Hello, Crossing Church. How are you doing this?
Fine day. You doing all right.
So good to see you. And you've all survived
Thanksgiving and that takes some doing, right?
I mean, for a whole lot of reasons.
But there is so much to be thankful for.
I mean, some of us may be challenged in certain areas,
missing people, dealing with some realities that that we
might be having. But you know, God is faithful
and there is always so much that we can thank him for.
I know all of the animals in Fort Madison are thankful that
Thanksgiving is over because Clayton has eaten his fill of
last week. He was talking about all that.
He was barbecuing and smoking and roasting and everything else
and and so that carnage is over and thankful for that.
I want to welcome all of our locations all over this three
state region for joining us. If you're insider online we're
so thankful for you as well and you know of course this is what
we do during this time of the year.
You know we we kind of have Thanksgiving as a theme.
So we we think about what we're thankful for and most of us
probably start with our family and then we work out from there
and and I don't think there's anything wrong with that.
But everything that we receive, every good thing that we receive
in this life, we receive directly from the hand of God.
And we need to be thankful to God for all that he has provided
for us. And so you know we look for OK,
how do I do that how how do I structure that that that prayer
of thankfulness to God. One of the best ways of doing
that for me has been to look at the names of God in the Old
Testament. So you know, God gave himself a
name when Moses asked. You know, who should I say sent
me when he went back to Egypt and God gave him this name?
Tell them I am, that I am. And in the English language that
word is Jehovah. And so we see that word as a
matter of fact, in your Bible, they use different names for
God. But when it's all for Cap, when
it's the Lord and all four letters are capitalized, that's
the word that's being used, the word Jehovah.
And a lot of times there's is a descriptive word that's
connected to that word. So it'll talk about some
attribute of God and that it is God.
And here's one of his many attributes.
And I look at those words, those names, and it gives me a context
of how do I say that I'm thankful to God.
Let me give you some examples of that.
Many of you. How many of you heard of Jehovah
Jireh? Have you heard of that before?
Well, Jehovah Jireh means the God who provides.
And that's the truth, isn't it? He provides for us so many
things that we take for granted. He's providing for us and things
that we appreciate, He's providing for us.
And so this is a way we can thank God, because he's a God
who provides. He's also Jehovah Rapha.
And Jehovah Rapha means the God who heals.
And when we've tried everything the world has to offer, a lot of
times He's our last resort and not our first resort.
But when we pray to God, God is the Great Physician and God
heals. And you know when, when, when
everything else fails, He's still right there.
Now, his healing may not look the way that I want it to look,
but he is the God who heals. And I can be thankful for that.
He's also Jehovah Nissi, which is the God who is my banner.
And we think banners like armies marching forward.
And I know that a lot of us, we get caught up in worldly things.
You know, government. We get caught up in politics.
We get caught up in whatever, you know, suits us as any
particular time. We get all excited about that
and motivated from that. But we need to understand as
believers in Christ, we March under 1 banner, and that banner
is the Lord God Almighty. He is Jehovah Nissi.
There's also Jehovah Shalom, which is the God who is peace.
Anybody that's listening to me right now think this world could
use maybe a little more peace? Wow.
We need to be praying that one, thanking God that he is the
source of peace. And the peace that comes from
God is a greater peace than any peace on earth.
Jehovah Sabaoth. Jehovah Sabioth means the God
who leads the heavenly host. And a lot of times you you think
about the heavenly host, you're thinking about the armies of
heaven. I think about the Book of
Revelation where it talks about someday the the sky is going to
split apart like a broken piece of parchment and Jesus is going
to come back riding on a White Horse.
He's described in Revelation and all the hosts of heaven are with
him. And if I'm not alive, I plan on
being in that host of heaven, and I hope that you do as well
to be able to see it from that vantage point, to be even better
than seeing it from this vantage point.
Jehovah Sabayev. Then there's one that's a little
less known, probably because it's just so hard to pronounce,
and that's Jehovah Mekotischkam. But it's an important one
because it means the God who sanctifies.
