Telling the Truth

Guest (Male): Today on Telling the Truth, we hear more of Jill Briscoe's message, "The Long Walk Home." You can take one of two paths in life: with God or without Him. No matter how hard you try, you'll never stay on God's path without the work of the Holy Spirit. King David found that to be true, but he learned the lesson the hard way. Jill begins in just a moment.

Today's culture is a revolving door of ever-shifting views and beliefs. That's why it's so important to test new ideas against the timeless truth of Scripture. It's the best defense against the world's confusion. We want to help ground you in the foundations of your faith by sending you Stuart Briscoe's six-message series on the book of Second Peter, "Six Things We Must Never Forget."

The "Six Things We Must Never Forget" series is our thanks for your gift to help keep Telling the Truth going strong, sharing life-giving teaching from Stuart and Jill with more people all over the world. So request your copy when you give today and get help staying grounded in truth in today's shifting culture. Call 1-800-889-5388. That's 1-800-889-5388, or you can give online at tellingthetruth.org.

Last time, Jill explained the importance of confessing those things we should and should not have done to God, seeking the forgiveness and continued cleansing of Jesus. It's here she begins part two of her message, "The Long Walk Home."

Jill Briscoe: The thing is about sin: there are no small sins, actually. How can anybody live a life? Certainly, we're not going to do it perfectly. Certainly, we're going to fail. Certainly, we're going to sin. Are we always, forever?

How does it work? We all know the story of David, but just let me remind you about David. He did pretty well until he was middle-aged, and then his disciplines fell apart. One day he got up late because he'd been in bed all the time, and that's all right, except he shouldn't have been in bed; he should have been on the battlefront where he'd sent his army. That was like the captain that appears to have abandoned the ship that just sank.

So he's getting lazy. He's getting middle-aged. His disciplines are all sort of going haywire. In the evening, it says, he got up and he went on the roof. He shouldn't have done that. He got on the roof, and he didn't get off it, which was the point. Uriah's wife, his best friend's wife, was in the swimming pool, which she probably shouldn't have been on the top of the house where everybody could see her. What she was doing up there at that point, nobody knows.

She didn't get out of the pool, and he didn't get off the roof. You know what happened. They ended up in bed together, and she got pregnant. She told him. So David, it says in the Scriptures, added sin to sin to sin. He called for Uriah to come back from the battlefront, hoping he'd go home and go to bed so the baby would be his and nobody would ask any questions. How he thought he was going to keep it quiet with all the servants, I'm quite sure, knowing everything that was happening.

So Uriah comes home, but he is more of a man drunk than David was sober because David got him drunk in the end to try and get him to bed with his wife. Even though he was drunk, he still wouldn't go to bed with his wife. I wonder if he knew. I always wonder. So he just slept at the gate of the king and didn't go home. Now David's in a mess. What's he going to do? Sin to sin to sin to sin.

He signs his death warrant in a letter and sends it back by Uriah's hand. When Joab—I think this is where he lost Joab too because he went over to Absalom later, his son, and rebelled. Joab opened it and said, "Well, this king of mine can sin like the rest of us." Because it said, "Put Uriah in the front of the battle and leave him to die." David, who wrote this Psalm!

I'm quite sure when David wrote this Psalm, it was written before that terrible time when he wouldn't get off the roof and everything crumbled. Absalom, his favorite son, rebelled against his father and tried to kill him. Absalom actually killed Amnon, another son of David's. And the baby died, remember? David was never quite the same after that.

Psalm 51. I just want to run through for all of us what you do when you don't get off the roof. I want to tell you that according to the Word of God, there is life after sin. Whether it's a small apple or a big apple, it's all apples, and it's all sin, and it all offends God. It will all have repercussions if it is not dealt with, if it is not cleansed and goes on being cleansed by the blood of Jesus.

So is there life after sin? Just look at this incredible Psalm. What a Psalm. Psalm 51. Let me just read it: "Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion, blot out my transgressions. Wash away all my iniquity, cleanse me from my sin. Clean me up. I want to clean up my act, God. I feel so dirty. I feel so filthy." Have you ever felt like that?

