Create In Me A Clean Heart

King David had strayed from God. What was going to happen in his life wasn't just something that happened out of the blue, and he just fell into it. There had to be a period of time where he had strayed from God. He pulled back farther and farther and farther from God, and God was not active in his life. So he walks out on his balcony, he looks out over the city, and it was normal for people to have baths on the very roof of their house. Why? People can't see. Unless, of course, you're in the palace, and you can see out over the roofs of the house. And there he sees Bathsheba. The reason I say he had the drift from God... Here's a man who is incredibly wealthy, incredibly powerful, has six wives. God has blessed him, and he knows God has blessed him. And he looks out and sees this young woman taking a bath. He could have walked away, and he did not. The fact that he did not had to be because he wasn't close to God. He had too many other things in his life going for him to go there. So he had drifted from God. He had become complacent with his power, and with God's help in his life, and everything that he had. And in that complacency, he stepped into destroying some people's lives. So we know the story. He brought her up to the palace. And it's interesting, the Hebrew word that talks about him lying with her, that's not the normal word that she used. It's not the word... It doesn't mean rape, but it basically means she was forced. In other words, protesting, but he's the king. So this wasn't the love story that you see in Hollywood movies. This is a very young woman, probably her late teens, early twenties. The king calls her up, and she goes along with his debates. But it's not because it's a love story. And of course, she gets pregnant. And what David does, then, is set up Uriah to be killed. So he's committed adultery. He's committed murder. He lies. The list of sins goes on and on and on. I remember having a conversation years ago with a woman who said that she never could figure the story out because God was so unfair. David should have been killed. And the fact that he did not kill David, and he forgave him. There was a distrust in God. She had a distrust in God because he would be so kind to this evil man. And she had a real problem with it. I don't know if she ever got it fixed over the years ago, but I just remember having this conversation where she just said that God was wrong in this case, basically. You don't forgive evil people. Now, after he commits all these acts, there is a time period. We don't know how long it is. There's a time period where he stays complacent. He knows what he's done is wrong, but he doesn't react. And we know that because God has to make him react. And that's where we pick up the story in 2 Samuel 12. Now, I'm going to read this. You know this passage. I'm going to read this passage because it's just the power of the word here, the way it's written. 2 Samuel 12. First one.

Then the Lord said Nathan, who was a very prominent prophet at the time, to David. And he came to him and said, now, this is an official audience with the king. I don't know whether it's a private audience. I don't know if there's anybody around that doesn't say. But he asks for an audience with the king, and he brings to him a legal case. You have to understand what's being said up here. Official audience, he's a prophet, so David has to honor him coming before him. And he needs a ruling on a legal case.

Now, he could have gone to the elders and the Levites in the gates of the city, whatever city this was taking place in. But he brought it directly to the king. Here's the case in Brixton. There were two men in one city, one rich and the other poor. The rich man had exceedingly many flocks and herds. For the poor man had nothing except one little hue lamb, which he had brought up and nourished.

And it grew up together with him and with his children. He ate his own food and drank it from his own cup and lay in his bosom. And it was like a daughter to him. So he compares a wealthy man that has everything. And he compares a person who has one little lamb. Now, if you've ever seen lambs play or played with a lamb, they're cute, they're cuddly, they're fun. They like to be petted, they like to bump you with their heads.

Lambs are just fun. And they're absolutely defenseless. I remember picking up a lamb one time, there was lots of people around, and it was just shaking all over. And I picked it up, and I was just calm. And it all was going on, and it just felt okay. I'm okay. Because they're defenseless. So he uses this example. A man whose children play with this little lamb, who sleeps in the same bed with him and his family.

And a guy who has thousands of sheep. Very rich, nice house. Verse 4. And a traveler came to the rich man, and refused to take from his own flock, and from his own herd, to prepare one for the wayfaring man who had come to him. But he took the poor man's lamb, and prepared it for the man who had come to him. So you can imagine, there's a knock on the door, there's a couple big burly guys out there, opening it up, and says, Hey, Jacob up the street here, watch your lamb.