You know, the word sanctify sanctification means to be set
apart for a holy or noble purpose.
And that means that God knows you.
He built you, He created you, all of the parts of what makes
you who you are. He did that.
He put all that together, and he did it with a particular purpose
in mind. And that purpose was a holy
purpose and a noble purpose that he has that set apart from you
for you. Jehovah Rahab, We're talking
about the heart of David. We've been spending a lot of
time talking about the heart of David.
David would really associate with this word because it means
the God who is my shepherd, the one who leads me and guides me,
the one who takes care of me, not just like on a wide and wide
sense, but in in very specific ways that I specifically need.
He's also Jehovah said. Can you?
Which means the God who is my righteousness.
You know, the Bible's real clear with us that as righteous as we
might try to be, we're just not. We're not righteous.
We we don't have that ability to be righteous in the eyes of God.
And yet through Jesus Christ, he provides righteousness for us
that we don't deserve and that that's what this name of God
means. The God who is my righteousness.
I'd be. I'm thankful for that.
There's Jehovah Shema and that means the the God who is near.
Aren't you glad that God isn't like that?
Looking at you through binoculars, like from a
distance? That he is up close and personal
with you, that he knows you, He knows every little aspect of
your life and loves you through that.
All of those really helps us to define thankfulness for God, and
there's one that is not actually specifically on this list.
The reason it's not on this list is because instead of using one
word as a descriptor, the Bible uses 2 words.
But what it essentially means is this.
The God who forgives. And of all the names of God and
all the attributes of God, I feel like I need that one the
most. I need a God who forgives me.
Maybe I need to understand that a little bit better because the
2 words that are associated with this name of God kind of gives
us a deeper insight into it. OK.
And by the way, when the Bible uses these two words, and the
words are NASA and Salah, so Jehovah NASA and Jehovah Salah.
And what those two words when they describe God, they only
describe God. Those two words are never used
with regards to forgiveness between people like each other,
just the vertical forgiveness between US and God.
All right, the first one is in Micah Chapter 7, verses 18 and
19. It says who is a God like you,
who pardons sin and forgives transgression of the remnant of
his inheritance. You do not stay angry forever,
but delight to show mercy. Now the name of God.
Here then, the word NASA actually means to pardon or to
have the debt removed, the removal of debt.
And we all understand that right, that when we sin we have
a debt, like a debt that needs to be paid, because God demands
that. But he is a God who pays our
debt for us. But it is not enough that one
word describing God is really not enough to understand
forgiveness. We need a second word because
there's a deeper reality, a soul issue that really needs to be
addressed. And so that's why the second
word comes in the word Salah. It's in Isaiah chapter 55, verse
seven. It says, let the wicked forsake
their ways and unrighteous their thoughts.
Let them turn to the Lord, and he will have mercy on them and
to our God, for he will freely pardon.
Now, where the word NASA means the removal of debt, the word
Salah means the removal of guilt.
Are you connecting with that? Because we're kind of that way.
Like we know that we've done something wrong.
And how do I, how do I make restitution for this?
How do I rectify this? And I I don't know how to do
that. If somebody steps into the
picture and pays my debt, that's that's an awesome thing.
But that doesn't solve the heart problem, because even though
maybe the debt was removed, there's still the feeling that I
have in my heart for what I have done and how disrespectful and
unloving that has been to God. And that's the guilt that I
carry. And what I need is cleansing
from that. So I need both of these aspects.
The the removal of dead and the removal of guilt.
That's what forgiveness is now. Last week, Clayton told us a
story about David's greatest failure.
And it was massive. Because for all of his triumphs
and all of his victories, for all the heartfelt songs that he
wrote, all the good things that he had done, he committed one of
the most epic compounded sins ever recorded.
There's a Bible verse that tells you what's next.
It's this one. Be sure your sins will find you
out. That's a scary verse for every
single one of us. Be sure your sins will find you
out. And David's sin found him out.
God found him out. And I didn't do it just to
gotcha because David needed forgiveness.
He was a ruined man after he did this, and he needed forgiveness.
And forgiveness for David was both NASA and Salah.
