The Opposite of Joy

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I wanna invite you to take out your Bibles and turn with me to Psalm 51.
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As I mentioned earlier, today is the final Sunday in the season of Advent.
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And the theme of today's service is the theme of joy.
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And regarding that theme, I want to pose a question, not one that needs be answered out loud, but one I'd like for you to answer in your heart.
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What is the opposite of joy? What is the opposite of joy? If I were to say gladness, then the opposite would be sadness.
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If I were to say happiness, then the opposite would be unhappiness.
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But when it comes to joy, finding the opposite of joy, finding the adversative of joy is a little more difficult.
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I went online and I was searching through some of the online dictionaries.
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You know, you've got Webster's and you've got the online, you can Google and they have their own dictionary and you can look up words.
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And I was looking up synonyms and antonyms and I looked up joy to see what the antonyms were.
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And I was interested to find that under joy, the antonym of joy in Google was trials.
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And I thought about that.
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I thought that really isn't correct because the Bible says that we are to count our trials as joy.
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James chapter one, verse two.
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And so from a biblical perspective, the opposite of joy is not trials.
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What I hope to show you today, and I think I'm able to bear this out from the text.
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I'm confident that I'll be able to, is that the opposite of joy is not sadness or unhappiness or even trials.
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But the opposite of joy is sin.
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And I hope that I can explain that as we go through the text.
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Let's stand together and read.
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Psalm 51, beginning in verse one.
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And we're going to read the superscription, which is above the text because it does play a part in our study.
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To the choir master, a Psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet went to him after he had gone in to Bathsheba.
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Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love.
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According to your abundant mercy, blot out my transgressions.
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Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin.
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For I know my transgressions and my sin as ever before me.
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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 judgments.
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Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me.
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Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart.
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Purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean.
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Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow.
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Let me hear gladness and joy.
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Let the bones that you have broken rejoice.
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Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquities.
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Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.
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Cast me not away from your presence and take not your Holy Spirit from me.
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Restore to me the joy of your salvation and uphold me with a willing spirit.
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Then I will teach transgressors your ways and sinners will return to you.
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Deliver me from blood guiltness, O God, O God of my salvation and my tongue will sing aloud of your righteousness.
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O Lord, open my lips and my mouth will declare your praise for you will not delight in sacrifice or I would give it.
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You will not be pleased with a burnt offering.
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The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart.
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O God, you will not despise.
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Do good to Zion in your good pleasure.
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Build up the walls of Jerusalem.
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Then will you delight in right sacrifices and burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings.
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Then bulls will be offered on your altar.
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Father, thank you for your word.
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And now, Lord, as I seek to preach it, I pray that you would keep me from error and from cowardice.
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Lord, I pray that the word of God would go into the ear, through the mind and down to the heart, Lord.
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And for those who know Christ today would be a day of introspection and self-examination and an opportunity for genuine repentance.
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But Lord, for those who do not know the Lord, that today might be the day of salvation for them.
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For Lord, that is something only you can do.
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And we leave it with you in Christ's name.
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Amen.
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Throughout Advent this year, we have been examining some of the Psalms and we have looked at Psalm 23.
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We looked at Psalm 139.
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And today we come to Psalm 51.
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And we have noted already that there are different types of Psalms.
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There are Psalms of praise.
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Many of the Psalms are simply songs of praise to God for his goodness, for his grace, for his steadfast love.
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Some are songs of lament.
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They are, you can almost feel the tears on the page as you read the writer.
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There are songs where the Psalmist is hurting.
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He's in pain and he's crying out to the Lord for relief.
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There are Psalms of imprecation.
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We talked about this last week.
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Psalm 139, the Psalmist calls out judgment upon the enemies of God.
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He says, I hate your enemies, O God, with a perfect hatred.
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We talked about what that meant.
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But today we are going to look at what is known as a penitential Psalm.
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And the word penitential simply means an expression of repentance over guilt.
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We get the word penitentiary from that.
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When you think of the person who goes to the penitentiary for having done some crime, normally it's called the state pen or the, that's short for penitentiary.
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And so the idea of penitence is the idea of being guilty and needing discipline, needing to be corrected.
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And there are seven Psalms which are specifically recognized as being penitential in nature.
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Psalm 6, Psalm 32, Psalm 38, Psalm 51, Psalm 102, 130, and 143.
