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[0:00] God, we thank you that we are continuing to worship you and hear from your word. And Lord, I look to you that you would be with us in such a tangible way right now as we dig into your word.

[0:12] Lord, I ask that by the power of your Holy Spirit, you would speak through me to all of us, including me, that you would shape us and change us and maybe be able to behold more perfectly the image of your Son, that we might be transformed into evermore the people you made us to be, who love you with all that we are. In Jesus' name, amen.

[0:32] Please be seated. Every single one of us in this room knows what it's like at some time or another, or maybe even for an extended season of life, to be having done something wrong or said something wrong, sinful, and not confessing it, not bringing it into the light.

[0:51] To be in a place where your bones feel like they're wasting away, where you feel almost sick inside and you're ridden with guilt. This is common to every single human being at one time or another.

[1:04] Psychologists and shrinks and counselors, all these different people, self-help books, try to medicate this because it's common not just for Christians but for anyone on planet Earth.

[1:15] And although there's lots of solutions out there, so-called, to medicate this, the Bible speaks right into this human condition and gives us a way out of it.

[1:26] Not a way to medicate it, but a way to actually deal with it by the power of God. And that's what we're going to be looking at today. The psalm that we're looking at, Psalm 51, was written by an incredible, godly man after God's own heart.

[1:41] He was the king of Israel and the king by which all other kings after him were compared to. He's the gold standard of what it means to be a good king and even a good man. So much so that God promised him that the Messiah of Israel, the Savior of the world, would come from his descendants, his line, because he loved God so much and God honored that.

[2:00] This was a man, a giant of a man, a giant in the faith. And yet, he finds himself in bed with another man's wife, his best friend's wife. They conceive a child, and he tries to cover up his sin by bringing back his best friend from the battlefield so it would look like it was his best friend's son.

[2:19] It doesn't work. His deception doesn't work. And so, he ends up having his best friend, one of the mightiest warriors in Israel, Uriah the Hittite, murdered. David finds himself now a murderer and an adulterer.

[2:32] And for nine months, he didn't tell anybody. And in Psalm 32, he records that experience of not telling anyone, not confessing his sin to God, and how his bones are wasting his way and his strength is sap. And that experience, I know, is something that I've experienced, and it's something I know that you've experienced as well.

[2:48] When you're not bringing your sin to light, and it's eating away at you, you're riddled with shame, with fear. And that is when, after nine months, the prophet Nathan, a friend of David's, comes to him, and he, in this beautiful, prophetic, poetic way, confronts David of his sin.

[3:06] It says, God knows what you've done. Confronts him of the adultery and the murder. And David pens this psalm, Psalm 51. This is his response. And though we just read it a few moments ago, as Laurie read it, we'll read it again now.

[3:20] So, if you can turn with me to Psalm 51, verse 1, let us read. Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love. According to your abundant mercy, blot out my transgressions.

[3:31] Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgressions and my sin is ever before me. Against you, you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment.

[3:46] Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive, me. Behold, you delight in truth and the inward being, and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart. Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean.

[3:58] Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Let me hear joy and gladness. Let the bones that you've broken rejoice. Hide your face from my sins and blottle all my iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.

[4:11] Cast me not away from your presence, and take not your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation. Uphold me with a willing spirit. Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will return to you.

[4:23] Deliver me from blood guiltiness, O God. O God of my salvation, and my tongue will sing aloud of your righteousness. O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise. For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it.

[4:34] You will not be pleased with the burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart, O God. You will not despise. Do good to Zion in your good pleasure. Build up the walls of Jerusalem.

[4:45] Then will you delight in right sacrifices, and burnt offerings, and whole burnt offerings. Then bulls will be offered on your altar. This is the word of the Lord. Amen.

[4:57] The very first words out of David's mouth in this psalm prayer to God is, Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love, according to your abundant mercy.

[5:08] Blah out my transgressions. This is remarkable. Because we human beings, when we're confronted with wrongdoing, even if we come to bring it into the light, we so often will do that, whether it's to God or to our friends, we so often will do that with some excuse, some mitigating circumstance, so that people will be willing to forgive us.

