All right, well, welcome back, those of you in the room.
It's good to see you on this fall day again.
Notes are available again on the back table.
And you know, someone coming back to my memory in an odd
place. Someone had emailed me about
emailing them the notes. So I need to do that.
If you e-mail me, I'll try to send you the notes.
I'll try to remember to do that. All right, if you're watching
online, so grateful that you are here tuned in with us, whether
it's live with us on Sunday morning or sometime in the near
future, we want to invite you to come and be part of of worship
service with us. Come find us at 115 E Main St.
in downtown Gaylord. This is your invitation.
You're invited. We would love to see you
sometime very soon. All right, if you have your
Bibles, please take and turn them to Luke, Chapter 18.
Luke is in the New Testament. So it's after Matthew, Mark,
it's Luke, and then before John in the book of Acts.
So depending on what you have at the back of your Bible, maybe
you know, 70% or so through 7080% into your Bible.
Luke chapter 18. Luke is a physician who actually
doesn't walk with Jesus. He actually in a very detailed
way goes to those who saw the events of Jesus first hand and
he then writes about them to a friend named Theophilus.
OK, so Luke starts his letters by addressing this man named
Theophilus. And so this is his telling of an
occasion where Jesus is going to tell a story.
OK, so this is Luke chapter 18 and I'm going to read to you
from verses 9 through 14. Luke writes he meaning Jesus
told this. He also told this parable to
some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and
treated others with contempt. And his story is 2 men went up
into the temple to pray. 1A Pharisee and the other tax
collector and the Pharisees, standing by himself, prayed
thus. God, I thank you that I'm not
like other men, extortioners and unjust adulterers, or even like
this tax collector, he said. I fast twice a week.
I give ties of all that I get, but the tax collector standing
far off will not even lift his eyes up to heaven, but beat his
breast, saying, God be merciful to me, a Sinner.
Verse 14 I tell you, this man went down to his house, says
Jesus, justified rather than the other.
For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who
humbles himself will be exalted. This morning we're continuing
our series in Psalms, and I'm going to talk to you about songs
of repentance. Songs of repentance.
Let me pray for us about how great it is to be in your house
and to be with other believers, other disciples, other followers
of you, Jesus. And now as an act of worship, we
take our thoughts captive and we open our minds and our hearts
and we say, speak to us through your word.
This is worship God us receiving from your truth in your word.
This is worship unto you. So be exalted.
We pray through your word in Jesus name.
And everyone loudly together said Amen and Amen.
So this fall I'm doing a series in the book of Psalms.
And the first week, this is the fourth week that we're here.
First week. I just introduced you to the
Psalms. Many of you are very familiar
with them, but some you're new to the Psalms.
You wouldn't even know where they are in the Bible.
So they're kind of there in the middle of sorts.
And the Psalms are 150 chapters long.
And it's it's, it's, it is 5% of the Bible is in the Psalms.
OK. And so the Psalms are ancient
songs that were written between a period of 1500 years, and they
went from like the period of Moses all the way past, like
Shadrach, Meshach and a Bendigo and the character Esther and
Nehemiah, if you know those characters in your Old
Testament. So this is a collection or a
playlist of songs from that era. And so I decided I'm going to
call it the OG, like the original playlist.
And some of you remember creating playlist back in the
80s where you would sit with your cassette recorder.
I mentioned every because it's so funny just remembering it.
We'd sit and listen to the radio.
You might even call the radio station and say, hey, I'm
requesting the song. Right when you shake your head,
she remembers And you'd sit there and you'd you'd push play
at the right time. And you felt so like great in
the accomplishment. You'd have a full cassette full
of your favorite songs, and it was a lot of work.
Nowadays, you just go to Spotify or Apple Music and you get your
playlist just like that, man. It's quick and easy.
But back then we had to work for it, right?
And so nowadays, kids, you just say, for granted, playlists are
easy, right? So we're familiar with a mixtape
or a playlist. And so the Psalms are a playlist
of songs that that the Holy Spirit inspired to be added to
the Old Testament, to the Bible and their vast styles and
different types of Psalms there. And So what I'm doing each week
is in the next weeks to come, even I will be kind of taking
this type of Psalm and this type of Psalm.
Today we're dealing with songs of repentance, Psalms of
repentance. Last week I looked at Psalms
that spoke about, you know, who God is, What is God like?
There's lots that you can learn about in the Psalms.
You read about God as creator and he's merciful, he's all
knowing. And so you read the Psalms and
it gives you more insight into who and what God is like.
And the second week I went to like the most popular psalms,
like Psalm 23, The Lord is my shepherd.
I shall not want some of the other ones.
In the weeks to come, I'll be tackling psalms that seem to
have like difficult theology. There are times you read the
Psalms and you go, man, that doesn't sound very Jesus like,
right? And I'll, I'll get there and
they'll surprise you. OK.
And then there are Psalms of lament where they're like grief.
We're going through loss or maybe the death of a loved one.
There's some great disappointment.
And so those Psalms are there to give voice to our grief and our
sorrow. OK, so this week we're looking
at Psalms of repentance. And last week I said to you that
I, I never want to be guilty of grabbing what I call like the
low hanging fruit. Like if you're picking apples,
it might be that the best apples are way up high at the top
right? So you want to reach high to get
the best. You don't want to just grab the
ones at the bottom right. And last week when I was
teaching on who and what God is like, and I wanted to seem like
low hanging fruit. No, these are really profound
truths. Well, that was last week.
