Well, happy Labor Day to all of you guys this morning. And also to all of you that are with us online today. We know that it is a big travel weekend. So if you're with us online, we will see you next week. Hey, listen, I know a lot of you already know this, but we've got about 315 or so students and adults that are out of this service, a lot of them. And they are on fall retreat this weekend. They are together in the mountains this weekend, just pausing, having some incredible worship time, teaching time, community time together. And I just want to break out this morning and open this message up, just praying over them. I know that they are in worship today, tonight, in the morning before they come home. And quite honestly, I just want to pray that God really breaks into their heart. So let's do that together more. We love you today. We thank you for the students of this church, and God, right now we are just begging you to move in their life. Lord Jesus, allow them to pause, allow them to see you, and allow them to just catch how much you love them Lord. And it's in your name that we pray. Amen. Amen. 

Well, hey, if you got a copy of Scripture this morning, I want you to turn it into different texts with me this morning. First, I want you to find Psalm chapter 51, Psalm 51. Mark that and then flip back to second Samuel, Chapter 11. That's where we're going to start this morning. Second, Samuel, Chapter 11, and we will end the message in Psalm 51. We're going to be there in just a minute. We've been walking over these last weeks through this incredible journey and a series called God's Not Done With US, where what we're doing is we're really seeing the character of God through some people in the Old Testament that at one point or a major point in their life could have at that point thought that God was done with them, thought that God had gone silent, God and maybe turned their back on them. But what we've seen week after week in this series is that God doesn't do that, that God is not a God that walks away from us. He's not a God that leaves us, and he's not a God that will leave you hanging no matter what you feel, no matter what others try to stamp on your life, or no matter what Satan brings at you. For those of us that are in Christ, Jesus is God is not done with you. We've been walking through this series and we've watched Moses and Joseph. We watched Elijah's life. We saw the Prophet Elijah in his despair and we also just saw Jonah's life. And in the last week, one of the favorite weeks of all of them, we saw Queen Esther take a stand against an incredibly evil king. I loved watching all week this week just how all of these stories have woven together into this message that we're going to finish up the series with today through the life of King David. And once again, we're going to just see how God uses so much of our lives to point towards his glory. And God can reach down at any point and drag us back up. 

So this morning, here's what we're going to do. We're going to look at the fall. We're going to look at the confrontation and the restoration of the man that the Bible just calls a man after God's own heart. We're going to see his most notable failure and then we're going to watch God restore him. And here's the idea today. I want us to see how we can all walk out of here still making it even after we've blown it. All right. Let's jump into the text this morning to show us this incredible, incredible truth. Second, Samuel, Chapter 11. It's a familiar text. It's the beginning of David's fall. Okay. And it's actually an incredible, incredible, incredible story that shows us that even in the middle of the fall, that God is walking with us. Second Samuel 11, Here it is. Let's do this. Chapter one, or Chapter 11, verse one. It says, In the spring, at the time when the kings go off to war, David sent Joab, now job, as his commander of all of the king's armies. David sent Joab out with the King's men and the whole Israelite army. They destroyed the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah. But David might want to underline this. But David remained in Jerusalem. Now, this is the backstory of what we're about to see. But the back story actually lays the foundation of how David ended up in the problem that we're about to see. And this is an incredibly big theme for a lot of our lives. So I want to point out to you just a couple of things about David's life that are a really big simile to where a lot of us are in our lives that we should take notice of. I want you to see three quick things about David's life. Number one, we're seeing in this text we just read that David was blessed. He was an incredibly blessed man in this time period. In David's rule, as God's commander. David was doing incredible. In fact, the chapter just before this laid out all of these victories that David and his army has had. David was standing in the gap. He was the army of Israel's commander. God had called him to be the king. His kingdom was growing. His people loved him. He was on cloud nine. He had so much to be proud of. But here's what I want you to see about that. There's really nothing wrong with being a blessed person. There's really nothing wrong with it at all. But I also want to show you that there are two times in our lives that temptation is especially tough. One of them is in great times of stress. It's in great times what we would call hardship. Why? Because we look at temptation as a kind of release from where we are on this planet. 

