SUNDAY SERMON - What Is Godly Sorrow? | Psalm 51 (Part 1) examines David's confession after Nathan confronted him regarding adultery with Bathsheba and Uriah's murder. The speaker distinguishes objective justification by grace from subjective assurance, requiring four steps: asking based on God's character, confessing full severity, petitioning for restoration, and possessing a broken heart. True godly sorrow arises from loving God, viewing sin as an assault on His character rather than just earthly consequences. Unlike worldly grief focused on self-preservation, this contrition vindicates God's judgment while accepting all ramifications through Christ's finished work. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, WAV2VEC2_ASR_BASE_960H, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.01, and large-v3-turbo
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Seeking Faithful Knowledge00:03:04
Hey guys, real quick before we get started, I have a small request.
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Thanks.
I'll read our text for us in its entirety.
When I finish reading the text, I'll say, This is the word of the Lord, at which point I would appreciate if you would respond by saying, Thanks be to God.
One final time, our text for today is Psalm chapter 51, verses 1 through 5.
The Bible says this.
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.
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.
This is the word of the Lord.
All right, please be seated and join me as I briefly pray once more.
Father, we do pray that indeed through the preaching of your word today, your people would arrive at a greater, more accurate, more biblical, more faithful knowledge of who you are, of what you've done, and of what it is that you now require from us as a proper, that is, a right response.
And Father, we pray that this knowledge of who you are, what you've done, and what you require, that it would not serve as an end in itself, but rather the necessary means.
Propelling your people into a right response of love.
That our minds would be filled with the right knowledge of your truth, so that our hearts would be fueled with a proper and full affection.
That our hearts would love the God that our minds have come to know.
Father, as we love you from the platform of a right knowledge of who you are, Father, we pray that our love for you would not just be in worship and in adoration, it would not just be in words.
Or in theory, but that it would be in deed, in action, in our overall manner of life, that as we love you, we would seek to do that which accords with real, genuine love for you.
That is, we would seek to obey your commandments.
We pray these things ultimately that you might be glorified in all the earth, but we also pray these things for the good of those people that you're saving across the globe, in our city, and perhaps if you would be so kind, even in this very room, especially among our children.
We pray these things in Jesus' name.
Amen.
I want to provide some context for Psalm 51 at the outset of the sermon today.
In your notes, I've written the following Psalm 51 is another psalm that is pinpointed as to its exact historical origin.
Administering Divine Grace00:04:19
The heading of the psalm states this To the choir master, a psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet went to him after he had gone into Bathsheba.
Uriah was murdered, his wife Bathsheba was defiled, and her baby was sentenced by God to die.
All this is clearly seen in 2 Samuel chapter 11.
And yet, when the prophet Nathan confronts David, he says this The Lord also has put away your sin.
You shall not die.
That's 2 Samuel chapter 12, verse 13.
It is true, therefore, that God put away David's sin.
But we must recognize that God did this at great cost to himself.
See, God sees from the time of David down the centuries to the death of his son Christ Jesus.
Who would die in David's place?
Romans chapter 3, verse 23 through 26 says this For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God and are justified by his grace as a gift.
No one is justified as the wage for their work.
The work that you and I have done is sin, and the wages of sin is death.
So the only wage that you and I deserve is the wage that we have merited by means of our work.
And the work that you and I have faithfully and sufficiently performed is.
Is the work of sin.
It is the work of offending God.
It's the work of rebellion.
So, any man who wants to reap the wage for his work is ultimately asking God for help.
However, there is an alternative.
You can receive wages for your work, which is death for your sin, or you can receive the gift that is the wage of grace.
That's what Romans chapter 3, verse 23 through 26 says.
We're justified, that is, We are pardoned, we are declared by God in His divine courtroom as righteous and guiltless of all charges levied against us.
We are declared righteous, justified, by what merit?
On what basis?
On the basis of human work?
No.
But what about the basis of human will?
Justified by grace, but you have to choose to receive that grace?
No.
The scripture is clear it is neither by the work of man nor the will of man.
But by the grace of God alone.
So we are justified by His grace as a gift, so that no man can boast, as Ephesians says, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.
So we're saved by grace, but what is the source of that grace?
How can God administer grace to rebels like you and I without compromising His perfect justice?
God can administer to you and I the grace of God.
Which we do not deserve without compromising his own righteousness and justice on the basis by means of the finished work of Jesus Christ.
The wages of sin is death, but Jesus died.
He fulfilled those wages.
Jesus took upon himself your sin and he took from God what your sin deserved, namely your death.
He took your sin and he took your death.
And through faith by grace, We take his righteousness and the wages of righteousness, which is eternal life.
You and I receive salvation, eternal life, eternal fellowship and communion with the Father, the Son, and the Spirit.
That reward, that wage is ours because it is the wage for righteousness.
And you are righteous because you have received, not by your own work, but by grace through faith, you have received the righteousness of Christ.
And so through faith, we receive Christ's righteousness and therefore the wages of righteousness, which is life.
And Christ, by grace, received our sin and therefore the wages of our sin, which is death.
Authority Above Kings00:07:03
This is the great exchange.
This is double imputation.
This is the gospel of Jesus Christ.
And it is by this means, by the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, that the prophet Nathan was able to say, with all fidelity, with all truthfulness, and all confidence, that he was able to approach, to confront King David at that time, who had radically sinned and offended the holiness of God, and yet he could say, without blinking an eye, without any ounce of guile or deception, he could say to David,
Your sin has been put away.
And you shall not die.
Such a profound thing that the prophet Nathan says to David.
He says, You shall not die.
And now I think the profundity of that statement is lost on us because we forget the context and we're not familiar with the culture.
But the reality is that David was the king of Israel.
So the prophet Nathan is confronting a king who is seated on his throne with all of his guards surrounding him.
And yet, here's the reality of all kings.
All kings are ultimately underneath a higher authority, namely the law of God.
And so, although David was king in Israel, the anointed king, anointed by the prophet Samuel himself, although David was God's chosen king in Israel, David is not superior to God himself.
There is a king greater than David, the king of all kings, and the Lord of all lords.
And even if a king is mighty as David, Is to transgress the King of Kings law, the penalty is death.
So when the prophet Nathan says to David, The Lord has put away your sin, you shall not die, this is an immense relief to David.
David doesn't laugh at this statement.
There are many kings in our day that if a prophet were to go to them and say, The Lord has put away your sin, you shall not die, they would mock that prophet.
I shall not die.
I was never threatened to begin with.
Of course, I shall not die.
You can't kill me.
No one can harm me.
Right?
