Finding Grace When You Fall

Rogers Cadenhead is a domain hoarder. Do you know what a domain hoarder does? Here's the way they make their living. They register thousands of website domains that don't currently belong to anybody and then they sell those website domains to people who want them one day in the future. Like they might have registered tlc.org and sold it to us years ago, except we thought of it first.

Well, Max Lucado tells a great true story that happened a few years ago to Mr. Cadenhead. When he heard that the Vatican was about to elect a new pope, Rogers Cadenhead jumped into action and he quickly registered a ton of domains with every possible pope name that he could imagine and he hit the jackpot. He guessed the right one. And so the Vatican came knocking, called him up, said his holiness would like to know would you be willing to sell it for such and such amount of money and they actually offered him thousands of dollars.

But it turned out Rogers Cadenhead is himself a Catholic and he thought, well, I don't really know if it feels right to sell this domain name to the Vatican. I really don't want any money. Instead, as he told the Today Show, what I want is these three things. Number one, one of those hats. Number two, a free stay at the Vatican Hotel. And number three, complete absolution, no questions asked for the third week of March 1987. Kind of makes you wonder what happened that week, right? Or maybe it reminds you of a week of your own, or a month, or a few years.

If there was surveillance video of your entire life, which tape would you want destroyed? Most people have a third week of March 1987; King David did. And that's the episode we look at today. Grab your message notes. We are in 2 Samuel chapters 11 and 12 today as we continue our series on King David in the Bible. If you're just joining us, we wrote a book that ties into it. We have small group videos and daily devotionals. You can access all those on YouTube.

Today, really we are in one of the most famous stories in the Bible, David and Bathsheba. But I want to be very careful today. I want to strike the right note with this story. And that takes some doing. Let me explain it this way. Probably the greatest playwright in the history of the English language is William Shakespeare, right? Best known for his tragedies like Hamlet and Macbeth. To this day, most script writers for plays or movies or TV shows, they cannot pull off what Shakespeare did seemingly so easily.

And if you vaguely remember some Shakespeare from your high school English class, let me just refresh your memory. Here's his genius. All of his tragedies have these elements among others. They all have a tragic hero who was a towering personality, often beloved royalty like Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, beloved by the people, kind of a charmed life. But these tragic heroes have a tragic flaw that leads to a tragic mistake that causes tragic waste. They make a mistake that just dominoes into full-scale chaos in their families, in their kingdoms. There's all kinds of collateral damage, all sorts of innocent people hurt.

And in case you look at this and you go, "Well, that does not sound like a really good time at the theater," right? That's not a good kind of date night thing. Here's Shakespeare's genius. And here's why these plays, here's why there's still Shakespeare with Santa Cruz 450 years after he lived, right? People still love these plays. Why? Because he gets you somehow to feel empathy for these tragic heroes. Somehow you don't see Macbeth or Hamlet as a bad guy. As you go through the play, it's clear these are good men, actually. They're good guys. They're good people who make horrible, tragic mistakes.

That is a nuance that's super hard to pull off. Most of our movies and TV shows today, heroes are all good, right? Superheroes, in fact. And the bad guys are all bad, almost always. Like really bad, like Voldemort, Freddy Krueger, bad, right? But Shakespeare pulled this off. And so these plays make you think, as you're leaving the theater, "Wow, that could have been me. In the right circumstances, I might have made that choice." And that makes you better. And it makes you a wiser, a more insightful, a more empathetic person.

Well, centuries before Shakespeare, another truly inspired genius wrote a masterpiece that does exactly this. And that's the story that we look at today. And here's the thing. If you do what I think I so often hear when people approach the story, if he either underplay the tragedy of what David does, well, he just had a spring fling, right? Or you merely make him into a monster that nobody could ever relate to. You miss the whole point either way. He is portrayed as a tragic hero. And the thing is, you and I could end up the same way. That's why the story's in the Bible.

Watch how this unfolds. I just want to tell you the story with some explanatory notes. And the one that we're going to get to very quickly at the end, three things. The story shows us that without stories like this, we're often blind to. So, 2 Samuel 11, verse 1. In the spring of the year, when kings normally go out to war, now what's that all about? This is the post-Bronze Age, just apocalyptic world where everybody's fighting each other for supremacy. And in the winter, it's hard to go out to fight because of all the rain and stuff, but in the spring, this is when countries start defending their borders again against marauders.

