Turn to God in Repentance

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Vanessa Hawkins
Oh, this is the day that the Lord has made. Let us rejoice. Let us be glad in it. Good morning, TGCW. What a privilege, what a blessing it is to be with you today. It’s a good day to turn our eyes to the Lord, isn’t it? And let’s do that now. Turn with me to Psalm 51 and it is going to be important that we read this superscription that’s above this psalm, because it’s going to give us context for what we’re talking about in this psalm. Okay, so pay close attention to that superscript. We can’t run past it today. We got to pay close attention. All right, let’s read to the choir master a psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet went to him after he had gone in to Bathsheba, 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, for I know my transgressions and my sin are 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. Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean. Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow, let me hear joy and gladness, and let the bones that you have broken rejoice. Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, oh God, and renew a right spirit in me. Cast me not away from your presence, and take not your holy spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of my salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit. Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will return to you. Deliver me from blood guiltiness, oh God, oh God of my salvation, and my tongue will sing aloud of your righteousness, O Lord. Open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise. For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it. You will not be pleased with the burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart. O God, you will not despise. Do good to Zion in your good pleasure. Build up the walls of Jerusalem. Then will you delight in right sacrifices and burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings. Then bulls will be offered on your altar. This is the word of God. So, if you are old enough to be at the Gospel Coalition Women’s Conference, that means that, unfortunately, you’ve been around long enough to have experienced the public failure of a high-ranking leader, and this is in no small part due to the emergence of the 24 hour news cycle that has come about in many of our lifetimes, and for some of us such failures has hit close to home and left us reeling and largely distrustful of not just leaders, but large organizations, corporations, governments, and yes, even the church, and wherever you find yourself on that continuum of trust or distrust, the public failure of a leader is unsettling, and it generally produces wreckage far beyond the point of impact. When the news first breaks, we just try to make sense of it, and the leader gets tried in the court of public opinion, in which all of the perceived good that they’ve ever done is now brought into question. There begins this sifting of the person’s life and motives, often without the benefit of proximity. We question if their regret is genuine or if they’re genuine. Trying to do damage control and to keep any there from being any further fallout. What we’re really asking in those moments is, how did we get here? How did they so quickly go from being the leader that we’ve known and loved and trusted to this moment of disappointing and often disorienting failure.

Vanessa Hawkins
Well, in our text today we have a very public failure from a beloved high-ranking official of Israel, beloved King David, and he has written this psalm that we just read, a song of repentance, and it helps to know that the word repentance, in its most basic sense, is just it means just turning from something to something, and so King David has written a song of repentance, announcing that he is turning from something to something, he’s turning from actions that have caused great scandal and upset in Israel, and turning back to the God of Israel. Now I I imagine when this headline broke on TikTok back in 10th century BC Jerusalem, that the headline would have read something like this: Royal Scandal, Beloved King of Israel, guilty of abuse of power and premeditated murder, and all of those of you who get your news from TikTok, I know you read the comments, so yes, I’ll tell you what the comment said. Commenter one, now you know the king only posted this because Nathan totally clocked it. Comment or two created me a clean heart, but didn’t he have Uriah unalived? Question mark, exclamation point, exclamation point, surprise face emoji! Commenter three: The institutional corruption at the palace is wild in comments, and while TikTok headlines and news snippets may be how we get introduced to breaking news, we are often left to grapple with the question of how did we get here, and while in King David’s case, scripture helps us with a bit of backstory, and so we will examine the life and moments that led to this psalm, and in doing so, we will consider three things: we will consider the heart that worships, the heart that rebels, and the heart that repents. The heart that worships, the heart that rebels and the heart that repents. Now, when we talk about worship, what we’re really talking about is the worthiness of where we’re focusing our deepest longings and our affections. What gets our greatest focus and attention. Worship is about the object of our affections. It’s what we are ascribing value to, often with our time, and what occupies our thoughts and our desires. Now we are first introduced to David, in contrast to King Saul, who