That's the way that Herod thought.
And then God struck him dead and he was eaten by worms.
That's the way Nebuchadnezzar thought.
Look at this great kingdom that I have established by my power, by my strength.
And the Lord caused him to have a depraved mind and to get on all fours and to drink the dew of the grass and to eat locusts and insects and to behave as a wild beast for seven years until he is humbled to the point where Nebuchadnezzar himself.
When he's restored to his right mind and restored to the kingship, he says, Surely God is sovereign.
He exalts who he wills and he humbles who he wills.
There is a king greater than I. Nebuchadnezzar was the greatest king in that day.
Babylon was a superpower in the same way that the United States of America has been at least a superpower back when we had courage and things like that.
But in the same way, whether it be Babylon or whether it be Rome, Whether it be King Herod with Rome, or whether it be America and the President of the United States, the reality is this that there is a king above them all.
And he has a law.
And he will exact justice.
And there is no escaping his justice.
And the wages of sin is death.
And more particularly, the wage for the specific sin of adultery was death and is death.
It is still the law of God.
And it is still relevant today.
David deserved to die.
And that's precisely what Nathan says to him.
Nathan says, It doesn't matter that you're king of Israel.
It doesn't matter your status.
It doesn't matter your authority.
There is an authority greater than yours.
You have transgressed that authority, and that authority has a law, and his law says that you deserve to die.
You have murdered Uriah, you have defiled his wife, and committed adultery.
You are a transgressor of the law of God, and the wages of sin is death.
And so, Nathan would have been well within his rights as a prophet of God to confront even the king of that day and say, This is who you are, this is what you've done, off with his head.
Now, whether David's generals and soldiers would have responded to Nathan and actually carried it out is another thing.
But Nathan would have been righteous in saying so.
You have transgressed God's law.
The penalty is death.
And the king is not immune to justice.
The king is not above the law.
And yet, Nathan says to the king, The Lord has put away your sin.
He confronts the king, as we'll see later in the sermon, he confronts the king and says, Your sin is not minuscule.
Your sin is not small.
It is a very, very great sin.
So, this is not David or Nathan, rather, backpedaling.
I want you to sense this.
Nathan is not saying, oh, snap, maybe I came on too strong.
I just confronted the king of Israel.
He's pretty high and mighty.
He could have my head.
So, let me go ahead and backpedal here after the confrontation, after calling him out for his sin.
Oh, but by the way, the Lord forgives you, and, oh, king, you're above the law, and it's not going to cost you your life.
That's not what Nathan's doing.
This statement does not reveal Nathan's cowardice.
This statement reveals Nathan's understanding of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
The Lord has put away your sin and you shall not die.
Why?
Because Nathan's afraid?
Because Nathan is afraid to carry out the justice that God's law demands even on the kings of this earth?
No.
No, because Nathan understands the gospel of Jesus Christ that someone already died for David's sin.
Nathan's not saying, hey, the wages of sin actually aren't death.
God's decided that that's a little bit too severe.
And he's also not saying, hey, the wages of sin are death for your average Joe, but you're the king.
You're above the law.
No, Nathan is saying the wages of sin are death for anyone and everyone.
You, O king, are not excluded.
And yet that death has already been paid.
Someone has already, in fact, died.
It's Jesus Christ.
Who was crucified, the scripture says, before the foundations of the earth.
And God, in his mercy, is looking forward from you, David, to the time of his son and the death that he will die in your place.
The Lord has put away your sin, but he has not put away your sin lightly.
God's Standard of Goodness00:04:07
That's what I want you to get.
The Lord has put away your sin, but it was not an easy thing for him to do.
Well, he's God, he can do whatever he wants.
No, he can't.
Did you know God can't do whatever he wants?
The scripture says God cannot lie.
There are things that God cannot do.
Because, not because He's not God, but there are things that God cannot do precisely because He is God.
Because He is holy and righteous and just.
And one of the things that God cannot do, in addition to the fact that God cannot lie, well, God cannot do that which is evil.
But you know, one of the things that is evil?
One thing that is evil is overlooking evil.
Turning a blind eye to wickedness is a wicked thing to do.
Not carrying out justice is actually evil.
So, if we think of good and evil as two opposites and we pit them against one another, Paul Washer once said long ago, and I liked the quote, he said, One of the most terrifying truths in the universe is this God is good.
So, that's not terrifying.
That's what I want to hear from my pastor every single week.
I don't want to hear about the justice of God.
I want to hear about his goodness.
But when we begin to flesh out the scriptural and logical implications of the goodness of God, this is what we find.
This is what we very quickly discover.
In light of God's goodness, part of being good is punishing all that which is a threat and contradiction to goodness.
See, you cannot be good and tolerate evil.
You cannot be good and allow wickedness to have free reign.
That's not goodness.
Part of the goodness of a father is protecting his children.
From what?
From evil.
And part of protection is.
At times, it is to vanquish evil.
Not just to some, we always, you know, we think in these superhero idealistic terms, right?
So there's a criminal, right?
Well, why did the police officer just shoot the gun out of his hand?
Like, why it hurt?
Well, because it's not Halloween, because we don't live in a maple, because this is real life, right?
Like, that's why.
You shoot for the kill because we're human beings.
And the chief way to subdue evil is to actually vanquish evil.
You know why in Gotham City everything's under distress all the time?
Because Batman never finishes the job.
That's why.
He subdues Joker, but then he never gives the death blow.
And he's supposed to be the dark knight.
He's supposed to be the guy who's okay with getting his hands dirty.
Then kill Joker.
You're putting him in prison, he keeps getting out.
Finish the job.
You want to actually be good, right?
So, goodness as a guardian of the city, goodness is to protect the city.
Well, to ultimately protect the city from evil, you can't just subdue evil.
You can't just block evil.
You need to vanquish and utterly defeat evil.
And this is the very thing that God has promised to do in His goodness.
In God's goodness, He has promised that He will vanquish all that which is a contradiction to goodness.
And the standard and definition of goodness is God Himself.
Right?
So there's not some kind of universal standard of goodness that stands outside of God Himself, that God is God because God is living up.
To this standard of goodness.
No, God Himself is goodness.
He is all that is good, and He only does that which is good.
So God upholds goodness by upholding His own essence, His own character.
God is the standard of all that is good, and God only does that which is in line with His own nature.
And part of what is in line with God's nature of goodness in doing acts of goodness is vanquishing and destroying anything that is outside of goodness.
Confessing Sins for Peace00:14:21
Punishing the wicked, therefore, is a good thing to do.
That's the point.
