Preacher: John WeisÂ
Text: Psalm 51
East River Church (Batavia, OH)
Cleansing From God
Good morning. Thanks for joining us for Lord's Day worship. If you're visiting with us the first time, I'd like to wish you an extra special welcome. We appreciate you joining us to be with us this morning. My name's John Weiss. I'm one of the pastors here at East River. Last week we began a short series in the book of Psalms. Pastor Foster preached from Psalm 148, which was a worldwide call for all of creation to worship God. Now our text this morning, Psalm 51, deals with the exact problem of what is it that hinders us from worshiping God. It's our personal sin and guilt. Now this Psalm was as just relevant on the day it was written as it is for today. Therefore please give your attention to the reading of God's holy word. Psalm 51, to the choir master, a psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet went to him after he had gone in to Bathsheba. Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love, according to your loving kindness, blot out my transgressions, wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgressions and my sin is ever before me. Against you, you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment. Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me. Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart. Purge me with hiss up and I shall be clean. Wash me and I will be whiter than snow. Let me hear joy and gladness let the bones that you have broken rejoice. Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from your presence and take not your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of my salvation and uphold me with a willing spirit. Then I will teach transgressors your ways and sinners will return to you. Deliver me from blood guiltiness, O God, O God of my salvation and my tongue will sing aloud of your righteousness. O Lord, open my lips and my mouth will declare your praise. For you will not delight in sacrifice or I would give it. You will not be pleased with a burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite heart, O God. You will not despise. Do good to Zion in your good pleasure. Build up the walls of Jerusalem. Then you will delight in right sacrifices in burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings. Then bowls will be offered on your altar. This is the word of the Lord. - Thanks be to God. - Let's pray. Our most gracious Father, we thank you for the gift of your word. Through your word this morning, we ask that you would convict us of sin, that you would encourage us with the offer of grace that is only available through Christ. We pray that you would give us life through your word that we could truly praise you. We ask these things in the name of our Lord, Jesus Christ. Amen. In the book of Psalms, we find not only a hymn book for the church, but a diary of all the issues of life for man. Joy, suffering, hope in God, despair, longing, encouragement. All of these things are captured for us so that we can always find help from God's word in the moment of need. This Psalm, Psalm 51 this morning is especially important because it shows the only way for you to deal with the greatest problem in your life. And that's because this is how David deals with the greatest problem in his life. The superscription of the Psalm, the words before verse one, says this, "A Psalm of David, when Nathan, the prophet, went to him after he had gone to Bathsheba." Now it's unclear whether the superscription are the words of David himself or someone who left a note to give context to what the Psalm is about. Nevertheless, they are found in some of the most ancient scrolls and so it's right for us to use them, even though it's not marked as verse one. Nevertheless, David's sin with Bathsheba is one of the most harrowing accounts in all of scripture about the fall from grace that a Christian can have. And knowing that story is absolutely crucial to understanding this Psalm. We don't have time to read all of 2 Samuel 11 and 12, so I'll summarize the story briefly that way we can understand the severity of David's sin. At the height of his reign as king, instead of joining his army in battle when kings went out to war, he remained at Jerusalem. When seeing Bathsheba bathing in her house, he then called her by messenger to the royal palace. And after she came to him, he then lay with her, as one does when he is married to a woman. When he then learns later that she has conceived a child through their one-night stand, he then hatches a plan to deal with this problem. He fetches her husband, Uriah, one of the mighty men in his company from the battlefront at war. And he tells Uriah to then go down to his house and rest a while and be with his wife. He's hoping that Uriah will go in to Bathsheba and that this will be covered up. But being a man of honor, Uriah is unwilling to go into his house knowing that his companions are still on the battle lines. He doesn't go down and he sleeps at the door of his house. David, upon seeing this, entices him again. He tries to get