[5:28] You know, in David's case, he could have come to God and said, God, Bathsheba was on the roof, and she was naked, and I stumbled upon that. It wasn't really my fault, but would you forgive me for the fact that I still lusted after her?

[5:43] You know, there's a lot of mitigating circumstances. We can always find, we're genius people when it comes to excuses, to try to lessen the weight of our guilt. But David has no desire to try to provide an excuse.

[5:55] This would be a lame excuse, as it always is, to try to get God to forgive him. Instead, David knows that his only hope for forgiveness is not an excuse. His only hope for forgiveness is by the character, by the mercy of God.

[6:08] And so the first word out of his mouth is, Have mercy upon me, O God, according to your steadfast love. It's his only, it's his only hope. And so today we're going to be looking at five steps to biblical confession and restoration.

[6:24] We'll be looking through Psalm 51 as it gives us five steps that we can look at. And the first one is that biblical confession is centered on the character of God.

[6:35] It's centered on the character of God. And so the very first words are, God, have mercy because of who you are, because of your steadfast love. So often when Christians, when we try to take confession seriously, when we decide, you know what, we're going to practice the discipline of confession, we'll bring our sin to the light, it's an opportunity for us to spiritualize navel gazing, for us to spiritualize introspection.

[6:58] And so I know that I've experienced this when I'm going to get serious about dealing with my sin. And so now my focus is all about my sin. But for David, his focus right from the get-go, right from the start is, God, you're the God of steadfast love.

[7:11] And in view of your mercy, would you have mercy upon me? I'm 26, but I'm only now learning to drive. First time I took the test, the G2 test, I failed. But this past week I had a breakthrough in my driving.

[7:23] And if you drive, I'm sure you've had the same breakthrough. Hopefully you did this before you're 26. No shame if you haven't. But for me, there's so many things to pay attention to. You're checking your rear view mirror, all this kind of stuff.

[7:33] But when I finally, it hit me this past Sunday, last week, I was driving with my mom and I finally clued in to what they've been telling me all along, which is where your eyes are, there the car goes. There's so many things to pay attention to.

[7:44] But by and large, you're keeping your eyes on the road, a certain amount of feet in front of you. I'm still getting it. But as I learned that, all of a sudden, I'm able to drive. And we're no longer just going on residential streets.

[7:56] Like, my mom and I are driving all around Ottawa. It's awesome. And I booked myself into a test. I'm pretty confident I'm going to pass this because I know where my eyes need to be. And this is so important when it comes to confession, that our eyes are not on our own self and our own sin, but our eyes are on the character of God.

[8:11] God, according to your steadfast love, would you give me mercy? In Numbers, not Numbers, in Nehemiah chapter 9, the people of Israel have done horrible things for hundreds of years, and they come together in Jerusalem to confess their sin to God.

[8:25] And they have a lot of things to confess. They've been doing horrible, horrible things in all areas of life for a long time. And so you'd expect them to just have a long laundry list of their sin.

[8:36] And they do confess their sin. They identify what they've done wrong. But if you read it, you'll find the most common word in that huge, full chapter of confession is you and your, as the people beautifully recount again and again, the character and the deeds of God.

[8:51] They've come to confess their sin, but their focus is God. You delivered us from Israel, and you are the one who chose Abraham, and you're the one who continues to redeem, and you're the God of steadfast love. And this is what we've done wrong.

[9:02] But you are a forgiving God. Their eyes, even though they've come to confess their sin, their eyes are not on them, it's on God. It's on God, and he is the hope for forgiveness.

[9:14] Now, as David goes to confess his sin, the first words are about God and his character. And then as he identifies his sin, he says, Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.

[9:27] David had been such a steadfast man, you would think, at least I think I would, if I was in his shoes, would have been like, God, please forgive me according to your steadfast love. And Lord, I've been so faithful.

[9:39] Like, I have said no to so many opportunities for sin for so long. I slipped up. Please grant me some slack. Like, come on, God. I'm a man after your own heart. Instead, David says, from the very moment that I existed, from the very moment I was an embryo, from the moment I was a zygote, the moment I was conceived, I was sinful.