But another time that temptation is really strong is really what I would just call times of blessing. Why? Because it's in times of blessing that many of us, like David, will begin to see ourselves as the only king, ourselves as the only Lord. And we will take control of our lives away from God. And we will live our lives how we want to. You see, in times of temptation, if we believe that we are blessed because of us, it's those moments that Satan begins to bring in incredibly, incredibly big strength against us when we say that I'm in charge. That's exactly why the Apostle Paul says this in first Corinthians ten. He says, So if you think you're standing firm, be careful that you do not fall.So church, there's nothing wrong with being blessed. But we have to realize who has done the blessing and who it is that we are living under need the blessing of. Well, David was blessed, number one. But I also want to show you this. Number two, David was also isolated. We just saw this in the text. It kind of snuck in, right? King Joab, his commander, the commander of all the king's armies, was doing what he was out fighting David's war for him. And in fact, the Bible was really clear that spring was the time when the Kings went out to war. What does this mean about David? It means that David was not living out his purpose at this place. The Bible wouldn't have mentioned that spring was the time that he should have been out of the war if it wasn't, in fact, the time he should have been out to war. Right. But he's not. Can I just tell you this? One of the best ways to successfully resist temptations in this world quite frankly, is to be busy with the higher calling of living for God. 

But what we're seeing in David's life right here is he has removed himself from leading his armies and now he is no longer in the busyness of being active in the kingdom of God. In fact, the more engaged that we are with the mission of God, the less time and the less Satan will have access to our hearts. But when we begin to get into our kingdom, in God's kingdom, more often than not, Satan begins to grab access to our hearts. And temptation begins to get stronger and stronger and stronger. This is exactly where David is. He's isolated, or you could call it disengaged from the mission of God. But thirdly, I want you to write this down about David in just a second. David was in a place to be tempted. He was in a place to be tempted. In fact, look at this at a second Samuel 11 verse 2. Watch what it says. It says, One evening David got up from his bed and he walked around on the rooftop of the palace. From the roof. He saw a woman bathing. The woman was very beautiful. Now, if you were here last week, It's kind of ironic that two weeks in a row we are looking at a beautiful lady in the Old Testament. But we are right. It's there. So David was, go ahead and write it down, number three. David was in a place to be tempted. David was not only a blessed guy, he was not only just isolated from humanity. 

Why was he? He was on this rooftop by himself. He was there late at night. He was there peering around. You can kind of think of this as the Old Testament version of browsing the Internet late at night with nobody around you, nobody knowing what you were doing with no accountability. Now, look, I don't know. It was not clear if this was a normal thing for David to do often. It probably was to get into the coolness of the night. But we don't know if it was a normal thing for David to get onto the roof, to peer around, to look into people's houses, and to be this creepy I mean, the creepy guy on the roof, right? We don't really know that. Or if this was just a kind of a once in a lifetime deal time for him. We're really not sure. But what we do know is that it is way easier to avoid temptation than to resist sin. And if David would have known this, then David should have made himself in a place where he wasn't there or had somebody with him. But David did not. His first move should have been to run, but he didn't do it. In fact, look at verse three. Watch what he does. And David sent someone to find out about her, about Bathsheba. The man said, listen to this. She is Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam the wife of Uriah the Hittite. You say well Matt, why do we need all that detail? I'm glad you asked, because I want you to look at the description of this lady. She is a daughter. She is a wife. She is the wife of a commander. She was probably influential in the kingdom. Probably had a group of ladies around her. What the Bible is doing out here is showing us that this lady is not an object. She's not an object. She is God's daughter. She is a God's creation. Do you know what sexual sin does to us in our lives? It makes us see other people as objects and not creations of God. She's a wife. She's a daughter. She has purpose in her life. She has a reason to be there. But David sees her as an object. And watch what he does in verse four is then David sends messengers to her. Watch the fall to get her. She came to him and he slept with her. Now she was purifying herself from her monthly uncleanliness. Then she went back home. Verse five The woman conceived and she sent word to David saying, I am pregnant. From this point on in the story, David is in a panic. David, the King. David, the man after God's own heart, is in a panic and he begins to spiral out of control. Why? Because he knows he's in trouble and he, like us, as we fall into sin. 