Takes his lamb. The kids are crying. I mean, you can see how this is playing out in the mind of David. And the family said, no, it's our only lamb, it's a pet. No, no, we're going to serve it tonight for food. Now remember, David thinks this is a true story. And he has an immediate reaction of anger. How dare a wealthy man do this to one of his poor brethren. So David's anger was greatly aroused against the man, and he said to Nathan, As the Lord lives, the man who has done this shall surely die, and he shall restore fourfold for the lamb, because he did this thing, and because he had no penny.

Now it's interesting, him restoring fourfold is the law. So David says, well, do what the law says, but I want more. This is so hideous to me, I want to make him an example for all of Israel. In other words, he would have said, he has to pay back four times. The Levites and the elders of the gate would have showed up and said, You've got to pay back four times. The king has decreed it in accordance with the law, and you can find that in the Torah.

But he took it a step farther. He said, I want this to be an example to all Israel. I want everybody to know this doesn't happen to him. My watch, I'm going to kill the man. And he had the power to do it as king. Then Nathan said to David, you are the man. Can you imagine the gut reaction of David when he hears that? Because he knows exactly what he means. And he just passed his own death sentence.

He just declared death on himself. You're the man of this story. You're the rich man. David doesn't need an explanation of what he's done. The story describes perfectly what he's done. Only a much more horrendous way. And then God has something personal to say to David. Thus says the Lord God of Israel, I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you from the hand of Saul.

I gave you your master's house, and your master's wives, and your keeping. I gave you all the house of Israel, Judah. And if that had been too little, I would have also given you much more. God says, I gave you everything, David. Wealth, I made you king. I protected you from Saul, and all you had to do was ask me. I happened to have given you more. Why have you despised the commandment of the Lord to do evil at his sight?

You have killed Uriah the Hittite with the sword, and you have taken his wife to be your wife, and have killed him with the sword of the people of Amor. He goes on and describes, here's what's going to happen to you. For the rest of your life, your family will suffer violence inside itself. In other words, he had opened up a Pandora's box in his own family. David would be not respected by his own sons.

His sons, one of them were trying to kill him. They would kill each other. He said, you started something in your family that you will pay for the rest of your life. That your family will be absolute mess. Verse 15, And so David said to Nathan, I have sinned against the Lord. Now that seems like a simple statement, but think of what he could have said. Whoa, whoa, whoa. My family has nothing to do with this. Or, we need to talk to God, Nathan.

Remember Saul said, to Samuel, you go to God for me. He could have said, Nathan, I need you to go to God for me. Fix this. If you only understood my problem here, it's Bashimah's fault. How dare her take a bath at that time of night on the top of a house. You know whose fault it is? It's my six wives. Not one of them is a good wife. You see, there's lots of things he could come up with. And he simply said, I've sinned, and I've done it against God. Nathan then says to David, the Lord also has put away your sin.

You shall not die. But someone will. The baby that's going to come from your union with Bashimah will die. That's a hard sentence, isn't it? Probably David a hundred times said, take me. Take me. The guy said, no, you don't get off that easy. I don't take you. But the child's innocent. You think of what had gone through his head. Now what we have here is it jumps down now from verse 15 in verse 16 into the child being born. But there's something very, very important that happens between verse 15 and 16.

That's what we're going to talk about today. What happens between 15 and 16? And how it applies to us.

You and I live God's way. We know the Sabbath. We know the Holy Days. We only take commandments. We know all the basic doctrines. We know that we don't believe in the mortal soul. We can all talk about the doctrines. We know the doctrines. We try to live by the doctrines. And if we're not careful over time, we begin to drift. Oh, we do them. We keep doing the things we're supposed to do on the surface. But we begin to drift, just like David. Remember the enthusiasm, the excitement, the first Lord in God's way? And then we begin to drift. And some days, some sin comes along, some temptation, and we just jump right into it. Well, we know that years earlier we would have never done it. And a lot of those temptations aren't obvious, like stealing from your employer. But the things that go inside our head, the lack of forgiveness, envy, lust, hatred, those things go on here, and we just let them keep going on.

As we drift, we begin to fall back into old habits. And David drifted enough that he just jumped. He wasn't like, oh, he fell into this temptation. He jumped into this temptation. Something that a few years earlier, he had never dreamed of. He would have turned around and walked away.