[9:57] David sees, even though he's been such a man after God's own heart, David sees this wrong he's done, and he says, God, that's consistent with who I am. In no way is David trying to limit what he's done, or rather, like, provide excuse for what he's done.

[10:10] He is completely owning the sin he's done and taking that to God, knowing that God can deal with it. So often, the reason that you and I are afraid to bring our sin to light is that we really fear that if our friends, if God really knew what we were doing, if he really knew what we were like, that it just, this time, it would be too much.

[10:33] I mean, how many of us in this room have wondered, have I, I've just done the impartable sin. Like, I don't even know what the impartable sin is, but I've just done it. I know that. No. No. So, as we know, and David only knew in part, but we know in full, Jesus is the perfect sacrifice.

[10:50] And so, there is no sin that you and I can bring to light that the mercy of God, that the blood of Jesus isn't able to fully cleanse and fully address. David, even though he was writing this before the coming of the promised Messiah, somehow knew that God, because of the character of God, not because of the character of David, but because of the character of God, was able to forgive this wretched, sinful man.

[11:15] So, biblical confession is centered on God. It takes full responsibility for what it's done. It confesses in view of the character of God. Now, the second element to biblical confession is a plea for cleansing.

[11:31] You'll see in verse 2, he says, wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. And down in verse 7, he continues with this plea, purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean.

[11:41] Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow. His plea to be purged with hyssop is very likely a reference to either Leviticus 14 or Numbers 19. Leviticus 14 outlines that when someone has been defiled by leprosy, their cleansing process is to come to the priest and there's blood sprinkled on them and hyssop, which is this type of branch, is used in the process.

[12:02] And the Numbers 19 reference is that when you've come in contact with a dead body and you're defiled, that's a similar process and it includes hyssop, which the priest uses to cleanse you. David is writing this at a time where the priests were very active.

[12:17] This is not today where the temple has been destroyed. There were priests he could have gone to. But David is saying, God, my sin is so big. Only your hyssop, only you can cleanse me from my sin.

[12:29] Lord, cleanse me. He's saying, God, I need you to be my priest. And there's more to it. He says, purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean. That's almost a direct, a verbatim reference of Leviticus 14 and Numbers 19 where it says that they'll purge them with hyssop and he shall be clean.

[12:48] It's in third person. But instead, David said, purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean. It's become personal for David. He's looking to God to be his personal cleanser, to be the one that makes him clean.

[12:59] I shall be clean. What is it that compels David to pray this with such earnestness that he would not only be forgiven for his sin but cleansed from the defilement?

[13:13] The next verses are a little further down rather. In verse 11, he says, cast me not away from your presence and take not your Holy Spirit from me. Cast me not away from your presence and take not your Holy Spirit from me.

[13:27] This is David's big plea and this too is remarkable because when you and I are caught in sin, whether it's conviction just by the Holy Spirit or someone who speaks into our life like Nathan did for David, often our very first concern is about our reputation.

[13:44] often our first tears are because we've been caught not because we have sinned. We're so concerned about that. David's great concern is not that his name is now in the muck, it's not that people aren't going to respect him, it's that he doesn't want God to take away his presence from him.

[14:02] You know, David had watched first row seats, front row seats to see King Saul have the anointing of God, have the presence of God and then lose all of that because of King Saul's sin.

[14:15] And King Saul has a similar confrontation where Samuel, the prophet at that time, like Nathan was the prophet at David's time, comes to him and confronts him with his sin. But instead of saying like David, have mercy upon you, O God, King Saul tries to make excuses and say, actually, I disobeyed God because I'm going to be worshipping him this way.

[14:33] He tries to excuse it. He doesn't repent of it. And God removes so much from him and strips him of his anointing and takes away the kingship. David, his first response isn't, Lord, please keep me as king.

[14:47] His first response isn't, Lord, keep your promise that my children will stay on the throne. As he had seen God strip that away from King Saul, David had every reason to be afraid that that would happen.

