Psalm 51 - The Road Back

It's an amazing thought to think that the child that Mary delivered was none other than the Son of God who had come to deliver her and all of us who would trust him as Savior. How much Mary understood of the mission, purpose of Christ's coming, we don't know, we know that she knew a lot. She understood a lot of why she had come, but whether or not she understood all of the Old Testament prophecies that he would fulfill, it's difficult to know. But he was the one who came. As a baby, but for the express purpose to be our Savior, to forgive us of our sins. Woman by the name of Debbie Morris was kidnapped and assaulted at the age of 16. The man who perpetrated that crime against her was later arrested for killing another woman and was sentenced to death. As he was on death row in prison, a woman who visited that prison and would talk to prisoners, befriended him and began to explain to him that he could find forgiveness and grace in Christ. He finally came to understand that. The relationship between that man on death row and the woman who came to visit him became an award-winning, Academy Award-winning movie in 1995 called Dead Man Walking. The woman, however, who gave testimony that put Robert Willie in prison and sentenced him to death had a little more difficulty understanding what was going on. She was actually interviewed by the public broadcasting system front line program about the crime against her and his life and the movie that was made about his coming to faith in the Lord. She said she thought she had forgiven him, had dealt with all the issues in her life, and then when she saw the tape of that program, of the interview with her, she realized the last statement she made was, if this means that Robert Willie and I are in heaven together, I'm not sure I'm there yet. And she said she realized she had not yet come to full grips with what had happened to her and whether or not she could really forgive or believe that God's grace and mercy was big enough to forgive someone even of the worst of sins and crimes. And she began to deal with that in her own life, the issue of what God's grace is and God's forgiveness is. I am sure that there may be someone, there probably is someone, maybe more than one person sitting here today who wonders if you can be forgiven because of something in your past, something you're living with now. Or there may be some of you here today who have someone in mind that you are not sure they should be forgiven by God. Just how far reaching is God's mercy, just how deep is God's forgiveness, just how broad is God's love anyway. Can't it forgive the greatest of sins? Well Psalm 51 gives us the answer to those questions. And I would invite your attention this morning to the 51st chapter of Psalms as we work our way through favorite Psalms, we cannot leave this one out. It has been the heart cry of many people and a cry that probably some here this morning need to express from your hearts. Psalm 51. Now if you're there at Psalm 51, you notice the title of the Psalm describes the historical background of the Psalm. It says, for the director of music, a Psalm of David when the prophet Nathan came to him after David had committed adultery with Bathsheba. So this Psalm comes out of the darkest period of David's life. It comes out of the deepest sin that David committed. Lost for another woman who was not his wife. The theft of that woman who was another man's wife, adultery with her, trying to cover up that sin which didn't work. And so eventually that leads to him having her husband murdered and that begins a year long cover up of the whole sort of affair. This was the darkest time of David's life. And this, all of this by a man whom the Bible says is a man after God's own heart. Is it possible that such a man can sink so low into such depths of sin? And is it possible that he could be forgiven of such sin? Maybe there are some of you here this morning that are hiding a secret in your past. Or this is the darkest time of your life. Or maybe you're dabbling in sin without recognizing the consequences of what will happen and the depth to which it can lead you. I want us this morning, all of us to very seriously consider what David says about the road back. Is it possible to get back to where you once were? Is it possible to come back to God? Is it possible to receive his forgiveness to ever be like it was before? Well, let's see what David says about that. David tells us what the road back is like. It's not easy, but it is possible for anyone here today. Now the road back has at least three steps that David describes for us in Psalm 51. The first step and the most important step, the one I'll spend the longest time talking about this morning because if you don't get this one, you're not going to get any further. You'll never get back to where you need to be. Never get back to God. And if you are a Christian and you've fallen into some deep sin, you will never get back to where you need to be in your relationship with God unless you take this first step. And it's the step of a sincere repentance. A sincere repentance. What I mean is a genuine confession of sin that deals honestly with what's in your life. Now David talks about that in the first six verses. I want us to read those six verses. I'm going to pull some truths out of those verses that help us understand what a sincere repentance is all about. Verse one says, have mercy on me, O God. According to your unfailing love, according to your great compassion, blot out my transgressions. Wash away all my inequity and cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgressions and my sin is always before me. First you, you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight so that you are approved right when you speak and justified when you judge. Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me. Surely you desire truth in the inner parts. You teach me wisdom in the inn most place. What does it mean to sincerely repent of sin? What does it mean to genuinely turn away from sin in a confession that comes from the depths of your soul to God? What does it mean to do that? David helps us understand what sincere repentance is all about. First of all, sincere repentance appeals to God's mercy and love. It appeals to God's mercy and love. That's what David does in verse one. He says, have mercy on me, O God. Now when David says, have mercy on me, O God, he's admitting that he does not deserve God's forgiveness. He's admitting that if he gets what he deserves, that God could abandon him to the just punishment for his sin. He does not deserve God to show anything of mercy or grace or love to him. So he appeals. He hilarly casts himself on God's mercy. Now mercy is the fact that God withholds what we deserve, what is due to us by our punishment and in turn acts impiddy and love toward us. That's mercy. And David knows that the only way he can be forgiven is to appeal to God's mercy. But he also appeals to God's love. He says, have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love. Now the word for unfailing love is a word which describes in the Old Testament that covenant love that God has promised to us when he comes into relationship with us. God makes a promise, a covenant with us when he comes into relationship with us through his son Jesus Christ. And that promise, that covenant relationship is that we are in his family and nothing can take us out of his family. And so David basically says, God, I know I don't deserve your forgiveness so I need your mercy, but God, I'm appealing to your covenant love too. I believe I'm in your family and I know you don't turn your back on your children. And so I'm not presumptuous. I recognize I don't deserve your forgiveness. But I have hope that I will receive your forgiveness because of your unfailing love. So he appeals to God's mercy and love. And then at the end of verse one, he says another word for love, according to your great compassion, brought out my transgressions. Different word for love there, it's a word which has that warm, fuzzy, embrace kind of love. It literally means to be moved with feelings of pity towards someone and compassion towards someone. So what David is saying is, God, here I am, I throw myself on your mercy, on your covenant, faithfulness as being your child and on your loving embrace which I long to feel again. I cast myself on you. I realize I don't deserve to be forgiven, but I appeal to your mercy and your love. Now there is no genuine repentance without that. If you come to God thinking you deserve God's love or God ought to give you something because you're coming back to Him, right? If you come in that spirit, that's not genuine repentance, not sincere confession. Sincere repentance casts ourself on the love and mercy of God. Secondly, sincere repentance takes personal responsibility for sin. You know, we live in a world that is doing everything it can. People are doing everything they can to excuse themselves from their sin, the reality of what's right and what's wrong. And we find every rationalization and excuse we can to get out of personal responsibility for sin. The July 30th issue of World Magazine had a little news blurb in it about the professional teacher's association in England. They had decided they were going to stop using the word fail in their schools in England. We're no longer going to use the word fail because we don't want anybody to feel bad. So instead we're going to use the words deferred success. You know what that sounds like to me? Failure. That's what it sounds like. You fail. Now the problem there is we're so afraid of making someone feel bad that we don't want them to get a bad self-image. So we want to skirt around the issue of sin. And that doesn't happen only in England. It happens in the United States of America too. There is a woman in our country who has founded a home-based business. Her name is Kathy Warman and the name of her business is an apology service. For six dollars she will use her warm soothing southern accent to phone call an apology to someone that you've offended. She'll do it for you. Anything to get out of taking