Message Robby Gallaty, Senior Pastor The price that we ll pay for our sin is separation from the Lord Jesus Christ and that s the beautiful thing about Jesus. Jesus takes the record of our sin. It s as if He erases it and writes righteousness on top. What an incredible picture for us to see this morning. The title of the message is Sorrow Over Sin. It s important for us to look at our attitudes. It s important for us as we go through this revival series to look at our lives, to look at our thoughts, to look at our problems, and to look at our sins. See, when we hold a mirror to ourselves, we realize that we fall short of God s expectations and it s amazing as we come to Psalm 51 this morning, David has a mirror held to his own life in the form of Nathan the prophet. Nathan, if you remember the story, was sent by God in 2 Samuel chapter 11 and 12 and we realize, in the context of Psalm 51, this is right after David has committed adultery with Bathsheba. David, in 2 Samuel chapter 11, looks in the distance and sees Bathsheba bathing and he calls her to his place so that he may lie with her. You have to understand here, don t miss this, David probably rapes this woman and then after he rapes her, then he realizes she becomes pregnant. David trying to cover up for his actions, calls her husband, Uriah the Hittite, from the front lines and brings him back in hoping that he will lie with his wife to cover up his sin. We know what happens. Uriah is so loyal to David and his men that he doesn t even enter the house. He sleeps on the doorstep. David, realizing that his scheme has fallen short, sends him back out to battle, puts him on the front lines of the enemy causing his death. David now has 2 problems. He s committed adultery and he s committed murder. This is the context we find ourselves in in Psalm 51. If you have your Bibles, I hope you do, turn with me to Psalm 51. When you re there, say word. The word of the Lord, 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! (Psalm 51:1-2 ESV) Three aspects of the text, I wish we had time to cover the entire text. We don t. I figured you d want to get out of here over 2 hours. So we re going to cut and condense the text down to 3 progressions of the text. The first one we see in the text is this: David approaches the Lord write it down with humility. He approaches the Lord with humility. Where do I see that? Look how he begins. Have mercy on me, O God. That word mercy is another way to say have compassion on me. Mercy is God holding back from us what we do deserve. If we get in trouble, we deserve punishment. Mercy is God holding back from us what we do deserve and David says 3 ways have I sinned. Look at the first one, in my transgressions. That word transgression is another way to say gross rebellion against God. It s the idea of crossing the line. You may remember in the history of Julius Caesar that there as a general, there was a law that said if a general crossed from the north to the south across the river Rubicon, then it was war and as long as Caesar stayed on the north side, it was fine. Well you know what happened. Caesar decides to go against the Roman legislature and he advances with his troops. He says these words, Alea iacta est. Bascially what he says is, in English, The die is cast. He knew that once he crossed the line, it was the point of no return. When he crossed the line, it was civil war. Friends, when we sin against God, we cross the boundary of His righteous standard get this and we declare war against God. We are against Him. David says, I have sinned in my transgressions. Secondly, cleans me or thoroughly wash me from my iniquity. I ll get to this in a few moments but what he s talking about here is his depraved nature. What he s talking about here is original sin. He s saying that, even from my birth, look at verse 5, I was brought forth in iniquity in my mother s
womb. David is saying, I am sinful from birth. You didn t have to teach me to sin. So we have transgression. We have iniquity. Write down the third one, sin. It s the idea of missing the mark. The word picture here is an archer shooting at a bulls eye. He pulls back the arrow and the arrow misses the mark. He misses the target. That s what David is saying. God has a righteous standard and we have missed the mark. Now notice what David says. He doesn t force the blame on someone else. He doesn t say, Your sin, your transgression, your iniquity. Notice what he says. It s my transgression. It s my iniquity. It s my sin. So David acknowledges that he s a sinner and he approaches the Lord with great humility. Secondly, he acknowledges his wrong doing with honesty. This is a key point here. He acknowledges his life. He looks at his life with honesty and he says, God, there are some things that I have done. Look at verse 3. 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. Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being, and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart. (Psalm 51:3-6 ESV) I want you to notice David s awareness of his sin. In the bestselling book by Jim Collins many years ago, Good to Great, which is a great business book, he has this insert, which I think is applicable. He says, True transformation, whether of an organization or an individual, demands an uncommon willingness to confront, get this, the brutal facts not about what is going on in the world outside of us but the brutal facts about what is going on in the world within us. Friends, we must take an assessment of our own life with honesty. It s easy for us to cover up our wrong doing. It s easy for us to discount our sins. It s easy for us to gloss over our transgressions and David says, That s not what I m going to do. Now commentators have questioned David and said what is David saying when he says, Against you, Lord, and you alone have I sinned? That s not right because, think about it, David sinned against Bathsheba. What about Uriah? What about the nation of Israel? And those are valid points but let me make a point