Let's direct our attention now to the Word of God. We are looking at Psalm 51 Psalm 51 continuing the emphasis upon the worship of the Lord which began when we looked at a miracle a couple of weeks ago In the disciples worshiped the Lord when he had walked upon the water And so as we continue to look at that mark has directed us to the Old Testament We read the first half of this Psalm as our confession of sin and now we pick up in verse 10 with the balance of the Psalm Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me Cast me not away from your presence and take not your Holy Spirit from me Restore to me the joy of your salvation and uphold me with a willing spirit Then I will teach transgressors your ways and sinners will return to you Deliver me from blood guiltiness, O God, O God of my salvation And my tongue will sing aloud of your righteousness, O Lord open my lips and my mouth will declare your praise For you will not delight in sacrifice or I would give it You will not be pleased with a burnt offering The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise Do good to Zion in your good pleasure build up the walls of Jerusalem Then you will delight in right sacrifices in burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings Then bulls will be offered on your altar The word of the Lord you may be seated
the heart of true worship is sacrifice The heart of true worship involves sacrifice There is no worship of the true and living God in spirit and in truth Unless and until there is sacrifice Sacrifice acceptable to God we see this in the Old Testament going back to the very earliest days When the Bible says that Abel offered a more excellent sacrifice than did his brother Cane it was pleasing in the sight of the Lord We see in the lives of the patriarchs Job Abraham Isaac Jacob These men offered Sacrifices animal sacrifices blood sacrifices Attoning Sacrifices before the Lord as part of their worship Antiseed it to their worship and even following their worship You don't come to the Lord bloodless You can't come to God Almighty without a covering without an atone but a cathart
God only is approached Through a pathway of spirit and truth and sacrifice In fact so much that the Lord went to a lot of trouble to lead Israel out of Egypt into the wilderness In order that God might give them on the mountain according to a pattern a sacrificial system It was not enough for to blow a bull here and a goat there and a lamb someplace else But God through the sacrifice of the Paschalam which stood as a substitute for the first born of each household God rescued them from his from the Egypt brought them into the wilderness and on the mountain God gave Moses a sacrificial system a system of the slaying daily in the morning and in the evening of a sacrifice The slaying of multiple animals large animals On a routine basis especially around the festivals and the holy days and the holy convocations of Israel And God gave them a sacrifice of one great day The great day of atonement when a special sacrifice was offered on behalf of the people God is not approached except Through sacrifice Sacrifices at the heart of worship Now King David, I know you're very familiar with this particular passage King David had sins greatly He had committed adultery with Bathsheba He had had her husband murdered on the battlefield adultery and murder The great humiliation the covering up of his sin The convicting preaching of the prophet Nathan wherein he had looked David right in the eye and pointed and said Thou art the man and the convicting power of the Holy Spirit of God came upon David Who before had been hardened in his sin, recalciton his sin and denial of his sin Now his heart was broken and he realized the magnitude of his sin and he realized the seriousness of it His sin was before the Lord against the and the only have I sinned and done this evil in by sight David says Later on the prophet would tell all of Israel The Lord's hand is not shortened that he cannot say Neither his is ear heavy and he cannot hear But your sins have separated you from your God and he will not hear you
It is instructive for us to remember that it was David The first great king of Israel all of Israel
Who began to put together and collect the remnants and the tatters And the remains of the old tabernacle sacrificial system David with the help of Samuel the prophet and Eli the priest before him had managed somehow to recover And to preserve that ancient holy box the arc of the covenant They had found shreds of the tabernacle all of those years in the wilderness and all of those years over 300 years During the days of the judges the conquest and the days of the judges what was left of the sacrificial furniture And all of the paraphernalia that God had instructed and given to Moses which had been Carefully crafted he put together to every detail and the reason the details are important is all the details of that tabernacle talked about Christ and it was important for them to have a perfect tabernacle in order to mirror a perfect Christ And David as best he could it wasn't easy because things had really taken their toll the Philistines and other enemies of God had Had shredded and stolen and mistreated and scattered and destroyed almost everything that Moses had had With him in the wilderness of that Joshua had brought across the Jordan into the land and several hundred years have passed Generations have passed But it was David that began to pull together Everything he could Getting the order of the Levites in their courses their 24 courses in order that they might serve on a cycle in the temple It was David that began to scrap together everything he could find of the vessels and the holy furniture That was left over from the tabernacle and it was David that began to plan to build God a house a permanent house a place of worship a place of prayer A dwelling place for God in Zion It was David that gathered all the materials now. You know the story well enough to know that David didn't get to build The temple that fell to his son Solomon Shalom The Prince of peace David Was a man of war and a man of brutality a man of blood Solomon was going to be the man of gold Prosperity the blessing of the Lord. It was going to be under Solomon that the Shalom Would come to Israel the peace The pucks Israeli over the earth symbolizing again Pointing to that true Prince of peace that was to come I say all that to say a little bit of history I hope you learned something in that or caught something or at least was reminded of something of the ancient history because It brings us to the time of David and it sees that David even here when he had his personal sin To confess before the Lord Realize that the confession of his personal sin was