personal responsibility for sin. That's our credo today. But the Bible says if you are going to genuinely get right with God, you have got to take personal responsibility for your own sin. I don't know if you noticed it as we read those six verses. But in the first three verses David uses the word my five times. In verse one, blot out my transgressions. Verse two, wash away all my iniquity. Cleanse me from my sin. I know my transgressions. And my sin is always before me. There's no rationalization or excuse making here. David says I am responsible. This is my sin. I know it. In fact, look at what he says in verse three. I know my transgressions and that's not just I give a mental nod to. It's that this is always before me and he says at the end of the verse. My sin is always before me. It's like a bad nightmare. It's like a guilt trip that keeps coming back. I'm weighed down heavily with the burden of what I've done. I know I have sinned. It's my sin. David takes personal responsibility for his own sin. Genuine repentance must include sincere repentance, must include taking responsibility for our own sin. Couple of years ago almost now, a couple of years ago, the movie The Passion came out and you remember the firestorm that surrounded that movie before it was released about whether or not it was antisemitic. There were groups that were claiming that Mel Gibson was going to portray very clearly that the reason Jesus was killed was crucified was because of the Jews and they were to blame and it would cause an uproar of antisemitism across the world. For a while Gibson just kept quiet about that and then finally in a People magazine interview in the first week of March, just a couple of weeks after the film was released, he revealed for the first time that no, he had actually done something in the making of the movie to show whose fault it was that Jesus was on the cross. And he revealed that when they were nailing Christ on the cross, the hand that was holding the nail was his own hand. As the director of the movie, he made that cameo appearance to emphasize the fact that I am personally responsible. My sin is what placed Jesus on the cross. And his point was that it was all of our sins that placed Jesus on the cross. It was not some national or ethnic group. It was all of our sins that placed Jesus on the cross. And he said, I wanted to be the one to show that it was my sins. I understand it was my sin that placed him on the cross. Genuine repentance takes responsibility for our sin. And there is no genuine repentance without that. There is no honest confession without that. So sincere repentance sees sin in all its ugliness. In the first four verses, David uses three words to describe sin. By the way, it's the same three words we saw back when we looked at Psalm 32. He uses the word transgression, which means an out and out rebellion in the face of God. He uses the word iniquity, which means a twisting or perversion of what's right. And he uses the word sin, which means to miss the mark. Now David is not just playing word games with us. David is describing sin in those three terms because there is no one word to express all of the ugliness of sin. And so David is impressing on us. Sin is ugly. Sin is awful. It is a rebellion against God. It's a twisting of what's right. It's a missing of the mark God intended us to hit. And so he very clearly sees sin in all of its ugliness. And even the words he uses to ask God for forgiveness are so picturesque in describing what it means to be forgiven of the ugliness of sin. Notice there in verse 1, he says, Lord, please, blot out my transgressions. The idea of blotting out is to literally remove something from an official record to erase it from the record to take away the record of my sin. My friend, there's someone who has done that for us who has answered David's prayer. And it's the Lord Jesus. When he died on the cross, the extent to which God would go to answer this prayer in the prayer of many, many others who have cried, Lord, blot out my sin. Take it off the record books in heaven. The extent to which God would go is revealed only in the gift of his son. Paul described that in Colossians chapter 2. When he said to us, he forgave all our sins. Having canceled the written code, that's the law of Moses. Having canceled the written code with its regulations. That was against us and that stood opposed to us. He took it away. This is how he did it. Nailing it to the cross. That's how he forgave us of our sins. That's how he blotted out the record against us by nailing it to the cross. And so David said, Lord, blot out my transgressions. And then he said, in verse 2, wash away all my iniquity. The word there literally means to get the stain out of a garment, the stubborn stain that won't seem to leave. It carries with it the idea of the continuing guilt of sin. David asked to be washed from that. Now in our day getting stained out of clothing is fairly simple. You just dump some chemicals on it like stuff like shout and stuff like that. You just dump it on there and throw it in the washing