here. By definition, our sin is against who? It s against God. Why? Because God is the one who set the standard for righteousness. Let me give you an example. You re driving on the interstate and you break one of the laws by speeding and policeman pulls you over. He is upholding the laws that the state has set and because of that, you receive a penalty or a ticket. In the same way, when you break God s law, you re breaking the standard that God has set and therefore we deserve punishment for that. What David s talking about here is the doctrine of original sin. It s the idea that from Adam in the garden when he sinned, he infected all of us. Friends, it s easy to see that we all have fallen short of the glory of God. And what s neat about the Lord Jesus Christ is that God offers us forgiveness of our sin through Christ and He removes the penalty of sin. But don t miss this. There are consequences for our sin. See, when you repent of your sins and put your faith in Christ, He removes the penalty of sin. But based on years of habitual sin, there are consequences. Can anyone amen to that? If you think about David, go to 2 Samuel chapter 12 verse 10, I want to show you how the story unfolds. When you re there, say word. God sends the prophet Nathan to confront David and tells the story about a lamb. If someone does something against your only lamb, what would you do? David said, I d kill that man. Nathan says, You re that man. Notice verse 10. Here are the consequences for his sins. Now therefore the sword shall never depart from your house, because you have despised me and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife. Thus says the LORD, Behold, I will raise up evil
against you out of your own house. And I will take your wives before your eyes and give them to your neighbor, and he shall lie with your wives in the sight of this sun. For you did it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel and before the sun. (2 Samuel 12:10-12 ESV) David s sons, because of his sin, Ammon, Absalom, and Adonijah will die all by the sword. Absalom, one of his sons, will take one of David s wives and sleep with her. In addition to that, David s child that he has with Bathsheba out of adultery will ultimately die. And because of David s sin, the one thing that David longed for to build the temple for God, God says, Because you have blood on your hands, you are cut off from that. You won t build the temple. And more importantly, God finishes with this, David, you re sin will be blasted to the world. Obviously there wasn t Twitter and Facebook back then but what would happen today would be that your sin would be tweeted and retweeted all over the world on Twitter and Facebook for all to see. Basically what He says is what you do in secret, I will bring openly. All of Israel will know about what you ve done. Now that s interesting because if you ve ever talked to someone who s caught up in sin, let s say a drug addiction, they re always saying things like (because I said this), Just leave me alone. I m not hurting anybody. I m only hurting, who? Myself. As we see in the life of David, not only did David hurt himself but he hurt the nation, he hurt Uriah, he hurt Bathsheba, he hurt his children, and he hurt people for years to come and we re still talking about the consequences of his sin. When you enter into an adulterous affair, you don t think at time with momentary pleasure but your kids are the byproduct, they re the innocent bystanders of your sin and you ll experience consequences forever. When you gossip, you don t think you re hurting anybody until the person you re talking about confronts you and you realize that now you re talking about a friend. What are you saying, Pastor? I m saying think before you sin because there are consequences. Friends, remission of sin does not remove get this the consequence of sin. Let me say it again. The remission of sins from Christ does not remove the consequences of sin in our lives. We must approach the Lord with humility. We must acknowledge wrong doing with honesty. Write the third aspect of the text down. We must appeal for restoration with haste. We must appeal for restoration in a hurry. David doesn t wait here. Look at what he says. Cleanse me from my sin, [O, Lord] Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean (verse 7); 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, O [Lord], 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. (Psalm 51:7-12 ESV) Basically David says in 2 aspects, first of all, cleanse me. Cleanse me from sin write it down. David parallels his statements from verse 1 and 2 again here. He uses the same 3 words. Look at it. He says cleanse me, wash me, and blot out my iniquity. That word cleanse is another word for purge. It means to completely remove sin. It s almost as if you have never sinned. It means to desinsetize if you will. David says, Do that to me, Lord. Secondly, he says wash. That s another way to say cleanse or to purify me. And then finally he says blot, the idea of removing the ink from a page or the writing from a book. That s an interesting word, blot. In the first century and even in the time of David s writing, there were certain ancient manuscripts that were called Palimpsest. Palimpsest were these writings that were written on papyrus or expensive materials and after they had written on these materials and the writing was no longer in use, the writers would go back over it and rub the ink off the page because the
