I'd like to invite you to stand for the reading of God's Holy Word, Psalm 51 verses 10-19. You will recall a few moments ago that we used the first portion of this psalm as our confession of sin. And that was very intentional because we as a body confess our sin to our holy God and those words are appropriate, not pointing at one man but to our Savior, the man, Jesus Christ. So here we will continue the reading of this psalm beginning in verse 10, Psalm 51. These words were David's prayer, creating 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. Nor 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 guiltyness, 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 would not be pleased with the burned offering. Sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart, O God. You will not despise. Do good design in your good pleasure. Build up the walls of Jerusalem. Then will you delight and write sacrifices in burnt offerings and a whole burnt offerings. Then bulls will be offered on your altar. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Please be seated. Father, we thank you for all that we have witnessed this day. And we ask Holy Spirit that you would illuminate every heart, every mind that's here now, to receive the preached word in a way that would grow us up and understand in your mercy and your love and your call on our lives. We give you praise in Jesus' name, amen. The last few weeks we have been talking about worship, and I shared that we must prepare to worship, we are to participate in worship, and that we must persevere in worship. Perseverance is a great word. It reveals that one perseveres through times that are difficult, challenging, seeming impossible to overcome, and today we have witnessed, even as Tommy shared, the miraculous work of God. In the midst of studying the miracles, we see that they lead us to worship, and it's not simply the miracles that we see throughout scripture, but the reality of the miraculous work of God and saving His people. If you have professed faith in Christ, then that miraculous work of God has taken place. Behind the scenes of your conversion, the Holy Spirit worked, works. He is the one who allowed your mind to think correctly, your heart to feel appropriately, and your hands and feet to act as they ought, and it's a beautiful thing when we see it. So every person this day that would say, yes, I'm a believer in Jesus Christ, that miraculous work has happened and is happening in your life, because the one who started that work will finish it. It's the promise of perseverance in our life. So when it comes to our worship, we seek to persevere because of what He has done in showing us His steadfast love. Ten years ago, almost at this exact time, just a few weeks before, I met Skip Ryan for the very first time. It was a breakfast over at the original Pancake House on Northwest Highway. I didn't know much about Skip, though Barbara was the first contact I had with his church. It was actually when Skip was the moderator of General Assembly. I was in St. Louis, and I was very happy. Love living there. I finished seminary, was serving in a church, and was involved with this thing called the Youth In Ministry Institute. Their Skip was serving as moderator of the PCA, a huge role in our denomination, and I had never met him. I wasn't yet ordained, so I wasn't even supposed to be in those meetings. I was just there telling people about covenant seminary, the seminary I had attended. My phone rang, and as it rang, I went to hit decline. And as I hit decline, I guess I answered it on accident, and I heard this little voice barking at me. It was Barbara. You know the bark? Yes. So there it comes. Hello, hello, and so I pick up the phone, and I said, I'm so sorry. I meant to hit decline, which is a terrible thing to say. But she doesn't take that. Well, you know, Barbara. So I talked for a few minutes, and she said, have you seen Skip? And I literally said, Skip, who? I'm not sure who you're talking about. She said, he's the moderator of the General Assembly. I said, okay, but I still haven't met him or seen him. Who is he? My husband. Oh, Barbara, I'm so sorry, I had no knowledge of that. Well, soon I realized who he was, and what the Lord was doing in and through his life. So there we were at breakfast, number four of us, and Skip, after all the introduction and warm remarks about family, et cetera, he said, I have one question for you. Now, that sounds really profound, or it sounds like you're in a hurry. Skip asked the most profound question, and the question was simply this, Mark, what is the gospel? What is the gospel? You know, that's a question that we must always ask. And the answer that we are to give must be the answer that scripture gives us. And I wonder 10 years from that day, if the answer I would give would be any different. I don't exactly know everything I said, but I don't think my answer would be very different. I'm sure it was something along these lines, Skip, that the gospel is the reality that we, because of sin, are so much worse off than we could ever imagine. We are so more capable of doing things we could never even conceive. But God's love for us is so much deeper, so much greater than we can even imagine. All those lines, I'm sure I said something like that, because that