Love Worth Finding

Guest (Male): Listen closely to Adrian Rogers as he explains how to come back when you're down in your sin.

Adrian Rogers: The devil will tempt us to sin, and then after you sin, he becomes the accuser. And he says, "You'll never get away with it." The devil will tell you that God is finished with you. The devil will tell you that God has cast you off, but that is a lie. There's nothing you can do that'll make God stop loving you. And God loves you today. I don't care what you've done, how many times you've failed; for great sin, there is great grace.

Guest (Male): Welcome to Love Worth Finding featuring the profound yet practical messages of Pastor Adrian Rogers. Getting saved does not mean we lose our capacity to sin or minimize its gravity. The eternal security of salvation is not a license to sin without suffering.

In fact, we will suffer more because the Holy Spirit convicts believers of their sins until they confess them. King David, though a man after God's own heart, was a great sinner. He committed adultery, and in covering it up, he committed murder.

But David was also a great repenter, and his words of insight in Psalm 51 show us the way back after falling into sin. If you have your Bible, turn there now as Adrian Rogers explains how to come back when you're down.

Adrian Rogers: Take your Bibles and turn to Psalm 51. And while you're turning, may I tell you that the devil does this. The devil will tempt us to sin, and he will say, "You can get away with it. You can get away with it. It's all right." And he is the tempter.

And then after you sin, he becomes the accuser, and he says, "You'll never get away with it. You'll never get away with it." And what he wants to do is to get you off balance, get you out of the will of God, and bring discouragement to you and make you feel that you can never, ever again come back. I want to talk to you today about how to come back when you are down.

Now, Psalm 51 is the story of David's repentance after he had sinned. David committed the sin of adultery, and then trying to cover it up, he committed the sin of, at the best, manslaughter, at the worst, cold-blooded murder. But this psalm is the psalm of a penitent because not only was David a great sinner, David was a great repenter.

And that's why I love Psalm 51. Three basic things I want you to think about. The very first thing is this: the capability of sin in the saint. What I mean by that is that any of us have the capability to sin. When we get saved, that does not mean that we lose our capacity to sin.

Many times, sin in a saint is an unexpected opportunity and an undetected weakness. And when those two come together, we fall into sin. The Bible says, "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." Now, we've already told you that when the child of God sins, if he's truly a child of God, that sin cannot take away his salvation.

But that does not mean that he can sin with impunity. I want to say just as surely as you put your hand on a hot stove, you get burned. If you're bound to sin, you're bound to suffer, whether you're saved or whether you're lost. Now, I want us to move not only from the capability of sin to the consequences of sin.

What happens when a Christian sins? I want to list some things here. Look in Psalm 51. David says, "Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness: according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin."

The first consequence in the life of a child of God is this: it soils his soul. David says, "Wash me, cleanse me." Now, why did David do that? Well, he felt dirty. He's not dirty physically. He's a king. He bathed in his lavish marble tub. He slept on his silken sheets. He wore his royal robes. And yet he feels grimy. He feels filthy. He feels dirty.

Did you know that's one way that you can know that you're saved? Not whether or not you can sin, but does your sin make you feel dirty? You see, there's a difference between a child of God and a child of the devil. The child of the devil sins, and it doesn't bother him. He may take God's name in vain, and you rebuke him. He says, "What'd I say?" or "What's wrong with that?" He has no difficulty with sin.

There's a difference between a child of God and a child of Satan. It's just like a pig wallows. No pig has ever felt dirty. No pig has ever said, "Woe is me, I'm a dirty pig." A sheep may fall in the mud; it wants to get out. But the pig just lies there because that's the pig's nature. The pig doesn't feel dirty.

The difference between a child of God and a child of the devil is this: the child of God may lapse into sin and he loathes it. The child of the devil leaps into sin and he loves it. Now, David sinned, but David felt dirty. He felt grimy. He said, "O God, wash me, cleanse me." If you can sin and that sin does not make you feel grimy and dirty, I doubt that you've ever been saved. I doubt that you have the Holy Spirit living in you.

That's the first thing sin does. The second thing sin does, not only does it soil the soul, but sin also saturates the mind. Notice in verse 3, "For I acknowledge my transgression, and my sin is ever before me." Ever before me. Night and day, day and night, the thing that David had done reverberates through his soul and echoes through his consciousness. He cannot get rid of it.

It is there. It is an indelible mark. It is a wound to his psyche. It saturates his mind. Now, if you can sin and easily forget that sin, I doubt that you've been saved because the Holy Spirit of God is there to remind you of that sin. David said, "My sin is ever before me."

Does that mean, Pastor Rogers, that if I sin, I'll be thinking about it 24 hours a day? Maybe not in your conscious mind, but it will be there in your subconscious. You may kick it out the front door; it'll run around the house and come in the basement window. And it will show up as a migraine headache. It'll show up as the inability to concentrate. It'll show up as an irritable temper.

It will show up as the inability to pray. It will show up in other ways. I'm not saying that if you have a migraine that it's because you're backslid, but I'm saying that some people have one because they are. Their sin is ever before them. It saturates the mind. There are two kinds of wounds that can come to the human psyche. One is guilt, and the other is sorrow.

