Our Hope

If you have your Bibles with you today, turn with me if you would to Psalm 51. We're going to be looking at verses 3 through 9. Let's go to our Lord in prayer. Heavenly Father, what a glorious Psalm we have before us today. It's not just a declaration.

It's not just rules and principles. It's a prayer of repentance by David that helps us to understand the human heart. In today's passage, we see truths that break us and truths that revive us. We also see that revival doesn't come outside of repentance.

Father, I pray a scary prayer this morning, and it's this. Show us our hearts. I have a tendency to be proud, not humble. A tendency to be overly sensitive and petty. I don't like others pointing out my shortcomings. I can hunger for human acceptance, not be concerned about your acceptance. Help us all to quit worrying about pleasing people and get dead serious about pleasing you. Help us to run from the fallacy of hiding sin and to run to you that our sin might be washed away.

Please keep my lips from error this morning. May Christ be exalted, may this congregation be edified, for it is in the precious and holy name of Jesus that we pray. Amen.

You may be seated. Two weeks ago, we started a study on Psalm 51. This Psalm is the greatest chapter in the entire Bible on the subject of repentance. Charles Spurgeon said, When you were studying Psalm 51, you were standing on holy ground.

In case you weren't here two weeks ago, let me share a little quick background with you. David is committed adultery of Bathsheba. He has then had her husband Uriah the Hittite killed in order to cover up his sin.

And for several months, he's been living in spiritual apathy and hardening of heart. It's at that point that God sends the prophet Nathan to confront him. And Nathan goes before David and he tells him the famous story of how there was a rich man who owned great herds of cattle and great flocks of sheep. And he lived beside a very poor man who had pretty much nothing but a little pet lamb that his family absolutely adored. And the rich man had a traveler to come by, and the traveler came by and wanted supper, so the rich man went out.

But instead of going to get one of his own lambs, he went right by all of his sheep, he went right to his neighbor's house, stole his little pet lamb, slaughtered the lamb, threw it in the pot, and they ate it for supper. When David heard this, he was absolutely livid. He was incensed. The steam was just coming off David's head. He was furious about this, and he said to Nathan, he said, You bring that man to me, and justice will be done.

He said, That man deserves to die for what he's done. And then at that point in time, Nathan the prophet lifted up his arm and he pointed that long bony finger, prophet's finger, right into the face of David and said, David, thou art the man. You're the rich man in the story, David.

You were the one who stole someone's wife and then killed him in order to cover up your sin. David, thou art the man. And David fell apart, spiritually, physically, emotionally, just absolutely fell apart.

Finally he was able to pick himself up off the floor, and he went into his bedroom. He got on his face before God, and he prayed this prayer that we call Psalm 51. In the first verses of this great psalm, David is praying and begging for mercy. Begging God for forgiveness, and then he begins to confess his sin.

And he confesses openly and honestly, and he confesses specifically. Then we get to verse three, and I want to share with you today in this passage that we're looking at, three through nine, four points that I believe are very important. Number one is a godly conviction. Look with me at verses three through four. He said, 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. David is not pleading innocence here.

He is doing the exact opposite. He said, I know my transgressions. The conviction of God's Spirit was so heavy upon David. The guilt was laying on him so deeply that he couldn't stand it. It was like he just couldn't get away from it.

David said, My sin is ever before me. It was all he could think about. This shame that he brought to his own family. How he'd broken up Bathsheba's family.

How he killed one of his most loyal soldiers. And this was running through his mind again and again and again like it was on videotape. He couldn't run from it. He couldn't ignore it. He couldn't justify it.

And that convicting Spirit of God, that convicting truth of his sin was just eating a hole through his heart. Let me ask you something. You ever been there? I have.

I've been there. I've sinned and I've known it was sin. I wasn't doing anything about it.

And it was like God brought it up at every turn in my life. Maybe I'd spoken harshly to somebody. Maybe I'd gotten bitter against somebody. Maybe I'd gossiped. Maybe I had lusted.

I knew what I should do. I should confess it and I should forsake it, but for some reason I just kind of backed off. And when I backed off, God would just pummel me with the thoughts of my sin.