This week I will tell you like get ready because this is
challenging. What I'm going to talk to you
about is it you, It takes a little effort to get your head
around this idea of repentance. So this is like we're going to
reach high and we're going to connect some dots and see some
challenge teaching truths that we should add, disciplines that
we should add to our life. Now in this series, we'll see.
If I continue to do this, I think I will, is that every week
I'm starting in the New Testament and that's, it might
seem odd to you. It's like you're starting in the
New Testament and then you're going back to the Old Testament.
I thought it's a series on the Psalms.
It is. But each week what I'm doing is
I'm grabbing a place where the Psalm is being quoted in the New
Testament. And I want to just really just
get this into your thinking is that the Old Testament is
valuable. The New Testament, just the
Psalms alone are mentioned over 100 times in the New Testament.
And some Christians, they come to Jesus and they're like, I
don't know if the Old Testament if I need to read that or get
that. Some Christians go as far to
say, oh, I just want the red letters of Jesus.
All I need is the red letters. It's like, no, you don't need
just the red letters. You need the entire New
Testament. And the Old Testament is
valuable also. And so we saw Jesus quoted it
last week. We saw Peter quoted it.
And this week I'm going to show you a surprising character that
quotes and draws from the Psalm. So my pattern so far has been I
grabbed something from the New Testament that is quoting the
Old Testament in order to establish the importance of the
Old Testament. Now Jesus taught with parables
and a parable is a story and these stories had some like
surprise truth or profound pivotal moments where Jesus
would like bring great truth and wisdom.
OK. And he uses the story of the
Pharisee and a tax collector. Again, this is a made-up story.
It's, it's a story to to show a point and Jesus tells us brief
story, but there's so much profoundness here.
And I'll just show you what we've already read is that
there's two postures at hand here.
There's a Pharisee and a Pharisee was a, it was a
religious leader, but not like in a pastoral way.
It was more of a religious leader in like a sect or like a,
like a political way. OK, so I'd like to think that
the role of a pastor is to be caring and relational with
people. The Pharisees were not that way.
They were not caring and they're not relational.
They were separated from people, and they thought themselves, as
in the story, as more righteous and better than others because
they followed the rules more to the T in the certain sect of
their faith, OK. And they were very political and
they were maneuvering and they were manipulative, all of this
stuff. You have this Pharisee, and he's
going to have a posture of prayer, and his posture of
prayer is that he's going to stand.
According to verse 11, he's standing by himself.
And what we get from this is that he's not with the people,
he's not in the group. He he's in the temple, but he's
kind of found a place to like stand out.
It would be like if someone came up here and they stood right in
the front. They're like, they're standing
by themselves and like watch me pray and they're just right down
there and watch how I pray. And he's praying out loud where
everyone can hear him. He's like, I'm not like the
worst scum of the earth. I'm not like the adulterers and
I'm not like the, and he, and he says I'm not like this tax
collector. And in his prayer, when he says
this tax collector, it's like he sees the tax collector and he's
being critical of him thanking God that he's not like the tax
collector. It's not a great posture of
prayer. Then you get this, you get this
posture of prayer from the tax collector that he's praying far
off. Maybe he's like in the temple,
but maybe he's like in the back feeling like, you know, I'm just
going to be back here quietly and this is where I'm going to
connect with God. My posture of prayer is not
grandstanding in front of others.
So he's standing far off and his prayer is simple.
The prayer that the tax collector prays is God be
merciful to me, a Sinner, Pharisee, I'm so grateful.
I'm not like these people. And the tax collector says God
be merciful to me, a Sinner. And the tax collectors, maybe
you know, this, they were considered like the, the most
hated because the Romans had conquered that part of the world
and they were taxing all the, the kingdoms that they'd
conquered. And what the Jew Romans would do
is they would take somewhat of that ethnic group, people group,
and they would make them collect the taxes.
So now you have a Jew collecting taxes from a Jew.
And they were corrupt and they, the Jews were paying taxes.
They hated that a Jewish person was taking from them.
So they were like the outcasts. They were the ones who were not
going to be invited to the parties and they were not
popular on Facebook. Maybe they had very few friends
on Facebook, Who knows? So he says this in his prayer,
God be merciful to me, a Sinner. He says it far off.
Now, what I want to show you is that the tax collector is using
a phrase, a popular saying, and it has an origin.
I'm going to take you to where it is, but to kind of illustrate
how phrases have origins. We have familiar phrases that we
use and maybe you don't know the origin of some of them.
For example, the idea that the buck stops here.
You ever heard that phrase before?
The buck stops here. And what does the buck stop
here? It means?
It means it's like I'm responsible.
I'm I'll take, I'll take charge here.
You can count on me. The buck stops here.
But where did the phrase start? I understand in the 1800s when
Cowboys in the West would play poker, they would have a knife
like a, a big knife. And whoever was the dealer, I
understand the deal would rotate around the table and there would
be different dealers. So when you were dealing you,
you had the knife, they called it the buck and you'd stab it
into the table. And it was a way of being
protected, right? You're like, OK, right now I'm
responsible. I'm the one who has the buck, as
they call it the knife. And then when you were done
dealing, it was the next turn. Then it went around the table
and the next guy would take the knife and right, and now he has
the buck. The buck is here.