Sorrow is a clean wound. And sorrow, because it is a clean wound, will heal. It's a deep wound, a raw wound. It hurts, but it will heal because it's a clean wound. But guilt is a dirty wound. It festers and festers and festers, and it will never heal until it is cleansed.

So what does this do? It soils the soul. It saturates the mind. And here's a third thing it does: it stings the conscience. Look in verse 4, "Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight." Now, here David is conscience-stricken. Here David is not crying out against the punishment; he's crying out against the sin.

He says, "Oh, my God, I have sinned against you." Some people say, "Well, David sinned against his kingdom." He did. David sinned against his family. He did. David sinned against his body. He did. But that's not what bothered David primarily. David was a child of God.

And David said, "Oh, God, against thee and thee only have I sinned." And David saw sin for what it really is: an affront to a holy God. And it was the God who loved him, the God who had redeemed him. If all you're afraid of is the punishment for your sin, I doubt that you've been saved. If you're a child of God, when you sin, you don't weep primarily because you're going to get punished.

You weep primarily because you have disgraced your God. "Against thee and thee only have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight. Oh God, I'm so ashamed I sinned against you. Not only, God, did I break your law, I broke your heart." That's the difference between a slave and a son. A slave, when he disobeys, fears the whip, his master's lash.

But a son, when he disobeys, if he's a loving son, fears the father's displeasure and is brokenhearted that he has broken the heart of God. Does your sin bother you that way? When you sin, do you say, "Oh, my God, my God, I sinned against you"? It stings the conscience. It saddens the heart.

Look in verse 8, "Make me to hear joy and gladness; that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice." Look in verse 12, "Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation." He's not asking to have his salvation restored. You can be saved and be miserable.

The most miserable man on earth is not an unsaved man. Many unsaved people are having a ball. They're living high, wide, and handsome, a lot of fun. Never tell anybody you can't have any pleasure if you're not saved. The Bible speaks of the pleasures of sin for a season.

And David here is miserable, and he's saved. He's a child of God. And he is praying, "God, restore unto me the joy of thy salvation." The most miserable man on earth is not a lost man. The most miserable man on earth is a saved man out of fellowship with God. Isn't that true?

When God saves you, God doesn't fix you where you can't sin anymore. He just fixes you where you can't sin and enjoy it anymore. That's what God does when God saves you. And so here David is praying, "Lord, restore unto me the joy of thy salvation." Not only that, but it also sickens the body.

Look in verse 8, "Make me to hear joy and gladness; that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice." Well, did God put a hammerlock on David and break his bones? Not literally. This is poetry. David is a poet. We do the same thing today. We say, "I was just crushed." That doesn't mean a steamroller went over us. He's talking in poetic terms.

What he's saying is, "God, you have me under extreme pressure." The bones which thou hast broken. It's almost as if God has David in his hands and God is just squeezing the life out of David. Sometimes people think, "Well, if we sin, God will just cast us off." Oh, no, he squeezes all the tighter.

He's saying, "Make me to hear joy and gladness, that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice." There's incredible pressure. If you keep that pressure on for a long time, it's going to make you sick. The pressure of sin can sicken your body. If you're a child of God, many children of God are sicker than they ought to be.

Sickness is a very complicated thing, and there are many reasons for sickness. But one of the reasons for sickness is sin in the life of the child of God. So if you've lost your joy, no wonder you might get sick, because a merry heart doeth good like a medicine. When you're right with God, you stand straighter. When you're right with God, you smile more.

When you're right with God, you sleep better. When you're right with God, you digest your food better. I'm just telling you, friend, that a merry heart is one of the best medicines you can take. But you can't have that joy of the Lord if you are a backslider walking away from God.

Here is David, a child of God, and he is perfectly miserable. It also sours the spirit. Look in verse 10, "Create a clean heart in me, O God, and renew a right spirit." David had a wrong spirit. Have you ever seen a backslidden person with a sour spirit? I'd much rather be around a good old-fashioned unsaved pagan than a backslidden Christian.

The most censorious, cantankerous, vituperative, can't-get-along-with type of individual I've ever known are backsliders. Because they're miserable on the inside and because they're condemned, they're trying to push the misery off on everybody else. You watch a person with a sour spirit, a person with a wrong spirit.

They are the most critical persons in our church. They think that God gave them the gift of criticism. Do you know what their problem is? They are backslidden. No dish on the table looks good to a person with a sour stomach. And they just find fault everywhere with everything. Case in point.

David had committed adultery, and then trying to cover it up, he committed the sin of manslaughter. Nathan the prophet came to speak to him. He didn't come to talk about church finance either. He came to talk about David's sin, and he told David a story about a man who had a little pet lamb that was like his own daughter, ate from his table, a poor man.

He lived next door to a very rich man. This rich man had thousands of flocks and herds. And then the rich man had a stranger to stop by, and the rich man took the poor man's lamb, killed it, cooked it, and fed it to the stranger. He said, "Now, David, you're the king. Tell us what ought to be done to the man who's done this thing."

