What True Repentance Looks Like

Don’t look at me like that. He looked at Donald Trump, but David was a lot better man than Donald Trump, no question about it. But he looked at, he was in that place. He could have gotten in big trouble, but he did not fear. He feared God above all and he was God’s prophet. And so we saw the sin of David and Bathsheba and what David tried to do.

And just as a review, he was a man that was 100% for sure, for certain, a believer. There’s no room to doubt David’s faith in God. He was a true believer. And he was also a man who had a heart after God’s own heart. He was a man who walked with God, generally speaking, although those two chapters do not reflect that fact. And yet, despite those two facts, here is a man who is a believer and a man who generally walks with God, committing adultery, hiding his sin, making another drunk, involving others in his sin, committing murder and playing the hypocrite.

All of those facts remind us that David is, the Lord sets David forth as an extreme example of how far we can fall when we are not walking with God, when we are not doing our duty, when other parts of our life are out of order and we’re tempted like what happened with David. And so we looked at how David got out of fellowship with God and how this sin brought reproach upon God’s name and we also saw how that David confessed, David repented, David was forgiven immediately and restored immediately.

And so that’s the context of this psalm. So when we read this psalm, we can take that information and that sets the background for what we read in this psalm and it will help us see more things in this psalm that maybe we would have seen otherwise. Verse one of Psalm 51 says this, have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy loving kindness, according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies, blot out my transgressions.

Wash me throughly from mine iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. For I acknowledge my transgressions and my sin is ever before me. Against thee, the only have I sinned and done this evil in thy sight, that thou mightest be justified when thou speakest and be clear when thou judgest. Behold, I was shaping in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me. Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts and in the hidden part thou shall make me to know wisdom.

Purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean. Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow. Make me to hear joy and gladness that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice. Hide thy face from my sins and blot out all mine iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from thy presence and take not thy holy spirit from me.

Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation and uphold me with thy free spirit. Will you pray with me tonight? Our Lord, thank you for this psalm, for leading your servant David to express in written form, in song, these truths. Lord, that are a dark chapter in his life, an ugly part of his life, yet you directed him specifically to write these things down and they have helped us so much.

Lord, I pray that tonight, would you allow these things to help us more? Would you please reveal to us and illumine our eyes that we might be able to see the truths that have been here some 3,000 years? Help us to see them, help us to act upon them. Lord, help us to respond to our sin as David responded. And so Lord, we commit this time to you.

Lord, I acknowledge I can’t help your people. Lord, you are the only one who has the power to help them. So would you do that tonight, in Jesus’ name, amen. All right, psalm number 51 is, there is a, it presents an interesting and unique occasion. Now you think about, think about the occasion of the psalm, which is David’s sin, confession, and repentance.

And that’s unique, and that’s unique. You know, if you think about it, the Lord Jesus, in all of his glories, in all of his righteousness, and all of his truth, and all of the things that he is to us, could not write psalm 51. That’s what’s so amazing about inspiration, inspiration of the Bible. It is not that God directly dictated, do this, do this, do this, do this, do this.

Everything wasn’t dictated in scripture. God chose, the method God chose to use, was he chose to use holy men of God, who spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. He chose to use them, and the fingerprint of men is all over the Bible. And this is one of the best examples of that. Now the Lord Jesus never had any sin to confess. He never was in the place that David is describing here.

Never once, but God chose to use David, and David’s sin was then, the Lord used that to teach us some things about ourselves, and to instruct us as to how we should respond to sin. He used, the Lord used an occasion of sin, confession, and repentance. You know, sometimes I feel like that, that we have this idea that we are supposed to relate to others only the happy things of the Christian life.

You know, we’re talking about our faith, and talking about our relationship with God, and giving a testimony, it’s always supposed to be happy. We’re supposed to use only happy talk, because after all, we don’t want to make God look bad. But I want to tell you something, there is definite value in relating things like this. This is not happy talk. This is sad talk. This is bad things.

And yet it’s written in scripture. These things are written in scripture. This is not the happy talk of, well, everything’s great. You know, it’s not the Joel Osteen Psalm that we’re looking at right now, where everything’s great, and you’re best life now. No, this is not David’s best life. This is not David’s best life now. Things like this are not happy, and yet it is these kinds of things that God uses as well.