him drunk to give him a little liquid courage, maybe perhaps stir his affections for his bride and go into his wife. He then realizes though, of course, that this won't work. Uriah is a warrior and he refuses to have pleasure when the army is at battle. So David hatches another plan, a more diabolical plan to deal with this problem. He sends a letter in the very hands of Uriah to Joab the commander of his army. And in the letter, he says this to Joab, quote, "draw back from Uriah after putting him at the front, draw back from Uriah that he may be struck down and die." And Joab does exactly that. Now elsewhere in scripture, David is called a man after God's own heart, but in these chapters, we see that David is just that, a man. A man guilty of adultery. A man guilty of conspiracy to murder. A man guilty of false witness and deception. He thought he had swept it all under the rug after Uriah died. And yet at the end of Second Samuel, the writer tells us this, "The thing that David had done, displeased the Lord." Even though he covered it up from all human eyes, the Lord saw. And still, after this, even after hearing the news of Uriah's death, David did not repent. Therefore, the Lord sent Nathan the prophet to come and speak to David. Nathan bypasses David's callous heart with a parable in which someone steals a sheep that didn't belong to him. And David accuses himself, and he says that what that man has done is worthy of death. And Nathan's famous response to David, perhaps you know it, you are the man. The Lord had to send Nathan to rebuke David, and even still then, David did not confess. You see, David had thought the consequences of his sin were the worst problem of his life. And yet, he thought he had dealt with the problem, but he hadn't addressed the problem at all. This psalm then is David actually finally dealing with the real problem. Not the consequences of his sin, but his sin itself. And that's why I said at the beginning that this psalm is important because it shows the only real way for you to deal with the greatest problem in your life. The greatest problem in your life is not your pain. It's not your finances. It's not becoming a more disciplined person or finally getting your act together. The greatest problem in your life is that you sin against a holy God. And this psalm then shows you the only right response that is possible on your part. It is repentance. It's repentance in the light of what God gives. And that's exactly why we have this psalm. What is repentance? Simply put, repentance is turning from sin to God. But what makes for true repentance? That's the question we must ask. This psalm gives us this morning four marks of what true repentance is. First, true repentance relies on God's mercy. David begins his prayer in these verses where all true repentance must begin. He begins at focusing on God's gracious promises. And verse one, he prays, have mercy on me, oh God. According to your steadfast love, the words here translated steadfast love are a very significant word in the Old Testament. It's a word that can be translated as loving kindness or perhaps even better your covenant faithfulness. David's asking God to have mercy on him according to God's covenant faithfulness. Now, even though Nathan's rebuke had no promise of any forgiveness or any deliverance, still David knows God's heart and God's character. And apart from God's steadfast love, David has no reason to expect for his prayer to be heard. Nevertheless, David knows that God's covenant toward his people has not been broken by David breaking his side of the covenant. Even though David has sinned, he knows that God remains the same. And therefore, he approaches God. God remains God and David is bold to approach him. In Exodus 34, when the Lord passed by Moses on Mount Sinai, the Lord declared his name. We hear God's name as the Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love, covenant faithfulness for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin. That is the God that David knows, and that is the God that David approaches in prayer. It's only because of who God is that David can pray how he prays. God's nature is the basis for David's prayer. And this shows us that that is the basis for all true repentance. Even though God remains the same though, there's a change that's needed in David. He needs to be cleansed. David's sin has stained him and he has made him unclean. In the Old Testament, the idea of being unclean is not just committing some sort of sin that is abstract in a sense, but rather it's a mark on you by which you cannot come before God's presence. And so David then, in saying, have mercy, he then adds to this a second petition, wash me thoroughly from my iniquity. David knows that if he's to be cleansed, it is God who must do the cleansing. We've seen over and over in rehearsing the story that as David is trying to clean up the mess that he made, he is just smearing the dirt around, getting dirtier and dirtier in the process. All of his efforts to cover it up had not cleansed a single thing. And that's why