To punish the wicked is not something other than goodness, but it is precisely one of the attributes of goodness.
Punishing the wicked, aka executing justice, preserving justice, upholding justice, is what a good person does.
So, the goodness of God is, in fact, one of the most terrifying attributes.
And so, God's pardon of David is not simply the Lord has put away your sin, aka because he's God, he gets to do whatever he wants, and he's decided to forget about your sin.
Now, if God ever did that, he would cease to be God.
He would not be good.
His justice would be compromised, and therefore his goodness would be compromised.
God doesn't put away people's sin lightly.
In fact, that's one of the indictments, one of the.
The corrections and rebukes that's offered to the false prophets in the days of Jeremiah.
You have healed the wounds of my people lightly.
Meaning what?
You haven't actually dealt with their sin.
You haven't dealt with sin in the manner of how severe, how serious it actually is.
You have healed the wounds of my people lightly.
You're putting band aids on a gaping wound.
All right, you're doing the Monty Python, it's just a flesh wound.
No, you're missing an arm, it's a big deal.
You've healed the wounds of my people lightly, saying peace, peace, when there is no peace.
Ultimately, when it comes to peace, the greatest aspect of peace, kind of peace that we need is peace with God, not peace between nations, although that's important, not even peace within our family or with our friends or peace in our marriage or peace in our homes with our children, but the greatest enmity.
Absence of peace that you and I possess apart from Jesus Christ and His finished work on our behalf is a lack of peace with God.
That's your greatest problem.
The greatest problem of humanity is that God is their enemy.
And guess what?
In a war between man and God, man never wins, he does not stand even an ounce of hope.
We don't have peace with God.
We need reconciliation with God, we need forgiveness from God.
We need to be restored in right fellowship and relationship with God.
And God, here's the problem we have sinned, and God is good.
Which means, in his goodness and therefore justice, he cannot lightly heal the sin of his people.
He cannot merely put away our sin.
So, when Nathan says to King David, The Lord has put away your sin, you shall not die, this is not an exception made for David because of his kingship.
And this is not representing a light healing from the Lord.
That the Lord is sovereign and he gets to do whatever he wants, even if it contradicts his attributes of justice and goodness.
No, what it represents is a declaration of the gospel.
The Lord has put away your sin and you shall not die, is Nathan, in essence, saying, Jesus died in your place.
Nathan is preaching law to David in his confrontation and then.
He heals the wounds inflicted by the law of God, not lightly, but sufficiently with the gospel.
You are the man.
You have committed this heinous sin, this radical cosmic treason against the God of heaven, a king far above yourself.
That's law.
But then he begins to apply the salt, the healing balm of the gospel.
The law inflicts the wound.
Ultimately, sin causes the wound.
The law reveals the wound that's already there from sin.
And then the gospel begins to heal it.
You are the man.
You deserve to die.
Law.
And yet, the Lord has put away your sin.
You shall not die.
Gospel.
This is the gospel of Jesus Christ.
And so, what we see in Nathan's confrontation in 2 Samuel 12, verse 13, we see Nathan's confrontation of King David when he says, The Lord has put away your sin.
You shall not die.
Ultimately, what we're seeing is two things.
I want you to think of it like this there's the objective theological truth, and then the subjective personal reality.
So, the objective theological principle that we see when Nathan says, The Lord has put away your sin, you shall not die, it is the objective theological principle of justification by grace alone, through faith alone, and Christ alone.
Nathan's statement, The Lord has put away your sin, you shall not die, it is the objective reality.
The reason he can make this statement with confidence and with no guile is because he is making it on the basis of the objective theological reality of Romans chapter 3, verses 23 through 26, that Christ died for David.
However, what we see in Psalm 51, our primary text, is not the objective theological reality of how God, in fact, was able to put away David's sin and allow him to live without compromising his own justice.
That's the doctrine of justification.
That's Romans 3.
But what we see in Psalm 51 is a subjective reality of what David felt and what David did in order to lay hold of that grace that is found.
By justification.
So the Lord has put away your sin, you shall not die.
In an objective theological sense, that's Romans 3 justification.
But Psalm 51 is the process, the interpersonal process, the gut wrenching emotions and feelings, and the prayers and the confessions, the clawing to the table of mercy that we see David experience.
It's the subjective process.
The reality of how David comes to feel forgiven.
How is David forgiven?
How is he forgiven?
Romans 3 The Lord has put away your sin, you shall not die because of Christ dying in your place.
That's how David is forgiven.
But Psalm 51 shows us how David comes to feel forgiven.
And both are important.
Now, one I would argue is more important than the other the reality of forgiveness.
How is David, in fact, forgiven?
By grace alone, through faith alone, and Christ alone.
The doctrine of justification, Romans chapter 3.
But how does David come to a sense of interpersonal confidence and a sense of feeling forgiven?
Assurance of forgiveness.
That's Psalm 51.
So, Psalm 51 is not outlining for us the doctrine of justification.
We have other texts for that.
Psalm 51 is outlining for us the process of how a man comes to lay hold of the subjective reality of justification.
You're justified by the work of Christ alone.
But there are many people in the church today who are justified in an objective sense because of Christ's work, but they don't have any confidence, any sense of assurance that they're justified in their own subjective emotions.
There are people, in other words, who are forgiven but don't feel forgiven.
Because although Christ does the work for our forgiveness, there is a work that you and I must do in order to come to that sense of confidence, the feeling of forgiveness.
Christ does the work to accomplish our actual forgiveness in objective terms, but we have a work to do to arrive at the confidence of feeling forgiven.
And there are many Christians who do not do that work.
And so, although they are forgiven in an objective sense, they do not feel forgiven in the subjective sense.
So, there's nothing that man does to accomplish the forgiveness of God objectively, but there is something that man does in order to come to that place of assurance and the feelings of forgiveness.
And if you, while knowing in your head theologically that you're forgiven by grace through faith in Christ alone, if you know this theological truth, but you do not feel loved by God, you do not feel forgiven,
your conscience is still overburdened with a sense of guilt that you can't quite get rid of, that you can't quite absolve, it's probably because you have not done the work of Psalm 51 to arrive at the subjective feelings and confidence of God.
Forgiveness.
So, what is that work?
I believe that in Psalm 51 we see four clear steps.
I'm sure that we could look at the text and come up with five or perhaps six, but I think that at least very, very explicitly, very clearly, there are at least four steps that David takes in coming to the place of the subjective confidence and assurance of forgiveness.
Again, I'm laboring the point because I don't want anybody to walk away believing a heresy.
These are not four steps in Psalm 51 that David takes in order to actually, in objective terms, earn God's forgiveness.