He needed the removal of debt and he needed the removal of
guilt. And so God was the one who found
him out. We read about it in Second
Samuel chapter 12, verses one to seven.
It says. Then the Lord sent Nathan.
He was a prophet to David. When he came to him, he said
there were two men in a certain town, one rich and the other
poor. The rich man had a very large
number of sheep and cattle. But the poor man had nothing
except one little ewe lamb he had bought.
He raised it and it grew up with him and his children, and it
shared his food, drank from his cup and even slept in his arms.
Now before you're going, that's just weird.
You don't want anybody to judge you on how you treat your dogs
and cats, do you? It was like a daughter to him.
Now. Traveler came to the rich man.
But the rich man refrained from taking one of his own sheep or
cattle to prepare a meal for the traveler who had come to him.
Instead he took the ewe lamb that belonged to the poor man
and prepared it for the one who had come to him.
David burned with anger against the man and said to Nathan, as
surely as the Lord lives, the man who did this must die.
He must pay for that lamb four times over, because he did such
a thing and had no pity. And Nathan said to David, you
are the man. Wow.
That's how David was found out. He was exposed.
There was no more hiding, no more rationalizing, no excusing.
Nothing left but a man who was found out, and even though he
was the one sitting on the throne, he was the one who was
being judged. There was no defense for it, no
mitigating circumstance, no character witness, just a harsh
and all-encompassing light of God and God's judgment.
What would David do with that? Would he try to continue to
cover it up? Would he put Nathan to death so
that what Nathan said to him would also be hidden and lost
forever? You know, I think that when we
read that story together, we've all tasted that feeling that
David must have had in that moment.
Like we can connect with David in that moment.
You know what I mean? It's like when you're found out
in your sin and there's the sinking feeling that comes into
your heart and you have this need, immediate need for self
preservation, and then you want to try to find the comfort of
darkness. What do we do?
What do I do now? And the realization that you
cannot undo the past. So what's the way forward?
There's only one way forward, and that way forward is the way
of forgiveness. So this is something all of us
need to understand on a deep level.
What is forgiveness? What does it look like?
Well, it begins with confession. Look at Second Samuel 1213.
Then David said to Nathan. I've sinned against the Lord.
He admitted it. No more rationalizations, no
more hiding. I've sinned against the Lord,
Nathan replied. The Lord has taken away your
sin. You're not going to die.
David knew that there was no hiding from God, and Nathan told
him that everything was going to be exposed.
So David owned what he had done. But do we do that?
What do we do when our sin is exposed?
Well, we really normally do one of two things, and this is in
the New Testament, in the book of first John in first John 1/8.
This is the first way that we try to deal with exposed sin.
If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the
truth is not in us. So what we do is we just deny
that it's a sin. We just say no, that's not
really a sin. Maybe it's part of a social
construct or cultural construct. We might say, well if it's legal
it must be moral. What John says is it means that
we're self deceived and we are truthless.
Well maybe we don't deny that it's a sin or that we're not a
Sinner because that is no sin. Maybe we just deflect it and try
to blame other people for it. That's in first.
John 110 says if we claim we have not sinned, we make him God
out to be a liar and his word is not in US.
You see, God knows what we've done and whether we're able to
fool all the other people around us.
You can't fool God and listen, God's not a liar.
We are the liars, not him, and all that those lies do is just
compound the sin. There's only one way to
forgiveness and it comes from the verse that's in between
those two. So you got 1/8 and 110.
Let's look at first John 19. It says if we confess our sins,
he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins.
Look at this. OK?
He'll cancel the debt. He'll forgive us our sin and
purify us from all unrighteousness.
Both the NASA and the Salah. Do you see that?
That he will make restitution for the debt and then he will
take care of the guilt by cleansing us.
So that is really what we're looking for.
Now we have to understand this word confess, because a lot of
us misunderstand the word We think, well, to confess your sin
means to admit it. It means to say I did it, you
got me now, now, now, David did that, and we just read where he
did that, right? But that is, that is only the
first step of confession. Confession is actually a lot
bigger than that. Now let me help you to
understand that if you're writing notes down, this is a
good one to understand. Ready.