The Lord not only works in the happy things, in the mountaintop, as they say, the mountaintop experiences to bless others and strengthen others, He also uses the testimony of the low points as well. And you know what? I think we do foolishly when we present a lopsided Christianity that is always, we present to the world, it’s like Instagram Christianity, you know what I mean by that? It means it’s the pretty face, all the filters are on, and everything, all the blemishes are wiped away, and that’s the way people do on Instagram.

That’s the way people do on social media. And they present, and how many of you have felt, those of you that are into social media, how many of you have felt the effect of, have had the thought go through your mind, well, their life seems perfect. That is like a secondary effect of social media. You don’t see the blemishes because it’s all happy talk. Nobody, and I say, there are always one or two people on social media that don’t ever have happy talk, it’s always sad, but okay, I kind of contradicted myself a little bit.

I don’t think we do well by presenting a lopsided, kind of happy all the time Christianity, that’s, because that’s not real. God didn’t do that. He led directly, David directly to write down this Psalm. And you know what, when you read Psalms like this, but think, this is a testimony now, think about your own testimony among the people of God, like we might have a testimony service, like we had not too long ago.

Think about Christians, young Christians who are up and coming, and people who are struggling with things. This kind of thing, this kind of thing in this Psalm here can be a real encouragement to somebody like that, who is falling, who is messing up. And they see repentance, they see confession, they see a God full of compassion, they see a God who is gracious, who will forgive instantly and freely.

And they see people like just like them, who are to their view, super Christians, to their view, mature Christians. And that’s as they see them in the present. But when we give testimony to what God has brought us through like this, it can be an encouragement to them. It really can. So we shouldn’t present Christianity in the way it’s not the Lord hasn’t presented it. Now, let’s go through the Psalm.

And when we get to the end of verse number 12, there’s a couple things I wanna point out to you, and then we’ll be finished. Verse number one, let’s look at it. It says this, have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy loving kindness, according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies, blot out my transgressions. Now notice, you’ll see this blot, this cleansing, this idea of washing over and over.

So as we go, kind of pay attention to that. But notice God’s mercy endures forever. God’s mercy endures forever. He pleads for forgiveness upon the mercy of God. And that’s something, you know, we’re talking about in Sunday school, His mercy endureth forever. The incomprehensibility of God. There’s not an end point to God’s mercy. If a sinner, be it a believing sinner or an unbelieving sinner, comes to God in humility and in confession, he will always, always, always, find the mercy of God.

It endures forever. And you know, again, 70 times seven, the Lord applies that to Himself just as well as to us. In fact, He is the example of that. That is the mercy of God enduring forever. Verse two, wash me throughly from mine iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. I’m gonna come back to that, but notice wash, cleanse. What is David, I’ll just ask you this rhetorically, what is David concerned with in verse two?

What is he thinking about now that he has been confronted with his sin, now that he is nailed, now that he is convicted? Go to verse number three. For I acknowledge my transgressions and my sin is ever before me. Now I wanna tell you something. This is one of the key marks of a true believer.

A true believer cannot escape his sin. A true believer cannot escape his sin. You know, oftentimes we judge right or wrong, we judge other people and their faith based upon the way they look. You know, they wear a suit and tie, they wear a dress. They are dressed modestly. How many of you have seen somebody in a store and obviously dressed modestly different than everybody else around?

Oh, that’s probably a Christian. But that’s how we do. But that’s how we do. We make those assumptions. But see, that’s not the primary distinction. That’s not the characteristic mark. The characteristic mark, at least as far as we see here, the characteristic mark is that a Christian, a true born again child of God is someone who under no circumstances can escape his or her sin. And we saw that last week.

God did not leave David in sin. When God confronted David, that sin was right before him and he could not escape it. Now look at verse three again. At the beginning of the verse it says this, for I acknowledge my transgressions. Now, the key takeaway of confession, the key, the essence of confession is to name the thing, the name, the sin as evil. That’s what we’re talking about when we’re talking about confession.

You see, our tendency to do with our sin when we’re caught, our tendency is to use a euphemism, call it by something other than the ugly word that it actually is. That’s why adultery is always an affair, right? Instead of calling it what God calls it, right? And so instead of, you know, on issues of money, we were, you know, maybe a little not above board instead of being committing extortion, right?

We use these nice little words to kind of hide what it really is, but see, that is the opposite. That is contrary to the idea of confession. When David sinned against God, he is no longer hiding that sin behind words, behind nice sounding words. He is acknowledging his transgression.