David is bold to come to God and ask for cleansing. That's the first true mark of repentance that we see in this Psalm. The first true mark of repentance is that it rests on God's mercy as its basis. It trusts in God's mercy so that it is bold to come to ask for grace. That is where all repentance must begin for you. Both our initial repentance and the continual repentance of the everyday Christian life. Some people mistakenly think that repentance only is done at the beginning of the walk in Christ. But rather, repentance is an ongoing daily experience for every Christian. Faith towards God and repentance from sin are two sides of the same coin of the daily Christian life. This leads us to the second mark of repentance in this Psalm. True repentance requires confession and not just confession generally, but confession of sin. In verses three to six, David confesses both his actual sins and his original sin, as we'll see in just a moment, his nature as a sinner. In verse three, David says, "For I know my transgressions, my sin is ever beforming." The transgressions not a word that we use commonly in our world today. We don't think of transgressions, maybe unless you're a lawyer or something like that. It's a fairly religious word now, it's fallen out of use. But transgression just simply means a trespass. If you've ever been out in the woods or maybe moving about in the countryside, you'll see signs that say no trespassing. That's a much more familiar word for us. That's the same idea as a transgression. There's a boundary line and you may not cross it. That's what it means to transgress. But the difference between trespassing and a transgression is that trespassing, at least the way that we think about it, it's just a boundary of human property. Transgression, at least here in this Psalm, is a much more significant thing. This is a boundary that God himself has marked. David hasn't violated just the rights of other people. He's violated the dictates of God. Doubtless, his conscience would have continued to torment him about this. David says his sins are continually before him. Think for just a moment, the depth of David's deception in his plan. To hide his sin, he intended to have Uriah raise a boy his entire life who wasn't his. He was also consigning Bathsheba to perpetuate this lie at all times and never tell her husband. He was dividing a family and making a child into a bastard. And when this did not work, he sent a letter in Uriah's own hand. He trusted Uriah to be a faithful messenger and not open the letter to cover up his own deception. What do you think would have happened if Uriah had spilled open the letter? Nevertheless, this is the depth of deception. Uriah was, as it were, a dead man walking. I mean, how diabolical is this plan? Finally, some of David's other servants even died because of this plan. Uriah wasn't the only one who was killed. Some of the other soldiers that day, part of David's army, were also killed. There was collateral damage to this conspiracy. What this story tells us is that sin never stops spreading. And in this song, we see that sin never stopped annoying David's conscience. It wouldn't leave him alone. He perpetually had his sins come before his mind. And that's why David is praying for God's cleansing. He says, "Wash me, for I know my transgressions. I'm intimately acquainted with what I've done. Only the miraculous cleansing power of the Holy Spirit could deliver David's and his conscience from such guilt." Now, though your sins may not seem as serious as David's, perhaps you've never done something as diabolical as what we see in 2 Samuel 11. Nevertheless, your sins don't differ in nature. They just differ according to greed. That's why your conscience also can fix you when you sin. Your conscience won't leave you alone when you haven't dealt with sin the right way because it is God's gift to you to drive you to him. If your sins are continually before your mind, if you have things that you think about, that you've done wrong, that perpetually perturb you, then you need to deal with them by coming to God through Jesus Christ. Only by coming to your Creator, who is your law giver and your deliverer can you have deliverance from the knowledge of sin. And it's only done one way by acknowledging your sin before God. And that's exactly what David does in the very next verse. In verse four, David says what is admittedly a very difficult verse for some people. He says this, "Against you, you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment." You may be asking yourself the question, how can David say this against you, you only have I sinned? We've actually rehearsed this morning the many people that David has sinned against. And it's true that the Bible does use this kind of language. It says things like if your brother sins against you, if you have something against your brother. So sin is not just vertical, sin is truly also horizontal. It's not just against God, it's also against others. And how then does David say against you only have I sinned? Well, David here isn't denying