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0:57It just happens, and these sins build one upon another, often worse and worse and worse. So in 2 Samuel 11, if we remember that David did not go out into the battle as the kings did, he decided to stay home. And then he used his free time to stay on the rooftop and he watched a woman bathing. And instead of fleeing this temptation, he decided to indulge it. He found out who is this woman? She's beautiful. He sent people out to go bring her to his house so they could commit adultery because they were both married.

1:32So at this point, David already committed a sin worthy of death when he should have been fulfilling his duty as a king at the battle. But wait, there's more to this story. She then becomes present, pregnant, and her husband is out at the battle that David should have been at. Now his sin is going to be exposed. What does he do? David decides to try to cover it up. He calls her husband, Uriah, back from the battle, and he tries to get him to go home with his wife so he can be tricked that the child is his. Because he figures that if he comes back for a night or two, then when he returns at the end of the battle, he won't be surprised when she's pregnant. But Uriah is a good soldier of Israel. He says, I can't do that. I can't come and enjoy the comforts of home while my brothers in arms are out at the battle, dying and fighting. And he wouldn't return home. David tries it again. He says, well, I'll get him to eat a lot and drink a lot, get him drunk, and then he'll go home because he won't be able to resist. But Uriah still did not return home. At this point, David gets desperate.

2:40He then gives instructions for Uriah to be put at the front line of the battle, the fiercest part of the battle, so he won't make it home. And he even gives that instruction for Uriah to carry back to the front line. And just like he wished, Uriah is killed in this battle, and word sent back to David. And then David marries Bathsheba and moves. Her into his house. Now, if you're keeping count, at this point, David has eight wives, eight, something God strictly told the kings of Israel not to do in Deuteronomy 17. It was a very common practice in the surrounding cultures, but the kings of Israel were not supposed to do this.

3:18Now, I remember reading through the Bible for the first time. This story stuck out to me like a sore thumb. It just didn't make sense. How is this the same David? The same David that was after God's own heart. The same one that had so much faith. The man who wouldn't defend himself against Saul when Saul was trying to kill him. And he commits this murder. The New Testament calls David the firstborn, preeminent of Israel, the man who greatly feared the Lord. So how can this be?

3:52This is the result of unrepentant sin. It's kind of like a snowball. It starts off small and gets bigger and bigger and bigger. But this isn't unique to David. We need to pay attention and heed this warning. But David also gives something out of this tragedy. He gives us an example of what true repentance looks like in action. If you could turn to 2 Samuel 12, I'm going to read this portion before we get to the Psalm. 2 Samuel 12.

4:25Then Yahweh sent Nathan to David, and he came to him and said, There were two men in one city, one rich and the other poor. The rich man had a great many flocks and herds, but the poor man had nothing except one little ew lamb, which he bought and nourished. And it grew up together with him and his children. It would eat his morsel of bread and drink his cup and lie in his bosom, and it was like a daughter to him. Now a visitor came to the rich man, and he was unwilling to take from his own flock or herd to prepare for the traveler who had come to him. Rather, he took the poor man's ew lamb and prepared it for the man who had come to him. Then David's anger burned greatly against the man, and he said to Nathan, As Yahweh lives, surely the man who has done this deserves to die. And he must make restitution for the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing and had no compassion. Nathan then said to David, You are the man.

5:26Thus says Yahweh, the God of Israel, it is I who anointed you king over Israel, and it is I who delivered you from the hands of Saul. I also gave you your master's house and your master's wives into your care, and I gave you the house of Israel and Judah, and if that had been too little, I would have added to you many more things like these. Why have you despised the word of Yahweh by doing evil in his sight? You have struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword, have taken his wife to be your wife, and have killed him with the sword of the sons of Yahweh. Of Ammon. So now the sword shall never depart from your house, because you have despised me, and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife. Thus says Yahweh, Behold, I will raise up evil against you from your own household. I will even take your wives from before your sight and give them to your companion, and he will lie with your wives in the sight of the sun. Indeed, you did it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel and before the sun. Then David said to Nathan, I have sinned against Yahweh. And Nathan said to David, Yahweh has also taken away your sin. You shall not die. However, because by this deed you have given occasion to the enemies of Yahweh to blaspheme, the son that is born to you shall surely die. And Nathan went into his house. So this is the backdrop of Psalm 51, our text this evening. David was living in unrepentant sin that kept growing and growing.

