From His Heart

Speaker 1

Is there any hope with God when you really blow it? We'll discover the answer to that today on From His Heart with Pastor Jeff Shreve.

Speaker 2

Maybe you can really identify with David, especially with sexual sin, which is rampant in our world today.

You know, many people doubt their salvation. Why? Because they're living in sin and there's no assurance of salvation when you're living in sin.

And so what do you do? How can you get forgiven? How can you get clean on the inside, every scar with real truth, real love, real from his heart?

Speaker 1

What do you do when the Holy Spirit of God affirmatively convicts you of sin and not just a little sin? When you blow it big time, how do you come back from that? Is there any hope? Well, yes, there surely is. This is From His Heart with Pastor Jeff Shreve.

Thank you for joining us today as he shares a three-step action plan on what to do when you've sinned so greatly that you think God could never forgive you for that. The message is entitled "The Psalm of a Sinner," and it's from Pastor Jeff's nine-message series, "Life is Hard, but God is Good."

Now, this is a wonderful series of hope and encouragement, and it's our gift to you to say thank you for your support this month of any amount. To get this series in the format of your choice, along with the companion booklet "Strong Faith for Tough Times," you can just reach out to us today at fromhisheart.org.

Right now though, open your Bible to Psalm 51. Here again is Pastor Jeff with part two of "The Psalm of a Sinner."

Speaker 2

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? 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. 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.

The second step is to own what you did. If you look in verses one through five, 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 to minimize it. Don't minimize the evil of your actions. Secondly, don't procrastinate on coming clean with God.

Now we want to follow David in Psalm 51; we want to do what he did because this is a great psalm of repentance and confession. But we don't want to do exactly how David did because David waited about a year before he came clean before God, and it cost him all that time. See, David was sweeping his sin under the rug, and God's not going to let that go. David thought, okay, I've crossed this hurdle. Uriah's gone. I married Bathsheba, and everybody thinks it was such a noble thing for me to do, to marry her. So she's not a widow in Israel trying to fend for herself. Now she's going to be my wife. All the while, he's knowing what he did.

As I told you before, the sin with Bathsheba was a hot-blooded sin of passion. The sin with Uriah was a cold-blooded, sinister sin. I'm going to wipe this guy out. Uriah, who would have died for David's honor, died by David's hand. How awful is that? Oh, and David's keeping silent about this, and it's eating him up inside. You read Psalm 32, which is a sister Psalm of Psalm 51. He says, "When I kept silent about my sin, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long; for day and night, your hand was heavy upon me. My vitality was drained away as with the fever heat of summer." Selah, which means pause. Feel what I'm feeling. God is crushing the life out of me. Why? Because I'm covering up my sin.

So don't postpone; don't do what he did, postponing getting right with God. Don't procrastinate on that. He says, "You desire truth in the innermost being." Verse 6. "And God, I didn't have truth there. I had lies, I had cover-up, I had hypocrisy."

What happens to a Christian when you have sin in your heart and you're putting it in the shadows, not bringing it out into the open? Well, he says what happens. Here, let me hit on some of the high points. Unconfessed sin, number one, will foul and fester inside of you. He says in verse two, "Wash me, wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin." The word "wash" is that was. It's a picture of taking a garment that is filthy and putting it on the rocks and stomping on it to get it clean. He's not talking about just giving me a light rinse. He's talking about, "Lord, I need to be washed because I am covered in filth on the inside. Wash me, cleanse me."

In verse 7, he says, "Purify me with hyssop and I shall be clean. Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow." In verse 10, "Create in me a clean heart, O God." David is dirty. He's dirty on the inside. Unconfessed sin will foul and fester and produce a rottenness like an open sore inside that doesn't go away. You know, we say, "Well, time heals all wounds." Well, if you're not right with God, time doesn't heal that. You have to do something to heal that.

David is just covering it over, acting like, well, it's going to go away. It's not going away; it just keeps getting more and more foul. David felt filthy on the inside, and there was no way to get that out. He couldn't take a shower on the inside. Only God can do that.