manuscript was hard to reproduce and it was very expensive to cut so they would rub the ink off the page. They would turn the manuscript sideways and they would write on it again. That s the word picture David is using here. He s saying, Lord, I want you to take my sins that have been written on the page of my soul, I want you to blot them out. I want you to rub them with your finger and then I want you to turn the page sideways and I want you to write on them again. Friends, do you know that unless something happens on the last day of your life, you will have to give an account for the sins that have been written in the book of your life. Do you know that? That unless you have someone to remove your sins or to write over them as the Lord Jesus Christ declares that we are innocent, then we re in a world of trouble. Why? Because the Bible says the wages of sin is death, that the price that we ll pay for our sin is separation from the Lord Jesus Christ and that s the beautiful thing about Jesus. Jesus takes the record of our sin. It s as if He erases it and writes righteousness on top. What an incredible picture for us to see this morning. But did you catch the connection to the blood sacrifice of Christ in this text? You really have to be a Hebrew scholar to catch this. It s in the word hyssop. Did you catch it, in the word hyssop? Now, Robby, what does hyssop mean? Is it like a hiccup? Not really. Hyssop was a plant or a shrub that was very common in the first century although it s not common today but it was common back then. It would grow in the crevices of stones or mountains. If you can imagine these little shrubs would come up. How why is that important? The Jewish people would take this hyssop shrub, they would break it off and they would use it in the ceremonial ritual of sacrifice. The hyssop branch was the branch that dipped into the blood and the blood was then sprinkled onto the altar of God. It s amazing that the hyssop plant was used even in the first Passover. Go to Exodus chapter 12, let me show it to you. When you get to verse 22, say word. Take a bunch of hyssop (there it is) and dip it in the blood that is in the basin, and touch the lintel and the two doorposts with the blood that is in the basin. (Exodus 12:22 ESV) In the time of the Passover, the Jews would dip the hyssop in the blood, they would throw it onto the doorposts of the house. That night when the angel of the Lord would come, he would see the blood on the doorpost and he would Passover, literally why you call it Passover, and their firstborn child would be saved. Now there s an interesting connection even in the New Testament that God says that hyssop was used in the blood covenant between Moses and the people of Israel. Did you know that? Go to Hebrews chapter 9 verse 19, another time we see the word hyssop used, verse 19 chapter 9 of Hebrews. When you re there, say word. For when every commandment of the law had been declared by Moses to all the people, he took the blood of calves and goats, with water and scarlet wool and hyssop, and sprinkled both the book itself and all the people, saying, This is the blood of the covenant that God commanded for you. And in the same way he sprinkled with the blood both the tent and all the vessels used in worship. Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding (here it is) of blood there is no forgiveness of sins. (Hebrews 9:19-22 ESV) There s another connection to Jesus, John chapter 19 verse 29, when Jesus is on the cross and they hand Him a jar of sour wine. So they filled a sponge get this full of sour wine on a hyssop branch. It s another interesting connection to hyssop. Robby, what does this have to do with David in Psalm 51? Well I m glad you asked. What David is saying is this, when he says cleanse me with hyssop, this is what he s saying, I want you to cleanse me with blood. He s saying I want you to look at me based on the innocent animal that was sacrificed in my place in order to provide the blood by which I will offer up the cleansing of my sin that I committed. I want you to look upon that animal in my place. And David is
saying, I want to be cleansed with blood. Friends, the Lord Jesus Christ is the only way we have forgiveness of sins. Without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins. Christ is the only basis by which we have access to God s mercy and that s what David is saying here. Let me ask you. Have you found mercy today? Have you had your sins forgiven because maybe you re in this place and saying, I haven t done anything as despicable as David, or maybe you re saying, I ve done something more despicable. You re never beyond the reach of God. There is mercy for you today in the Lord Jesus Christ. Not only do we see in the text that he says, Cleanse me from sin, secondly he says, Create in me a pure heart. Look at it, verse 10. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. (Psalm 51:10 ESV) David is praying here for restoration. Circle the word create. It s an amazing word. That word create is the same word that s used in Genesis chapters 1 and 2 when God describes the creation of the world. Some people are reading chronologically the Bible right now and you just got through Genesis so what s amazing is you see that God created everything get this out of nothing. It s the word Ex Nihilo. So David, what are you asking? Get this. David is asking for a miracle here. He s saying, God, create in me out of nothing a clean heart. The heart in the Old Testament is the mind and basically what he s saying here is this. The mind get this is a system of filing cabinets that hold segments of your life in your soul. So the mind files away like a filing system everything you have done or thought or seen or tasted or touched in your soul. So Robby, how do these things enter into our bodies? They enter through our senses. They enter through our sight, through sound, through touch, through smell, through the things we see. That s why Job said, I m going to make a covenant, God, not to look at another woman. Why? Because he knew the eye was the gate to the soul. Men, let me speak to you for a second. Men are visual. Women are emotional. Women are visual too but women are more emotional. Men are visual. Men, one of the reasons you need to abstain from pornography is because those images will be burned into your soul. You can t remove them. Like fruit punch on a white shirt, it tarnishes and blemishes your soul. What David here is this, I want you to create. I have been stained. I need you to create in me a clean heart. I can