machine, right? Is that how you do it? So I do it. Tell, I don't do the wash around our house, but I think it's fairly simple to get stuff out today, isn't it? They got all kinds of stuff that you could pull stains out of any fabric. In Bible times it was not that easy. Washing clothes demanded that you find a river or pool of water. And if it had a stubborn stain and that you took a rock or a brush or some other instrument and you worked and you labored hard to get that out of the fabric. And David recognizes, God, that's what I need. My heart, my soul, my life needs that kind of scrubbing clean. I need to be washed. I need to be washed of my sin. And then he says, cleanse me from my sin. Take out anything that stands in the way of my relationship with you and makes me dirty. You see, David is talking about the ugliness of sin with the words he uses here. And the height of his awareness of the ugliness of sin comes in verse four. Look at what he says. He says, against you, you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight. What he's saying is I see my sin as high treason against a holy God. Now, I know that we may have read this verse and kind of puzzled over it against you and you only have I sinned. Well, wait a second. Were there some other people hurt by David's sin? I mean, wasn't his family hurt and for crying out loud, what about Eurea, Bathsheba's husband who got killed because of David's sin? A David is not denying responsibility for those things. David is simply saying, when you see sin in all of its ugliness, you realize that the very worst part about it, the ugliest part about it is the offense we do to a holy God when we sin. A God who has been so good to us and has blessed us so much and we slap him in the face with our sin. That is the worst and the darkest thing about sin. To think only about how sin has affected you is bad enough. To think of how it's affected others is bad also but to think of how it affects a holy God. If you really understand the ugliness of sin, that's the thing that really stands out to you. That you've offended the holiness of a pure and spotless God who has loved you so much that he gave you son to die for you. That's the ugliest thing about sin. So genuine repentance sees sin in all of its ugliness. But fourthly, genuine repentance. Sincere repentance agrees with God's verdict. Look at the end of verse four where David says, so that you are proved right when you speak and justified when you judge. In other words, God, you are right to accuse me of what I've done because I've done it. And you would be entirely within the bounds of your justice if you gave me the punishment I deserve for it. I agree with your verdict. Again, this is not trying to excuse oneself. This is not trying to get away from sin, trying to rationalize it, trying to explain it. This is what everybody does in our society today. No, I deserve your punishment, God. I agree with your verdict about my sin. Genuine repentance comes to that level of humility. A little two-year-old Brianna was supposed to have a part in a play at her church. And she was supposed to quote Romans 3.23 because of her age, only being two years old, she was supposed to just say the three words all have sinned from Romans 3.23. And when it came her time to say that, little two-year-old Brianna gets up to the mic and she sees all those people out there and she just blurted out, I have sinned. But you know, that's exactly right. Brianna was right. Genuine repentance, sincere repentance takes the all have sinned and makes it personal and says, I have sinned. It's not just that everybody has sinned. The world is guilty. I'm guilty. I take personal responsibility. I agree with God's verdict. I have sinned. That's sincere repentance. The fifth element of sincere repentance is that it recognizes our basic sinfulness. The good verse 5 recognizes our basic sinfulness. Verse 5 says, surely, I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me. I think the NIV has done a great job of explaining the meaning of this verse and what he's really getting at. There are some translations that say, in sin, my mother conceived me. And that has misled some people to think that it was the act of conception that was sinful or even that David was born out of wedlock. And that's not what David is saying. The NIV has translated the thought exactly right. The idea, it really is, surely, I was sinful at birth and it goes even beyond when I was born. It goes back to the time I was conceived, sinful from the time my mother conceived me. What David is saying basically is that my sin goes deeper than just one act. He's not, he's not removing responsibility from sin. He's not explaining it away. He's not saying, well, I just got the way I am. You know, it can't help it. No, David is saying, my sin goes deeper than one act. It's more than just one blimish on another wise pure record. No, my sin goes all the way to the core of my being. I have a sinful nature. And that sinful nature was passed down to me from my parents. At the moment I was conceived in my mother's