Repentance Is Not Just a One Time Thing

Well, good morning. I want to welcome all of our campuses worshiping all across the Triangle this morning.

My name is Will Taburen. I'm one of the pastors here at the Summit Church. And a few weeks ago, Pastor JD asked if I would preach this weekend because he fully anticipated that he was going to be on a trip to South Asia to encourage some folks over there, leaders over there, as well as to establish some new work that we are working on. And earlier this week, as he was preparing to go, the day before he left, his visa got revoked.

And they would not allow him to go, most likely because he is a very visible Christian leader and this is a place that is hostile to the gospel. And so, although we've gotten tremendous reports from the team that is there, we're excited about the work that is taking place there. And as he and I were talking about it, he reminded me, he said, you know, he's already heard from the leaders over there and as they, although disappointed, they said to him, he said, you know, this just reminds us that it's ultimately about us taking the good news to the nation that we are in. And so, although we're disappointed, we're reminded that God is sufficient and He is going to meet our needs.

And so, we're grateful for that. But he had asked me to preach this weekend and I told him I wasn't giving up my spot. And so, he can sit on the bench today and I want to share with you that I have a message for you that I have entitled, repentance is not just a one-time thing. Repentance is not just a one-time thing. Now, I want to go ahead and acknowledge the fact that some of you need to stop right where you are and you need to repent. Because when you saw me walk out here and saw that it wasn't JD, you cussed under your breath a little bit and you need to repent.

God will forgive you, I'm going to need to pray about it, but God will forgive you. In all seriousness, all of us on staff who feel this pulpit when Pastor JD is not here, we recognize that there is a sentiment that comes along with that. And the reason we have that sentiment is twofold. One, is because we all love Pastor JD. And two, we share that sentiment because we see the power of God at work in his life when he preaches. And for that, we can all be extremely grateful. Amen? Yeah, we can clap for that.

That's good. But this weekend, I believe God has a challenging word for us. And so, if you will turn with me in your Bible or turn your Bible on to Psalm 51, we are going to look at what is one of the most well-known passages in the scripture that deal with the issue of repentance. And so, it was Martin Luther who famously said, all of life, all of a Christian's life is repentance. So, repentance is not something we do to start the Christian life. Rather, repentance is a posture toward God that we adopt at conversion and we maintain the rest of our lives. That's precisely why Jesus taught his disciples to pray every day.

Father, forgive us our debts as we have also forgiven our debtors. Daily, we're to remind ourselves and confess to God that sin saturates our hearts through and through. So, the discipline of repentance is absolutely vital for spiritual growth. And so, my desire for us this weekend is for us as a church to think about the role that repentance plays or should be playing in our lives and recognize that it's imperative if we are going to experience the fullness of joy that God intends for us and if we are going to be conformed into the very image of Christ. So, before we go any further, let me share with you a definition of repentance that I want us to work from this weekend.

So, if you have a pen and paper, if you have a tablet that you can write on, I want you to write this definition down. Repentance literally means a change of mind. It means a change of mind and that change involves three things. It involves our intellect, the way that we think, it involves our heart, the way that we feel, and it involves our will, the things that we do, what our behaviors are.

So, let's unpack that for just a second. The intellect, it's a change in the way that we think about sin. We begin agreeing with God that what this is is sin and we acknowledge that He is right and that He is true. It begins to change our emotions.

It begins to change our heart. We begin to no longer be indifferent towards sin, but we begin to see that sin ultimately is grievous and we begin to grieve and become sorrowful over our sin. And ultimately, we begin to see then repentance leading to a change in behavior, change in actions that then become consistent with the will of God for our lives. So genuine repentance engages our intellect, it engages our emotions, and it engages our will.

And what I want us to do this morning is I want us to, from Psalm chapter 51, I want us to unpack how David shows us the impact of that in each of those three areas all throughout the Psalm. So let's begin with the intellect because repentance means, begins to help us understand, it means that acknowledging God ultimately as true and that His ways are ultimately right. So repentance begins by acknowledging sin as sin and that it's ultimately against God. Now we see this all throughout Psalm 51, but I want us to focus in specifically for just a moment as we look at how repentance leads to us changing the way that we think about our sin. I want us to look at three verses, verses three through five very carefully.

Let's look at what David says. 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. Now I want us to notice very carefully that David began to change the way that he viewed his specific sin, but he also began to change the way that he viewed his sinful condition.