Now let me pause here just because this is something that came to my mind earlier, and so I wanna say it so I don’t forget it. You know, David’s, in this song, David’s primary concern is toward God, but let me tell you something. If we have sinned against God, and that sin has brought harm to others, and we’re willing to bring that sin to God and confess it, the evidence of true repentance is that we are willing to go to the person that we have harmed and confess it to them also in no uncertain terms, in that clear kind of ugly talk that leaves no ambiguity as to what we’re confessing.

Instead, what do we do? We often do this. If I said something to hurt you, if I did this, no, it’s not a question of whether they, we’re not gonna shift it to them. We’re gonna own that thing. We’re gonna own that thing. That’s what we’re talking about here. I acknowledge my transgressions. You know, sometimes that’s very hard to do. Sometimes that’s hard to do in prayer, is it not?

To name our sin to God. Do it anyway. That will help you. That will help you. You know what, if that’s true of your relationship to God, then it should also be true when that sin has harmed another. And we should go to them in the same sort of spirit of confession and call the thing as it is, acknowledge the transgression to them also in no uncertain terms.

Now, if you go to verse number four, the Bible says, against thee, the only have I sinned and done this evil in thy sight. Now, pause there a second. Has David sinned against anyone else in all of this affair?

Everybody’s kind of tentative. Yes, David has sinned against many people. David has sinned against Joab, his captain. David is, by involving him in the sin, David has sinned against the baby that was judged, that is his life was struck as a result of David’s sin. David has sinned against Bathsheba. David has sinned definitely against Uriah, the Hittite. David has sinned against, in fact, you could make the argument that David has sinned against people yet to come, because this sin is not gonna go away.

Yet in verse number four, he says, against thee, the only have I sinned and done this evil in thy sight. That’s an interesting fact, is it not? Here’s what I want you to take away from that. And this is one of the main things I want you to see. One feature of this Psalm that stands out is how David views the evil that he has done.

David views the evil he has done primarily in relation to God himself, not primarily in relation to man. Now, David has definitely sinned against man, but that’s not his first and primary concern. That’s what verse four indicates to us. He is most worried about what this sin has done to his relationship to God.

He is not most concerned about how this sin makes him appear to others. And yet that, that maybe what might seem to be a subtle distinction is often what drives our fake repentance is our fear of how it’s made us appear to others. And that’s what we rush. That’s what we rush to fix, our reputation, because it’s been marred by this thing that we have done. David, David, David, David, David, David is not concerned about that.

Now, as far as we know, he’s not concerned about that, but he is definitely concerned about his relationship to God first and foremost. And here’s the other thing. When we rush to try to make up or try to cover our tracks or try to make it seem not as bad, or we’re worried about what people think and that kind of thing, we’re neglecting the most important aspect of sin.

Sin is first and foremost, it is first and foremost an act of rebellion against Almighty God. That is the greatest evil of sin. That is, if you wanna say it like this, that is the iniquity of sin. It is that it is offensive to God and it creates a breach between us and our God. That’s what we should fear, not what people think of us. You see, his chief concern is how his evil has harmed his relationship to his God.

Even when we sin against others, remember, even when we sin in such a way that it harms others, yes, there is a duty, there is a debt to be paid to those people in the sense of reconciliation, in the sense of seeking forgiveness and resting in the presence of God. Seeking forgiveness and restitution, all of that. But first and foremost, that cannot be done so long as our sin before God is outstanding and has not been dealt with.

And yet, honestly, I’m convinced that a lot of Christians run around trying to tie up all the ends and all of that kind of thing when they get caught in something rather than dealing with the matter before God. Because if you deal with the matter before God, the effect of that will be dealing with it with men too.

Now notice also, since I’m already here, I’ll just go ahead and mention it. Notice also, David is most concerned with how God sees him and how his sin has harmed his relationship to God. David is also greatly concerned over his personal inward defilement due to the sin. Again, is he more concerned with the way it appears outwardly? Is he more concerned with the fact that he is dirty inwardly?

You see, there’s a contrast. God, man, inward, outward. How do you know that? Well, notice in verse two, or verse one, he says, blot out my transgressions. Verse two, wash me throughly. Verse two, cleanse me from my sin.

He says down in verse number seven, purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean. Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow. He knows he’s dirty. He doesn’t want to be dirty. All of these things are strong indicators of a man who really truly knows God and is not just concerned with looking the part, but being the thing. You see, David is first and foremost concerned, and he’s really deeply distressed at the ill effects his sin has brought upon him personally.