[14:57] Maybe that would happen. But David's concern isn't that that would happen as much as God, don't take your presence from me. David's chief concern was for the presence of God. At the Church of the Messiah Tuesday night prayer meeting, we had been going through the book of Nehemiah.

[15:12] Now we're going through the book of Matthew. And what struck me as I was preparing for the first, for chapter one in the Gospel of Matthew is that although regarding Nehemiah, and it's such a rich book, it's the word of God, although about Nehemiah we were studying a man who had lived and died 2,500 years ago, the Gospel of Matthew we're studying a man, Jesus, who's alive today.

[15:33] And so the way that we talk about the one we're studying is different between Nehemiah and the Gospel of Matthew because with Jesus we're talking about a man who's alive today. We talk about people who are alive today different than people who are simply alive in the past.

[15:47] And then it hit me as I was preparing that first message, not only am I talking about someone alive today, I'm talking about someone here in the room. Like when we talk about someone who's in the room with us, it's different than when they're not in the room with us.

[15:58] Like if I was to say, you know what, I'm so thankful that Diane Sharpe is here, like I love her so much. Like I'm talking about her, if she's not in the room I'll talk about it one way. If she's here I can actually turn to her and be like, Diane, I'm so glad for your friendship, thank you.

[16:10] Right? I talk about people differently if they're in the room or not. When we talk about Jesus and we're talking about God, He's here with us. As I've been trying to wrap my mind and my heart around the reality of the presence of God, that He is Emmanuel, God with us.

[16:24] This week as I was reading through Psalm 51, it was bringing this home to me that David's chief concern, his great delight is in the presence of God. And when I searched my own heart this past week, I find that as much as I love the presence of God, I'm in awe by the presence of God, that I still have so much to grow in becoming like David, a man whose chief delight is in the presence of God.

[16:49] That my deepest concern is not for my name or my reputation or my ministry, my job, any of that stuff. My great concern is, God, I want your presence in my life. And I know that this isn't only true for me, that there's no one in this room who fully savors and values the presence of God as we were made for.

[17:06] And so as He's in the room with us, let's take a moment quietly to bow our hearts before God, just interrupt the sermon right now, and let's just quietly pray, God, cultivate in our hearts a heart that would love and savor your presence above all else.

[17:22] God, we thank You that You're in the room with us.

[17:47] We thank You that we are the temple of Your Holy Spirit, that You're here and You dwell within us and amongst us. Lord, we pray that You would make us ever more aware and attentive to the reality that You're here with us, that You're in the hard times and the happy times.

[18:04] You're here with us. Help us to savor that, to value that, to treasure that more than riches and reputation, even more than our jobs and our ministries, even more than our very lives.

[18:15] May You give us the same heart as David that our chief longing would be to be in Your presence as we are even in this moment. In Jesus' name, Amen.

[18:29] So David's first, the first step to his restoration process is God-centered confession. The second thing is a request for cleansing, knowing that God is not that purge me with hyssop and I might be clean.

[18:43] No, God, purge me with hyssop and I will be clean because I long to be in Your presence. And then the third thing is that He, the third step is that He calls out for restoration. A lot of us get the fact, like if we've, if you've gone to church long enough, we know that God takes away our sins so we can confess our sin, we know God cleanses us from our sins so we'll do that.

[19:02] But a lot of us stop short. When we've fallen short, I've actually asked God for restoration. But David has the faith and the longing to be restored. Verse 12, restore to me the joy of Your salvation and uphold me with a willing spirit.

[19:16] When he has so many different things to ask for restoration of, David chooses to ask for the restoration of joy. And the reason is that David has fallen greatly. He loves God but he's been defeated by his fleshly desires of, for, for sexual pleasure, his desire for reputation by trying to get rid of Uriah.

[19:35] He's, he's fallen short because of these desires. And so David comes before God, a broken man but a man ready to come out swinging, coming, ready to come and fight his flesh.