What does David do? He grabs the shovel and he digs himself even deeper into the hole of despair. And what we're going to see in this story, the rest of this event, God shows us some incredible truths about himself, some incredible truths about us that are really and truly truths that all of us need to grab hold of so that we can have in our back pockets when we began to fall. And really, these are going to show us what the Gospel of Jesus Christ looks like for us. So I want you to write him down this morning so you can have them kind of fresh on your minds. I'm going to give you four truths as we finish up this story, number one. The first one is this the truth about us is that everyone sins. The truth about us is that everyone sins. The reality we're seeing in David's life is even this guy, there's a man after God's own heart, God's chosen instrument. He sinned. We all sin. Romans six Paul tells us we've all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. First, John one eight tells us this If we say we have no sin, we're deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us. 

In fact, I want you to do something this morning. I want you to look at your neighbor, and I just want you to look at them and say you're a sinner. That didn't go so well, did it? That didn't go so well. Now, look at your neighbor and say, I'm a sinner. Why was the first one louder than the second one right? It's so true, though. It's true. In fact, write this principle down, everyone sins, it's what you do after you sin and how you respond to your sin, that makes all the difference. Everybody sins, but it's what we do with that sin that makes the difference from that point on. So what did David do? Did David bow on his face? Did he confess this to the Lord? Did he cry in front of the Lord at this very moment? No, not yet. Spoiler alert. It's going to come later. But David did what most powerful sinners do. They don't want to get caught in their sin. He did what most sinners do that are not walking in the power in the presence of Jesus. What does he do? He comes up with a plan. He comes up with a plan. But in his plan, God so masterfully shows us some common responses to sin that many of us have, that I just want you to take note of this morning. You know, the first thing that we do and that David did when we get caught in sin? Number one, we try to cover up our sin. 

We try to cover it up, we hide it, we hide it. We try to get a plan together. Now, David went for this option quickly. He went for it quickly. He knew that time was of the essence, right? He had just impregnated this lady and now he had to do something about it. So what did David do? I'm glad you asked. David sends word to his commander in Joab that is out in the field fighting and he says, Hey, listen, you know that guy Uriah that fights for you? And I'm sure he was like, Yeah, I know him. And then he was like, Hey, send him to me because I want to hear how this war is going that you're fighting. I want him to come in and give me a report. You can read the account this week, but I'm going to tell you right here. So, Uriah, good soldier. What does he do? He comes in to King David. Uriah starts explaining what's going on in the war. And you can just see it in your imagination. David's like, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, he's kind of halfway listening and he's like, Yeah, war. Yeah, war. Whatever, whatever. He's like, Hey, Uriah, listen, you need to go home. You need to go home and you need to, you can read this in the Bible. I love this term. You need to go wash your feet, right? You need to go wash your feet. 

Evidently, that's what you call it when the kids are around. You need to go wash your feet with your wife. Right. I'm sure David was like, hey, you know the Bathsheba? Yeah. you know her? She's your wife. Yeah. She really, really misses you, right? He wants to send her home. David thought surely this will work. I mean, after all, we just saw that she is a beautiful lady. I mean, now. And Uriah has been off to war. And if you are a married couple, beautiful, off to war, missing each other, you go home. The magic happens and you wash your feet. Right? That is what you do in the story, right? But here's the problem. The problem is Uriah is a good soldier. Now, I don't know what that says about Bathsheba, but he is a good soldier, right? He's a good soldier, so he doesn't go home. In fact, verse 11 says this Uriah says to David, the ark and Israel and Judah are staying in tents. And my commander, Joab and my lord's men are camped in the open country. Watch what he says to David. How could I go to my house to eat and drink and make love to my wife? As surely as you live, I will not do such a thing. So Uriah doesn't go home. He comes out, he stays at the palace with all the other soldiers that are guarding the palace. But then David is like, Man, that didn't work. We got to go to plan B. I'm not making it up. Read the story later. David decides, Here's what I'll do tomorrow night, I'll invite Uriah back to the palace and I will bring him in. And I won't just send him home to wash his feet. This time I will get him drunk. I will get him drunk. I will then send him home to his wife. But here's the problem with that. Uriah doesn't do it again. He doesn't do it again. 