womb, just like everybody has received it all the way back to Adam. And so I am a sinner at core. This is not just one little accident on my record. This is my character at stake here. This is to the core of my being. I am a sinner. And I do what I do because of who I am. I am a sinner and God needs to do a work deep inside me to deal with that. That's what David's saying. He's not avoiding responsibility. He's taking a deeper sense of responsibility than what many of us do when we confess our sins. We have a say, well, Lord, kind of blew it there, but you know, we're all in pretty good person. Most of the time I'm doing all right. No, it's not that way at all for him. Like David, we are sinners from the get-go from the moment we're conceived. And we have to take responsibility for the fact that we are sinners by nature, by character. David recognizes his basic sinfulness. The wickedness goes deeper than just one act. It is broken over his sinfulness. The sixth element of sincere repentance is in verse six. Sincere repentance deals honestly with sin. It deals honestly with sin. Look at verse six, surely you desire truth in the inner parts. You teach me wisdom in the innmost place. God wants truth. When we're dealing with sin, God wants truth. And He wants truth all the way down, David says, to the inner parts. That means from the heart. That means honestly expressing what we have done and who we are. And David goes on to say, Lord, you'll teach me the wisdom in that innmost place. You'll help me to see through your word. You see, when God turns the search light of His word on our hearts, it digs out all the dirtiness and the evilness and takes away our hypocrisy and deceit and shows our sin for what it really is. God will give us the wisdom to see what we've done if we'll be honest about it. That's what David said in verse six. We've got to be honest about sin. January 2004, issue of readers digest had a story about a guy named Bruce. I believe it was his first name, Red Domsky. It was his last name. This guy lives in a neighborhood somewhere here in the United States and one day he got a knock at his front door as a little five-year-old boy standing outside his front door. A little five-year-old guy says, Sir, I need to get something out of your garage. Bruce is kind of like, what's going on here? He takes a little boy. They walk through the kitchen into the garage and when they get into the garage, Bruce realizes what has happened because on the floor of his garage lies a baseball and some glass from a broken window. Bruce thinks it's a teachable moment for this little kid. He says, looks at the window, looks at the baseball, looks at the kid and he says, how do you suppose that baseball got in here? A little five-year-old boy looked at the window and looked at the baseball, looked back up at Bruce and said, man, I guess I'm better than I thought I was. I threw it right through that hole you had in your window. Some of us do the very same thing with our sin. We try to find some reason why it would have happened, some reason why I was weak at that time or whatever, rather than just saying, honestly, God, I sinned. I was wrong. I accept your verdict. I'm going to deal honestly with this thing. I'm not going to try to explain it away or rationalize it away. Friend, you will never get back to where you need to be until you begin with sincere repentance, which is described in those six ways by David. You'll never get anywhere getting right with God unless you begin with sincere repentance. If you've never trusted Jesus as your Savior, that's where you need to begin. You need to recognize that you're a sinner and you have no hope of being in heaven someday apart from God's grace in salvation through His Son, Jesus Christ. You need to recognize that you're a sinner and admit that to God. That's where it all begins. If you've done that, if you've trusted Christ as your Savior, but even as a Christian, you've gotten off the path and you've kind of crossed the foul line and got over into bad territory and you got into sin. If you've done that and you feel like you've messed your life up, there is a way back, but it begins with being honest about your sin and not trying to explain it away. You must begin with sincere repentance. Now if you do that and as a most important step, that leads to a couple of other steps that we'll deal with real quickly. Step number two in getting back, the road back to God is a spiritual renewal. Once you really get right with God by confession of sin, then there is a spiritual renewal which takes place, a cleansing which takes place. And David describes that in two ways. First of all in verse seven, it means to be right with God. Look at verse seven. Cleanse me with hissep and I will be clean, wash me and I will be whiter than snow. The cleanse or the purge was a very strong word. It could be translated to desan, you know, like you deice your windows in the morning at this time of year, well this means to desan, to wipe away the effects of sin in our lives. And he uses a very beautiful, Old Testament picture to