And I want us to look at both of those. Let's look at how he began to change the way he looked at his specific sin. Notice that he says, for I know my transgressions and my sin is ever before me. Now there is little doubt in my mind that when David says this, he has his sin with Bathsheba and he has his sin with Uriah at the forefront of his mind. To remind you of the story, you remember that David, who was king of Israel at the time, was supposed to be off at war, but instead he was at home and he was on his rooftop and he was looking out onto the city and he sees a woman bathing. And in that moment, he has a choice whether to look away or to continue to set his eyes upon her.

And you know that he does. And he sets his eyes upon her and she's beautiful to him. And so he sends for her and she's brought to him and he ultimately sleeps with her and she becomes pregnant.

And so now David finds himself in a real pickle. And so David ultimately says, well, in order to try to cover my sin, I'll bring Uriah home, her husband. I'll bring him home from the battlefield and I'll just let him come and he can come in and he can be with his wife and he can have a little vacation while everybody else is off at war. And so Uriah comes home and Uriah's like, I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to go in and be with my wife. All of my friends, all of my co-soldiers, they're off at war.

How dare me come home and be able to experience the good life when they're all off at war. And he won't go into her. And so the scripture says that he stayed outside and David is like, well, the only thing left to do is to ultimately kill her and then I will just take her as my wife. And so he sends note back to the leader of the army to put Uriah the Hittite at the front lines.

And so there Uriah is killed. And so there is no doubt in my mind that when you read Psalm 51 verse 3 and David says, I know my transgressions and my sin is ever before me. David is mindful of the fact that I lusted after her. I committed adultery with her.

I killed her husband. All those actions are before his mind. And you know, for us that is a part of it. It is looking at our actions and agreeing that these actions in our lives are inconsistent with what the word of God says. But when we think of our specific sin summit church, we have to go deeper than just our actions. We have to get to the sin behind the sin because you need to understand that behind every behavioral sin, there is a motivational sin that is driving that, right? Behind everything I do, there's a motivation for what I'm doing. So when David is standing up on the rooftop, before he ever commits physical adultery, he's committed spiritual adultery. Because in that moment, he's bought into this motivation that says, I believe Bathsheba can give me some sort of pleasure that God can't give me. Behind every behavioral sin, there is a motivational sin and behind every motivational sin is the functional disbelief that God really loves me. It's the functional disbelief that God really loves me. Let me tell you how it plays out in my life. I'll give you two examples of that.

It may not appear as bad as David, but it's just as wicked. In my life, I like things to be the way that I like them to be. I like to control things. In my life, when I come home, I want to come home to peace and quiet. I want to come home to the kingdom. I want to come home to Downton Abbey.

I want it just to be quiet, calm. Everybody's like, hello, Father. Good to see you today. Tell me about your day, Father.

Let's sit and have a glass of tea. That's what I want it to be like. But when I come home, it's not like that at all. It's crazy.

I got kids 6 to 16. They're all over the place. It's hustle and bustle, man.

We're going. There's stuff everywhere and it's stressful. I can find in those moments that my temperature gets a little bit hot and I get a little bit angry and I find my voice getting a little bit raised.

You want to know why? I start getting angry with my wife. I start getting angry with my kids because my kingdom is being threatened. My comfort is being threatened.

My behavior is that I'm getting angry. What's underneath that is I want comfort. I believe that that comfort can somehow satisfy me in a way that God can't satisfy me.

I'll give you another example. When things get difficult for me, and I know you are going to find this unbelievably hard to believe. When things get difficult for me, you know what I like to do? Eat.

I like to eat. In fact, one of my favorite movies and one of my favorite lines from any movie is found in the movie Tommy Boy. If you've not seen Tommy Boy, you need to repent right now. Here's one of my favorite scenes from Tommy Boy.

Here's a picture from that that will just help you get into it just for a little bit. In Tommy Boy, Tommy is talking with Michelle. Michelle, who's going to be his future girlfriend, offers him a donut. Tommy says this. He says, the doctors say that I have what they call a little bit of a weight problem. I can resonate with that. Part of the reason is because when things get stressful for me, I can overeat. The reason that I overeat is because somehow, someway, I'm looking to food to give me comfort.

I'm looking to food to somehow satisfy me, and in that moment, I believe that it can satisfy me in a way that God really can't satisfy me. Some of you are judging me like, God, I can't believe you'd overeat. Well, you do the same thing with your exercising. You know, you do the same thing joining CrossFit and Iron Tribe. I swear it's like a cult here at the Summit Church.

