Restored Joy

If you have your Bibles with you this morning, turn with me if you would to Psalm 51.

We'll be looking this morning at verses 12 through 15. And open my lips and my mouth will declare your praise. Bow with me as we go to our Lord in prayer. Heavenly Father, how I praise you today for Psalm 51. David prayed a prayer of repentance. He was under the inspiration of your Holy Spirit when he prayed. So these words are not just from David's heart.

They are actually from your heart. So they were meant for us, the people of Grace Church, in 2021. Need these words as much as David needed them 3,000 years ago. In the last few sermons, we've heard David cry for mercy.

We've seen David confess his sin openly, honestly, specifically. We've seen David experience your grace and your mercy and your forgiveness. But today we see David back on his feet, learning how to be dependent on you.

He's been a strong independent leader in the past. He's come to realize the danger of depending on his own gifts and talents. Now instead of pride, there's a brokenness and a deep humility that little by little is molding him to be more Christ-like. Father, use this passage today to sand down the areas in our lives that don't look like Jesus. Make us humble, broken, and totally dependent upon you. For it is in the precious and holy name of Jesus that we pray. Amen.

You may be seated. A few years ago, a pastor in Seattle, Washington, got up in his pulpit on a Sunday morning, opened his Bible up and read the text. He put his Bible down and he looked out over the congregation. He opened his mouth, but the words would not come.

He got white as a sheet. He was just totally nervous and broken. He tried to speak once again, but his tongue would not cooperate.

He tried to apologize, but he could not articulate the words. Finally, there was a doctor in the congregation. He thought he might be having a stroke, and so the doctor ran up and grabbed the pastor's arm and took him back to the pastor's office. The doctor started checking him out and realized that he just did not have the signs of having a stroke, so they called an ambulance. The ambulance came and got the pastor. They took him off to the hospital. They ran him through a series of tests and found out that the pastor had a brain tumor. They operated him on the very next day. The brain tumor was benign, but they found out that it was a very fast-spreading brain tumor, and that it was pressing down on the part of his brain that controlled the speech and that controlled his memory.

It was a totally, completely successful operation. About six weeks after that, he was ready to go back to work. On the Wednesday before he was supposed to preach on Sunday, he called a pastor friend of his, asked him to come over. The pastor friend came over.

They sat down together, and the pastor looked at his friend, and he said, I am scared to death. He said, I've never been so humiliated in all my life. And he said, when did you get humiliated in your operation?

He said, no, no, the operation was a piece of cake. He said, it was when I was the last time in my pulpit. He said, I stood up to speak, and the words wouldn't come. He said, it was a horrible, terrible situation. He says, I was totally, totally embarrassed. He said, there were 500 people standing, or sitting before me, waiting for an exposition of the Scripture, and he said, I just stood there like a zombie. He said, I was scared to death, and I was scared that I was going to make an absolute fool of myself, and I'm scared it might happen again.

That was a rough thing for him. He said, before I was confident, I was bold, and I was sharp. He said, now all I am is scared.

His friend got a tear in his eye. He said, now I think I know what the blessing is in your brain tumor. He said, blessing? What are you talking about? He said, well, he said, maybe God doesn't want you to be so confident in yourself.

Maybe it doesn't matter if you look foolish or not. Maybe God is breaking you so the messages that you preach won't be yours that He is. The pastor started to get angry. He's not used to being talked to like that, but he listened, and a tear began to well up in his eyes.

And he said, you know you're exactly right. He said, I've trusted my talents, I've trusted my intellect, and I've trusted my study habits, but now I'm going to have to trust God. With trembling knees and quivering lips, he entered into the pulpit that next Sunday, and he opened his Bible up and preached a sermon from 1 Corinthians 10 verse 12. And he didn't preach that sermon from a commentary. He didn't preach that sermon from a book. He preached that sermon for life. What does that verse say? Let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he falls. The pastor said after that he never stepped in the pulpit again without praying, uphold me Lord, undergird me Lord, empower me Lord, for without you I can do nothing.