So, when kings normally go out to war, David sent Joab and the Israelite army to fight the Ammonites. And these were constant harassers of Israel's borders. The Israelite army constantly had to fight back against the Ammonites. So, he sends the army to fight. David, however, stayed behind in Jerusalem. So, here's his first bad decision. He's not doing his job. He says he sends people to fight. And in fact, if you look at the story, really the whole time in this story, David is sitting on his throne in Jerusalem. This man of action, this man who'd been a hero, a soldier, a courageous fighter, a leader, this whole story, if you watch for it, he doesn't actually do anything. He's sending people.

He's sending people. He's sending people. He's sending people to do his dirty work like a spider in the middle of a spider web. So, there sits David. And late afternoon, after his midday rest, David got out of bed, and he was walking on the roof of his palace. He has a nice little siesta on the palace lanai, as everybody else is defending the borders. After he looked out over the city, he noticed a woman of unusual beauty taking a bath. And so, he sent someone to find out who she was, and he was told, "She is Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam and the wife of Uriah the Hittite."

I think this unnamed servant is trying to warn off David, because we find out later, Eliam is one of David's mighty men. The mighty men. That's the term that the Bible gives to David's top 37 warriors. The top 37 guys. This is his commando unit. These guys were like a combination of Navy SEAL and personal bodyguard secret service agent. They're the top of the top. Oh, and she's also the wife of Uriah the Hittite. Guess who he was? Another one of those 37 mighty men. And we find out later that Bathsheba is also the granddaughter of Ahithophel, and Ahithophel was this brainiac intellectual advisor to David as king. He was the guy who could see around corners. He was the guy who could see 15 chess moves ahead of you, and David keeps him at his right side all the time to advise him.

So, Bathsheba is like the daughter of James Bond, the wife of Jason Bourne, and the granddaughter of Sherlock Holmes. You think this was a super bad idea on so many levels, but David ignores the warning signs. You see how he keeps making bad decisions, one little bad decision after another. Then David sent messengers to get her, and when she came to the palace, he slept with her. She had just completed the purification rites after having her menstrual period. Now, why this detail? There's no detail in this story by accident. Religious people in those days would ritually bathe themselves at various times to be ceremonially clean, and one of the reasons this is in this story is that you had to use what was called "living water," not "stagnant water," and that meant water from a running spring or rainwater.

And where do you think you would collect rainwater in your house? Up on the roof. This is talking about the bath that David saw her take. This detail is in here partly to say Bathsheba's bath was not an act of seduction. It was an act of devotion. This story never breathes a hint of condemnation toward Bathsheba. This detail is there to say this is a story 100% about David's corruption. And you know what else? This is also not a story about an affair. This is a story about a man using his power to sexually exploit a woman and then using his power to try to cover it up. Sounds like something about out of the modern headlines, doesn't it?

Later, when Bathsheba discovered that she was pregnant, she sent David a message saying, "I'm pregnant." And so this means this is over a month later, right? So next comes the cover-up. Plan A. David sends for Uriah Bathsheba's husband hoping he will sleep with her, and a few months from now, maybe Uriah's not so good at math, he'll think it's his kid. But Uriah didn't go home. Verse 9 tells us, "He slept that night at the palace entrance with the king's palace guard." And when David heard that Uriah had not gone home, he summoned him and said, "What's the matter? Why didn't you go home last night after being away for so long?"

Can you hear David starting to panic? Uriah replied, "And to me this can't help but be seen as some sort of a little subtle criticism of David's laziness." Well, the Ark and the armies of Israel and Judah are living in tents. And Joab and my master's men are camping in open fields. How could I go home to wine and dine and sleep with my wife? Uriah's saying, "I want to show solidarity with my men. I'll go home when this battle is over." So Plan A doesn't work. Plan B, do some shots with Uriah. Verse 13, "Then David invited him to dinner and got him drunk. But even then he couldn't get Uriah to go home to his wife. Again he slept at the palace entrance with the king's palace guard."

That Uriah even drunk his moral compass right now is better than David's. And at this point as a reader you just want to go, "David, David, just confess it. Just confess it to Uriah." But he keeps taking these incremental steps in the wrong direction. And the next one's a big, big step. Plan C. So the next morning David wrote a letter to Joab and gave it to Uriah to deliver. The letter instructed Joab, "Station Uriah on the front lines where the battle is fiercest and then pull back so he'll be killed." David gives this sealed letter with what amounts to a death warrant for Uriah to Uriah to take to Joab. That's cold.