It's like you can't go to a staff meeting, and somebody's not talking about, oh, what'd you do in Iron Tribe this morning? Well, we had to do this, this, this. I was third in my class and pretty much nailed it. How was CrossFit? It was great.

I did 50 box jumps and 130 burpees, and I carried Phil from accounting around my back for 800 yards. It was awesome, man. It was great.

It was fantastic. I'm like, hey, guys, they got donuts in the break room. So whether it's exercise or whether it's eating a donut, you can look to things to bring you some measure of comfort or some measure of control in your life. So the behavior is that maybe for me, it's overeating. Maybe for you, it's overexercising. But underneath that, you're really just trying to control things.

And David is saying, listen, I know my sin, and it is before me. So I know my transgressions. It's not just my actions. It's not just my behaviors. It's the motivation behind those things. And God, I'm recognizing now that these things ultimately are wicked before you.

But it's more even. He goes more than just his specific sin. He's saying, God, I want you to acknowledge that I know my sinful condition. Because look what he says in the scripture in verse 5. He says, behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me. Now, David is obviously not condemning his mother for something wrong that she did. He was brought forth from a mother and father in the confines of marriage. Rather, he's saying something so important and so profound for us.

Don't miss this. He's saying that it's iniquity. It is sin that is the element in which he has always existed. From the moment of conception, this is his existence. It is in sin. I love how Spurgeon said it. He said, it's as if he said, not only have I sinned this once, but I am in my very nature a sinner.

He said, the fountain of my life is polluted as well as its streams. I naturally lean towards forbidden things. For most of us, when we evaluate our character, if we're really honest, I mean, I think if we're really honest with ourselves, when we evaluate our character, we don't think ourselves as that bad of people. I go to church. I love my wife.

I love my kids. How bad can I really be? Well, the Scripture tells me how bad.

The Scripture tells me that my heart is deceitfully wicked above all things and that I am capable of doing things that are really beyond my comprehension. This week, I was sick for a good part of this week. We've had this kind of nasty virus going through my family.

For several days, we were just kind of laid up in the bed. I was reading the news, and I came across this article this past week, and it just kind of blew me away. It made me so sad to read. But it said, in the past 10 days in the United States, in the past 10 days, there have been five mass murders. Five. A mass murder is anything constituted with four murders or more. So that doesn't even count what happened in Louisiana at the movie theater. Five mass murders.

And I read that, and I think to myself, one, I get sad because I think about the condition of our country and just those events and the people that were involved in that. And then I think to myself, you know, I think, who does that? I mean, who does these things? I mean, who puts people in a freezer? I mean, who walks into a place and kills their family members and does it?

Who does this? And then I'm reminded, I could do that. And so could you. That's what the scripture is teaching us. You see, that's, all of us are capable of doing it.

We're the environment and circumstances just right in your life. You are capable of doing things that to you seem absolutely inconceivable. Tim Keller said it this way, you can't be in denial about your capacity to sin.

Sin is always crouching at your door. You're capable of much more than you want to admit. So the first thing that we have to do is we have to get out of denial. And that's exactly what David is doing. He's getting out of denial. He is saying, God, this is my sinful condition and I am agreeing with you that this is who I am. You see, repentance begins when we stop making excuses and acknowledge sin for what it is. Keller would go on to say, real repentance begins when blame shifting ends. Real repentance begins when blame shifting ends. Real repentance begins when you stop using words like if and but and you acknowledge, God, I know my sin and it is ever before me. And it is against you and you only have I sinned. And it was from my very beginning that I was conceived in sin.

This is who I am. You see, for David, this repentance began to infuse everything the way that he thought and it led to a change of mind. It changed the way that he viewed sin.

So it changed his intellect. But I also want you to see it doesn't stop there. No, true repentance also has to involve the emotions.

So let me share what I mean by that. When we talk about the emotions, we begin to see that repentance means that we begin to feel real sorrow for our sin. It's going to change how we feel towards our sin.

So genuine repentance will always involve and produce godly sorrow and godly grief that comes along with it. You know, in 2 Corinthians 7, Paul is writing a letter to the church at Corinth. And he's written them a previous letter of which we don't have. He actually wrote three letters to the church at Corinth.