So then I understand Harry Truman comes along years later
and he takes that that background and he put on the
doll on the door, a sign on the door of his office that said the
buck stops here. And what he was saying is like,
I'm responsible. I all right, you can count on
me. I'm in charge.
OK. But it started the origin was at
a poker table with a knife stabbed in the table.
And now we say it like, oh, yeah, we say it all the time.
The buck stops here and we know it's like, Yep, I'm the one
that's in charge. OK, What about kick the bucket?
This is a little dark. This is a little darker than
that. So when people say, oh, so and
so is about to kick the bucket, right?
We know that means they're about to die.
But the origin of it is that when, when sometimes people when
they would hang somebody else, they would stand them on a
bucket and then they would put the noose around their neck and
they kick the bucket out from underneath of them.
It's really terrible. It's a dark thought, right?
So the next time you're talking about someone said, man, they're
about to kick the bucket, you might want to say it
differently, right? It's kind of a dark origin.
OK, so that's the kick the bucket idea.
Or what about close but no cigar?
I understand that touring carnivals when they used to have
like games, We have games here in Alpenfest and, and maybe you
get a teddy bear or something like that nowadays, but you used
to be able to win a cigar. So let's say you got close to
winning at a carnival game. The the carnival people would
say, well, you're close, but no cigar.
You don't get a cigar, right? close.
And then finally, this idea of jump on the bad bandwagon.
If we're going to jump on the bandwagon, it used to be in the
early 1900s that like a, a wagon would travel, maybe in a parade
with a political candidate on the wagon and there would be a
band. And if you were in great support
of that political candidate, then you might jump on the wagon
and might go down the parade with them to show your support.
So nowadays we use that phrase, jump on the wagon.
Well, what I want to show you is that the tax collector is taking
an ancient Psalm and he's using it in his prayer.
And This is why Jesus says he goes away justified because he's
utilizing the tax collector, not the Pharisee.
The Pharisee is supposedly the religious one, but he thinks
himself self-righteous and he's boasting about how he's not like
other sinners. But watch the tax collectors
going to lean into a Psalm written by David and it's Psalm
51 and this is how David says it in his song.
And Psalm 51 I'll read you 2 verses.
It says, have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast
love, and according to your abundant mercy, blot out my
transgressions and wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and
cleanse me from my sin. Now I showed you Jesus quoted
the Psalms, Peter quotes the Psalms on the day of Pentecost.
And now Jesus in the story takes a tax collector and now the tax
collector is drawing, also quoting from the Psalms in the
story that Jesus it's telling. Now this is not my own idea.
I'm not just making this up. I often want to remind you that
I'm not coming to you with original ideas.
And sometimes I feel like maybe the Lord of the Holy Spirit will
prompt me in some way. But usually I'm really studying
and reading. I'm not coming to you with some
far fetched, I think thing that no one else has ever seen.
If you ever hear a preacher go, I'm going to tell you something
nobody else has ever seen in the word of God before.
This has never been seen. Then just close your ears.
Don't listen. That's right.
Because they're full of something.
OK, so you don't want that, right?
You want. Yeah.
Christian thinking scholars and other Christians have thought
the same thing. I'm not making this up.
OK. And again, anytime they make it
up, just run. In fact, I'll expound that.
In the Old Testament or in the New Testament, in the early
church, there was a early heresy where those who were, they were
called the Gnostics, and the Greek word for Gnostic meant
knowledge. And early on there were some
Christians running around going, oh, I have some knowledge that
nobody else has this. Nobody else's has seen this yet.
Oh, the Lord has shown me something nobody else's got.
They were called the Gnostics, J And oh, I didn't tell us the
first story, J I'm sorry. GNOSTICS, the Gnostics.
And they were heretics and they were coming up with things that
no one else had seen. And Paul addresses them in some
of his letters, right. So I'm not, I'm, I'm not the one
who's going, wow, look, the tax collector, No one else has ever
seen that. The tax collector's like David.
No, I'm telling it's stacks and stacks and stacks of
commentators and commentaries say this.
And what is a commentator? A commentator is a person who
comments on an event, right? So there are commentaries that
you can read that will comment on Scripture when it's difficult
to get your head around a certain passage of Scripture.
I would encourage you to use commentaries.
And you know, the commentator often, like think about a sports
commentator, right? They're going to talk about that
when you watch football today, they're the sports commentators.
They're making comments about the game.
Some of you are commentators. You've got a lot of comments
about a lot of things, right? You're a commentator even though
you didn't know it. But certainly there are Bible
commentaries. And nowadays it's so easy to,
when you read a passage that you're confused about, you go,
what is this? What does this mean?
And you're trying to figure it out.
You can go. I'll suggest even instead of
your notes, biblegateway.com. That's an easy one to remember.
biblegateway.com. And when you get there, they
have tons of free commentaries. And all you have to do is put
in, you know, Psalm 51 verse one, and there will be comments
from reliable people that are not, you know, I'll name names.
