How to Get It Right When You Got It Wrong

Listen, grab your message notes as we continue our series in the biblical book of Psalms we call our series Soul-food. As you're grabbing those notes, as Caitlin and Val just shared, we are giving the first ten thousand dollars of today's offering for Japan relief. By the way, do you guys agree with that? Do you think that that's a good idea for our church to show some support for those churches that we support over there? You can get details; I confirmed with our webmaster that it is on our website. There's a button you can push right on our home page, TLC.org, and you can get more information about the ministries that we are supporting there and how you can continue to donate as well.

Now, of course, we were also touched here a little bit, weren't we? Everybody's talking here about how we were hit right in our own harbor with a little trace of what originated off the coast of Japan. Incredibly, there was no loss of life, but they're saying now at least 17 million dollars of damage. I understand that's just to the harbor itself; that does not count the loss of the boats and so on. The destruction to me was really quite stunning, and of course, our hearts really go out to anybody who's here in Santa Cruz that was hit by this.

I was actually up at the harbor during the tsunami surge. I waited until three in the afternoon; I thought it would be over by then, but it was still all cordoned off. I took some pictures with my cell phone. I've never seen anything like this. You can see in this shot, across from the Aldo's parking lot across the harbor, the water level got up nearly to the level of the Crows Nest parking lot. I mean, I've never seen anything like this. One whole dock, of course, was ripped away; all the boats on it were sunk or damaged.

But it was interesting; you'll see in this next shot some shadows on the water. Those are all people that are standing on the trestle bridge, looking down at the oil slick left by several boats, several of their boats that were sunk. As I talked with these people, it turned out that many of those up on the bridge were boat owners, and they were looking down there at where their boats used to be. You know what I was surprised at? They were throwing a party. They actually had ordered out for pizza. They had pizzas everywhere; somebody had gotten drinks, and there was a guy sitting on the edge of the trestle bridge. You can just see his shadow there at the bottom with a guitar, and he was singing a silly little song that he had made up about how his boat was underwater now. They just decided they would throw a party out of it. I thought that is a great attitude to have.

But it occurred to me, it's relatively easy to—it's not a slam dunk, but if you choose to, you can choose to have a great attitude about something that you had no control over, just a kind of a disaster minor on the world scale of disasters that happened to you because of some act of nature. It's one thing to experience that kind of disaster, but it's another thing entirely to experience a disaster of your own making. It's another thing entirely to see your life underwater, and you know, it's nobody's fault but your own. That is where we find King David in the psalm that we want to look at this morning.

I want to talk about how to get it right when you got it wrong. In other words, what do you do when your life is sunk and you did it to yourself? What do you do? Val says sometimes, I hate it when I feel a pain in my foot and I realize it's me that's holding the smoking gun, and you shot yourself in the foot. You know, what do you do when you make the costly mistake, when you make a decision that steals your peace of mind or your sleep at night or your sobriety or maybe even your marriage or your family or your finances? How do you deal with the guilt? How do you deal with the consequences?

Well, as we continue our series in the Psalms, I want you to turn in your Bibles, if you have them, to Psalm 51. And if you didn't happen to bring them, we've got Bibles in the backs of all the pews, those brown TLC Bibles, and you can crack them open to the middle of the Bible. Psalm 51 in those Bibles is on page 405, page 405. Psalm 51, we're going to go through this this morning. This is an interesting psalm because this is actually one of just a few dozen psalms where we actually know the specific context. The inscription below the title, which is part of the Bible, this is not something just put in by some commentator. It says, a psalm of David when Nathan the prophet came to him after he had gone into Bathsheba.

What's that all about? Let's start by setting the context. The story behind the song is in the Bible in 2nd Samuel chapters 11 and 12, where King David—this is good King David, who up to this point has been such an example of godliness, and he's really been the golden boy, right? I mean, the anointed one; everything he touches seems to turn to gold. He's the giant killer; he's a godly king that everybody looks up to and admires and respects, not only for his courage but also for the fact that he's an artist. He writes these beautiful songs about how much he loves God.

