Sermon Transcript

0:00:14.0

Karl Menninger was an American psychologist who also founded the famous Menninger Clinic in Topeka, Kansas.  In 1973 he wrote what became a bestselling book, titled Whatever Became of Sin?  Now, it’s an interesting title, and it’s a provocative title.  I’m not sure that title would pass through the editorial team at a major Christian publisher today.  I’m not sure they would take the risk on a book titled Whatever Became of Sin?  But Dr. Menninger back in the early ‘70’s wrote that book, and it was quite successful.  Dr. Menninger, of course, is a medical professional.  He’s a scientist.  And he understands how important it is to diagnose things properly.  If you don’t diagnose things properly, you end up with inefficient and ineffective remedies.  He also understood the difference between root causes and symptoms, whether you’re talking about a mental illness or a physical illness.  And Dr. Menninger believed that the root cause of all of our illnesses, whether they’re physical illnesses or mental illnesses, gets back to sin.  The breaking of God’s moral laws.  The consequences of doing that has made us unhealthy, broken…well, let’s just say it…cracked pots.  And Dr. Menninger went all the way back to Genesis 3 and to the fall of man to explain the root causes of our brokenness.  We’re in a series of messages called “Cracked Pots: How the Glory of God Shines Through Our Brokenness.” And we’ve come to a character in the Bible that is worth studying around this subject- King David.  I call him a broken man after God’s own heart.

0:02:20.2

Before we get to that though, David is one of these guys who is a great hero of the faith, is he not?  I mean, you can almost hear the cheers that were given on behalf of David many, many years ago, dating all the way back to 2 Samuel and the early chapters there.  Usually when we think of David, we think of David and Goliath, right?  The mighty Philistine champion who came out, for 40 days and 40 nights, just breathed out all kinds of hatred and threats against the people of Israel.  And all the soldiers of Israel were intimidated by them until young David came.  And David was a small kid.  And he was ruddy, had red hair.  And David couldn’t wear Saul’s armor, right?  He took that sling, put some smooth stones in it, and flung that sling and hit Goliath right there in the forehead.  Mighty, mighty Goliath falls over.  And David was a hero after that.  The cheers were, “Oh, Saul has slain his thousands, but David his ten thousands.”  And David’s heroism just shot off like a rocket ship to the moon after that.

0:03:36.7

So when we think of David, you know, we also think of the Davidic line, the messianic line comes through the line of David.  We can also talk prophetically about the throne of David, how Jesus Christ will one day return and sit upon the throne of David in Jerusalem.  There’s more editorial space in the Old Testament given to King David than perhaps any other king.  David is a huge figure.  But as much as we think about King David and David and Goliath and the throne of David and the messianic line through David, we also remember David and, yeah, Bathsheba.  It’s kind of the dark part of the story.

0:04:18.5

2 Samuel 11.  It was springtime when kings go out to battle.  And David stayed home in Jerusalem, the Bible says.  The implication in the way the story starts is David was in a place he shouldn’t have been.  He should have been out on the battlefield fighting the battles that kings fight.  But instead he was home alone, got bored one night, and started walking out on the balcony of the king’s palace.  And his eye caught a bathing beauty over here named Bathsheba.  And I don’t need to go into all the sordid details.  We know the story.  And the message today is not so much a diagnosis on how you go from a blessed life to a broken life.  I want to pick it up where David is broken.

0:05:12.4

But what’s interesting, before we get there, the larger arc of David’s life in the Bible describes him as a man after God’s own heart.  David is a guy who wrote the psalms.  And you just read his life and his story, and he is pursuing hard after the God of Israel.  Acts 13:22 says, “And when he had removed him [that is he, being God, being removed King Saul] God raised up David to be their king of whom he testified and said, ‘I have found in David, the son of Jesse, a man after my heart who will do all my will.’”  How do we reconcile that with a God who knows everything?  He is completely omniscient, especially with David’s dark side.

0:06:08.1

I want to focus on that time not so much of how do you go from blessed to broken, but how do you go from broken to blessed again.  Is there ever an opportunity that when you find yourself broken as a result of your own sin, is there a pathway back to blessed again?  David is going to help us with that.  Psalm 51 is going to help us with that.

