A Clean Heart and a Right Spirit

Take your attention to Psalms 51, verse 10. And it says, Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.

! Cast me not away from thy presence, and take not the Holy Spirit from me. Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation, and uphold me with thy free spirit.

And then Psalms 51, skipping down to 16. It says, For thou desirest not sacrifice, else would I give it. Thou delightest not in burnt offering.

Back then, that's how they worshiped God. They would bring animals, and they would sacrifice them and worship them, and burn their carcasses on a blazing altar. And it was all from the law of Moses.

It was of God. But David realized that he doesn't really desire that kind of sacrifice as much.

He doesn't delight in that kind of sacrifice as much as what he says in the next verse. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, God's not going to despise a broken and contrite heart, or broken spirit.

That's what God can work with. And so my title today is A Clean Heart and a Right Spirit. Let's pray. Lord Jesus, I thank you for your word. It's always timely.

And God, I thank you for ministering it to me as I studied it and put it together. God, over the course of the past week, all the little nuggets you've given me, God, all the little things that you've brought to my attention in the preparation of this moment and time today that I would be able to present your word to the people here in Houston that we call disciples of Jesus Christ.

God, we thank you, Lord, for the word. Let it be a ministering spirit unto us today. Help us with it. In Jesus' name, amen. You may be seated. And Psalms 51 is famous for David's perfect example, I would say, as a response to being called out, exposed, his sin, brought to light by a man of God named Nathan.

It was after the man of God in David's life approached David and confronted him about his sin that David wrote Psalm 51. And it specifically says that in your Bible.

Israel was at war with enemy nations, the Bible says. And the Bible says it was a time period in which the kings went to war.

But David stayed home. He sent his armies and his generals into harm's way, but he stayed back in the comfort of his palace while the Bible says other kings from other nations fought with their men.

The detail already begins to speak to us about the condition of David's heart, the details that he would send men to fight at a time when kings fought with their men, but he would stay back in the palace.

That key detail right there already begins to speak to us about the condition of David's heart and his spirit, his attitude and his thought processes towards things. But the story continues in that while David was in a place he shouldn't have been at a time that he shouldn't have been, his eyes wandered to places they shouldn't have gone.

And from his place of selfish comfort and from his vantage point above everyone else, he looked out across the distance from his palace and he saw another man's wife bathing.

Being king, he was able to have her brought to him and ultimately he did. And his sin began to become exposed now that she found herself to have conceived with him and is now pregnant.

Her husband was well known to David, a key member of his army. He was away fighting when all of this happened. The condition of David's heart and spirit is in a free fall at this point.

David not wanting to be exposed of his sin, finding out that Bathsheba was in fact pregnant out of his heart and spirit's current condition.

He conceived the plan. He would then have Uriah, the husband of the woman he took advantage of, return from battle during the middle of that war.

To understand David's next move, we have to understand the fact that the condition of our heart and spirit dictates the way that we think and the way that we see things.

And we can be so sure that we're right when in fact we couldn't be more wrong. And that was David's situation with his thinking and thought processes.

With that heart and that spirit he had, he believed that if he could get Uriah back from the heat of the battle for a little vacation at home, he would definitely take advantage of the opportunity and enjoy the comfort of his bed and his wife while home.

And because that's what David would have done. And so that's what David thought he would do. And that is exactly the opposite of what happened, but it's because it was from the condition of David's heart and spirit that he would even think that that would take place.

And so David calls him home from war, expecting he will come and spend time with his wife. And then her pregnancy, when later more obvious to everyone else, will be thought to be as a result of her own husband being home during that time.

It didn't work out that way because Uriah's heart and spirit was of a different condition than David's. Once back to Jerusalem from war, Uriah refused to go home and would sleep on the steps of the palace.

And when David confronted him about this and said, why don't you go home and be with your wife? Enjoy your little vacation away from the front lines. Uriah said he would not go home and sleep in his house while his men that he served with in Israel's army were out sleeping in tents in battle.

And so David realizing his plan to cover up his sin wouldn't work. He developed another plan from his heart and spirit's condition, and that was of murder.

He wrote a letter to Uriah's general, Joab, and sealed it, gave it to Uriah himself to deliver to Moab. A sealed letter in his side to be carried by Uriah to the hand of Joab was instructions to Joab, Uriah's general, from David.