And he would pummel me to the point that I felt like I had no recourse to repent, and I did. That's what's going on with David. David says, Oh Lord, my sin is ever before me. That's where David's heart is right there.

Let me ask you something. Why did God do that? Why did God do that to David? Why does God do that to me? Why does God do that to you? And the answer is because God loves his children. Hebrews 12, verse 6 says this, For whom the Lord loves he chastens, and scourges every son whom he receives.

Brothers and sisters, God loves his children so much, he is not going to allow us to get away with sin. Verse 4, David prays something that is often misunderstood. David prays and he says this, Against you, you only have I sinned, and done what is evil in your sight.

We read that and we say, Wait a minute. David sinned against a lot of people. David sinned against his own family. He sinned against his nation. He sinned against Bathsheba. He sinned against Uriah the Hittite. What do you mean he sinned against God and God alone?

The Reformation Study Bible, the footnote there for this, I thought he did a good job. He said this, David committed adultery with Bathsheba and sent her husband to his death. How can David say that he sinned against God only?

This is an example of hyperbole. The point being that David sinned was ultimately, not exclusively, against God. Rebellion against God was the root of his sin.

And his crime injured people who belonged to God and transgressed a social order created by God. Point 2, ungodly conception. Look with me at verse 5.

Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me. Several years ago, Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones preached on Psalm 51 verses 1-4. He got through with his message. A man in his church came up to him and said, Dr. Jones, that was a powerful message. And he said if I had been a bank robber or a murderer or a sex maniac or an adulterer, that sermon would have really touched my heart. But he said it didn't mean too much to me because I am basically a good man. And Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones, with those still gray eyes, looked at him and said, No, you are not basically a good man.

You are basically a deceived man. And he said if this passage didn't deal with your heart today, come back next week and we'll deal with verse 5. In the first four verses of Psalm 51, David is broken. He is crying out, begging God for forgiveness, begging God to have mercy. He is confessing his sins openly to God, and there's great emotion there. He is praying with his heart in those first four verses. We get into verse 5 and David is praying with his mind. He is very contemplative here. And as he prays, he asks a question, and this is the question, Why did I do it?

Why did I do it? He wonders, How could this have happened to such a good guy like me? I love the Lord. I'm the apple of God's eye. I'm a man after God's own heart. For all these years I've been obedient and committed and loyal and faithful to the Lord.

How could this happen to a good man like me? In verse 5, the Holy Spirit gives David his answer. His obedience and his commitment, his loyalty and his faithfulness to God were not the fruits of his own effort, but they were the fruits of the Holy Spirit.

It was a product of God's grace. So all of a sudden, David comes face to face with a shocking reality. He's not basically a good man. He doesn't naturally love the things that God loves. He doesn't naturally hate his own sin.

David has not realized this up to this point, but now he's seeing it. The only reason his whole life he hadn't been acting like the devil, and the only reason he doesn't act like the Philistines who he's been fighting all his life, is simply the grace of God. I don't think David realized this here, but there was self-righteousness in his heart. Like Eric shared with us in Sunday school this morning, self-righteousness leads to spiritual pride, and spiritual pride leads to deception. David was able to say things about his sin that were just not true. He'd get mad and get angry, and he'd say, well, that's not a sin. That's just righteous indignation. He would lust after a woman and say, well, that's not my fault.

That's her fault for wearing such immodest clothing. Beside that, the devil made me do it. And in verse 5, he asked the question, why did I do it? And God tells him. And I think out of all the things that David learned from this prayer that was inspired by the Holy Spirit of God, I think one of the greatest lessons that he learned is this.

He is not basically a good man, and brothers and sisters, the same is true of us, all of us. Forty-five years ago, I went to an evangelistic crusade over in Kannapolis. It was held at a football stadium at A. L. Brown School. And evangelists preached a very powerful message, a very convicting message. I was sitting down, and right in front of us, there was a family boy about 16, 17 years old was there. And when the sermon was over and the evangelist gave an invitation, that young boy stood up. His mother reached up. She grabbed his hand.