Well, David was livid with rage. He jumped up from his throne. I can see him as he clinches his fist, grits his teeth, and says, "The man that has done that will pay fourfold." And Nathan the prophet said, "And you're the man. You're the man. You are the man, David. You have just sentenced yourself in your own court."

It was all an analogy. The little lamb was Bathsheba, the one that David had stolen. David was quick to judge a man that had stolen a lamb; he had stolen another man's wife. David was quick to judge the man who'd killed an animal, but he had killed a human being. And yet he was quick to judge somebody else.

You'll always find those who are backslidden are very careful to judge people for less sin than they have in their own lives. They're the ones who go around trying to pick specks out of other people's eye when they have logs in their own eye. They have a sour spirit. You feel so much better when you get back right with God.

And then the last thing that sin does in the life of a child of God, not only does it sour his spirit, but it seals his lips. Look in verse 12, "Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation, and uphold me with thy free spirit. Then will I teach transgressors thy ways, and sinners shall be converted unto thee. Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God, thou God of my salvation; and my tongue shall sing aloud of thy righteousness. O Lord, open thou my lips, and my mouth shall show forth thy praise."

Sin in the life of a Christian shuts his mouth; it seals his lips. David said, "When I get right, then I'll be a soul winner. When I get right, then I'll be a singer. When I get right, then I will praise." Do you know how you can tell whether or not a person is backslidden or not?

When a person is backslidden, as a general rule, singing just stops. Oh, he'll sing, but it doesn't come from his heart. Praise withers. Soul winning stops altogether because sin shuts his mouth. The devil says, "Who are you to be singing 'What a wonderful change in my life has been wrought since Jesus came into my heart'?"

"Who are you to be singing 'What a mighty God we serve'?" "Who are you to be testifying and telling somebody else they need to get saved when you are such a miserable example and you have no joy and you have no peace and you don't even have any real assurance in your own heart and in your own life?"

The devil intimidates so many people because there's sin in the heart and in the life. All of these things put together are things that happen in this life. And then when you come to the judgment seat of Christ, oh, what a loss of reward there will be.

How do you come back? When you get into this situation, how do you come back? Three very simple and wonderful things. The very first, and they all start with the letter C, is confidence. Confidence. You must have confidence that God still loves you.

Notice how David prays beginning in verse 1, "Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness: according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions." David had confidence in his God. David knew that for a multitude of sins, there were a multitude of tender mercies.

David knew that he was a sinner, but David knew that God was full of lovingkindness. The devil will tell you if you've sinned grievously that God is finished with you. The devil will tell you there's no hope for you. The devil will tell you that God has cast you off, but that is a lie.

There's nothing you can do that'll make God stop loving you. Oh, friend, remember that. Don't you listen to the dirty devil. David had confidence in God. And God loves you today. I don't care what you've done, how many times you've failed; probably nobody here has committed sin in the magnitude of David.

And yet David said, "Oh, God, according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies." For great sin, there is great grace. Say amen. For great sin, there is great grace. For great sin, there is great grace. That is confidence.

Now the next C is confession. Notice what he says in verse 3, "For I acknowledge my transgressions: and my sin is ever before me. Against thee, thee 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."

This is a confession. The Bible says in 1 John 1:9, "If we confess our sin, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sin, and to cleanse us," hallelujah, "from all unrighteousness." It's not just an admission of sin; it is a confession. He's saying, "I sinned against you."

There's one thing that God will not accept for sin, and that is an excuse and an alibi. David could have said, "Well, it wasn't my fault. My wife wasn't showing me the love I deserved." Or he said, "It wasn't my fault. Bathsheba was out there bathing where she shouldn't have been bathing." Or, "I just had a weak moment, but God, you know all of us are human. I had a glandular malfunction."

He could have given all of these alibis for sin. There's one thing that God will not accept for sin, and that is an alibi. First of all, confidence. Secondly, confession. Thirdly, cleansing. Notice he says in verse 2, "Wash me thoroughly." Notice he says in verse 7, "Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow."

Wash me, purge me, blot out my transgressions, he says. Not only does he remove the penalty, he removes the pollution. Friend, he literally purges you on the inside. Hallelujah. This is God's triple detergent. And you don't need to go around with a load of guilt anymore.

You don't need to go carrying all of that condemnation that Satan has put on you anymore. You can be clean. Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Isn't that wonderful? Isn't that glorious? Hallelujah. What a great God, what a mighty God we serve. There's the capability of sin, the consequences of sin, but thank God there's the cleansing of sin.

Guest (Male): Aren't you glad to know that you don't have to carry around your own condemnation anymore? You can be clean. If you have questions regarding your faith in Jesus, we'd love to offer an insightful resource on our website: the Find God's Love page.

There you'll discover answers you may need about your faith. There's a response section as well. You can share how this message or others have helped you. Go to lwf.org/radio and click the tab that says Find God's Love. We can't wait to hear from you today.

Cary Vaughn: Hi, this is Cary Vaughn, and this program has been brought to you by Love Worth Finding, a nonprofit ministry showcasing the powerful preaching and teaching of Pastor Adrian Rogers. We operate solely through the generous gifts of individual supporters just like you.

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