[19:45] Ready to come into, it's a fight to be the man that God made him to be. And the chief way he does this is by looking to God for joy. Back when I first entered my teens and one of my great Christian buddies and I decided that we were gonna, we were gonna be men of God, we were gonna be men of purity, we were gonna fight all sin in our lives.

[20:02] And so we were on the phone all the time confessing our sin, of all manner of sin, all types of sin, confessing our sin to each other. We became so, like just so trying to cultivate hatred for sin. One of us, I think it was probably me, and this is a confession, like I can get into big trouble for this.

[20:18] One of us decided that every time we fell short that we'd shred $20. Okay? That's actually a felony to shred money so they might come after me. This might be the last term I ever preach.

[20:29] Okay? So come visit me in jail, remember my chains. But, so it helped us for a good few days. But even, like, so we thought, like, we didn't even want to donate the money to some charity because we thought that would be an excuse for sin.

[20:41] So we're just, if we fall, we're going to shred $20. And that kept us, we thought, like, I don't know how you value sin or not, but we felt like we were doing good, like we're living perfect lives for a few hours, maybe a few days, but then there we were shredding $20 and $40 and $60.

[20:56] Eventually, we're like, okay, I think it was him that discovered that it was a felony. We're like, we can't do this. We're actually sinning by shredding, like this isn't good. You with me? What's the point? Maybe you can't relate to shredding money, but all of us can relate to trying to fight sin by just trying to hate sin and trying to put all these safeguards in.

[21:12] And safeguards are good. Safeguards help us, help us fight sin, but the way to actually overcome sin isn't by simply focusing on sin and hating sin. You defeat the love for pleasure for sin with the love for a greater pleasure.

[21:26] And the greater pleasure for David is a joy he's found in God. And so he's saying right now in the midst of his miserable, sinful state, he's saying, God, I don't have this joy. He's not saying, God, I have the joy.

[21:36] He's saying, God, restore to me the joy. Is this our response after we've sinned? Lord, restore to me the joy. If finding such joy, a joy that's bigger than the joy you'll find in any kind of sexual pleasure, any kind of economic pleasure, any kind of recreational pleasure, if the joy of the Lord as a greater pleasure than any of that is something foreign to you or something that isn't as much as you want it to be, let that be another prayer of yours.

[22:02] God, restore to me the joy of your salvation. Lord, may the joy found in you, may the exuberance and the delight and the savoring and the treasuring of you, may you as my joy be a bigger joy than anything the world has to offer, anything the flesh has to offer.

[22:16] Lord, be my chief joy. Let that be a daily prayer for you and for me because all of us can grow in the joy of the Lord. It doesn't matter how deep and how much joy you have, there is more and it is the greatest and the most deepest and profound joy we'll ever find.

[22:30] A joy that we can find even when we're going through dark times and dry times, a joy that is, that words cannot even express. David wants that joy and David doesn't simply confess his sin, he doesn't simply ask for cleansing, he says, Lord, restore to me the joy.

[22:44] He knows that God can do this despite the wrong things he's done. And if he simply stopped there, I think a lot of us would still be pretty impressed with the Bible's view of restoration. But David goes one more than simply restoring his personal joy and praying for that.

[23:00] David asks that God re-engage him in the mission of God. David wasn't simply a king, he wasn't simply the political leader, he was also a great worship leader. From before he had ever become king, he was already ministering in worship in the fields with the sheep, ministering worship in the courts of King Saul.

[23:18] And again, as king, he was still a worship leader, a songwriter. And so, as he is saying, Lord, open my lips and my mouth will declare your praise and I will teach transgressors your ways and sinners will return to you.

[23:31] He is speaking right into the mission that God had called him for as a worship leader, as a teacher, saying, God, would you re-engage me in this? And so often when we see someone who's fallen, whether they're a great famous pastor or a politician or whether it's you or me, we lose hope that they can ever be used by God again.

[23:50] We're just, a lot of, you'll see the media and everyone just crying for their blood. David has fallen greatly. He has slept with his best friend's wife and he committed murder against his best friend and David is saying, God, God, would you forgive me because of who you are?