Well, there's a war going on, and the Bible says that in the spring of that year—this happens about a thousand years before Christ was born, so about 3,000 years before now. It's the Bronze Age to help you set some of the historical context. It says that David's soldiers and army are out to war. So why isn't David out with them? Well, he says, I'm going to join you guys; I'll be right there. But he's lounging around, maybe getting a little fat and lazy because of his fame and his riches. When the story picks up, he's lounging around on the roof of the palace, and he looks over in the direction of a specific person's house named Bathsheba.

Now, to give you a better picture of where and how this happened, here's Jerusalem today. This is an aerial picture of the city. You can see the flat area there; that's the Temple Mount where the Dome of the Rock mosque is now. That's where Solomon's temple was built in the generation after David. Just in front of it, on a ridge sticking out, this hill is called the City of David, and that is where David's palace was. In fact, they're excavating a Bronze Age palace there now that might very well be David or Solomon's palace. It's fascinating.

But in those days, the houses right on that little spur of land called the City of David actually looked something like they still do, all stacked on top of each other. Even in modern Jerusalem, one house on top of the next on these steep canyon slopes, they're stacked like blocks. If you've ever been to San Diego and you're familiar with the topography there, where they have these flat mesas and then they've got these steep canyons all through San Diego, and it's sort of desert climate, but they're close to the ocean, that is very similar to what this part of Israel is like. So they build these houses up on these mesas, but eventually, as the city gets populated, they start going down the face of the cliff. Of course, David is the nicest house on top of the hill, so that when he walks out onto his balcony, he looks down onto the roofs, and on one of the next roofs down, why, there's Bathsheba.

Her husband's not home; he's one of David's soldiers away at war. Bathsheba, it turns out, is outside on her roof naked, and she's taking a bath. That is why she is called Bathsheba to this day. No, that part's not true. My filters are off because I had to get up an hour earlier, but the rest of this is true. David looks down at this fine woman down there on the roof and does not look away. He thinks that's pretty nice; in fact, I must have that. The Bible says he sends some guys down to get her, and he brings her back to the palace and he sleeps with her and sends her back home and thinks, I've had my fun; it's over.

But then Bathsheba, a few weeks later, sends a message to the palace, and the message basically contains two words—the two words that for millennia have struck either terror or joy into the hearts of men. The two words are, I'm pregnant. David hears those words and he panics. You know what he does at first? He actually sends for her husband and says, you know, you have been such a great soldier. Why don't you go home for a conjugal visit with your wife? Because I want to just give you a little break here. Uriah says, well, I won't do that until my boys, my soldiers, are all home safe with their wives because it's all about getting the boys back home. David says, good for you; you know, it's all about the team. And to celebrate the team, let's have a drink, and he tries to get Uriah drunk, but Uriah still won't go home to be with his wife.

And so finally, what's David going to do? Well, he does the only thing that he feels wrongly is left to him. He sends Uriah back to the front with a sealed letter, and he says something like, Uriah, now this is a very important letter, and I want you to give this secret communiqué, this kind of spy stuff, your Uriah, you're my agent. I want you to give this sealed letter to your companion. Your commander has very special instructions. Uriah goes, yes, sir. He gets back, says these are secret instructions for you from the king himself, and the commander says, thank you, opens the letter, and reads, put the man who bears this letter in the front lines. And he does, and as David hoped, apparently Uriah is killed in battle. And that's cold.

When the news gets to the Capitol, David announces, we have tragically lost a great warrior. Fortunes of war, but I see his widow is expecting, and I'm going to do the right thing. I'm going to take her in because he was a great man. She marries him, and as far as David is concerned, it's all over, right? Things worked out great. His secret is safe; his spotless reputation as a singer of God's music is intact. No one will ever know, even though he knows, even though, as we'll read later, he is haunted by the guilt. But God wants to deliver us from guilt even when we fall, even when we fall badly, even when we cause a disaster that destroys our own lives. God cares for us.