They're not Jehovah Witnesses, they're not Mormons, they're not
universalist, they're not other unreliable, in my opinion,
scripturally traditions, right? I'm encourage you
biblegateway.com, very just reliable, and go there and find
comments, commentaries to help you understand scripture when
you run across something that you don't understand.
So I'm telling you that stacks of commentaries connect the
origin of what the tax collector says to what David said in Psalm
51. When David says God be merciful
to me, a Sinner, he is saying the same.
And going back to Luke 18, This is why Jesus says, I tell you,
this man went down to his house justified rather than the other.
For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who
humbles himself will be exalted. David humbles himself by saying,
God be merciful to me. This tax collector does the
same. Now Jesus takes the tax
collector and the pair and the, and the, the Pharisee and he
like turns the ideas of culture on its ear.
There's a there's a saying that we use on its ears.
What is the origin? The origin?
Is it like if you take someone and you put their ear where
their feet should go, you've turned them on their ear, right.
So Jesus often was doing this like society and culture thought
this, this is the Pharisee is obviously better than the tax
collector. Not according to Jesus.
God often has his way in his thinking of going, I'm going to
shock you, I'm going to surprise you.
You thought it was like this, but I'm showing you it's
different. Jesus shakes things up.
He flips the script, the tax collectors better than the
Pharisee. Now in the Psalms, what I want
you to see is that we're not going to do the Psalms like
chapter one through 150. I'm not teaching them that way.
I'm taking groups of Psalms and I'm kind of grouping them
together. OK, So I took the most popular
psalms. We did that.
This week we're doing songs of repentance.
On weeks to come again, I'll do songs of lament, songs of grief,
all there's so many different types of psalms.
This week we're talking about songs of repentance and the one
of the scholars would call this a penitential Psalm.
That's a big word. I don't expect you to remember
that. But a penitent person is a
person who confesses sin and wrongdoing and seeks
forgiveness. That's a penitent person.
If you're penitent, you go to someone that you have wrong.
You go to God, you go to someone, your spouse, your
children, a friend. And when you're penitent, you go
and you say, I'm sorry. I did.
That was not how I intended to come across.
That wasn't the best me. I'm sorry, I'm penitent.
And from penitent we get the word penitentiary.
And this is a curious thing because the word is evolved.
A penitentiary used to be a place where people went when
they were sorry and they went like to pay for their wrong.
Nowadays A penitentiary, when we think of a penitentiary, most
time we think, well, everyone who's there is innocent, right?
If you saw Shawshank Redemption, remember, everybody in the jail
was innocent according to them, right?
So you don't find, sadly, a lot of penitent people in
penitentiaries anymore. Now, Psalm 51, let me read a bit
more of what David says. He says have mercy on me, Oh
God, according to your steadfast love, according to your mercy,
blot out my transgressions and wash me thoroughly from my
iniquity and cleanse me from my sin.
Just those two verses are so great.
It's such a simple prayer that when you need to repent in your
life and the reality is this is not a one time occasion.
It's something that should be happening in life of Christian
ongoing throughout our life. I'll unpack that more.
This is a good Psalm to know Psalm 51 to know to, to even if
you don't memorize it, there's a couple phrases from it, if you
at least get those like the tax collector, he just took one of
the phrases and he prayed it and he was honored by Jesus.
Now I'm, I'm going to take a long tangent and I want to
unpack what repentance is and what it looks like.
And then I'm going to come back to Psalm 51 and I'll read more
of it to you. But I'm warning you, here comes
a long tangent. OK, what is repentance?
Repentance is a change of mind or heart that leads to a turning
to God and away from sin and the context of our faith in
Christianity. Repentance is I've been going
this way. I've been is the picture is I'm
all about me. I'm the king of my life.
I'm the Lord of my life. I reign over by life.
I'm about self and when we repent, we turn and now we say,
now God, I want to be about you and your ways and Jesus, I want
you to be the Lord of my life. I surrender to your lordship.
I'm made for that. So I, I turn from this and I
turn over here God to you. And that's what repentance is.
It's a turning, it happens throughout our lives.
And let me present you this theology and doctrine.
You cannot be a Christian without repentance.
You can't be a Christian without repentance.
It's a turning. When we choose to believe in
Jesus, we're turning towards God.
So did we find this, first of all, the premise of what must we
do to be saved? Well, at its simplest form, we
must believe in the Lord Jesus and you'll be saved.
We find this in Acts 16. This is Paul and Silas are in a
jail and there's like an earthquake of sorts and they're
about to escape and this jailer asks them this question.
Then he brought them out and he said, sirs, what must I do to be
saved? And they said believe in the
Lord Jesus and you will be saved, you and your household.
Now Paul in this occasion, he doesn't say, OK, you have to
repent. He just simplifies it.
You, you believe in the Lord Jesus, but then you go, well,
what is believing look like? And Luke in Acts is not
recording the entire conversation with the jailer,
but I'm sure that Paul's saying believe and be saved.
And then the jailer's going to say, well, what is believing?
Look like Paul is going to unpack.
Well, it looks like turning. There's a turning that happens
in your life when you turn towards God in Jesus.
And sometimes sometime back, I really wanted to simplify
believing in Jesus as the point of salvation because some
Christians want to be like Jesus and to be saved.
You, you follow Jesus and you give to the church.