"For I know my transgressions; my sin is always before me." He's had one year, one year before Nathan comes and faces him up, the prophet, and he confesses his sin. He's had one year trying to hide it, one year trying to bury it. Now, what does he say about trying to do that? "I know my transgression, my sin is always before me." In other words, it's haunting me. I'm haunted.

That's what happens. You go to bed with it, you get up with it. You cannot do anything to it to make the shame and the guilt go away. Only God can cope with sin that's offended Him. Of course, David had also offended Bathsheba, and she had also offended her husband. It goes in ripples and ripples. But the person that you've offended has to forgive you.

If somebody hurts my husband, I can't say, "I forgive you for doing that." He has to say, "I forgive you for doing that." The one that you've offended needs to forgive you. "My sin is always before me. It's haunting me. Against you, you only, have I sinned." A sin against man is a sin against God. A sin against anybody is a sin against God.

Against You, You only. Obviously, he'd sinned against Bathsheba; he'd sinned against all these other people. But a sin against any man is a sin against God. "I know my transgression, my sin is always before me; against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight; you are proved right when you speak and justified when you judge. Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me."

He's talking about how we are all born in sin with a sin propensity, with a bias inside us. It means that there isn't a baby conceived from the time Adam and Eve sinned in the garden and Cain and Abel began the human race. There isn't a child conceived that hasn't been born with the propensity, the bias, to sin—this weight that pulls us off.

Adam and Eve and parents and everybody can push those children as straight as they can; they can aim them as straight, and there's something in them that pulls them off. It's called the old nature. The old nature pulls us off, and it got David. Maybe he didn't know himself. Maybe he'd just let his disciplines go, whatever.

So here he is, and he begins to say, "Surely you desire truth in the inner parts." I love Moffatt's translation: "from the inside out." He wants truth from the inside out. That's what he wants. He wants us to be honest with ourselves. He wants us to be honest with God. He wants us to get on our knees and say, "You know it all."

Have you ever noticed how devious we are? Have you ever prayed, and there's this huge thing you should be talking to God about, and He wants to talk to you about? You manage to have your quiet time over here somehow, in the prayer chamber of your soul. You get your map out and you pray for all the missionaries, all the time this thing is here and God is saying, "Excuse me, can we talk about this?"

And we finish and we tick it all off and we think, "Oh, I've done all my prayers. Oh, I've got to go. Sorry, Lord." And off we go, right? And we're not honest. Too painful, maybe.

Guest (Male): More teaching from Stuart and Jill Briscoe is coming up, so stay with us. Did you know you can find more life-giving content from the Briscoes at tellingthetruth.org and on the Telling the Truth app? There, you can sign up for daily devotionals, watch videos, read blogs, and access a variety of other resources to help you experience life.

And while you're there, you can also request this month's featured resource as thanks for your gift of support to help share the abundant life Jesus offers with more people around the world. Visit us online or download the app today and experience life with Telling the Truth. Let's get back now to Jill Briscoe for more.

Jill Briscoe: Not honest. Sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me, but You want me to be truthful from the inside out, and You will teach me wisdom. What's wisdom? Spiritual intelligence. Wisdom is spiritual know-how, know-how to know what to do. That's wisdom. Knowledge is just collecting facts; wisdom is knowing what to do with them.

Spiritual wisdom is knowing what God wants you to do with them. And God will give us wisdom because He has given us wisdom—He gave us Christ. It says in the New Testament, Christ is your wisdom. Christ is our wisdom. We don't have enough wisdom, human wisdom, but He lends us His ideas. He lends us beyond ourselves.

Have you ever had to take a very difficult talk with somebody, and you have no idea? You're lost for words. You're going to be lost for words. You don't even want to have this talk. Christ is your wisdom. It says in that hour, "I will give you words for what I want you to do, for what you want to say, and what you should say."

