Confession

Have your Bibles with you. Turn with me if you would to Psalm 51. We're going to start with verses 1 through 3.

As we go to our Lord in prayer. Heavenly Father in 2 Corinthians 1-4, Paul told us that sometimes you allow us to go through times of suffering and affliction so that we might be able to comfort others who are going through the same thing. 3,000 years ago your servant David committed horrible sin.

He brought pain to himself, to his family, to his nation, and to your heart. But you broke David, and David genuinely repented. Then you inspired him to pin down the prayer of Psalm 51. It is a pleading for mercy. It is a confession of sin. It is a formula for repentance.

It is the hope for restoration. David prayed these words for himself, but they were pinned down for us. 1 Corinthians 10 verse 11, Paul said, Now these things happened to them as an example, but they were written for our instruction. As we contemplate these words that David pinned down, may we take our focus off of David and focus on our own heart, our own sin, and our own need. Help me to preach with clarity and faithfulness today. Please do for us what you did for David, for it is in the precious and holy name of Jesus that we pray. Amen.

You may be seated. Last week we were studying the confrontation between the prophet Nathan and King David. David had committed adultery with Bathsheba, and then he had murdered to cover up his sin. And for several months, David has just been living a lie. But then on this particular day, the prophet Nathan walks into David's palace.

He goes right up to the throne, and he tells David this heartbreaking story. This story of a man who was extremely wealthy, had all the money in the world. He had great herds of cattle. He had great flocks of sheep. So a man that lived right next to him, who was a very poor man, had almost nothing at all except one little ewe lamb. That ewe lamb was a very special lamb. It was a pet for the family. And that whole family loved it with all their heart.

It was like family to them, and they cared for it dearly. One day a traveler came by the rich man's house and wanted to eat supper. And so the rich man walked right out of his property, walked right by all of his cattle, all of his sheep, walked right over to the poor man's house, took his lamb, and killed the lamb, and they ate the poor man's lamb for supper. When David heard this, he was absolutely livid.

I mean, you could see the steam coming off his head. He was seething, and he was ranting and raving. He was making all these proclamations, these promises that if you bring that man to me, he will be judged, and I will bring that man to his death. As all that's going on, Nathan lifts his arm up, and he points that long, bony prophet's finger right into the face of David. And he says, David, thou art the man. You're the rich man in the story, David. You committed adultery with Bathsheba, and then you had her husband, Uriah the Hittite, killed to cover over your sin. And David absolutely lost it.

I mean, all this false bravado, all this tough macho stuff, just melted right then into a puddle. David fell prostrate before the prophet Nathan, and he cried out, oh my God, oh my God, I have sinned against you. How long did it take, how much time, between this confrontation that the prophet Nathan had with David, until David prayed this prayer that we call Psalm 51? Did it take months? I don't think so. Did it take weeks? I don't think so. Did it take days? I don't think so. Did it take hours? I don't think so.

I think it took minutes. I think Nathan got up, he walked out of the house, and David immediately went to his bedroom, and he told the soldiers that he was not to be disturbed, and there he got on his face before God, and he repented. Folks, this is the greatest chapter in the Bible on the subject of repentance. It is a tremendously important passage.

You say, well, how big a deal is repentance? Well, John Mark was the man who wrote the very first gospel, and the first words that we have from the words of Jesus in the very first gospel were these words, repent and believe the gospel. When Peter preached the great sermon on the day of Pentecost, he preached and the people were deeply under conviction, and they came to Peter and they said, Peter, what must we do? And Peter said, repent and be baptized in the name of Jesus. And then in Luke chapter 13 verse 5, terrible tragedy had happened in Jerusalem. A tower had fallen over, and 18 people had been crushed and killed in that tower.

18 people on the street were talking about it, and they were saying, why did God allow these 18 people to be killed like this? Jesus went to them and said, do you think that these people that were killed and that you think they were worse sinners than you because the tower fell on them? He said, but I tell you, no, except you repent, you shall all likewise perish. What does it mean to repent? The word repent is the Hebrew word shub.

It means a U-turn. So you're running away from God as fast as you can go. God brings conviction into the heart, and you turn around, make a 180-degree turn, and you run back to God as fast as you can go. That's repentance. I think of the New Testament word metanoia. That word is repentance. And what does that word mean?

That word means that it's a change in mind that leads to a change in heart that leads to a change in behavior that leads to a change in your lifestyle. Charles Spurgeon wrote one of the greatest commentaries that's ever been written on the book of Psalms. It's called the Treasury of David. And Charles Spurgeon preached on all 150 Psalms. But he said the hardest one he had to preach on was Psalm 51. And he said the reason for that was because he came to realize that the cry of David was also his own cry.

