesus Christ. Take all your guilt. Confess
it and stop that. Find in the heart of God a cause
why he'd even look in your direction. And then turn your guilty conscience
to Jesus Christ. Have you ever had the devil come
to you? And he says, you've sinned the
same sin. And how many times have you sinned it? You sinned
over and over and over. Look at you. Look what a shame
you are. You're worthy of hell. Why don't
you just despair? You know what you need to do?
Agree with Him. Say, yes, devil, I've done it. I don't deny it. I don't deny it. But Jesus Christ
has made full satisfaction for my sins. All my sins, all my
iniquities, all my rebellion. And I trust Him. In the face
of my guilt, I trust Him. He may hide His face from me,
I trust Him. He may chasten me sore, but I
trust Him. Though He slay me, And I've never
known this type. Find me a place in the Scripture
where this happens. I'd love to see it. Though He
slay me, I'll trust Him. You trust in Him, He'll never
slay you. No. He'll hold you up. He'll wash you. He'll cleanse
you. Confession of faith. God give us grace to do it. Amen.