was the center of his own worship, one who sought the applause of the people and his own greatness. It’s in this context that the prophet Samuel announces that the God of Israel is raising up for Himself a king who will be a man after his own heart, one whose deepest affections would be for him, one who would seek the approval of God over the approval of man, one whose life would put on display the greatness of God. We don’t have to read many psalms penned by David to understand that the greatness of God was the focus and the center of his worship. We hear him declaring greatness in psalms like. Psalm eight, where he ponders, what is man that you are mindful of him? Why does a great God like you even care about the likes of us? He concludes the psalm the way he begins it, and says, Oh Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name? You are the Majesty, you’re the King. How majestic is your name in all the earth? We see it in Second Samuel 622 how King David, his pursuit of God’s approval was so much greater than his pursuit of man’s approval. It’s on full display as Israel brings back the ark of the covenant, and it’s this symbol of God’s presence among the people, and they’re bringing it back to its rightful place in Israel. David was so taken with it, he stripped himself of his royal robes, he humbled himself and worshiped his God, the true King of Israel and of all creation. His exuberant worship created a problem for some, including his wife Michal, who thought it was beneath the dignity of the King to worship with the abandon that he was worshiping with, to which David replied that his dancing was before the Lord, the one who had chosen him. He said, “I will celebrate before the Lord and become even more undignified than this translation. You ain’t seen nothing yet, girl. Don’t make me worship for real.

Vanessa Hawkins
In other words, his worship wasn’t for the pleasure of the people, it was for the honor and the worthiness of his God. It’s in the Psalms that we hear David say things like, on my bed, Lord, I remember you, I think of you through the watches of the night, for you have been my help. In other words, I’m just lying here thinking about your goodness in my life, thinking about how you’ve kept me and how you’ve provided for me, thinking about how you shielded me from my enemies and caused me to walk in victory. Your loving kindness to me has been better than life, and so I’m just lying here lost in thoughts of your goodness. And then, if we wondered if God was the focal point of his worship, he sums it up for us in Psalm 27 four, where He says, “One thing I have desired of the Lord, and that will I seek after, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in His temple His greatest affection, his single-minded desire, the whole pursuit of his life was the Lord. The Psalms bear witness of King David’s earnest pursuit of his God, and how he rehearsed his great and mighty acts, and how he honored him above the approval of people, and how his deepest affections were for the Lord, and that it was the default of his heart, even in his idol moments. Now, while we marvel at what a worshiper David is. The truth is, we’re all worshipers. It’s how we were designed. We were designed as worshiping beings, those who were made to give their deepest affection to the God who created heaven and earth. And so, it’s never a question if we’re worshiping, it’s always a question, what are we worshiping? What is it in your life that represents the pinnacle of greatness? How great are your longings to honor the Lord above the applause of man, what is your single greatest desire? Where do your thoughts default in your idle moments? I can’t answer any of those questions for you, but what I can tell you is that they may give you some indication as to what’s at the center of your worship now. As I studied the life of David in First and Second Samuel, I found a fascinating pattern multiple times. I read this phrase. David inquired of the Lord, and the Lord said to David. David inquired of the Lord, and the Lord said to David. David inquired of the Lord, and the Lord said to David nine different times we hear David inquiring of the Lord for direction, both before he is king and after he is enthroned, and we hear the Lord faithfully replying to David. He asked the Lord if he should pursue his attackers to save the city. He asked about Saul when he was trying to kill him. Saul was a little cray cray. He asked God for guidance in times of famine. In all of these situations, the Lord faithfully instructs David. In fact, according to Second Samuel eight, the Lord gave victory to David wherever he went. So David was the original. All I do is win, win, win. No matter what, but then something strange happens. We go from hearing David inquire of the Lord to this conversation going silent, where there had been frequent inquiries of the Lord, all of a sudden there are none. We learn in Second Samuel eight that the Lord gave David victory wherever he went. So it’s strange when we arrive to chapter 11 and hear the words in the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle, David sent Yoav and his servants with him and all Israel, and they ravaged the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah, but David remained in Jerusalem. It happened late one afternoon when David arose from his couch. This one, who had frequently inquired of the Lord, this one who the Lord gave victory wherever he went, is no longer inquiring, and he is no longer going. Instead, while other kings are away at war, he’s at home comfortable on his couch. He’s not where he’s supposed to be.