Unconfessed sin will foul and fester. Secondly, unconfessed sin will haunt your conscience. He says in verse three, "For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me." Lord, it's always before me. Every time I turn around, when I go to sleep and I close my eyes, I just see what I did. I see Uriah's face. I'm just haunted by the ghost of guilt. Can anybody identify with that? When you have a guilty conscience, it just gnaws at you. It will haunt your conscience and steal your joy, your peace, your praise, your witness. All that is gone when you have unconfessed sin in your heart.

David mentions that; he says, "Hey, God, verse 8. Make me to hear joy and gladness. I can't hear that anymore. Let the bones which you have broken rejoice. Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquities. God, I'm so ashamed. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast 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 my salvation and sustain me with a willing spirit."

Hey, you read that? What's going on with David? David is so afraid that God is going to take his hand off him. You know, we don't pray, "Lord, please don't take your Holy Spirit from me." We're New Testament saints. David's an Old Testament saint. In the Old Testament, God's Spirit didn't come to live inside people. He does in the New Testament. Jesus said, "My Spirit shall be with you and shall be in you. He'll be with you forever. I will never leave you," Jesus said, "nor will I ever forsake you."

So we never have to say, "Oh, God, are you going to leave me now? Am I going to lose my salvation over my sin?" That doesn't happen. But for David, the Holy Spirit of God came upon him when he was anointed king. David didn't want God to take his hand off of him. David saw what happened with Saul. When God took his hand off Saul, it was awful.

David has lost his peace. David has lost his assurance. David is now living in fear. There's no joy. He says, "Lord, bring me back the joy of my salvation." David doesn't have a mouth to praise him. He's called the sweet psalmist of Israel, but now he can't praise the Lord, and he can't sing. Everything is mechanical, okay? When you have unconfessed sin in your heart and you try to worship God, you just know, "I'm not right with him. I'm not right with him. I'm not right with him." I'm just going through the motions. I'm just saying the words. But it's not real. God hates that because it's so hypocritical, and unconfessed sin will steal all of that from you. It's terrible.

So David says, "God, I need to get right with you. I don't need to cover this anymore. Have you gotten to that place? Hey, you own what you did."

Then step number three, you claim the truth of Scripture. And what is the truth of Scripture? "If we confess our sins, he's faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." First John. David didn't have First John 1:9, but he did have Psalm 86, verse 5: "For you, Lord, are good and ready to forgive and abundant in loving kindness to all who call upon you." God's ready to forgive.

Maybe you're here and you can really identify with David, especially with sexual sin, which is rampant in our world today. You can identify with being a Christian as David was an Old Testament saint, and you're not right with God. You know you're not right with God, and you're trying to play this cover-up game, and you have the guilt and the loss of peace and loss of assurance. You know, many people doubt their salvation. Why? Because they're living in sin. There's no assurance of salvation when you're living in sin.

So what do you do? How can you get forgiven? How can you get clean on the inside? God will forgive you when you repent. When you repent. Repentance is not just saying, "God, I'm sorry." If we confess our sins. Confess. Homologeo in the Greek means to say the same thing as God. When we say the same thing about our sin that God says about our sin, when we confess our sins, then he's faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

See, it's kind of like this. If you're leaving church today and you get on I-30, and let's say you're driving fast to get somewhere, and you're going 80 miles an hour in a 65-mile-an-hour zone, you get pulled over. The police officer says, "Hey, you know how fast you're going?" "No, officer, how fast was I going?" "You're going 80 miles an hour; the speed limit is 65. You're going 15 miles over the speed limit. You're speeding."

"Okay, you caught me. I'm speeding." All right, I agree with you. I'm speeding. You get a ticket, and you keep on going. You see him turn around, go the other way, and you're back going 80. Okay? You don't really care you got caught, but you're not repentant. You don't feel the weight of what you did.

See, repentance says, "God, not only did I break your law, but I broke your heart. And God, I am so sorry over what I've done." The Bible talks about worldly sorrow and godly sorrow. It says this in Second Corinthians, chapter 7, verses 9 and 10. Paul says to the Corinthians, "Now I rejoice not that you were made sorrowful, but that you were made sorrowful to the point of repentance. For you were made sorrowful according to the will of God, so that you might not suffer loss in anything through us. For the sorrow that is according to the will of God produces a repentance without regret leading to salvation. But a sorrow of the world produces death."