[24:08] You're a merciful God. God, would you cleanse me from a sin that should be imparable? Would you make me clean? Lord, would you restore to me joy? And God, would you help me re-engage in the mission that you made me for?

[24:20] Now, if you have done something so serious that you may need to take a step back, there's time for that. There's room for that. But no matter what, what you've done wrong, no matter what dark things you've done, and we've all done them, we're able to re-engage in the mission of God because of who God is, because he's restoring God.

[24:43] As long as there's breath in your lungs, you are made like David to be someone that not only worships God if I join him, but to be pointing people toward God. Whatever that looks like in your workplace or your neighborhood or your home and ministry and your church.

[24:57] And so, I want to invite us, for those of us who have lost hope of being able to make a radical difference for God, to invite us to remember that our God is a God who restores not only our own joy, but re-engages us in mission.

[25:14] To do that in a healthy way, but to believe that we are able to be people who are living out God's calling in our lives, not because we've avoided sin for a while, but because of who God is.

[25:26] And so, David, he goes from talking about leading the people and teaching them and leading them in worship. He ends still as their king, interceding for them. Do good to Zion, to your good pleasure.

[25:37] Build the walls of Jerusalem. This is a king's prayer for his people, knowing that God has called him to re-engage in the mission of God. So, those are four steps. There's confession that's centered on God, a request for cleansing that he might be able to be in the presence of God.

[25:53] For indeed, it's our sin that separates us from being able to be with God, but because of Jesus, we're able to be in the presence of God to savor that. He asks for restoration of joy. He asks for re-engaging in mission.

[26:04] But there's a fifth step, and the fifth step isn't after that. It's actually before all that. We started in verse 1, but something to note, if you don't already know this, you probably do, but in our Bibles, you'll find these bold headers, and that's not sacred scripture.

[26:19] That's just the translator's titling of that passage. But after the header, you'll sometimes see in a lot of psalms the subtext, in this case, to the choir master. And this is the original.

[26:32] This is the original Hebrew. This, even though it's not, it doesn't have a verse number beside it, it's before verse 1, this is part of the word of God. This actually is part of sacred scripture, God-breathed words.

[26:43] Let us read it. To the choir master, a psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet went to him after he had gone into Bathsheba. This is remarkable. Because when someone comes to a king with bad news, when a messenger comes to them, it's not uncommon for the king just to kill the messenger.

[27:01] How much more so when the bad news is about your own sin, a sin that you've successfully hid for nine months, and all of a sudden, this guy, he's the one person who knows what you've done. A lot of kings would just kill him.

[27:12] And not only kings. When someone comes to you and me, at least me, when someone comes to me and confronts me about wrongdoing, I so often want to defend myself. I want to make excuses. I don't want to actually embrace what they've said.

[27:24] David embraces the conviction from Nathan. How is this possible? He's a human just like you and me. How is this possible? I believe we've Psalm 51 because we've Psalm 139.

[27:36] And I believe that Psalm 139 was written before Psalm 51. Psalm 139, a famous psalm that talks about God being with us and the depths and the heights and everywhere we are, we can never leave his presence.

[27:47] It ends with this beautiful prayer. Verse 23, Search me, O God. This is David writing. Search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts and see if there be any grievous way in me and lead me in the way everlasting.

[28:03] David has been praying, maybe daily, maybe weekly, regularly praying, Search me, O God. Find where there's wickedness. Find where there's sin. Find where there's things that grieve you. Convict me of it.

[28:14] Lead me in your way. As he's praying that prayer over time, Nathan comes to him and says, Nathan, God has found sin in you. David, God has found sin in you.

[28:24] And David's response is, Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love. If we are going to be people who can be free of the shame and the fear and the guilt that we rightly have because we've done wrong, we need to be people who are regularly looking to God to convict us of sin, to create in us hearts that long more than anything for the presence of God so we'll welcome conviction and we'll welcome rebuke, whether that's from a person or whether that's by conviction of the Holy Spirit.

[28:54] Would you add that to the prayers you pray? Lord, search me and know me. Finally, there's wickedness so we can bring the things that make us shameful and filled with shame to God. There's one more thing.