She pulled him back down. She said, what are you doing? He said, I'm going down there. And she said, why are you going down there? He said, I need to be saved. And she said, you don't need to do that. She said, you're the best boy I know. And he looked back at his mama, and he said, mama, that's what you think, but you don't know my heart.

And I will never, ever forget that. In verse 5, we are going to be looking at a doctrine called the doctrine of original sin. Verse 5, David said this, Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.

That doctrine says this. We are all born with a sin nature. We don't sin because we—let me start that over—we don't sin in order to become sinners.

We sin because we're sinners to begin with. When Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden of Eden, it affected not only them, it affected all of their descendants. Their sin was a deliberate act of rebellion against God, and it changed their nature, and it changed and removed their innocence. No longer did they long to fellowship with God.

Now they wanted to run from him and hide from him. No longer did they hate their sin. Now they kind of had a bent toward that sin. Their hearts had been corrupted. And because of that, now they've got a propensity, a want to, to sin.

And folks, that sin nature was genetically passed down to all of the descendants of Adam. We look at a little baby, and I don't know if you've ever done this or not, but there's this first thought, oh, look at how sweet he is. He's just so innocent. He's so holy.

Look at him. He's never lied. He's never committed adultery. He's never stolen anything. He's never murdered anybody. Oh, isn't he sweet, and isn't he innocent? Oh, wow.

That's not true, is it? You see, that little baby, although he's not mentally capable of committing some of these sins that we as adults do, he has the nature of Adam that he was born with. You might see a little rattlesnake just born. That little rattlesnake may not have a lot of venom in him yet, but guess what?

When he grows up, he's going to be filled with nasty poisonous venom because he has a rattlesnake nature. Now, this is a doctrine that we call federal headship, and federal headship means that Adam was our perfect representative, that God is so omniscient that God knew that if I was in Adam's place, if you were in Adam's place, we would have done the exact same thing that Adam did. Verse 5, David said, Martin Lloyd-Jones said the following as he's explaining David's helplessness.

I thought this was good. He said, David realized that, and every man who has become a Christian realizes it too. He likewise cannot find peace. He's doing everything he can, but he cannot find peace. He cannot sleep. This thing is there. It is always before him.

He cannot get away from it. I do not say that in necessity you need have a particular feeling, but I do say that no man is a Christian unless at some times he has known that terrible searching for peace, for rest, and for quiet. The great Saint Augustine knew it. For quite a period, he had this restlessness of soul, and at last he cried out, Thou hast made us for thyself, and our souls are restless until they find their rest in thee. Have you known that restlessness? Have you known the search for peace and quiet of conscience and of mind and of heart in an attempt to get rid of that sense of guilt?

David feels helpless because he knows he can't do a thing personally to change it. Psalm 51 was not written just for the murderer and the adulterer and the bank robber. It was written for every single one of us. And when you read Psalm 51, what you see is what your heart is really like.

Alright, point three. Divine clarity. Divine clarity. Look at verse six. Behold, you delight truth in the inward being, and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart. What does David mean when he says that God desires truth in our inner parts, in our inner being? He means that God desires for us to be honest with Him. He desires for us to approach Him with a clear conscience. One of the sins that Jesus railed against over and over again was the sin of hypocrisy.

And in this Psalm, what we're being told is don't be hypocritical. About 35 years ago, I met a young man who was on fire for the Lord, told me that he felt like God might be calling him into the ministry. But he shared with me that he had been through, pretty recently, a real terrible struggle in his life. And he said that he worked at a company, it was an engineering company, a very prestigious company.

He, too, was an engineer. And he said that he went through a time of temptation. That if he had given in to that temptation, he said it would have destroyed any possibility of him going into the ministry. He said that there was a young lady that came into the office, said she was going to be one of their new secretaries. And she walked in, and every man there just stopped what he was doing and just gawked at her. That she was absolutely beautiful.

He said she was there for about four or five weeks, and he was in his cubicle by himself. And she came over to him, and she stooped down, she whispered in his ear, and she propositioned him. And she said, I know you're married, but I'd like to have a relationship with you. And I'll never tell anybody, and it will be our little secret.