1 Corinthians and then there was a middle letter and then we have 2 Corinthians. And in 2 Corinthians, he refers back to that middle letter in which he really writes to them a pretty stinging rebuke about what they've been doing. And he's saying, listen, you're walking away from the faith and you need to have a course correction. And so they get this letter and they respond to it very well and they begin to turn back to Christ. And in chapter 7 verses 9 and 10, he says this, as it is, I rejoice not because you were grieved.

Because this letter was harsh. He says, but because you were grieved into repenting. For you felt, you felt a godly grief so that you suffered no loss through us. For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret. Whereas worldly grief produces death.

This godly grief that Paul is talking about is that feeling you get when the depth of your, in the depth of your soul when you know that you sinned against God. You know, when you're physically sick, you begin to get those symptoms that have kind of been going around in our house. You know, the back of your throat starts to scratch a little bit.

You begin to cough, you know, a little bit and you begin to get the shakes and the chills and you begin to start getting achy and you know you better get yourself to the doctor to get whatever that is fixed so that you can feel whole again. You can be healed of whatever illness that you have. When you start feeling that godly grief, you know that it's time to go to Christ who will give you the very spiritual healing because he said, if you will confess your sins, he is faithful and just to forgive you of your sins and cleanse you from all unrighteousness. And he will always be faithful to that. And so it produces in us that godly grief. It's what David is saying and he's saying it's against you. You only have I sinned.

And so he shows us that even further. Look with me at verses one and two. In verse one, he says, Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love, according to your abundant mercy, blot out my transgressions, wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. He says in verse four, 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.

Listen, don't miss this summit church. David is crying out for mercy because he knows he's guilty. He's crying out for mercy because he knows he's guilty and he's feeling here the weight of his sin. He's saying, God, have mercy on me.

Have mercy on me. And you know, you want to know how you can tell that David feels genuine sorrow and grief that leads to salvation? Because it's not the punishment that he's crying out against. It's his own sin. He's not asking God for the punishment to go away, but he's saying, God, take this sin away. He's saying, Have mercy on me, God, and blot out my transgressions. Have mercy on me, O God, and wash me thoroughly. Have mercy on me, O God, and cleanse me because it's against you.

You only have I sinned. And you see it even further at the end of verse four when he says it's you, God, are justified in your words and blameless in your judgment. He's saying, God, everything that you're saying about me is true. The judgment that is coming upon me is just because of my sin.

And he's feeling the weight of that. He's feeling that godly sorrow and that godly grief, recognizing that it's ultimately against God. You see, it's important to know that this is something that only the Holy Spirit can bring.

It can't be manufactured. And some of you may be thinking to yourself right now, you may be thinking, well, I don't know that I've ever really experienced that kind of godly sorrow and that godly grief. Does that mean that I've never genuinely repented before?

Does that mean I've never really experienced that? Well, let me share with you, let me give you some hope in a little backhanded kind of way. There's never going to be a time when you're not going to struggle between, there's not going to be a struggle between your flesh and your spirit. There's a battle that's being waged for you every single day of your life. There's going to be a battle that's going on that is fighting against you and there are going to be things that you know that you want to do and then there are going to be things that you look at and go, I know that I should do that, but I don't really want to do that.

Shoot, it was Paul that said in Romans 7 basically this, part of me wants to stop sinning and part of me doesn't. That's the battle that is being waged and so I know that the grief that we may not experience may not be to the fullest, this just overwhelming, all-powerful grief, but it should be there. We should begin feeling that sorrow and feeling that grief and our emotions towards that should begin changing. But we must also see that repentance must be more than just sorrow and guilt. It must engage the will and it must act on it, which leads to how repentance impacts the will because repentance ultimately changes our behavior. It ultimately changes our behavior.

Now here's what I want to do. I want to show you how that works in David's life. I want to first show you in verses 7 to 12 how David's attitude began to be hatred towards sin and then I want you to see three very specific actions that began to result as a result of David's repentance.

So first let's look at his attitude towards sin in verses 7 through 12 and I want you just to listen to the disdain that David has. Listen to the words he used to describe. He says this, purge me. Purge me with hyssop 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. Create in me a clean heart oh 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 your salvation and uphold me with a willing spirit.

Do you hear it? His entire attitude is changing towards sin and towards God. He's saying God I need you to purge me. I need you to wash me. I need you to blot out all these things because I know that these things are keeping me from having a right spirit. I know that these things are keeping me from having intimacy with you and those things I hate.

These things I want to now love. I want to love you. He's saying God I hate my sin and realize that it's against you and I want you to take it all away because all I want is you.