Judas had the sorrow of the world. He regretted what he did, betraying the Lord Jesus, and he went and hanged himself. Judas hated himself and loved his sin. Peter denied the Lord, and Peter hated his sin and loved himself and repented and got right with God. Big, big difference. Sorrow of the world: Judas. Sorrow according to the will of God: Peter.

Now, you can't manufacture that, but you can pray for that. "God, make my heart to where it cares about the things that you care for. And when I sin against you, Lord, that it would hurt me and that I would want to quickly repent, agree with you, and come clean."

David puts it this way in verses 16 and 17: "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 contrite heart. O God, you will not despise."

Hey, you can make the sacrifice, you can check the box, you can go through the motions, but God's looking at your heart. Is it real in here? You can't snow job God. You know, religion is all outward. We do it outwardly; people can see it. And the Lord looks at the heart and says, "Is that genuine? Is that true?"

When our girls were little and they would fight, Debbie said, "Now you need to apologize to one another." And they would say, "I'm sorry." "I'm sorry too." And Debbie would be like, "No, no, no, no, no. That doesn't count. Not just saying the words. You have to repent. You have to be sorry in your heart that you hit your sister. You have to be sorry for this. There has to be genuine, sincere repentance over what you did."

God is looking for that, and he'll forgive you when you repent. That's what Sandy Patty did. And God forgave her. Did it cost her? Yes. But God forgave her, and God restored her. See, God will restore you and use your life for his glory when you get right with him. David said in verse 12, "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."

Hey, if you commit some terrible, horrible, awful sin, is there hope for you? I'm going to talk about as a Christian. See, before you became a Christian, if you do terrible, horrible, and awful things, well, that's just your testimony. It's like, "I was this horrible guy, Son of Sam, David Berkowitz." He has a great testimony. "I was killing people in New York in the 70s, and I got put in prison. I was the Son of Sam killer. I got put in prison. A guy witnessed to me, gave me a New Testament Psalms and Proverbs in the New Testament of Gideon, those little Bibles. I started reading through Psalms. I came to Psalm 34:6: 'This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him and saved him out of all his troubles.' And God convicted the Son of Sam killer. He convicted his heart. And David Berkowitz got down on his knees and asked God to forgive him. And his testimony is, 'I'm forgiven for life. I'm going to be in prison for life, but I'm forgiven for life.'"

Hey, we look at that as a non-Christian and say, "Wow, what a testimony." What about a Christian? I'm talking about you who know Christ, and you commit terrible, horrible sin like David. Where do you go from there? Is there hope for you? Yes, because God is the God who will restore. God is the God who will forgive. But know this: there are consequences to sin that don't go away. There are consequences. Nathan told David, "The sword shall never depart from your house."

In chapter 13, his son rapes his daughter. His son Amnon rapes Tamar. Then the other brother, Absalom, kills the rapist, Amnon. Then Absalom tries to kill David. The sword didn't depart from his house. He had disaster on his hands. Why? Because of his sin. But his heart was right with God. God restored his relationship with him.

When I was in college, I still remember my pastor, Harold Ochester. He was talking about, "You reap what you sow." He said this: "If you go out from here today, and you go to a bar and you get bombed out of your mind, you can do that. You have the free will to do that. And then suppose you get into a fight at the bar, you're drunk, and in the fight, somehow, some way, your arm gets cut off. And then you go to the hospital, they stitch you back up, and you get right with God and you ask God to forgive you. And God forgives you, and you get right with him. And you know what? Your arm doesn't grow back."

We all understand that. "I lost my arm. Why'd you lose your arm? Because I sinned against God. I got drunk, and now I got in a fight, and I lost my arm. And I've gotten right with God, but now they call me Lefty." I mean, it's just one of those things, right? And my arm's not growing back. There are consequences to sin. David had consequences.