You follow Jesus and you say this prayer or use this
particular little type of worship.
Those are the things that say, you know, what do you need to be
saved? You need to believe in Jesus.
OK, and what does believe in Jesus?
What does it look like? It looks like an initial turning
and watch. Jesus is going to mention this
often. Jesus mentions repentance over
and over again Matthew 417 from that time.
In other words, the time where John the Baptist was killed and
martyred for his faith. From that time Jesus began to
preach saying repent for the Kingdom of heaven is at hand.
Turn turn to God through Jesus and Mark 1 the same Mark is
telling the same story that Matthew tells now.
After John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee proclaiming
the gospel of God and saying the time is fulfilled and the
Kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the
gospel. Luke were quotes Jesus.
He says, no, I tell you, but unless you repent, you will all
likewise perish. Oh, you're familiar with John
316. I don't have it in your notes,
but it says, For God so loved the world that he gave his only
begotten Son, that whosoever believes and him will not
perish. And Jesus is saying here, you
know, you take both of these truths that Jesus is presenting
and you blend both of them. When you believe on Jesus, you
won't perish. But Jesus then says, no, I tell
you, but unless you repent, so He's adding to it, but unless
you repent, you will also likewise perish.
To turn to God, become a Christian, it takes repenting.
That doesn't mean that you clean yourself up and you stop doing
whatever sinful thing you're doing.
That's not what it takes to come to God.
You turn towards God and then that leads to repentance.
That turning then begins to change who you are as a person.
Peter on the day of Pentecost in Acts chapter 2, he's preaching
and he says the story. Now when they heard this, they
were cut to the heart. They're hearing Peter's sermon
and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, brothers, what
shall we do? And Peter said to them, repent
and be baptized, everyone of you in the name of Jesus Christ for
the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of
the Holy Spirit. Repentance is talked about by
Jesus, by Peter, the sermon on Pentecost, and then it's talked
about by Paul. Watch in Romans, Paul says, or
do you pursue them on the riches of his kindness and forbearance
and patience, not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead
you to repentance. Paul is saying you presume on
the riches of God when when you continue in your sin and you
don't turn. And he's saying, listen, the
kindness that you received, you received the salvation of God
when you were saved, when you believed you were saved, OK, and
you started this turning, but that turning now continues when
you're going to chase after the ways of God.
And Paul says the kindness that you've received from God, God
continues to be kind and gracious and merciful to you.
And that kindness is meant to lead you to repentance through
ongoing turning. John Piper, who's a pastor
preacher that I enjoy, he says this repentance means more than
merely stopping sin. It means turning from the love
of sin to the love of God. So when we start to say, God,
I'm going to love you more than anything else in my life.
I'm going to nurture and grow within me a love for you.
And that is then going to lead me away from a love of sinful
behaviors and sin in general. And then CS Lewis in Mere
Christianity, he says, now repentance, I love this.
He says, now repentance is no fun at all.
It's something much harder than merely eating humble pie.
So if you think repentance is just you going to God or to
somebody else and saying, hey, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
That's not quite repentance. It it really real repentance.
It's not fun. It's something much harder than
merely eating humble pie. It means unlearning all the self
conceit and self will that we've been training ourselves into
like we're born. And if we're not, especially in
the culture in which we live, the culture in which we live
will permit and promote you to be selfish and self-centered and
to go for instant gratification to be all about yourself.
It will promote all that to be sinfully all about self.
God is calling us to a point where no, we turn from that and
we turn to him. We're like, OK, Jesus, I'm
receiving your forgiveness in your grace and now you're going
to show me and you're going to you're going to you're going to
challenge me here in the season mindful challenge me there.
God, you're going to continue to grow me.
Now watch this. There's an initial turning that
leads to salvation, initial salvation.
But then watch there's an ongoing repentance for all of
us. That's a good discipline.
And how do I know this? Well, in Revelation 2, four
through 5, John the Apostle, the disciple of Jesus, he has a
vision of heaven. We call it Revelation.
But before he has this great vision of heaven, he meets face
to face. Jesus appears to him, and Jesus
addresses 7 different churches. OK, so he's going to speak of
seven different churches. I won't go into great detail
about it, but three of the churches, he's going to tell
them to repent. These are churches.
These are existing Christians and Jesus is telling them
repent, which leads you to believe.
It's like, oh repentance isn't wow, that's for Christians too.
Oh it's for people who are far from God, not saved yet all.
But then you become a Christian and you're told to repent again.
Jesus says in Revelation 2, four through 5 to this church,
Remember therefore from where you have fallen, repent and do
the works you did at first, what you did when you first became a
Christian, that fervor that you had a commitment, that love that
you had for the Lord. Jesus is saying, go back to
that, come back to me in that way.
Repent, which means that there is ongoing repentance in the
life of a Christian. And many Christians don't have
the discipline to know. It's like, Oh yeah, confession
and repentance is part of life. And for some of us, you came
from a Christian tradition where they so pounded the idea of
repentance and confession that it was like overboard.
And you had to walk around in shame all the time thinking I'm
a worm, I'm a worm. I'm nothing but a worm.
There are some church traditions that that's that's like in their
weekly confessions. I'm just a worm God.