If you're interested, just let me know. He said she walked away, and his knees got weak. He said he went home that night, and he said he got on his face before the Lord, and he cried out, and he said, Lord, you know I don't want to do this thing. And all of a sudden, verse 6 came up. Verse 6 of Psalm 51, and that verse is the verse that says you desire truth in the inward parts.

And he says, Oh Lord, I just said that I don't want to do this thing. That was a lie. I do want to do this thing.

My old wicked heart desires that girl. I can't lie to you. I don't want to hurt my family. I don't want to hurt my wife. I don't want to hurt my children. I don't want to ruin my testimony.

But Lord, this thing is a great temptation to me, and I just don't know how to handle it. The Lord led him at that point in time to another verse. In James chapter 5 verse 16, James said this, Confess your faults one to another and pray one for another that you may be healed. As he was meditating on that verse, he started asking himself, why did he use the word faults instead of the word sin? Why didn't he say we confess our sins to one another? He used the word faults, so he looked it up.

And when he looked it up, he found that that word faults meant a geological fault, like a crack in the earth, and if an earthquake were to hit, it would cause a great shift in the land and do great, great damage. And he said, my faults are gaps in my character. They're not full-blown sins, but they're cracks in my spiritual armor. They are propensities to sin.

They are leanings to sin. God said that if he would confess his faults one to another, that he would be healed. So he went out and he found a man that he knew he had great respect for, very spiritually mature man, and he asked him about this. He said, the Lord said if we confess our faults one to another that he would heal us.

Can I confess my faults to you? And the man said yes. And he just opened up, and he began to just share his heart. And he shared with him, he said, look, I've got a problem with lust. And he said, my dad had this problem, his dad had that problem, his dad had that problem. And he said, all three of those men gave in to that temptation, and all three of them ended up having marriages that ended in divorce. And he said, I don't want that.

I love my family, and I love my wife, and I love my children. I have a desire to go into the ministry. And then he shared about this woman, and how great a temptation this was. And he said, will you pray for me? And the man said, yes, I would be glad to pray for you, but I want to do more than that. He said, not only am I going to pray for you, but I'm going to hold you accountable. He said, I want you to meet with me once a week for the next six months every week, and said, every week I'm going to look right into your eyes, and I want you to be honest with me. I want you to share with me what's going on in your thought life.

I want you to share with me if you've had any communication with this woman. They did that. He said, after about three weeks, it was very interesting because he was honest. And he said, it was very interesting what happened. The power of that temptation began to subside.

He said, after about three months, it was completely gone. He said, it was absolutely amazing. He said, when I got honest about my sin, and I had to share my heart with a man that I had great respect for, he said, when that took place, he said, some great things began to happen. Folks, that's truth in the inward part. That's truth in the inward being.

Here was a man who knew that he was no match for the power of the flesh, and being honest with himself, and being honest with God, being honest with a brother in Christ, paved the way for a victory. You know what? Most of us won't do that.

And you know why? Because it's embarrassing. We don't want to let somebody else think that there's something wrong going on in my mind, that I might be sinful.

We don't want people to hold us accountable because we don't want them to think that we're not everything that we want everybody to think that we are. Folks, brothers and sisters, that's a real part of genuine repentance. David had to be honest with God. Why did he sin? It wasn't Bathsheba's fault. It wasn't his wife's fault.

It was his fault. He sinned because he wanted to sin. He sinned because he enjoyed that sin. Have you been that honest with God? Saying, Lord, I've got a problem, and my problem is this, I enjoy that sin.

Genuine accountability will help you immensely. Point four is holy cleansing. Look at verse seven through nine. Purge me with Hithop, and I shall be clean. Wash me, and I shall 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.

David is saying, Lord, I'm in a bind. I've sinned. I've committed murder. I have committed adultery. I have lied about it. I have tried to cover it up. And, Lord, I can't change it. I can't go back in time and make things right.

I can't erase what has happened. Kind of like Jeremiah, when Jeremiah said, Can a leopard change his spots? No.

Can an Ethiopian change the color of his skin? Absolutely not. People, listen. Verse five may be the most sobering verse in the entire Bible. For it says to me, I'm a sinner by nature, and I'm a sinner by my actions. My heart is desperately wicked and deceitful above all things.