But here's the good news: God can still use you. God can forgive you. God can use you for his glory. "Then I will teach transgressors thy ways, and sinners will be converted to you."

Let me close with this story. A man had a business appointment in the morning, and he had to catch the 8:05 train to get to his office for this important meeting. The night before, it rained hard at his house. He gets up a little later than he wanted to. He's hurrying to make sure he catches the 8:05 train. He goes out the back door in a hurry, and there he sees his little son, a 3-year-old, playing in a mud puddle in the backyard. The kid is sitting in the mud, having so much fun, rubbing mud all over his hands, making mud pies. There's mud on his face; the kid's in the mud.

The father, in his hurry to get to the 8:05 train, goes by the son to say goodbye to him. When he does, he slips and falls in the mud. So now the three-year-old is in the mud having a good time, and the father is in the mud thinking, "What in the world? I don't have time to change my clothes. I have to go. What am I going to do? I have to catch the 8:05."

So the father gets up from the mud, brushes off the mud as best he can. He knows that on the train there's a bathroom. In the bathroom, there is water, there is soap, and there are paper towels. "I'll clean myself up on the train." And off he ran.

Hey, you're in this room today. You're watching Livestream. There are two kinds of people. There's the kind that's sitting in the mud, playing in the mud, having fun in the mud. And there are those who fall in the mud. They don't want to be in the mud, but they find themselves in the mud. What are they going to do?

You need to remember, if you've fallen in the mud, you got a train to catch. God has a plan for your life. God didn't save you so that you would stay in the mud. He saved you so that you would walk with him in the light and make a difference in this world for Jesus Christ. You have a train to catch. And on that train, there's a God who loves you. And on that train, there's the blood of Jesus that washes white as snow.

If you'll get up out of the mud puddle and come to him, you'll find his arms open wide because God is a God of forgiveness. Hey, you can leave this place today in the mud or walking with God. The prodigal son said when he came to his senses, "Do not my father's hired men have food to eat? They're not. I'll get up and go to my Father and say, 'Father, I've sinned against heaven and in your sight. I'm no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me as one of your hired men.'"

He left the pigsty, and he got up and

Speaker 1

Now, how about you today? Perhaps you know that you are a believer that Jesus is indeed the Lord and Savior of your life. But like King David, your sin has caused you to feel distant from God. God wants you to come back to him today. He wants you to confess your sin and resurrender your life to him, walking by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Or maybe you know right this very moment that you have never asked God to come into your heart. You've never surrendered your will and your heart to him, repented of your sin, and asked him to save you. Well, if you do that today, you will be saved. If you don't know Christ in a personal way, come to him now. Cry out to him from a repentant heart, and you will be a child of God. What a blessing and comfort that is, knowing that you are part of the family of God.

If you'd like to know more about how to surrender your life to Christ and what it means for you now and for eternity, go to fromisheart.org and click the "Why Jesus" link. You'll find some free materials there to download and some specific messages from Pastor Jeff that'll be a real blessing to you.

If your heart is not with the Lord, then you're probably struggling with your job and your marriage, maybe your money, your kids, family issues, loss of a loved one, things like that. You're struggling because you don't know where to turn. Maybe your sin has caused you to be distant from God. No matter what it is that has shattered your heart, you will be encouraged with the series Pastor Jeff is in this month called "Life is Hard But God is Good." Nine messages on CDs, DVDs, a USB flash drive, or an immediate MP3 download. These are our gifts to you to say thank you for your fiscal year-end gift today, and when you do, make that gift and get the series. We'll also include the companion booklet "Strong Faith for Tough Times."

To get these resources, call 866-40-BIBLE (866-40-24253) and make your gift, or go online to fromisheart.org. Discover how God can turn everything around in your life, pull you out of the pit of despair, and give you a song of blessing and deliverance.

Thank you for joining us today on From His Heart. I'm Larry Nobles inviting you to join Pastor Jeff tomorrow as he begins the final message in the series "Life is Hard But God is Good," as we'll open up God's Word then and share real truth, real love, and real hope. From His Heart.

Speaker 2

There is tremendous truth.

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 when you go to fromisheart.org.