Vanessa Hawkins
Verse two, it says, ‘It happened late one afternoon when David arose from his couch and was walking on the roof of the king’s house, that he saw from the roof a woman bathing, and the woman was very beautiful. And David sat and inquired about the woman, and one said, ‘Is not this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite. Not only is he not inquiring of the Lord, he’s inquiring about another man’s wife. His affections have clearly shifted, his loves have become disordered. disordered, his primary desire is no longer to honor the Lord, but to fulfill the desires of his own flesh. Verse four. So David sent messengers and took her, and she came to him, and he lay with her. Now she had been purifying herself from uncleanness. Then she returned to her house, and the woman conceived, and she sent and told David, I am pregnant. The king of Israel had used his power to lay with another man’s wife while he is away fighting in the king’s army, David sends for Uriah, the husband of Bathsheba, in hopes of covering up his misdeed to pass the baby off as Uriah’s, but it turned out that Uriah was more honorable than David. He refused. refused to go in and enjoy the pleasures of his wife, while his men, his comrades in arms, were away fighting in the war, while they were in battle, in peril, in. Inspiration, then David had to do part two of this plot of his wicked scheme. He says he had to, he sent Joab word to return Uriah to the front line, and then to have the people to pull away where the fighting was fiercest, so that he would be killed, he essentially, he had him executed right on the low, and you know, while it’s so easy for us to sift through the events of David’s life and see where things went wrong, you know what’s harder, by far, is for us to detect our own drift, our the slow drift of our own affections away from the Lord. David had been in a slow drift that ultimately turned into a free fall, into rebellion. The Lord mercifully interrupts David’s fall by sending the prophet Nathan, who cleverly calls David to repentance by telling him a story in Second Samuel 12. Nathan says to David, so there were two men in a certain city, the one rich, the other poor. The rich man had very many flocks and herds, but the poor man had nothing but one little ewe lamb, which he had bought, and he brought it up, and it grew up with him and with his children. It used to eat of his morsel and drink from his cup and lie in his arms. It was like a daughter to him, and now there came a traveler to the rich man, and he was unwilling to take one of his own flock or herd to prepare for the guests who had come to him, but the he took the poor man’s lamb and prepared it for the man who had come to him, David. was furious. He said to Nathan, ‘As the Lord lives, the man who has done this deserves to die, and he shall restore the lamb fourfold. And because he did this thing and had no pity, Nathan says, Oh, my friend, you are that man, and because you’ve done this thing, thus says the Lord God of Israel. Now, therefore, the sword shall never depart from your house, because you have here this word despised me and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife. The Lord charged David, this man after his own heart, the worshiper, the one whose life testified of the greatness of God, the one who sought to please God above the applause of men. The Lord charged that David with despising him. David’s slow drift from the heart of God is now absolute hatred for him. Do you feel the weight of that the Lord often likens his relationship with his people to a marriage, and I think that’s an apt metaphor here, because David’s slow drift away from the Lord and towards rebellion is very much how this happens in some marriages, the communication stalls or becomes rather transactional, and then that’s the beginning of the drift.