No, that that's not at all what this is about, but it is about
being open to saying God when you convict me, when you
challenge me. But people who get stubborn and
unwilling to listen to the promptings and Holy Spirit to
grow to different depths and God, they miss out because
they're not willing to have ongoing repentance, ongoing
turning in their life. So you're, you're saved, you're
a Christian, but there's things in your life you need to turn
from. OK.
And I love what Timothy Keller says about this in his book The
Prodigal God. He said repentance is not just
the way we enter the Kingdom of God, it's the way we make
progress in the Kingdom of God. You want to make progress in
your Christian life. And then it takes you being open
to promptings from the Holy Spirit where you need to come
back to God and say, like the tax collector and like David,
God have mercy on me, a Sinner in the midst of your grace, I'm
going to turn and I'm going to go your way.
Instead of a way, there's a way for you.
Now, what I want to show you is that the Psalms offer some
prayers of repentance to help us in ongoing repentance that leads
to progress. There are seven of them.
There are 7 Psalms out of the 150 that are very uniquely given
to us as prayers of repentance, and they're valuable.
And in your life, again, there might be a time where you're in
grief. OK, I want you to know the
Psalms about grief. There are times where it's like,
oh, I want to know how great God is.
I'm going to read that Psalm. There's some psalms that are
like an encouragement to sing and to worship.
We want to know those. But there are psalms that are
there that give an example of how to repent, and they're
beautiful. And Psalm 51 is one of them.
And David writes to the choir master and you're heading in
your Bible, it'll say to the choir master Psalm of David and
watch in the heading. It gives the occasion when David
said have mercy on me, O God, he said it in the heading in your
Bible says when Nathan the prophet went to him after he had
gone into Bathsheba. Now you know the story of David.
It's so. I mean, even outside of the
church, it's following. David kills Goliath with the
stone, the slingshot. David becomes king.
He's a musician. He plays a harp of the likes,
and he becomes king. And you know the story, David's,
it's a season where he should go off to war, but he doesn't.
And he's on the roof of his house and he sees Bathsheba.
And some would say he has an affair with her.
He commits adultery with her. But I think it's really more
than that. I think it's more like assault
maybe, and abuse. And David does this terrible
thing. He takes Uriah the Hittite's
wife, Bathsheba, and he abuses her, and he's a king and he
loves God and he does this terrible thing, but not only
does he commit this terrible sin, but then I won't read you
the story. But in Second Samuel 11, you can
go read the story this week. He sins in this way, but then he
covers it up. And to cover it up, he brings
her husband home and he tries to set it up where her husband
would impregnate her because now he finds out she's pregnant.
His name is Uriah the Hittites. And Uriah, to honor his fellow
soldiers, he won't go and be with his wife.
He stays away. And so because of this, David
continues the cover up by murdering Uriah the Hittite.
He hasn't put on the front lines of battle knowing that he will
be killed. So David, I mean, his sin is so
horrible. He, he has this sexual sin, then
he covers it up, then he murders Uriah and then he marries
Bathsheba and it's terrible. I mean, it's, it's, it's
horrible. So in Second Samuel chapter 12,
what happens is that leads up to the context of Psalm 51.
It says this is, this is the song that David sings when Uriah
or when Nathan confronts him, Nathan the prophet confronts
him. So Nathan goes to David and
second Samuel 12 and he's going to tell David a story.
It's a parable. Nathan tells a parable to David,
as Jesus often told parables. And the parable that Nathan
tells in brief, Nathan says, David, there's a traveling rich
man and he has lots of sheep, and he goes into an area and he
takes a lamb from a man who has only one lamb.
And this one man loves this lamb so much.
But the rich traveling man takes that lamb and he slaughters a
lamb and they eat it. And David's furious at this
story. It's like this is terrible.
And David said whoever has done this thing should be put to
death. And then watch this in second
Samuel 12 seven. Nathan said to David, you, you,
you are the man. And we use that phrase like,
yeah, you're the man, you know, in a flippant light way.
That's not the way it means to us now.
But when Nathan says to David, you, you are the man that did
this right there and then in Second Samuel 1213, what is
David's response? He could have Nathan put to
death. He's the king, he's the ruler.
He could do whatever he wants. But instead he repents.
He repents, he turns in verse 13, David said to Nathan, I have
sinned against the Lord and you're going to find that from
that conviction that he has an awareness of how terrible his
sin is. Then we get Psalm 51 that the
tax collector quotes in Jesus. This parable.
Now aware of this is what's happened to David.
Psalm 51. Let me read you more of it.
It's 19 verses long. I won't take the time to read
all of it, but I'll read you one through 4 and verse 7.
Then eight through 13. David says, have mercy on me, oh
God, according to your steadfast love, not because I'm deserving,
but God, have mercy on me because you're loving.
And according to your abundant mercy, God, you're merciful.
And blot out my transgressions, and 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. Only have I sinned and done what
is evil in your sight, so that you may be justified in your
word and blameless in your judgement.
And purge me with hyssop. Hyssop is an Evergreen herb that
it has healing qualities about. It's in the mint family, I
understand. And David's using it like a
metaphor. Like God purge me, like purify
me with hyssop, and I shall be clean.
And wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
They're not very familiar with snow where David was, but he
romanticizes it and it's cleanliness.