7:01And then he was confronted by God through the prophet Nathan. And this Psalm we're going to read, Psalm 51, you can turn there now, is the response. Please turn to Psalm 51. The title of this. Sermon is true repentance. True repentance. For the choir director, a psalm of David when Nathan the prophet came to him after he had gone in the Bathsheba. So the superscript of this tells us the occasion for this psalm, which is why we read all that background. The first element of true repentance is conviction of sin, conviction of sin, and we'll see that in verse 1 and 2. Be gracious to me, O God, according to your loving kindness, according to the abundance of your compassion. Blot out my transgressions, wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. So how does David start this psalm?

8:12Does he start talking about all the good thing he's done for Yahweh? How he's made his name go forth among the other nations, maybe the battles that he's fought, how he didn't kill Saul when he had a chance, how he was the only one who had all the faith when he went up against Goliath? No, not at all. David starts the psalm by appealing for mercy. He is convicted of his sin. He knows that he needs God's compassion. He needs God's grace. Because we don't earn credit for the good that we do, it's not like a scale where, don't you see all the credits I've done when they cover this? That would be like trying to bribe a judge and going to court and saying, yes, I killed someone, but I gave $100,000 to the poor. Are we good? Isn't that even? See how that works out if you go to court. And it's even more insulting to try to appeal to your good works to an all-seeing God.

9:12And if we look at verse 2, he talks about, wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. David has been thoroughly convicted of the sins he's committed. He knows he needs to be cleansed from the guilt that plagues him. You might ask yourself, why wasn't David convicted of the sins earlier? He knew everything that was going on, every sin he committed. And think about the entire episode took about a year, a year of sinning, and then trying to cover it up, and then trying to cover it up, and then trying to assage his guilt over it.

9:50Maybe he was trying to preserve his good name. Maybe he thought that, well, this is what's best for the nation. It's not good for the king to have a scandal, so this is the best way out of this. He started justifying his own sin. And we're the same. We're master justifiers of our own sin. We say, it's not that bad of a sin. Others are way out of line, but I'm just tiptoeing over, so it's not that bad. I can just stay in it. I'm only human. And we can also be self-deceived of our own goodness. But if we continue. In our sin, we start to sear our conscience, and we become desensitized. Conscience, the word with knowledge, conscience. Our conscience holds us to the highest perceived moral standard. But if we're not continually renewing our mind with God's word, then our standard can be pulled down towards the culture around us.

10:55This is a skylight that hasn't been cleaned in 28 years. You can see all the dirt and grime. It's probably very dark in the room below. Showing you this for this example from John MacArthur. I like this example a lot. The conscience functions like a skylight, not like a lamp. It does not produce its own light, but merely lets moral light in. Because of that, the Bible teaches the importance of keeping a clear and good conscience. The goal of our instruction, Paul wrote to Timothy, is love from a pure heart and a good conscience and sincere faith. A few verses later, Paul stressed the importance of keeping faith and a good conscience, which he warned, some have rejected and suffered shipwreck in regarding to their faith. A necessary qualification for deacons is that they hold to the mystery of the faith with a clear conscience. Believers must guard the purity of their cleansed consciences, winning the battle for holiness on the inside where the conscience works. So we must know and renew our minds what's right and wrong based on God's word. Standards. We have to clean off the dirt of our moral skylight and let the light of the word do its job.

12:09Sometimes we just try to put out of our minds the sins we commit. We commit them, move on, don't think about it again. I used to be a police officer, and part of that background process is they make you submit a personal history statement. They say, Tell us everything you've done wrong in your life. And it's not like a job, a regular job background check that, oh, what have you been convicted of or anything like that? It's no, what is everything you've done wrong? When have you ever stolen something? When have you ever lied to somebody you shouldn't have? When have you ever not been a good employee at work? When have you ever got pulled over by not given a ticket? Everything in your life they ask you about.

12:52And to make you sure that you're going to tell the truth, they let you know you're going to be put under a lie detector test. So if you leave anything out, your mind is going to betray you. Your body is going to give off the signs that you're lying when you go under that lie detector test. Now, at this point, I was a believer, so I wrote down everything to be convicted of our sins and confess it, which is our next section. Our next element. So our first one was conviction. David is convicted of his sin. Now we're going to move on to confession, verses 3-5.

13:26For I know my transgressions and my sin is ever before me. Me. Against you, you only, I have sinned, and done what is evil in your sight, so that you are justified when you speak, and pure when you judge. Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me, for I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Nathan brought David's sin to his attention, and David was convicted of his sin, and now he's ready to confess his sin.