As we approach the Passover, we need to understand that one of the reasons God has us keep the Passover every year is to keep us from drifting. This brings us back to our focal point. The Passover always brings us back to our focal point. And what I want to cover today is what happened between verses 15 and 16. What happened between verses 15 and 16 and what we just read was that David experienced something so profound. He wrote Psalm 51. He wrote Psalm 51. A song. A song that was to be sung by him to God, and a song that was to be sung by all people to God. In all the scripture, there is nothing more personal than Psalm 51. It is the absolute taking of a human being, him ripping himself open, and just pouring it all out there. And we even have a reference to the Passovers, we'll see when we go through it. Psalm 51 is something you and I need to review, I think, before every Passover. Before every Passover, Psalm 51 was not written by a man who had to come to repentance to be baptized. Psalm 51 is written by a man who has already received God's Spirit. So this has real importance to those who have already received God's Spirit. So let's go to Psalm 51. We're going to go through this verse by verse and look at what he wrote. What is his experience? How does that apply to us as we prepare for the Passover? Psalm 51, if you look at, there's a few notes before verse 1. To the chief musician, so this was to be put to music, a psalm of David went into the prophet, went to him, after he had gone into Beshim. So this is what happened. I don't know how long there was between verses 15 and 16 and what we read. But in that time period, what he went through, he eventually wrote down. This is the product of what he went through after Nathan said, you are the man and God's going to punish you the rest of your life, but you're not going to die. And then it just isn't left. He just walked out of the palace and left him there. The story picks up with the baby being born. So let's start in verse 1.

How many times have you heard someone say, well, the Old Testament is filled with the law, and the New Testament is filled with grace. You will not see. You will not find any place in the Scripture. There is grace more expounded than exalted to Him. And a person who understood what that meant. David starts reading that through. Oh, that's sort of poetic. That's sort of nice, no? Understand, here is a man that has destroyed, he's put a barrier between him and God. He's destroyed his relationship with God. He's destroyed his relationship with his family. He's destroyed his relationship with all of Israel. And he goes to God and he says, Have mercy on me, O God.

He did not approach God with bargaining. He did not approach God with explanation. He approaches God with a desperation. And when you read through this, you're going to see an absolute desperate man that says, If you do not forgive me, I have nothing to bargain with. I have nothing to pay you with. I have nothing to fall back on. I have no explanation for my sin. I have nothing. If you're going to see a man who's absolutely broken, it is nothingness. I've done it. I wish I had a dollar for every time someone's come to me and said, Yes, I did this, I did this. I know I cheated on my taxes, but that's not really me. Yes, it is. Every sin I've committed is really me. It is. It's really me.

And David comes before God and says, Yes, this is really me. And if you don't forgive me, I have nothing. We'll see in a little bit how desperate he gets with this. If you don't forgive me, I have nothing. He throws himself on God and says, Only your mercy can save me. Only the fact that you have love can save me. Because I can't bring Uriah back. I can't undo what I did to that woman. He takes full responsibility. You notice, Bathsheba is never condemned in the Scripture. It doesn't take away your responsibility. She was in an impossible situation.

It's all squarely on David. You forced her to do this. She would have done this on her own accord. It's fully on him. Because he used his power to do what he did. And he comes before God and just says, If you won't do this, I have nothing. You know, every Passover is supposed to bring us back to that focal point. If God doesn't do this, you and I have nothing. We can't forgive ourselves. We can't make up. We can't undo what we've done. Or as he will see here, how he sees himself undo who we are. He says, blot out my transgressions. So I brought this point up before. Blotting is a fascinating concept in the Old Testament, because the paper they used, usually was papyrus, and the ink they used bond together like... ink and paper does today. I mean, I can take this piece of paper, I can't get the ink out of it. I can't. I mean, I destroy the paper. I can put white out on it, but what happens when you hold it up for the white? You can still read what's underneath of it. You can't get modern ink out of modern paper. You can't do it. You've got to burn it. You've got to destroy it. What you could do with papyrus is you could take... if you had the right chemical, you blot it, and it dissolves the ink. So the ink sort of dissolves. Might leave the paint sort of discolored, but you can't read it anymore. It's gone.

