Start Walking in Purity
Psalm 51:1-15
Sermon by Rick Crandall
McClendon Baptist Church - April 6, 2008
*Let me start tonight by saying that sex is a good thing. I think we can say that can’t we? -Sex is a good thing! One way we know this is because none of us would be here without it. But even better, we know that sex is good, because it was created by God. God designed sex to be a wonderful blessing to us. And it is a wonderful blessing when practiced according to God’s plan for marriage.
*On the other hand, sex will bring great pain, if we don’t follow God’s plan for it. The introduction to Psalm 51 says, “A Psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet went to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba.” Nathan the prophet confronted David about the terrible sin of adultery he committed with Bathsheba, -- a sin that led to the murder of Bathsheba’s husband, and the death of the baby conceived through David’s adultery.
*David’s song of confession is in Psalm 51. Let’s read vs. 1-15:
1. Have mercy upon me, O God, According to Your lovingkindness; According to the multitude of Your tender mercies, Blot out my transgressions.
2. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, And cleanse me from my sin.
3. For I acknowledge my transgressions, And my sin is ever before me.
4. Against You, You only, have I sinned, And done this evil in Your sight That You may be found just when You speak, And blameless when You judge.
5. Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, And in sin my mother conceived me.
6. Behold, You desire truth in the inward parts, And in the hidden part You will make me to know wisdom.
7. Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
8. Make me to hear joy and gladness, That the bones which You have broken may rejoice.
9. Hide Your face from my sins, And blot out all my iniquities.
10. Create in me a clean heart, O God, And renew a steadfast spirit within me.
11. Do not cast me away from Your presence, And do not take Your Holy Spirit from me.
12. Restore to me the joy of Your salvation, And uphold me with Your generous Spirit.
13. Then I will teach transgressors Your ways, And sinners shall be converted to You.
14. Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God, The God of my salvation, And my tongue shall sing aloud of Your righteousness.
15. O Lord, open my lips, And my mouth shall show forth Your praise.
*Tonight is a special night as some of our young people are publicly committing themselves to a life of purity. This is a good and Godly thing for them to do, -- far too rare in our society today.
*We honor you for the commitment you are making tonight. But the truth is that you are going to need help to keep that commitment. We all need help living up to God’s high standards for our lives, and we can find great help right here in the Word of God. Tonight we will look at 5 principles that will help all of us to live up to God’s high standards for our lives.
1. First: Be wise about the challenge.
*Keeping your commitment is not an easy thing. This is partly true because of the world we live in today. God’s ways of purity have been stubbornly rejected by all of our media, and much of our society today. We live in a world where “Sex in the City” reruns are on TV as much as “The Andy Griffith Show” used to be. We live in a world where there are 5 or 10 porn channels on TV, and literally millions of sites on the web. We live in a world where McDonalds has become a member of the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce, because company leaders want to aggressively promote homosexual business ventures. McDonald’s CEO Jim Skinner wrote on their website that this was part of their company “being a socially responsible organization.” (1)
*That’s the world we live in -- but keeping a commitment to purity can also be hard because of our weakness. If a man like King David -- one of the greatest heroes of our faith -- giant killer -- a man after God’s own heart -- writer of the 23rd Psalm and many more. If a man like that can fall so far, -- then we have to face up to our own weaknesses.
2. We must be wise about the challenge. -- And be warned about the dangers.
*We must be warned about the dangers of sin. David went through incredible pain and hardship because of his sin. Sin always costs more than we ever want to pay -- even though the costs may be hidden at first. David Lansdown gave a great explanation of the effects of sin we can see in this Psalm. (2)
1-First, sin can make us feel unclean. So David cried out in vs. 2, “Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, And cleanse me from my sin.” Then in vs. 7, “Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.” And in vs. 10, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, And renew a steadfast spirit within me.”
2-Next, sin can fill our mind. So in vs. 3, David said, “I acknowledge my transgressions, And my sin is ever before me.”
3-Next, sin can make us depressed. So in vs. 8, David pleaded with God, “Make me to hear joy and gladness.”
4-And sin can make us sick. Again in vs. 8, “Make me to hear joy and gladness, That the bones which You have broken may rejoice.” Sin can make you sick. Here is a shocking statistic from the Centers for Disease Control: One in 4 teenage girls in the United States has a sexually-transmitted disease. -- Not 1 in 4,000 or 1 in 400, but 1 in 4! (3)
5-Sin can make you sick. -- And sin can destroy the assurance of God’s presence, so in vs. 11 David was compelled to ask God, “Do not cast me away from Your presence, And do not take Your Holy Spirit from me.” God’s love for David had not changed a drop, but David felt a distance, a broken fellowship. That’s what known sin will do in our lives.
6-And sin can steal the joy of your salvation. David never lost his salvation, but he did lose the joy of his salvation. So in vs. 12, he prayed, “Restore to me the joy of Your salvation, And uphold me with Your generous Spirit.”
*All of these painful things and more came into David’s life because of his sin.
3. We must be warned about the dangers of sin. -- And be washed by God’s mercy.
*Thank God we have a merciful Savior! David knew this fantastic truth, so in vs. 1-3 he prayed, “Have mercy upon me, O God, According to Your lovingkindness; According to the multitude of Your tender mercies, Blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, And cleanse me from my sin. For I acknowledge my transgressions, And my sin is ever before me.”