indeed is the gospel. For every person that's here, the sin in our life, born in us, this curse that we all have, even as infants, as David says here, it has profound impact on us. We have the ability to think, and say, and do, and feel things that we could never imagine. But there is a God whose mercy and love outruns all of that, whose love is so far beyond what we could even imagine that it's described by Paul in terms that are immeasurable, so wide, so deep, so long, so high. That's the gospel. But I wonder 10 years later, how much narrative would enter into our discussion? If it was just Skip and I at the same Pancake House, I wonder how much detail would we now speak of knowing the things that have happened over the last decade? Skip used to come by my office over in Hampton Court. When I was being recruited to come, I laid out three kind of non-negotiables. I won't tell you all of them, but one of them was this, I have to report directly to the senior pastor. I said that, and I believed it. Why? Because I think youth ministry is so important, and the youth minister needs to have the ear of the senior pastor. I was told no. Nobody reports to Skip Ryan. I thought, red flag. But then I was introduced to Tim Tinsley and thought, hey, that's not a bad deal after all. Tim and I, such dear sweet friends. But one thing I had the whole time was Skip's ear, primarily because of Barbara, but I did. And Skip would come by my office, and he would often have a brown sack with something in it, and it always had cranberries in it, whatever it was. And he would lean his head in and say, Mark, would you like to eat lunch? And I would look at my watch and say, well, Skip, it's two o'clock. I've already had lunch with somebody in the body, so I'm happy to sit down with you and talk, and we often did. And their conversations formed that were very deep and rich, and in honesty, I think was presented. Skip would ask me questions, and I felt the freedom to say exactly what I felt. I really treasured those moments. Over time, as history has shown us, God has revealed His powerful love to this body, through this man. And each and every time it points us to the man, we don't stop, short and praise a man. We never should do that, but we praise the God who saves a man, who saves a man, who saves men and women and children to him be the glory. But today, we actually have the privilege, listen carefully, like every Sunday of witnessing the miraculous, redeeming work of Jesus Christ. Today, a man is installed, or re-installed as a minister in this church, but every Sunday, people come. And they are reminded of the gospel. What is the gospel? What is the gospel of the gospels in Psalm 51? Did you hear it? Go back to your public confession of sin, or turn in the pew Bible to Psalm 51. Let's look for a minute at the first few verses. David is writing this prayer, this Psalm, after his deep sin with Bathsheba. Most of us are aware of this story, but here's what I will simply say today. David should have been somewhere he wasn't. When all kings go to war, David should have been at war, but he wasn't. So he's on his rooftop, where he shouldn't have been. And he looks out across other rooftops, which he shouldn't have done. And there, when he saw the image of a woman in a glance, he decided with temptation to gaze. And as he gazed, sin was born in his heart. He then had the woman brought to him, and then a sin unfolded to the point where he then sent to have her husband murdered. That's sin. I believe beyond what David could have ever imagined he was capable of, but he did it. He did all of it, and he is guilty. And his God knew it. He saw it, and in 2 Samuel, we are told that the Lord was displeased with David. David tried to cover up his sin. He tried to make it look like something else had happened, but the Lord knew, and the Lord knows. David begins his psalm by speaking of mercy. Listen to it. Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love, which is another frame of perseverance, according to your abundant mercy. David knows that he cannot in any way approach God aside from his mercy. Sunday after Sunday, as we enter and hear to worship, we can never offer a breath of worship to God without his mercy. And David knows it. And so he sees his condition. He has seen his sin, and he says, have mercy on me, O God. He describes the character of God, but he also begins to describe the reality of sin. David uses three different words for sin to digress the whole meaning. Listen to what he says. What about my transgressions? Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. He uses those three words, transgression and iniquity and sin. The word transgression means crossing a boundary. That the Lord in His word has given us boundaries that we are not to step beyond. He has given us these commands, these laws that are meant to protect us, but in our own sinful condition, we go up to the edge and we step over. David there on his rooftop, as he looks, knows that he's not to look with lust, but he did. He crossed over the border. That is the word for transgression. The second word he uses is the word iniquity, and this is the word that we use for original sin. It means that David understood, even as he describes his own conception, that we all, because of original sin, are sinners. We do not come to no sin. We are born in sin. Now some people say, well, babies, you know, they're innocent. They don't have sin. And I always want to ask those people right away, how many children do you have? Any? They're not sinless. They learn to do things early and often the word iniquity means original sin, depravity. But then David uses the third word, not just transgression, it's not just iniquity, but also the word sin. He says, and cleanse me from my sin. The word sin here means missing the mark. It's an archer who is standing back and there's only one place that you can hit, and it has to be exactly perfect on that mark, the bull's eye, and all of us have missed the mark. Not some less than others, because the standard's perfection, we all have fallen short of the glory of God, because of sin. Every one of us has missed the mark, every one of us has fallen short, and the reality of that sin impacts the person so greatly that David uses words like bones crushed. It impacts the whole person, but not just the individual, when we sin. When we live in a sinful world, it impacts those around us as well. What does this have to do with worship? Well, this side of heaven, until glory, we enter into a sanctuary where a battle takes place. The battle is real. There are forces against us that we don't see. The enemy does not want us to worship, but instead he wants us to be distracted by so many things that are related to sin, and so this is what it looks like on any given Sunday. There are people entering those doors and these doors who belong to worship God. There are people who enter those doors and these doors who long to long to worship God. There are people who enter those doors and these doors who are so dry that the Sunday before was like drinking dirt, and their desire is just waning, and their ability to open the Bible and find anything of worth because of their condition is so low, and they're sitting right next to you, and you're sitting right next to them. Every Sunday, every Sunday, there are people who come into this sanctuary 11th, the night before simply taking their computer or their iPhone and hit clear all, because they want no one to see their history, yet the Lord has seen it, and they know it, and so that shame follows them as they enter in. There are those here among us who have had thoughts even this morning of another person, and they know it's wrong. Eniquity, transgression, and sin, it is serious, and it's deep, but it's not just the individuals andiquity, transgression, and sin. It's also the reality of living in a sinful world where disease and brokenness and pain are everywhere present. There are moms and dads here today who will be receiving a middle school child later this afternoon from a retreat in which the middle school child, he will say, I prayed for salvation and there are other parents who hear me say that now who are saying, oh, when will my child return to the faith? There are young men and young women engaged to be married at some point in the next future, and there are husbands and wives sitting in here wondering if their marriage is going to make it. There are people here today who have just received the news, a good, clean bill of health more than they could have hoped for, and others who are awaiting the call from a doctor tomorrow. What will the biopsy say? There are people who are going to be celebrating the 90th birthday of a parent and others who wonder, why did my mom or my dad have to die so young? This is PC, PC, every Sunday, and in the midst of it all, we're called to worship God, every Sunday. But how can we persevere in the midst of the broken world, David tells us, you see, David understood the significance of his own sin. He could see the impact of his sin on other people in fact, a whole nation, but he also because of mercy, this is so important to understand, because of mercy. He could see mercy, do you understand? Because of mercy, God even showing mercy to give sight, he could see mercy. And so David then begins to cry out in verse 7, listen, purge me with hiship and I shall be clean, wash me and I shall be wider than snow. Let me hear joy and gladness, let the bones that you have broken rejoice, hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquities, create in me a clean heart, oh 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. Do you hear that prayer? This is how we, his people, persevere in worship, not just once in a while when we're having a difficult day or a difficult season, but every Sunday that we enter in, this is what we pray, here's why, if we don't pray this prayer and absolute dependence on God, we will seek to do these things ourselves. For example, we will seek to wash ourselves and make ourselves wider than snow. We do it all the time, good works will make us look a little bit cleaner. When I was a young boy, I took a treasure of my brothers, it was a baseball, typical baseball, I know it's a bad subject right now but I have no control over that, I took the baseball, and I went out with my friends to play. We were practicing grounders on the concrete because it was faster. The significance of this ball wasn't that it was just a nice new white ball, but it had been signed by Hank Aaron. But at six years of age, I had no idea who this man Henry was, I had no knowledge, I