Three points I want to share with you today. Number one, a willing spirit. Look with me at verse 12.

Restore to me the joy of your salvation and uphold me with a willing spirit. In Psalm 51 verse 12 we find out that David has learned the same thing that that pastor has learned. David has learned that he is vulnerable. He has learned that his heart is terribly deceptive. He has learned that he is very weak, and when temptations come, he can easily fall. So what does he pray?

He prays out, Lord, restore unto me the joy of my salvation. I want to take a minute and read you something that Martin Lloyd-Jones said about this, and I want you to listen carefully to this because this is important. Martin Lloyd-Jones said this, You look at yourself and of course you will be miserable. For within there is a blackness and darkness. The best saint, when he looks at himself, becomes unhappy.

He sees things that should not be there. And if you and I spend our whole time looking at ourselves, we shall remain in misery and we shall lose joy. Self-examination is all right, but introspection is bad.

Let us draw the distinction between these two things. We can examine ourselves in the light of Scripture, and if we do that, we shall be driven to Christ. But with introspection, a man looks at himself and continues to do so and refuses to be happy until he gets rid of the imperfections that are still there. Oh, the tragedy that we should spend our lives looking at ourselves instead of looking at him who can set us free. Is it not a wonderful thing that joy is at all possible to such creatures as we are? Is there not something almost daring about this prayer of David's? Restoring to me the joy of my salvation, says the adulterer and the murderer, the liar, the man who is responsible for so much trouble. Restoring to me the joy of my salvation. How can a man like that ever be happy?

Is it possible? I thank God it is possible. And that is why I preach this gospel to you. That is the glory of this wonderful salvation. It can give this joy to a man who has sunk as low as that and raised him to the heights of joy and gladness.

And it does it like this. It can make even the worst sinner joyful and happy because it gives him an assurance of pardon and forgiveness. The only one who can pardon is God, and thank God he does so. And God not only pardons, he can make me know he has pardoned. To know that it is that is to lose that miserable sense of guilt and frustration.

Nobody else can do it, but God can do it. So though I may have sunk to the lowest depths of sin and degradation, he can make me rejoice in his great salvation. David prays, Lord, uphold me with thy free spirit. Now what had David been worried about? David was worried that what happened to him before might happen again. And when he went through this sin and the things that were going on and all the hearts that he was broken and all of this stuff, it was breaking his heart.

That was the closest hell he'd ever experienced in his life. He doesn't want that to happen again because he's been filled with just guilt and shame and absolute heartbreak and the thought of the possibility of going through that kind of thing again is just tearing David to pieces. So David prays, and what does he pray for? He asks God to give him a willing spirit. If you've got a King James Version here today, in that King James the sentence structure puts the emphasis on the free spirit of the Lord. But if you read that just in the Hebrew, the idea is that God's spirit will make David's spirit a willing spirit.

So here's the bottom line. When will you stop committing a particular sin? You'll stop committing that sin when the desire to quit that sin is strong enough.

That's when it'll happen. David is praying this prayer. God give me a hatred for sin. Change my will. Make me willing in the day of your power. The Hebrew word for free means to make willing.

To make willing. In John chapter 8 verse 32, great verse of scripture, Jesus told us what it takes to make us free. You remember that? Most people say, yes, I remember that. The truth will set you free. Hmm. Is that really what Jesus said?

No. Jesus said more than that. For I know a lot of people who hear the truth, the absolute truth, and they are still bound up horribly and terribly in the bondage of sin. I was in Canada preaching a series of revival services several years ago, and the pastor asked me if I would go and witness to a man that he had been trying to witness to. The man was about mid-twenties. He was an alcoholic. His name was Brian. We went to the man's house. We knocked on the door, and the door was kind of slightly open.

It just kind of pushed open when we knocked on it, and we just kind of stuck our head in. We saw him getting up off the couch. He hadn't bathed or shaved in several days, and he had a big knot on his head that was covered with blood, dried blood, and we walked in, and Rich, the pastor, said to him, Brian, what happened to you?