in the context Of God's sacrificial system. So that's why we hear things like blood Guiltiness we hear things like offerings we hear things like sacrifices of God We hear about burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings and bullocks being offered This is the language of the sacrificial system of david's day that he was going to Reestablish and bring to prominence He knew But the Old Testament had taught over and over Without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sins He knew What the old covenant taught over and over and over That there could be a substitute That God had ordained that a substitute Could die in the stead of the guilty party The guilty sinner did not have to die But he could be forgiven based upon The sacrifice the blood of the sacrifice the substitute He knew that the sins of the guilty party could be laid upon another by imputation David had learned through the sacrificial system That it only sacrificed that would avail before God was a perfect sacrifice Without spot and without blemish a perfect sacrifice Would be the only sacrifice that God would accept So david is praying and asking for forgiveness from God based upon sacrifice That some thing some body there would be some blood shed for him somewhere somehow That would atone for his sins There where there would be a remission of the sins A covering of the sins and expiation of the sins A taking of the sins away A propitiation whereas the blood of that sacrifice would appease a rightfully angry God And that there would be a reconciliation that would be wrought between an angry God and a vile sinner Where God in his love would look upon the sinner and the sinner would respond With praise Interestingly enough called in the scripture the sacrifice of praise That's what david says is going to happen here When the lord forgives him and when he is delivered from his blood guiltiness he he says in In triplicate my tongue will sing aloud of your righteousness Lord open my lips and my mouth will declare your praise Out of the mouth will come the confession Out of the mouth will come the praise out of the mouth will come the joy in the jubilee restored to be the joy of the salvation Renew a right spirit within me give me the spirit of worship the spirit of truth in worship And david knows this will take place Now I'm about time, but let me just mention something as I conclude There's a phrase in here that you need to notice and it's in that very last verse And it says then Will you delight in right sacrifices then Speaking david speaking to the lord then will you oh lord delight in right Sacrifices the british revised version translates that the sacrifice of righteousness the sacrifice of righteousness Right Sacrifices If that's not a direct reference to jesus christ. I don't know what he is Jesus christ is our righteousness He is the one who came from the father. He is the one that left the splendor of heaven Latest side all the prerogatives and benefits of his royal nature And humbled himself coming in sinful flesh like us Taking upon himself the weight and the burden and the guilt and the shame and the death penalty of our sin And bearing it in his body To a bloody cross
They're shedding his blood pouring out his blood for us It was the sprinkling of the hissep Of the blood of the righteous one That's i paul but he Weaves his intricate theology of the gospel in the letter to the romans He would say that in order that the lord might be just And the justifier of those that come to god by him by christ God is just he is perfectly righteous in his sacrifice Because he took upon himself Our guilt our sin There's a death penalty in your soul this morning and the bible says that god in christ took that death sentence And carried it out He did not abate it. He did not part it. He did not forgive it and forget it He carried it out Executed it in the body of christ It's why paul and the writer to the Hebrews and others will refer to the body of christ the flesh of christ And the cross of christ Because they're talking about that event In time space history When god bore in himself the death penalty for your sin David knew that his adultery
deserved Punishment He knew that his murder that he had committed deserved death He knew That he was guilty before the lord That's why he pleads lord deliver me from from blood guiltiness That's just a little brief synopsis of gospel The gospel is the good news that god in his love Which precedes all
devised A way of salvation And he executed it Through his son jesus christ on the cross And that he now Will take that finished work that atonement that full Payment of all of the guilt of sin And And will lay it upon your soul As an active free grace and free mercy There's another phrase you might need to
Highlight in verse 12 He says restore to me the joy of your salvation salvation is of the lord salvation is his idea God executes salvation in the father the son in the spirit the whole triune god is in the business of saving lost sinners But notice the second phrase there in that strobe Restore to me the joy of your salvation and uphold me with a willing spirit Now the Hebrew is is just extremely difficult to interpret for several reasons One is their fewer vocabulary words and another one is that they can mean an assortment of things And I like the authorized version that I memorized as a child it says uphold me with thy free spirit But if this is a reference to the Holy Spirit, I think it is probably If it is a reference to the Holy Spirit, it means thy free and willing spirit The willing spirit of god Who is willing and able to come to you in your lost condition and apply savingly the blood of Christ To cleanse you and purge you from your sin and guilt To restore you and reconcile you to a right relationship with god To release in your soul the bondages and the thrall them of sin and depravity that have gripped you and taken you down in your life The things that you want to do you can't do The things that you don't want to do that's what you do The captivity of the psyche is ransomed and redeemed The prison doors are opened and the shackles fall off Of the soul that is set free by the free and willing Spirit of the living god And when you know that kind of freedom When you walk out of that kind of darkness when you leave those kinds of shackles behind and you know in your soul The saving cleansing restoring releasing and filling power of god You can't keep quiet You will worship the Lord with all your heart and it's got to come out someplace You can't hold it in the tabernacle of your flesh your mouth Is going to come open Your lips are going to be freed And your tongue will magnify the saving grace of almighty loving Try you God how I promise you it'll happen