Confession is understanding your sin from God's point of view.
See, when we admit our sin, we're understanding it from our
point of view, but we really haven't let it sink in as to how
it applies to God Himself. We need to understand that
because forgiveness flows from that, and so does cleansing.
Here's where a lot of us get tripped up with the idea of
forgiveness. We think that if we confess our
sins or admit that we did it, that somehow God will roll, will
miraculously remove the consequences.
Forgiveness does not remove the consequences.
I know we would like for it to be the other way, but it doesn't
work that way because when repentance begins in a person's
heart, it's based on the fear of consequences.
We're afraid of what's going to come to us or happen to us or
people we love because of the sin that we've done.
And maybe if we confess our sins, we'll be able to avoid the
consequences. Now David prophetically received
from Nathan what the consequences of his sin were
going to be, even after he admitted it.
The baby that was conceived with Bathsheba was going to die.
There was going to be a lot of violence.
It would never depart from his family.
The Bible says one of his children would sin openly the
way that David had, in secret. He would actually do it in
public. Now that's all horrible stuff.
But we need to understand that when we sin, it's like throwing
a rock into the water. The ripples go out and it
affects everything around it. Same thing with us.
When we sin, the ripples go out. The people that we love the most
are often affected the worst. So David's repentance at first
was an attempt to avoid the consequences.
Because he's just as human as you and I are.
So what does he do? He dresses in sackcloth.
He covers himself with ashes. He goes out and lays outside on
the ground and won't even go into the house.
He's praying for this baby to survive.
He won't eat anything. He won't drink anything.
Let's read what it says in 12. It's verse 16 and 17 says David
pleaded with God for the child he fasted, and he spent the
nights lying in sackcloth on the ground, and the elders of his
household stood beside him to get him up from the ground.
But he refused. He would not eat any food with
them. You know what he thought?
He thought, I have AI follow a God who is a graceful God and a
merciful God, and if I pray to him, maybe this consequence will
leave me now. God had plenty of grace and
mercy for David. He kept his own life.
He was going to have another son named Solomon who would succeed
him as king. But he had to know that those
consequences were still there for his actions.
And you see his David's understanding of that in chapter
12, verses 22 and 23, after the baby died.
It says he answered because they were asking him why he did what
he did. Because he when the baby died,
he cleaned up. He went in and he ate.
While the child was still alive. I fasted and wept.
I thought, who knows? The Lord may be gracious to me
and let the child live, but now that he is dead, why should I go
on fasting? Can I bring him back again Now
look at this. I will go to him, but he will
not return to me. That's profound, because what
David is doing is he's looking at life inside of the idea of
eternity. I'm not going to be able to do
anything about this consequence now, but God is faithful.
Even though this child has died, God is faithful.
And I'll see this child again. He's understanding the reality
of his life inside the context of eternity, not just in the
circumstance that he was living in right now.
Do we do that? His hope's eternal, not
temporary. And there's something else we
need to learn about repentance here that we don't want to
learn. None of us want to learn this
because we're always looking for the short line.
We're always looking for the easy button.
But this is not the way repentance works.
Listen to me. Repentance takes time.
It is never quick, never quick. Feeling bad about what you did,
saying you're sorry. That can happen really quickly.
Confessing it, you know, which is admitting what you did, that
can happen quickly. But true repentance, which is to
look at your sin from God's point of view?
That takes time because there's this initial understanding, But
then grasping the full weight of what you've done is a much
longer process. But in that process, I know that
sounds bad, but in that process, that's when we draw closer to
God, and that is when we put more distance between ourselves
and that sinful event or what we have a propensity to do.
Now, David gives us deeper insight into this.
He does it in Psalm 51. The whole song is written about
what he did with Bathsheba and what he did to cover that sin up
killing Uriah. How would you like to be
inspired by God to write a song about the worst moment in your
life and then publish it in a hymnal so everybody can sing the
song of your greatest failure? Because that's exactly what
David did in Psalm 51. Let's read the 1st 12 verses.