t do this myself. I can t re- write my own life. I can t restore my own soul. I can t renew my life. You have to do this for me. The filing system is filled with sins that I can t remove. So David is saying, God, you and you alone are the only one that can do this for me. The Room, I want to read it to you. In that place between wakefulness and dreams, I found myself in the room. There were no distinguishing features except for one wall covered with small index card files. I want you to picture it. They were like the ones in the library with lists of titles and subjects and authors in alphabetical order. But these files, which stretched from floor to ceiling, seemingly endless in every direction, had very different headings. As I drew near the wall of files, the first one to catch my attention was the one that said Girls that I had liked. I opened it up and began flipping through the cards but I quickly shut it in shock realizing that I recognized all the names on the files. This room was filled with small files and it was a crude catalog system of my entire life, He said. Here were written the actions of my every moment big and small in every detail my memory couldn t even match. A sense of wonder and curiosity came over me. Also a sense of horror stirred within me as I began to randomly look through these files. Sometimes I even looked over my shoulder, he said, just to see if anyone was in the room. A file named Friends was right next to the one that said Friends that I have betrayed. Titles ranged from the mundane to the weird. Books I have read, Lies I have told, Comfort I have given, Jokes I have heard. Some were even hilarious things I ve yelled at my little brother. Others I couldn t
laugh at, things I have done in my anger, things I had muttered under my breath to my parents. It never ceased to surprise me by the context of the filing system. Often there were many more cards than I had expected. Each one was written with my own handwriting and each one was signed with my own signature. When I pulled out the file marked TV shows that I watched, I was overwhelmed by its contents. The cards were packed tightly together. It looked like they went on for 2 to 3 yards and I shut it shamed not so much in the quality of the shows but more in the vast time that I spent and in the file that it represented. When I came to a file marked Lustful thoughts, I felt a chill run through my body. I pulled out the file only an inch not willing to test its size to draw out a card. I shuddered of its content and closed it back. I felt sick at this point. I was dominated by horror. One thought dominated my mind. No one must ever see this room. No one must ever come in here. I must destroy all these cards. He said, In an insane frenzy, I yanked out the first card file. I had to empty it. I had to burn it but I didn t know how to do it. So I began pounding it on the floor but I couldn t dislodge a single card from it. I became desperate and I eventually pulled out one card only to find that it was strong as steel when I tried to tear it. Defeated and utterly helpless, I returned the file to its slot. Leaning my forehead against the wall, I let out a long, self- pitying sigh. Then I saw it. The file that said People I have shared the gospel with. The handle was brighter than all those around. It was newer and almost unused. I pulled on its handle and a small box fell out 3 inches long. I could count the cards one hand. Then the tears came and I began to weep, sobs so deep that they hurt me. They started in my stomach and they shook all through my body. I fell on my knees and I cried. I cried with overwhelming shame. The rows of the file shelf swirled in my tear filled eyes. No one must ever see this room. I must lock it up and hide the key. But then as I pushed away the tears, I saw Him. Oh no, no Him, anybody but Jesus. And then Jesus walked into the room. He began to open the card files. I couldn t bear to watch His response. And in the moments I could not even look at His face, I saw sorrow deeper than my own in His eyes. He seemed to intuitively go to the wrong boxes. Why couldn t He have read every other one? Finally He turned and looked to me across the room and looked at me with pity in His eyes and I dropped my head. I covered my face with my hands and I began to cry. He walked over and He put His arm around me. He could have said a million things but He didn t say anything. He just cried. Then He got up and went back to the wall of files. Starting at one end of the room, He took out one file after another and He began to sign His name over mine and I began to shout, No! I rushed over to Him, No, no! You can t do this. But there it was in such rich red, so dark, so live. His name, Jesus, covered my name. It was written in His blood. He gently took the card back. He smiled a sad smile and began to sign more cards. I think I ve never seen how or understood how quickly He could have done that but then I heard the last card file shut. Then He walked over to my side. He placed His hand around my shoulder and He said, It is finished. And then He stood up and He walked out of the room not locking the door because there were still more cards to be written. Friends, aren t you amazed that the final chapter, the final card of your life is yet to be written? And I think, like David, it s amazing that we have a God who is merciful to us. Friends, listen to me. If David would have died after sinning with Bathsheba and killing Uriah, we would have remembered this man for the rest of eternity as someone who failed God. But oh, we thank God for His mercy, that through repentance and faith, we come to Him and He gives us a second chance. David goes on to be remembered as a man after God s own heart. Let me ask you, I wonder what God could do with you if you completely surrendered your life to Him through repentance and forgiveness of your sin, through belief in Christ. What could God do with you? Aren t we glad for a merciful Savior? Aren t we glad for a gracious God today?