From His Heart

Speaker 1

Today on From His Heart with Pastor Jeff Shreve, we'll be reminded that life is hard, but God is good.

Speaker 2

What do you do when the finger of accusation and conviction is pointed at you? When the Holy Spirit of God says you have sinned and we're not talking about a little sin, we're talking about big time sin.

What do you do when you blow it big time? How do you come back from that? Is there hope?

He can heal every scar with real truth, real love, real hope from his heart.

Speaker 1

King David is a great man of scripture. However, he was not a perfect man. In fact, he was a man who committed terrible sins. But he didn't stay in sin. He confessed his sins to God and he got his heart right.

You're listening to From His Heart with Pastor Jeff Shreve. Thank you for joining us today as we're going to learn something about the confession of King David that is recorded in Psalm chapter 51 and a three-step action plan that'll be revealed in this message to help you know what to do when you've sinned. There is hope, there is forgiveness, there is restoration in the Lord.

The message today is from Pastor Jeff's practical and powerful series, Life is Hard, but God is Good. This nine-message series is our gift of thanks to you for your support to From His Heart this month of any amount. I'll tell you more later, or you can go to fromhishheart.org if you can.

Now though, open your Bible to the 51st Psalm. Here's Pastor Jeff to begin the lesson called the Psalm of a Sinner.

Speaker 2

In Second Samuel, Chapter 11, we read of David's great sin. He walks out on the roof of his palace and what does he see? He sees a woman bathing and she's so beautiful. And David is just captivated by her and he just has to have her. She is the wife of Uriah the Hittite. He said, bring her to me. They brought Bathsheba to David. He had a night of adultery, a night of sexual sin with her. A month later she came back or however many weeks later and said, I am pregnant. And David knew he was in trouble. He had a problem on his hands. So he wrote a note and he sealed it, put it in an envelope, gave it to Uriah, said, give this to Joab.

When he gave it to Joab, Joab opened the note and unbeknownst to Uriah, the note said, put Uriah in the fiercest part of the battle and then everyone withdraw from him. And so Joab did it. And Uriah was killed. But the Bible says the thing that David did was evil in the sight of the Lord. David's sin was covered over for roughly a year. The child was born. It says in 2nd Samuel, chapter 12, verse 1, that the Lord sent Nathan the prophet to David. David was convicted to the core over what he had done and that conviction of sin. He said to Nathan, I have sinned. He said, the Lord has taken away your sin. You shall not die. If David had not responded positively to the conviction and to the message of Nathan the prophet, God was going to kill him. God was going to kill him over his sin.

Hey, the good news about David's sin is that he wrote Psalm 51. David was a great sinner, but he's also a great repenter. David, the man after God's own heart, did something so terrible, so awful, so horrible that it's beyond comprehension. He's guilty of the sin of adultery. And what compounds that sin is he's got a bunch of wives and he's got a bunch of concubines. He doesn't lack for a woman to be with, but he takes Uriah's wife. He takes the man's one little ewe lamb, and he takes that lamb for himself. David's a great sinner, but he's also a great repenter.

David helps you and me so much because his story and what he wrote in Psalm 51 as a direct correlation and response to Nathan the prophet visiting him, that encourages you, that encourages me, that encourages all of Christendom, that there is hope and forgiveness and restoration in the Lord. Psalm 51. You know, not every psalm do we get the background, but this psalm, we get the background. This is the psalm of the sinner, and David is the sinner. He says for the choir, a psalm of David. When Nathan the prophet came to him after he had gone in to Bathsheba.

Be gracious to me, O God, according to your loving kindness, according to the greatness of your compassion. 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 I have sinned and done what is evil in your sight. So you're justified when you speak and blameless when you judge. Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity and in sin my mother conceived me. Behold, you desire truth in the innermost being and in the hidden part. You will make me know wisdom, purify me with hyssop and I shall be clean. Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Make me to hear joy and gladness. Let the bones which you have broken rejoice. Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquities.

Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Do not cast me away from your presence and do not take your holy spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and sustain me with a willing spirit. Then I will teach transgressors your ways and sinners will be converted to you. Deliver me from blood guiltiness, O God, Thou God of my salvation. Then my tongue will joyfully sing of your righteousness. O Lord, open my lips that my mouth may declare your praise. For you don't delight in sacrifice, otherwise I would give it. You're not pleased with burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit and a broken and a contrite heart. O God, you will not despise. By your favor, do good to Zion, build the walls of Jerusalem. Then you will delight in righteous sacrifices in burnt offering and whole burnt offering. Then young bulls will be offered on your altar.

Here's the question I want you to consider today. What do you do when you're the man and the finger of accusation and conviction is pointed at you? When the Holy Spirit of God says you have sinned and we're not talking about a little sin, we're not talking about I was going 60 in a 55 zone. We're talking about big time sin. What do you do when you're guilty of big time sin and we're not talking about as an unbeliever? David is a believer. David is a man after God's own heart. David is anointed king over God's people. What do you do when you're a guy like that and you blow it big time? How do you come back from that? Is there hope?

And the answer is yes. God gives us in Psalm 51 a three-step action plan of what to do when you're the man. Number one, you remember who God is. You remember who God is. See, here's the thing with you and with me and with all of us when we sin a great sin, the devil moves in. See, here's how the devil works. The devil is more crafty than any beast of the field which the Lord God has made. Genesis chapter three. Talking about the serpent. And the devil comes in. He will tempt us to sin. No doubt he was tempting David. David, you see? You see? You see that woman over there? Look at her. David's like, well, you know, I'm not supposed to look at that. Just keep looking. You can't. I mean, it's just right there. Just look. Nobody's around. Just look. Look. I mean, after all, you can look and there's no. You're not going to touch her. You're just going to look.

But the look turned to longing, and the longing turned to laying, and the laying turned to sin and devastation and destruction in his life. So the devil tempts us to do things, and then when we do them, then he condemns us for it and says, look what you did. Oh, you're the worst person in the world. How dare you. And you call yourself a Christian? Look what you did. You are awful. You are horrible. Don't bother coming to church anymore, man. If those people knew what you did, they wouldn't have anything to do with you. And you think God is going to have something to do with you? God is holy and you are so sinful and God has written you off and you are done, pal. Stick a fork in you, you're done. That's how the devil works.

So when that happens, and all of us can testify to the fact in some way or another that we can feel what David felt because we've sinned a great sin, maybe it's not in quite the same way, but it's still a great sin. So what do we do? We remember who God is. We remember that God doesn't write us off and kick us out. We remember who he is. Look at verse one. Be gracious to me, O God, according to your loving kindness, according to the greatness of your compassion. Blot out my transgressions. Now it is so critical to understand who God is because, as I said, the devil's going to try and warp your mind to where you think negatively about God.

And when you sin a great sin, you have this idea that God is so mad at you and God must hate you, and you hate you, and God must hate you. And then that creates this huge distance between you and God. And then you don't come to God. How? You don't come to the one who hates you when you're hurting. But you do come to the one who is gracious and compassionate and loves you. And that's why it's important to have that understanding of God. Exodus 34, verses 6 and 7. Every Christian needs to memorize that. That is God's declaration of himself to Moses. See, Moses prayed in Exodus 33, God, if I found favor in your sight, I pray, show me your glory. And the Lord says, well, I'll show you the backside of my glory. No one can see my face and live. I'll show you the backside of my glory. And I'll make all my goodness pass before you. And I'm going to declare the name of the Lord. His name is his nature. That's who God is. It's the core of who God is.

And so God does that in Exodus 34. He puts Moses in the cleft of the rock. He covers him there with his hand, and he passes by Moses. And then he says this: The Lord, the Lord God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in loving kindness and truth. Exodus 34. And David is no doubt referring to that passage when he prays, be gracious to me, O God, according to your loving kindness, according to the greatness of your compassion. Blot out my transgressions. So you write this down. God is unfathomably gracious. God is the God of all grace. 1st Peter 5:10. The God of all grace.