Vanessa Hawkins
It’s slow, but it’s sure you start not out, not knowing how you can live without each other, and then one day wake up wondering what you ever saw in each other. That’s what drifting does. You end up someplace you were never meant to be, and then you say things like we just grew apart, we fell out of love, and can I tell you that what’s true of marriage is true of our relationship with the Lord. I think it’s Paul David Tripp who says it this way, that people don’t fall out of love they fall out of repentance. The steady drift is often the result of repeated injury without apology. It becomes easier and easier to hurt someone you care about and to believe that they. Have your best interest at heart when there’s distance, that’s true for marriage. It’s also true for our relationship with the Lord. The more we drift away, the more likely we are to end up in a place we never meant to be, doing things we never meant to do. Our affection simply grow cold, and because we are worshiping beings, remember it’s not about if we worship, it’s about what we worship. Our affections for the Lord are slowly replaced with another love, one less worthy, one that will never satisfy. So, then, what’s the remedy? It’s turning to the Lord in repentance. So, now, in light of what you know about the heart that worships, in light of what you know about the heart that rebels. Let’s look and hear from the heart that repents. Look with me now. Let’s go to our psalm, Psalm 50-One. Now, I ask you to pay special attention to the heading of the psalm, because it’s there that we are reminded that David journeyed from a slow drift to the rapids of rebellion. His free fall was mercifully interrupted by Nathan the prophet, who is listed there in the heading. So, then, how does the repentant heart look? The truly repentant heart is deeply aware of a couple of things, is deeply aware of its need for mercy, and is deeply aware of God’s willingness to grant it. Look at verses one and two. 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. How is David able to make such a bold ask? It’s because he’s clear on the character of God. He knows the law of Moses, and how God self identifies as the Lord, the Lord merciful and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. That’s the God who’s been the center of David’s worship. He knows him, he’s able to make such a bold ask, not based on what he is entitled to, but based on who he knows his God to be. He understands that abundant mercy flows from who he is, and that when he, we turn to him in repentance. He doesn’t treat us like our sins deserve. I’m glad about that. He strikes them from our record, never to be held against us again. David is asking God to be the God who he knows him to be be the God who’s been the center of his worship, be the one who he had always known, the one who mercifully blots out transgressions, rebellion from our record. Now, from verse two, we know that David is also clear on his own desperate need, and that the nature of sin is to contaminate the heart, distort affections, and redirect the love that belongs only to God alone. That’s why it’s enough. It’s not enough to just have it stricken from the record. He needs the Lord to wash him thoroughly from his iniquity. Now, this word “iniquity” is not a word we use a lot, but it carries with it this idea of perversion, twistedness, and so he’s asking the Lord to apply His goodness to his life in such a way that He rids him toward of his bent towards perversion. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity. We also learn from Psalm 51 that the repentant heart takes responsibility for his actions. Look at verses three and four. He says, “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.

Vanessa Hawkins
Him, so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment. In other words, David is saying the messiness of all that I’ve done stays on my mind, it weighs me down, it’s ever before me. Yet I know the real damage I’ve done is against you and you alone, so then how is he able to say that he is sinned against God, and God alone. The effects of what he has done is very real in the life of Bathsheba. The effects of what he has done is very real in the death of Uriah. The effects of what he’s done is real in his army. He had Yoav to participate in the execution of Uriah, and then, oh yeah, he just happens to be leading this country. So, the effects of what he has done is real for Israel. So, how then can he say that it is God alone that He has sinned against. Can I tell you that God so identifies with His people that when you harm one of them, when you cause injury to any of them, it’s as if you’ve done it directly to him. Now, for those of us who have children, or maybe those of you who are parents, I mean, or children of a mama bear, this isn’t a hard concept to get. Okay, messing with me. Let me put it where you get it, messing with me. Okay, whatever. But messing with one of those three that I carry. Yeah, you got a whole different situation. Yeah, that’s that. That’s a whole situation all together. Jesus says in Matthew 2540 that whatever you’ve done to the least of these, my people, you’ve done to me. He’s a God who, who intimately identifies with his people. So, David understood that he couldn’t abuse God’s people and not injure God himself. He calls his actions what the Lord calls them, saying, I’ve done evil in your sight, and I deserve whatever judgment you give me. Now I want you to understand that, according to Jewish law, the punishment for David’s sins is death, and David, knowing the law, is in effect saying I am deserving of what your law demands, no excuses, and he just says that my actions were evil and I deserve the punishment of a just and holy God. Now a truly repentant heart bears fruit in keeping with repentance. That means there is real, visible, fruitful action that flows out of true repentance. Look at verse 10. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me, cast me not away from your presence, and take not your holy spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit. Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will return to you. Deliver me from blood guiltiness, O God, O God of my salvation, and my tongue will sing aloud of your righteousness. O Lord, open my lips and my mouth will declare your praise, for you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it. You will not be pleased with a burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite heart. Oh God, you will not despise. Notice that David never asked God to restore his salvation, only the joy of it. Our ability to feel conviction is evidence that the spirit is at work, because there’s no good thing in us, and so the weightiness of unconfessed sin, though, is crushing, and it diminishes that joy, the joy of that relationship. David promises that if the Lord indeed restores him by creating in him a clean heart and returning to him the joy of his salvation, that he will use his failings to teach others who fail how to repent, how to turn back to the Lord. He says, if you take away from me the weightiness. Place of this guilt of all that I’ve done, I will sing your praises. I will bless your name. In fact, he says I would bring you an offering if I thought that would help, but what I know about you is that you don’t care about my religious practices as much as you care about where my love and my devotion lie. Man looks at the outside, but you, oh God, you look at the heart.

Vanessa Hawkins
And so what you desire from me is to be broken over my mess, broken over chasing after other gods, broken over the harm I’ve caused your people, broken. that I’ve drifted away from you, and allowed my heart to be turned towards another. This kind of heart, the heart of repentance, is the one you will never despise and never turn away. So did David keep up his word? Did he teach transgressors God’s ways? I’d say so. He’s doing it right now through this psalm. His private rebellion in a public office led to a very public repentance that landed on the pages of the Songbook of Israel. How’s that for taking responsibility? The final verses of this psalm show how restoration would look. It looks like right worship. Look at verse 18, do good to Zion in your good pleasure. Build up the walls of Jerusalem. Then will you delight in right sacrifices and burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings. Then bulls will be offered on your altar. He’s saying, after you’ve looked upon my broken and contrite heart, my deep remorse for my failings. And after you’ve had mercy on me, oh God, would you have mercy on your people? Would you keep them from being harmed any further because of my rebellion? Would you do good to them despite me? And then with right hearts together we will worship you. We’ll give you the worship that is due your name. Now we started our conversation imagining the headline breaking about the royal scandal King David’s actions would have prompted, and asking the question of this psalm, How did David get here? How did the one who worshiped so beautifully become the one who rebelled so scandalously and utterly the one who repented so publicly? But can I suggest to you that while David’s headline is news, it’s not the real story. The real story is David’s God, and how he mercifully receives the repentant rebel. That’s the real story today, and combing through the sordid details of David’s life, we are reminded that depravity of man is just the stuff that headlines are made of, and while human depravity is bad news, it’s not new news. Prophet Jeremiah reminds us that the heart is deceitful above all things, desperately sick, who can understand it? And, as David was, so are we scandalously sinful, conceived in iniquity, sinful from birth, deserving of the judgment of a good and righteous king. But what is more astounding than David’s great failings is David’s great God, that he would receive repentant rebels. If I’m honest, I’ve done a lot of thinking about, and I actually shudder to think about what a headline about my worst moment would say, but what I do know is that as much as I would love to be able to tell you that I’ve kept God’s law perfectly, I haven’t, and as much as I’d like to be able to tell you that I have never failed to love him with my whole heart, it just wouldn’t be true. But if you move past my headline and you read my story, you’d hear me saying something to the Lord, like as many times as I failed and turned back to you. You received me back to yourself, as prone as I am to wonder, you’re greater, you’re more greatly prone to pursue me. And when I’ve wandered off the path, it was your goodness and mercy that chased me down, and when I’ve stumbled, you’ve kept me from falling, and when you’ve hemmed me in from before and behind, you’ve upheld me with your righteous right hand, and when I failed to inquire of you, you saved me from myself, and when I drifted away, you rescued me, and when my affections grew cold, you wooed me back to yourself, and I know my sins deserve death. I know I’ve made a mess of life sometimes, but you haven’t treated me as my sins deserve. So, Lord, I thank you that you’ve received this repentant rebel again and again and again and again, that’s what my story would say. Now we cringe at the idea that God could call somebody like David a man after his own heart, but have you read what He calls us? He calls us children of the Most High God. He calls us the faithful ones. He calls us the saints, the righteous, the upright.