Look at this, if you would. Verse eight, make me to hear joy and gladness that the bonds which thou hast broken may rejoice. Look at verse number 12. Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation. Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation. Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation. David has been ill affected by this sin personally, inside, in his heart, and that deeply troubles him.

That deeply troubles him. Let me tell you something in addition. If our focus is always on man, you know what we will never do? We will never go to someone unprompted to seek forgiveness when we have sinned against them or harmed them. We won’t. We only do it if we’re caught. I wanna tell you something. If the only time that we confess our sin, and you see it in David.

Now David is an example where David was kind of whistling past the graveyard for some nine months. We saw that last week, right? Until finally God had to actually, actually, actually chasten him by shaming him with the prophet. And that finally woke him up to what was going on. And sometimes, you know, when we just ignore the Lord, that’s when we’re just going to be like, sometimes, you know, when we just ignore the Lord, that’s what he has to do to us.

But see, the real place the Lord wants us to be is not to be prompted when we’ve sinned against others. No, when we’ve sinned against others, God’s talking to us about that inwardly. And that’s really a problem with us and God first and foremost. We get that right. And then unprompted, we go to that person to seek to ask and seek forgiveness from that person unprompted. But if on the other hand, if our concern is only with man, then that first part is not happening.

We’re not dealing with the matter before God and we only are willing to deal with it when we’re caught. That’s a very bad indication. And that, hey, how many times in public figures, be it stars, TV stars, political folk, and you know, they’ve been doing it for five years. When it comes out, now they apologize. I’m sorry, it’s hard to believe. Is it not? It’s just, it’s difficult to believe.

Why weren’t you apologizing beforehand? Right? But see, again, this is the effect of a man, a woman who knows God, because when they sin, God is on them, even though nobody else knows. Just like with David, you remember, we read chapter 11 of 2 Samuel, all of these things, nobody knew what was going on. And then the last verse says, but the thing which David did displease the Lord.

God knew and God was gonna deal with it. That’s the difference between someone in the world who doesn’t know God and a true believer. You know what the difference is? An active God in their life. That’s the difference. Verse four, notice what it says. Against thee, the only have I sinned and done this evil in thy sight. Notice this curious phrase quoted also in Romans chapter three, that thou mightest be justified when thou speakest and be clear when thou judgest.

Let me give you a, let me explain to you what’s happening here. Say I’ve done something wrong, something that God condemns as sinful. And I say, I didn’t do anything. I didn’t do anything. And I’m unwilling to acknowledge and confess that. I didn’t do anything. Well, now you have a problem because you have God Almighty saying, this is sinful, this is evil. And you have you saying, no, it’s not.

You see our refusal to condemn an action that God condemns as sin is the same as saying that God is wrong. In other words, I’m right. God is wrong in judging the thing as sinful. God, you’re wrong. That’s why, look at what it says, that thou mightest be justified, that is proven righteous when thou speakest and be clear, that is not guilty when thou judges. So when God brings the hammer down on sin and we’re saying, no, no, no, no, it wasn’t wrong.

I didn’t do it, no. And we make excuses, we’re actually condemning God. This is quite a statement. This is exactly what God says to Job in Job 40 verse eight. He says this, will thou also, God speaking now, will thou also disannul my judgment? Will thou condemn me that thou mayest be righteous? That’s exactly what we’re doing when we refuse to confess a thing that God condemns as evil.

So if David had said, no, I’m not confessing. Verse four says, denying that wrong of what God calls evil is a sin. That evil is worse than it might seem on its surface.

Look at verse five, behold, I was shaping in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me. Job 14 verse four, this is just an interesting verse, says this, who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean?

Not one, nobody. Here you have, what is he talking about? He’s not talking about his mother committed some sin when he was conceived. No, what he’s talking about is the fact that he came into this world as a sinner. He came into this world with a depraved and corrupt nature from the moment of his conception. He was shaping that way as a result of, of course, Adam’s fall.

Now, what’s funny is this. Look at verse five again. I was shaping in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me. David does not intend this statement to be an excuse.

You know, sometimes people today say something similar, but we use it as an excuse. We say something like this, nobody’s perfect. Or everybody makes mistakes. Is that not, is that not similar to what David is saying? They say, or, or this is the most famous one, I’m sorry that I’m not perfect.