All I want is you. You know some at church listen. It's only when you hate the sin does sin begin to lose its power over you. It's only when you begin to hate the sin does sin begin to lose its power over you. I can think of no greater illustration of this than with Augustine and I've shared this with you before but it just resonates so much in my soul.

Augustine who lived in the fourth century is one of our early church fathers who was a man who was gripped with sexual sin. He was just gripped with it. He gave himself to it over and over. He felt great guilt over it but he was just controlled by it.

He was controlled by it and it wasn't until he came to saving faith in Christ that God replaced his love of this for a love of himself and this is what he wrote. This is one of my favorite quotes. He says, how sweet all at once it was for me to be rid of those fruitless joys that I once feared to lose.

Hear that? How sweet all at once it was for me to be rid of those fruitless joys that I once feared to lose. God I was afraid of losing this. I thought this would bring me ultimate joy and ultimate happiness and ultimate just life. But he says, no those are fruitless joys.

You drove them for me and you gave me yourself. Now I hate these things because you are the true, you are the sovereign joy. It's only when we begin to hate the sin, the sin begins to lose its power over you. And that attitude in David's life began to manifest itself in behaviors that were consistent with the word of God. You know in Luke chapter 3 when John the Baptist is preaching out in the wilderness, the people are gathering and he's preaching to them and he's preaching to them a message of repentance and they're responding to it and they're being baptized. And John the Baptist says to them in Luke chapter 3 verse 8, he says, listen you need to bear fruits in keeping with repentance. So in verses 13 through 19 we see, we see David bearing fruit in keeping with repentance. We see these fruits that would now characterize David's life and these are the same fruits that ought to characterize our life. So look carefully with me at three fruits of repentance that we see from David's life.

The first is this, we see great evangelistic zeal. We see David begin to bear the fruit of evangelistic zeal. He says in verse 13, look with me there, then I will teach transgressors your ways and sinners will return to you. David is saying I want people to experience the matchless grace and mercy that I've experienced and so I will teach transgressors your ways and sinners, people who are far from God will be brought near to God. Listen, the cross of Jesus will never be more beautiful to you than when you see it in light of your own sinfulness.

The cross will never be more beautiful to you than when you see it in the light of your own sinfulness and when you begin to see it in the light of your own sinfulness there is a zeal that begins burning in you that you want other people to experience that same beautiful, glorious, matchless grace of Christ. And you will be like David and say God I long to teach transgressors your ways because I've tasted of your joy and I want others to taste it as well. You know in the New Testament when you see people who were healed of blindness or you know the lame who were allowed to walk or people who were raised from the dead, what did they immediately do?

They got up and they went and they told people. They got up and they went and they proclaimed the good news that they had been healed. How much greater is it that we have been brought out of the realm of darkness and into the realm of his marvelous light and so what else can we do but proclaim the excellency sent for him who has done that in us. The cross will never be more beautiful to you than when you see it in the light of your own sinfulness and that will propel you to share the gospel with others. So there is the fruit of evangelistic zeal but secondly there is the fruit of worship as a lifestyle.

The fruit of worship as a lifestyle. Look with me at verse 14. He says deliver me from blood guiltiness O God, O God of my salvation and my tongue will sing aloud of your righteousness. Deliver me from this God and my tongue will just proclaim your excellencies.

It will sing aloud of your righteousness. It was Spurgeon who said, a great sinner pardoned makes a great singer. A great sinner pardoned makes a great singer.

A great sinner pardoned makes a great singer. Listen to what he says in verse 15. O Lord open my lips and my mouth will declare your praise for you will not delight in sacrifice or I would give it to you. You will not be pleased with a burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit and a broken and contrite heart O God.

You will not despise. David is saying God I don't want to do anything that is not of you but if you will open my lips my mouth will do nothing but declare your praise. God he's saying I know what you want from me is my heart. I know that what you want from me is my affections. That you want all that I am to be set and stayed upon you. Finding my hope, finding my purpose, finding my meaning only in you and when you are the source of my affections, when you are my hope then it's going to change everything about the way that I live. It's going to, my worship is going to impact the way that I view my family. My worship is going to change the way that I view my marriage. My worship is going to change the way that I view my relationships. The way that I see you, my affections towards you are going to change the way that I view my career and my career trajectory and my generosity and the way that I see life in general. David is saying listen the fruit of the repentance is a life that worships you. A life that has set its affections upon you. So the question that we have to ask ourselves this morning is are my affections set upon Christ? You may be saying well I don't know. How can I answer that question?