And the instructions were to place Uriah at the front lines, the fiercest part of the battle, and then retreat and leave Uriah to die on the front line, to which Uriah delivered the sealed letter, to which Joab followed the order, and to which David became a murderer.

The condition of your heart matters. The condition of your spirit matters. It's from your heart and your spirit that you will go to the extreme, either for righteousness or for evil.

The condition of your heart and spirit can affect your ability to be directed by the Lord. For David, he spiraled down into such a bad condition that no more could God speak to him and lead him and guide him in the way that he once did.

And not that God wasn't trying, but David's condition caused the voice of God to be muted in his life. You say, Shane, just last week you preached about David being a man after God's own heart, and you propped David up in your message about being a shepherd, a singer, and a slinger, and you highlighted David and all the great things that he did, and that he was the only man in the Bible referred to as a man after God's own heart.

And now you're talking this week about David having a poison in his heart and not a right heart and not a right spirit.

And I would just tell you that, like I said last week, the Bible's great. The Word of God is great in that the people that we learn from in the Word of God, they weren't perfect people, and that gives us hope today because we're not perfect people.

But the condition of your heart and spirit affects your ability to be directed by God, and we see that in David. It's a really bad place in life to be in which the voice of God and instructions from God and the direction of God for your life is muted, and now you're flying alone.

And when that happens, you will always crash. It's always going to be a disaster in your life if you're going to try to fly alone, and if you think you're safe and if you think you're okay not living by the direction of the Lord and the instructions from the Word of God, then you're going to find out, if not sooner rather later, you will find out that it's going to result in a crash.

But God, unwilling to give up on David, sent a man of God into his life, a man that was willing to think about this for a minute, a man that was willing to confront a king that had all power in that nation, a man that was willing to confront that king with a bad heart and a bad spirit condition.

So this is a man of God that was willing to go to a king in a state of a bad heart and a bad spirit that just committed adultery and murder, and to confront him and to call him out.

But he did follow the direction of the Lord. And when Nathan, used by God, confronted David, thank God David responded the way he did. And David was quick to confess that that's not always the response.

That's not very common. It's not normal. And that may be actually why one of the reasons, many reasons why that God would call David a man after his own heart is that he was not perfect, but he was quick to repent.

He was quick to confess his sins. And that's not normal. Many times, most times, when a man of God approaches someone in a condition such as David's, they reject the attempt of God's restoration because that's what it is.

Because God's gotten to a point where he's, it wasn't that he had quit trying to reach David. It wasn't that he wasn't trying to speak to David. But because of David's condition, he was unable to hear the voice of God.

And that happens a lot in the lives of everyday people that loved, at one point, truly loved God and had a right spirit. And but somewhere along the way, they lost spiritual disciplines.

And they get into a place where they can no longer hear the voice of God leading them and directing them as they should. And so God will send a word to a man that is listening and is responsible for people.

And and God and God will give them a word for them. But it's not always received in a way that David had received it. But thank God that David did receive it that way.

And and out of that, David prayed a prayer of repentance and probably many prayers of repentance and remorse. But as often did when he had the right heart and spirit, when he prayed, he wrote a psalm.

He wrote Psalms 51. And we thank God for Psalms 51 today. I thank God for Psalms 51 today. It's it's a beautiful psalm.

It's a song famous for verse one, for example, through three, for example, have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy loving kindness, according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies, blot out my transgressions.

And wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. For I acknowledge my transgressions and my sin is ever before me.

He's saying I acknowledge that I've transgressed against you, God. I acknowledge that I've committed sin. I acknowledge that I'm imperfect.

I acknowledge that what I've done is wrong and my sin, the things that I've done, they stand ever before me. And and famous is famous and beautiful words of repentance are found in Psalm 51.

Psalm 51 and seven. Purge me with thy hyssop and I shall be clean. Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow. Beautiful pleas from David, a pleas for forgiveness, a plea for cleansing.

And that is the power of repentance. David went from an out of control spiral straight down to hearing the man of God in his life and then repenting and turning it all around.

And David's prayers became songs. Amen. Our prayers should be our songs. Amen. Our prayers of repentance are our sweet songs unto the Lord.

Amen. They're worthy of of being written down even or sung about in our own hearts and minds and memories of all the times that we've failed God. But he left space and grace enough for us to be able to find a way back to him.

Amen. I thank God for every time that I was so hard on myself about the things that I've said and the things that I've done as as an imperfect man.