The idea of blotting out sins was the idea of appearing before a judge, and you have all the crimes committed by the person, and the judge blots the page, dries it off, and says nothing about your page. Now, you think about, in the New Testament, when we keep the Passover, the blot of Christ blots out our sins. The list of all your crimes before God are there, and He takes the blot of Christ, and He blots it out, and it dissolves. And God holds up the list of your crimes and says, there's nothing on this. There's nothing on your page. David knew, if God doesn't blot it off my crimes, I can't save myself. I can't do anything. He threw Himself entirely on God's mercy and begs Him for it. He says in verse 2, He washed me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleansed me from my sin. He wanted to be washed. He didn't say, I'll scrub myself down with enough ceremonies. There were washing ceremonies in Judaism. He said, you have to clean me. I'm dirty. I'm filthy. I'm living in a cesspool, and I can't clean it off of me. I can't. He asked God, You wash me. You scrub this off of me, because I can't get it off.

The Passover always brings us back to this. It brings us back to who scrubs us, whose mercy is given to us. But by what right do we have to approach God? What happens is we forget the purity of God, the absolute purity of God. He doesn't do evil. It's not part of His thought process. It's not part of anything He does. We do. And we forget that purity. We take it for granted.

Verse 3, For I acknowledge my transgressions, and my sin is always before me. He says, I can't get it out of my head. I can't get what I've done out of my head. I keep thinking it back. I should have walked away. I keep thinking back. Why would I do that for Uriah, who was so loyal to me? I keep thinking, but you know, He's thinking now, I imagine the entire army He's having trouble with. And we would know there would be rebellions against Him after this.

How can you trust a king that would do that to you? This became public knowledge. All of Israel, our king, who passes all these judgments on us, he actually committed adultery with some other man's wife and then killed him? Who is he to tell us what to do? Read what Absalom said, David's son, who did a violent coup to kill his own dad. Look what he told those people. He can't make a judgment. Look at his conduct.

And David knows this. And he's thinking, how can I even go on? What can I do? Because I can't fix any of it. Why don't we get up and tell people I'm sorry? How do I fix this? And he says, it's before me all the time. And then verse 4, against you, you only have I sinned and done this evil in your sight, that you may be found just when you speak and blameless when you judge. He says, but I know that most importantly, God, I did this against you. David understood something. In a few minutes we'll see it in more detail. He understood that all sin, God takes it personal.

Every sin committed by every person, God takes it personal. It's something he... well, we'll show in a minute. It's something he actually experiences in a very negative way. We forget that God is a conscious being. No, God's out there, he helps me, but no, no. He's a conscious being. And what he experiences, he tells us, he explains us. What I find interesting here, you have the word, iniquity, and transgression, and sin.

And English would be hard to differentiate those. In Hebrew, they're actually very different words. Transgression is basically a rebellion. He looked at himself and said, I'm rebellious. What I did was rebel against you. Have you ever thought about... Have you ever gone to God and said, you know what, there are times I'm just plain flat-out rebellious. That's a hard thing to admit to, isn't it? Oh, no, I'm weak. We like to admit our weakness. But to admit our rebelliousness. David said, I just flat-out rebelled. I knew what I was doing was wrong, and I did it anyways.

The word, iniquity, means literally an offense against the law of God. Here's the man who would write later how much... how I love God's law. All how I love God's law. He would say, I just... your law. It spit on it. The word, sin, comes from a word that literally means that you miss a mark. It's like you're on a path, and there's markers to tell you where the path is. And he saw the marker, and then just wandered off. I saw the markers. I just didn't pay any attention to them. So I just wandered off until I'm lost.

Now, what you're doing is you're finding a man who's breaking this down on purpose. He's breaking down. Why did I do what I did? And as he breaks it down, he doesn't say, God, I'm just a weak man. He doesn't say, God, it's the stresses of the job. Being king's not easy. Breaking it down, he said, I'm rebellious, and I just sometimes don't want to do your law.

And I saw the markers, and wandered off until I was lost. That's a remarkable insight into yourself, isn't it? Here's a man who looked at himself, went to God, and said, I have no way to fix this. Either your love and kindness, either your mercy is given to me, or I'm lost.