Spurgeon said when we read Psalm 51, we are standing on holy ground. And we need to understand that David is a picture of every single one of us, and we need to be where David was. And where was David? Where was David at this point in time?

I'll tell you where he was. He was prostrate before the Lord. He was broken in his pride. He was humbled in his heart. He was open and honest before God. And he was more dependent upon God than he had ever been before. That's why Spurgeon was so wowed by this particular psalm.

And what it did to Spurgeon, brothers and sisters, it needs to do to us. I want you to hear this because God's call for our repentance is not a call to turn over a new leaf. It's not a call to just try to do better. You see, when God calls us to repentance, it is a God-initiated, soul-cleansing, life-changing, Christ-exalting turning in the heart. Repentance is God empowering you to turn from sin. Now, I've heard preachers do altar calls, and they'll say in the altar call, you just need to come and walk down the aisle, and you need to express faith and repent. And if you do that, God will give you the gift of being born again.

Folks, don't believe that. You don't repent and express faith in order to be born again. But you repent and believe because you are born again. A spiritually dead man can't believe. A spiritually dead man can't repent.

He is dead. Folks, only God the Holy Spirit can regenerate. Only God the Holy Spirit can bring a lost person to life. Only God the Holy Spirit can make you hate sin that naturally you love. In Ephesians chapter 2, the apostle Paul said this. He said, And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins. For by grace are you saved through faith, and that not of yourself. It is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast.

So what does that tell us, folks? It tells us that God is the author of our salvation. It tells us that God ought to be the one who gets the glory for our salvation, not us as individuals. God ought to get the glory.

He ought to be the one that is lifted up. Folks, I didn't get saved because I was smarter than somebody else, or because I was more spiritual than somebody else, or because I was better than someone else. The only reason I was saved is because God reached down from heaven, spiritually resurrected me, and gave me a heart to turn eyes to see and ears to hear. It's all of God, and God should be the one who gets the glory for our salvation. Now folks, if that is true, does that mean that there's no need for repentance?

No, that does not mean that at all. Our faith and repentance are not human works to merit God's favor, but our faith and repentance are spiritual fruit, or spiritual evidence that we are genuinely saved. Jesus said, you will know those that are His, by what?

By their fruit. And the fruit, first and primarily, is faith and repentance. Folks, it is a work of God.

And we need to understand this. If there is no repentance, then there is no salvation. Richard Owen Roberts wrote one of the most powerful books that I've ever read on repentance, and I want to just share with you what he said here, and listen to this carefully. There is an increasingly common failure in the church in understanding the mandatory nature of repentance. Some seem to be of the persuasion that repentance is an option.

One can repent, they say, and maybe even should, but it certainly isn't mandatory. In consequence, multitudes have sought to turn to Christ without ever turning from their sins. Thus, it is becoming increasingly difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish the church from the world. Others have developed the preceding era into a pernicious doctrine that is being widely taught and preached. This grievously erroneous viewpoint insists that repentance has nothing whatever to do with salvation. That repentance is described by these false teachers as a work. They insist we are not saved by works, we are saved by faith alone. Their era is not so much in stressing salvation by faith alone as it is in failing to understand the irrevocable link that always exists between repentance and faith. To assume that sinners can turn to the righteous one without turning from their own unrighteousness is the height of theological nonsense.

In attempting to describe repentance as a work, these teachers are much more successful in proving their ignorance of the Holy One. Sad to say, this grievous era is responsible for incredible damage throughout major portions of the church. And all I can say to that is Amen. That's pretty much the attitude of the modern-day church, isn't it?

And what is it? Well, I think it's this in a nutshell. We have lost our all of God. Folks, God doesn't wow us anymore. Sin to so many people who even claim to be Christians is just a joke. It's a joke because we haven't seen and we haven't felt the holiness of God.

And when we do, it hurts. Folks, before a person can genuinely repent, he's got to feel deep conviction over his sin. This is what the Apostle Paul calls worldly grief.

I was talking to a—excuse me, godly grief, not worldly grief there. I was talking to a missionary a few years ago, and he had come home on furlough. He'd been gone for about four years. He was in a country that was kind of backward.

Only five percent of the nation claimed to be Christians. And he told me some amazing things. He said, Doug, when I preach there, he said, the people want to hear.