And so God sends to David Nathan the prophet. Now, I've always pictured Nathan as something like a, you know, three thousand years ago version of Colombo. You remember Colombo on TV? That kind of bumbling detective who everybody thought was an idiot, but he ends up tricking people into confessions. That is the character of Nathan because Nathan comes up to David for an audience with the king, and he says, King, I don't know, I don't want to bother you. I don't want to bother you; forget it, forget it, forget I said anything. David says, what? You know, come here. What do you have to say? Nathan says, well, I just said there's something that happened over here. They're asking me what to do about it. I don't know; it's not covered in the law. You're wise, so maybe you know what to do, but I don't want to—it's too silly; I don't want to bother you. And David says, no, no, I told you, bother me.

So Nathan says, well, it turns out that there's a very poor guy, and they couldn't afford any pets, right? And so what he and his kids do is they actually—I’ve never seen anything like it, David—they trained a lamb, domesticated it. They trained it to the point where it actually ate with the kids at table for every meal. It was the cutest thing you've ever seen; they trained this thing to eat from their hands. It was like, you know, like a pet to them. And David says, that's adorable; what's wrong with that? Nathan says, well, here's the weird thing. There's a rich guy down the road, and he had some guests over, and this rich man wants to know what banquet food to give to his guests, and well, I can't believe he did this, but instead of taking one of his own numerous sheep from his flock, what he did instead was he sent men over in the middle of the night, and they stole this guy's trained little cute pet lamb, and they gave it to the guests to eat.

Wow, I don't know; there's nothing in the Bible about what to do for that. I said, well, what do you think? And the Bible says that David is so vexed that you can just picture him. He's practically shaking as he stands up and he says, I'll tell you what, for his lack of compassion, for that man's family, for eating that man's pet, that rich man deserves death. And while he's still standing like this with his accusatory finger pointing, Nathan points his own bony finger at David and says, you are the man. And you can just imagine David frozen in that position thinking, oh, I'm busted. I thought nobody knew.

And Nathan says, you're the man because you had a harem of women, and instead, you have to choose the one beloved lamb of one of your own soldiers, Uriah. And David's got to be thinking, what do I do now? Because everything that David held dear, everything that David had built his life on, was now in jeopardy—his reputation, his kingdom, his family, his fame as a singer of God's songs, all damaged, perhaps fatally. But the story of David's fall is in the Bible to show you and me how to get back on track. Because would you agree with this? In one way or another, we all fall. In one way or another, we all shoot ourselves in the foot, big or small or in between, and David's story shows that what matters to God most—God desires our purity, absolutely—but when we fall, what matters to God most is not whether we fall, but what we do when we fall.

And I'll say this because it's also important to understanding David's response. David does the exact opposite of what his predecessor as king, King Saul, did. Do you remember the story? King Saul is also busted by another prophet for another completely unrelated sin. I won't go into the details now, but Samuel the prophet, a generation or so before this, a few years before this, confronts King Saul and says, you have sinned and gone against the Lord. And King Saul's response, do you remember? In so many words, he goes, what? What are you talking about? What's sin? I've done nothing wrong. You can't accuse me of any sin because I'm the king, and how dare you accuse me? And I didn't do anything wrong. And even if I did do something wrong, and I'm not saying I did, but if I did, you don't see that smoke going up because that's bulls I'm sacrificing on the altar to God to cover any sins that I might have done. But I'm not saying I did do any, but I'm covered in case I did, so shut up, Samuel.

I think that in this critical moment, David flashes on what Saul did, and he basically says, I'm going to do the exact opposite. It shows how the quality of his heart was different than Saul's heart as well. So when you fall, when I fall, when we do things that we know we shouldn't do and we feel so guilty about it, what do we do? Well, we take the next steps—the next three steps on the road to recovery—the first three that are right here in the famous psalm of confession, Psalm 51. So jot these down. First step: I need to look honestly at myself. I need to look honestly at myself because the first step in the process of getting it right is admitting I got it wrong, right?

David says, hey, first, I'm responsible for my actions. I'm responsible for my—it's interesting that there really isn't that I can think of any discussion of Bathsheba's complicity in this. We don't even know; maybe she was, you know, compelled; maybe she was willing. David doesn't talk about it; neither does Nathan, because it's almost as if they're going, you know, that's Bathsheba's deal between her and God. David doesn't deflect any blame; he just says, have mercy on me, oh God, according to your unfailing love, according to your great compassion, blot out my transgressions, wash away all my iniquity, cleanse me from my sin.