And here's why. Because I am these things. There's no point. It really wasn't me. I am these things. And I can't... How do I fix myself? How do I go beyond this? I mean, God had given him everything. Including God's Holy Spirit. He had God's Holy Spirit at this point. I said, I have no explanation, except this is who I am.

I'm a rebellious, sinful man, who knows the markers on the path of life, and ignore them. And that's who I am. So that's how he goes on now. Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and it sinned my mother could see me. Verse 6 is really, really important.

Because this is where we find where David is different than so many other people. Behold, you desire truth in the inward parts, and in the hidden part, you will make me to know your or no wisdom. He said, what you want is a change in the inner man. He could not find any ceremony. He could not go to the tabernacle and get this fixed. He could be fixed with a ceremony.

He realizes what you want is something in the inward man, in the inward part. He is accepting this terrible wrong inside of me. And that's what has to be fixed. Because if not, I'll simply do it again. I'll simply do it again.

In Ephesians 7, it says, Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean. Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Now, you're going to see, this is a little bit of a progressive movement. He's now moving towards a more positive message. And what is the image he uses? Remember, at the Passover, they took the blood of the lamb, and they put it on for the doorpost. What is it? Cover me with a substitute. You can't make me white. Right now, I'm filthy, but you can make me white. The Passover is all about you and I being filthy and God making us white. Now, it's true that we're not filthy like the way we were before we were baptized. But it isn't interesting. We'll talk about this some next week, a little bit. When we do the foot washing ceremony, he said, you don't have to wash all of them. You don't have to all wash just your feet. His point being, come back and remember who you were. Remember what I'm doing so that you don't drift. So that you're clean on a regular basis in this relationship with God. David says, take that blood and only then, because it's just in front of me all the time. At this point, he probably feels like he's going insane. Emotionally, he's absolutely nothing. Intellectually, he has nothing left to argue with. He was a smart man, but he has nothing left to argue with. He looks at his own motivations and says, this is me. What I did is me. Part of me was saying, don't do it, and I did it anyways. I said, but you can't change this. You can't change me. And you can wipe all this out. You can forgive me. What I find interesting about David, he spent the rest of his life suffering because of what he did here. And never once did he complain to God about it. Never once. He spent the whole rest of his life suffering and just thanked God. Horrible suffering. Because he realized, no, that's my fault. My suffering is my fault. If I would have never done this, I would not have unleashed these things in my family. But I did. And God is merciful. Because God gave him forgiveness. He then goes on to verse 8. Make me hear joy and gladness, that the bones you have broken may rejoice. Hide your face for my sins and blot out all my iniquities. Hide your face. He said, God, I don't even want you to look at what I've done. Please, don't even look at it. Just turn your face away. It's disgusting and I'm ashamed. You see the depth of what he's saying here? He actually goes and says, look away. Don't look at me. Don't look at my sins. And then blot them off the page that they're not there anymore. Because I can't get rid of them. Because they're in front of my face all the time. I can't get rid of them.

He goes on from this. And he makes... part of this is a prayer. And this prayer is very important because it's a song, but it's a prayer. It's sung to God. And verse 10 is the crux of everything I want to talk about in our preparation for the past. Create in me a clean heart, O God, that renew a steadfast spirit within me. Sometimes when we think of heart, in English we usually think of emotions. The Hebrew concept of the heart was much greater than that. The heart was your innermost thoughts, then emotions, emotions are part of it. Your thoughts and emotions and your motivations. Why do you do what you do? He didn't say, forgive me for committing adultery, or for murdering a man, or for lying about it. Forgive me for lying. What he said was, reach inside me, the inward man. He talked about these inward parts. And change me so that I cannot do it. Create in me a clean heart, so that my thoughts, my emotions, are clean, because they're not clean, they're rather filthy.

If you ever pray, if you ever go to God and you pray, create in me a clean heart, I can tell you something that will happen. If you pray it, and he begins to work with you, he will pray it many times in your life. Because once you do it once, and God starts to work at you, and starts to change your heart, you'll just discover, wow, there's more that needs changed. And you'll keep going back, saying, create in me a clean heart. I think before every Passover, we should all pray, create in me a clean heart. Create in me a clean heart. Create in me a clean heart. I didn't know I was so envious. Create in me a clean heart. I didn't know I could lie. I didn't know I could cheat. I could say it's not me, but it is. Create in me a clean heart. Create in me a clean heart.

