Psalm 51, have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love, according to your abundant mercy, blood out my transgressions. Watch me through it from myiquity and cleanse me from my sin. 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, so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment. Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity and incendiated my mother conceivably. Behold, you delight in truth and the inward being and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart. Perch me with hiss up and I shall be clean, wash me and I shall be wider than snow. Let me hear joy and gladness, let the buns you have broken rejoice, hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquities.
Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew the 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 who return to you. Deliver me from blood guiltiness, O God, O God of my salvation, and my tongue will sing aloud your righteousness. O Lord, open my lips and my mouth to declare your praise for you will not delight in the sacrifice where I would give it. You will not be pleased with a burn 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 burn offerings and hold our offerings. Then, bulls will be offered on your altar. This is the Word of the Lord. Thank you. Please be seated. Let's pray. Father in heaven, we are so thankful. Thank you for the many, many things that you've given us, for your word which has just been read by two new members of our body, young men who you've called your own. We ultimately thank you, Father, for your son Jesus Christ and his death on the cross, that which we have been seeing about this morning in preparation for the feast that you have before us. God, we thank you for the means of grace, for the way in which you use these things to transform our lives, allowing us to see the depth of our sin and the need for a Savior. And that Savior is Jesus. Lord, I pray that you would be with every individual here today. Hearts that are heavy and broken because of sin, whether it's our own sin or being sinned against, we pray that you and you alone, Lord, we begin to be that which occupies our hearts and minds. We ask, Lord, that you would do a work that only you can do. That as we leave today, we will be filled with joy. As David prayed, we ask that you would renew our right spirit within us. Lord, we ask that you would restore to us the joy of your salvation. Father, I pray that you would be with all those in the body today who are hurting deeply. And I pray for those among us today who might simply be visiting, maybe seeking to understand more about Christianity but aren't yet shown. God, use me, your servant, in this moment to proclaim faithfully and boldly the truth of the gospel that we all might see the wonder of Jesus Christ and whose name we pray. Amen. Well, I'm very thankful for the body of Christ. It is, as the elders experience once in a while, getting to be your twice in a row, which I get to experience each week, the beauty of our worship. Isn't it fun? It's great to hear these songs twice, to have your hearts swell with the joy. And I'm grateful for all the gifted people that God has put around us. I'm also thankful for the body in terms of what happened yesterday. Nearly, I guess, over actually, I was corrected last service. 500 people went over into West Dallas to serve yesterday. And that's a wonderful thing to see our body at work like that. I'm very grateful that so many responded and went faithfully. But I didn't go. I wanted to go and was looking forward to that moment for many, many weeks. But I received a phone call early Friday morning that my mom had an accident. Some of you are aware of that. I'll bring you up to date. My mom is not in good health. Hasn't been for a number of years. She has infosima and is oxygen all the time. But she still gets around. She has a lot of spirit, a lot of joy. She's great cook and loves to eat. The food which she cooks, which is important for the rest of the story. My mom is going to get her nails done which she does once a month or so. It's important for an elderly woman to make sure her toes look exactly right. But if she was pulling into the parking lot in a retail center where she gets her nails done, she blacked out. She then drove into the retail shopping center through the glass front. Took a sharp left turn. I don't know how and drove out the side of it through the brick wall. She was not injured from the accident. But doctors have began to look at her heart and her brain. It's said to understand much wrong. They put a stint in her heart yesterday. She had had a heart attack 14 months ago. And that seems to be helping but they're still concerned for what caused the blackout exactly. So I asked that you would continue to pray for her and her recovery. Her name is Maureen. She's a dear, dear woman. Mother of five. And you can imagine what it's like to be my mother. I feel somewhat guilty when I see her. That she's in the condition she's in. So pray for me, too. When I was in the hospital room when you're in a heart hospital, you can't help but think about your own heart. And now I'm not talking about the spiritual heart. I'm talking about the physical heart. My brothers and sisters for the most part are not in very good shape, largely because we all have a love for food. And so the nurse called us all into the hall yesterday to speak with us about our mother and then to speak with each of us about our lives. Now, I happen to be the slimest in my family. But I want you to know that underneath this robe is a multitude of dietary sins that are hidden. I do not eat really that healthy. And when I saw my mother's heart through the