And would myself if I was the king, if I was God, I would have stricken myself down and not allowed myself to have grace and mercy.

And I thank God I'm not God for that. But I thank God we serve a God that's full of grace and mercy and is always willing to hear our prayers. Amen. It's a song unto the Lord, a sweet, beautiful song that's worthy of being written down in our own life's book, if you will.

And so I thank God for Psalm 51. And God values each individual person. Amen. That repents of their wicked ways and turns to righteousness.

Luke chapter 15 verse 7 says, I say unto you, this is Jesus speaking, that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth more than over ninety and nine just persons which need no repentance.

All of heaven rejoices when? When a sinner repents and turns back to God. Amen. Psalms 51 and 11 and 12 says, Cast me not away from thy presence and take not thy Holy Spirit from me.

Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation and uphold me with thy free spirit. When you repent, all of heaven rejoices because in that moment you are restored to the joys of his salvation.

Amen. But without repentance, you are without the joy of his salvation. You are without his free spirit. Instead, you have a spirit of bondage without hope.

It is the condition of the heart and the spirit that will dictate your direction. As I had said before, David said in Psalm 51 and 10, Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.

David, following his repentance, knew instantly how he ended up where he was. He needed a clean heart and a right spirit to make sure that it didn't happen again.

And it didn't happen again. He said, Create, create in me a clean heart. That means that we don't already have a clean heart sitting in here that's ready and available for us.

But God has to make one inside of us. God has to create within us a clean heart. And we have to allow him to do that. It has to be created in us.

And it starts with us wanting God to do it. We have to want a new heart. We have to want a clean heart. And too many people today are satisfied with their unclean heart and in their unclean condition.

They think they can get by with their natural born fleshly carnal evil heart that comes pre-installed into us. But you want to know what kind of heart you're born with as a human.

It tells us in Scripture. Genesis 6, verse 5, the first book of your Bible within the first six chapters is already saying that God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth.

And that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. Amen. It's a sad case for us that we were born with such an evil heart.

And Ecclesiastes 9 and 3 says, This is an evil among all things that are done under the sun, that there is one event unto all. Yea, also the heart of the sons of men is full of evil and madness is in their heart while they live.

And it's a sad case for us. Jeremiah 17, verse 9 says, The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it?

And God goes on to say that He will give you what you want from your evil heart. Jeremiah 17, verse 9 says, The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.

And the next verse, in verse 10, it says, I, the Lord, search the heart. I try the reins even to give every man according to his ways and according to the fruit of his doings.

God will bless you one way or the other. He's going to bless the fruit of your heart. He's going to bless the condition of your heart. If you have an evil heart, you're going to, you're going to, God's going to bless you and give you according to your ways.

And you're going to have the fruit of that. But also, if you have found a way to have within yourself created a clean heart, then he will bless that according to the fruit of its doings.

And so, because God will give us the desires of our hearts, it is imperative to us for our Christian living as disciples of Jesus Christ that we ask God to create within us a clean heart.

And if we are sincere, God will do it. I believe that. Ezekiel 36 and 26 says, A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you, and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh.

Thank God for that promise. Amen. God alone searches our hearts. God alone searches it and alone can change it. Only God can do it. We need to ask God to create in us a new heart and to renew a right spirit within us.

That word renew, it means, you know, renewing means that the spirit was once there and has to be restored. Lord, Satan's sharpest attack is not first against the teachings of truth that you hear week in or week out.

It's not against the teachings that we have that are unique to us as the oneness of God or all the Jesus name teachings that we have and the understandings that we have of those things.

That's not where Satan will attack first. Although he will attack those things, but it's not his go to. It's not his.

He also will attack ministry. If you if you if you commit to ministry that you can expect the attacks to increase. Satan's not going to stand by while you do the work, the good work of the Lord.

Any any type of commitment that you make to the kingdom of God is going to be a struggle. And but that's not as that's not his first go to either. It's not going to be against your faith.

That's although he does come against our faith. He's he's a whisperer. He likes to whisper evil thoughts into our minds. Evil. When I say evil, like an evil report and that, you know, it was going to go wrong.

It's not going to work out all these negative things. And it challenges our faith. And but that's not his first go to attack either. Satan's first focus begins on our hearts and spirits.

If the devil cannot stop you from serving God and he can't, he can't stop you from serving God. If you make up your mind, you want to serve God. You can come to church religiously every Sunday.