In other words, David doesn't do what so many politicians, priests, and preachers have done over the years and say, hey, where was Bathsheba's fault? She was the one who was naked, very disgusting, God, naked in her own bathtub. I'm the victim here, total victim. No, he says, I admitted I did it. It's my responsibility, my bad. Now, why is he so eager to come clean? Well, I think the next verse gives a clue. Verse three: For I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me. To me, that shows that he's been haunted by the guilt, and I know I'm not reading that into this because David actually talks about this in other psalms that he wrote, like Psalm 32. He says, when I refused to confess my sin, my body wasted away, and I groaned all day long.

When I read these verses that David describes how it feels to have unconfessed sin, there's something that happened to me once that I always flash back on. One day I did a funeral in Folsom, California. It was for a man that I didn't know named Ebb, but Ebb's daughter went to church, and so she asked me to give the sermon up there in Folsom, and I said yes. The church was packed; he was well known in the community. But it was a formal service, kind of more liturgical; you can kind of picture this. It was an open casket service. You don't see a lot of those anymore, but the body was in the coffin with the lid open right on stage next to me as I stood at the pulpit, which was off to one side right next to that, and preached.

As I'm doing the eulogy, I was a good man, and we need to remember the best things about his life. Out of the corner of my eye, I see a big piece of lint or something in my peripheral vision on my hand. So I go to brush it off, and it doesn't come off. And so I brush it off again a little harder; it doesn't come off. So I put my hand kind of behind the pulpit and tried to pull it off while I'm still doing the eulogy, and it kind of stayed there stuck. Finally, I tear my eyes away from the script, and I look down thinking to myself, what is this? And I see the biggest spider I have ever seen outside of a cage in my entire life there on my hand. And I know it wasn't just my imagination because a guy in the audience told me later at the reception that he saw it. I said, how big was that spider? And he says, I bet that thing was two and a half inches across. It was the biggest spider I've ever seen, hairy brown spider, and I'm no spider expert, so I don't know what it was, but there it was sitting on my hand while I'm in front of people I don't know doing a funeral service.

I got to tell you something; every cell in my body when I look down there wanted to just go freak out. But instead, I just gripped the pulpit tighter and smiled and continued to read the words in front of me about Ebb and his life as I feel my life ebbing away. I could feel the spider's little feet digging into my skin, and it is not letting go. Now, outwardly, again, I stayed calm, but I'm sure the people at the funeral home were wondering why my hair was suddenly standing up like this, right? Finally, I reached out and I grabbed the spider and just yanked it off my hand and tried to throw it down, but it caught the edge of the podium, and to my horror—true story—it clambered across my sermon, up one arm, across my shoulders, and back down onto that same hand like it was laying eggs on my hand or something. What was it doing there?

I thought to myself, it's going to bite me; I'm going to die. I'm going to topple right into the open casket. We'll have a double funeral right here. The local news will say, in a bizarre incident, a local pastor died today at a funeral film at 11, you know? At last, I thought I was rid of it, but that one man in the audience told me, no, I saw it crawl right back up over your shoulder and into your jacket again. And that is why I do not wear that gray suit to this day; that thing's probably still in that jacket with its little spider babies somewhere.

But here's why that story comes to mind when I read this verse: it somehow—there's an association there in my experience. Guilt can be like that because you try to brush it off. You know, you just try to flick it off, and it keeps clambering back. You go, right, I'm going to feel guilty about that; on it goes. You need to kill it. And there's only one way to kill the spider; it's by confessing. You know what? You've got two options when it comes to guilt: confession or repression. Depression doesn't work; repressing guilt is like trying to keep a beach ball under the ocean. You know, you can try and try and try, but the minute you forget about it, it pops right back up to the surface again. The only way to kill the spider is to come clean, either very publicly like David did here or at the minimum between a trusted friend and the Lord.

