Broken, Part 2

Today on Summit Life with J.D.

Greer. We're already dead in our trespasses and sins when he comes up to us, which means when Jesus came up beside me in the water, I was already face down. Jesus picked up my lifeless corpse out of the water and brought me back to life. What God offers you is not reform. What he offers you is resurrection and confession gets you there. Welcome to Summit Life with pastor, author, and apologist, J.D. Greer.

As always, I'm your host, Molly Bidevich. Today we're continuing to look at what true repentance looks like. After David's sin against Bathsheba and Uriah, thankfully he walked through a process of restoration that models for us how to repent and take responsibility for our sin.

And pastor J.D. shows us how this repentance not only restores us to fellowship with God, but it also can point others to Jesus along the way. The beauty is that Christ didn't just die. He was raised to life. So God can take the dead remains of our sin and bring us back to life too.

As a reminder, if you've missed any part of our series on the life of David, you can always catch up free of charge at jdgreer.com. Right now, let's rejoin pastor J.D. in Psalm 51. True repentance recognizes that your sin comes from the core of who you are. Sin is not just what I did. Sin is who I am. David says, I abuse power because at my core, I've got an abusive spirit.

I've learned to control it in some contexts, but that's what's down there. I pursued lust because in my heart I'm idolatrous. I had a man murdered because in my heart I cared more about myself than anybody else. This corrupted, depraved heart was not something alien that overtook me in a weak moment. Those things have been present with me since my birth.

Parents, one thing we ought not have any trouble believing is the doctrine of total of gravity. It's like the British philosopher G.K. Chesterton always said, total depravity is the one Christian doctrine that is empirically verifiable. My kids were crazy cute when they were young, but they were sinners through and through. Sure, Veronica and I have not been perfect examples. I admit that freely.

By a long shot, we haven't been perfect, but our kids did not learn sin by watching us. Parents, did you ever get that call from the preschool because your kid bit somebody? Veronica and I got that call a few times. Here's the thing.

They didn't learn that from us. We've gotten into our share of arguments, but not one time have I ever gone up to Veronica and been like, oh yeah? I gnawed something out of her arm. That impulse came from inside. Then nobody called my kids to sin.

I never had to send a single one of them to sin camp. It just came naturally. Parents, you put your one and a half-year-old down for a nap, and his body bows up in anger and resistance. He is saying, I don't want to go down for a nap, and I know better than you. One of the first words our kids learn is what? No. Why is it not yes? Yes, Daddy. Yes, as you wish, Daddy. You know best, Daddy. You love me, Daddy. You know more than I do, Daddy. How awesome would it be if I got up at 5 a.m. and my five-year-old had tidied up the living room and she's sitting there reading her Bible, journaling, Dad, can we pray together?

I need to figure out how to surrender more of my life to the Lord today. That never happened in all the years of me raising kids. When I left them alone, for like 10 minutes, I'd come back and be like, who set the backyard on fire?

What just happened here? Now, I'm being really lighthearted with a lot of this, but David says something really of utmost seriousness. I did what I did because it's at the core of who I am, and sin did my mother conceive me. Some of you feel like if you admitted that, not just laughed along with me when I talk about it, but if you actually admitted that, it would lead you to despair. When somebody confronts you about something, you're not only admitting to that thing, you're actually saying to them, yeah, you don't know the half of it. That's just what you caught me doing.

That's just what I did when my defenses were down. What's in my heart is far worse than what you saw. I didn't sin because I hung around with the wrong crowd.

If anything, I chose the wrong crowd because I am the wrong crowd, and the wrong crowd is who I prefer to be around. That would lead to despair were it not for the gospel. You see, what God offers is a new heart, not a second chance, a new heart. That word create, by the way, verse 10 in Hebrew, bara.

It's like the word used in Genesis 1 when God created the worlds out of nothing. Create in me a brand new heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me, a new heart, a clean heart, a right spirit. I don't need reform or reeducation or a second chance or a few behavioral tweaks. I need resurrection. I don't need to turn over a new leaf.

I need new life. We're not students who are struggling in the school of religion that Jesus offers to tutor. We're not swimmers in danger of drowning that Jesus offers to assist. Sometimes we present coming to Christ like we're drowning in life, and Jesus comes by in a lifeboat, and he says, here, take this, and he gives us a lifesaver and pulls us to safety. Jesus, take the will. According to Ephesians, we're already dead in our trespasses and sins when he comes up to us, which means when Jesus came up beside me in the water, I was already face down.

Jesus picked up my lifeless corpse out of the water and brought me back to life. What God offers you is not reform. What he offers you is resurrection, and confession gets you there.

True confession begins when you admit that your sin goes down to the depths of who you are, and you have no hope of acceptance by God except for his grace and no hope for change except by the power of his renewing spirit. Component number four, verse 16, you will not delight in sacrifice or I would give it. You will not be pleased with a burnt offering.