You can be faithful and all those things. And he's there's nothing he can do about that. But if he could poison your heart while you do that, if he could poison your spirit while you do that, then he he can have great success and destroying you in that sense.

The devil can can stop you that way by poisoning your heart and spirit against other people of God or against your pastor or against the very word of God.

If he can poison your heart and spirit against worship, where you won't sing, you won't praise, you won't get excited about the things God has in your life.

You can't even think about all the good things God has done in your life. Maybe it's good for us to take time to actually start looking back and counting the blessings that we have because it seems so hard sometimes to come in and worship God.

But if we would be honest with ourselves and with God and take a look at our lives, we would realize how blessed we truly are and that God is worthy of praise.

But if he could poison our hearts against and our spirits against seeing those things and where we don't worship and we don't praise and and and lift our voices because your heart and spirit is poisoned by the devil against it, then he can begin to destroy us even no matter how faithful we are to the house of God.

It is it is poisoned against a move of God. It becomes poisoned against commitment and sacrifice and obedience and then ultimately becomes poisoned against another brother or sister in the church.

And then it ultimately damages your relationship with their father. Which is God, if someone has issues with my kids, I have issues with them.

It's the same for our heavenly father if in that he will protect his children. So it's wise not to get crossed up with true children of God.

And so we we have to have a clean heart and a right spirit. That's what the message is today. A clean heart and a right spirit. They don't it doesn't it doesn't maintain themselves.

They don't maintain themselves. It takes constant attention, continual surrender to the Lord and daily prayer. David didn't maintain it and went so far as to commit adultery and then murder.

But the clean heart and the right spirit has to be maintained. We have to maintain it and we cannot blame others for our heart and our spirit. That's our heart and our spirit, not theirs.

Your greatest problems don't come from someone else. They come from inside of us. They come from inside of you. And if you have a clean heart and a right spirit, no matter what happens to you, you're able to survive it spiritually.

But if you don't have a clean heart and a right spirit, your spiritual survival of things that happen to you, it becomes less likely.

So please understand today. Believing truth is not the same as having a right spirit. Just because you believe the word of God, just because you believe everything I'm saying today, that doesn't automatically mean that you have a right spirit.

People can believe the teachings of, like I said, of one God in Jesus name and be faithful to church and faithful in their giving because they can have an impure heart and still believe truth.

And so we have to be aware of that today. We have to pray for our clean heart and right spirit to be protected. Quit praying, God, fix my circumstance.

God, fix this situation I'm in. Quit praying, God, fix my wife or fix my husband or fix my son or fix my parents or fix my children or whatever it is.

We need to quit praying that. We need to start praying, God, fix me. Fix my heart. Fix my spirit. If we want to have revival, we have to have personal revival.

And it starts in your heart and spirit. A bad spirit will not kill someone else's revival. It will not kill the revival of the one next to you, but it will kill yours.

And a clean heart is more than just polite words or thin forgiveness, flimsy forgiveness. It's I'll forgive you, you know, but you stay over there and leave me alone and we're not ever going to coffee again or whatever.

Like, you know, the relationship is different now. You know, you know, it's you know that things aren't the same because that's not really true. Godly forgiveness.

A clean heart is free from bitterness and jealousy and pride and envy and unforgiveness and hatred and especially free from hidden sins.

See, it's it's funny how people think that they can do certain sins, have certain sins. And as long as they hide it from their parents or from their pastor or from their spouse or or whatever, they think that they're somehow getting away with it.

Well, that shows a very lack of faith in God because God sees all things. And not only that, but his angels in heaven, the multitude of legions, thousands, tens, hundreds of thousands of angels are all watching you do your sin.

And not only that, but the devil and hell and all of his minions are watching you and cheering you on while you commit your little hidden sins. Selfish, selfish ambition, revenge, wrong motives, malice, offense, all these things.

It's it's all tied together and it comes from evil heart, unclean heart and a not right spirit. God weighs our motives and and our actions.

You can do right. You can, like I said, come to church every Sunday and do do do the things that you're supposed to do, like a checkbox. But have the wrong reasons behind it.

And God will not honor it. You can pay your tithes religiously and faithfully. That's the right actions. It's doing right. But having the wrong spirit about it or doing it for the wrong reasons and you're going to miss your blessing.