*Another great place to see the mercy of God is in vs. 7, where David prayed, “Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.” “Purge me, purify me with hyssop,” David prayed. For years I passed right over that, not realizing the crucial importance of those words. But the first time we see the hyssop plant was back in Exodus 12, the first Passover, when the Lord set the Children of Israel free from slavery in Egypt.
21. Then Moses called for all the elders of Israel and said to them, "Pick out and take lambs for yourselves according to your families, and kill the Passover lamb.
22. And you shall take a bunch of hyssop, dip it in the blood that is in the basin, and strike the lintel (beam above the door) and the two doorposts with the blood that is in the basin. And none of you shall go out of the door of his house until morning.
23. For the Lord will pass through to strike the Egyptians; and when He sees the blood on the lintel and on the two doorposts, the Lord will pass over the door and not allow the destroyer to come into your houses to strike you.
*They were saved by the blood of the lamb, and that was a picture of what Christ was to do for us when He died on the cross. Now we all can be washed clean through the mercy of our God. Like David, we can pray, “Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.”
4. We must be washed by God’s mercy. -- And be willing for God to work in your life.
*As David prayed in vs. 10, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, And renew a steadfast spirit within me.” Are you willing to let God have control of your life? -- Or are you stubbornly resisting God’s work in your heart?
*Max Lucado tells about taking his two daughters to a park. They went into a plastic ball pit to play. One of those 3-foot-deep pits filled with thousands and thousands of lightweight, plastic balls. Max’s older daughter did just fine, but the younger one was only 3 and she struggled.
As soon as she stepped into the pit, she filled her arms with balls. It’s hard enough for a 3-year-old to walk through a waist-deep pile of balls with your arms spread to keep your balance, -- and it’s impossible to do so with your arms full. So little Andrea took a step and fell. She tried to get up without letting go of the balls. She couldn’t do it and began to cry.
*Max walked over to the edge of the pit and said, "Andrea, let go of the balls and you can walk." "No," she screamed getting deeper and deeper. Trying to be wise and patient, Max said, "Andrea, if you let the balls go, you’ll be able to walk." She said, "No!" took two steps and fell again.
*Parents weren’t allowed in the pit, so Max asked his older daughter, Jenna, to come over and help her sister get back on her feet. But Jenna wasn’t strong enough, and Andrea was still hanging on to the balls she grabbed when she first stepped into the pit. Jenna said, "Daddy, I can’t get her up." So Max said, with a great deal more irritation in his voice, "Andrea, let go of the balls so you can get up!" The cry from beneath the balls was muffled but clear: "Nooo!"
*Max thought to himself, "She’s got what she wants and she’s going to hold on to it if it kills her." The next step was to tell Jenna to take the balls away from her sister. So they engaged in hand-to-hand combat for a while until finally the attendant told Max he could go on in to get them out.
*Later Max reflected, "What is it that makes children immobilize themselves by clutching toys so tightly?" Then he thought, "Whatever it is, they learned it from their parents. That child’s determination to hold onto those balls is nothing compared to the grips we put on the things this world has to offer. And if you think Jenna’s job of trying to take those balls away from Andrea was tough, try prying our fingers away from our earthly treasures. The way we clutch our possessions and our pleasures, you’d think we couldn’t live without them. Our resistance to the Father is just as childish as Andrea’s. God wants us to loosen our grip for our own good, but sometimes we refuse to let go. (4)
5. We must be willing for God to work in our lives. -- And be a witness for the truth. This was the cry of David’s heart in vs. 12-15:
12. Restore to me the joy of Your salvation, And uphold me with Your generous Spirit.
13. Then I will teach transgressors Your ways, And sinners shall be converted to You.
14. Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God, The God of my salvation, And my tongue shall sing aloud of Your righteousness.
15. O Lord, open my lips, And my mouth shall show forth Your praise.
*God wants us to witness with our lips, but we must also witness with our lives.
*Melvin Shelton tells the story of a youth meeting where the kids were talking a verse of Scripture from Matthew 5. It was the verse where Jesus tells His followers: “You are the salt of the earth.”
*The youth group discussed the meaning of that verse. Then the leader asked them to talk about different uses of salt. There were several good answers: Salt gives flavor to food. It preserves food to keep it from decaying.
*Then one girl said, “Salt makes you thirsty.” They all got quiet as they began to ask, “Have I ever made anyone thirsty for Jesus?” (5)
*Have I ever made anyone thirsty for Jesus? We can -- we must make people thirsty for Jesus, witnessing with our lives, then witnessing with our lips. Let’s ask God to help us live up to His high standards for our lives.
(1) American Family Association Action Alert
(2) Adapted from SermonCentral sermon “What Happens When A Christian Sins?” by David Lansdown - Psalms 51:1-19
(3) BBC NEWS: news.bbc.co.uk - 2008/03/11
(4) Lucado story found in SermonCentral sermon “Forceful Men” by Alan Smith - Matt 11:7-15
(5) SermonCentral illustration contributed by Melvin Shelton