Component four, I will not be pleased with a burnt offering. I offer nothing to excuse or offset the sin. David said, I'm not trying to make up for this by buying you off with religious stuff.

That's what Saul had done. That's what a lot of religious people do. I may not be obeying you over here, so I'll use this religious sacrifice over here to make up for what I did. I prefer to follow you, God, on my own terms. So I'll make up my own path for obedience.

I'm dating the guy that I shouldn't be dating. I'll bring him to church. I may not tithe my income, but I'll tithe my time. I've known people who were having an affair, so they started to give more to the church. Well, God wants me to share Christ with somebody, but I'm terrified to do it, so I'll fast and pray for them instead.

God's called me to go overseas to serve as a missionary, but instead I'll get really involved in a ministry over here, and we'll start to use our house to host a small group. Those are all awesome things, but if you're doing them to avoid obedience, all they are is religiously dressed up rebellion. I use the word offset because many people want to treat their sin like a large company wants to treat their carbon emissions. They're like, well, look, we're releasing a lot of toxins into the environment, but it's okay because we've offset those things. We've made up for it.

We planted a bunch of trees, or we have office furniture made out of recycled paper straws, or we gave all our management electric Tesla's to drive or whatever. That's what people want to do with their sins. Sometimes when they come in to confess, they start to make promises to God.

Have you ever done that? All right, God, I know I've really, really messed up here, but I promise I'm going to be faithful to church now, and I'm going to try to pray every day, and I'm going to stop cussing, and I'm going to give lots of money as if they're trying to ask for God's forgiveness on credit. God, give me your blessing back now, and I'll earn it back later.

I promise. God doesn't want any of that, David says. None of it. Look at verse 17. The sacrifices that God wants, all that he wants is a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart.

Oh God, you will not despise those things. All God wants is brokenness, repentance toward him, surrender. The gospel is that God has done everything necessary to save you. You cannot earn it. You cannot make up for it.

You cannot borrow it on credit or lay hold on it through promises to do better. You can only receive it as a gift, but to receive it, you have to be in the right posture to receive it. The only posture that receives it is brokenness and total surrender. Now you're ready for those incredible promises of this psalm.

I skipped them. They're in the first three verses. Back to verse 1. Have mercy on me, O God. Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love. Mercy means not getting what you deserve. If you're the kind of person who feels like, I just want what I deserve, then you do not understand the gospel.

No gospel-informed person would ever say that. What I deserve is judgment. What I deserve is hell. What I'm asking for is mercy. David says, Give me mercy according to your steadfast love. That's that Hebrew word chesed, the incredible one-way love of God that God offered to David in 2 Samuel 7. When God said to David, Your future blessing is not dependent on your righteousness. This is a one-way promise, David.

David said, Look, if there had been a contract, God, I would have already violated all my terms, so give me this blessing based solely on your willingness to keep your one-way promise. According to your abundant mercy, blot out. There's your second word. Blot out my transgressions.

Blot out. That's the same word used for the flood in Genesis 6. Remember when God flooded the earth? God said the whole world was so wicked that the only thing to do was to drown everybody and everything and start a new creation. David says, My heart is like the earth before the flood.

It needs to be flooded. I need to have my sins drowned and blotted out. I need a new birth of righteousness. Wash me thoroughly, verse 2, from my iniquity. This was a very common Hebrew word they would use to talk about washing clothes. It's not a religious word. It's just an everyday word.

Imagine a woman with a washboard scrubbing, agitating, and rubbing hard on something rough just to get the dirt out of this cloth. David is saying, That's what you need to do with my heart. Verse 2, Cleanse me from my sin. Cleanse me. That is a religious word. That was a Hebrew word used for ritualistic cleaning when they would clean vessels for religious service.

Make me where I can be used for your service again. Verse 7, Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean. Wash me, and I'll become whiter than snow. Anybody got some hyssop at home in their cabinets? You know what hyssop is?

Hyssop is a bush with a small spindly flower on it. If you read your Bible, you'll see it appear two times before this one in the Bible. Once was during the Exodus. It was what they used to spread the blood of the lamb on the doorposts on the night that God delivered them in the Exodus. God said, When I see the blood on the doorpost of your heart spread by the hyssop, I will pass over you and judgment will not come to your house.

The second time you see it used is in Leviticus 14. When they wanted to cleanse a leper, the priest would take a hyssop flower. They would dip it in the blood of a slaughtered lamb and then sprinkle it seven times on the diseased skin of the leper. David says, I've got a leprosy of the heart, and I need the blood of the lamb to cleanse me. Of course, at this point in Jewish history, they didn't know how that would happen, because all the Jewish sacrifices were external.