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You don't have to write all those down because if you want them, just come write them down later.
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By the way, if you ever want, just copy my notes.
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I know some of you like to write your own notes and that's great.
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But if you ever just want it, just email me, I'll send them to you.
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It's easier that way.
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Because I like it when we're all sort of engaged, paying attention.
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If we're sitting there writing the whole time, sometimes we miss things.
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So you can have a copy.
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It's not, I put them on the website anyway.
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But seven Psalms, as I said, are mentioned as being penitential in nature.
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And probably the most well-known penitential Psalm is Psalm 51.
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It includes an introduction with its historic context, which we just read.
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It says, it is a Psalm of David when Nathan the prophet came to him after he had gone into Bathsheba.
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Now, it is my hope that most of us are familiar with that scene.
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I don't wanna recount everything in regard to that scene, but I do wanna remind us for those of you who may have forgotten what exactly that's referring to, but I don't wanna get down into everything.
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I just sort of wanna go over the simplistic, this is a Christmas message, by the way, but we're gonna deal with the basics.
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The story begins with David on a rooftop.
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David, and this is in 2 Samuel 11.
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If you wanna make note later, if you wanna go back and read through, the narrative is in 2 Samuel 11 and 12.
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David is on a rooftop.
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It's the time of the year where the kings are supposed to be out at battle, but instead he is home.
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And as he is on his rooftop, he sees a woman who is bathing and he is able to gaze upon her in her nakedness.
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And so he becomes infatuated with her.
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He calls for her to come to him after finding out that she is a married woman.
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She's the wife of one of David's valiant men.
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Uriah was one of David's great fighters and a man who we will see was noble and dedicated to David.
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He loved his king.
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And David, because of his lust, chose to take Uriah's wife and lay with her.
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And on laying with her, they conceived a child.
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And Uriah being out at battle would one day come home and find that his wife had been unfaithful.
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And it would be very easy for the community to recognize who the culprit was.
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Certainly her visiting the king would have been known by at least someone.
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And so David decides to bring Uriah home and try to have Uriah go home to be with his wife in hopes that no one will find out.
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We're gonna cover this up.
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We're gonna have a scenario where we can hide the evidence.
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Well, Uriah comes home.
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David says, go home, be with your wife.
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And Uriah says, no.
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And he sleeps on the king's doorstep and he won't go home.
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And David said, go home.
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Uriah won't do it.
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In fact, this is verse 11, 2 Samuel chapter 11, verse 11.
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Uriah said to David, "'The ark and Israel and Judah dwell in booths.
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"'And my lord, Joab, and the servants of my lord "'are camping in the open field.
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"'Shall I then go to my house to eat and drink "'and lie with my wife?' Think about the noble heart of Uriah.
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David said, go home, go be with your wife.
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You know, David doesn't care about Uriah.
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He cares about his sin, trying to hide it.
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Go, be with your wife.
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And he says, but the ark of God is in a tent and my fellow soldiers are in the field of battle.
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Shall I go home? And the king's like, yeah, yeah, go.
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But Uriah would not go.
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So finally, Uriah's faithfulness frustrates David to the point of a murderous plot.
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And so I'll just read the text.
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It's verse 14.
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It says, in the morning, David wrote a letter to Joab.
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That's the head of the army.
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He wrote a letter to Joab and sent it by the hand of Uriah.
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By the way, Uriah carried his own death warrant.
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Uriah had a letter that was going to call for the men to go out to battle with him and then draw back and let him be killed.
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And he held that letter from the king, didn't even know it.
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He was carrying his own death sentence to Joab.
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And he sent it by the hand of Uriah.
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And the letter, he said, set Uriah in the forefront of the hardest fighting and then draw back from him and he may be struck down and die.
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And as Joab was besieging the city, he assigned Uriah to the place where he knew there were valiant men.
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And the men of the city came out and fought with Joab and some of the servants of David among the people fell.
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Uriah the Hittite also died.
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Notice that, as I was studying this week and reading the narrative again, I noticed Uriah wasn't the only one who died.
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Hear it again.
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It says, and the men of the city came out and fought with Joab and some of the servants of David among the people fell and Uriah also died.
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So it wasn't just Uriah who falls under the plot of David here, it's other men as well.
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It's other fighters.
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This was an unnecessary fight.
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This was a fight that was intended to be lost because we're trying to get a guy killed here.