But now David knows he's in trouble. He knows that this is spiraling out of control and his cover up plan is not working. You see, here's the deal, though. In our lives, while our circumstances may be different in our lives. Trying to cover up and hide our sins is usually the initial human response, especially for those of us that are not walking in Jesus. We learn this as kids, do we not? Do you remember as a kid when you did something wrong? Or if you have kids and they do something wrong when they're little kids, what do they do? They do one or two things. Either A, they run over to the corner and turn around and look at it so you don't see them anymore, or they just put their hands over their face thinking that you're not going to see them or they hide underneath the table. Right? Why? Because they're trying to cover up their sin. But as we get older, we get smarter about it and we learn how to get better at it. Our stories become more believable. We would throw anybody under the bus or we maybe we just lie about it or we try to justify our sin, or we try to redefine sin, or we use the atomic option where people are really in sin, then they just deny absolute truth altogether so that they can just do whatever the heck they want to do. 

It's all in the spirit of just trying to cover up our sin so we can just move on. Look, if we're not walking lockstep with Jesus, I guarantee you your first response will be David's first response, and we will just try to cover it up. But it never works. It never works. Watch for David, it gets worse. It gets worse. He tries to cover it up first, tries to cover it up second. But watch his third attempt. Watch what David does. He uses the atomic option right here in verse 14. It says, In the morning, David wrote a letter to Joab and he sent it with Uriah. Another word you're about to see is David sends Uriah's death letter with Uriah. Now that's just mean. Verse 15. In the letter he said this: Put Uriah out in the front where the fighting is the fiercest and withdraw from him so he will be struck down and die. Die. Verse 16 While Joab had the city under siege, he put Uriah at the place where he knew the strongest defenders were. When the men of that city came out to fight against Joab, some of the men in David's army fell; moreover Uriah the Hittite died. So what are we doing? We've moved from David just kind of being isolated and kind of being curious to David being in lust and David being in adultery and David being in lying. And now David is a murderer. Why? All To try to cover up something. Listen to me closely. That only God can cover, that only God can do something about it is a fool's errand church, for us to try to cover our sin. It does not work. It has never worked and it will never work. But then David does something. He moves from just trying to cover up his sin to number two, he does what we all try to do. We try to make up for our sins. We try to make up somehow. We try to come up with something humanly possible, some gift, some blessing, some excuse that we're just trying to make it up. We want to make it right. We want to get it out of the way so I can move on in my life. But that doesn't work either. In fact, watch what David does. Verse 26 When Uriah's wife heard that her husband was dead, she mourned for him, and after a time of mourning was over, David had her brought to his house and she became his wife and bore him a son. 

But the thing that David had done displeased the Lord. So what happened, Bathsheba? She mourns for her 30 days. That was the common practice of that time. But then. David sends word, he brings her into his house. To do what? To marry her. He's really not hoping to make this right between him and God. He's really just now trying to cover up the fact that he impregnated this lady and that he is now in trouble. There's no indication at this point that anyone knows, except for possibly a couple of servants. And David is attempting to. to somewhat in this weird way, be quote-unquote, noble. But this is not noble. David's just trying to cover his tracks. That's all he's doing. I mean, you can just kind of feel with a picture or maybe even the headline in The Jerusalem Times that they just kind of read that, Oh, David takes in the widowed Bathsheba, right? No, it means nothing. He's just hoping he gets away with this. But David knows that God knows. He knows that this thing is growing and he knows this thing is about to get out. And listen, this sin that is in David's life continues to rule and continue to grow just like it will in ours. Sin is like a seed that is planted and it grows until God does something about it. Number two, we try to make up for our sin, but number three, we just try to what? We just try to move on from our sins. We just try to move on. Or maybe you could just say it like this. We just try to forget it. We just try to put it behind us where it's not even there. But you got to remember right here verse 27, what did it say? 