And so what's happened so far? In incremental ways David has rationalized sin, David has coveted another man's wife, David has committed adultery, David has lied about it, David is now murdering this person. That's half the Ten Commandments. And he's our hero. Well Joab does his ask and a messenger delivers the news to David, "My lord, several men were killed and among them Uriah." And look at David's response. "Well, tell Joab not to be discouraged. The sword devours this one today, that one tomorrow, fight harder next time, conquer the city." Clearly he's being portrayed here as, this is a guy just, he's emotionally not in touch. This is not a leader who is leading the nation in a time of mourning for a loss on the battlefield.

This is a guy, this sounds like a guy at a popcorn or football game at halftime going, "Go team, go fight, fight, fight. So out of touch, so shallow." Verse 26, "When Uriah's wife heard that her husband was dead, she mourned for him. And after the time of mourning was over, David Eder brought to his house and she became his wife and bore him a son." Now from the outside, he's probably going, "That's cool. Nobody knows. It's all fine." But in the last line in this chapter, the narrator tells us, "But the thing David had done displeased the Lord." Oh yeah, the Lord. I don't know if you've noticed in this whole chapter, nobody's mentioned the Lord. The word, the Lord or God or anything like that has not come up once and it's literally the final word. God has the final word, literally as ever.

Next chapter, verse 1, "So the Lord sent Nathan the prophet to tell David this story." And when I read this story, I think if I were to cast Nathan the prophet in some kind of a play, I would cast Peter Falk as Columbo. And I know this is kind of dating me. How many of you, raise your hand if you remember Columbo, the TV detective. Whoa, I'm among friends here. That's fantastic. Because Columbo, his whole shtick was he was a rumpled detective who acted like a moron, but he would trick the culprit into confessing because he acted like an idiot.

And Nathan goes, "All Columbo," on David for a minute here, he goes, you know, he's leaving the palace. "Oh, one more thing. Great thing. Do you have a minute? Because there's something that's just, it's confusing me. I don't know what to do about it." "That weirdest situation." And David goes, "Yes, may I help you?" He goes, "Well, it's just, I don't want to bother you." "No, no, please, go ahead. I've never seen anything like it." Well, he tells the story. There were two men in a certain town. One was rich, one was poor. And the rich man owned a great many sheep and cattle and the double words there intensified. It's like there's just sheep and cattle just like pouring out of this guy's windows of his barn. He has so many.

But the poor man owned nothing but one little lamb he had bought. And Nathan's like, "And here's the weird thing, kid. I've never seen anything like this before." He raised that little lamb and it grew up with his children. It ate from the man's own plate and it drank from his cup. He cuddled it in his arms like a baby daughter. And so he's treating this lamb like a beloved pet. And then one day a guest arrived at the home of the rich man. But instead of killing an animal from his own flock or herd, he took the poor man's lamb and he killed it. And he prepared it for his guest.

I was thinking if you were remaking this today, it would be like the rich guy sends his earpiece wearing black Armani-suited muscle and a black Hummer onto this poor guy's property to steal and cook and eat his puppy. That's what's happening here. And David was furious. "What? As surely as the Lord lives," he vowed. Any man who would do such a thing deserves to die. And he must repay four lambs to the poor man for the one he stolen for having no pity. It's funny to me. He gets so upset that he gets the order wrong. Have you noticed that? He deserves to die. And then he's got to repay this guy. He's just out of control.

And then Nathan drops the act and he says to David, "You are that man." And David goes, "Oh." And Nathan goes on. The Lord, the God of Israel says, "I anointed you, King of Israel. I saved you from the power of Saul. I gave you your master's house and his wives and the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. Anointed, gave you, saved you." This is the deliberate echo here of 2 Samuel chapter 7, which we saw last weekend. Do you remember that? Where God reminds David of all of his grace to him. It's a repetition of those same points. What he's saying is, "Oh David, do you remember how you handled it when I said no to you? And you listened to my litany of all my blessings toward you and you focused on blessings and gratitude. And that's how you got through that. David, if you had only stayed in that place of gratitude, but you didn't.