He said, they're open. And he said, they feel conviction, and there's repentance, and there's brokenness there. He said, very seldom do I preach that somebody doesn't come to know Christ as his Lord and Savior.

He said, I got back home to the United States. He said, I could not believe the hardness of the hearts of the people in America. He said, there is a spirit of spiritual apathy here that is absolutely scary. He said, it seems that nothing moves the hearts of the people in America anymore. He said, it's almost like God has drawn a line in the sand and said, go no further, and that America has stepped over that line and said, we'll do what we want to do. He said, preaching here is like preaching to a brick wall. He said, I don't see godly grief, but I see a lot of worldly grief.

What's the difference? 2 Corinthians 7, Paul does a very powerful job explaining the difference between worldly grief and godly grief. This morning in Sunday school, I was asking Larry Oldham what he's going to be preaching on tonight. I have a funeral this afternoon, and I was supposed to be pre-preaching myself, and I called Larry up and told him I've got this funeral, and I'm afraid it's going to run a little too long, and I might not be able to get back here on time. Could you preach for me?

And he very happily agreed to do that. And so I asked him, I said, what are you preaching on tonight? He said, I'm preaching on repentance. I said, well, what passage? And he said, 2 Corinthians 7, that's exactly what I'm reading you here, talking about God putting things together.

You come here tonight, and you're going to hear a whole lot more better representation than what I'm giving you in this little section. But this is what Paul said, For even if I made you grieve with my letter, I do not regret it, though I did regret it, for I see that letter grieved you, though only for a little while. As it is, I rejoice not because you were grieved, but because you were grieved into repentance. For you fell to 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.

For see what earnestness the godly grief has produced in you, but also what eagerness to clear yourselves, what indignation, what fear, what longing, what zeal, what punishment at every point you have proved yourselves innocent in this matter. Folks, worldly grief is regret in its remorse. It is being sorry that you got caught. It is not being sorry for your sin. It's being sorry for the consequences of your sin. And worldly grief never leads to genuine repentance. Godly grief is sorrow over your sin because it has dishonored God. Folks, Psalm 51 is the opposite of worldly grief. It is the greatest chapter in the Bible on the subject of repentance. And praise God it tells us that there is hope for every single one of us here.

Two points I want to share with you very quickly. Number one, a plea for mercy. Look at verse one. David said, Have mercy on me, O God.

According to your steadfast love, according to your abundant mercy, blot out my transgressions. I want you to picture David, if you will. After his confrontation with Nathan the prophet, Nathan just turns around. He walks out of the building and David immediately gets up. He heads off to the bedroom.

He says to the soldiers, I do not want to be disturbed. And I can just picture him there as he goes into his bedroom. He falls on his knees. He begins to pray. Then he realizes that's probably not where he needs to be. And he moves from a kneeling position to a prostrate position. And he's lying on his face with his nose down in the dust.

And he's just got a puddle of tears out in front of him. And as he is lying there in the floor, I can imagine the Lord just bringing to his mind the many blessings that God has given him through his life. I can imagine him remembering that thud that he heard when Goliath hit the ground when he fell dead on the battlefield.

I can imagine him thinking about the day that his first son was born. I can imagine him remembering the time when he was out there in the pasture watching over his sheep in a line. I tried to attack the sheep and God spiritually empowered him. And he went and he tore that line apart with his bare hands. And then there was a bear that did the same thing and God empowered him again.

And he tore the bear up with his bare hands. I think David probably remembered back to the day that they brought the Ark of the Covenant back to Jerusalem. They took it to Mount Zion. And they placed the Ark of the Covenant in the tabernacle of David. I can imagine David thinking of that day that the ark was in the tabernacle and the people were all there and they were worshiping. And all of a sudden the Shekinah glory of God starts shining out of the entrance of that tabernacle and what David felt like during that time. I can imagine what David remembering back to that time when he was out in the shepherd's pasture. And he was working and nobody else was there, just him, the sheep and God.

It was during that time that the Lord inspired him to write so many psalms. I'm sure David remembered that time when a garrison of Philistine soldiers took him and were ready to kill him and David was scared. And all of a sudden that fear just left his heart. God took it from him. And God reminded him, David, you're going to be the next king of Israel.

I promised you that and you will not die because I never break my promises. With all those memories of God's goodness and God's gifts and God's grace, he remembers that awful night when he walked out onto the roof of his palace and he looks down on the building next to him and there's the beautiful Bathsheba bathing herself. He feels the tug of the Holy Spirit on his heart to turn, to get away. All of a sudden the Lord begins to bring Scripture to his mind. Psalm 101 verse 3, I will set no wicked thing before my eyes.