So David just admits his responsibility because he wants to get rid of this thing that's been haunting him, clinging to him, and he even takes it further than just saying I'm responsible. He says I'm sinning, not just making a mistake. He says, let's call a spade a spade; this is a sin, big-time evil. A lot of times, even when we admit it, we minimize it, right? I read once about a man who wrote a letter to the IRS saying, I haven't been able to sleep lately because last year when I filled out my income tax forms, I deliberately misrepresented my income. I'm enclosing a check for a hundred and fifty dollars, and if I still can't sleep, I'll send the rest. It's a bad idea, minimizing. None of that here. David says, against you, you only have I sinned. But what's he talking about there? Well, every sin, think about it, is basically making something else your master, giving your soul to another God, another Lord.

And he says, I've sinned against you, God, and he says, I've done what is evil in your sight. It's evil. Like the Google company motto, you know, don't be evil. He goes, yeah, I was evil. So you are right in your verdict and justified when you judge. In other words, he's saying God does not owe me anything. He doesn't owe me forgiveness; he doesn't owe me mercy. He says, if I was just asking for what was fair, God would do nothing but pronounce judgment on me. That would be fair because God would be very justified in judging me. And the next, he says, I'm in even deeper trouble than that. I'm inclined to sin even more despite all of my words. This is an intriguing verse. He says, surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.

Now, you might be thinking, alright, David, you're going a little far with the sackcloth and ashes bit, you know? You're kind of piling it on here. See, how is this even possible? A fetus doesn't float inside of its mom saying to itself, I'm going to lie and cheat and steal the minute I'm born, you know? What is he talking about here in this verse? Well, these days, I guess we could say it's just part of my genetic nature to sin. David says it's part of my bones. And who could deny it? Somehow, as fallen human beings, we have an inclination to satisfy self-destructive tendencies—to lie, to cheat, to steal, to get what we want. It's part of our DNA. Even babies, even little children—yes, I can say from experience as a father of three, even our dear sweet children, even small children—they lie; they cover up. They do not have to be taught this in school, you know, intro to lying. But that's not a class that they offer because we don't need it.

It reminds me of something I could have given you tons of examples, but something our oldest now, Jonathan, said in Sunday school here at Twin Lakes Church right over here in what we used to call the I building when he was only about four years old. They were outside playing in the playground, and he said, teacher, I have to go to the bathroom. And the teacher said, okay, let's go inside. And he said, no, that's okay; I can just go out here in the playground. The teacher said, well, you don't do that at home, do you? And he said, only when my mom isn't looking. True story, he actually said that to her. He knew what was wrong, and he did it anyway when mom wasn't looking. It's part of our nature. Nobody has to teach us this.

The good news on that story, though, is Jonathan hardly ever does that anymore, so I'm glad to announce that, that I know of. But you know what? I love David's honesty in these verses, right? Because this kind of honesty is so rare. I got a question for you: How many of you have seen the movie Liar Liar? Anybody seen that movie? It stars Jim Carrey as a guy who's just a habitual liar, but then somehow he magically is forced to always tell the truth, even when he doesn't want to. Watch the scene.

You know why I pulled you over? Depends on how long you were following me. Why don't we just take it from the top? Here goes: I sped, I followed too closely, I ran a stop sign, I almost hit a Chevy, I sped some more, I failed to yield at a crosswalk, I changed lanes in the intersection, I changed lanes without signaling while running a red light. Is that all? No, I have unpaid parking tickets. Now, that movie's funny only because that kind of honesty is so rare, right? But David in this psalm is almost like Jim Carrey there. He goes, alright, you got me; here's the real deal, and it ain't pretty. Why? Well, you know, like they say in recovery, we got to admit that we're powerless over our self-destructive behavior. You got to hit bottom before you bounce back.

But then you don't stay there; you move to step two, which is you look hopefully to God. You look hopefully to God, and honestly, I think David was inspired to write this because of Nathan the prophet's gracious response to him. After Nathan confronts him like that, David says back in 2nd Samuel 12, he says, I've sinned. You instantly—that's his response. And Nathan's instant response is, God has forgiven you of your sin. Now, he goes on to outline some of the other consequences of the sin, but he says, you know, God still has a future for you. And I think prompted by Nathan, David is able to look hopefully here to God for what? For three things. Jot this down: for cleansing, first of all—that comes first, right? You got to have that cleansing.