0:06:30.2

I said earlier in this message titled “Cracked Pots” that we’re all cracked pots.  We’re all jars of clay.  We’re earthen vessels.  How amazing it is that God places His treasure within us.  His treasure in jars of clay.  Sometimes we’re broken, and we’re chipped, and we’re cracked, and we’re wounded because of somebody else’s sin against us, or somebody else’s sin that has a ripple effect into our life.  Sometimes that’s the reason we’re broken.

0:07:05.7

But I want to focus today on another reason for our brokenness.  And that is when we have sinned against God.  David had nobody to blame but himself.  He had broken God’s moral law.  And in Psalm 51 we have the description of David who is a broken man after God’s own heart.  David had made a mess of his life when he broken the sixth and seventh commandments, the one about adultery.  And then, you know, they always say the coverup is worse than the crime itself.  He tried to cover it up by sending Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah, to the front lines of battle.  And he knew that Uriah would die.  So he breaks the commandment about adultery, and then breaks the commandment about murder.  Just made a mess of his life.

0:08:03.1

How do you go from brokenness to blessing?  Psalm 51:17, David says, “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit.  A broken and contrite spirit, O God, you will not despise.”  David was a broken man.  Took awhile for him to get there.  Actually took about 12 months, 365 days or so.  Because between 2 Samuel 11 that describe a liaison with Bathsheba and chapter 12 when Nathan the prophet confronts David and says, “You the man,” that whole thing, 12 months had passed.  And some time after that, the writing of two psalms we have, in the book of Psalms, that relate to this scene and this dark side of David- Psalm 51 and then the corollary, Psalm 32.  So we’ll go back and forth a little bit.

0:09:09.7

How do you go from broken to blessed?  Is anybody here today feeling like a cracked pot, broken because of your own sinful choices?  And you’re wondering if God can make anything out of that brokenness.  Let’s learn from David in Psalm 51:1-10 about the pathway back.

0:09:36.8

The first thing to do is to face up.  Face up to what you’ve done.  Verse 1 says, “Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions.  Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin!”  This is David who is broken, but he is now facing up to what he has done.  I almost say that figuratively and literally because I imagine David over this past year…his countenance has changed.  In conversations with people, his head drops, and maybe his face goes downward in shame because he knows what he has done.  But now the road back means, “I need to face up.”  In part, “Lift up my face and get face to face with God again.”  And when he does, he pleads for mercy.  “Have mercy on me, O God.”  Of all the character traits that we could talk about that the God of the Bible possesses, I find it interesting that David appeals to one and only one.  Well, the love of God is in there, too, but primarily to the mercy of God.  He says, “Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions.”  David is facing up to what he has done.  And he is appealing to the mercy of God.

0:11:17.5

Now, we need to understand the difference between the grace of God and the mercy of God.  They’re really two sides of the same theological coin.  Grace has to do with God giving us something we do not deserve.  We understand salvation to be by grace and through faith.  Ephesians says, “That not of ourselves, it is the gift of God-not of works, lest any man should boast.”  We sing, “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me,” and so on and so forth.  God’s grace is Him, out of the abundance of His generosity, giving us something—salvation, the forgiveness of our sins, a home in heaven, sonship, all of that—something that we do not deserve.  Mercy on the other hand is God withholding something from us that we do deserve, namely, the punishment for our sins.  And David here appeals to the mercy of God.  Basically, what he’s doing as he faces up is saying, “I’m guilty as charged.”  Why?  Because only a guilty person appeals to the court for mercy.  Think of a criminal on death row.  And their attorney works a plea for clemency or for mercy at the 11^th hour, the mercy of the State, the mercy of the governor, or even the president of the United States.  They’re looking for clemency, having been found guilty as charged.  There is no plea agreement in David.  There is no contest or not guilty.  He is saying, “I am guilty.  And I need Your mercy, O God.”

0:12:56.2

Now, David does sort of a 360 on his sin here.  You ever done a 360 analysis where you look at something from all sides?  David does this with his sin, because there are three words translated from the Hebrew here that have something to do with sin.  It’s the word “transgressions” in verse 1.  And then in verse 2 you have the word “iniquity” and the word “sin.”  The word “transgressions” speaks of crossing a forbidden boundary.  David says, “Have mercy on me, O God…according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions.”  He’s acknowledging that he has crossed over a boundary he should not have crossed over.  I believe he has the ten commandments in mind here, the sixth, the seventh commandment.  That is God’s moral boundary, His moral law expressed in the ten commandments.  And David says, “I’ve crossed over that line.  I went where is shouldn’t have gone.”  And he’s pleading God’s mercy, and He says, “Blot out my transgression.  He’s asking for God to remove it from the written record so that nobody can ever bring it up again.