How do you get the blood into the heart? Nobody knew that. It was just all on the external parts of the body. But David recognizes one day God's going to send another kind of lamb who would be able to sprinkle his blood on the doorposts of our heart and cleanse us in the deepest places. By the way, we see an interesting allusion to this coming lamb in this story. When Nathan tells David that he's not going to die, he says, you're not going to die, but your son will. Sure enough, a little innocent newborn died because of the sin of David.

By the way, just to be clear, this is not meant to imply that a miscarriage is ever some kind of punishment for the sin of the parents. No, this was a special circumstance whereby God was giving us a picture of another innocent son who would be born to the family of David one day, many years later, who would be born of the lineage of David, who would die for David's sin in an ultimate sense. When that son was born, the angel announced to the family of David, unto you is born this day in the city of David, in David's hometown, a savior who will die for your sins. He is Christ, the promised Lord. You will call his name Jesus because he will save his people from their sins. Your sin is great, friends.

It is great, but God's grace is greater. There's our website, our newsletters, but did you know that you can also follow Pastor JD on social media? Why not get some biblical insight and encouragement as you scroll? Just search for Pastor JD Greer on Facebook, at Pastor JD Greer on Instagram, and at JD Greer on X, formerly known as Twitter. And definitely don't forget about our YouTube channel. We not only put up new teaching each week, but our podcast called Ask the Pastor releases there as well. Follow along on all your favorite social media platforms and stay up to date with this ministry while filling up your timeline with the good news of the gospel.

Now set your phone down for just a few more minutes and let's get back to today's teaching. Once again, here's Pastor JD. Tyler Statham, a pastor out in Portland, pointing something out in this passage I've never seen before. Psalm 51. He says in Psalm 51, David uses four different words to name his sin, but 19 different words to illustrate God's forgiveness. In other words, God's forgiveness is more than four times more powerful than our ability to sin.

Isn't that awesome? It doesn't matter that you cheated. It doesn't matter that you abused your power.

Understand what I mean by this. I mean, of course it matters to people, and of course you have to make restitution. But God says, I don't care about your abortion. I don't care about your sexual promiscuity, or I don't care about your porn addiction.

I don't care that you murdered somebody. None of that removes you from this offer of forgiveness. Are you broken? He never turns away at broken people. A broken and contrite spirit he will never despise. Still filthy with the stain of your sin, he runs towards you and embraces you and kisses you and throws a party for you and leaves the church dumbstruck and confused at how he could ever be that gracious. He has not canceled you as his son or daughter, and he has a plan now to use you for good, which is where David turns next in the psalm. Verse 13. This is where David starts to talk about restoration.

Confrontation, confession, reassurance, restoration. Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will return to you. You're going to use me, David says, to warn others about the dangers of sin. Maybe that's going to be my friends. Maybe it's going to be my kids. Maybe other people in my situation.

I'll be able to warn. God is going to take this tragic story of even your sin and use it as a blessing to others. What kind of God do we serve? We have several stories of that right here in our own church, people who have destroyed their marriages and their homes through sin, but God has redeemed them. Now they are people to whom I often sin, people who are struggling in similar situations to what they were in. Because they've been broken, they can help others who are breaking. Like I've often told you about the ancient Japanese practice of kintsugi, where they make this beautiful pot.

Then the last thing they do is they shatter the pot in the ground intentionally. They take the pieces of this shattered pot and they put it back together, only now they're putting it back together by melting gold and putting it in the seams so that the value of the pot having been broken and put back together is infinitely more than the value of the pot before it was broken. God says, Your sin broke you, but I'm going to put you back together with the seams of my forgiveness, and that's going to make you a trophy of grace.

That's going to make you more beautiful and more valuable than you were before you were broken. Christians believe not just in the cross. They believe in the resurrection too. The cross assures you of the forgiveness of your sins, but the resurrection assures you that God can take the dead remains of your sin and bring them back to life.

A resurrected body, ironically enough, is better than one that hadn't died. God says, I can take even your brokenness and your sin and make it something beautiful. Verse 14. When you deliver me from blood guiltiness, O God, O God of my salvation, then my tongue will sing aloud of your righteousness. The greatest thing you can do in your restoration is just worship.

Hey, there's a thought. That's why God forgave you. He forgave you to worship, to become a trophy of his grace that points people toward him and tells them that there's hope in him. He forgave you and poured out the riches of his mercy on you so that you could worship him with extravagance and abandon. The way we respond to the gospel is by worship. God wants you to put his grace on display.

I've told you before the word gospel was not originally a religious word. It was originally a word that generals would use when they wanted to announce a victory. Just make good news. General wins a victory.

They send a message to Greece. You don't need to be afraid. General so-and-so has won the battle. They're not calling you to come and help fight.

They're just saying, hey, you don't need to be afraid. Respond with joy. Live at peace and praise the general that won this battle for you. If the general had lost the battle, they'd send back a bad news message. That bad news would be like, you do need to be afraid. You need to figure out how to come up with some kind of sword, because that invading army is coming.