David gets God's forgiveness.
He receives it objectively, not by any steps that he took, but by the steps that Jesus took to the cross.
The steps that Jesus took to Calvary is what earns and merits David's forgiveness in objective theological terms.
But there are steps that David takes in Psalm 51 that you and I should follow the model that he sets.
That we also must take not to earn forgiveness in objective categories, but to feel the assurance and confidence of that forgiveness in subjective categories.
Here are the four steps.
Number one, we must ask for forgiveness.
Well, I'm already forgiven.
That's what you've been laboring, Joel.
You've been laboring the point that we're saved and therefore forgiven by grace alone, through faith alone, and Christ alone.
That's right.
In an objective sense, any Christian, if you're truly in Christ, And born again, any Christian who asks God for forgiveness is asking for that which they already have.
That's true.
And you still need to ask.
But I already have it.
Why ask for that which I already have received?
You're not asking to receive it in an objective sense.
You're asking so that God might remind you in a subjective sense that that forgiveness is yours.
You're not asking to be forgiven because God withholds forgiveness.
From his children until they pray a prayer, a petition asking for forgiveness.
Right?
So we do a prayer of confession.
I'll use this as an example.
Every Lord's Day in our liturgy, we do a prayer of confession.
That is not meant to convey that when you walk in here on the Lord's Day, that until we get to that prayer of confession, that you haven't actually been forgiven.
Right?
Because I always give the assurance of pardon from 1 John 1, verse 9.
He, if we confess our sins, if being a conditional prepositional phrase, if we confess our sins, then that's the implication, then he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us of all unrighteousness.
And so, if we're not careful, we can exegete that text in 1 John 1, verse 9, and say there's a condition for being forgiven and being cleansed from all unrighteousness.
Meaning, until I meet the condition, I am not forgiven and I am not cleansed of all righteousness.
So, until I confess my sins, I haven't been forgiven.
That is not what 1 John is saying.
It's not.
No, what 1 John 1, verse 9, is saying is that there is a subjective sense of feeling forgiven.
I don't have time to go into all this today, but I've written a book on 1 John, and I go into great lengths on 1 John 1, verse 9, talking about the reality of if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse.
That's actually a past progressive verb of cleansing, meaning you've already been cleansed, and you're being cleansed.
But what's actually taking place is you, in the confession of your sin, coming to a new and restored assurance and confidence of that forgiveness and cleansing.
So, what I don't want you to take away from this is that we must confess our sins, and until we do, we're not forgiven.
No, the Christian, upon the moment of conversion, is forgiven of all their past, present, and future sins.
So, the moment that Christ saved you, All the sins, not just that you have already committed and that you are committing, but all the sins, future tense, that you haven't even yet committed, all those sins you've already been forgiven for at the moment of conversion.
So, the moment that any man comes to Christ and is born again, receives a new heart by the power of the Holy Spirit and the process of regeneration, at that very moment of conversion, all your sin, past, present, and future, is forgiven.
Revealing Guilt and Forgiveness00:15:07
It's all forgiven.
So, when we ask for forgiveness in an objective sense, an objective theological sense, we are, as Christians, asking for forgiveness.
We are asking for that which we have already received.
And yet, it is vital, as David demonstrates in Psalm 51, that we still ask.
Although we have already received the forgiveness of God by grace through faith in Christ alone at the moment of conversion, yet, moving forward in the Christian life, when we falter, when we fail, when we sin, It is imperative that we ask for that which we've already received.
That we ask God for the forgiveness that He's already granted.
Because there's something in the relationship.
There's something in the prayer itself.
There's something in the pleading, something in the petition, something in the confession, something in the dialogue between man and God that does not accomplish something objectively, but it does radically change something in our hearts subjectively.
And it matters.
It matters.
So, Romans 3, that's the objective reality of how the Lord puts away our sin.
And the objective reality of why God, without compromising his justice, does not have to put us to death, even though we are sinners and the wages of sin is, in fact, death.
That's the objective reality.
But Psalm 51 is the subjective reality, a descriptive text where we see David, as it were, wrestling with God for assurance, wrestling with God for pardon.
Wrestling with God to be reassured once more that he's a man after God's own heart and that God loves him and forgives him and will never leave him or forsake him.
What does David do in order to come to this sense of confidence and assurance?
Number one, he asks for forgiveness.
Number two, he confesses, not merely confesses his sin, but what we see in Psalm 51 is he confesses without any minimization.
Without any disclaimers, without any excuses, he confesses the severity of his sin.
So, number one, he asks for forgiveness.
Number two, he confesses the severity of his sin.
Number three, he doesn't just ask to be forgiven and confess the severity of his sin, but he also asks to be restored and preserved.
It's one thing to ask, Would you forgive me and would you cleanse me?
But it is another to say, And would you also restore me and, moving forward, preserve me?
And we'll get into that next week.
And number four, he possesses what the Bible calls, and what we see in Psalm 51 explicitly, a broken and contrite heart.
He possesses contrition.
Contrition, which I think is one of the most absent virtues in our culture and in our churches today.
Contrition.
That is a profound humility and brokenness.
Over our sin.
A profound realization of our sin and the severity that it actually is and the great offense that it was against the God who we love.
So, David, number one, asks for forgiveness.
Number two, confesses the severity, the full severity without excuses of his sin.
Number three, he doesn't just ask to be forgiven, but he asks to be restored and preserved.
And number four, as he does all of this, he possesses a broken and contrite heart.
Heart.
Now, we'll look at number three and number four the plead, the petition for restoration and perseverance, and the possession of a broken and contrite heart.
We'll look at those two, number three and number four, in the second half of Psalm 51 next Lord's Day.
But for today, we're going to look at the first two steps that David takes, which again is the petition for forgiveness and the confession of the full severity of his sin.
We'll look at that in the first half of Psalm 51, again, namely.
Verses 1 through 5.
So let's look at verse 1.
David is pleading for forgiveness.
He's asking God to have mercy.
He's asking God to do this not according to anything inherent in David and what he might deserve, but according to the character of God, namely his steadfast love, in accordance with his mercy.
To forgive him, to grant mercy, to deal with him mercifully and not justly, not with what he deserves, but mercifully, and to blot out, to erase, to cleanse his transgression, his sin.
This is what God has promised to do for all of his people.
And we see this promise multiple times in the New Testament, but we see it in Exodus chapter 34 very, very clearly.
Exodus 34, verses 6 through 7, God said to Moses, This, the Lord, the Lord, The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.
See, that's the very language that David is using in his prayer, in his petition to God in Psalm 51.