0:14:08.7

And then he uses the word “iniquity.”  The word really means perversion.  It’s the word that, translated here, theologians use to talk about the depravity of humanity.  Again, diagnosis is important here.  Dr. Menninger said that.  He knew the importance of diagnosing thing properly.  Otherwise you end up with ineffective self-help remedies.  If you don’t diagnose humanity properly, you won’t get an effective remedy.  And he uses a word here that describes the depravity of humanity, the total and complete corruption of his humanity.

0:14:54.0

Think of it as a laptop computer.  Have you ever had the experience of opening up your laptop, and it just isn’t working very well?  You discover you have a virus.  That virus has corrupted the operating system.  What David is saying here by use of this word is, “My entire operating system is corrupted by sin.”  Then he uses the word that translates sin.  This is the word that describes the missing of a mark, the falling short of something.  Think of Romans 3:23, where the Bible diagnoses our human condition and says, “All,”—not some, but all—“have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”  If you have any doubts that, again, just measure yourself according to something as simple as God’s moral law expressed in the ten commandments.  The Bible says that if you violate even one of them, you’ve violated all of them. It’s a pass/fail kind of test.  And so David does this 360 analysis on his sin and faces up to what he has done.  He has a pretty full understanding of it.

0:16:08.5

Secondly, after you face up, you ‘fess up.  This involves confession.  It involves verbalizing it.  And David goes on in verse 3 to say, “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.  Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.  Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being, and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart.”

0:16:45.0 

This is a full-throated confession.  David is ‘fessing up.  And I want you to just circle three words at the beginning there of verse 3, “for I know.”  You know, a lot of times when you turn on the television and you see these Washington Capitol Hill subcommittee meetings and the cross examinations and all of that, the person in the hot seat will often say, “I do not recall.  I do not recall.  I do not recall.”  It’s Washington-speak.  David is not playing games here with God.  He didn’t say, “I do not recall.” He says, “Yeah, I know.  I know.”  And he knows four things, and he confesses them.

0:17:31.8

First of all, he says, “I know that I sinned.  For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me.  There is no escaping this,” David says.   “I did what I did.  I know that I have sinned.”  Secondly, he says, “I know the seriousness of my sin.”  Read on.  He says in verse 4, “Against you only.”  He’s speaking to God.  “Against 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.”  Does anybody have trouble with this part of the confession?  Because there is no mention here of Bathsheba.  There is no mention of sinning against Uriah and their family.  Why is that?  I’ve done reading about as broadly and as deeply as I can to get various opinions on this, and here is where I’ve landed.  David is ‘fessing up.  He is confessing to the highest moral authority in the universe, and it starts there.  Yes, the victims are important, and we hear a lot about victims today that are victims of certain abuses and all of that.  And appropriately so, the victims need to be addressed. But if that’s where we end, (0:19:00.1) if we don’t go to the highest moral authority in the land, we’ve really not grasped the seriousness of this sin that has impacted these victims.

0:19:12.2

And David says, “Against You, God, and You alone…You are the highest moral authority.  You are the one that establishes what is right and what is wrong.”  Part of the problem in our culture today, even in these victim cases, is we have no reference to the highest moral authority anymore in our culture.  A generation ago we took the ten commandments off the walls of our schools.  And we’ve raised an entire generation of young people who don’t know right from wrong.  And they say, you know, “You’re okay.  I’m okay.  The highest moral authority is moral relativism and tolerance.”  But how do you determine whether what David or what somebody else did is actually wrong?  You have to appeal to the highest moral authority in the universe.  And guess what? (0:20:00.1) You’re not that moral authority, and neither am I.  And if we don’t appeal to God and His moral authority, moral authority shifts with the wind.  And you can never determine or rightfully prosecute this is right and this is wrong.  The judicial system in this nation is based upon a Judeo-Christian ethic that rises from the pages of scripture, understanding that the highest moral authority in the universe is God.  He and He alone determines what is right and wrong.

0:20:34.1

And so David raises the seriousness of his sin to the highest court in the universe and says, “Against you and you along have I sinned.”  When you raise the seriousness of sin to that level, you’ll take care of the victims.  They’ll be taken care of, but only when it’s raised to that high of a level.