Well, what exactly is grace? Grace is the unmerited favor of God. Unmerited favor. Unmerited means you can't earn it. Unmerited means you don't deserve it. But God gives grace anyway because he's the God of all grace. And David is appealing to God's grace. He is unfathomably gracious. You never can hit the bottom of God's grace. But not only is he unfathomably gracious, and incidentally, one of the great verses, Hebrews 4:15, says, we don't have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who's been tempted in all things, as we are yet without sin. Let us therefore draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

The devil wants you to think that God sits on a throne of condemnation. He sits on a throne of judgment. He sits on a throne of thunderbolts, ready to whack you. And he sees you doing something, bam. I'm going to get after you. God sits on a throne of grace. He has grace for his children. He is unfathomably gracious. But not only is he unfathomably gracious, God is immeasurably loving. Be gracious to me according to your loving kindness. Your hesed (C H e S E D) that is the loyal love. That word loving kindness is used over and over and over again in the Old Testament. It's not used in the New Testament. It's grace in the New Testament, but it's God's love and kindness put together. God's love in action put together. And God is a God of loving kindness.

The Scripture says of him, for as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his loving kindness to those who fear him. Can you measure as far as the heavens are above the earth? You know, the Bible talks about three heavens. We have the atmospheric heavens, we have the planetary heavens, and then we have the heavens where God is. And so as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his loving kindness toward those who fear him. The Scripture goes on to say in Psalm 103, from everlasting to everlasting. That's how his love endures from eternity past to eternity future. That is the measure of God's loving kindness toward those who fear him.

So God is immeasurably loving and he is greatly compassionate according to the greatness of your compassion. Blot out transgressions. Interesting word, compassion. You know, we use that word a lot. That's the first thing God says about himself, the Lord, the Lord God, compassionate and gracious. Compassionate. That means that he has mercy. The Latin word or the English word compassion comes from the Latin, calm meaning with and passion meaning to suffer. He suffered. He feels your hurt. In his heart, he has compassion. And that word, compassion carries with it the idea of a woman who is carrying a baby in her womb. She cherishes that baby in her womb. That's how God feels about you. The Lord, the Lord, God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in loving kindness and truth.

David appeals to God's character and God's nature. He remembers who God is. It's so important to do that. Why is that so important? Because when you sin a great sin, the tendency for all of us is we listen to the lies of the devil and we don't listen to the truth of what God says about himself. Why are the lies of the devil so easy to latch onto? Tell you why. It's because they match up with your feelings. And when you sin greatly, you feel terrible about yourself. I'm talking about a Christian. When a Christian sins, you know that you have done wrong. You feel terrible about yourself. And the devil's lies match up with your feelings. But when you know the truth of who God is, you can come to him because he's gracious and loving and compassionate.

Remember who God is. Second step. You own what you did. You have to own what you did. Now, he says this in verse 2. 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 I have sinned, done what is evil in your sight, so that you are justified when you speak and blameless when you judge. Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity and in sin my mother conceived me. What in the world does that mean? David is saying, God, I'm king, but I'm no better than anybody else. I was a sinner from the womb. We are all sinners four times over. We're sinners by birth, we're sinners by nature. We're sinners by choice. We're sinners by practice, we're sinners. And David said, God, I am a sinner, sinner, and I don't claim any special status before you because I'm a sinner coming for mercy, and I desperately need your mercy.

David owned what he did over and over. You read me and my. And I. He's taking ownership of what he did. It's important. If you look in verses 1 through 5, 13 times, you find the first person, me, my, I. I have sinned. Hey, don't minimize the evil of your actions. We have a tendency to do that because we don't like to think we did something so terrible, so horrible, so awful. So we try and minimize it. What did Adam do with his sin? Did you eat of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat? The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me the tree and I ate. Let's deflect onto the woman. Well, it affected some on you, Lord, because it's the woman whom you gave to be with me. So let's not. You got the spotlight on me, God, but we need to move the spotlight.