We see this language first in Exodus 34.
The Lord, who is the Lord?
The Lord, the Lord, he is a God who is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands.
Some translations that I prefer to the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity and transgression.
Again, that's the second part of what David's asking for in Psalm 51.
Verse 1, blot out my transgression.
Well, who is the Lord according to Exodus 34?
He's the one who forgives iniquity and transgression and sin.
But it finishes by saying, Who will by no means clear the guilty.
Or some translations say, By no means pardon the guilty.
So, what David is doing in the very first verse of our text, Psalm 51, verse 1, is he is doing the first of these four steps in trying to achieve, lay hold of.
Of the subjective feelings of confidence and assurance of having been forgiven.
And the first step is this asking for forgiveness, asking for mercy.
And David asks for this mercy and he pleads for this forgiveness, not on the basis of his own person, not on the basis of his own words or his own deeds or what he might deserve, but rather what David appeals to in his petition.
The petition is asking for forgiveness, asking for mercy.
And David makes this request on the basis.
Of God's character.
Not his, not David's character, but he makes his request with confidence on the basis of not who David is and not what David has just done, but rather on the basis of who God is and what God promises to do.
That is to be steadfast in his love, steadfast in his faithfulness, and to have mercy to the thousandth generation of those who fear him.
That's what David is appealing to.
He's appealing to the mercy of God.
This is what God had promised to do for all his people in Exodus chapter 34.
Just as Moses understood, David also knew that there were guilty sinners, because we see this at the end of Exodus 34, that there were guilty sinners who would not be forgiven.
Their iniquity would not be blotted out, their transgressions would not be put away.
And yet, there were also guilty sinners who, by some mysterious work of redemption, would not be counted as guilty.
But would in fact be forgiven.
So David's prayer in Psalm 51 is his way of laying hold of that mystery of mercy.
As New Testament believers, we know immensely more of this mystery of redemption than David did.
We know Christ.
However, we lay hold of this mercy in precisely the same manner which David did.
See, Christ has purchased our forgiveness, he has paid the price in full.
But Christ's finished work on Calvary does not replace our asking for forgiveness.
Instead, Christ's work of redemption is the basis for our asking for forgiveness.
It is the reason that we can ask with confidence, knowing that the answer will be yes.
So, in Psalm 51, verse 1, the first thing we see David do, the first in these four steps, is that David asked for forgiveness.
And he asked with confidence because he asked with an appeal to God's character, God's mercy, God's steadfast love, God's steadfast faithfulness.
David is echoing the very words of Moses when the Lord revealed to Moses his own character.
David is saying, I am asking for forgiveness with confidence because I'm asking on the basis of your own character.
And I know your character because you revealed yourself to Moses.
You revealed yourself to Moses as one who is steadfast in love, as one who is steadfast in faithfulness.
And yet, in your revelation of your steadfast love to Moses, you still said that you will by no means pardon the guilty.
So David knows this.
He knows, I know there are guilty sinners.
Who will not receive God's forgiveness.
And yet, I also know that there are guilty sinners by some means of mysterious redemption will, in fact, receive the forgiveness of God on the basis of his mercy and not on the basis of what we deserve.
That's what David knows.
And he knows, to be fair, a bit more than that.
He knows that there is a Messiah, that someone is coming, that there is a King even greater than him who will one day come, and that it is through this King.
That the mercy of God will flow to all those who trust in Him.
You and I, this mystery of redemption has been completely revealed to us.
We see it clearly this side of the cross in Christ.
We see it in His person.
We see it in His work, in His life, in His death, in His resurrection.
The mystery of redemption has been revealed to New Testament Christians through the work of Jesus and the writing of the apostles.
But the point is this David was saved the very same way we were.
We have more knowledge of how we're saved, but the way in which the source of salvation remains the same.
David was saved by grace through faith in Christ looking forward to the cross.
You and I are saved by grace through faith in Christ looking back to the cross.
And for those of us who are looking back, we look back with more clarity.
But it's not the clarity, it's not the size of our faith or even necessarily the clarity.
Of the eyes of faith, but it is the object of our faith that saves.
It's the object.
And David was looking forward to the very same object.
He had faith in the same person, namely Christ.
And therefore, David was forgiven.
But what we see once more in Psalm 51 is not just how David was forgiven, but the process by which he lays hold subjectively of this reality of forgiveness.
And you and I, whether this side of the cross or before the cross, as David was, That has not changed.
The process by which we lay hold of the subjective feelings of forgiveness are still the same.
And the first step is to ask.
We ask on the basis of not our works, not our person, but God's character that He is merciful.
And therefore, we ask with confidence that the answer to our request for forgiveness will, in fact, be yes.
The second thing, and that's all we're going to look at for today, is the first two steps asking for forgiveness.
We've covered that.
That's verse one.
And Confessing our sin.
That's verses 3 through 5.
So the second thing now is confession.
David confesses the full severity of his sin.
In verse 3 of our text, he says, For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me.
David's sin, according to David, is ever before him.
In other words, the tape of his failure keeps playing on an unstoppable loop.
David is haunted by his sin.
Meaning, David has not yet found a way, and I think we're meant to assume, I think what's implied in verse 3 is that he has not even attempted to find a way to somehow forget his sin.
David has not forgotten his sin.
David has not found a way, nor do I believe he has even attempted to try to find a way to somehow distract himself from his egregious rebellion and betrayal of the God that he loves.
David is haunted.
He is profoundly and continually and incessantly aware of his sin.
My sin is ever before me.
I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me.
So, the first thing that I think we see a principle, or I should say, a characteristic of Christian confession is that the Christian is torn apart by their sin, the Christian is grieved.
Paul writes, he talks about godly grief and worldly grief, godly sorrow and worldly sorrow.
The Christian has a godly sorrow, a profound and deep godly grief over their sin.
The person who has never been plagued by their sin, that they've never been broken, and we'll get to this further next week when we speak of the doctrine of contrition.
But the person who is not contrite, that they've never been broken over their sin, They've never been grieved by their sin.
They've never said and never really even could say, as David said, I know my transgressions and my sin is ever before me.
That is a person who has never really been burdened by the reality of their sin.
Godly Sorrow Over Sin00:15:01
And a person who has never been burdened by the reality of their sin, I sincerely question the reality of their love for God.
Because that's precisely what causes us such grief.
That's the source of godly grief.
The source of godly sorrow is affection for God.
It is the man who loves God truly that is so truly broken over his sin.
The person who is not broken by their sin, the person who doesn't really deeply grieve their sin, the person whose sin is not ever before them is likely the person who has never come to truly love God.