Maybe the words of Job in Job chapter 31 verse 1, I have made a covenant with my eyes, why should I look upon a maid? He remembers that still small voice of God speaking to his heart, warning him to stop right where he was. And yet David just dismissed all of that conviction. He remembered thinking to himself, it couldn't hurt just to look.

That's no big deal. And he remembered how the Holy Spirit was just grieved down in his spirit. He then thought of Bathsheba, how he'd taken advantage of her. He then thought of Uriah the Hittite and how he had betrayed Uriah the Hittite's great loyalty to him. He remembered what this had done to his own wives and how it had shamed all of them. And he remembered what it had done to God.

He had not only broken God's law, he had broken God's heart. The first thing David does as he's getting ready to repent is to cry for mercy. Folks, if you're going to repent, if it's going to be real, if it's going to be what God wants it to be, it needs to start with a cry for mercy. Alright, point two, specific confession. Look at verses two and three. Wash me thoroughly from my sin and cleanse me from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin.

For I know my transgressions and my sin is ever before me. What kind of confession is this? It is a specific confession. He's not using generalizations here.

He is not using euphemisms here. He is confessing specifics to God. Have you ever heard anybody pray this way? Ah, Lord, we've done a whole lot of stuff wrong. Please just forgive us for all the junk that we've done.

Not much conviction there, is it? Not much detail specifics in that. Folks, when we are praying and it's a prayer of repentance, then we need to pray specifically. We need to pray personally to this God. God wants for this to be a personal matter. Listen to David's personal pronouns that he uses here. He said, wash me, cleanse me, I acknowledge.

There's none of that we stuff here. When I pray privately asking God for forgiveness, and I start saying we and us, all I'm doing is shifting the blame. Let me say something in light of that. We in this church often, almost every Sunday, have a confession of our sins. And I think that's a good thing. We say before the Lord corporately, we confess, we repent, we forgive.

And I think that's good because nobody is compelled to do that. When I'm confessing sin publicly, I am not speaking for you, I am speaking with you. Huge difference between corporately confessing our sin and privately confessing our sin. If I'm privately confessing my sin, I need to not say we, but I. I need to say I because I don't know what's in your heart. I don't know what you're thinking or if you're really repentant.

All I know is what's going on in my own heart. Folks, it's wrong to pray we if you're praying privately because that's just shifting blame. Notice how specific and detailed David is here. He's describing his failure to God. And he doesn't just pray, oh Lord, I was wrong. But he shares three different ways in which he has sinned. First of all, he speaks of iniquity. His sin as iniquity. He says, wash me from my iniquity.

And what does that mean? I remember back when I was in seminary. I went to Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, North Carolina. We would meet in our classes in these buildings that were built back in the 1920s. And they had these old steam radiators.

And those radiators would get hot as a firecracker. One day, a good friend of mine, Dickie Cullum, came into class late. And he brought into the class a plastic vase with plastic flowers in it.

It was a gift that he was going to give to his wife. He wasn't really thinking. He reached over there and he put it on the radiator. And when he put it on the radiator, he just forgot about it. Dr. Cook, our professor, got up to teach and he started teaching the lecture, got into his lecture, and all of a sudden the radiator came on.

And after the radiator came on, for just a few minutes, I mean, everybody started smelling this strange smell. And Dickie looked over there and there was that vase and those flowers that he just melted down into a garble mess. And he ran over there and he took his knife and he scraped it all off and he was holding it like this. And Dr. Cook said, Mr. Cullum, would you come up here? And Dickie started walking up there, his face red as a beet. And he said, Dr. Cook said, let me have that. And he handed that garbled mess over to Dr. Cook and he held it up in his hands and he said, Students, do you see this?

He said, I don't want you to ever forget this. What we have here is a picture of iniquity. What is iniquity?

Iniquity, the word iniquity, means twisted or perverted out of shape. Iniquity always has to do with moral sin. David was saying, my sin is not just a sin of dishonesty.

It's not just a sin of a lack of integrity. My sin is a moral sin. I committed adultery. I took an act that God created to only be enjoyed in the context and under the boundaries of marriage. And I twisted it and I perverted it and I cheapened it and I made something ugly out of something that God intended to be beautiful. My sin was iniquity. It was a moral sin.

Folks, the idea of twisted says it pretty well. God is the one who ordained and instituted the sexual relationship between a husband and a wife. And when God did that, it was meant to be pure. It was meant to be the glue that would hold a marriage together.