14:07Transgressions literally means rebellions. He has rebelled against the Lord, against the one he said he serves. And that's what sin is. It's my will, not thy will. I think it cut David down when God told him, You have despised me, the one that David said he loved the most. That would hurt me if the ones I love the most said, you have despised me. Who did David chiefly sin against in this whole episode? Was it Uriah? Was it Bathsheba? Was it the nation? He chiefly sinned against God through this whole thing. All the other ones are horizontal. Yes, it was still sinning against them, but the chief sin was against God. It is a rebellion. And refusal to follow his instruction.

15:04If you remember Joseph and Potiphar's wife, she tried to get him, she said, come to bed with me. He might remember his response. He said, How can I do such a wicked thing and sin against God? Because God is the one we primarily sin against. David recognized that in his confession. He affirms also that everything that God said was true. He tells us, You are justified when you speak and pure when you judge. Because God deals with us justly. He's not like an earthly judge that can be bribed or hear some of the facts and try to lean things a certain way, be corrupted. His judgments are right 100% of the time. There's never a need for a retrial. The first one, first one's good.

16:01But that's a sobering thought. People like to say that, oh, well, God knows my heart. Yes, he does. But that means he knows your intentions. He knows your sin more than you. That means everyone in this room deserves death if we were given our penalty for our sin. So if God is a perfect judge, And we are guilty, what are our options? What can we do? Well, there's really only one option, and that's what David chooses here. It's time to confess, and it's time to ask for mercy. And that's why David started out this psalm appealing to God's loving kindness and mercy.

16:50And down here in verse 5, he says a phrase, In sin my mother conceived me. And that's a peculiar phrase. David is not just a sinner by practice, he is born with a propensity for sin. Romans 5:12 tells us that therefore, just as through one man, sin entered the world, and death through sin, so death spread to all men. So David was born into creation, which was stained by sin. And now, this does not change David's culpability in his sins. He's not saying, God, you made me do this. You bear responsibility. No, Adam's counting responsibility for the fall, not God. David here is expressing the depth of his sin. He is a sinner through and through, 100%, from his beginning.

17:41Now, if you have children, you know this. How many parents in the room have ever had to teach a child how to steal something from somebody else? You ever have to teach class on how to lie? No, you haven't had to do any of that. They do it on their own. They are born sinners. And that's what David's expressing here. So David has conviction of his sin. He's now confessed his sin. Now we're going to move on to restoration.

18:17Verse 6. Behold, you delight in the truth and the innermost being, and in the hidden part. You will make me know wisdom. Purify me with hyssop, and I shall be clean. Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Make me to hear joy and gladness. Let the bones which you have crushed rejoice. Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me away from your presence, and do not take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and sustain me with a willing spirit. Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will be converted to you. Deliver me from blood guiltiness, O God, the God of my salvation. Then my tongue will joyfully sing of your righteousness. O Lord, open my lips, that my mouth may declare your praise. For you do not delight in sacrifice, otherwise I would give it. You are not pleased with burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart, O God. You do not despise. By your favor, do good to Zion. Build the walls of Jerusalem. Then you will delight in righteous sacrifices, in burnt offerings, and whole burnt offering. Then young bulls will be offered on your altar.

19:47So, back at the start of this section, verse 6, he talks about truth and wisdom. Associated with piety, and truth is just the ultimate word associated with God, as we talked about this morning. David knows that he needs to let his conscience be lightened with the truth and wisdom of the Lord. In our previous example of the skylight, he's saying, Let's get all the dirt off there and let the light penetrate all the way to the inside. Because David knows he needs more than a little behavior modification or a checklist to go over. He needs change in the heart. He needs his heart to be oriented towards the word of the Lord.

20:32Down in verse 7, he talks about hyssop. Purify me with hyssop. This was used, if you remember, in Exodus, they marked the doorposts with the blood so they would be spared from the destroyer. It's also used in numbers for cleansing. Ideas from going from unclean to clean. David has a desire for forgiveness of his sin. He's asking, If you forgive me, God, I shall be whiter than snow. He knows that if God forgives him, the sin will no longer be counted against him.

21:04And down here in verse 8, make me to hear joy and gladness. Let the bones which you have crushed rejoice. David is feeling the weight of his sins and feeling just completely destroyed. He's desiring restoration again to a right relationship with the Lord. He used the word crushed. At this point, I don't think any sense of pride or self-importance is left. The companion psalm to this one is Psalm 32, where he says, How blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. How blessed is the man whose iniquity Yahweh will not take into account, and in whose spirit there is no deceit. When I kept silent about my sin, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me. My vitality was drained away as with the heat of summer. Selah. So David was physically affected by this unconfessed sin. His grief over it was so intense, it sapped his health, it sapped his energy. And it can do the same to us.