But the thing that David had done this pleased the Lord. It displeased the Lord. Now, I'm not going to lie. That is an incredibly intimidating verse. Why? Because what that verse is telling us is that not only did it just displease the Lord, we have a God that never forgets our sins, that has not been covered by the blood of Jesus. Why? Because he is a just God. And a just God can't just throw it out there and have nothing done with sin. It can't work for him. A holy God cannot be in the presence of sin. Therefore, God cannot just forget about sin without something having been done with the sin. See, God knows where we are and God knows what we do and God knows our innermost thoughts all at one time. And listen, we cannot move on in our sin until we move on with Jesus. We can't do it. We're not. You might be able to hide it from everybody else. But we can't hide it from God. We can't trick God. But what are we seeing in David's life right here? We're seeing David follow the same pattern that sin always follows. 

In fact, when you go back to Genesis chapter three, when you go back to the story of Adam and Eve, the first time that sin entered this Earth, they did the exact same thing that David did, did they not? They stood up against God. They ruled as their own gods. They ruled as their own decision makers. When they got caught in their sin, what did they try to do? They tried to cover themselves up with a fig leaf. They tried to explain themselves out of the situation. They tried to move on from the situation. But our sin separates us from God. It separates us from Him. And our tactics will never work apart from allowing Jesus to rule in our hearts and cover our sins. So what happens to David? I know that's what you're asking. Let's keep on in the story then. A year passes since David commits the sin with Bathsheba, and brings her into his house. The son is born. A year passes in David's life where David is just quite frankly, when you read the text, you just know that he's living in conviction. And then all of a sudden God in his faithfulness, sends the Prophet Nathan to David. 

Nathan is kind of David's pastor. If you would, right. And Nathan comes before David and he confronts David on David's sin. God gives Nathan this dream. He gives them this wisdom of what is going on in David's life. And Nathan comes in and sits before David and gives him this incredible parable about a rich guy that represents Jesus and a poor guy that represents Uriah and a Little lamb that represents Bathsheba. Let me just read you the parable because I think you're going to see it. Second Samuel chapter 12 verse one says this The Lord sent Nathan to David. When he came to him, he said, There are two men in a certain town, one rich and the other poor. The rich man had a very large number of sheep and cattle. That's David with a lot of wives. Right. But the poor man had nothing except one little ewe lamb he had bought. He raised it. He grew it up with him and his children. He shared his food. It drank from his cup and even slept in his arms. And that's a little weird, but we're going to keep moving. Right? It was like a daughter to him. Now, a traveler came to the rich man, but the rich man refrained from taking one of his own sheep or cattle and prepared a meal for the traveler who had come to him. Instead, he took the ewe lamb that belonged to the poor man and he prepared it for the one who had come. 