that he has sinned against others. He's not saying that he hasn't affected anyone else. Rather, he's saying a remarkable thing about what sin is. He's saying that only God can account sin. It is God who himself is the backstop behind every sin that David committed. When David was sinning against Bathsheba, he was sinning against God's daughter. When he was sinning against Uriah, he was sinning against a man who God made. When he spilled his blood through the sort of the Ammonites, he was roping them into his conspiracy. You see, at the back ground or the backstop of every sin is a holy God who accounts sin. When he sinned against the people of Israel, he sinned against God's people Israel. David is stressing in these words that sin is not just a collateral damage that affects other people in wrong ways. No, he is saying that his sin is a personal offense against God himself. David cries out that he has done what is evil, not just in the world's opinion, but is what is evil in your sight? What is evil in your sight? It is God who accounts for sin. Now this brothers and sisters is the difference between a false confession, what is no true confession at all, and true confession. Many people stop short of true confession because they don't make a confession of sin. They might admit to doing things that are unwise, doing things that are harmful to themselves, doing things that have affected others, but they never describe it in the way that the Bible describes it. They describe it in terms that are easy, and soft, and palatable. They don't make a true confession. If they're caught, perhaps they'll even acknowledge that they've had some bad ways of life and bad patterns that they've harmed of their people. But true repentance, true confession, names sin for what it is. True repentance manifests in a heart which is willing to say before God and to God, "God, I have broken your will. I have done what is evil in your sight. I have offended and sinned against you." True confession of sin not only includes actual sins, but sin as a whole. Not just the wrong deeds you've committed, but the truth about where those deeds come from. That's exactly where David turns his attention in verse five. He says, "Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me. Behold, you delight in truth and the inward being, and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart." Now we know that David is not the product of an illicit relationship. David is not a bastard. He's not someone who has been conceived out of wedlock as in his situation. He's not referring to that in verse five. He's not saying that his mother was sinning when she bore him. Rather, David is describing the depth of his own corruption. He is saying in this way that he is a sinner all the way down. Not just the things that he has done in his life, not just the sins that we've rehearsed from second Samuel 11. He's been a sinner from the beginning. The sense of David's confession in these words is this. My corruption, it goes all the way down to the very depths of who I am, to the very beginning of who I am. The reason that David's confession goes all the way back in time is because God delights in truth in the core of his being. At the core, David is confessing that he is a sinner against God. Now the Bible teaches that all mankind were corrupted in the fall of Adam and Eve. That they being the root of mankind, that in their fall, all mankind fell together with them. And this is a doctrine which is commonly called original sin and is a very helpful doctrine in understanding the radical nature of our identity as those who not only transgress in individual ways, but are transgressors at the bottom, that we are against God in our sin nature. My question for you this morning is that how you see yourself? Not just as someone who has done sinful things, but someone who, apart from God's grace, is at enmity with God at the depth of who you are. The reason that this must be the depth of your confession is because this is the depth of God's radical cleansing that he must bring if you are to have true repentance and true forgiveness. When God cleanses a man, he cleanses him all the way down. In John chapter 13, just before the last supper, when Jesus was washing his disciples' feet, Peter objects to what Jesus is doing. He says it's beneath Jesus for him to serve in this way. Peter said this, "You shall never wash my feet." And then Jesus says to Peter, "Peter, if I do not wash you, then you have no part in me." And it seems like Peter finally gets one right. His response, I think, is a good response. Peter understands the spiritual meaning behind Jesus' words, and he says to Jesus, "Lord, then wash my hands and my head and my feet." What is Jesus' response? Those who have already bathed only have to wash their feet. You see, Peter is expressing what is true of someone who has never initially repented, but he's also hearing from Jesus what's required of every Christian. That's what it is to respond to God's offer of cleansing, which brings us now to the third mark of true repentance that