David goes on: "Create and cleanse me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow." He feels dirty. Have you ever felt dirty? Do you know that God can clean you up so you don't feel dirty? What's hyssop? It's a little tiny plant. It grows out of the rocks in the Holy Land, and it's spongy.

The priests used it in the Old Testament, and people use those sponges today—that plant that is a sponge. What the priests used it for was when the sacrifice was made, they would dip it in the blood, and then they would sprinkle from that spongy hyssop whoever it was that had come to confess their sins. Cleanse me with hyssop, and I shall be clean.

The blood of Jesus is the life of Jesus. That makes it easier to think about and talk about the blood of Christ. The life is in the blood. That's what the Bible says, and that's what doctors and everybody else will tell you. The life is in the blood. Cleanse me by Your blood means cleanse me by Your life—Your living life, Your forgiving, compassionate, loving *hesed* life.

So he says, "Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow. Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones you have crushed rejoice. Hide your face from my sins; blot out all my iniquity." Now he starts on the positive: "Create in me a pure heart. I need to just have a new makeover. I need to be created again, God. A new creation."

We can go into the New Testament and think about that phrase "a new creation in Christ." Only Christ can do this. He can make us a new person. He can make us a new creation. Create in me a pure heart, O God. Is that possible? Is that possible when you look at what David fell into or walked into and didn't walk out of? A pure heart again? Older and wiser?

"And renew a steadfast"—the word is willing—"renew a willing spirit." What's he saying? "I want to be willing again. I want to go back to Psalm 119 and the whole thing: You know my heart, You know I'm willing, You know I want You, I know I'm looking for You, You know I delight in Your Word. I want that willing, willing, 'I will, I will, I will' spirit." Is that possible after what had happened?

"Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me." Can we lose the Holy Spirit when we sin? This is the Old Testament, before Pentecost. Saul was anointed with the Holy Spirit, but it says that when he played the fool, the Spirit of God was removed from Saul and David was anointed.

David experienced the anointing and the power and the blessing of the Holy Spirit, so the Holy Spirit could be withdrawn in the Old Testament. Once Pentecost happened, I don't believe you can lose the Holy Spirit. I think you can grieve Him. I know you can grieve Him—make Him sorry He's living inside you. It's pretty uncomfortable because He's promised never to leave you.

We can do that. We can resist Him. No. We can quench Him, Paul says. Try and pour water on the fire. We can do all those things. But He's never going to leave us or forsake us. It's like having a penny in my hand that falls down, but it can't fall out because He said, "No man shall pluck you out of my Father's hand."

So here's David. Even in the Old Testament, with all the things he knew about the sacrifices and everything like that pointing to the Lamb who would come, the Messiah, from his family—is all of that gone because of his sin? God had chosen him, a man after His own heart, and all the things that God had helped him do—to kill Goliath and take the throne back and make the Davidic kingdom something that to this day has never been seen on this earth.

In one night of sensual indulgence, he broke ten. If you look at the Ten Commandments, figure it out. He broke pretty well every one of them in one sensual giving-in to his sexual appetites. "Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit; restore"—I love these words—"restore, renew, remake the joy of your salvation."

How can you possibly be happy without repentance? I don't understand anybody thinking this. I do think just turning away from what you've been doing—that's what it's going to take. Because you can be forgiven for murder, but the body is still there. You can be forgiven for adultery, but the mess is still there.

And that's what happened to David for the rest of his life. God did forgive him; God did renew him. This is the verse I love: "Save me from bloodguilt, O God, the God who saves me." That's Uriah he's talking about. "My tongue will sing of your righteousness. Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise."

We say that in the traditional Lutheran service and Anglican service. I used to say that verse; I didn't know where it was from. It was from Psalm 51. For a long, long time: "O Lord, open thou my mouth, and I will declare thy praise. You don't delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it; you don't take pleasure in burnt offerings. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit. Look at me; I'm broken. O God, you will not despise."

And God restored David. God restored him. We'll look at a little bit of his writing after Bathsheba. So, can I lose the Holy Spirit if I sin? No. Is there life after sin? Yes, if you're coming to God in humility, confessing to God with sincerity, and you can be cleansed by God through the blood of Jesus.