0:21:02.2

Thirdly…he says, “I know that I’ve sinned.  I understand the seriousness of my sin.”  Thirdly he says, “I know why I have sinned.”  Go back to verse 5.  “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.”  What David is saying here is that, “I know why I’ve sinned, because I was born a sinner.” We’re not sinners because we sin.  You and I didn’t become sinners because around the age of 5 or 6 we did something wrong.  We were born sinners. Think about that laptop computer again with the virus.  Most of the time when you buy a laptop computer, you know, you buy one from a company.  It goes into the manufacturing process.  It’s delivered to you in a box that’s never been opened.  It’s brand new, right?  But maybe six months into using it, a year into using it, there is a virus that pops up.  That analogy would be the wrong analogy to use to diagnose our human condition.  We weren’t born sinless, and then somewhere along the way a virus infected us.  No, a better analogy is you ordered that computer from the manufacturer, it was manufactured and assembled, packaged up, never been used before.  You opened it up, you turned on the computer, and you discovered a virus.  It was corrupt from the beginning.  That’s what the depravity of man refers to.  We’re all corrupted by sin because we’ve inherited a sin nature from our physical and spiritual forefather Adam.  And it was passed down through the generations.

0:22:51.6

By the way, the reason the virgin birth of Jesus Christ is such an important doctrine is because the sin nature is passed through the male.  And there was no male involved in Mary’s conception.  She conceived by the Holy Spirit. Therefore Jesus was born without the corruption of sin, and He lived a sinless life.  That’s orthodox Christianity, and that’s a very important aspect of it.  But you and I were conceived through both the male and female.  And we inherited the sin nature.  We came out of the box sweet and as lovable and huggable as can be as a little baby.  But what we didn’t realize is this baby is arriving corrupted by sin.  It doesn’t take very long to figure that out, right?  And everything about our life and our world and the brokenness in our world, Karl Menninger was right.  It goes back to Genesis 3.  Whatever happened to sin?  It explains all the mess that this world is in.  And if you diagnose it properly, then you can find the right remedy.

0:24:08.3

So David says, “I know that I’ve sinned.  I understand the seriousness of my sin.”  By the way, to illustrate that a little bit more, suppose I slap you in the face.  What happens?   Probably you’ll slap me back, right?  And we’ll get into one of those tussles.  Maybe one of the other of us will file an assault charge.  I hope not.  But, you know, I slap you, you slap me.  Okay.  We go on our way.  But what if I walked up and slapped the face of the President of the United States.  What would happen to me?  Yeah, I’d go away for a very, very long time, wouldn’t I?  Yeah.  Because the seriousness of the action is determined by who you did to, right?  “Against thee and thee alone have I sinned.”

0:24:59.6 

So, “I know I’ve sinned.  I understand the seriousness of my sin.  I understand why I have sinned.  I was conceived in sin.”  And then he says, “I know there are no secrets with You, God.  You know everything.”  He says, “Behold, you delight,” verse 6, “in truth in the inward being, and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart.”  David knows, “I can’t keep a secret from God.  I may keep it hidden from people who know me best, but God knows everything.”  Write this down.  It is true.  A secret sin on earth is an open scandal in heaven.  You’ll never keep a secret from God.  And David knows this.  He is ‘fessing up after he’s faced up.

0:25:52.6

By the way, now is probably a good time to go to the corollary to Psalm 51.  Go with me to Psalm 32 for a moment.  Psalm 32.  David talks even more about what he was going through at the time.  And he says in Psalm 32:3, “For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long.”  Is there a connection between hidden sin and my physical wellbeing?  David alludes to that.  David wasn’t as physically healthy.  He says, “My bones wasted away through my groaning all day long.  I just wasn’t physically like I should have been because I was keeping silent.”  Verse 4, “For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer.  I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity; I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,’ and you forgave the iniquity of my sin.”  Relief did not come for David until he confessed.

0:27:03.9 

Confession is when I verbally ‘fess up and agree with God that what God says is wrong is wrong.  That’s confession.  And confession is good for the soul, isn’t it?  You ever heard that?  That’s not exactly the way the Bible says it, but that’s kind of what David is saying.  It’s good for the soul.  It’s good for the body.  In fact, James 5:16, James says, “Therefore confess your sins to one another,” get this, “and pray for one another that you may be healed.”  Confess your sins to one another.  You ‘fess up to God.  He’s the highest moral authority in the universe.  But James says in the body of Christ as we experience authentic biblical community, the confessing of our sins to one another leads to healing.  And you’re saying, “Pastor, I don’t know about that.”  I understand.  That assumes it’s a safe place in the body of Christ for us to reveal our brokenness, right?  And to say, “I’ve blown it.”  And it isn’t always a safe place.  I understand that.  I understand that.  It’s what being part of the body of Christ is all about though.