David says in verse 7, cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow. Doesn't that sound great? Cleanse me, God; just wash me. Let's take a closer look at this. I want you to circle that phrase, cleanse me. The word used there for cleanse—it's a fascinating word. We don't have a word like this in English. It literally means de-sin me. Don't you love that? That you feel like saying that to God sometimes when you fall in? God, de-sin me. And then he says with hyssop. Now, what's that mean for this? I'm going to need a volunteer, and I have volunteered Howard. So come on up here to the stage. Let's give a hand to Howard, who I asked during the movie clip if you would be our volunteer. How are you doing this morning?

I'm doing good. Now, are you a morning person, or are you a sleep-in-late person? I'm a morning person. You are? Good. Many of us despise you for that. But listen, no, seriously, Howard, you're the perfect volunteer for this because you used to be a judge, and your background is in law, and I'm going to talk about the Old Testament law here and a judgment pronounced on people who are unclean, and you're going to play the part of somebody who's unclean. Let's see. Pardon me. How fitting. Okay, well, you know, that's good personal confession, but let's say you are living actually hundreds of years before David. This was already an ancient ritual by the time David wrote about being cleansed with hyssop. He's referring specifically to the time that the Israelites almost lived like gypsies. They didn't have a permanent city like the City of David; they were just living in tents. They didn't have a temple; they had a tabernacle that was basically a big tent where they would go to do sacrifices before God.

And they had some pretty strict laws, especially enforced back then. And one of the laws was about things that were taboo or unclean. For example, let's say that you did something unclean. Touching a dead body would be considered unclean, and you touched a dead body. It was a friend who had a spider on his hand, but that's not important now. And so you touch the dead body, and you're then ritually unclean, and you have to be put out of the camp, actually, because now you're unclean, and they want to really enforce this. And so you have to leave the camp, but while you're leaving the camp so that nobody accidentally touches you, you have to shout out, unclean, unclean, to keep people away from you. And so I'd like you to make your way out of the camp shouting unclean right now.

That's pretty good. That's very good, Howard. But good, I got good news for you because you don't have to stay unclean, even though there's nothing you can do about this. Because how could you go make sacrifices? Because everything you touched would be unclean too, so you're really in a fix. Well, there's a way out because some friends who really love you went to the tabernacle, and they performed a sacrifice to God on your behalf. They took the ashes from that sacrifice at the temple, and they took them, and these are not actual ashes from a sacrifice. I just want everybody here to know that this is my great aunt. No, just kidding. That's not true. It's too early; no filters, okay?

So they take the ashes, and they take a bowl of cleansed and purified water, and they pour ashes from the sacrifice into that water, and they wait until it's dissolved. So now you've got ashes from a blood sacrifice poured into water, and then they take this plant that grew wild there—this is our relative of the hyssop plant. And you guys all know this relative of the hyssop plant, Howard. Can you—how's your smeller? Can you smell that? What does it smell like? Good, smells like mint, doesn't it? Well, that's because it is mint, and mint is a relative of hyssop. And so they take this clean-smelling— I think that's part of the symbolism, this clean-smelling plant—and they swirl it around in the water that has ashes in it, and then you know what comes next? Well, I've been waiting for this all morning long. What they do is they sprinkle the person who is ritually unclean, and you know what? Now you're cleansed. How do you feel?

I'm wonderful. Good. Let's thank Howard for being our guest model for that. Thank you, Howard. But I love that. Do you see the parallels with our sin today? Now, what's interesting is this is already an ancient ritual by the time David refers to it, but all his readers knew what he was talking about, right? They didn't have to have it explained. But David—where there's no record that David actually had Nathan do this ritual to him, David is talking about this metaphorically, just like we refer to it metaphorically. And because he's asking God, he's saying, God, I want you to cleanse me with hyssop. And so he's using that ritual already here as a metaphor for what? Well, look, there's so many parallels. Sin can break our fellowship, right? Sort of sends us out of the camp, makes us outcasts from our friends and family, or at least we can feel outcast because of our guilt and shame. We can bench ourselves, and sometimes we even identify ourselves as unclean, right? Your identity can come from whatever you feel guilty about. I'm just this or that.