Let me give you one diagnostic question that you can ask yourself that will at least help you get on the road to answer that question and that's this. What's the one thing that you're most afraid to lose? What's the one thing that you're most afraid to lose? Another way of asking that is what's your greatest nightmare?

What's the one thing you're afraid to lose or what's your greatest nightmare? And the answer to that question is going to reveal to you where your affections ultimately lie. David is saying listen this life of repentance is going to result and bear fruit of evangelistic zeal but it's also going to bear fruit of worship as a lifestyle but there's a third fruit that we see and that's this. There's going to be a deep commitment to disciple making and you see that in verse 18 and 19.

Look with me at what he says. He says do good to Zion. Zion is just a reference to the city of Jerusalem. Do good to Zion in your good pleasure. Build up the walls of Jerusalem. Then you will delight in right sacrifices and burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings. Then bulls will be offered on your altar. Some of you are going what in the world does that have to do with disciple making?

Well listen very carefully. We know that David loved Jerusalem. We know that David longed to build the temple there and God told him no I'm not going to allow you to build the temple there.

That's going to be for your son Solomon to do. He longed to see that built and he's longed to see the walls established but I think David is acknowledging something much greater here. I believe David as king of Israel is acknowledging that due to his sin, due to his pervasive sin and his failure of leadership as king of Israel the spiritual walls of Jerusalem have been torn down and now David is saying God rebuild those spiritual walls and David is saying let me be a part of rebuilding them. Let me be a part of reestablishing your people because what he's saying here David doesn't care God doesn't care if the physical walls of Jerusalem are built and all of a sudden that's going to make the sacrifices right. He's saying the spiritual walls of Jerusalem have been broken and he's saying David's saying God I want to build those spiritual walls back up.

I want to build this community back up to set their hope in God and to engage in his mission and as they do so as the spiritual walls of Jerusalem are built then when the people of God bring sacrifices they'll bring sacrifices that are honoring to you because their heart will be in the right place. And so this is a statement about David's commitment to the people of Israel to the people of Jerusalem saying God let me be a part of building that. So you see David's attitude towards sin had changed he had begun hating his sin and it resulted in a God exalting lifestyle of evangelism of worship and of disciple making. You see David knew and was grieved over his sin and he desired to change. But listen let me close with this. He not only was grieved over his sin and desired to change but David was also convinced he was convinced of God's love and willingness to forgive.

He was convinced of God's love and his willingness to forgive him. You know I would imagine that there are some of you here this weekend that you're saying to yourself Will you don't have any idea what I've done. You don't have any idea where I've been.

You don't have any idea what I've done. How can you be so certain that God loves me and that God is willing to forgive me. I want to say to you that that is a great great question. And the beautiful part of this psalm is it gives us an incredible answer to that. You know there is one time there is one time in this psalm where David asks God not to do something.

You remember where it is. It's in verse 11. You remember what David says. He says cast me not away from your presence and take not your Holy Spirit from me. One thing he begs God not to do.

One thing that David could not bear happen. He says God don't remove your presence from me because life would not be worth living without you. So in light of everything David had done, lusting, adultery, murder, David says God please don't take your presence from me.

And you know what some at church God doesn't. He doesn't take his presence from David and you want to know why? Because the very thing that David asked God not to do is the very thing that God would do to his own son. You see there was Jesus holy and blameless the son of God dying on the cross. And in his moment of greatest agony he cries out to God too but he cries out something entirely different.

He says my God my God why have you forsaken me? And in that moment, in that moment Jesus is cast out of the presence of his father and God pours on him the judgment and wrath and condemnation that David was deserving of. The judgment you are deserving of.

The judgment I am deserving of. You see Jesus was cast out of the father's presence so David wouldn't have to be. So that I wouldn't have to be.

So that you wouldn't have to be. And that's how I know that Jesus loves you. That's how I know that he's willing to forgive you. So yes we have to see the magnitude of our sin but we have to see it in light of the magnitude of his sacrifice. And so I want to stand here at the top of my lungs and say that there is no sin so great that the blood of Jesus Christ cannot cover it. And I want to tell you what Peter told the people at Pentecost and that is repent and believe and you shall be saved.

That is the depth of love that the father has for you. And so my prayer for us is simple. That we would be a people who lived lives of continual repentance. A people who put to death the indwelling sin that resides in us as we delight in the one who was cast out for us so that we could become sons and daughters of the most high God. Amen. And Amen.