describe this. Purge me or cleanse me with hissep. Now hissep was a plant that had kind of branches that were real close together and it was used in the temple and tabernacle ceremonies to dip in blood and then take it and sprinkle it. The blood would be sprinkled by the high priest in the holiest of, the holy of holies, the most holy place in the tabernacle in temple where it was represented that the blood covered our sin and kept us from facing God's judgment. Sometimes the hissep plant would be used to sprinkle blood on a leper if it had been determined that indeed his lepercy was gone and he was clean to show that he was literally clean. So that's what David means when he says, cleanse me with hissep. He's saying, Lord, I need, I need the cleansing power of the blood of an innocent, innocent substitutionary sacrifice. And for us, for those of us who live on this side of the cross, that innocent, substitutionary sacrifice is Jesus, God's Son. He's the one who shed his blood so that we could be clean and be right with God. John said it this way in 1 John 1 and 1 verse 9 when he said, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins. And here it is, purify us from all unrighteousness. Now how does he purify us? How does he cleanse us? If you go back to verse 7, it tells us how. Verse 7 says this, if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin. So it is the shed blood of Jesus Christ, just like David was talking about, he needed to be right with God cleansed with blood that was applied. When you trust the Lord Jesus as your Savior, it is his blood shed on the cross which cleanses you from sin. And then as a Christian, whenever you confess your sin, honestly to God like David did, that blood continues to cleanse you, purify you from sin. So this spiritual renewal means to be right with God again. That's one way he describes it, cleans me with his up and then he says, wash me and I will be wider than snow. In other words, Lord, when you cleanse me, when you purge me with your blood, you don't do a halfway job. When you wash me, I'll be wider than snow. I'm right with God again. But you see, this spiritual renewal that comes from sincere repentance also means we're right with others. That's what David's talking about in verse 8. We're right with others as well. Verse 8 says, let me hear joy and gladness, let the bones you have crushed rejoice. I think David's talking there about being back with God's people. You know, when you're living in sin, when things are not right with God, you avoid God's people, right? We've all done that. We avoid God's people, don't want to be in church, don't want to be around God's people. And David is saying, a part of what it means to be spiritually renewed is that I want to hear again the rejoicing, the singing, the worship of God's people. Let me hear that again. And these bones, this body which has felt the guilt of sin for so long, I want to rejoice again. I want to be with God's people again. I want to hear that sound of rejoicing and gladness once again. So this spiritual renewal that takes place when we get right with God and confess our sin, it means that we are right with God, it means that we're right with others. But then David says there's a third step. In this road back, when we're coming back from a dark, sinful time in our lives, the third step is a stunning restoration. And what I'm going to describe next, what David pleads for, and what he knows will happen because if God forgives him, he knows this will happen. Can only be explained by the grace of God. This is literally stunning that God would restore us this way. But he does. He does. And David describes this restoration in three ways. First of all, it's a restoration to fellowship with God versus 10 through 12. And I just want to explain what David describes here quickly about the fellowship with God we can enjoy. This is wonderful. The phrase is he uses. He says, create me a pure heart, oh God, using the same word that Moses used in Genesis 1-1 of God's original creation. In other words, Lord, do a deep work of something new in my life. And what I need new is a pure heart, a heart that seeks after pure things. And after you, not after sin, Lord, that's what I want. That's what fellowship with God is. That's what it is, is to have a pure heart. Secondly, he says, renew a steadfast spirit within me. That's a faithful spirit. That's our motivations, our purposes, being faithful to God. So Lord, instead of being so shaky and tendency to fall into sin so easily, I want to kind of spirit that's faithful, that's steadfast, that really follows after you. That's fellowship with God. Then he describes it in verse 11. Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. I don't think David was talking about the presence of the Spirit there as much as he was the power of the Spirit. The long study involved in that, we're not going to get into that this morning, but I believe he's talking about the power of the Holy Spirit. The endowment with power that the Spirit gave him to do king type stuff, to be the king of Israel. David had seen that removed from Saul. The very, very powerful description in 1 Samuel 16, where David is anointed by Samuel to be the king, and this is what it said about David. Samuel took the horn of oil, anointed him in the presence of his brothers, and from that day on, notice what it says, the Spirit of the Lord came up on David in power. So this is the enablement, the empowerment to do what God was requiring to do as king, the very next verse. Look at what it says. Verse 14 says, now the Spirit of the Lord had departed from Saul. In the context it means, just as he came on David in power, he departed from Saul, removed his power from Saul, and David was afraid that would happen to him because of his sin. So fellowship with God is living in the power of the Holy Spirit, experiencing the Spirit's power. It's a pure heart. It's a faithful Spirit. It's the power of God being on your life. Verse 12, he says, restored to me the joy of your salvation. No more of the guilt, no more of the heaviness weighed down by sin. I want to be joyful again in my salvation. That's fellowship with God. And then in verse 12, grant me a willing Spirit to sustain me. The willing Spirit here is literally an eager Spirit. In other words, I want to be eager about the things of God. I want to have the kind of Spirit that delights in living for Christ because when you have that kind of Spirit, sin and temptation loses its attraction. When your heart is gung-ho after I delight to do your will, O God, then sin loses its attractiveness. And that's what David wants. That's what fellowship with God's all about. There's no better description in the Bible of fellowship with God than those five statements in verses 10 through 12. And we're restored to that, to fellowship with God when we honestly sincerely confess our sin. David also says, this is a restoration to service for God. Not only fellowship with God, but service, verse 13. He says, then I will teach transgressors your way and sinners will turn back to you. Who better to instruct other people about the way back than one who has been there and back? Now this is not saying, I'm going to glorify my past. I'm going to make a big deal out of all my sinfulness and all of its glowing details. Now what David's saying, David is saying, because he's a broken man. David is saying, when I come back, I want to warn other people of the depths to which sin can take you. And if they're there, I want to warn them how to get back. I will teach transgressors your way. I'll teach them the way back. So it's a restoration to service. And then thirdly, it's a restoration to worship. What David ends the psalm with is a beautiful description of how to be restored to the worship of God. Verse 14, it's a worship with humility. Save me from blood guilt, oh God, the God who saves me and my tongue will sing of your righteousness. You see, we're not for God's forgiveness. David would still be bearing around the guilt of his sin. And so he says, the only way I can sing of your righteousness, Lord, is if you forgive me of that blood guilt. The guiltiness of my sin. When I know I'm forgiven, then I can sing again. This is not a proud, boastful guy, a presumptuous guy. This is a guy who has humbled a guy who's humbled by the brokenness that comes from recognizing his sin and experiencing the guilt and the heaviness of conviction. And now he says, oh God, we're not for your forgiveness, I wouldn't be able to sing. But if I know I'm forgiven, I can sing. So he worships with humility. Secondly, he worships with passion now that he's right with God. Look what verse 15 says, oh Lord, open my lips and my mouth will declare your praise. You see, David's mouth had been silent for almost a year. David tried to hide and cover his sin and get by with it. And there were no songs of praise during that time. There was no worship of God and David longs to worship freely and fully again. And so he says, oh Lord, if you open my lips, I will declare your praise again. There is no praise, there is no worship as passionate as one who understands the amazing grace of God to forgive us of the awfulness of our sin. If you've never been there, if you've never understood how great God's forgiveness is, you will never worship with any passion of your heart. And it doesn't matter whether you're singing an old hymn or a newer praise course, that's not the issue. The issue is your heart passionate about what you're singing, about how you're worshipping, about what you're giving to God, about how you're listening to His Word. The whole worship experience, are you passionate about that because you know it's God's grace that has lifted you from a myriad pit? Jesus in Luke 7 went into a Pharisees house, Simon's house, and he went there to eat supper with him. And Simon was going to watch every move Jesus made to find something to be critical of. It didn't take it long to happen. A woman of the street came in. Jesus as was the custom in that day was leaning on his left elbow, eating from the table his feet out behind him. And the Bible says that the woman stood at his