It's a remarkable statement. A clean heart. My thoughts, my emotions, who I am at the core, not who we pretend to be. Not what we say, not the actions we do, but at the very core of who I am. Now, I want you to think about that, and you and I, the very core of who we are. Remember, I mentioned earlier that all sin is personal to God. Let's go to Genesis. We're going to back here in a minute, but let's go to Genesis 6. Genesis 6.

Let's start in verse 5. Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart. It's not just his emotions, his thoughts, his emotions, his intentions, his motivations. At the core of who you are, why you do what you do. Of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually, and the Lord was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and he was grieved in his heart. Now, think of God as a conscious being, and God has emotions. God is the opposite of sin. He's the opposite of uncontrolled anger, envy, lust, holy grudges. You think of all the things we do as human beings. He's the opposite of that. And every time we sin, we grieve God at the core of who he is. Isn't that amazing? And yet, David knew that. And what did David say? Your love of mercy is greater than that. Your love of mercy is greater than my terrible offense to you. The Passover is supposed to bring us back to that every year. Every year we come back to God's love of mercy is greater than my offense, and he feels a fit. You and I grieve God. Now, David had a great fear in all this. You know, we should be, at times, afraid of God. I don't think there's enough fear of God. Now, there's a long kind of fear. Now, fear religion. God wants to have a relationship with him as children, and we're not like... But there is a fear of God we're supposed to have. It has to do with when we disobey him. We offend him, and we refuse to do anything about it. Let's go back to Psalm 51.

Verse 10 says, Create and be a clean heart, O God. There's such emotion in this Psalm. He's crying... O God! Here, he's crying out to God. Create this in me because I don't have it. And then, verse 11, Do not cast me away from your presence. Do not take your Holy Spirit from me. He fully realized that his offense to God was so great that God could take his Holy Spirit away from him. He had seen that happen before. God gave the Spirit to Saul. And this is God took his Spirit away from him. Now, what happened to Saul? He went insane. He went insane. David knew, if God takes his presence away from me, I will go insane. And he begs him, Don't...please...don't take this away. You're the only sanity I have. You're the only health that I have. There's nothing else but you. That's what we have to remember. That's what the Passover is supposed to help us remember. There's something joyfulness that you'll see by the time you get to the end of it, which is, yes, you are everything you say you are. And yes, I can count on this. And yes, you will forgive me. And God did take his Spirit away from him. And he feared it. You and I don't have to walk around every day fearing that God's going to take his Spirit away from us. But we drift, and we drift, and we just dive headlong back into the world. And there's a time when God's going to bring you to him, and you're going to say, Please don't take your Spirit away. Please don't take your Spirit away.

Because as he pulls you back, you will realize he came. He who says that, he can take it away. Because we reject this is what we do. Now what's obvious here is he didn't reject. He had not rejected God's Spirit. So on the other hand did. David did not. He's begging him. Please don't do that. Please don't do that. In fact, let me have your Spirit so that I can do all kinds of works for you.

Jesus is fascinating, and the scripture is held in Aesop, in one of the other Psalms. It says, I looked at all the wicked people, and they were all doing good, and I'm suffering. And I said to God, why did I prepare my heart for you? And he says, and then I remembered. Wait a minute. The only time I've really been happy in life was when I was in the right relation with God. That's why I prepared my heart for God. It doesn't even work anyways.

Verse 12. Restore to me the joy of your salvation. You see, we get so caught up in other stuff, our jobs, our lives. I mean, we should spend time and energy on those things. We should, though. We get caught up with other people. How many times have you seen a person give up on God because of the actions of another person? You go back and focus on God. Focus on God and other people. But we focus on each other, and guess what we do? We get discouraged with each other. When you focus on God, you look at other people and say, well, we're all pretty messed up, aren't we? You see it differently. Because you're focused on God. We have to stay focused. The joy of salvation. This Passover takes Psalm 51. Study it. Think about it. Pray it to God. Ask God to restore to you the joy of salvation. Ask Him for it again. David did. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and uphold me by your generous spirit. That's just an amazing statement. Pick me up because you have a generous spirit.