David burned with anger against the man and said to Nathan, as surely as the Lord lives, This man who did this must die. You've got to love the Bible, right? Verse six, he must pay for that lamb four times over because he did such a thing and he had no pity. Verse seven. Here it is. Then Nathan said to David, You are that man. Now, Nathan never got to come to dinner again, right? You're that man. What are we seeing right here? We're seeing the prophet Nathan stand in the gap for David. God sent this message to them and at that moment, David began to see the wrath of God, and he began to see how broken he really was. One year had passed. One year. Nathan explains later on in the text, you'll have to read it this week, that David your son is going to die. There's consequences to the sin. And David's like, Oh, I know there's consequences. I've been living in it for a year. So David has sinned. Nathan has exposed it, and now David is broken and David now begins to turn to the only place that any of us can turn when we are in our sin. And what Scripture does is it gives us an incredible glimpse in the mirror to this text in Psalm 51 of David drawing himself back to the heartbeat of God. And Scripture gives us this glimpse into God's heart for us to live over to Psalm 51. I want you to see something real quick. You see, David has shown us the truth about ourselves right already. And that is that we're all sinners. But number two, I want to show you this quickly. The truth about God is that he loves us even in our sin. He loves us even in our sin. You see, God is the difference maker. You see, all of us are the same. We're all sinners in need of a savior. But God is the one who knows what to do with our sin. Watch this moment for David as he realizes. And here's my prayer for all of us. And I pray we can all realize this week that this is our Psalm 51 moment. 

Look at the text, David's prayer in his heart. Watch what he says to God. This is so different from his Bathsheba story. Psalm 51 verse 1 says, Have mercy on me. Oh, God. According to your unfailing love. I love that David doesn't go this religious route. He doesn't call in a priest. He knows that he has to go to God himself and beg of God's mercy and acknowledge his sin before Him as David does this, what does he do? And he's pointing towards the heartbeat of God and the heart of God is that He is a loving God. And David points to that. You see, our tendency is, in our sin, to keep running away from God. But what God is doing in his loving kindness, and he's asking us to pause and look back at him, the only one that can do something about our situation. You see, David, he throws himself at the mercy of God. Look at the rest of the verse. Chapter one, Chapter 51 verse 1. It says, Have mercy on me. Oh, my God. According to your unfailing love, according to your great compassion, blot out my transgressions. What is David's plea based on? What is his hope based on? It is based on the mercy of God. 

Church listen, it is not based on his past. It's not based on his works. It's not based on any of his future stuff. It is based on God's mercy. It is based on not David rationalizing evil. It is based on God recognizing that David is a sinner and David falling at the feet of a holy God. His hope is in one place, and that is that we serve a God that is not done with us. We serve a God that wants us to crawl up to him. Let me ask you something. Is God's mercy great enough that you can make him the basis of all your hope? The answer to that, Yes, it is. In fact, listen to me close, you will never be turned away from God when you crawl up into his arms in repentance. You won't. No matter where you've come from. Write this down. Write this principle that maybe will help you. No matter what the sin is that has gotten you to where you are, God will not reject a humble and repentant heart. He won't do it. He won't do it. In fact, if you fast forward down to verse ten, we're going to come back down. We're out of order. Watch. David says this. He has created me a pure heart of God and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Look at verse 17, My sacrifice oh God is a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart God, You will not despise. 

Man, can I just be really honest with you? Some of you grew up in faith traditions that taught you that we have this angry, vengeful, powerful God that is just barely holding himself back from pouncing on you and giving you back what you deserve for your sin. You grew up thinking that. But listen, if that was God's heart, if that was God's heart, he would not be doing this in David's life. If that was God's heart, just the reality is he would have pounced on most of us way earlier than now. Right? It's not God's heart. God's heart is that we turn back to him. That we experience his love, we experience his mercy. We experience his grace. And then he steps in and shows us how much he loves us. In fact. Second Peter 3:9. Watch what it says. The Lord is not slow in keeping His promise, as some understand slowness. Instead, he is patient with you not wanting any to perish, but for everyone to come to repentance. God is not this angry, frowning God that is in the cosmos, just waiting on you to make a mistake. God desires all of us to turn back to Him. It is the truth about God that He loves you. The truth about us is that we are all sinners. The truth about God is that He loves us despite our sin. Let me show you the third truth that David shows us, though, and that's the truth about sin, is that it never satisfies and it always leaves us empty. It always does. I said this couple weeks ago, but I think it's worth reminding us that sin will always take you farther than you want to go. It will keep you longer than you want to stay. It will cost you more than you want to pay. And it will leave you worse than you ever thought you could be. But God's mercy is better than you will ever think. His mercy to rescue you is available. That's what we're about to see. And Psalm 51 verse three. Watch David's description of sin and description of God. Here it is, watch what he says in verse three. 