Hey, we don't like the spotlight on our sins, right? Men, they hate the light. And they don't come to the light, lest their deeds should be exposed. And when you get exposed, there's the tendency to try and shift, to try and minimize, to try and put lipstick on a pig. Don't do that. You own what you did and you confess it to God. Hey, David is saying, he uses three words here. He says, blot out my transgressions. Wash me from my iniquity, cleanse me from my sin. Transgressions, sin, iniquity and sin. Those are three words that are used to describe, they're similar words, they're used to describe evil. And David was guilty of all of them.

What is the difference? A transgression is a high-handed revolt and rebellion against God. God draws a line in the sand and says, don't transgress this, don't cross this line. And David crossed it. He blew God off. He blew God's commands off. I mean he committed. These are capital offenses. To commit adultery, you would be stoned. To commit murder, you are going to be stoned, you're going to be executed for that. He committed capital offenses. He transgressed God's law. So he was guilty of that. And he says, blot out my transgressions. But he was also guilty of iniquity. Iniquity is moral perversion. It's twistedness and it was very twisted what David did. I mean, think about it. I got all these wives and I got all this. A harem full of girlfriends in case all the wives have a headache. I got these other girls over here. I mean he's got his choice to be with. And what does he do? He takes Uriah's wife. What in the world. It's moral twistedness. God, cleanse me, wash me thoroughly from my iniquity.

And then he said, cleanse me from my sin. Sin is just missing the mark in the New Testament. That's what that means, Hamartiah, to miss the mark. And David is guilty of all that. He's falling short, very bad. And he says, Lord, verse 4. You're justified when you speak, you're blameless when you judge God. If you were to judge me and cast me into hell for what I did, you would be right to do it. See David, he's not appealing to anything in himself. Like yeah, but God, look what the good things I did over here. He's saying, God, I am a guilty sinner before you and I've been a guilty sinner since I came out of the womb. He's needing mercy.

Hey, so don't minimize the evil of your actions. And then secondly, don't procrastinate on coming clean with God.

Speaker 1

Some life-changing insight and actions to take when we've made some decisions contrary to the word of God. Today you heard part one of the lesson called the Psalm of a Sinner. It's from Pastor Jeff's series, "Life is Hard, but God is Good."

What's going on in your heart today? Is your heart singing the blues? Are you struggling with your job, your marriage, money, kids, health, family issues, the loss of a loved one, or a number of other serious issues? Or are you struggling with sin in your life that you just can't seem to overcome? No matter what it is that has shattered your heart, your dreams, your life, you will be encouraged by these messages in the nine-lesson series from Pastor Jeff that we're airing this month.

Life is hard, but God is good. That includes part one of the lesson you heard today, with part two coming tomorrow, called the Psalm of a Sinner. The series is available on CDs, DVDs, a USB flash drive, or immediate MP3 download as our gift to you to say thank you for supporting From His Heart this month with any amount. When you do, we'll also send you the series and the companion booklet, Strong Faith for Tough Times.

To get your copies, call 866-40-BIBLE (866-40-BIBLE) or go online to fromhishheart.org to make that gift and discover how God can turn everything around in your life, pull you out of the pit of despair, and give you a song, a blessing, and deliverance.

We hope that when you visit our website each day, you'll take a moment to listen to the Real Hope Minute from Pastor Jeff. Sign up for the weekly Real Hope email encouragement letter that'll arrive in your inbox every Friday morning, and it will be a blessing to you. You can also download an MP3 of any broadcast you may have missed, along with the sermon notes from Pastor Jeff. Plus, you can easily join us on our social media channels for regular comments, commentary, and encouragement throughout the week.

The web address again is fromhishheart.org. I'm Larry Nobles, inviting you to be here tomorrow when Pastor Jeff Shrie will continue to explore the deep truth and great encouragement we can have by studying the Book of Psalms. That will be part two of the message, the Psalm of a Sinner. On Wednesday, we'll open up God's Word and share real truth, real love, and real hope from His heart.

Speaker 2

There is treasure, there is bless, There is hope that you always dream Love he can heal every scar Real truth, Real love, Real hope.

Speaker 1

From his heart is the listener supported Broadcast Ministry of Dr. Jeff Shreve speaking the truth in love to a lost and a hurting world.

Remember, no matter what, God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.

Find out more. Go to fromisheart.org.