God's very generous. Ask God to pick you up because I know you're generous. I know you're loving. I know you care. So pick me up because I can't get up. David's whole point was, I can't get up. What I did is so horrendous, I can't get up. You have to pick me up. Deliver me from the guilt of bloodshed, O God, the God of my salvation. Can you imagine how many sleepless nights, between verse 15-16, I killed a man who was loyal to me, who would have been my friend, a man of God. And I killed him. And he says, if you will forgive me of this, this next statement is very interesting. And my tongue shall sing aloud of your righteousness. Verse 15, O Lord, open my lips and my mouth shall show forth your praise. David said, you forgive me, and I'll sing about it. I'll write down my sins, and I'll sing about it. Church is God, Protestant Church is Catholic Church. Guess what? One thing we all have a good idea about. We all have a good idea. Church is God, Protestant Church is Catholic Church. Guess what? One thing we all have in common. We have some song in our songbook, based on Psalm 50 Word. Three thousand years later. God held him to that. God held him to that. God said, good. They'll be singing about your sins and your resurrection. First Sabbath service after the resurrection, David will go to it. Guess what? We'll be singing. And you know what he'll say? That's incredible! What's that called? A piano. I wish we'd had one of those. I've written more songs. See, it's not going to bother him that we're singing it. He wrote with the Southerner.

Would you want... I'm sure hope God doesn't ever ask me to sing my sins. David volunteered it. He said, if you'll forgive me, I'll sing about it. I'll sing about it.

Verse 16, For you do not desire sacrifice, for I would give it. He says, you know, if you just say, look, David, we can make this even, I'm going to put your sins in this balance, here's your sins, and I think a thousand sheep and a thousand goats will do it.

We'll even this out. For what you did to her, and what you did to her husband, and what you did to the entire nation of Israel, and what you did to my reputation. Because, you know, Nathan, we didn't read through all that. He even said, God said, people blaspheme me because of you. Can you imagine, God said, you know what? People are blaspheming me because of your conduct. Boy, that's got to be... You can't even answer that one, right? You can't even respond to that.

And he told me, they're blaspheming me because of you, David. Because everybody knows you're my guy! And he said, I'll sing about it. I'll tell everybody about it. I'll tell them how great you are, because how bad I am. Because it's only through your mercy that I live. It's only through your mercy that I can still talk to you. It's only through your mercy that I'm still king. And there's no amount of sacrifices I can do. I can't make this even. There's no praying at the temple or tabernacle.

There's nothing I can do to make this even. Verse 17 is very important. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit and a broken and contrite heart. Do you have a broken spirit? You know, usually we have broken spirits because... why? We do something stupid. We have it if you're in already complex. We break up with our boy, brother, girl. We have broken spirits because of things that have happened and because of things we do.

That's not what he's talking about here. This is a sacrifice of a broken spirit before God. It is to go before God broken because you understand entirely. Well, no. None of us can understand entirely. It's because we understand in this limited way, here's God and here's me. And he's complete and I'm broken. It is to go before God without arrogance, without pride. It is to go before God broken. You know, I talked to someone this morning in Nashville.

They took a pottery class and they said, you know, they work on this pottery, work on this pot, work on this pot. And sometimes you just couldn't get it to come together. It just wouldn't work. There were holes in it, blumps on it. He said, so I would just have to scrape everything off, throw it in the pot, mix it all back up again, slap it back on here. He said, I guess that's what God does with us. Yeah, I can't work with this pot.

So I scrape it off the wheel, put it in, mix it up again, and slap it back on here. That's what he's doing. We're broken. It's not like we can be fixed. Oh, well, I think I could paint this up and make it look sort of nice. We're all broken. It's not until we're broken before God that we acknowledge our brokenness that He really works in us.

He really makes us that change in the inward mirror. It's a whole lot easier to learn to keep the Sabbath and God keeps on doing it. And we should do that. That's commanded by God. It's a whole lot easier to give up worshiping idols. It's a whole lot easier to say, okay, I'm going to keep the letter of the law, not steal. It's easier to do those things. But that's like great school. This is graduate level work. This is where God wants to take us. You don't give up everything you learn in grade school.