I want to tell you something, brothers and sisters, talk like this. When we’re in the wrong, when we’ve done wrong and evil in God’s sight is a terribly pathetic justification for sin. Listen, if we’re, if you or I, if we’re wrong, if we have sinned against God, then we need to name that thing. And not say, well, you know, everybody makes mistakes. Well, you know, you know, I was shaping in iniquity and sin did my mother conceive me.

You know, everybody’s a sinner. How many of you have heard that? It is always used as an excuse. David is not excusing it. David makes this statement to say this, oh God, I am broken. Oh God, I am not good. David, rather than using it as a justification, he is owning, follow this now, he is owning not only the deed that he has done, the individual act of sin, but he’s also owning the conclusion which that act of sin has demonstrated that he is corrupt through and through.

And that’s the whole point. That’s what, see, when we sin against God like David has, what are we showing? We’re showing a wicked and corrupt nature. We’re showing not only what we have done, but who we are. We’re not saying, well, you know, everybody’s a sinner. No, ironically, people use those very words as a cover, as a cloak for sin, but actually, it’s supposed to be, I did this thing, look at me.

Lord, I am broken. I am messed up. That is exactly what conviction and confession is supposed to produce in us. It’s supposed to produce, listen, in the people of God, from in scripture, from start to finish, you know what you find? You’ll always find with the people of God, you find the people of God who are meek, who are humble, who do not think highly of themselves and think of themselves in their heart of hearts as deeply corrupt sinners.

That’s how people view themselves, not this modern American Christian view of, well, I’m a good person. That is totally contrary to scripture. You know what I think? I think sometimes this is just me, my observation now, and I think it’s been true in my life to some degree or another, that when a person first comes to Christ and believes in Christ, and they start, you know, they start growing, pride starts to come into their heart about themselves, because they’re not doing what they used to do, and they’re trying to follow the right path and all of those.

And sometimes the Lord doesn’t make them sin, of course, but sometimes he can remove some of the barriers so that the things, the thing that they are will finally be revealed to them. So that they will finally understand that they’re corrupt. They will finally understand that they’re depraved. They will finally understand that they’re wicked, that if the Lord does not protect them, if the Lord does not protect me, I am liable to seriously mess things up.

This is the universal testimony of God’s people. This is how they view themselves. And it is times like this, royal failure, gross sin, that the Lord teaches us that.

It’s a hard lesson to learn. I think probably all of us have had to learn it to some degree or another. Verse six, behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts, and in the hidden part thou shalt make me to know wisdom.

You know, in mankind and of course, religion, which is just like we saw on Sunday, religion comes from man, it’s from the earth, it’s from beneath. God’s faith, the truth, is something God delivered and revealed from heaven. So I say mankind and therefore religion is chiefly concerned with the outward. God, however, is concerned with the inward.

Thou desirest truth in the inward parts. God doesn’t want just outward conformity, he wants the heart transformed. Verse seven, purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean. Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow. That hyssop, found in scripture 12 times, 10 times in the Old Testament, two times in the New. It was some kind of plant, it’s a little bit mysterious, but it was a plant that they would use and dip in blood to apply in certain circumstances.

It was first, anybody know where the first mention of hyssop being dipped in blood? At the Passover. So even the use of this word, hyssop, to someone who knows their Bible reminds us of our Lord upon the cross, who is our Passover sacrifice for us. And just like the scripture says, even as a believer, when we sin against God and we come to him and we confess, even as a believer, the Bible says, but if you don’t confess, you’re not going to be saved.

The Bible says, but if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another and the blood of Jesus Christ, his son cleanseth us from all sin.

He says, wash me and I shall be whiter than snow. You know, we saw this in 2 Samuel 11 and 12. What did we see? You remember, complete and immediate restoration. You remember seeing that? Complete and immediate forgiveness. Whiter than snow, not a little bit dirty, not needs to get washed out over and over, instantly brighter than snow. What has David done to earn this? What has David done to earn this?

What has David done to make up for his sin? What restitution has he paid at this point? What has David done to merit this forgiveness? You know what he’s done? Nothing. That’s the beauty of this. In fact, that’s one of the other points I want to go to at the end. We can cover it now, that’s fine.