He said, for I know my transgressions and my sin are always before me. In other words, sin, it's there. And once sin enters our life, it is there for always, forever. You know what our culture is trying to make us think? Our culture is try to make us think the sin is just kind of this bad decision. And then once it's over, it's over. That's not how sin works. Once it is planted into our lives, it grows and grows and grows until Jesus does something about it. There's consequences from it. It's what separates us from God in eternity, and it's what removes God's power from believer's lives. Sin and shame will always grow until God does something about it. David is showing us what uncompressed sin does in our life. It acts as this chain that is strapped onto us. And no matter what else we are doing, it is always dragging us down. And what David is showing us in this past verse is he's showing us that if he would have just known what sin feels like and how it grabs you and how it grows and the consequences of it, he would have never done what he's done. And we have all been there. We've all seen this. But keep reading. Listen to what David says. He says this and verse four. He says, against you and you alone have I sinned, and done what is evil in your sight. So you are right, God in your verdict and justified when you judge. Now, that's a tough verse because you're looking at it. 

You're like, What about Bethsheba? And what about Uriah? David Didn't you sin against them too? And it sure looks like it. But there's two incredibly important reasons that David says this. Number one, he realizes that his sin begins against God. Do you know this church? Your sin always begins against God and another person. Now you may sin against another person, but your sin initially always begins against the one who has laid out the rules. Who has created you. Who has given you life. And what is he realizing? And secondly, he's realizing that his sin, that in this sin that God is always the most important one that we're offending. Yes, he offended Uriah. I mean, come on. He did a heinous thing to Uriah. He killed him. But listen, no matter what you do, you are first offending God and you are most offending God.Why? Because he's the maker of the universe. He's the creator of the universe. He is the one  that spun all of this into existence. And when we have the audacity to stand in front of our Creator God, and say that I make a better God than you, and I will make my decisions, God, back off. We are first sinning against God. Yes, we're sinning against the other person, but always against God. Never let Satan tell you that your sin is just between you and somebody else, or just in your heart. It's always against God. That's what he's saying right here. David has shown us that we're all born to this devastation. We're all born into this moment. Look at verse five. He says, Surely I was sinful at birth from the time my mother conceived me. I've always been prone to wander. I've always been prone to sin and listen, that is the flag of our lives, that we're always one step from stupid. Amen. That's where David is living his life. It's where we live our lives. 

That's exactly what Jesus has offered to give up his life to cover that sin. In fact, I want you to write down the fourth truth from the day. And that's this. The truth about repentance is that it realigns us back to God's loving heart. It realigns us back. Look at where we've come from. The truth about us is that we're all sinners. The truth about God is that He loves us even in our sin, right? He loves us even in this moment. The truth about sin is that it always leaves us lacking. But number four, the truth about repentance is that it realigns us back to God's loving heart. Do you know what repentance is? It's a big old word that just means change of direction. It means that we are running away from God. And for some we pause and we turn back to Him. Repentance starts when we realize that we've done something against God, but it ends when we realize that God wants to change us. Look at verse seven and watch David's repentance as we close. He says this: Cleanse me with the hyssop and I will be clean. Wash me and I will be whiter than snow. 

This is such a difference from the first verses we read today, David is now crying out to God to be washed. Now it's a little bit confusing because we don't even know what a hyssop is, right? You can look it up in Wikipedia and it's a plant. But it's a specific plant that the Israelites used in Egypt to take the blood of the lamb and wipe over the door post for the deliverance from the death Angel. What David is saying is, God, use the blood of the lamb to deliver me. Fast forward to the Old Testament. It's like me saying the blood of the old rugged cross has given you freedom. It says cleanse me with a hyssop. I will be clean, Wash me and I will be whiter than snow. Verse eight Let me hear joy and gladness. Let the bones you have crushed rejoice. Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquities. Church, that's what God wants to do for us. That's what God does every time we turn. Sin may be painful. There may be consequences, but God can and will put it behind us. Why? Because He's not done with you. And God's role and God's desire and God's goal for you is deliverance and not destruction or disqualification. That's His goal for your life. 