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You gotta wonder how Joab felt when he got the letter.
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He's gonna do what the king tells him to do, but he's looking at it like, you want this man dead.
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Why don't you just take a knife and cut his throat? Because it's a conspiracy.
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There's a grand attempt to hide sin.
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This is all about trying to hide the sin of David.
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David's trying, and the thing is, you go back and I'm getting ahead of myself now, but if you go back to the beginning of the story when he just saw the wife of Uriah, that's the moment where he should have dealt with it.
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That's the moment where repentance should have happened.
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When he looked upon the wife of another man and he lusted after her, that's the moment when repentance should have happened because it wasn't, you begin to compound the sin.
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And it goes, as Jesus talks about lust being like adultery, that's because lust leads to adultery.
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And it does.
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Lust to the wife of Uriah led to adultery, led to a conception of a child, led to lying and murder.
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And David is guilty of it all.
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David is guilty of it all.
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And notice too, we're not talking about King Saul here.
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We're talking about King David.
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This is a man who the Bible says in 1 Samuel 13, 14 was a man after God's own heart.
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You might think that a man who was willing to take another man's wife, kill her husband.
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Oh, and then by the way, he plays the hero by marrying her after her husband's dead.
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You know, well, I'll take your wife in and care for her.
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Like he's the hero.
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He's the villain.
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And you might think at that moment, God would simply abandon David.
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And God would have been just in abandoning David.
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God would be just in abandoning any of us.
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We, God owes us nothing.
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God owes us nothing.
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God created us, we sin against him.
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Therefore we are worthy of nothing but his wrath and judgment.
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Anything that we receive of goodness from him is nothing but grace.
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And at this moment, God should have abandoned.
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When I say should have, understand, I'm not saying what God should have done in the sense.
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What I'm saying, justice would be just abandon him.
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But God demonstrates grace to unmerited favor to David.
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But the unmerited favor doesn't come in just overlooking the sin.
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The unmerited favor of God comes in the conviction of his sin.
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That's the key to this.
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God doesn't just paint over it and let it go.
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God sends David a man to call him to account.
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The hero of the story is Nathan.
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And we see Nathan in chapter two, I'm sorry, chapter 12, verse one, 2 Samuel chapter 12.
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It says, and the Lord sent Nathan to David.
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He came to him and said to him, there were two men in a certain city, the one rich and the other poor.
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The rich man had very many flocks and herds, but the poor man had nothing but one little ewe lamb, which he had bought.
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And he brought it up and grew it up and with him and with his children.
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It used to eat of his morsel and drink of his cup and lie in his arms.
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And it was like a daughter to him.
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You ever see somebody who treats their animals like people? That's kind of the picture here.
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This guy has this ewe lamb and he's treating it like a daughter.
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He loves this little ewe lamb.
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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 guest who had come to him.
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But he took the poor man's lamb and prepared it for the man who had came to him.
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This guy, the rich guy, he's got all these lambs, but he doesn't wanna take his lamb to feed the traveler.
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So he goes over to this guy who's only got one lamb.
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He goes over to this guy that's only got one animal.
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And this is not only just an animal, this isn't like a dog that he's had in a cage in his backyard.
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This is a ewe lamb that he's kept like a daughter and he slaughters it and he feeds it to the traveler.
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Now just for a moment, we can all understand what Nathan is doing.
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Nathan is producing a parable.
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Nathan wants to get David to understand the weight of his sin.
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And so he draws him a picture and David falls into the trap because it says in verse five, then David's anger was greatly kindled against the man.
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And he said to Nathan, as the Lord lives, the man who has done this deserves to die and he shall restore the lamb fourfold because he's done this thing and because he had no pity.
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David just wrote his own death sentence.
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What'd he say? The man who did this deserves what? He deserves to die.
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Now we're talking about lambs and travelers here.
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David can't see past his own nose.
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He can't see that Nathan's talking about him.
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David said that man who stole that lamb deserves nothing more than death and to restore to that other man fourfold what he has taken.
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And the little crooked finger of that prophet pointed right at the king and said, thou art the man.
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That's the scenario that leads us to Psalm 51.
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That's the situation that takes us to Psalm 51.
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Nathan the prophet coming to David, giving him the parable.
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David commences to provide judgment as his right as the king of Israel to give judgment and he pronounced judgment, not realizing he was pronouncing judgment upon himself.