It says have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing
love, according to your great compassion, blot out my
transgressions, wash away all my iniquity, and cleanse me from my
sin. That's that Salah again, for I
know my transgressions. My sin is always before me.
See, that means that he's in a process of repentance.
He can't just let go of it and move on.
It has to change him. He has to look at it from God's
point of view against you. You only have I sinned and done
what is evil in your sight. So you are right in your verdict
and justified when you judge. See that he's not trying to be
self-righteous, he's not trying to rationalize what he's done,
he's owning it. God's right.
Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother
conceived me. Yet you desired faithfulness
even in the womb. You taught me wisdom in that
secret place. Cleanse me with hyssop.
This is an interesting word because it means a brush.
And this word, this, this hyssop was a plant that they would bind
together like you might bind together straw to make a broom.
This was what they actually used to paint the blood of a lamb on
the doorposts in the lentils of their houses on Passover.
So it's like a scrubber. Cleanse me with hyssop is what
it means, and I'll be clean. Wash me and I'll be whiter than
snow. Let me hear joy and gladness,
and let the bones you have crushed rejoice.
Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquity.
Create in me a pure heart. He wants that Salah, oh God, and
renew a steadfast spirit within me.
Do not cast me from your presence, or take your Holy
Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your
salvation, and grant me a willing spirit to sustain me.
He doesn't just leave his mind what he's done because he's
using it to discover the deeper things of God.
He realizes that ultimately all sin is against God alone.
He said that in Psalm 51 because God is the one who's primarily
offended. Listen, a lot of times I hear
people say that we've sinned against each other.
That's really not a biblical concept.
We do wrong things to each other.
But sin is vertical in nature. It has to do with what we owe
God. It has to do with the debt that
we owe God because it is always God who is primarily offended.
He declares that God's right. He doesn't give any excuses or
rationalizations and he accepts the consequences and looks
forward to a clean heart and a spirit filled life.
That is what true Restoration looks like.
It's not. Things are going to go back to
the way they were. It means that life is going to
move forward where confession and the consequences push us
closer to God than we were before.
Now I want you to think about your sins.
I'll think about mine because we all have them.
Have you had a conversation with God about those sins?
Have they found you out? Are you still hiding from God?
Are you still searching for dark places?
Are you denying your sin? Are you rationalizing your sin
like first John 18 and 1st John 110?
Or are you looking at it from his point of view like First
John 19? Let him lead you to the place
where you realize that it's him who has been offended.
Declare that God is right, drop the excuses and the
rationalizations, accept the consequences and look forward to
a clean heart and a spirit filled life.
Then you can ask for what David asked for later in Psalm 51, he
said. Then I will take what I have
learned and I will use it as an example, a platform where I can
help other people not to sin the way I did.
He's going to turn this destructive behavior into a
testimony, and Psalm 51 proves that that's true.
And then he says this in verse 16 and 17.
You do not delight and sacrifice or I'd bring it.
You do not take pleasure and burnt offerings.
My sacrifice, oh God, is a broken spirit and a broken and a
contrite heart you, God will not despise.
You know what David realizes in this moment?
That a broken and a sorrowful heart is not mended.
I want you to hear me when I say this.
A broken heart, sorrowful heart is not mended.
It is replaced this whole series.
This is the last, and that's the series it's about handle with
care our hearts and using David as the example of how to do
that. And David understood this.
He understood that it really wasn't about having his heart
mended. Because the one key concept, key
verse in this whole series has been this that David was a man
after what he wasn't after his heart.
He was after God's heart. He wasn't after having his heart
mended. He was about having his heart
replaced with God's heart. And guess what?
Every one of us needs exactly the same thing.
We don't need a tweak in our lives.
We don't need a counselor in our lives.
We don't need Jesus, you know, whispering over our shoulder
while we sit on the throne of our own lives.
What we need is God's heart in our chest beating inside of us.
We we need to say I don't want that heart anymore.
I don't need surgery. I need a transplant.