we see in David's prayer. True repentance receives God's cleansing. In verse seven, David asks for a cleansing that only God can provide. In this section, verse seven through 12 uses a lot of language from the Levitical system, and we don't have time this morning to examine each verse by verse, but I want to highlight what is perhaps the most strange to our ears. In verse seven, David prays, "Purge me with Hisap, and I shall be clean. "Wash me, and I shall be wider than snow." Now, David's words here seem very strange to us. What does it mean for someone to be purged? Is this some sort of asceticism or, you know, whipping the body or scourging the skin in order to be cleansed? Not at all. The Hisap plant was a very spongy, yet sturdy plant. If you think of a lilac bush, that's kind of what a Hisap looks like. It has a reed, a rod, and that makes it good for being used as a tool. And then the ends of the Hisap plant are very spongy, so they can hold on to liquid and let go of liquid. And in Exodus 12, excuse me, when Israel was about to leave Egypt, we see that God told Israel to take a Hisap branch and take some of the blood from the Passover lamp and apply it to the doors of the house. The reason for this was to serve as a sign that this house was not to be touched as the angel of the Lord comes through Egypt that night to destroy the Egyptians. But later, when Israel entered the land, God gave them a Levitical system of sacrifices. These were designed to teach Israel about the seriousness of sin and, most importantly, their need for cleansing. In Leviticus 13 and 14, God then teaches Israel how to handle a special case of an infectious skin disease with a Bible called leprosy. Leprosy was one of the most severe diagnoses that you could receive in the ancient world. In Second Kings chapter five, when Naaman writes a letter to the king of Israel, asking if he could get healed of leprosy, the king's response is, who am I? God that I could make someone clean from leprosy? Leprosy was essentially a perpetual exile from the community. Those who had been given a diagnosis of leprosy had to leave the camp. And so God gives them a commandment about what can happen when someone is cleansed of leprosy. But the near impossibility of being cleansed from leprosy shows us all the more the severity of what David is confessing in this sin. This chapter in chapter 14 of Leviticus tells us how a leper can return to the community. But it's important to note as we read these verses that it can only take place if that leper has actually been cleansed. This is an extended passage, but bear with me for just a moment because it says two very important things about David's prayer in this psalm. In Leviticus 14, one through eight, we read this. The Lord spoke to Moses saying, this shall be the law of the leper's person for the day of his cleansing. He shall be brought to the priest and the priest shall go out of the camp and the priest shall look. So there we see that the leper's one is not even able to come in yet as he's cleansed. The priest shall go out of the camp and the priest shall look then if the case of leper's disease has been healed in the leper's person, the priest shall command them to take for him who is to be cleansed two clean birds and cedar wood and scarlet yarn. And here it is, and hiss up. And the priest shall command them to kill one of the birds over an earthenware vessel over fresh water. He shall take the live bird with the cedar wood and the scarlet yarn and the hiss up and dip them and the live bird in the blood of the bird who was killed over the fresh water and he shall sprinkle it seven times on him who is to be cleansed of the leper's disease. Then he shall pronounce him clean and shall let the living bird go off into the open field. And he who is to be cleansed shall wash his clothes and shave off his hair and bathe himself in water and he shall be clean. And after that he may come into the camp. You see David is pulling on that thread here. He's saying my sin is so bad, it's like the case of leprosy. It can't be healed apart from a miraculous God who is able to restore me. And I need to be purged with hiss up. I need to be cleansed just like the bird who had to die so that I could be brought back into the community. I need to be purged with hiss up. He is saying in the sense that he is a spiritual leper. He's admitting at the same time both the depth of his sin and the trust of God's cleansing. What's the end of the law for the case of the leper's person? He is able to come back into the camp. We see this exact same kind of faith in Matthew chapter eight. When a real leper comes to Jesus, he comes to Jesus and says, Lord, if you will, you can make me clean. And Jesus then touches him and he pronounces him clean. It's an amazing idea. Jesus very words be cleansed and then the gospel writers say and immediately he was cleansed. That at Jesus is very declaration of cleansing. He became healed. This is exactly what David is doing. David, when he's asking God to cleanse him, to purge him with hiss up, is saying, essentially