I gave you all these gifts and if that wasn't enough, I would have given you more. But why then have you despised the word of the Lord and done this horrible deed? For you have murdered Uriah the Hittite with the sword of the Ammonites and stolen his wife from this time on. Your family will live by the sword." And Nathan goes on about all the consequences. More on that later. And then in verse 13, "Then David confessed to Nathan, 'I have sinned against the Lord.'" What a story. To be continued next weekend. But first, a question. Why is this story in the Bible? There's a UC Berkeley professor, world expert on biblical Hebrew, Robert Alter, and he says there's really nothing like this story in ancient literature.

He says if you look at all the other ancient kingdoms that were around at this time, they're telling these legends, these myths about their founding and the great heroes who founded them. They never go, "Oh, and let me tell you about this horrible, terrible deed that he did that the gods had to punish them for." It's always a hagiography. It's always like glorifying the founding. Even today, if you're being onboarded at some company that you work for and they're playing you the video that you've got to watch about the company's founding so that you can understand the company, the corporate story, they always glorify the founder. They never say, "Oh, and then the founder did something super bad that we got sued for a billion dollars for." But then he got better later. That never happens.

So why is this in the Bible? What's the point? Well, the author actually gives you a hint, I think. Follow me here. Why did Nathan tell David that story? David, I need your advice. Why did he go about it that way? To disarm David, right? To lower his defenses so that he can sneak his point in. Because here's the thing, my biggest obstacle and your biggest obstacle to true righteousness is my own self-righteousness, right? It's always so easy to see the evil others do, and it's so easy to excuse my own. Somebody else does something wrong. It's all their fault, idiots. I do something wrong. Well, it's my environment or my job or my family of origin or my ex.

There's a word for this in the recovery community, denial. I don't have an anger problem. I don't know what you're talking about. I'm just passionate about what I believe in. I don't have a communication problem. Other people just misunderstand me all the time. It's not me, it's you. In fact, you may be experiencing this right now going, "Man, do I know someone else who really needs to hear this message." Right? Gotcha. And so Nathan tells this story to elicit from David a reaction of condemnation, and then he turns to the tables, "You are that man." Well, do you see this as just genius? Do you see what the author is doing to you and me? We are being told the story of David and Bathsheba, and we can't help but be just disgusted. But then the author tells you this little story within a story to tip you off. "You are that man." That's the key phrase to understanding the spiritual point to this story. "You are that man." You are that person.

We're all tragic heroes, heroes made in the image of God, and we have a divinely anointed purpose, but we all have tragic flaws that can lead us astray. Maybe you don't have the exact same flaws as David, but you've got yours. And the worst of our flaws is self-righteousness because it blinds us to everything else. So this story kind of sneaks in under that. The mistake we make when we hear about somebody falling into disgrace, and it seems like every week now, right? You read the headlines at some other CEO, some other comedian, some other TV host, some other pastor, some other politician, but here's the mistake we make. We were wrong about that guy.

I remember listening to that comedian when I was a kid. I loved the TV show that he was on. I remember watching that TV show host every morning. I remember listening to that pastor's tapes. We all thought he was a good guy, but it turns out we were all wrong. He was just a monster. When you write them off as a monster, you miss the fact they're just human beings who incrementally rationalized evil behavior, and you and I are capable of that too. Now, most of us don't really believe that. In some way, most of us are self-images, at least partly, "Well, I know I'm not perfect, but I'm better than those people." I'm more tolerant, and I'm nobler, and I'm more spiritual, smarter, whatever.

And what happens is that actually weakens your defenses to your own bad behavior. In a clever, attention-getting, defenses-lowering way, this riveting story of this hero's fall is there in the Bible to show us three things that you and I often don't see because we're blinded by our own self-righteousness. And number one is this, the power of sin. The power of sin in everyone, including the hero of our story, David. See, watch this. We tend to think only bad guys do bad things, right? This is what David himself thought. I was reading what David told Saul when Saul was chasing him. Remember earlier in this story? And Saul is chasing David because he thinks David's going to kill him, and David says, "I'm not going to kill you." And here's what he says in 1 Samuel 24, 13, as that old proverb says, "From evil people come evil deeds." So you can be sure I'll never harm you because I'm not evil.

Do you know where the proverb he quotes here is found in the Bible? That proverb is not found in the Bible. That's not even a biblical idea. This is just his culture's accepted wisdom. Only bad people do bad stuff. So I don't have to worry about myself because I'm not bad. And our culture is exactly the same. We tend to put people in either one of two camps, black hats or white hats. You know, they are the bad guys and we are the good guys. They are practically inhuman monsters. We are the enlightened, beautiful spiritual people. And this is the first step to rationalizing evil because we think we're beyond it.