You can miss it with also by not having the right motives involved in what you're doing.

So don't practice religion, but have do it from the heart. Do it from a clean heart and the right spirit. And and and when you have a clean heart and a right spirit and you do something you're not supposed to do, you make a mistake, you fall, you fail like we all do.

And and it's unavoidable. It will happen when when God sees that you you have. It came from a mistake with a striving for a clean heart and a right spirit.

Then even though you the action was bad, the motives, your motives and intents were good. God honors that. And and you can find grace and mercy and forgiveness much quicker and faster.

And and God can still bless you. But when the actions are not backed up by the right motives, it's a different story. The Bible says it's guaranteed that offenses offenses will come.

Being offended by someone is going to be certain in life. The test for a clean heart and a right spirit is how you respond to the offending. The question isn't is someone going to hurt me?

The question is, what will I do after I'm hurt? And so Proverbs 4 and 23 says, keep thy heart with all diligence for out of it are the issues of life.

Heart and spirit feed each other. You cannot pray for a clean heart while going over and over in your mind all the time. So I hurt you and you cannot pray for a right spirit while continually feeding and trying to justify all of your wrong attitude.

And so we need to pray Psalms 51 and 10. And as I was as I typed that note, we need to pray Psalms 51 and 10. I put in there daily and then I set an alarm on my phone and I named the alarm the text of Psalms 51 and 10.

And so I'm making a commitment to God and to myself that every day I'm going to read this text because I can and I understand that I can read it every day and and still struggle with certain things.

And the things I'm talking about today, I truly believe that nobody, nobody I know struggles with them more than I do. And it's this message is for me just as much or more as it is for anyone else today.

And I'm very susceptible to having a wrong spirit and unclean heart. And so it concerns me very much.

And I want to do and put into place anything I can to help me in this area. And it's just finding some way or somehow for you to do the same.

We have to guard what enters our minds. Stop watching the junk you're watching. Stop listening to the junk that you're listening to. Guard your heart and minds.

And it's it's garbage in garbage out. Keep a clean heart. Don't let filth into your heart. We have to change the way that we speak.

Speak blessing instead of complaint. Stop complaining about everything. If you if you don't have something nice to say, don't say it. Right. That's what mom used to always teach. I don't know about your mom, but my or my mom.

My mom said it a few times. My dad's definitely said it before. But usually that's coming from mom and dad. If you don't have something nice to say, don't say it at all. It's good advice. If we don't have anything positive to say, it's better left unsaid.

If we're constantly negative all the time, it's an indicator that we need to pray for a right spirit. We have to assume the best. God works on our behalf. We have to assume that he's going to work on our behalf.

No matter what comes against us in life. Let's just have faith and believe that it's going to work out for our good in the long run. Refuse to believe the worst. Most importantly, spend time with Jesus.

Especially when you're hurt. Especially when things aren't right. Especially when things are going wrong. Spend more time with Jesus.

It's not the time to spend less time with Jesus. But when you're hurt and things aren't going right. It's time to spend more time with Jesus. Let his spirit minister to your spirit. Amen.

Maintaining a clean heart and a right spirit means forgiving again. Praying again. Choosing grace again. Refusing to retaliate again. Blessing those who hurt you again.

And giving people and situations to God again. Man, people can't cause you to lose your salvation and destroy your walk with God.

But your response to people can do that. Amen. We have to choose. As for me and my house, we're going to serve the Lord.

Amen. Let's all stand. Let's close out the service today.

Praying to God to create within us a new heart. A clean heart. And renew within us a right spirit.

Let's pray that prayer today. Let's pray the prayer of Psalms 51 and 10. And, you know, I've been backstabbed many times.

Many times I've been betrayed. Lied to. Talked about behind my back. Ridiculed. Mistreated.

Many times. Even sometimes by my enemies. Most of the time those kind of things come from people close by. And people we go to church with.

People that live in our household. That's honestly where it comes from the most. But we have to learn that we have to respond differently.

And we can't control what happens to us and what other people do to us. But we can have some say in our and how we respond to it. And so let's pray today before we leave that God not only creates within us that clean heart and renews within us that right spirit.

But it's also protected. But it's also protected. And that through that that we be good witnesses to our family and to our friends and to people in the church.

Those that are most likely the ones that could offend us. So let's find a place and pray and ask God to help us with these things today before we leave out of his presence today.

Thank you.