And as we've already talked about in 1 John 4 19, the person who's never come to love God is a person who has likely never been loved by God.
We love because he first loved us.
So, God loves us, we love in response, and if we love God, we seek to obey God, and we might add further from Psalm 51, verse 3 if we're seeking to obey God out of love of God, because God first loved us, then when we fail to obey God, when we miss the mark, when we sin, when we transgress God's law, and therefore offend God, we are grieved.
We're grieved in all the ways that we offend God precisely because we love Him.
And we love him because he first loved us.
So, the first thing we see, the first characteristic of Christian confession, that is a confession of sin, is that the Christian does not seek to minimize the severity of their sin.
And the Christian is broken over their sin.
And the Christian cannot easily wave off, distract themselves from, or forget their sin.
But rather, the Christian, because of their profound affection for God and seeing their sin as an offense against the God they love, the Christian is haunted by their sin.
I say that to encourage and to comfort you.
If you are haunted by your sin, there is a sense in which that is good.
Now, for the Christian, David says, My sin is ever before me.
Now, really, what David means by that is, Thus far, my sin has been ever before me.
But for the Christian, there is a point at which the sin is no longer before us.
And it's no longer before us because it's no longer before God.
That the Lord has put away our sin, as Nathan said to David.
That the Lord has forgiven our iniquity.
And because we've been forgiven, because the Lord has put away our sin, we should no longer torture ourselves over the memory of it.
That we can forget our sin, but not in a way that makes light of sin.
That we forget our sin only after grieving it and receiving the assurance of pardon from it.
See, there are many who profess Christ today who have never really grieved their sin.
They put away their sin, but not biblically.
See, the biblical way to put away our sin is to have it first to plague us, first to haunt us, first our sin is ever before us, as David says in Psalm 51, verse 3.
See, a lot of us, we want to skip that.
We want to go right to 1 John 1 9.
We want to go right to Romans chapter 3.
We want to go right to the doctrine of justification, the objective theological reality that our sin has already been forgiven before we even committed it.
Right?
We received all the forgiveness we'll ever need at the point of conversion.
So before I even committed this sin, post conversion as a Christian, it was already forgiven.
But one of the marks of a Christian is that although this sin is not news for God, it is in fact news for me.
And so although God has already forgiven me of this sin, I am still haunted by it.
I am still broken over it.
And I want to go through the Subjective process of going before the Lord with a contrite and broken heart, with godly grief, godly sorrow, telling the Lord, I'm sorry.
I'm sorry for the ways that I betrayed you.
I'm sorry for the ways I've offended you.
And I'm sorry for the false accusation I've made about you.
Because, see, all sin, I've said this several times, but it bears saying once more all sin makes a statement about God.
When we sin, we are ultimately proclaiming something false.
About who God is.
When we sin, we're saying God's not sufficient.
He's not enough.
He's not good and great and glorious and gracious.
We're telling a lie about God.
When we covet, we're saying God has failed to be a provider.
He has not given me what I need.
Like Psalm 23 The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.
Well, when I want, that is, when I long for that which God has not given me and I long selfishly, In a carnal, fleshly way, what I'm ultimately saying is that God is not a good shepherd.
That God doesn't lead us beside still waters.
That He doesn't make us to lie down in green pastures.
And so I recognize, the Christian recognizes their sin as a personal assault against God, a lying accusation against His character.
To sin is to lie about God.
And for the Christian, to sin is to lie against the God you love.
It is to lie against the one we claim.
To love.
It is an offense.
It is a betrayal.
And so, for the Christian, although we've already been forgiven, when the Christian sins, although that sin is not news to God, and although God has known about that sin and already forgiven you, it is news to us as fallen and finite creatures.
And the Christian, therefore, should immediately begin to grieve over that sin, to have contrition, to be broken.
And there is a sense in which the Christian should cry out, as David does in Psalm 51, verse 3.
My transgressions, my sin, it's ever before me.
I'm grieved by it.
I'm plagued by it.
I'm haunted by it.
God, please forgive me.
So that's the first characteristic of contrition or confession is this sense of being broken over our sin.
Verse 4 of our text David says, Against you, you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight.
This does not mean that Uriah and Bathsheba were not sinned against by David and profoundly affected by his sin.
David didn't only sin against God.
Right?
I mean, you could just kind of hear Uriah from heaven saying, Really, David?
Against God and God only?
Because I kind of died because of your sin.
Seems like you kind of, at least in some way, sinned against me too.
I mean, Bathsheba saying, You took my husband from me, you defiled me, you led me into adultery, and my child died.
That's part of the story.
Part of the story is that the child that was conceived by David and Bathsheba.
Died after seven days.
And God was very clear in the way that he spoke to David, saying that the death of the child was a direct consequence of David's sin.
So there's a sense in which David sinned against Uriah, Bathsheba, and even this child.
Uriah died and so did the child.
And there's also an indirect sense, but still very real, that David sinned against the whole kingdom.
Because as the king of Israel, the king of God's nation, it falls to him to uphold righteousness.
And he failed to do so.
So, David, he says, I sinned against you and you only.
And you could almost just hear everyone.
If anyone was to overhear David's private prayer of confession before the Lord in Psalm 51, you would assume that just about everyone would be offended.
Against you and you only have I sinned.
And the whole kingdom of Israel would say, Nope.
Against God, you sinned.
Yeah, that's true.
And against pretty much everyone alive.
I don't know if there's anybody that you didn't sin against, David.
You've affected all of us.
You've compromised the whole kingdom.
You have sinned against all of us, and the consequences of your sin, although for some directly, like Uriah, and for some indirectly, like the kingdom, but everyone, whether direct or indirect, has been affected by the consequences of your sin.
And therefore, David, you have not only sinned against God, you sinned against everyone.
So, what does David mean?
It doesn't mean that he hasn't actually sinned against Uriah or Bathsheba or the child or the kingdom.
It simply means that David is so profoundly affected by his own sin against God, that's all that he can think of.
It simply means that David understood that what makes sin so truly heinous is that it is an offense against God.
See, when it comes to sin, hurting our fellow man by our sin is significant, but that is not the true horror of sin.
Ultimately, all sin is a direct assault against God Himself.
David fully acknowledges this reality by saying, Against you, you only have I sinned.
There is no attempt at self justification.
Verse 4 continues with David saying, So that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment.
See, God is justified and God is blameless.
If God chooses to damn David to hell, God will be righteous in doing so.
David does not seek to vindicate himself, he seeks to vindicate the character and righteousness of God.
This is God centered repentance.