But the good news is a friend has made a sacrifice for you to cleanse you. You are passive while you are cleansed by somebody else. Folks, that is a picture of grace. And as Christians, we believe this all points to the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross for all of our sins, once for all. He is your friend who makes the sacrifice for you. You may have been trying to scrub that stain of guilt off yourself, and it keeps crawling back onto you, but he can de-sin you. Isn't that great news? You can be washed clean. But there's more to it than just cleansing. It gets better because I can also look to God for joy. It's great that God doesn't want me to just be miserable even after I've made a bad mistake. David says, let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones you have crushed rejoice.

Wait a second, the bones you have crushed? Yes, God will let you hit bottom to save you. God's short-term goal isn't your happiness; it's your holiness. And so God will let your bones be crushed. He will let you feel the pangs of guilt and shame to save you. But God's long-term desire is to give you your joy back, not to have you stay crushed. And then David looks to God for lasting change. It gets even better. Not only is there cleansing and return joy, but there's actually a change. Now, this is fascinating. Don't flip over the page to you because I want you to look at this verse 10: Create in me a pure heart, O God. It's interesting; the word that he uses here for create is the same word, same exact Hebrew word used in Genesis 1 about God creating the whole world out of nothing.

And I love that because think about it: David is not saying improve me. He's not saying improve me; he's saying create something new in me that does not exist now. What's he talking about next verse? And renew a steadfast spirit in me. Verse 12: Grant me a willing spirit to sustain me. Listen carefully here; he's saying, I know this temptation's never going to stop for me. This isn't the last time I'm going to face this temptation. So I need actually a willing spirit so that I want to not do this, so I want to obey. I heard about the little boy who says, I'm going to save up all my money to give to the missionaries, but he keeps spending it all on ice cream. And one night, his mom overhears him praying, Lord, please make the ice cream truck stop coming down our streets.

Well, I got news for you; the ice cream truck is never going to stop coming down your street. I don't know what your ice cream is, but it's never going to stop coming down your street. So what you do is you ask God for a steadfast and willing spirit for when you hear that ice cream truck siren song, right? Do you ask God for this? He can create something where now there is nothing. So you look honestly in at yourself, and then you cross the line and look hopefully up to God, who longs to be gracious to you. And then number three, you look helpfully out to others. In other words, you stop thinking about sin and switch to service. David says, and then listen to this future hope: then I will teach transgressors your ways so that sinners turn back to you.

It's interesting, isn't it? Deliver me from the guilt of bloodshed, O God, you who are God my Savior, and my tongue will sing of your righteousness. Open my lips, Lord, and my mouth will declare your praise. He's saying, God, I want to go public with this, and I want to recover from this, not just so that you help me through my little problems, but so I can help other people who also are sinners, right? God doesn't want to just heal your marriage for your marriage's sake; he wants to heal your marriage for other broken marriages' sake. He doesn't want you to just recover from your addictions for your own sake; he wants you to recover so you can help other people with similar addictions.

And that's the process David is talking about here. Don't just sit there in the mud puddle of guilt; get back into service. You say, I don't know if I can after I—David did. After what he did, wrote beautiful psalms that we'll see later in this series about the beauty of knowing that you're forgiven that we would never have if God hadn't rescued him from this. Look, you're not a failure if you fall; only if you stay down. Here's another way to put it: get right and get going. Get right and then get going.

Now, look, obviously, these three steps are just a start; there are other steps to take. It's a long journey, but they're a start. They're a start. And if you feel racked with guilt right now, you don't have to be. The good news, the great news is that God longs to be gracious to you, that there is a future for you. And then David wraps it up in a fascinating way—amazing insight here, verses 16 and 17. Again, I think he was thinking of Saul's response. Remember what Saul did? He immediately is like, I'm going to offer bulls and sacrifices and get right so that my sin, if I did sin, so that it's covered. David says, you know what? You don't delight in sacrifice, or I'd bring it. You don't take pleasure in burnt offerings. My sacrifice, God, is a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart. God, you will not despise.