Let me get more specific. Have you been born again? Are you saved? Do you self-identify as a Christian? Then you are capable of everything David did. I mean, David's the man who loved God, who wrote many Psalms, including Psalm 40, verse 8. "I delight to do your will, O Lord. Your law is written on my heart." The man who wrote that and meant that did all of this. Tim Keller says, "This story teaches us that the seeds of the most terrible atrocity live in every human heart and the best people, even in people who have been converted by God." Seeds.

If in your heart there is a little seed of ingratitude, self-centeredness, hurt, pride, self-pity, envy, those are all seeds. And what this story is telling us is this. If they fall in the right soil and are watered in the right way, they will become what you see here in this story and what you see in the headlines every day. Let's get even more specific. David stared at Bathsheba from his rooftop. Well, these days we all have a virtual rooftop through the Internet. And we can stare at just about anything. Sexual porn or any other kind of porn. I heard somebody saying, you know, sexual stuff is not the only kind of pornography. There's shopping porn. You know, new kitchen stuff that you can't afford porn or whatever it is. Where are you staring at stuff you want that you can't have?

Stuff you want that you can't have because you really shouldn't be paying to get that stuff because everything comes with a price tag. This story is saying if you don't stop staring from your rooftop at stuff you want that you don't have, where's that going to lead you? Point two, the pain of consequences. The pain of -- I've actually heard Christians say, hey, why not sin? I'm saved by grace. Absolutely, God's gracious. Life is not. The forgiveness of God does not negate all of sin's consequences. Nathan answered David after David confesses, the Lord has taken away your sin. When you confess your sin to God, He's faithful and just to forgive your sin, to cleanse you from all unrighteousness. You will not die, but -- and he reels off a list of consequences.

I mean, it's -- you know, sometimes people say, well, you know, why not sin because I could bear the consequences even if there are consequences. Well, it's not just you. People that you know and love are impacted. People that you don't even know are impacted. In David's life, his own children, his own family, and then eventually the whole kingdom is impacted. And next week, we are going to see this in high death. So I'm not going to spend too much time on this because you'll see how the consequences start unraveling next weekend. So that's next weekend. Before it's too late today, I want to get to the good news because I'm dying for it, aren't you?

This story is also here to show point three, the possibility of redemption, even for the worst of us. The possibility of redemption, of coming back from the worst fall imaginable. Now, this is a very complicated emotional issue. NPR ran a story just two weeks ago, headline, "Is Redemption Possible?" in the aftermath of the #MeToo movement, and some said absolutely not. No. And then they quoted Tamara Burke. She's the activist who coined the term #MeToo. She said, "Well, leaving them in a heap on the side of the road isn't the answer, but allowing them to act like nothing happened is not the answer. There should be an expectation of real rehabilitation, that they have seen the light and want to make dramatic shifts in their behavior." And that is exactly where the Bible goes.

The one thing David does right in this whole sordid mess is he doesn't defend his behavior or excuse his behavior or blame his behavior on somebody else when caught by Nathan. He owns it. He immediately, publicly gets down on his face before God and prays and repents and confesses and goes on to be very public about this. He writes about it. He owns it. There's at least two Psalms where he writes about this whole episode and many more where he talks about the joy of redemption and forgiveness. And in fact, there's evidence that David grew to cherish what Nathan did for him when Nathan did this intervention. David wasn't angry with Nathan. David cherished it.

You know how I know? Bathsheba and David ended up having four sons together. Can you name any of them? Solomon's the most famous and then came Shobab and Shamua. If we'd had another son, his name would have been Shobab Shamua Schlupfer. Just kidding. That's not true. Solomon, Shobab, Shamua, and then their last son was named Nathan. David names his own son after the whistleblower. And this showed me that what David got to was, "Yeah, oh, it was embarrassing, but, but it saved my life and it saved so many lives. Though there were consequences, God was able to bring redemption and new life and new purpose because I was confronted and because I was given the gift, the opportunity to publicly repent."

And David writes about it so much, I want to encourage you specifically to look at Psalm 51. I encourage you to read all of it. But as we close, let's just look quickly at just three verses here. David says, "Have mercy on me, O God. Have mercy because, because I promise I'll never do it again. Because I promise I'm a changed man. No. Have mercy because of your unfailing love. Because, because of my new moral determination, because of my vow to be a better boy, because I will do so many good things in the future, they will outweigh all my bad things. No, because of your great compassion, just because you're a compassionate God. I don't, I don't earn this at all. Please blot out the stain of my sin."