And then in verse 8, he continues in his song of
repentance. And he says, let me hear joy and
gladness. Let the bones that you have
broken rejoice. Hide your face from my sins and
blot out all my iniquities. And then he says this classic
phrase that is worth memorizing and praying throughout your
life. Create in me a clean heart of
God and renew a right spirit within me and cast me not away
from your presence and take not your Holy Spirit for me and
restore to me the joy of your salvation and uphold me with the
willing spirit. And then this is a profound
thing that David says. He says then I will teach
transgressors your ways and sinners will return to you.
David's like Lord, once I experience your forgiveness and
your mercy, then I'm going to go tell other sinners,
transgressors about how you forgave me and they will return.
They'll turn to you. David goes on to till you know 6
verses later. But I encourage you to go read
that. But my encouragement to you is
to know these psalms and to have them like in your back pocket
when you need to pray this when you find yourself in a place,
you're like, OK, God, I, I, I disobeyed your best.
I fell short God of what you wanted.
And now I'm in this place and God, I, I want to pray for
forgiveness. I'm not sure what words to use.
These words are great. Have mercy on me.
O God, create in me a clean heart and, and, and then I'll go
teach transgressors your ways and sinners will return to you.
Now I want to give you just the components of repentance.
When David is repenting, he has conviction.
He knows what he did is wrong. He ignores it for a while until
he's confronted by Nathan. But then when Nathan confronts
him, he's convicted. He realizes that what he did was
sinful and what he did was wrong.
We have the same. The Holy Spirit will prompt us
also when we're open. And then there's contrition.
In other words, he has a contrite heart.
And a contrite heart is when we are actually sorry for what
we've done to another person or before God.
And we can ignore it or we can be contrite.
And it's a bit of sadness. It it's contrite.
We're saying, God, yeah, this, this grieves me, God, that I was
this way. Now, again, I'm not encouraging
shame. I'm not encouraging you to walk
like you're a worm. You're a worm.
What I'm encouraging is to read these Psalms and utilize them to
go to God and say, God, I've sinned.
I need your forgiveness. So I'm coming back to you again.
God forgive me, and then I'll go tell others about your
forgiveness. So there's conviction, there's
contrition. And then also we are to confess
our sins before God and sometimes others, not all the
time, but sometimes others one to another.
And when you can, the confession of your sin, whatever it might
be, it actually leads to healing and victory in the future when
you're willing to confess. And then finally, it takes a
turning or an action. Now I'm going to turn from the
sinful thing that has a grip on me or the sinful behavior or
this, whatever it is in your life where you're falling short
of God's best, it's considered sin.
And so God is calling you an ongoing, He's calling you to
ongoing repentance. Now, there are other Psalms.
I would encourage you to take the notes.
If we run out of notes, Kathy, will you make us some more back
there? I think I see.
So I have them listed here in your notes.
And I would love it if you took these home.
And it's Psalm chapter 6, which is a plea for mercy and healing.
And Psalm 32 is about the joy of forgiveness.
The confession leads to. You can read that Psalm 38 is
about the pain of grief that's brought on by sin.
Sometimes we experience grief over our sins.
Sometimes it's small, but still there should be attorney.
But there are other times in your life where it's like, man,
this is huge and it's led to grief.
And grief could be depression or anxiety or panic attacks or
other things, but you can be LED out of that and lifted out of
it. And it's a Psalm of someone
who's in great physical pain about their sin in Psalm 38.
And if you're in that place, go pray.
It's a great one. Psalm 11-O2 is a declaration of
dependence and a cry for restoration.
OK, so now they're they're crying out.
And when they're crying out for this restoration, the period of
time is like again, post like Daniel and the lion's den,
Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego and the fiery furnace.
It's late in the history of the Old Testament.
This is this is a people group. This is an entire people group
have disobeyed God and they're crying out as a people group.
So if you want to pray for your country, any of your state or
your city, then this declaration of dependence and a cry for
restoration is more of a prayer for a people group.
Then they perfumed us to Psalm 1:30 the day.
I've taught on this before. In fact, I teach them this often
when I go to other churches. I've taught on here twice when I
came to interview here and Memorial Day weekendish and
2018, I actually preached Psalm 130th.
The day perfumes, which means from the depths they perfumed us
is Latin for out of like the depths of despair.
And I taught that. I know I taught again about a
year ago. And so the day perfume Psalm,
that's a great one to go read. Psalm 143 is loosely grouped
with the penitent Psalms, but it's an urgent plea for guidance
and vindication. When someone has vindicated
vindicated, they're cleared of blame.
So if you want, if you say God, I want to be vindicated.
Maybe maybe you were wrong, but not not as to the extent that
someone might be accusing you of.
And so then you can go and you can pray this like God, I need
you to vindicate me. Like God, you declare me free of
blame. So these are psalms to know and
to go utilize. And maybe you're in a place
today where you're in one of those situations.
I encourage you go pray the Psalm.
Use it as a prayer. Repentance in the life of a
Christian should become an ongoing discipline.
And in my testimony, I would say to you, I'm 55 years old, I've
been following the Lord. I got to say when I was 8 years
old, I did that turning. When I was 8 years old, I turned
to God. But in my life there have been
times where it's been big, where it's like God, I have mercy on
me, a Sinner. God have mercy on me, God, a
Sinner. I take the posture of the tax
collector. Sometimes it's small.