This is the way that Christians should think and feel about their sin.
Against you and you only have I sinned, this is verse 4, and done what is evil in your sight.
The second half of verse 4 says, so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment.
So there's two things I want to draw out.
One, David is not saying that his sin has not affected others.
We've already covered that.
But what we are seeing in the first half of verse 4 is that David is most profoundly grieving over the way his sin has affected God.
That's a mark of Christian confession.
The Christian is most concerned about their sin insofar as it ultimately represents a betrayal of the God they love.
An offense towards God, the Creator of heaven and earth.
And not merely the Creator, because for the Christian, you're not just sinning against your Creator, you're sinning against your Savior.
And if sinning against your Creator was not a big enough deal already, To sin against the one who gave his life to save you is much, much more significant.
So, first and foremost, one of the marks of Christian confession is this brokenness over sin.
That's verse three.
My sin is ever before me.
But then also, verse four, it's the profound sense that ultimately what makes sin so horrible and heinous is that sin is an act of betrayal against not only our Creator, but our Savior.
So, David is first saying when he says against you and you only, he's not saying my sin hasn't affected others, but he's saying I am most profoundly grieved by how my sin is directly against you.
And that grieves me the most because I love you the most.
David is saying, as much as I loved Uriah, as much as I loved Bathsheba, as much as I loved my own child who has died, I love God infinitely more.
And because I love God infinitely more, all I can think about right now as I confess my sin before the Lord is how my sin is against you.
And you only.
That's the first thing.
That's the first half of verse 4.
But the second half is where he says, so that you may be blameless in your judgments.
So, what David is doing is he's saying this My sin is against you.
Therefore, you are blameless in whatever consequences you allow to take place.
See, one of the marks of worldly sorrow, as opposed to godly sorrow, is worldly sorrow is merely concerned with worldly effects of sin.
So, worldly sorrow can say, a husband could commit adultery and say, I am so grieved by the way that I betrayed my wife.
And that's good and right.
But if that's the extent of his grief, it is only worldly sorrow.
And it will not lead, as the Apostle Paul says, to life, but rather to death.
Worldly sorrow is a concern for the worldly consequences of our sin.
I'm sorry, and most people aren't even.
That to us in our culture today, they fall into an even more degrading form of worldly sorrow, which is they're only concerned about how their sin affects them.
So, the first stage is this selfish worldly sorrow that says, I can't believe how I have to now experience these consequences.
Woe is me.
A self pity, self concern, self focus.
And then beyond that, You know, you might begin to be concerned not just about your sin and how it affects you, but how your sin affects others.
But even that still falls short of godly sorrow.
It will not lead to repentance, and therefore it will not lead to life.
So, worldly sorrow is first and foremost a selfish concern for how our sin affects us.
Secondarily, it becomes a worldly concern, but absence of any concern for God, a worldly concern for how our sin affects us and others.
But still, it's only a concern for the effects and consequences of sin.
As it pertains to humanity, but not as it pertains to God.
So, what David is doing in verse 4 is he's saying, First, because I love God infinitely more than I love anyone else, including myself, I am overwhelmed.
And all I can really think of right now, all I can focus on, is how my sin is ultimately and first and foremost against you.
Sin Against the Creator00:08:52
Secondly, when he says, So that you're blameless in your judgments, so that you're righteous in whatever you say, David is saying this, In his sin, what do we often try to do?
In our sin, we immediately try to think of ways to vindicate God.
No, us.
So when we sin, immediately what we try to think of is, yeah, but I've just been going through a hard time lately.
Or, yeah, but you should have seen what they did to me.
Right?
So I'm sinfully responding to someone.
And one of the first things I want to say, if someone confronts me on my attitude, if somebody confronts me on the way I'm sinfully responding, the first thing I want to say is, yeah, but do you know what they did?
Which is what?
It's a vindication of me.
Notice what David does in verse 4.
David doesn't attempt to vindicate himself.
He is only concerned with vindicating, with exonerating, as it were, the character and justice of God.
Again, verse 4 says this Against you, you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that, right?
So he makes the first half of verse 4, that statement, in order to make the second half.
He's saying, I really did sin against God.
And my sin is only against God.
And what he's saying again is that my sin is first and foremost, in the greatest sense, the ultimate sense, against God alone.
I have done what is evil, objectively wrong and evil in the sight of God.
And because of that, you are blameless in your judgment.
Part of what David's saying now depends on when he wrote Psalm 51.
We know he wrote it after he was confronted by the prophet Nathan.
I tend to think he probably wrote it after he was confronted by the prophet Nathan and after his son died.
Because that was one of the consequences for his sin.
Well, one of the things that was prophesied is that because of David's sin with Bathsheba and Uriah, murder and adultery, is that his son, him and Bathsheba's son, would die.
And after seven days, the child did in fact die.
I think that it's very likely that Psalm 51 comes post the death of his son.
And what David is saying in the second half of verse 4 is essentially this God is justified and blameless in killing my son.
Because see, David could be so tempted in this moment, even though his sin was great, his sin was egregious, right?
Murder and adultery, they're not small sins.
It's an egregious sin.
But his son died.
And it would be tempting for David to say, although my sin is egregious, murder with Uriah and adultery with Bathsheba, still, God seems a bit harsh to kill the child.
The child didn't do anything, the child was innocent.
See, that's what many of us would do.
But in that line of logic, in that line of reasoning, essentially what we would be doing is this.
Even though we're the ones who committed the evil, We're somehow trying to indict God.
So I'm the one who sins, and here I am blaming God.
See, David does precisely the opposite.
David doesn't even attempt to point the finger at God and say, You shouldn't have killed the child.
No, rather, what David says is, I sinned against you and you only, and my sin is very great.
And all the ripple effects, all the consequences, even the death of my own son, ultimately, the source of that falls on me.
I'm the cause, not God.
I'm the cause.
I mean, it goes all the way back to the garden, right?
You think of Adam and Eve and the problem of evil, the problem of evil and suffering in the world.
And many people today would say, well, if God's really good, why?
No, no, no.
Death, war, pestilence, disease, suffering, all of it is because of man.
It's not God.
Is God sovereign over evil?
Yes.
Does God even ordain evil?
Yes.
But he is not the author of evil.
God does not do evil.
Man takes care of that.
Death entered the world because we sinned.
And so the consequences of sin, now that's one of the marks of Christian confession, is that in Christian confession, what we do is take responsibility.
So when we see all the consequences of our sin, and they are often multifaceted, there are multiple rolling effects, rippling effects, and implications for one singular action of sin.
And the Christian takes responsibility.