22:25Unconfessed sin breaks that relationship. Fellowship with the Lord. And Spurgeon says it this way about this verse: What a killing thing is sin. It is a pestilent disease, a fire in the bones. While we smother our sin, it rages within, and like a gathering wound, swells horribly and torments terribly. So his sin hurt him physically, weighed him down. Then, verse 9, he's talking about, hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquities. It's a continuation of the same idea. He's asking God, please be merciful, stop looking at my sin. Same thing if we did something wrong, we don't want everybody to go focus and put a camera on it. He's asking for more mercy here.

23:28Then, verse 11, he's asking the Lord, Do not cast me away from your presence, and do not take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and sustain me with a willing spirit. David knows the Lord will be right in casting him out. There's no reason for him to stay as king. There's no reason for him not to just have the death penalty imposed on him for what he did. He's asking for mercy.

23:59He's asking for. Mercy from God, who is our ultimate Father. He's the Father that wants the best for us. He actually knows what's best for us. He guides us. He has no shortcomings. He offers us grace. It's not a legalistic attempt to follow rules, but a relationship to serve the one who actually loves us and wants the best for us. And that's what David wants to restore here. And then down in verse 13, then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will be converted to you.

24:43So David's committing to not only change his behavior, repent, but he wants to now become an evangelist. He sees the error of his ways, and he wants to tell others about the Lord and about how they should interact with the law. And we see the superscription at the beginning of this whole thing. It says, for the choir director. David is giving this example for all of Israel to see. He's not hiding it at this point anymore. Not that it could be hidden, but he's saying, use this, use my example, my bad example, as an example for all to see what unrepentant sin does. God sees all, God will bring judgment.

25:32I want to ask you: do you use your past sins and examples for others, or do you try to hide them away so nobody knows? As many of you know, we have a lot of children in my family, and a lot of older people come up sometimes when we're at the store and say how they love our family and they wish they would have had more kids because they had regret. They had bought a cultural lie that children are a burden, not a blessing, and they spent their time on worldly pursuits. But the time had passed, and they couldn't do anything about it at that point.

26:14Do you tell others when you've made a mistake and see that God's way is the right way and try to warn the next generation? Or do you try to hide it? Do you evangelize to others to follow God in all areas of their lives? Are you holding on to pride? Pride doesn't do anyone any good. Down in verse 16, talking about sacrifice. For you do not delight in sacrifice, otherwise, I would give it. You are not pleased with burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. David here correctly identifies. What God wants from us. He's not looking for someone to check the right boxes or go through motions. Think about this whole event took almost a year. David was still going through the motions, he was still offering sacrifices. From the outside, it looked like he was still the hero of Israel. Nobody knew what was going on inside his heart. Nobody knew, like Psalm 32 was talking about, he was being crushed inside by the weight of his sin.

27:33Visibly, he did not leave God. And God doesn't delight in our outwardly sacrifice if the inside doesn't match. The sacrifices are supposed to be an outward representation of what's going on internally. And we still see that today in called checklist Christianity. I go to church, I read my Bible, maybe I go to a Bible study every once in a while. I pray before going to sleep. I don't commit any big sins. I'm doing everything I should be. But that's not what a relationship with God looks like. God doesn't desire you going through the motions. He wants your heart. He wants you to actually have a godly sorrow over sin that leads to repentance. 2 Corinthians 7:10 says, For godly sorrow produces a repentance without regret, leading to salvation. But the sorrow of the world brings about death.

28:30Feeling bad about having to deal with the consequences of your sin is not the same as being sorry for your sin or regretting sinning. It's the difference between godly sorrow and worldly sorrow. And down at the end here, verse 19: Then you will delight in righteous sacrifices and burnt offering and the whole burnt offering, then young bulls will be offered in your altar. So then, then, after he's restored, the internal parts restored, then the material sacrifices are acceptable again. God didn't say don't do any more sacrifices, he just wants the outside and the inside to match.

29:12And this whole element of restoration is dependent upon God. It's not something we can do ourselves. We're looking for God's mercy when we come to him, convicted, confessing about our sins. That's what's unique about Yahweh. What's unique about Christ's sacrifice in Christianity? It's different from all the other religions. You're not trying to work your way to heaven here. You couldn't. There's not a list of dues that don't if you follow it closely enough and you'll get there. You don't have to say a particular prayer. You don't have to go on a pilgrimage. You don't have to sell all your possessions or become a monk. Your entire sin debt can only be cleared by the mercy of the judge.