He said, oh, it's nothing. He said, I got drunk last night. I fell in the bathtub.

I hit my head and knocked myself out. I looked out over his house, and the smell was absolutely horrific. There were beer cans and liquor bottles all over the floor. There were dirty dishes everywhere.

There was half-eaten sandwiches on the floor. There were rats and cockroaches running around like they owned the place, and I sat down with him. I opened my Bible. I read the scripture to him and shared the gospel with him, and Rich looked over at him, and he said, Brian, are you ready to trust Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior and repent of your sins?

And Brian looked back at him. He said, no, not yet. And he said, why not? And he said, man, I just got to be free. And I thought to myself, here's a man who has just heard the truth, and he believes that he's free when he's in as much bondage as any man I've ever seen in my life. So, folks, it's not just the truth that sets us free. It's the knowledge of the truth that sets us free. Jesus said, you shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free. Now, that word, to know, is an intimate term.

It means to love it, to desire it, to be one with it, to embrace it. I remember two years after coming to Christ, I'd been a Christian about two years, and I went to a seminar, and Dudley Hall was speaking, and he was speaking on Hebrews chapter 12, verse 15. And that verse says this, Let no root of bitterness spring up within you, whereby many have failed of the grace of God.

At that time, I was mad at a particular man, and I was holding a grudge against him. I knew what the Bible said about forgiveness. I knew what the Scripture said about being kind, but I was not living it out. And as Dudley began to preach, he preached over an hour on that subject, I remember that verse just kind of plowing down in my mind and in my heart. And I began to know it in the spiritual sense. I began to see what the consequences of bitterness was doing to my own heart.

It was stealing the joy out of my life. And I remember how God just broke my heart at that point in time. It didn't matter what this person had done to me. It didn't matter if I thought I was right and I thought he was wrong.

It didn't matter whether he was apologetic or not. All that mattered was this. I was losing the joy of the Lord. I was not experiencing that peace that passes all understanding.

I didn't have that joy like I had before, and it was absolutely killing me. I repented. Not just by hearing the truth, but by the knowledge of the truth. Hosea 4, verse 6 says this, My people are destroyed for a lack of knowledge. Not for a lack of truth, but for a lack of the knowledge of the truth. So when David asked God to give him a spirit that was free, what did he mean?

I think he meant this. Lord, give me the desire to do what I ought to do, and not necessarily what I want to do. Give me knowledge so I'll understand what the consequences of my actions are going to be. And Lord, help me to change my will so that my will will be your will. That's what David's praying.

Alright, that takes us to point to successful teaching. Look at verse 13. Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will return to you. Now remember where David is praying this prayer. He's not in a theological library with his concordance and his commentaries. He's praying this from the school of life.

That's where he is. He's been humiliated by his failure. He has grievously sinned, and everybody's talking about him. I want you just to put yourself in David's shoes for just a minute. What if everybody in Harrisburg and everybody in Charlotte knew what your grossest sin was, and everybody was talking about it?

How would you feel? That's where David was. For years, David was put on a pedestal he was looked up to as one of the greatest men of God in all the world at that particular time. But now he has proven to be just as fallible and just as carnal as everybody else. He's stolen a man's wife, and then he killed that man in order to cover over his sin. He has broken up families. He has brought reproach on the name of God.

He has done all of these things, and now he's living with guilt and shame and deep, deep humiliation. He prays this prayer not from a pulpit. He prays this prayer not from a gorgeous cathedral. He prays this prayer from his bedroom.

The door's shut. I have a feeling he was probably lying prostrate on that floor. His nose is down in the dust, and he's praying, just crying out to God. How does he pray? He first of all begs God for mercy, begs God for forgiveness. He confesses his sin. He repents of his sin. He asks God to give him a new heart. He asks God to give him a right spirit. He asks God to restore into him the joy of his salvation. He asks God to give him a hatred for his sin. That's how he prays. Then what does he say? Then he says then.

Then, then I will teach transgressors your ways. Duane Taylor used to be our neighbor. He died about 20 years ago. He was a man of God. He loved the Lord.