this, God in myself, I'm as hopeless as it comes, but if you cleanse me, then I'll be clean. And I can come back into your glorious presence. That is what David is trusting here. Though his sins are like scarlet, if God washes them, he takes through the blood of Christ, that's scarlet sin and makes it white as snow. That's what true repentance looks like. A radical trust in God's power to cleanse you. Not just David in this chapter, but to cleanse you, even despite the fact of yourself that is completely hopeless. Some of you perhaps are despairing of the hopelessness of your sin, the hopeless condition of you to cause any reformation of character or behavior in and of yourself. If you are despairing this morning, I want to say two things. First, good. Good that you are despairing of your ability to perform your cleansing. But at the same time, look to God. Look to Jesus Christ and receive the cleansing that only he can provide. Trust in God's power to cleanse. Join with David and say to God, purge me with hiss up, and I will be clean. Know that if God cleanses you, you will be cleansed. Now, perhaps this morning you have repented before, excuse me, perhaps though, this morning you have never repented of your sin. Perhaps you've mistakenly thought that you have to cleanse yourself and to clean yourself up before coming to God. Know this, that is impossible. Just as we saw in David's story in 2 Samuel 11, everything that you will do in your life to cleanse up your sin, to hide your problems, it will only make it worse. You cannot hide your sins from God's face. Know God rather must hide his face from your sins. But he will. He will block them out, most assuredly, if you look to him through Christ. There's only one way that that happens is if your scarlet sins are washed by the blood of Jesus. And that's exactly what David then prays for next, not just cleansing from sins, but cleansing from sin. In verse 10, David then prays, "Create in me a clean heart, O God, "and renew a right spirit within me." Even here, David's prayer shows us the depth of what repentance is. The change that David asks for in this verse is a radical change. This is open heart surgery. This is the translation of a stone, a heart of stone out for a heart of flesh. And the word that David used here is very significant. In the Hebrew Bible, the word for create that's used here is only used of God. In every occurrence that this word, starting in the very first verse of the Hebrew Old Testament, it's only God who is used with this verb. The significance is this. David knows that God must create this clean heart in him. It's not something that he can do on his own. Now, some people wonder whether this next verse teaches that a Christian may lose their salvation. They think that take not your Holy Spirit from me implies that David truly feared that possibility. But I don't think that fits with the rest of Scripture. And the reason is this. For example, in 1 Peter 1 verse 23, it says that Christians have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable seed. 1 John 3, 9 says essentially the same thing, that no one who is born of God makes a practice of sinning because God's seed abides in him. On the contrary, David is recognizing in these verses that that's what he deserves. In 1 Samuel, we learned that when Saul had sined and had turned away from following God, that eventually God took his Holy Spirit from Saul. But he did that because he was removing the anointing to be king. I think that's the background of David's words here. Now, John Calvin commenting on this verse expresses what David is doing quite healthily. He says in summary that David is recognizing that that's what God, that's what he deserves of God. Calvin writes this, "It is natural that the saints when they have fallen into sin and have thus done what they could to expel the grace of God should feel an anxiety upon this point. But it is their duty to hold fast the truth that grace is the incorruptible seed of God, which can never perish in any heart after it has been deposited." This is the spirit that is displayed by David. Reflecting upon his offense, he is agitated with fears and yet rests in the persuasion that being a child of God, he would not be deprived of what indeed he had justly forfeited. This is an amazing explanation. Well, Calvin is essentially saying that David had done everything in his power that deserves the taking away of God's spirit. And yet because he is a true child of God, God will not take it away. And in fact, this very Psalms existence tells us that God did not withdraw his Holy Spirit from David because David is basing his entire Psalm on the trust that comes in God's promises. Again, Calvin writes this, "The words of this verse imply that the spirit had not altogether been taken away from him. However much his gifts had been temporarily obscured." This is a warning to you, Christian, to not persist in unrepentant sin because it is true that through our sins, as the confession teaches, we can lose a sense of the fatherly pleasure of God because our sins