ultrasound, I realized that that's probably one day what my heart is going to look like. If certain changes aren't made after a further conversation with the nurse, she assured me that that would be true. And that I needed to take some action regarding my diet. It's just hard when you have a love for food the way I do. And elders who give you a pie of the month club at Christmas as a gift. So thank you, brothers, for helping me send. When we eat, we're putting things in our body that we can't really see the ultimate damage. But over time, those types of food began to cause the arteries to blood. And then suddenly there is a significant clogging and blood can't get through. The same is true with sin. Sin is something that has an incredible impact on us. Sometimes we know immediately the damage of it. But often we don't. Often it's like eating pie and doughnuts and enchiladas all of our life. And then suddenly at a certain age our heart says no more. Sin is like that. And David here is crying out for something specific. He's crying out that God would restore unto him the joy of salvation. You see, that's what sin does. Sin destroys our joy. But it does so with great deception and lying. Nobody looks at sin and says that doesn't look fun. That'll probably ruin my life. But I'm going to do it anyway. We look at it and see that it's appealing. And we move towards it even though God has given us a boundary that said no. Don't go there. That will destroy your life. That will rob your joy. We go. And over time suddenly it builds up. And as it builds up it begins to destroy life and destroy ultimate joy. So what it means is that we need to make changes in our life. But changes as any good heart physician knows are difficult for people to make. David Letterman years ago when he had a heart attack he was out of his work for a while. You know David Letterman the late night talk show host. On a second show after returning he made this comment. He was complaining about his new diet. And as he spoke about the things he can no longer have like caffeine and high fatty foods. He then said the doctor said you can no longer have bacon. He then responded by saying great. Now what am I going to put my butter on? You see that's how we often think of sin. If we could just change a little bit of our diet we'll be fine. What we don't realize is that the enemy truly wants to destroy our hearts. He truly wants to destroy us through sin. But it happens most of the time very subtly. For example when a man looks at someone he shouldn't look at. If he was able to see in the future what that pattern would do to his marriage. To his being a parent. To his being a member of the church. To his being a child of God. He wouldn't look. The gaze wouldn't happen. It would be a glance. There's a woman she seems attractive. I'm looking away. But we don't do that. We look. And as we gaze suddenly there begins to be a deterioration in our heart. It's the same way with every sin. It's greed. If we simply begin to think of ourselves and are consumed with our own desire for material things. We begin to lose the generous heart. We begin to be less grateful. But it doesn't happen automatically. It's very subtle. It's the way with our tongue. If we tell a lie or speak gossip. It didn't seem like that big a deal right away. But then suddenly it begins to erode at our heart. And then we find ourselves in a place like David where the joy of our salvation is gone. Now remember David through this Psalm shares with a 17 different request. Why? Because the sin in his life has become so entangled that he's desperate for God to heal him. He cries out with four longings. The first longing is the longing for a new clean heart. We talked about that last week. The second longing is the longing for God's presence. This morning just for a brief moment. I want to talk about his longing for joy. I'm only going to set the table today and then pick that theme up next week. But David is longing for God to give him joy. You see it in the Psalm where he cries out verse 12. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and uphold me with a willing spirit. Think about the kind of joy that David knew in his relationship with God. Can you imagine the joy David felt when he struck down Goliath? Think about it for a moment. Can you imagine the eruption of the applause of the army as they saw their prime enemy defeated by a little boy? Can you imagine what it felt like as he grabbed that stone and slung it and hit the Goliath in the forehead? Can you imagine what it was like to be swelled up in all of that glory? The enemy was defeated in David at such a young age with an incredible heart for God gave glory where it was due. But now he's facing a different Goliath. It's a place he never imagined he could be. He has caused a woman to be pregnant who's not his wife and he has had her husband murdered. His friend Nathan has come to him with the word of God, the first means of grace, and says you have done evil. It's been exposed. And now he's left to deal with this broken heart that's shattered and where does he go? He goes the only place he knows to go. To the God who's called him his own, to the God, to the God, one true God, the only one who can restore his heart. Do you see that David quickly doesn't run to a pattern of new behavior and new tactics? He falls down and says against you and you only have I sinned. The cost of David's sin is his joy. He's joyless. And instead of pulling himself up by his bootstraps and trying to do it all himself, he goes to his father. And he says, restore unto me the joy of your salvation. I want to ask you this morning, are you joyful? When I was in the hospital with my mom, I was reminded of