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And he says, Nathan says to the king, you are the...
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Now the text goes on in 2 Samuel.
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Again, I would encourage you reading it but I want us now to look at David's response in Psalm 51 because this whole Psalm is David's cry of repentance over this sin.
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And what I've done is as I've outlined it for you, I don't think I'm gonna get to every verse but I wanna at least give you the outline if you'll pull it up for me.
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This is the outline of the whole text that I've written.
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So this gives you how I'm seeing the whole thing.
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I see this Psalm in two parts.
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First, I see it as an appeal to God's grace.
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That's verses one to 12.
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We see a plea for mercy, a confession of sin and a desire for restoration.
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And then the second part is a response to God's grace which is proclamation and praise, verses 13 to 15, brokenness and contrition, verses 16 and 17 and then restored worship and community, verses 18 and 19.
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I'm gonna focus though today mainly on verse 12, even though we're gonna look at the whole thing, I wanna focus on verse 12.
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Look very quickly with me at what verse 12 says.
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Verse 12 says this, restore to me the joy of your salvation and uphold me with a willing spirit.
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Restore to me the joy of your salvation.
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I asked a question earlier.
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I asked this question, I said, what's the opposite of joy? I said, I don't believe it's unhappiness, I don't believe it's sadness, I don't believe it's trials but I believe the opposite of joy is sin.
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Why do I believe that it's sin? Because what David expresses here is he expresses that in his unrepentant sin, that he had lost not his salvation but the joy of his salvation.
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That he had lost not his salvation which comes by grace through faith but the expression of joy which comes by knowing the Lord intimately.
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We are not saved by works and we have to hold a very hard line on that because it is easy to begin to think that we are saved by what we do.
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And if we begin to think that we're saved by what we do, then somehow we're going to begin to think that we have contributed to what was finished by Christ on the cross.
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Christ completed our salvation on the cross and we add nothing to that.
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But when we come to salvation and we are born again into the family of God, we are now in a relationship with the Father by which we can call him Abba, that's what you read this morning from Galatians 4.
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We are adopted into the family of God, we get to call him Father, we're in this new relationship with God and yet there are times where that relationship is interrupted by our sins in our lives.
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And I'm gonna tell you, I experienced this.
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There are times when I'm struggling, when I'm battling and I feel as if I am far away from God and I remember years ago the old preacher said, if you are far away from God, he didn't move.
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All right, who moved? You moved, you began to follow after something else, you began to seek after something else, there was something else, there was something that caught your eye from the top of your roof that you shouldn't have been looking at and the desire was for that thing and you took your eye off of God and you put your eye on the other thing and because of that, now you are focused on that which the joys of sin are fleeting.
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It's not even real joy, it's temporal, earthly, fleshly pleasure which is here today and gone tomorrow and while we are lapping up the fleshly desires of this world, we will not be basking in the joy of the Lord and so David cries out, restore to me, not my salvation but restore to me the joy of my salvation.
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Restore to me what I have lost and how long has it been? We don't know but we know this, it's nine months because the baby is still alive at this point.
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Nathan actually tells us in 2 Samuel that the baby will die and we know that will happen and that will be a severe consequence for the sin of David.
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This baby will not live and so we know that this is within a nine month period but however long it's been, David has lived every day with the wife of Uriah and he's lived every day with the death of Uriah on his heart.
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Notice what the text says.
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It says, my sin is ever before me.
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My sin is ever before me.
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I'm gonna tell you this.
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If you are living with unrepentant sin today, that sin is before you.
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If you're living with unrepentant sin today, that sin is in your heart and in your mind.
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You know, that's what we talk about the Lord's table, right? We talk about prepare yourself to take the table.
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What do you do? You look into your heart and mind and you know what's there.
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I don't know what's there.
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I can't see into your heart and you can't see into my heart but haven't we all talked about how scary it would be to have all of our thoughts projected onto a screen for everybody to see? Why are we so afraid of that? Because we know that there are thoughts that are evil.
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We know that there are desires that are sinful.
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We know that those things are there and instead of repenting of them, often we long for them.
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We look forward to the times when we can be by ourselves so we can indulge those things without anybody knowing.
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We look forward to the times where we can just have a moment to ourselves to engage the sin of our hearts.
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And if I'm the only one, I guess I'm the only one.