He died of a debilitating cancer, and it was just a heartbreak to see him go down. In the last few years of his life, he was holding some support groups for cancer patients. And I asked him about the meetings, and I said, Who does the teaching in the meetings? Who speaks at the meetings? Is it pastors, or is it doctors?

And he said, Oh, no, no. It's cancer patients. He said, A pastor can tell us about heaven, and a doctor can tell us about the symptoms of the disease. But he said, We want to hear from people who are going through what we're going through. We want to hear from people who are facing death every single day.

We believe that the best teachers are the ones that are experiencing the reality. In 1995, my wife of 23 years left me for another man. I had been pastor of this church for seven years, and I was absolutely devastated.

I didn't know you could hurt like that. I had been preaching against divorce, and I still do, and I always will. I'd been preaching against it with all my heart, and now it happened to me. I had a pastor friend come, and he sat down with me, and he said, Doug, remember Romans 8, verse 28, Now we know that God works all things together for good to those who love him and are called according to his purpose. And I remember nodding at him, but I thought to myself, I can't see any good in this.

I can't see how this is going to help me at all. I just could not feel it. Two and a half years later, I married Cindy, and I can't imagine, I couldn't imagine at that point in time that marriage could be this wonderful. Let me tell you what else happened. We had had a radio ministry here for seven years, and the people that listened on a radio station, they knew what I had been through. And right after that, I started getting calls from my radio listeners. And the calls would come in, and they'd say, Doug, I'm going through now what you went through. And I'm going through this now, and I've gone to my pastor. He didn't have a clue what I'm going through or how to help me out. Could you talk to me?

Could you help me through this? That's been going on for 27 years. I still get calls today. And every time I get a call like that, I think back to Psalm 51, where David says, then I will teach transgressors your ways. After David's fall into this horrible sin, the people stood back and they watched to see what would happen, and they watched as God broke David. Then they saw David repent, and they saw David restored back to the family. And they said, my goodness, if God can work this miraculously in David's life, then we want to listen to what he's got to say. So what's the Lord teaching us here? Are we being told that what we need to do is to go out and commit some great, horrible sin so that we'll have a sensational, dramatic testimony? Is that what we're supposed to do?

Oh, absolutely not. I remember when I was in my former church, I had a converted Hell's Angel who had come to know Christ to come and speak and gave his testimony. And he shared with us about all the drugs that he had taken and all the affairs that he had had and all the money that he had stolen and all the people that he saw murdered. Then he told us how he had come to Christ and how the Lord had changed his life.

That was a beautiful story, and it was just filled with emotion. And I remember a young man coming up to me after the service was over, and almost apologetically, he said to me, Doug, he said, I don't have a testimony like that. And he said, I'm afraid I'll never be used like that guy's being used. And I said, well, tell me, what is your testimony? He said, I can't remember a time that I didn't know and love the Lord Jesus. He said, my mom and dad were Christians. He said, we had devotions every night.

They taught me the Word of God. He said, I've never been a drunk. I've never been an adulterer.

I've never sold drugs. He said, I've gotten married now. We had two kids. Those two kids are converted. They've come to know Christ. And I said, pal, let me tell you something. I said, I think your testimony is greater than his testimony, because God didn't have to reach down and pull you up out of the pig pen of this world. God gave you so much grace that you were never in that pig pen.

I said, give me the choice. I'll take that testimony. Praise God for it. It's not the sin that David committed that made the transgressors want to listen to him. But when they saw God's grace poured out on him, that's what got their attention. They saw his joy. They saw his hunger for the Lord. They saw his thirst for holiness. And they said, this is God's work.

This is grace. Notice that David said, then I will teach transgressors thy ways. Why did David choose that term, thy ways?

Because, folks, there's a difference between the works of God and the ways of God. A lost person can open the Bible and study the history of what God said. They can study about how God created the world. They can study about the building of the temple. They can study about how God took the two stone tablets and wrote on those two stone tablets the Ten Commandments.