the little faces that are often in doctor's offices. They help people describe the level of pain. You've seen those? On one end, it has a real happy face. I feel pretty good. I shouldn't even be here. And on the other side, it looks like well, a face of death. If I don't get some medication, I'm going to die. And depending on your tolerance for pain, you identify yourself somewhere along that continuum. When it comes to joy as a Christian, where are you? Joy isn't this exceedingly happy place where everything is always fine. It's not right for me to show up at the hospital Friday afternoon and say, maha, praise Jesus that you drove through a building. He's wonderful and good. Aren't you glad that you're here in this hospital? That would be foolish. But can I have joy in the midst of that? Yes. I can have joy that if she drove through the building, it was vacated. The one next to it wasn't where many women were having their nails taken care of. I can rejoice that she wasn't injured. I can rejoice that she wasn't killed, that nobody was killed. I can rejoice in God's sovereignty. I can rejoice that that would she drove through an art gallery is in Bethany, Oklahoma, where we're not really known for art galleries. I'm hoping it's a lot of black velvet elvises, you know? I can rejoice in those kinds of things, but it would be foolish to just appear happy all the time. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about a joy that's so deep, so deep within us, that regardless of the circumstances, regardless of that which we're experiencing, we have a confidence in God. One of the great definitions that I came across these many weeks and studying on joy is this, biblical joy consists of the deep and abiding confidence that all is well, regardless of circumstances and difficulty. Biblical joy is always related to God and belongs only to those who are in Christ. What that means is that God offers us a joy that David somehow knew. But now because of his sin, it's gone, it's absent. And instead of trying to get it himself, he goes to the source of that joy and he says, the store, restore unto me the joy of my salvation, he goes to the author of that joy. The word restore, it means to make new or to return to the original, normal condition. Brothers and sisters, God is in the business of renewal. He is seeking to renew that which he created. He created us for joy. He created us for a joy that is beyond anything any of us have ever experienced. But one day all those in Christ will, when everything is as it was meant to be, but sin entered the world. And when it did, joy was one of the great sacrifices. But here's the thing, you and I don't look to the end of our sin to see where it will end. But God has. And in doing so, knowing what the ultimate outcome of sin was, it's greatest thing being death. God did something about it. He sent his son. And he sent his son breaking through the boundaries, so to speak, that I talked about a few weeks ago, breaking through the boundaries that we might have life, sending his son to the cross so that all of the sin of the world will be poured out on his son and his own wrath as well. And what happened, as I said last week, the heart of Christ burst. What's the sound of a broken heart? It's the sound of our Savior crying out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? He forsook him so that he wouldn't forsake his people, so that he wouldn't forsake you and me, so that as we go through these difficult times, we know that it's only for a season, but we can have real joy because in the end we will be with him forever. How's your joy? God has given us the means of grace to remember his joy. One of them is the word, God graciously sent Nathan to David, to say, David, you're the man. God graciously has given us this holy word that we might see that we're the men, we're the women that put Christ on the cross. But God also graciously has given us a feast. It's set behind me on this table. And this table is to remind us of who we are and is to remind us even more of who God is and what he did, that he sent his son to the earth to do everything that was necessary to deliver, to redeem, to rescue and save his people. And as we come to the table this morning, I want you to understand a couple of things. One is this, that this table is for God's people. It is not a Presbyterian table. It's a table for those who belong to Christ, who are members of an evangelical church that professes faith in Christ, but it's for God's people. This morning if you're here with the heart that's heavy, broken, or hard to the things of Jesus, I want you to know that you're here for a reason. I believe God has you here for a reason. But if you've yet to place faith in Jesus Christ, God's Word would urge me as a preacher to ask that you allow the elements to pass you by today, lest you eat and drink judgment upon your own soul. So as they pass, give consideration to what it means to know that Jesus Christ died for your sins and the cross. You may be thinking, well, I'm not in a good place with God right now, I know I have a relationship with him, but my heart is hard. That's exactly what the table is for. The table is to restore unto us the joy of our salvation, or his salvation, to recognize his deliverance. So I encourage you to eat and to eat remembrance of what Christ has done. When we come to the table, we are to come being sober and humble, but we're also to come expectant and thankful with hearts full of joy for what he has done through Christ. Every one of us are the same as we come to this table. We have come in on the rails of humility and mercy, come, take and eat and ask him and him alone to restore unto you the joy of his salvation.