David merely seeks forgiveness from God, not upon the merit of some redemptive or restorative work that he does. We might call that penance. You know, and that’s a Roman Catholic doctrine, this idea of penance. There’s certain things when you confess, when you go into the confessional booth and you confess, the priest assigns acts to perform of penance. Now, what’s ironic is the penance is necessary, right?

But they speak out of both sides of their mouth. So you have to perform the penance, it is required. However, they say that you’re not trying to, you’re not trying to perform a good work to gain God’s forgiveness. So they speak out of both sides of their mouth. If it’s required, then you have to do it to get it, right? But it’s a jargon game, like many things in that system.

But that’s not what David’s doing. You remember when he came to Nathan, Nathan said, dowert the man, and all of those things he rebuked him. What was the first words that David spoke? He said, I have sinned against the Lord. And what was Nathan’s? I pointed it out on purpose. What was Nathan’s reply immediately? The Lord had put away thy sin. Did he do penance? No. Did he make up for it?

No. Did he do good works to kind of even the scales? No, because forgiveness is free. It’s free. It’s free. When we’re caught with sin, stained crimson, when we’re caught sin, black. We need only come to God and confess.

He forgives freely. He forgives by a simple request of his mercy. He does not forgive based upon some work performed to make up for our sin. There is no penance required. When David said, I have sinned against the Lord, the Lord immediately and completely forgave David.

He says in verse number eight, make me to hear joy and gladness that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice. A true believer, for a true believer, sin robs him of joy and gladness. Look at verse 12. Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation. No true believer can be happy and in sin at the same time.

Sin, because of its relationship to God, will immediately and totally rob a true believer of his joy. You know, a religious person, by contrast, a religious person who is an unbeliever or claims to be a believer, whatever the case may be, can live in complete rebellion to God and know that his life is sinful. You’ll hear things like, well, I know it’s not right. And still enjoy himself because his joy does not depart from him in his sin.

And in this way, a believer and an unbeliever are separated. David has sinned and thus has lost his joy. I wanna tell you something. If you’re a Christian or if I’m a Christian who is a joyless Christian, there is a strong probability that there is sin in our life.

I’ll say it one more time. If you’re a person who claims the name of Christ, that you have put your faith in Jesus and you are a joyless Christian, there is a strong probability that there is sin in your life because that is the effect of sin. That is the effect of sin, is it sucks joy right out of us.

He says in verse nine, hide thy face from my sins and blot out all mine iniquities, creating me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. We’re reminded in verse number 10 that a dirty and corrupt inner man, he asks for God to make him, give him a clean heart and a right spirit because a dirty and corrupt inner man is the ultimate cause of wickedness on the outside.

It’s not possible to sin with a good heart like people assume. Outward sin testifies to what is in the heart, Mark 7, 21. For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, and the Lord goes on. So therefore, outward wickedness can only be remedied by an inward transformation, not just an outward conformation. Is that the right word?

But see in churches, is that not what we shoot for, right? That’s always what we’re aiming for, make them look the part. But David’s not worried about that first. He’s worried about the future. He’s not worried about that first. He’s worried about, Lord, make my inside right. My inside being wrong is the reason I got here. Make my inside right.

When one has a renewed heart, that is what will keep him from sinning in the future. He doesn’t just wanna save face before Nathan or the people. He’s not just concerned with how his sin made him look.

Verse number 11, and we’re finished. Cast me not away from thy presence and take not thy Holy Spirit from me. That might, sometimes this verse is misused. You gotta remember that what David requests of God here, take not thy Holy Spirit from me, what David requests in his economy, that is in the world in which he lived with his God, is impossible in our economy.

Because we have been given the Spirit as a seal of our faith, of our true eternal life. We’ve been given the Spirit of God, and he abides with us and will never depart from us. So we can pray this all day. You don’t need to pray this. If you have the Spirit of God, you have him forever. That was not true of David. See, in David’s world, in God’s economy, in David’s time, the Spirit of God came upon men and departed from men, and came upon men and departed from men.

He did not abide on the believer like he does now. Man, what an encouragement, in a way. The encouragement is, even if I sin, and you’re telling me that if I sin, God’s gonna stay with me, yes. But that yes is a double-edged sword. Because he’s gonna stay, and you might wish he wouldn’t.

He’s gonna stay, and he’s gonna deal with you and me until we get to the Psalm 51 place, where he’s saying, Lord, Lord, create in me a clean heart, cleanse me, I’m broken. And we confess. Let’s pray together.