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See, that's the issue.
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There are these sins that we need to deal with and we don't.
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We try to hide them where nobody else will see them.
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We try to cover them up under the death of Uriah.
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We try to cover them up under all these things.
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And yet God knows, right? Psalm 139, we studied last week.
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What was the thing? You can't hide from God's presence.
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If I go up into heaven, thou art there.
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If I go down into Sheol, thou art there.
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I cannot escape from your presence, O Lord.
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You know the words before they come out of my mouth.
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What's it gonna take for us? Is it gonna take God sending a prophet who takes his finger and puts it in our chest and says, thou art the man? You ever had somebody do that to you? I would tell you some of the sweetest moments in my life have been when men of God were willing to tell me I was wrong.
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And they were as like Nathan in my life at that moment.
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I didn't like it.
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I'm gonna tell you something.
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I don't think David liked it.
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When David was sitting on his throne and he saw that little finger pointed at him and he said, thou art the man, I think David's heart fell apart.
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I wanna say this.
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If you don't have somebody in your life that you're willing to let speak into your life like Nathan spoke into David's life, then that's a problem.
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If you don't have people in your life, if they're not brothers and sisters, hopefully in this room, who can speak truth into your life without you automatically seeking to defend yourself, then that's a problem.
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We should be willing to have brothers and sisters in Christ be honest with us because we are often the worst at being honest with ourselves.
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We are often the worst at being honest with this real situation.
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That's where David is.
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He has had many months.
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We don't know how many, but he's had many months to repent.
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He's not yet repented.
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He's tried to hide it.
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He's not yet repented.
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It took that prophet to say, thou art the man, to bring David to this moment where he would repent.
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Now let's just walk through the text.
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Like I said, I'm not gonna try to go through the whole thing, but I wanna show you at least a few things from the text that really caught my attention this week as I was studying it.
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First, it says, it begins with a plea for mercy.
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He says, have mercy on me, O God.
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Notice that when he says, have mercy on me, O God, he's expressing his worthiness of punishment.
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Mercy means that you're not getting what you deserve.
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What does David deserve? Death.
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He already told.
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He said, the man who stole the ewe lamb deserved to die.
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And then Nathan said, thou art the man, therefore David deserves to die.
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David's already pronounced judgment of death upon himself.
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So now he cries out for what? Mercy.
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God, have mercy on me.
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But he doesn't appeal to anything in himself.
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David doesn't say, have mercy on me because I'm the king.
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He doesn't say, have mercy on me because I slew Goliath.
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He doesn't say, have mercy on me because I didn't attack King Saul.
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He doesn't say, have mercy on me because I have fought your battles and I've won your wars.
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He says what? Look at verse 51.
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Have mercy on me, oh God, according to your steadfast love, according to your abundant mercy.
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You see, he is crying out for mercy, not on his own account for anything he has done.
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He's crying out to mercy because of who God is.
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God who is merciful.
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God who is loving.
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He is throwing himself at the mercy of God's almighty love.
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Beloved, let me tell you something today.
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If you are fighting a battle with sin, there is a loving God who is willing to forgive you.
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There is a loving God who will receive your repentance and restore you.
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The Bible says in 1 John, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us and cleanse us of all unrighteousness.
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That's the blessing of being in Christ.
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You don't have to hold that sin anymore.
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You can confess it and know that the Lord is faithful and he's loving and he will forgive you.
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So he says, have mercy on me according to your steadfast love.
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And he says, wash me thoroughly from my iniquities, blot out my transgressions, cleanse me from sin.
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David's not asking to be covered up.
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He tried covering it up.
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It didn't work.
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David tried to cover it up in the death of Uriah.
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That didn't work.
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David tried to cover it up in bearing Bathsheba.
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That didn't work.
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David realized a coverup is not what he needs.
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He needs his sin forgiven.
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The term blot out means to be erased.
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And the idea is a forensic forgiveness or a legal forgiveness where, like if you had a debt that you couldn't pay and your debt was paid and you were forgiven of that debt, that's the idea that's being stated here.
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It's a true forgiveness.
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Now, how can we have forgiveness, beloved? Because of what Jesus Christ did on the cross.
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Jesus Christ takes our punishment on himself.
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Therefore, our sins do get punished, but they don't get punished in us.
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They get punished in him.
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Therefore, my ledger, which is all red with sin, is cleaned.