The Christian looks at all those consequences and says, This isn't God's fault.
The Christian doesn't give in to the temptation to somehow blame God.
Rather, the Christian says, This happened.
Yes, God's sovereign over this.
He could have made this not happen if he chose to.
But ultimately, the source of all these consequences, these painful consequences, is not God, but me and my choice to rebel against him.
That's what David is doing.
So, number one, Psalm 51, verse 1, he asks for forgiveness, not on the basis of his own merit, but the basis of God's character, which is mercy.
The second thing that David does after asking for forgiveness is David confesses his sin.
He confesses the full severity of his sin.
He doesn't try to minimize it, he doesn't try to excuse it, and he recognizes that in the ultimate sense, what makes sin so heinous is not that we sin against our fellow man, and certainly not that we sin against ourselves.
But first and foremost, that we sin against God.
And for the Christian, that's not only a sin against our Creator, but a sin against our Maker.
And then, furthermore, what David does is he says that anything that happens as the rippling effects of our sin, the consequences, ultimately, the one responsible is not God, but the man who sinned.
God is blameless in His judgments and justified in His words.
What words is God justified in?
I believe what David is speaking of is the word spoken through the prophet that the Son would die.
David is ultimately saying this after the death of his son, he's saying, God is justified in giving that prophetic word.
God is not the reason my son died.
I am.
I'm the reason.
My sin is the source of all these terrible consequences that have taken place.
Lastly, in verse 5 of our text, still on confession, David says, Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.
Even those of us who choose to acknowledge the biblical doctrine of total depravity, we often use our inborn corruption as a way to diminish our personal guilt.
David does the opposite.
For David, the fact that he committed acts of adultery, murder, and deceit are expressions of something far worse.
He is by nature a sinner, meaning that if God does not rescue him from his condition of being a sinner, he will ultimately eventually do even more evil than what he has already done.
So David does not merely possess remorse and resolve, but rather David realizes and repents.
Look at 2 Samuel 12, verse 1 through 7.
This is Nathan's confrontation, the exact words.
And the Lord sent Nathan to David.
He came to him and said to him, There were two men in a certain city, the one rich and the other poor.
The rich man had very many flocks and herds, but the poor man had nothing but one little ewe lamb, which he had bought.
And he brought it up, and it grew up with him and with his children.
It used to eat of his morsel and drink from his cup and lie in his arms.
And it was like a daughter to him.
Now there came a traveler to the rich man, and he was unwilling to take one of his own flock or herd to prepare for the guest who had come to him.
But he took the poor man's lamb and prepared it for the man who had come to him.
Then David's anger was greatly kindled against the man.
And he said to Nathan, As the Lord lives, the man who has done this deserves to die.
And he shall restore the lamb fourfold because he did this thing and because he had no pity.
But look at what Nathan says.
Nathan said to David, You are the man.
The final point that I want to make is this.
When Nathan confronts David over his sin, he doesn't merely say, You did the deed.
Nathan says, You are the man.
Regretting Our Sinful Nature00:04:06
And so I think one of the final characteristics of a Christian confession of sin is this we don't just have remorse and regret over the wrong deed that we did.
But rather, we have a profound, humble realization of the man that we are.
See, the Christian doesn't just say, I so regret this bad thing I did.
No, the Christian says, I am horrified and profoundly concerned over the person that I am.
So, to make it kind of a painfully clear illustration, if it comes to pornography, the Christian doesn't merely say, I can't believe I did that.
No, the Christian says, What I did says something about who I am.
It's not just I did this perverse thing.
The greater problem is that I am a perverse man.
And so the Christian, and this is what we'll see next week, is he doesn't just stop with petitioning and asking God for forgiveness of sin, but he also asks God for restoration and transformation and preservation.
The Christian recognizes that their deepest problem is not just the wrong actions they've committed, but their deepest problem is their condition of being a sinner.
So, the Christian recognizes that even if God were to grant my request of pardon for this particular sin, that doesn't solve the ongoing future problem that I'm still a sinner by nature.
And that therefore, my problem is not just sinful actions, but a sinful condition that will lend towards even greater sin if gone unchecked again sometime in the future.
And so, Christian confession of sin doesn't just ask for forgiveness or pardon for the sinful actions.
That were previously committed.
But sinful confession of sin recognizes not just what we've done, but who we are apart from the grace of God.
And therefore, it doesn't just ask for pardon for past sin, but it asks for present transformation and future preservation to keep us from sinning against the God that we love.
So, all that being said, we see these four steps in Psalm 51.
We'll look at step three and step four next week, Lord willing.
But what we saw today.
Is that we must ask for forgiveness and ask for mercy on the basis of God's character.
That's the first step.
And then, secondly, we must confess our sin.
And as we do, we must not minimize it.
We must confess the full severity of our sin.
We must recognize that ultimately our sin is an offense against God, regardless of its effects against our fellow man.
And God is just and blameless.
We should, in our confession, have a desire to vindicate God, not putting any blame on Him.
And then, lastly, in confessing our sin, we must recognize that the ultimate problem is not merely our wrong actions, but our own sinful condition.
It's not merely what we've done, but who we are.
And that the ultimate solution is not just that God would forgive that one instance of sinful action, but God must actually change and transform us as sinners into saints.
And that all of this is accomplished by the work of his son Jesus.
All right, let's pray.
Father, thank you for your word.
We pray that you would bless it to your people.
I pray that you would be glorified and that we too would follow in the example of David as those who are broken and contrite, confessing our sin to you in a way that honors you and ultimately a way that possesses godly sorrow, leading to repentance, ultimately leading unto life.
We pray these things in Jesus' name.
Amen.
Oh, hi, I didn't see you there.
Thanks for sticking around.
I've got an important announcement to make.
That's the Theonomy and Postmillennialism Conference 2023, May 5th, 6th, and 7th, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.
Theonomy and Postmillennialism.
Theonomy Conference Announcement00:00:45
We've got the speakers that we've already had lined up.
That's Dr. James White, Dr. Joseph Boot, Dr. Gary DeMar, non doctor Pastor Joel Webbin.
But we also have a bonus speaker, and that is Dale Partridge from Real Christianity.
Perhaps you've heard of him.
If not, you should start listening to his podcast.
It's fantastic.
Dale Partridge is going to be joining our team.
We're going to have live panels on Friday night and Saturday night, where you'll be able to write in questions and get them answered.
We're also going to have a catered barbecue, Texas style barbecue meal on Friday that's a part of your registration fee.
All that is covered.
So you need to get that.
This is how you do it go and register right now at rightresponseconference.com.