feet and her tears dropped on his feet. She knelt down and began to wipe his feet with her hair and then poured perfume and an ointment on his feet. And Simon, that hypocritical Pharisee said, yeah, if he were a prophet, he'd know what kind of woman that is. So he must not be a prophet. Jesus looked Simon right in the eye and said, Simon, I know your heart. I can read your mind and tell you a story. There was a man who was forgiven 500 bucks and another who was forgiven 50 bucks. Who do you think was more grateful? And says, oh, the guy who was forgiven 500 bucks, Jesus said, yes. From the moment I came into your house, you did nothing to wash my feet, but this woman has not ceased to wash my feet with her tears. You had no oil for my feet, for my head this woman has not stopped bathing my feet. You gave me no kiss. She has not stopped kissing my feet. Simon, here's the point. The one who is forgiven much loves much and the one who's forgiven little loves little. Jesus' point is, you will never worship him with such passion and love him with such passion until you recognize the enormity of what you've been forgiven. It's not whether or not you live the worst life in your neighbor. All of us have done worse than can be imaginable in our hearts against God. And we all need the enormity of God's grace. And when we recognize that, we will passionately give ourselves to worship God. So it's worship with passion and then it's worship with sincerity versus 16 to 19. We don't have time to get into those, but basically versus 16 to 19, talk about the fact. David says, Lord, you don't desire offering. You desire a contrite heart, a broken heart, broken spirit. It's not that God didn't want the offerings. God's the one who stipulated the offering should be brought. What he's saying is God, no offering means anything unless it comes with a heart that is broken by sin behind it. So you know what that means for us today? And this day, it means no songs that we sing in worship, no gifts that we give in the offering plate, no supposed attention to God's word, no act of worship that we bring to God when we come to Him is worth anything unless it comes out of a heart that recognizes the enormity of our sin and the amazing nature of God's grace to forgive us. And when our hearts are broken by the enormity of our sin and further broken by God's gracious forgiveness, then we worship with sincerity. That's the road back, my friends. The road back to God begins with sincere repentance. It leads us to spiritual renewal and it brings us eventually to a stunning restoration to God. Stubborn young man had a fight with his dad, left home, said, I'll never be back. And they didn't hear from him for 15 years. 15 years, they cried at night, didn't know where he was, didn't know whether it was safe, didn't know what had happened to him, never heard from him. 15 years later, unexpectedly. They get a note from their son. They explained what had happened in his life that he had made some things right with God and he wondered, can I come home? Can I come see you? This was years ago, he said, I'll be riding the train. And when the train goes by our house, if it's okay for me to come home, would you put a white rag out on the tree, the old oak tree out in the yard? And if the white rag is there, I'll know it's okay to come home and I'll get off the train when it stops in town. If I don't see the white rag there, how does it go on? Sure enough he got on the train, found himself seated beside a pastor and he spilled out his story to the pastor. The pastor said, tell me when we're about to get close to your town, close to your house, why don't you just pray when we get close and I'll look to see if that white rag is there on the tree. So that's what they did. As they got close to the house, the young boy was praying, the young man was praying and pastors looking. All of a sudden the young man felt an elbow in his side. The pastor was so excited, he said, look, you got to see this. The young man looked out the window just in time to see every window of the house had a white rag in it, every tree in the yard all along the fence covered with white rags. He was saying, yes, you can come home. Yes, you can come back. We forgive you. And my friend, that's what God says to you today. If you will come with sincere repentance, honestly admitting your sin, he says, I will forgive you. Welcome back. Let's pray. Father, thank you for the promise of your word that you do receive us back when we come to you in genuine repentance. I pray, Father, that you would help. Those who are here today, all of us, Lord, help us to search our hearts. And I pray that there's anyone who's never trusted Jesus as their Savior that today they would recognize their need of Christ, trust you. I pray, Lord, for those of us who may be saved, but we've messed up our lives, we've gotten involved in sin, and for some it may be the darkest time of their life. And I pray, Father, that today they would come back, that they would honestly deal with sin and get back in fellowship with you in Jesus' name we pray.