They can study about the miracles of Jesus. They can study all those things and know about all that history in their head and still not know the Lord. But to know God's ways is a person that is getting into God's heart, that wants to know more than just the history.

The person wants to know God. In Exodus chapter 33 is a great, great chapter. The Scripture says that God had taken Moses, put him in the cleft of the rock.

That's just a cave in the mountain. Moses is up there, and he's waiting just with great anticipation for God to move on his life. And he's up there, and he prays to God.

And he said, Lord, show me your way that I might know you. And the Lord comes by, and Moses is able to see a little bit of his glory. And it does something to Moses' heart. He knows he'll never be the same again. It's changed him inside and out. It's illuminated his mind. Great verse in Psalm 103, verse 7, it says this, that God made known his ways unto Moses, but his acts unto the children of Israel.

And what does that mean? It means that Israel saw what God was doing, but Moses saw why God was doing what he was doing. Moses saw more. Folks, Moses saw God's heart. My last point is God's forgiveness and self-forgiveness. Look at verses 14 through 15. 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. We find out here that David still has a problem after all this. He knows that God's forgiven him. He knows that God's created in him a clean heart. He knows that God has restored some joy of his salvation to him.

He knows that now he can teach transgressors the ways of God. He's still got a problem. And what is the problem? The problem is he can't forgive himself.

That's the problem. And why does he have that problem? Because the guilt that he has is real guilt.

He doesn't just have an overly sensitive conscience. He's done some horrible things. He's committed adultery. He is murdered to try to cover up his sin. He's brought reproach on the name of the Lord.

He's hurt so many families. And he's happy that God has forgiven him, but how in the world can he forgive himself? How can he look in the mirror in the morning?

How can he do that? Ever felt that way? You feel like you don't deserve to be happy? That's guilt, isn't it?

Let me tell you something. If God has forgiven you, then that is misplaced guilt. Well, what can be done about it? Humanly speaking, nothing can be done about it. We're kind of like Lady Macbeth, who kept washing the imaginary blood off her hands. We try to get rid of guilt ourselves, and we just can't do it. We say we're not going to think about it anymore.

It's all we can think about. So what is the answer to our guilt? What is the answer of us forgiving ourselves? The answer is Jesus Christ.

And there is only one answer. Jesus didn't just die to save us from our sins. He also died to deliver us from sin's guilt. Folks, Jesus died to reconcile you to God, but he also died to reconcile you to yourself. You say, Doug, how do you explain that?

I can't explain that. It's kind of like when a person's going through a difficult time in his mind and in his heart over a lost loved one. And somehow God just intervenes in that life and gives him a peace that passes all understanding. And the lost world looks at that and says, how does that happen? We don't know how it happens. It's a supernatural miracle of God. And folks, the removal of guilt is that same type of supernatural phenomenon. I can't explain it. I can't figure it out. I don't know how God does it.

All I know is this, it's real. And when that guilt is removed, then what do you do? You do what David did here.

All you can do is just overflow with praise. Look what David said in verse 14. He said, Lord, deliver me from blood guiltiness and my tongue shall sing aloud of thy righteousness.

What it all boils down to is this. The grace of God wipes our slate clean. And then God says to us, and listen carefully, if I have forgiven you, then you can forgive yourself. Amen? Amen.

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, this passage of scripture is so relevant because many of us have learned how to accept your mercy, grace, and forgiveness. We have reveled in that. We acknowledge that it's an amazing and totally undeserved thing. We've learned how to receive your forgiveness.

But Lord, like David, we've not done very well at forgiving ourselves. And we know what that can do. It can defeat us spiritually. It can disturb us deeply.

It can bring us into a debilitating depression. Lord, do that work in our heart that only you can do. Help us to not only glory in your forgiveness, but help us to forgive ourselves. Not that we would ever take sin lightly, but that we, by your grace, could move past it for your glory. David said, Lord, deliver me from my guilt. My tongue will sing aloud of your righteousness. Lord, let that be our prayer. For it is in precious and holy name of Jesus that we pray. Amen.