You still live by that. But graduate level work is a little tougher. It's the inward man. And David, finally had drifted far enough from God, that he realized the inward man had not gone where it was supposed to go. The changes hadn't been as complete as they were supposed to be, because if they were, he could not have done what he did. And he understood it. And he went to God, and he was broken. You and I have to come to grips with our absolute need for God. We're still trying to do it ourselves.

We can't. And we have to come to this as he did. But you don't have to do it because, you know, you don't give this in. Because then you pay a price like he did for the rest of his life. We wouldn't do it before we get to that point. Every Passover is a chance to do that. Every Passover is a chance to come back to this focal point and realize, this is what I am because you brought me here. Creative be a clean heart. But, you know, this is opposite of what human beings naturally think or feel. We went to deny our sins or justify our sins or blame somebody else.

We want the right to harbor anger or hatred or pride or jealousy or envy or lust or dishonesty or arrogance. We want the right to do it. It's ours. We own it. You know why you own it? For some reason, I own mine because it's part of us. It's part of the inward man.

I want to hold on to my anger. It's part of the inward man. And David said, nah, you went true through the inward parts. Creative be a clean heart.

The Apostle Paul went through a similar experience. He thought he was right with God. He didn't drift like David did. He wasn't right with God. He didn't know it. Christ blinds him, knocks him down, and now he realizes what it's really all about. And he receives God's Spirit. Years later, he would write in Romans 12.

Romans 12. Romans 12.

Something that many of you probably went through baptism counseling. This was written. I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God. Where does he start here? Exactly where David started in verses 1 and 2 of Psalm 51. God does this or he doesn't. Because you and I can't make him do it. Either he is this merciful and we go throw ourselves on that. Where does that happen?

I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable God, which is your reasonable service. You need to obey God. We need to give ourselves to the obedience of God, which is exactly what David was saying when he said, Look, I've committed transgressions and iniquities to sin. I broke the law of God.

I went away from the markers he gave me. He's saying the same thing. God gives us markers, he gives us laws, he gives us guidance, and we give ourselves to that. That's our duty. That's our reasonable service. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

Create me a clean heart by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is the good, acceptable, and perfect will of God. You know what we take? Psalm 51, and we break it down into a set of prayer. Here's what you would pray for. You would ask God to help you return to him. But you've driven. You would ask God to help you return to him. You would ask God to help you repent, as David did. You would ask for a clean heart.

You would ask for truth in the inward marks. You would ask for a broken and contrite spirit. And you would ask for forgiveness. That's quite a list, isn't it? To return to God, to repent, for a clean heart, for truth in the inward marks. For a broken and contrite spirit, and absolute forgiveness.

Absolute washing. Now, be prepared, though. A broken spirit is a broken spirit. Not broken because of the reasons we break ourselves. But you end up broken before God, because God, you understand your need for him. And you may not like, any more than I do, I do not like what he shows me in the inward parts.

That's why I find myself going back regularly, saying, creating me a clean heart. I made the mistake of praying that once. I say that facetiously because I'm glad I did. But I find I can't get away from it. I can't get drawn back to it. When God creates in us a clean heart, and we submit to that cleansing process, you will experience a renewed relationship with God as your Father, with Jesus Christ, and you will experience what David called the joy of salvation.

He's involved in your life. He's taking you someplace. He's changing you. He is dealing with the inward man, the inward person, preparing you for eternity. And when this happens, there's two things. One is, he will work in you, just like David found. Psalm 51 is a change in his life because God worked at him the rest of his life. You will find God working in you, and you will be more sensitive to him.

The second thing you will find is exactly what David did. God will work through you. And you will tell other people, when you and I no longer have an interest in preaching the Gospel, when you and I no longer have an interest in telling other people, or participating in a congregation that does, it shows that there's something wrong with our heart, because if I know what God has done for me, then just like David said, how can I not tell?

How can I not share that with someone else? David said, I'll sing it. How's that? I'll write a song. And 3,000 years later, we sing it. I think they'll sing it all through the millennium. I think people will be singing Psalm 51 in the great white through just... and David won't care. Turn to God.

Keep this day, this Passover season. The days of other bread, which is all part of this. Do so by studying Psalm 51 and asking God to give you a clean heart.