Keep reading, verse ten. Watch what he says. Create in me a pure heart oh God. Renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit to sustain me. What is David doing out here? David is so far removed from that rooftop adulterer, so now he is crying out to a holy God. And what is he praying for? He is praying to God, deliver me. And what does God do? God responds. Why? Because God always responds. And God always hears. Listen, Psalm 51 is nothing more than a cry for a savior. A cry for deliverance. A cry for God to put away sin. And listen, He has put away sin and it's in the name of Jesus said He's it. It's nothing more than a cry for God to deliver us. And He has done that. And he's done it through Jesus. It's nothing more than a cry for God to send the Holy Spirit to rule in our lives and direct us in our lives to keep us out of this to begin with. And he's done it through the Holy Spirit given to us by Jesus. 

Listen, all we have done today is show you in David's life the incredible gospel of Jesus that's available for you. It was available for me. The truth is, we are all sinners. It's the truth about ourselves. The truth about God is that He loved us in that sin. He loved us and the truth about sin is that it always leaves us wanting and with no way out. The truth about repentance is that it really begins with a savior that can do something about our problem. Listen, you're not too far gone. You're not, to turn back to Jesus. David wasn't, and neither are you. Are there consequences? David would say, Oh, yeah, there's consequences. There was a whole lot of stuff that happened and there was a year of misery and my son died. There were consequences. Then David would say, But restoration is available. 

So what happened to David? That's a good question. Right? Did David fall off the wagon? Right. Never to be seen later. No, he didn't. God embraced David. David stepped back into the power and the presence of God. God redeemed this marriage that got started in an incredibly evil way. And after their first son died, God blessed him with another son. Blessed Bathsheba and David with another son. His name was Solomon. He wrote the Proverbs. He's the king who stepped in after David. But not only did God bless David with Solomon, centuries later in the line of David, another son of David came into play and his name was Jesus of Nazareth, the Savior of the world. 

Church listen to me. If from a lying, adulterous, scheming, evil man that God got a hold of. If Jesus of Nazareth can come from that line and be used to save the world, he can use you. He could save you. But you've got to turn to him. Repentance made it. Although it is available, it's not automatic. It has to be a point in your life where you realize that you're a sinner, that you throw yourself at the mercy seat of Jesus. You invite him to be your savior, your Lord, forgive you, and for him to give you life. Let me ask you something today. Where are you in this story? You're somewhere in the continuum of the story. I don't know where, but you're somewhere. And what will it take for you to say yes Jesus, move in me? 

Lord, today as we walk into our time of decision today, Lord, God, I just pray, pray, pray that you help us to see that you're not done with us. But, God, there's a responsibility from us to turn back to you. God, use this moment. God, I realize that there are people in this room that are great people. But they don't know you, and God, they're on a trajectory of life that's never going to get any better without you. God save them. Convict them. Send a Nathan into their lives. Send your Holy Spirit to draw them to yourself. God, there may be people here, even right now, that just need to say to you, Lord Jesus, forgive me, come into my life. I surrender my heart. Be my Lord, rescue me. Thank you, Jesus, for today. Thank you for showing us that if you're not done with David, you're not done with us. Thank you for this next couple of minutes of decision time, move in people's hearts. It's in your name, we pray. 

Amen. Amen. 

Would you stand and sing with us this morning? Man, if you want to give your life to Jesus today, maybe just a second ago, you've prayed that prayer that I spoke over you today. I'm going to be over here by the Next Steps banner. I've got some other people with me today, and we'd love to talk to you about that. Maybe today you are a believer but you just feel like today, man you need the Lord to meet you right here, right now and do some delivering. Man, we'd love to pray over and with you today. 

Let's sing together.