0:28:24.0

That’s why we encourage you.  Find a life group.  Find a life group where you’ve got your peeps.  And you’re so tight with your peeps that, yes, you could even call up a trusted friend and say, “I need to share something with you.”  And you know that trusted friend is not going to tweet about it.  You know that trusted friend is not going to gossip about it.  You know that trusted friend is not going to judge you.  They’re going to pray for you just like James says.  That’s the way the body of Christ works at its best.  And we have to work hard to become that safe place for broken people, because we’re all cracked pots, right?  And this sort of confession is healing to us.

0:29:09.0

So David faced up, he ‘fessed up.  Now it’s time for the cleanup.  Now, let’s go back to verse 2 for this.  He says, “Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin!”  David has felt dirty this last 12 months or so.  He’s like an automobile where you haven’t changed the oil for 10 or 20 or 30,000 miles.  And it’s just running a little sluggish.  He needs a cleansing.  He needs a cleansing.

0:29:43.1

By the way, the Bible tells us, to believers, 1 John 1:9, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us of our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”  I describe that as the Christian’s bar of soap.  You need to wash yourself every day.  Confession is the way to do that.  Or it’s like the Christian’s way of changing the oil regularly.  Daily I’m going to confess and let Him cleanse, make sure I’ve got the Holy Spirit flowing through me in a cleansing kind of way.

0:30:16.2

David goes on in verse 7.  He says, “Purge me with hyssop,”—I’ll come back to that—“and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones that you have broken rejoice.”  He had lost the joy of his salvation during this time.  It just wasn’t clicking.  The joy was gone.  The gladness was gone.  Verse 9, “Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities.”  And then I love verse 10, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.”  If God wasn’t willing and able to do that, I don’t think David would have asked for it.  Is there a way to go from broken to blessed again?  Yeah, you’ve got to ‘fess up.  You’ve got to face up.  But only God can do the cleanup.

0:31:11.8 

And it’s interesting how David appeals to hyssop here.  He says, “Purge me with hyssop.”  Hyssop was a small, leafy shrub that was used in the purification ceremonies in the Old Testament.  David is appealing to the only remedy God ahs ever put forth for the cleansing of our sins and cleansing of our souls, and that is a blood atonement.  So think back to the Passover when the Israelites were coming out of Egypt.  And on that fateful night when the death angel passed over Egypt, the Israelites were told to sacrifice the spotless lamb and take the blood and paint it on the doorpost.  Do you remember that?  And the death angel passed over those who were protected by the blood.  And they would take this small, leafy shrub known as hyssop, and they would dip it in the blood and paint.  It was used in those kinds of purification ceremonies and their purification ceremonies throughout the Old Testament in their sacrificial system.

0:32:19.8

What David is saying is, “My only remedy, my only hope for cleansing is a blood atonement.”  Somebody once said that you can go to any place in the Bible, Old and New Testament, and you can make a beeline to the cross of Jesus Christ.  That’s easy to do here in Psalm 51, because here he has in mind not only the sacrificial system of the Old Testament and the blood atonement, but all of that was a foreshadowing of the once-for-all blood sacrifice that came through Jesus Christ on His cross.  And you and I might spill blood, maybe on my white shirt, and it would be very difficult if not impossible to make as white as snow.  But God’s only cleansing agent for the stain and the stench of sin in our life is the blood of Jesus Christ.  That’s all throughout the Old and New Testament.  In fact, the first hint of it is in Genesis 3 when the fall took place.  And Adam and Eve were ashamed and naked.  And what did God do?  Sacrificed two animals over here, and out of the animal skins, made them an Armani suit.  Well, not really, but you understand what I’m saying.  He clothed them.  It was a blood sacrifice.  We call that the protoevangelium, the first gospel.  The first hint that it requires a blood sacrifice to cover our sins, to blot out the transgression, to cleanse us before a holy God.