Our Bible writers picked up that word gospel and said, our announcement is that Jesus has won the battle. Respond with joy. Live at peace and shout with praise for our mighty, victorious king. Let me end with one warning and one admonition.

I'll try to do this quickly. Here's the warning. Beware confession without repentance. There's a pattern in Christian circles. It may be well-meaning, but it is deadly. That is, we give people assurance of forgiveness before there is evidence of repentance.

Nathan did not do that with David. It was only after repentance that he gave assurance. Here's how it happens. Somebody in your small group confesses to a sin. They've looked at porn again this week. They slacked off in their job again and lied to their boss again about where they'd been.

They slept with their boyfriend again or with this new guy they started dating. It's pretty apparent that they're doing this habitually with no real effort or intention of actually changing. Their confession is really more about getting something off their chest, this cathartic moment they're having or whatever.

It feels good to talk about how messed up you are, what a hot mess you are, and then have people sympathize. It's well-meaning, but everybody in their small group comes around them, praising them for being vulnerable and honest, and tells them what brave and good Christians they are and how proud God is of them. But they are not repenting, and you can see that, because they are not changing. If you give reassurance before there's repentance, you're actually not being a good friend to them. You're actually just enabling them to sin.

You're saying, peace, peace, where there is no peace. Confession without repentance is worthless to God, and we should tell people that. God will receive any confession, but it should be accompanied by brokenness and repentance. When you have those things, you'll change.

Not perfectly. You don't stop sinning, but you will begin to change. Part of David's confession was, Create in me this new heart. He wasn't just getting something off his chest.

He was crying out for change. Sometimes people think Christianity is just confession of sin and believing in Jesus. Just acknowledge it and secure a deal with Jesus. But confession requires repentance, and repentance requires a change of life. It's like Tertullian, the North African church father, used to say.

If you attempt to have Jesus without repentance, you'll end up with religion without heaven. Again, that change doesn't happen all at once, and a lot of times you struggle and struggle with the same sins, but the point is you're crying out for change. It's more than words.

You're crying out for change and striving towards it, and we can see it in your behavior that this is more than just empty words and crocodile tears. We see an earnest desire for you to turn from your sin. Here's something else I'll say. I hear a lot of people who want to use David's sin to justify their own. Well, I mean, look at David. I mean, he was a man after God's own heart, and I hadn't done anything as bad as he did. Okay, okay. You can sin like David did.

Point taken. The question is, can you repent like he did? What made David a man after God's own heart was his broken and contrite spirit, which led to change. If that's not happening to you, don't comfort yourself with David's example.

It's not the size or the small things that he did. It's not the size or the smallness of your sin that saves you. It's whether or not you repent of it and cry out for God's forgiveness.

God will forgive any sin, no matter how horrendous. David shows us that, but you've got to be broken and repentant to receive it. That's the warning.

Here's the admonition. Let the bones that you've broken rejoice. Breaking a bone is painful. You've done that and broken a bone, but David recognized that God was up to something good in it. Your broken heart is God's way of waking you up. Yeah, it's painful, but God's intentions for you are for your good.

That's the admonition. Are you breaking? See, I feel like there are some here this morning on the verge of going one way or the other. Your sin may not be as bad as David's.

It may be worse. Either way, you know things are not right with you and God, and today it's either you're going to confess your sins and live, or you're going to go forward hiding them, and you're going to die. These broken bones, this broken spirit, this dry and joyless and barren life, that was God's way of waking you up.

Don't resist him. David's story gives us a powerful model of what godly repentance looks like, and while there are consequences for sin, God is always ready and eager to forgive. As we wrap up the week here on the program, I want to make sure that you know about our brand new featured resource that we're sending to all of our gospel partners and financial supporters. It's a commentary that Pastor JD co-wrote with Heath Thomas called Exalting Jesus in First and Second Samuel. It's designed to help you study these books of the Bible in an in-depth but accessible way.

It's a perfect supplement to your own devotional study, and if you've been as interested in King David's life as I have, you'll want to study back through these books with this fantastic resource as your guide. We'll send it to you today with your gift of $35 or more to support this ministry, and you can give right now by calling us at 866-335-5220. That's 866-335-5220, or you can give online at JDGrier.com.

That's J-D-G-R-E-E-A-R.com. And by the way, if you haven't signed up for our email list, you'll want to do that today. Stay up to date with everything going on at Summit Life, including Pastor JD's latest blog post and information about other resources available.

It's easy to sign up at JDGrier.com. I'm Molly Vidovitch, wishing you a wonderful weekend as you gather with your local church family. Join us next week as we continue our Life of David teaching series with a message called The Harvest of Poor Choices. We'll see you next time for Summit Life with JD Grier. Today's program was produced and sponsored by JD Grier Ministries.