Other times in my life it's been big.
And I've had to say, God restored in me the joy of your
salvation, created me a clean heart again.
And these Psalms give voice to those times in your life where
you're crying out for a new turning and a new forgiveness,
new repentance. It should be an ongoing
discipline in our lives. And again, if you came from a
discipline of Christianity where they shamed you within the every
week, you were just, you had to come in and act every week like
you, you grovel and you come in. I've been to Israel and I've
seen people crawling on their hands and feet and bleeding like
to the Church of repentance in Jerusalem out of guilt and
shame. It's like that is not what God
is calling us to, but God is calling us to ongoing repentance
or turning in our life as we sense His conviction to greater
heights in obedience to God. 2nd Corinthians 2 verse 10 says for
godly grief produces a repentance when you feel godly
grief and it leads you to repentance that that is going to
lead you to salvation without regrets.
Whereas worldly grief produces death if you take upon yourself
worldly grief, which is that again, groveling and like I'm a
worm, I'm terrible. Look, I fell in this area of my
life again, Oh, I'm so terrible, I'll never get over it.
I'm horrible. And you go to God in that
posture. No, that's not the posture that
will lead you into victory out of whatever you need to repent
of whatever you need to change in your life.
But if you'll come with these Psalms, the posture of the tax
collector, the posture of David and you can be lifted out of it.
Now I want to give you just some application as we wind down and
I want to just every week, most of the weeks I want to start
doing even more consistently is that I want to give you
opportunity for that initial turning.
Maybe you've come to North life or you, maybe you someone has
told you about Jesus or you've been wrestling with the claims
of Christianity and you've, you've you've not yet taken that
point. I've taken the action of saying,
OK, I'm in. I'm going to do the initial
turning towards God. And at that point, when you have
that initial change or decision, Jesus, I'm going to follow you.
We call that salvation and you turning towards God and you turn
towards God and you're like, God forgive me a Sinner and you're
granted forgiveness through Jesus because of what Jesus did
on the cross for us and his, his death, his burial and his
resurrection and what Jesus is doing even now with the Father.
When we surrender our lives in repentance, then we receive the
salvation of God. And if you've never done that,
if you've never made a decision to become a Christian, then I
want to pray with you. I'm going to do that in a
minute. And when you pray to receive the
Lord, then my encouragement to you is to tell somebody, whether
it's me or friend, tell someone that you received the Lord.
And then I encourage you to be baptized.
We'll have baptisms here in a couple months.
We just had them in September. We'll have them again.
And when you get baptized, it's your way of saying God has
cleanse me, I'm resurrected, I'm made new, I'm alive in Christ.
OK, so that's one application if you've not made your initial
repentance. But then my question to you, if
you've been a Christian for many years, is, is there something
that you need to repent of that's ongoing in your life?
Jesus says to the church in Revelation, I have this against
you, you've lost your first love.
And he says, go back to the things you did at first, repent.
And maybe there's some areas in your life where you need to do
that. Repentance is also a discipline
and an act that ongoing Christians do.
And then my third application question for you is, are you
willing to be like David where he says, I'm going to go tell
other transgressors? You going and telling others,
it's like I've received the forgiveness of God.
It's been so grand in my life. It's so life changing.
I want to tell you about it. It's worthwhile.
And David gets his sight on that even early on and his
forgiveness that he receives in Psalm 51.
I hope that you take this message and that you wrestle
with it and you go, OK, God, where do I, how do I do this in
my life? What does repentance look like
in a way that's not not walking in shame, not groveling, but
instead experiencing the ongoing forgiveness and mercy of the
Lord that comes when we are in tune and sensitive to areas in
our life where we need to repent?
Let me pray for us. And if you want to make that
decision to follow Christ for the first time to turn towards
Jesus, then I'm going to pray. And I encourage you to echo this
prayer with me. You can pray.
Jesus, I come to you and I say I believe in you, and because I
believe in you, I can receive your salvation.
So I turn from selfishness and my sinfulness and I turn towards
you, God, and I say Jesus become the Lord of my life.
I receive your salvation that is eternal.
I will live with you eternally. And I receive that eternal life
now here, not after death, but I receive it here, and it will be
with me there after death, but I receive it now.
So I receive your life and your breath and your spirit in me.
Jesus come and reign and rule in my life and show me what it
looks like to follow you in Jesus name.
And everyone said Amen and Amen. Let's all stand together.
Don't forget Wednesday night this week is out at Fleming
Farm. Hope to see you there.
And then the following Wednesday are the students leading us in
worship. We look forward to having you
out that night with us also. Now before you go, I want to say
a blessing over you. So if you'll receive this
blessing, pause and open your heart as I bless you and sway
before you go. And now may the Lord bless you
and keep you, and may he make his face to shine upon you.
And may the joy of the Lord that is unspeakable and full of glory
made a bound to you. And may the peace of God that
passes all understanding, may it surprise you in the midst of all
the challenges that life brings. And then may the mercies of the
Lord, the forgiveness of God that is new every morning, may
be especially new to your now and your mornings to come.
And now may the Lord Jesus Christ guard your heart and your
mind. You are salt and you are light.
Go now and be salt and light unto the world.
You are blessed. We'll see you again soon.