Title:To repent or not to repent, that is the question
Text: Psalm 51:10-12; Samuel 11:1-12:14
This message was preached by Rev. Tony Hamilton as part of our E100 Bible reading challenge. Each sunday during the 20 week challenge we preach on a portion of scripture that the church read that week.
David sinned. David slept with another man’s wife, David tried to trick that man into having sex with his own wife so that the man would think he impregnated his wife, David then had the man killed in a sneaky way because the man would have found out his wife was pregnant by another man. David knew what he was doing was wrong. He knew that he was sinning. He was trying his best to cover it up and only made it worse. It was like a snowball down a hill. It kept getting worse and worse. David knew it was wrong, but never faced up to it and turned back toward God. David tried to handle it all himself and continued sinning and continued to not repent and turn back toward God until Nathan showed him he was sinning. It took an outsider to show David he was going down the wrong path and that he needed to turn around and head back toward God. Sometimes when we are blinded by our sin and caught up in it, we cannot see clearly what we are doing. The devil loves when we lose sight of God and we are blinded by our sin. we try to justify it. You can see David saying in his head that he was king, he deserved to have sex with Bathsheba. He deserved anything he wanted, he was king. We do that sometimes. When we sin, we will justify it or try and say it isn’t so bad, but God hates all sin, small sins, big sins. He doesn’t want any sin in our life. We know right from wrong. One of the jobs that the Holy Spirit has as he lives inside of us is conviction. When we sin and mess up, the Holy Spirit convicts us that we sinned. He did something wrong and that we need to repent. David knew what he did was wrong or he wouldn’t have tried so hard to cover it up. Its hard to face up to sin. Its embarrassing, its saying we failed, its hard. But no one is perfect. David was an amazing believer in God and he messed up. Paul messed up, Peter messed up.. All Christians thru time mess up. I mess up every day of my life. There was only perfect person and that was Jesus Christ. Jesus never sinned. But the rest of us.. we sin. So, when we sin, we have to go further then just knowing we sin. The Holy Spirit tells us, hey, you sinned and then what do we say, oh thats nice. I will try not to do that again.. sorry. It is more than that. There is a big difference between knowing something is wrong and repenting. When we sin, we are called to repent. to Repent means to turn. To turn back towards the ways of God. Back into the light and out of the darkness. To turn fully away from the sin. To say no to the sin and turn away from. It is an action. Just knowing something is wrong, is not enough. We need to take that turn. We need to turn and face God and say we are sorry and choose to obey God. Once Nathan showed David the sin in his life, David repented. He cried out to God and said that he sinned and that he sinned against God. After David repented to God, he wrote the 51st Psalm.
This morning we are going to look into Psalm 51 and see How David cried out to God. How David repented and see if we can learn when we sin, what we need to say to God.
How did David respond? How did David repent? How are we supposed to repent.
Psalm 51 was written by David after Nathan and talked to David after his affair with Bathsheba.
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.
1. verse 10 God, Change my desire to sin.
We were all born with a sinful nature but when we became a follower of Jesus, He gave us a clean new heart. When we sin, that heart gets dirty. We need to ask God to help change our hearts and our spirits. We need to ask God to create in us a pure heart. To change our hearts. Change our desires. Most of us when we sin ask God to help us not to do the sin again. but we need to ask God to change our desire to sin. To remove the root of the issue. Why do we do that sin and probably do it over and over again. We need to turn back toward God and love what God loves and hate what God hates. When we turn back towards God, he washes the sins away. God hates sin and we must to. We need to have God’s heart and to see sin the way he does. Also, we need that steadfast spirit. A steadfast spirit is a sprit that is unwavering. When sin comes and tempts us, we need to be solid in God’s ways and be obedient to God and not fall into temptation. Like the Lord prayer says to lead us not into temptation. we must not fall for the temptation and be steadfast in the ways of the Lord.
2. verse 11 God, change my love for You, my love of God.
We need to love God. We need to love to be in his presence. When we are focused on him and in his presence, the furthest thing from our mind is sin. When we are in the Bible and praying and thinking about how good God is.. our day is filled with wonderful things. When we drift away from God’s presence we usually end up in the gutter or somewhere close. God has giving us His Holy Spirit to live inside each one of us as our helper, our counselor. He is the one that shows us when we are sinning, like Nathan did for David. Our first love should be God. When we sin, we should feel like we have let God down. We should feel bad about the sin and want to do something about it. We should just feel bad, but we should desire to renew our relationship with God and to welcome the help of the Holy Spirit. The should want God to be a part of our lives. When we sin, we try to hide and conceal it from God. But God knows everything we do. When we repent, we want to rebuild that relationship. So, God, please don’t leave me, don’t leave my side. I want to walk with you, i want to talk with you. I want your holy spirit to help me. We need God. When we mess up, we need to accept the blame and turn back 100% toward God. We need to love God and we show that we love God by being obedient and that is by not sinning.
3. verse 12 God, Change the things that bring me joy.
Where do we find joy? We need a change in our spirit to be willing to follow Jesus and not the devil’s lies. The Devil wants us to keep on sinning and being disobedient to God. The devil wants us to find our joy in sin. Listen, sin is pleasurable, if it wasn’t pleasurable, then we wouldn’t do it. The joy in sin is only for a minute and usually leads to some form of destruction. Destruction of our relationship with God, Destruction of our faith, destruction of our lives and our families lives, destruction of everything. The devil wants to see us fall. We need to replace the joy of our sin to the joy of the Lord. when we are sinning, the pleasure that we get is the joy of the flesh. We need to get back to finding joy in the lord. There should be nothing that gives us more joy then knowing that Jesus is our savior and that he died for me and for you. The blessings of God are for all his children, for me and for you. If we are obedient and choose God’s ways over the sin, we will lead a blessed life. Peace, gentleness, kindness, love, long suffering, patience.. all these things are not found in our sinful behavior, but they are found in being a child of God. And that is the joy of the Lord. We are saved thru believing in Jesus. we have eternal life guaranteed thru Jesus’s work on the cross. He took all of our sins. The sins we did before following Jesus and all the sins we have done since. Every sin is taken upon that cross. So, if we want to be sustained, if we want to continue to live a fruitful good life, then we must have a willing spirit that chooses the ways of God. It is a choice. we are all tempted. But we have to say NO. As soon as the temptation comes, we need to say NO. If we let that sin come in even a little and we play with it in our mind and in our heart, we have lost the battle. The devil has won. We need to say No. That is the only thing that will keep us going. Our willing spirit to obey will keep us moving in the right direction, to be more like Jesus. we need to get rid of our unwilling unrepentant spirit. Our flesh will fight and we need to say no to the flesh and say yes to God. Change our will. Its a hard choice sometimes, but its a choice we have to make. The devil tempts us but he can’t force us to do anything. we have to be willing to say no and god will sustain us. We have to find joy in doing good, doing the will of God. God will take care of us. He takes care of his obedient children. The joy of the Lord comes from knowing that we are saved and being obedient.
Closing
God change our desire to sin against you, change our love for you God to make you our first love and change the things that bring us joy. All of the these changes God needs to make in us starts in our heart. God, change our hearts and let that change come to the surface so that we can be the children you want us to be.
Let this be the day when we fully turn back toward God. A day of repentance for anything that you may be carrying. This is the day to let it go. All the way. Let this be the day that we ask God to restore and refresh our hearts. To change our hearts to be like the heart of Jesus. God make us more like Jesus.