And then it says this. This verse shouts to us, David, you are guilty. Doug, you are guilty.

You are guilty. What did that do for David? It drove him to the Savior. And, brothers and sisters, that's what this psalm should do to us. It should drive us to the Savior. It should make us realize that the heart of the problem is the problem of the heart.

Look at verse seven again. Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow. Who can wash a heart? Only Jesus can wash a heart. Purge me with hyssop. The word purge there, if you check it out in the Hebrew, it comes from the root word in Hebrew for the word propitiation.

What is propitiation? It means appeasing the wrath of God. Does God care that our hearts are wicked?

Let me tell you, God cares so much that if you die in that state, you will be separated from Almighty God for all of eternity in an everlasting hell. But He also cared so much that He provided the hyssop for us. And who is the hyssop?

The hyssop is Jesus. And the payment that Jesus made to wash away those sins is the shedding of His own blood. In the book of Leviticus, we are told that when the leper was cleansed, it was always a miracle that leprosy didn't just get healed. If it was cleansed, it was a miracle that took place. But if it did take place like that, then the leper had the responsibility of confirming that the leper had been made well. And what would he do? Symbolically, he would take a lamb's blood, put it on his finger, put a drop on his ear, a drop on his thumb, and a drop on his toe.

What was he doing? He was saying this to the leper. Now you can function. Your bodily parts can function like they should. You have hands that can feel.

You have feet that can walk. You have ears that can hear. Brothers and sisters, that's what David is saying. He's saying, oh Lord, I want my spiritual faculties back. He said, Lord, I want my spiritual sight back that I can see your glory. I want my spiritual ears back that I can hear your truth. I want you to repair my bones that I can carry the burdens of others like I used to. He was crying out for fellowship with God.

Look what he says in verse 9. Lord, hide your face from my sin. I heard about a little girl that was playing with her mama's makeup, and as she was playing with it, she got lipstick all over her face. And her mama walked in, and she kind of surprised her. She said, what are you doing? And that little girl's head just fell down in her hands, and she said, don't look at me, don't look at me, don't look at me. You ever been there? You know that you've done something to hurt someone, a sin against someone, you've offended someone, how easy is it to look them right in the eye?

Not easy at all. Folks, when David said to God, hide your face from my sins, what was he doing? He was looking down the corridor of history a thousand years. He was looking down to that day that Jesus Christ went to the cross, and he was nailed to that cross to die for us. He died for us as our substitutionary atonement. What does that mean? It means he took my sin, and he gave me his righteousness.

What's that all about? It's all about the last day. For when we stand before our God on that last day, when I stand before him, God will look at me, and he won't see the sinfulness of Doug Agnew. He will see the righteousness, the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ. My sin will be hidden in Jesus. Your sin will be hidden in Jesus.

I love verse 9. I love the gospel. And friends, I love the fact that Jesus Christ died and shed his blood that my sins might be washed away.

Let me ask you a question. Are you here today and you're not sure if your sins have been washed away? Have you trusted Jesus Christ as your Lord and as your Savior? Have you repented of your sins? Have you come to him, crying out to him, Lord, you are my only hope? If you have not done that, I would encourage you with everything that's in me to don't leave this building today without crying out to Jesus. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, David taught us to pray for spiritual cleansing. Watch me and I shall be whiter than snow.

Lord, there's nothing on earth that is whiter than snow, but your promise is that you can make my heart that clean. That's a miracle. Human effort could never accomplish it. It's not a work of man. It's a miracle of God. And Father, we're wowed by it, but we could never be appreciative enough.

We call it amazing grace, but we don't realize how amazing it really is. That you could take our filthy sin and replace it with your perfect righteousness. So when you look at us on that final day, the judgment day, you won't see us.

You'll see the perfect righteousness of your son, Jesus. In the light of that, spur us on to honor you now. Put a deep desire in our heart that we might strive for a holy walk with you. Help us to be satisfied in you, realizing that you are most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in you. We ask this prayer in the precious and holy name of Jesus. Amen.