[29:06] David writes this to the choir master. This is not David's private confession in his own bedroom or prayer closet. This is David's public song for the people to sing in Jerusalem and throughout the ages of time included in scripture for us today.

[29:20] This is a public song. David has successfully hidden his sin but now he brings it to light for people to join him in confession and cleansing and restoration and reengaging in mission.

[29:32] David's written this for us to share. So often the reason that we don't confess our sin is that we're so afraid that God will judge us, that people will judge us and condemn us but David has confidence that he can bring this to light.

[29:47] In 1 John, it talks about how we all have sinned and it calls us to confess our sin one to another that we may be cleansed, that we can pray for each other and be cleansed. Catholics, there's something right to Catholic doctrine of confession that they've instituted.

[30:03] You don't simply confess your sin to God but you actually confess it to someone else. In the Roman Catholic way, it's to a priest but as a priesthood of all believers, we can confess our sin not to a specific person like a reigning priest but we can confess our sin one to another.

[30:18] I want to invite you to do that. Find someone that you trust whether that's Pastor George or if it was me or Louise, Diane. Find someone that you trust and you can confess your sin to one to another as the scripture says.

[30:31] David wrote this to be sung not just in a private prayer closet but publicly because we find healing as we bring our darkness to light. Just last week, I had a very precious friend to me confess to struggling with some really heavy stuff and he shared how he'd been struggling with this stuff for years and the isolation he feels, the darkness he feels, how when someone affirms you, you feel like, well, if you only knew me, you wouldn't say those nice things about me and so the more affirmation you get, the less affirmation you feel.

[31:07] The more affirmation you get, the more isolated you feel for people don't know the real you. It's been eating at him for years and I got to watch as he confessed his struggle to me and I got to see light enter his eyes again and this past week, if you follow church news, one of my favorite worship leaders in the Church of England confessed, not distant, confessed and brought a struggle of hers to light and has embraced the lifestyle and she's given up the fight and as I read with a broken heart this long article where she talks about her struggle, it was the exact same as my friends, for years, a hidden struggle, for years, a hidden sinful struggle and giving into it but not being able to tell anyone about it and as a result, she's thrown in the towel, she's not going to fight this anymore, she's going to embrace it which is destructive, it's not good and as I read this, I knew that I could relate to that because you and I have done the same thing where we're keeping wrongdoing we've done in private, we're trying to keep it from anyone knowing about it because we don't really believe that God would forgive us or that people would be able to embrace us again but David has found forgiveness,

[32:18] David has found cleansing, David has found restoration of joy in the presence of God and he's reengaged in mission because David no longer was going to keep his sin in private, instead he embraced the conviction of God and found life in God.

[32:35] We don't need to kid anybody, all of us are broken people, we've all experienced the same thing where there's things that we're ashamed of, let us bring a brokenness to God and in public to each other in a safe setting, in the church is a safe setting, let us bring a brokenness to God because he forgives, he heals, he cleanses, he restores, in him there's life and joy for he's with us.

[33:00] Would you stand with me as we pray? Heavenly Father, we love you and Lord, we don't always understand you.

[33:16] Lord, you forgive us for things that we never would forgive ourselves for. Lord, you forgave David for sleeping with his best friend's wife and murdering his best friend. Against you he had sinned, even more so than against these people.

[33:31] And Lord, we know that even if our sin is called by a different name, we also have transgressed against you every single one. And Lord, it is so human for us to try to keep it hidden, for us to try to present a version of ourselves that people will like.

[33:47] But God, each one of us is brokenness and each one of us knows shame. Lord, would you help us like David to look to you for forgiveness as we confess our sins centered on you.

[33:59] Lord, would you help us to look to you for cleansing that we experience you saying that we are clean. Lord, would you help us to savor your presence and delight in your joy.

[34:09] Would you restore evermore your joy to us. And Lord, would you help us to reengage evermore in the mission that you've called us to. Lord, we want to walk with you in the freedom and the life that you've made us for.

[34:22]  God, we love you. In Jesus' name, Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.