He's saying, God, I'm not just going through the motions to get my get-out-of-jail-free card. He's saying, I realize, bottom line, God wants my heart, not mere religious ritual, not mere religion. Now, I could end this right there, but I'd be leaving you hanging, wouldn't I? Because what happened to David and Bathsheba after this? Well, there were bad consequences to the nation of Israel and to David's family. But the most amazing part of the story is that their failure wasn't final. God did make them clean. Were there consequences? Yes. But if you keep reading the story, you find out that David and Bathsheba do end up together, and she does get pregnant again, and this time she gives birth to a son, and his name is Solomon, the great king.

And he has a son, and if you follow the lineage of David and Bathsheba for 25 generations, you find that eventually somebody gives birth to a son named Joseph, who becomes husband to Mary, from whom Jesus Christ is born. It was from two failures, David and Bathsheba, that God eventually brought forth Jesus. And that's what God does. He still has a destiny. He goes from sin to a Savior. He's been bringing you from sin to your Savior your whole life long, and he'll keep doing it. We will all fail, but as we turn to him, God can still bring great things out of the life you have ahead of you.

So let's apply this message about confession right now, right? We've been studying confession, so let's practice it right now. I want you to turn to your neighbor and confess your most recent sin—just kidding! Alright, relax, no filters. Let's apply this by giving you a few minutes to meditate right on David's words and make them your own because my guess is there's somebody here with some guilt haunting you now because the words to some of these well-known psalms in Psalm 51 have been read by Christians as a prayer of confession for hundreds and hundreds of years, and some of these words can become so familiar that we miss some things.

So what I'm going to do is I'm going to read Psalm 51 again, but from the message paraphrase. And I want you to look at these verses and listen to them with your heart, and maybe they express some emotion that you want to express to God right now. And then after I'm done reading this, we're going to move into a song based on another psalm of confession, Psalm 24. And during that song, again, it's a new song to many of you. You might want to just let the words wash over you, but it's a chance for you to do some business with God.

So here's the message paraphrase of Psalm 51: Generous in love, God, give grace. Huge in mercy, God, wipe out my bad record. Scrub away my guilt. Soak out my sins in your laundry. I know how bad I've been; my sins are staring me down. You're the one I violated; you've seen it all, seen the full extent of my evil. You've got all the facts; whatever you decide about me is fair. I've been out of step with you for a long time. What you're after is truth from the inside out. Conceive in me a new true life. Soak me in your laundry, and I'll come out clean. Scrub me, and I'll have a snow-white life. Tune me into foot-tapping songs; set these once broken bones to dancing. Give me a clean bill of health, O God; make a fresh start in me. Shape a Genesis week out of the chaos of my life. Don't throw me out with the trash; don't fail to breathe holiness in me. Bring me back from gray exile; put fresh wind in my sail. Commute my death sentence, God. I know going through the motions doesn't please you; a flawless performance is nothing to you. I learned, God, worship when my pride was shattered. Heart-shattered lives, ready for love, don't for a moment escape God's notice.

Let's pray. Bow your heads with me. God, right now, this second, I know there are people who feel the same way David felt. It's something they did last night, or it's something they did a thousand nights ago, but they've just never felt right. They felt awkward, dirty, guilty. And so, God, as a church, we pray together this prayer of confession right now: have mercy on us. We deserve nothing but judgment, but we ask for mercy because you are a compassionate God. We're powerless to overcome these self-destructive tendencies. Cleanse us because we can't cleanse ourselves. Cleanse us by the blood of Jesus Christ, by that great sacrifice once for all. And we accept that right now. Some of us, maybe for the very first time, are becoming believers in that sacrifice for their sin. And God, empower us to live a life of lasting change. We pray this in the name of the one who cleansed us, in Jesus' name. Amen.