Getting Your Joy Back - Psalm 51:8-19 Series

Psalm 51:1 Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions. 2 Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. 3 For I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me. 4 Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you are proved right when you speak and justified when you judge. 5 Behold, I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me. 6 Behold, you desire truth in the inner parts; you teach me wisdom in the inmost place. 7 Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow. 8 Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones you have crushed rejoice. 9 Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquity. 10 Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. 11 Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. 12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me. 13 Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will turn back to you. 14 Save me from bloodguilt, O God, the God who saves me, and my tongue will sing of your righteousness. 15 O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise. 16 You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it; you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings. 17 The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. 18 In your good pleasure make Zion prosper; build up the walls of Jerusalem. 19 Then there will be righteous sacrifices, whole burnt offerings to delight you; then bulls will be offered on your altar.

Introduction: What Needs to be Restored?

When we sin against God, what is it that we lose? When we pray for restoration, we are asking God to restore that which was destroyed by the sin, but what is that? You will seek to be restored to whatever it is that you think you lost. Those who prize respectability will think that is the main thing that was lost in their sin, so when they seek to be restored they will do so by striving to regain their respectability. Those who live off their own self-esteem will strive to get back to feeling good about themselves. Those whose religion is that of trying to impress God with their excellent behavior will mainly focus on trying to get on a better track of behavior in the future.

But for David, the man after God’s own heart, the main thing he lost was not his reputation or respectability or self-esteem or any of that. It was the closeness of his relationship with God. That is the most important thing that needs to be restored. That is what we are asking for when we say the words, “Forgive me.”

And we found last time that receiving forgiveness from God is step 3 in the process of restoration. When you sin against God, step 1 in your restoration is brokenness and contrition before God. Step 2 is to turn your attention upwards to God and His attributes - rather than turning inward with either self-justification or self-condemnation. And step 3 is to ask God to forgive you, which means asking Him to repair your relationship with Him. Ask Him to turn His attention away from that sin so it no longer has any impact on how God feels about you, so that you are now clean in His sight and fit to be in His presence. That is where we left off last week. We have two more steps before we are finished. One of the prayer cards last week said, “I’m stuck at step 3.” It would not surprise me if more than half the people in this room would put themselves in that category - stuck on constantly asking forgiveness, but never feeling forgiven. You confess your sin to God, you ask forgiveness, but guilt feelings just continue to linger like a low-grade fever in your soul. It is not the crushing, debilitating guilt that keeps you awake all night. It is just a nagging, background sense that God is mostly disappointed in you. In many cases that happens because the person does not have any idea how to know when forgiveness has come. They will say, “I don’t feel forgiven,” but if you press them and ask, “What would it feel like?” they have no idea. I think most of the time the reason people get stuck on step 3 is because they do not understand step 4. They ask God, “Please forgive me,” and then they do not know where to go from there.