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It's erased because it's been imputed to the son.
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It's been imputed to Christ.
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He now bears the weight of my sin and my ledger reads free from sin.
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The father, when he sees me, he sees me from a forensic or legal perspective as being not only sinless, but righteous because I'm given the righteousness of Christ.
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So when David cries out, blot out my sin, wash me, he's crying out for that true forgiveness that only God can provide.
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You know, that's what got Jesus into trouble with the Pharisees so many times as Jesus offered forgiveness and they said only God can forgive sins.
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Well, that's true, but Jesus is God of the flesh.
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So that's okay, but that was the problem.
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David knew he couldn't go find forgiveness with anyone else.
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When he needed true forgiveness, he had to ask for forgiveness from the only one who could give it and that was God.
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So we see his plea for mercy.
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Then we see his confession of sin, which begins in verse three.
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He says, my sin is ever before me against you and you only I have sinned and done what is evil in your sight.
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I always had issue with that one.
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Now again, I don't have issues with God and I certainly don't have issues with the Holy Spirit who inspired the writing of what this is saying.
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But when David says against you and you only I have sinned, you have to think for a moment.
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Now wait, kind of feel like he sinned against Uriah too.
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And you kind of feel like he sinned against Bathsheba.
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He lusted after her and then you have to think, well, he kind of sinned against the whole nation because when the king violates one of his subjects, he's not just violating her, he's violating everyone.
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He's going against the trust that's entrusted to the king to be a good leader and a faithful godly leader, this king.
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And he says against you and you only I have sinned.
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Well, here's what we need to understand about that.
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Yes, David sinned against several, many people.
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All those men who died when Uriah was out there, he sinned against their families too.
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And I don't think David is denying that, but rather I think that he is acknowledging that ultimately what sin is, is sin is a breaking of God's law.
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And the one who is most offended when we sin is not the person we sin against, but the God who created that person.
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And ultimately, when we sin, we are committing treason against the God of the universe.
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And therefore David can say, God, you're right against you.
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And ultimately you only, against you, I have sinned and done what is evil in your sight.
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As the Believer's Bible commentary says this, it says David is taking sides with God against himself.
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I really like that phrase.
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God's taking, or David's taking sides with God.
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David's stepping out of himself and saying, yeah, God, you're right in judging me because I've sinned against you and I've done this evil in your sight.
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Now I don't have time to go into it, but the next verse he talks about being brought forth in iniquity.
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That is a proof text often used to talk about the doctrine of original sin.
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David's not saying his mother was a sinner in having given birth to him.
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What he's saying is he was a sinner from birth.
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And he's not using that as an excuse, but what he is saying is his sin that needs to be forgiven is part of his very nature.
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He is a sinner from birth.
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Remember this, everyone, remember this.
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We are sinners both by nature and by choice.
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We are sinners because of our relationship to Adam.
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We are born in iniquity.
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But also, do not forget, also, that we are sinners because we like to sin, because we want to sin.
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And I always say, if you ever get angry that Adam sinned in your place, just know that if you were in his place, you wouldn't have done any better.
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So David says, I was brought forth in iniquity.
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And he says, and you desire truth in my inward being.
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God hates hypocrisy.
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He loves us to have truth on the inside.
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And the problem is David had been trying to hide his sin, so all that was going on inside was duplicitous.
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All that was going on the inside was sinful.
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And he says, you desire that I be truthful on the inside.
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And ultimately, and we're gonna have to end at verse 12, but he says this, he desires restoration.
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He says, purge me with hyssop.
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Now, hyssop was a branch that was used in ceremonial sprinklings.
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It looked like a, it almost looked like a broom.
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When you broke the branch off, it looked like a broom handle and it had little ends on it, little florets on the ends that were used for you would dip it in.
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You remember the night of the Passover? It said, dip hyssop in the blood of the lamb and put the blood on the doorpost.
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That's how hyssop was used.
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Hyssop was also used, according to Leviticus 14, in the cleansing of lepers.
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They would take hyssop and water and they would cleanse lepers with that water.
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And so the idea, David, is he's calling here for, he's calling for a ceremonial cleansing.
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He's saying, purge me with hyssop.
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And then he says, beginning there at verse seven, he says, purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean.
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Wash me and I will be whiter than snow.
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And he goes on to say, let me hear joy and gladness.