Vanessa Hawkins
He calls us the chosen ones. He calls us the redeemed. He calls us friends of God, accepted in the beloved, he calls us blameless now. Whatever title David didn’t deserve, on my best days I don’t deserve to be called any of that. Yet somehow, by the grace of God, I am all of those things, and as much rebellion as we are capable of, it’s, it’s just astounding to me that a holy God would ever call us any of that. Now, make no mistake about it, there are only two kinds of people in this room. There are rebels who have turned to God, and rebels who need to turn. Only two kinds, like David. We were born in sin, shaped in iniquity, rebels from birth. We were enemies of God, slaves to sin, and incapable of being anything else, we and as God sent Nathan to interrupt David’s rebellion, oh, He sent a king to interrupt ours. He sent a king no greater than David. He sent a king who wouldn’t abuse his power, but would lay it down in service. He sent a king whose reign would know no corruption, but whose reign would be justice and righteousness. He sent a king who wouldn’t cover up sin, but would become sin to openly conquer it. He sent a king who wouldn’t plot a murder of convenience, but was murdered as a sacrifice. He sent a king whose affections wouldn’t drift from the Father, but who would love him to the point of death, even death on the cross. The King is Jesus, and the way of His kingdom is repentance. Among the first words we hear Jesus say in the Gospels is repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. He is the one who brings the repentance that David longed for to us. David longed to have his transgressions blotted out. Jesus wiped our records clean and gave us his perfect record. David longed to be cleansed of his sinful perversions, and by Jesus’ death and resurrection we are clean. Jesus is David’s God in the flesh, the Lord, Lord, merciful and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, that’s why we can turn to Him in confidence, knowing His deep mercy, His steadfast love. We can go boldly, not because of who we are, not dismissive of what we’ve done, but because of who He forever will be, the Lord, Lord, merciful and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. Now, for those of you who don’t yet know this God who receives the repentant rebel, oh. I want to tell you that today is a mighty good day to turn to Him. He will receive you. If you’ve been walking with Jesus a while, and you’ve answered His call to repent and believe the gospel, know that that’s not a one-time answer, but it’s an ongoing call you’ll need to answer every day of your life. The Christian life is a life of repentance, and whether you’ve drifted away or whether you’ve never known Him at all, whether your offenses feel tiny or whether they feel catastrophic, He is the God who receives a repentant rebel. It’s just who He is. Turn to Him now. Ask Him, Create in me a clean heart. Oh God, renew a right spirit in me. Let this be the language of our repentance. It’s the prayer, the Lord always delights to answer. Let’s pray. Gracious God, oh God, you are the one who receives the repentant rebel, and how we praise you for that. We thank you, Lord, that as unworthy as we are, you would send a king who would declare us worthy before you. And so, Lord, we thank you for Jesus. We thank you that we can come boldly into your presence, we can confess our sins, and you will indeed create in us a creek, a clean heart, and you will renew a right spirit in us. Lord, would you cause it to be so today in your people and in me we give you praise in Jesus’ name. Amen.