0:33:53.9 

And David is crying out to God.  He is facing up, he’s ‘fessing up, he is saying, “Now, clean me up.  Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.”  Oh, could we talk about how David, who was blessed, went from blessed to broken?  Sure, we could diagnose all of that, and we could talk about all of the boundaries you need to put in place, and how you follow hard after Jesus, and accountability is required.  Okay.  He messed up.  He messed up big.  He violated the sixth and seventh commandment.  Is there a pathway from brokenness when you’re broken because of your own sin?  You have nobody to blame but yourself.  Is there a pathway back to blessedness?  Yeah, there is.  You’ve got to face up.  You’ve got to ‘fess up and ask God to clean you up, and that’s the only way.

0:34:59.6

I think Karl Menninger was right.  Whatever happened to sin?  You won’t get to this remedy until you diagnose things properly, until God is returned to His rightful place as the highest moral authority in the universe.  And the seriousness of sin…not just adultery and murder, but gossip and slander and backbiting and lying and cheating, whatever it is…that when the Holy Spirit brings the conviction to our hearts that we’ve done something wrong, we understand the seriousness of it.  There are no little white lies.  We have violated the holiness and righteousness of the highest court in the land.

0:35:52.6

Thankfully, that God is abundant in mercy.  He never runs out of mercy.  In fact, go back to verse 1.  “Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love.”  He appeals to the love of God once, twice to God’s mercy.  What is steadfast love?  It means God will never love you more tomorrow than He did today because you behaved properly.  Likewise, He doesn’t love you less tomorrow than He did today because you behaved poorly.  His love is steadfast.  It’s steady.  It never changes.  God just loves you.  And His mercy…he says, “According to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions.”  He never runs out of mercy, not once.  Whatever you did, there is enough mercy.  God withholding His divine, retributive punishment, His justice against sin.  And He had enough mercy to send His own son Jesus Christ to the cross to pay the penalty for your sin and for my sin.

0:37:05.7 

The cross of Jesus Christ, friends, makes absolutely no sense apart from understanding the seriousness of sin and how it offends a holy and righteous God.  Once we understand He is the highest moral authority in the universe and He establishes what is right and wrong, what is unholy  and what is holy, what is unrighteous and what is righteous, then the cross of Jesus Christ we say, wow, what amazing grace that He would do something like this for us.  That He would give us something we didn’t deserve.  That He would withhold something, a punishment we did deserve, and direct that punishment to His Son Jesus Christ.  You want to get some sense of the seriousness of sin, just look at the cross and the time when the Father literally turned His back for the first time in all time and eternity.  He turned His back on His own Son because of sin.

0:38:10.1

The cross of Jesus Christ makes perfect sense when we understand sin the way David understood sin.  And we sing, “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.”  Maybe we ought to have a verse in there, “amazing mercy that withheld the punishment that should have been mine.”

0:38:32.9

David goes forward in Psalm 51 from broken to blessed.  He even imagines that time, verse 13, “Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will return to you.”  He remembers a time or envisions a time when God will use him again.  And then he’ll probably tell the story of his own brokenness.  We’re so good at hiding our brokenness, right?  And putting the mask on.  But even when the brokenness comes as a result of your own sin and you have nobody to blame but yourself…You can’t even say, “The devil made me do it.  No, I just did it.”  God restores you.  You face up.  You ‘fess up.  You clean up.  Now you’ve got a story to tell.  A story that is going to encourage somebody who is as broken as you are.  And I want to encourage you to use that story, the story of your brokenness.

0:39:33.1 

Remember, the power of God flows through our brokenness.  We have this treasure in jars of clay, in cracked pots like we are.  And the power of God flows, and the glory of God flows through your life and my life when we’re willing, like David, to write it down in a book.  You know, sometimes I say I wouldn’t want to be David.  Got all my worst days, my darkest days for everybody to read.  No, I think David is modeling something for us here.  You know, face up, ‘fess up, clean up, talk it up.  Share your story.  It will encourage somebody else.  And you can say to somebody else, “Listen, I’m not perfect either.  I’m just forgiven.  I’m a recipient of God’s grace and His mercy.  Hopefully I’m being redeemed.  I’m being sanctified.  I’ not what I want to be, but I’m not what I used to be.  Let me tell you where I was when I wasn’t following Him.  I was in a broken mess.  But He rescued me from that because of the abundance of His mercy and His steadfast love.  And He can do the same for you.”  That’s a story to tell.  It’s a story that will preach a thousand, ten billion times if we will let the glory of God and the power of God shine through the cracked pots that we are.

0:41:20.5