I need God's heart inside of me. And that is what makes David so
special. And even though he didn't
understand it, he talked about it prophetically, but he didn't
really understand it. Someone was coming.
Someone was coming that was going to give his heart for
someone else to have it beat in their chest.
And that was Jesus. Because when Jesus went to the
cross for your sin, and mine, I've had, I've actually heard
doctors and coroners say that Jesus literally died of a broken
heart. His heart was removed so it
could be placed inside of you. He died so that you could have
his heart beating in your chest. And you know what?
You can do that right now. You can have that transplant
right now if you trust in Jesus. We're moving to a time of
decision. Some of you, you just keep going
down this road of I'm just, I'm just going to work it out.
I mean, I'm just going to put enough disciplines in my life in
place and I'm, I'm going to get this taken care of.
I, I, I'm going to, I'm going to figure this out.
I'm going to solve this problem. No, you're not.
If there's anything that you
need to learn about David is that you can't do that.
As committed as David was to the Lord, as many times as God had
shown his power to David, he still blew it.
And he understood this basic truth.
And you have to understand, I mean, is anybody here tougher
than David, Stronger than David. Done more than David.
Been closer to God than David. I told you at the very beginning
of this series, no one has had as much written about him in the
Bible as David, except for Jesus.
You don't get to step in front of him.
But for all of that, David needed a heart transplant, and
so do you. Tough as he was, dedicated as he
was, he needed it. So do you.
You need to give up on depending on you being the savior of your
life and you need to trust the Savior of every life and the
Lord of every life. And you can do that today.
And there's nothing stopping you except something inside your own
heart saying, I want to do this myself.
Pride, ego, fear, you name it, somebody's going to be right
over there by that baptistery with love.
Nothing more than to help you take those next steps to come to
a place where God doesn't fix you, where God replaces that
heart with his, and it'll change everything.
Some of you, many of you, are here today and you say, well, I
did that, Jerry. Well, good for you.
Bless your heart, because you're like me and you're a hypocrite
like me, and you're inconsistent like me.
You see, it isn't like, you know, I needed forgiveness and I
went to God to forgiveness and I asked Jesus to to do this in my
heart and he forgave me. And it's like 1 and done, man.
I'm good. Look, I need the forgiveness of
Jesus every day. How about you?
I need it every day. Where do I go?
See, that's why these steps are here.
It's for you to take a moment. Because we're human.
We're human beings. And we, we, we, we need some
physical way of expressing what's going on in our heart.
Right. You gave me this new heart,
Lord, but I'm not treating this new heart.
I mean, you can get a brand new heart and you can keep eating
like you used to. You know what I'm saying?
You get a brand new heart. And you and you could choose
behavior that that doesn't take care of that new heart.
And I and you might have a new heart.
I have a new heart. But that doesn't mean that I'm
treating it the way it needs to be treated.
So I didn't go to the Lord just once.
I mean, he saved me, but do you know what?
In first Peter chapter one he uses the word salvation in three
tenses. That means that Jesus saved me
soon as I ask him to come into my heart.
But but he saves me every day. And when that final day comes,
when I close my eyes in death and he's going to save me then
too. Past, present, future.
So you need him right now. You need to be at the foot of
the cross right now, just like I need to be at the foot of the
cross. That's what these steps are for.
And if you need to do some business with God, you need to
talk to him. You think he's listening?
Is he near? Is he able to cancel the debt?
Is he able to remove the guilt? You bet he is, because he loves
you just as much as he loved David.
God is no respecter of persons. He doesn't love people in pieces
or percentages. He loves people to the fullest
extent of his love, and he'll never love him any less than
that. And you can come to him now and
He'll make the difference. Would you stand with me?
Let's pray together in Jesus name.
Heavenly Father, we come to you and I ask that you would do with
no human being. Nothing on this earth or from
this earth could ever do because you were from heaven and your
son came down. He came down to our level when
we couldn't get up to his, and he paid our debt, and he took
our guilt and He cleansed us and He set us free.
Help us to receive what you've so freely given today, I pray.
In Jesus name, Amen.