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Let the bones that you have broken rejoice.
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By the way, what bones being broken is he referring to? He's talking about the, he's talking about his soul.
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David doesn't have physical bones broken.
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He's talking about the fact that God came in and broke him down.
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I wanna ask you this, and this, just to think about this for a second.
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Has God ever broken you where you had nowhere else to look but to him? I think, I don't know how you could be a Christian and not have experienced brokenness at some point.
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One, when you came to Christ, the brokenness of all the sin that led you to him would be the first time, but I gotta say, you know, I've been in Christ now for 21 years and it wasn't just that one time.
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There have been times where I've been face down, blubbering on my knees, face to the ground, crying out to God and saying, God, I am broken.
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And I can't go anywhere else.
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I can't find restoration anywhere else.
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He calls out in verse nine, hide your face from my sins, blot out my iniquities.
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And then verse 10, create in me a clean heart.
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That's the ultimate call of the penitent sinner.
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God, create in me a clean heart.
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Now, some people, and I wanna make a theological statement here.
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Hopefully it won't be an argument later with anybody.
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Hopefully you'll understand what I'm saying.
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Some people think David didn't get saved until he wrote this song.
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I have an issue with that because David demonstrates faith much earlier than this.
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And like in his battle with Goliath and other things.
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So the idea that this is David's salvation prayer, and they base it on the idea that, well, create in me a clean heart is an initial call for repentance.
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I will say this, if you're not saved today and you're looking for a way to pray, create in me a clean heart works.
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It's good.
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I mean, that's a good prayer.
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But I don't think that it can only be prayed once for the believer.
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I think that there are times in our life where we ask God again.
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I'm struggling, God.
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And remember this, in the Hebrew mind, the heart is the seat, not only of the emotions, it's the seat of the intellect.
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Being led by the heart and all those things.
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So when he's saying, I compare this to Romans chapter 12.
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What does Romans chapter 12 say? Romans chapter 12 says we need to have our minds renewed.
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And I think that creating me a clean heart and the renewal of the mind, I think is very similar idea.
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So as a believer, do you need a clean heart? Yes.
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There are times when we allow ourselves to go where we shouldn't go and think what we shouldn't think and do what we shouldn't do, and therefore we cry out to God, create in me a clean heart.
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Renew my mind.
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And then he says, cast me not away.
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You know what's the beautiful of that? By saying, cast me not away, he was saying God hadn't casted him away yet.
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As I said earlier, David deserved to be cast away, but he hadn't been.
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He says, cast me not from your spirit, oh Lord, or take not your spirit from me.
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And he says, restore unto me the joy of your salvation.
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The heart of the psalm is restoring to me the joy of your salvation.
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John Calvin said this, I'm beginning to draw to a close.
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John Calvin said this.
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He said, David could not dismiss his grief of mind until he obtained his peace with God.
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This he declares once and again, for David had no sympathy with those who can indulge themselves in ease when they're lying under divine displeasure.
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David could not be at ease while he was still at odds with God.
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He could not be at ease when he was at odds with God.
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So I wanna ask you today, are you just as in peace with your sins as you are with your repentance? Let me ask that again, because I think it come out a little confusing.
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Are you just as at peace in your sin as you are in your repentance? Can you sin and it not affect your heart? Can you sin and it not affect your soul? If we can smile while spitting in the face of the Savior, there is something wrong with our heart.
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So I ask you today, what is the opposite of joy? It should be sin.
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For if we are in sin, we should not be experiencing the joy of the Lord.
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We should be experiencing the conviction of heart, which calls us to say, Lord, create in me a clean heart and renew a right spirit with me.
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So my call to you today is this, if you're a Christian and you're struggling with joy, first, examine your heart.
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Are there things of which you need to repent? Are there areas of your life that you've been hiding from God? Do you have Uriahs in your closet that you've been trying to put away? Or are you ready now to say to the Lord, create in me a clean heart and renew a right spirit in me? Let's pray.
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Father, I thank you for your word.
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I thank you for your truth.
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And I thank you for the call of salvation and for the call of renewal.
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Lord, we are to renew our minds.
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So I pray, Lord, that we would be renewed in mind today.
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And as we partake in the table, to be reminded of what this table represents.
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Lord, an opportunity to examine ourselves.
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I pray it in Jesus' name.
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Amen.