do create a separation between us and God. Nevertheless, God is kind not to take away his Holy Spirit. That's why the very next verse, David says, "Restore to me not your salvation, but the joy of your salvation and renew a right spirit within me." He is so confident that God will restore his joy, that that joy will overflow into worship, which brings us finally to the fourth mark of true repentance, that true repentance results in God's praise. David declares what the fruit of God's cleansing will be. In verse 13, he begins his conclusion, saying, "Then I will teach transgressors your ways and sinners will return to you." David knows that God's deliverance is going to spill over to other people, and it's not only going to spill over to other people, it's going to overflow in praise to God. In verse 14, he says, "Deliver me from blood guiltiness. Oh God, oh God of my salvation, and my tongue will sing aloud of your righteousness." That is one of the surest signs of true repentance, brothers and sisters, that God's pardon produces praise from your heart. And that praise for God is designed to have an effect on others. Do you want to see others come to find salvation through God in Christ Jesus? Do you want to see your family members who are wayward turn back to God? Do you want to see your coworkers and your friends, even this whole region turn to God in Christ, then praise Him. Praise Him in your homes. Praise Him as you gather around the table with your children. Praise Him with your coworkers in telling them of what God has done for you through Jesus. Praise Him in the sanctuary, in this congregation. Praise Him when we gather for worship. And God will be blessed to use that praise to produce transformation for others. One of the most powerful evidences of the truth, the lively experience of truth of the gospel, is not just arguments which can be memorized and rattled off, and evidence which can be presented and debated and dismissed, but a true heart that has been transformed by the power of God's cleansing. A true heart that's filled with joy again in salvation that explodes and overflows in praise, that absolutely cannot be faked. So praise God, brothers and sisters, praise God from a broken and then brandaged heart. As we conclude David's final petition, then moves from the idea of repentance to the restoration of God's people. In verse 18, David turns from focusing on himself to the effect that he has as king to the world around him. He asks God to do good to Zion in your good pleasure and build up the walls of Jerusalem. And we know from the rest of the story in Second Samuel, it seems that this part of this psalm was not answered in David's day. It's actually quite a discouraging story. If you read the rest of Second Samuel, I highly recommend it. If you have little children and you're looking for things to do for family worship, I would just recommend First and Second Samuel, kids love those stories. But the point of the matter today is that the rest of Second Samuel, this verse is not fulfilled. It's true that David's son Solomon does indeed build a temple and sacrifices and offerings are indeed offered up in Jerusalem, but it's not for long and it's not that glorious. Even though God has indeed put away David's sin, as Nathan the prophet said, Nathan also says, "The sword shall never depart from your house." That's exactly what Second Samuel shows us. David as the king unleashed calamity and disaster against Israel time and time again through continual sin even after this. Nevertheless, there was eventually a day when God did do Last and Good to Zion. There was one who was brought forth, not in the niquity, but was conceived in his mother's womb by the Holy Spirit, that he could become a partaker of our nature, but not a partaker of our corruption, that he would be a fitting substitute for our sins. That was done so that he who walked blameless before God who never did evil in God's sight could offer up his own life on a cross. And as he offered up his own life on a cross, a Hisop branch filled with vinegar was offered to him which he refused. He offered up the one true perfect sacrifice for sins and that man's name of course is Jesus Christ. He is great David's greater son who has truly established good for Zion. And it is only through his blood that you can have any cleansing from your sins. Seeing how great a salvation God offers you through Jesus, do not dismiss it. Turn from your sin, receive grace through Jesus Christ and bring forth true repentance. Let's pray. Our Father, we thank you for Psalm 51, the cleansing atonement that it shows, the experience of that atonement in David's life as he trusted in your covenant promises. God, I ask that you would allow us to join with David, not only in his confession of sin, not only in his declaration of his assurance in, of his confidence in your grace but also that we would experience the cleansing that we know you gave him. We pray that that would be a lively and true experience for us as well. Only through Jesus Christ, we ask these things. Amen. [BLANK_AUDIO]