There's a wonderful song I heard a man sing at a huge convention years ago. Fabulous song. It simply says, "Do you know what the blood has done for me? Do you know what the blood has done for me? It has cleansed me; it has set me free." It's the blood of Christ that cleansed you from all sin. It's His life given, come within you, taking possession of.

Are you living in the Word? If you're living in the Word, you'll truly be His disciple, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.

Guest (Male): And now here's Jill to answer a few questions about her message today. Jill, can you tell about a time you had to be honest with God? What difference did being honest with God make?

Jill Briscoe: Like this morning? I have a trouble with being transparent. You have to practice it. You have to practice transparency with God and with other people because who wants to? I mean, I don't. I think the thing about being honest with God is nobody can do that for you. Only you can decide to be honest with him.

It's really stupid, actually. We go to God in prayer; he knows absolutely everything. So who are we kidding? "Well, I don't want to talk to God about that, so I won't. So we don't need to do that, and maybe he doesn't see it. Maybe he doesn't know it." I think just to be still and quiet and know he knows it all, and then be willing to address the things that need addressing that you're in prayer for.

I think of Ananias and Sapphira that were not honest with God. They lied to the Holy Ghost, it says. Read the story in Acts chapter 5; it's rather frightening. Actually, they both dropped dead. Very dramatic. I'm not saying that's going to happen if you lie to God, but it's a warning. Peter says, "How can you do that? How can you lie to God? You're not being honest with God. You say, 'I've given you everything,' and you haven't."

That's sort of scary. Do you ever get down and say, "Lord, you have my whole life"? Does he? Does he have your time? Does he have your money? Does he have your plans? Does he have your ambitions? Take time just to be still and say, "Lord, what do you have to say to me? It hurts, but I need to be honest. You know it already, but you have asked me to talk about it even though you know it already. Let's start there."

Guest (Male): Jill, the Holy Spirit will never leave us, but unfortunately, we can quench the Spirit. How does a Christian avoid that?

Jill Briscoe: The Bible talks about the Holy Spirit as a person. In various verses in the epistles, Paul's writings, we read that we can quench the Spirit. "Do not put out the Spirit's fire," it says. We can grieve the Spirit. That means, here's the Spirit of holiness, so anything unholy makes him miserable, and you'll feel that misery for he lives within us.

We can resist his Spirit—say no to the commands of Scripture that we're reading. We can insult the Spirit, says in Hebrews. If we think little of the cross, then we are insulting the Spirit of grace, it says in Hebrews. Pretty shattering. Just remember he's a person and you can make him feel pretty miserable. He's promised never to leave you or forsake you, so you will feel his grief.

You will feel his hurt. You can quench his fire, the enthusiasm for Jesus that you have. The Christian needs to know that and avoid it. Stop it. Do not grieve the Spirit of God.

Guest (Male): Thanks for listening to Telling the Truth today. We're so glad you've joined us, and we pray this message has helped you experience more of the abundant life Jesus promises. Today's culture is a revolving door of ever-shifting views and beliefs. That's why it's so important to test new ideas against the timeless truth of Scripture. It's the best defense against the world's confusion.

We want to help ground you in the foundations of your faith by sending you Stuart Briscoe's six-message series on the book of Second Peter, "Six Things We Must Never Forget." This series will anchor you in six time-tested truths from God's Word, so you can stand strong in your beliefs as you remember the deep spiritual truths that are foundational to your faith.

The "Six Things We Must Never Forget" series is our thanks for your gift to help keep Telling the Truth going strong, sharing life-giving teaching from Stuart and Jill with more people all over the world. So request your copy when you give today and get help staying grounded in truth in today's shifting culture.

Call 1-800-889-5388. That's 1-800-889-5388, or you can give online at tellingthetruth.org. Thank you for listening today. Be sure to come back next time for more encouraging biblical truth with the Briscoes. Experience life right here on Telling the Truth.