just simply wanted to play, so I took the ball and began to bounce it off the curve, it would get in a little bit of rainwater and roll into the glove of one of my friends. Then we began to hit the ball as well, through the mud, you got the picture, here's the ball. So I took it in, I looked at it and thought it needs to go back on the shelf but it's dirty, so I will wash it. So I took it to the sink and began to scrub it and it became wider and wider, not perfect but definitely more white. And the name that was on it which meant nothing to me began to blur away almost completely. Well, my brother came in and saw the ball. What do you think he did? Well, let's pray for our relationships, if it's day, it's still a little bit strange. There's nothing I could do to make that ball clean. There's nothing I could do to make it right and you can do nothing to clean up yourself to stand before a holy God so that he would see you because of your own ability to clean yourself. Instead, we're covered in the perfect righteousness of our Savior. We're saying about it all morning in the righteousness of Christ we are clothed. Notice another word in verse 10, David prays, create in me a clean heart, oh God, the word create here is actually very rare. It means that the sovereign God is exercising power to do something that is seemingly impossible. Well, when something seems impossible, that's when we persevere. And we admire people who do persevere. An athlete or a family that's gone through a terrible ordeal. We will say things like how did you do it? I remember Skip telling me that people would say to him, how can you keep coming to church here and sitting right there? Thanks for moving by the way today. Sitting right there, how could you do that? You know, Skip told them each and every time, where else can I go? You see, that's the church. It took God, given courage, God given perseverance, God given accountability to a group of elders that said you have to keep coming here. We could admire a man or we can say what a God we serve, who gave him the mercy to ask for the mercy. You see, perseverance in God, in his steadfast love is God doing what only God could do. David Praise created me a clean heart, do what only you can do, oh God. And then he says, and renew a right spirit within me. That word right spirit could be translated steadfast, which is another word for perseverance. David knows that unless the Lord does this, he can never do what God called him to do. He could never be who God called him to be. So he continues and prays, cast me not away from your presence, though he deserved it. And take not your Holy Spirit from me. Pray nothing more. If this is all that could be in your mind, pray nothing more when you enter the sanctuary. When your mind drifts, when shame fills your mind, when fear consumes you, pray, cast me not away from your presence, O Lord. Take not your Holy Spirit from me, because the Holy Spirit lives in believers. He is in you and he is far more interested in you worshipping God and hungering for God and thirsting for God than you ever will be. So when you're honest with him about the condition of your soul, tell him in prayer, pray these prayers. And what will happen as we persevere? Look with me down at verse 14. David says, deliver me, again, you hear the dependence. Deliver me from blood, guiltiness, O God, O God of my salvation. And so this is the result of what will happen if the Lord delivers him. And my tongue will sing aloud of your righteousness. O Lord, open my lips and my mouth will declare your praise. Do you see what David has done? And just a verse or two, he has taken every part of the mouth, every part that speaks and says, it will bring you praise. But it can't bring praise that's honoring to God unless the Lord is the one who delivers. This is why a pastor standing up here or a music leader can never make you worship God. It's triumphant and beautiful as the music was today. None of it could make you worship God, only God in his mercy can make you worship God. And so we cry out, Father, deliver me, have mercy on me, that I may see mercy, skip. What is the gospel? We saw it today. People, what is the gospel? We see it every day. What is the gospel, Sunday after Sunday as saints come into this place to worship? We can see God's faithfulness, His steadfast love enabling us to move one step closer to Him. On those days when you don't feel like you can get out of bed, on those Sundays when you and your husband tangle or entangle with your kids, pray these prayers and give God praise that He has you in this place. What is the gospel? The gospel is the news that our sin is so much worse than we know and that we are capable of what we can never even imagine, but God's love is so much greater than we could ever dream beyond anything we can ever conceive of. His mercies made new every morning. The gospel is what we have been singing. The gospel is why we sing. Pray for the Lord to deliver us that our tongue, our lips, our mouths might proclaim the wonder of who he is. This is the gospel. Without it, we have nothing. And all God's people said, amen. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make His face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you. The Lord lift up His countenance upon you and give you peace.