But sin causes twisted thinking, doesn't it? When David saw Bathsheba bathing on a roof, everything that he knew and believed about marital infidelity just flew right out the window. He looked at this lady and, wow, she was beautiful. He had some good-looking wives, but, boy, nothing like this.

She was beautiful. And besides that, he's the king of Israel. He's done a lot for these people. He ought to be able to enjoy some pleasure. He ought to be able to forgive this. And my goodness, she is so beautiful.

I mean, she is such a temptation. No man would have turned this down. Joseph would have. Remember Joseph, the son of the patriarch Jacob? Who was sold into slavery, and Potiphar bought him.

And Potiphar was a very wealthy man. He made Joseph the steward, the manager of all of his household. At this point in time, Joseph was probably between 18 and 21 years old. He was a single man. He had no wife.

He was young. He was at the very peak of his manhood. And at that very peak of his manhood, Potiphar's wife came to him and approached him.

Let me tell you, he's such a rich man, I'll guarantee you she had to be just as beautiful as Bathsheba. And she came and she propositioned Joseph. He didn't proposition her. She came and she propositioned him. So he could very well say, hey, this was not my fault. He didn't do that. He said to her, no, I can't do this. How can I sin against God and do this wicked thing?

She was so mad that she lied about Joseph, had him thrown in prison. Folks, let me tell you something. That's godliness. That is holiness. If David had turned his head, if he had walked back into the palace that day, he would have honored God, he would have saved countless lives, and he would have had a testimony that would have spoken very powerfully to our world.

But his thinking melted into a twisted mess, and we are still bemoaning it today. That's iniquity. The second word that David uses is the word sin. That's the Hebrew word kata, and it means missing the mark.

It's a picture of a man standing before a target, and he's got a bow and arrow, and he's shooting the arrows at the target. Not only does it miss the bull's eye, but it doesn't even get to the target. It just falls short. In Romans chapter 3, verse 23, Paul said, For we of all sin had come short of the glory of God. The Pharisees did not get this concept. The Pharisees were walking around with their chest poked out, kind of bragging, all self-righteous, because they had not committed the physical act of adultery by committing adultery with someone else's wife and stealing her.

They hadn't done that, so they felt like they were fine. Jesus corrected their thinking, and Jesus said this to them, You've heard it said by them of all, Thou shalt not commit adultery. But I say unto you, if you even look upon a woman as to lust after her, you've committed adultery already with her in your heart. David's physical relationship with Bathsheba was more heinous, more harmful, and more hurtful than just his lust. But make no mistake about it, his lust was sin. It was coming short of the glory of God. It was missing God's standard. Why did the Pharisees hate Jesus so much? The Pharisees hated Jesus because Jesus made them go further than just what was going on with their physical bodies.

He went to their heart. And folks, Jeremiah said, The heart of man is desperately wicked and deceitful above all things who can know it. Truth of the matter is, none of us are so close to God that we view sin as it really is. None of us hate sin like we ought to hate sin.

And none of us have consciences that are as sensitive and tender as they need to be. Alright, David's third word of confession is transgression. Verse 3, For I know my transgression, and my sin is ever before me. The word transgression means stepping over a boundary. 1 John 3.4 says, Sin is the transgression of the law. God drew a line in the sand and said, No further!

And then we purposely, deliberately, stepped over that line. Probably the greatest example that we have of this is Adam and Eve eating the forbidden fruit in the garden. So David describes his sin. This is what he's confessing.

He describes it in three ways. He said, First, my sin was a twisted moral sin. That's iniquity. He said, Second, I have come short of God's standard, and that is sin. And then third, I have stepped over God's boundary, and that is transgression.

Without that kind of confession, there is no genuine repentance. David is doing what every one of us should be doing, praying that God would restore to us a sensitive conscience. Folks, that was the need of David, and that's the need of Doug. I need a conscience that is sensitive in God's hands, so that he can lead, guide, and direct me in the way that I need to go.

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, David was devastated and broken by his own sin. You led him to repentance. His first step was confession.

He could do nothing until he was honest and open with you and himself. His confession was detailed and specific. He refused to be vague.

He refused to cover up areas of his sin. He laid it on the table before you, before himself, and before us. Father, we don't like that. That's embarrassing.

It's uncomfortable. It makes us look bad, but that's what we need. We need to quit hiding sin and start hating it. We need to realize that striving for holiness is not an option in the Christian life. Father, let us learn from David, and may our confession build humility into our hearts and make us more dependent on you. For it is in the precious and holy name of Jesus that we pray. Amen.