The mistake so many of us make, and I don't want you to make this mistake leaving a message like this, the mistake we make when we're aware of our sin is we focus on our sin, kind of out, out damn spot to get back to Shakespeare, right? Instead, what David says is, "No, there is a blot, there is a stain, but I'm not going to focus on my sin or even my efforts to stop sinning. I'm going to focus on God and His mercy, and then knowing I am clean before Him, I am free without shame to confess and to make amends." And that brings me to verse 17. It's not on your notes, but I want to skip there for a second. He says, "The sacrifice you desire is what the blood of lambs and goats at the temple know, broken spirit."

He's saying, "God, all you need from us is our brokenness." And that's just a 3,000-year-old way of saying, "hitting bottom." Just saying, "God, I need you. I can't do this anymore." And then skip back to verse 10, "Create in me a clean heart." "Create in me." What David is saying, this is so beautiful, don't miss this, is he's saying, "I can't do this, God. I need the Creator God who spun the galaxies into existence to create something new in me out of nothing. That's what you do. I need a new creation, not just my moral exertion, because I'm powerless to change. It's got to be a miracle.

And do you see, if you feel, if right now, if you feel hopeless, I don't want you to leave feeling hopeless, I don't want you to leave feeling ashamed, I don't want you to leave feeling guilty, and you're going, "But I've tried to change." Do you see, this is where your hope comes from. This is our only hope, and this is our great hope, that when we finally hit bottom, that when we're finally broken, that we realize what it takes is a new creation. God creates something new in me, and God says, "That's what I've been waiting for." You don't have to leave feeling ashamed, you don't have to leave feeling broken. You can leave going, "I can be redeemed. My future's not going to look like my past, because God will create something beautiful, even out of this chaos. You're going to see it happen in David's life."

Believe it or not, even following this, even someone like David can change. Now, do I wish that to prove that point David had done something less horrible? Like, couldn't he have been guilty of, like, gratuitous jaywalking in Jerusalem or something? I wish! But I think the vividness of this story is in the Bible to say, "No one is ever beyond redemption." Not David, and not you. And, you know, I know that every Saturday night there's a group of men that watches this at Soledad and the prison there, and I know that every week there's a group of women that watches these sermons at the Blaine Street facility, and I want to say, "You are not beyond redemption, no matter what you have done." This is the point of this story in the Bible. None of us.

You know, the Bible says when Jesus died, he was crucified with two criminals. Remember the story? And actually, the word used to describe them implies that these guys were quite bad, like, they were probably bandits who ambushed innocent people and beat them up and stole their stuff and maybe even killed some of them. And one of them, true to form, just mocks Jesus until he dies. But the other guy says, "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom." And Jesus says, "Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise." God's mercy extends at the last moment of life to a man who would live the whole life like that, yes. And if that thought makes you uncomfortable, you are that man.

Because none of us get into God's kingdom based on the list of good stuff we've done. We are all that man. The mercy of God in Christ is our only hope. So if you ever feel beyond hope, it is time today to bring to God your third week of March, 1987, and leave it there. You know, I put a response of reading in your message notes, and I'm also going to put this on screen. And I'd like us to close the message today a little bit differently. For our prayer, let's read together words that David wrote after this episode. These are taken from about three different songs. And then Elizabeth and the band are going to come on stage and sing a song that our worship team wrote. Based on David's words in Psalm 51. So I want to invite you to take this time to own your own stuff and say, "I'm broken, God. I need you."

So I'm going to read the leader part, and then we'll all read the people part together. Make this your prayer. "Have mercy on us, O God, according to your unfailing love, according to your great compassion, blot out our transgressions, wash away all our iniquities, cleanse us from our sin, create in us a pure heart, O God, renew a steadfast spirit within us, restore to us the joy of your salvation, and grant us a willing spirit to sustain us. And we will praise you, Lord, among the nations, we will sing of you among the people, for great is your love. It reaches to the heavens. Your faithfulness reaches to the skies. We cry aloud to the Lord. We lift up our voices to the Lord for mercy. When our spirit grows faint within us, it is you who watches over our way. And let's say this all together. Our sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit. A broken and contrite heart. You, God, will not despise. And now let David's words from Psalm 51 wash over you in this song."