30:00And this was fulfilled when Christ nailed our sins to the cross. He offers forgiveness as a free gift, not anything we can earn. Any attempt at offering good works to earn forgiveness is just a slap in the face. You're trying to bribe the one judged that can never be bribed. So now David is restored. He's been restored by God. He was convicted of his sin. He confessed his sin, and God restored him. This is David's example of true repentance for us.

30:45So, what are some takeaways for us? Well, first, for unbelievers, you still have this judgment against you pending. Just because you're not paying for your sins at the moment does not mean that payment will not come. David saw that. He had almost a year go by from sin to when God brought trouble to his house. A delay of payment does not mean the sin will not be paid for. He has appointed a day that you will stand before him and give an account for every sin. But the good news, like we saw here in this psalm, is he also extends his hand in forgiveness. Free gift, he will restore you and bless you to a right relationship. He'll bless you in ways you cannot imagine. When you pass from self-centered rule to God-centered, your spirit will be at peace and you can start to really live.

31:44Now, as takeaways for believers, think about: is there an unconfessed sin in your life? If we hooked you up to that lie detector and asked you, what would that answer be? Maybe it's something you've been stuffing down. Occasionally, you get a little conscience prick about it, but then you try to just move on, think about something else, don't study that passage too much. But God has not forgotten about that. He's desiring you to be convicted over it and confess it, repent from it, so you can be restored.

32:24I like to say there's two ways you can go about this. You can go about this, the easy way or the hard way. The easy way is always confess it now, seek repentance now, own up to the consequences and get restoration from the Lord. Think about how much heartache David could have saved himself, his children, everyone, if he had repented before he had Uriah killed. Or what if he had stopped at that initial temptation when he saw Bathsheba on the roof and fled from that temptation? We probably wouldn't have been able to. Wouldn't even know about this. That's happening. David chose the hard way.

33:06He continued in his sin until God brought correction. Now, if you notice from this, David's sin was forgiven, but what about the consequences of his sin? Were they removed? No. His consequences were not removed. And the same thing happens to us. If we continue in a sin, let it go further and further, we're going to have to deal with more and more consequences, even if that sin is forgiven. And we see this happening, people who commit heinous crimes and they go into jail and they get saved. Say they're on death row. They got saved. That's fantastic. They'll be in eternity with us. But they don't get to push off the earthly consequences to what they've done. Justice still has to be served.

33:58And the same thing happened to David. His sins were forgiven, but he still has to deal with his earthly consequences. Now, thinking about our conscience, a dirty window, dirty skylight, think about: is there an area in which you have deadened your conscience? Easy ones to start with is just think about what does the culture value? What does the culture promote around us? Do you have the same standard as the culture at large, or what the Bible talks about as the standard? Do you tell Acceptable lies, white lies, omissions. I think we talked about that this morning too. Or is your standard that of Jesus? In him, there is no deceit, no deceit, not a little deceit, but no deceit.

34:46Do you have self-control? If somebody is describing you, would they describe you as a self-controlled person, physically, emotionally, and spiritually? Do you have rule over your own spirit? Or do people have to watch what they say around you, otherwise you're going to react? Do you have control over your own tongue? Are you overindulgent in your eating? Are you a patient person? Another realm, do you freely give your time and your money? Or do you try to hold on to everything you get? Spend as much as possible on increasing your own comfort?

35:30Are you focusing on getting ready for retirement so you can have a lot of me time where I think more about me? Or are you working on how can we build God's kingdom today? Do you walk in modesty? Do you dress in a way that honors the Lord and brings attention to your face? Or do you bring attention to other parts of your body? Similarly, do you harbor lust in your heart? Do you look at the things that are corrosive to your own soul?

36:01What our culture puts out in advertisements would have been considered obscene to almost every Christian generation before us. Do we have the same standard as the Christians before us, or have we compromised? What about your identity? Do you seek your identity in a particular career or vocation, or maybe education? Christ is our only identity that matters, the only thing that's eternal. The others promise a false fulfillment. They'll burn up your time and energy. They'll burn up your life.

36:32You have to seek your identity in Christ. We could go on and on. I think the important point here is that David's greatest enemy was not outside the walls, it was the sin inside himself. Good news is that we have God that not only saves, but will help sanctify us. We just need to make sure and come to him, convicted, confessing our sin, and he will restore us. Let us pray. Dear Lord, we thank you for this day. We thank you for everything that you bless us with, and thank you for the rain. Thank you for our time here tonight. We thank you for your word. Thank you for the example of David. Please help us identify and repent from unconfirmed. Sins in our lives.

37:33Please help us not put off what we could do today. Please help us bring, please help bring conviction to us on areas where our conscience is seared and not reflecting your truth. Please help us as a church encourage one another towards righteousness. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.