Repentance: 9 Invitations of the Gospel – 11/26/23

Good morning, friends. If you were here last Sunday for our Thanksgiving anniversary Sunday, it was so beautiful and so enriching to be able to come forward and offer our offerings to God. I was so blessed to be able to see all the people just gathering down front, magnifying God with their prayers back to him, thanking him for who he is, what he’s done in our lives. It was such a sweet time together. It’s not unusual during this season that God brings to mind people or events for which we’re genuinely grateful. Maybe it’s a family member that has really blessed you during this season of life. Or maybe it’s a faithful friend who has walked a dark journey with you. Or maybe it’s a provision of God that simply shows his goodness and kindness of his heart. These are all good things that bring us great joy and gratitude.

But I’d like to offer up one more today that may not have been at the forefront of your mind in terms of gratitude and thanksgiving, and it’s the doctrine of repentance. And I get it. Repentance can seem like such a downward process, very hard and humbling, just an extreme and blatant honesty before God. It’s difficult. If you’re a follower of Jesus today, the doctrine of repentance is one of the greatest gifts that we have given to us as sons and daughters of God.

John Owens, the Puritan pastor and theologian, said this about repentance. He said,

“Repentance pulls the weeds from out of the soil of our hearts that have been choking out any life and any fruitfulness.”

And as the system of this world does with all truth, repentance gets watered down and it loses the essence of the gratitude and thanksgiving that it’s meant to stir within us. And many times, it’s because we either really don’t understand what biblical repentance is or we have forgotten the gift of repentance that God has given to us.

So, our purpose this morning is threefold. One, to remind us of the gifts of repentance as we find in Psalm 51; two, to remind us of the kind and gracious outcome of repentance that our Father gives to us; and three, that the remembrance of these things about repentance would stir up true heart gratitude and thanksgiving within us.

When I was a young boy, one of the most spiritually enriching books that I read was The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan. John Bunyan wrote this book while in prison. He was in prison for preaching unlawfully, and then he published the book in 1678 after he got out of jail. It still ranks as one of the most widely translated and most read books of all time. If you’re not familiar with this book, it’s an allegory that’s written from the author’s perspective of having a dream, and he dreams about the trials and tribulations and victories that a Christian experiences on this road of sanctification. And the story follows a man named Christian who leaves his hometown of the City of Destruction, and it follows him all the way until he reaches the gates of the Celestial City. My favorite part of the story in all the book revolves around Christian and his friend Hopeful. They are traveling together on the Road of Righteousness, the Narrow Way. They had been told repeatedly, “Do not leave this narrow path. Don’t try another way. Don’t go around it. Don’t bypass it. Don’t shortcut it. Be faithful to stay on it.”

But as they travel, they’re tired, and their feet are worn and bruised from the hard ground beneath them. But one day, to their left, Christian sees this fence, and over the fence is a beautiful, green and lush meadow, and right on the other side of the fence is a different path. It’s a path that looks very comfortable, full of grass and would be much better than the path they were on. And he says to Hopeful, “Why don’t we just travel this path over here? It follows the same direction as the path we’re supposed to be on.” And Hopeful is skeptical because they have been warned to stay on this path. But Christian convinces his friend. They both go through a gate to the other side, and they start walking on this path. And as sin does, it led them away from the path, and they end up getting lost, it got dark, and it was storming outside. So, they have to take shelter.

But little did they know that this property belongs to another person. His name is Giant Despair. And Giant Despair is wandering his property, and he spies these two men trespassing. He captures them with his hands and takes them back to his home at Doubting Castle and throws them into his dungeon, dark and lonely, and locks the door behind them.

The next scene in the book: Christian is just beside himself. He is condemning himself in his sin. He is sad over what he has done, and all he can see is the fact that not only did he get himself in prison because of his own choices, but Hopeful is also in prison as his friend. And all he can see is condemnation, and he feels very stuck in his sin and doesn’t know what to do next. Anyone ever been there before? After four days of no food and no water, they’ve been beaten and tormented by the giant. Christian has this epiphany, this realization where he says in the book,

“What a fool am I to lie in a foul-smelling dungeon, when I may as well walk at liberty! I have a key called Promise, that will, I am sure, open any lock in Doubting Castle.”

And it does. Christian and Hopeful make their way to escape from Giant Despair’s castle, and they make their way back to the King’s Highway before they could be captured again.

This story is such a beautiful picture of repentance, is it not? And the memorable part of the story for me is that Christian had this key of Promise, this key of deliverance on his person the whole time. But he was so stuck looking at his sin and condemning himself that he forgot the gift that had been given him. He forgot the gift of repentance.

Years ago, our teaching pastor in Michigan shared the gifts that are found in Psalm 51 related to repentance, and since that time, this is my go-to passage when I fall into sin and make poor choices. I’ve studied this chapter, I’ve prayed through it, I’ve memorized its framework, I’ve seen other gifts that this chapter offers to me as a believer, I’ve shared it with others. So, today I’d like to remind us of nine invitations of the gospel that we find in Psalm 51.

Let’s be reminded about this psalm. This psalm was written by King David. If you recall, he had committed adultery with Bathsheba and tried to hide his sin by killing Uriah. [Excuse me. Could someone hand me the water that is right down there? I’m so sorry. Sorry. This story always chokes me up. All right. Excellent. Thank you for your patience.] King David kills Uriah, who’s a faithful and loyal member of David’s elite army and tries to hide his sin. Nathan, the prophet comes to him later, tells David a story, and opens up David’s sin and says, “You are the man.” And David says, “I have sinned against the Lord.” And so, Psalm 51 is David’s heart posture of repentance and having God work in his own heart to redeem and restore him. So, we have nine invitations today. So, we’re going to be moving swiftly. So, please pull your safety bar tightly down across your body, and please keep your hands inside the moving vehicle at all times. Thank you. All right.

Invitation number 1 — The gospel invites me to run to God and not from him. Verse 1,

“Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions.”

Notice David didn’t try to re-posture himself before God, minimize his sin. He did not run away from God any longer. He ran to God, and he ran to God with his sin. That was the only solution in David’s mind that would bring him joy and restoration back into his life. We have to run to God with our sin.

Listen to these words from Dane Ortland [Gentle and Lowly].

“He intends to restore you into the radiant resplendence for which you are created. And that is dependent not on you keeping yourself clean but on you taking your mess to him. He doesn’t limit himself to working with the unspoiled parts of us that remain after a lifetime of sinning. His power runs so deep that he’s able to redeem the very worst parts of our past into the most radiant parts of our future. But we must take those dark miseries to him.”

Invitation number 2 — The gospel invites me to plead for mercy based on God’s goodness and not my own. Verses 1 and 2,

“Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin!”

Friend, God does not ask you to come to him and let God know that, despite what he might see, it’s not as bad as he might think, and that there’s actually some really redeemable parts about you. Please hear this brothers and sisters — God desires that we come to him based on his mercy and steadfast love and not our own.

I think most of us are familiar with Isaiah 55 verses 8 and 9.

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither of your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

These are probably familiar verses, but you have to read the fuller context of this passage to really understand a sweet truth about our Father. If you’ve heard these verses before, can you think in your mind “what thought or what theme comes right before these verses”? If you don’t recall, let’s read Isaiah 55:6-9 because it expresses something beautiful about the character of our God.

“Seek the Lord while he may be found; call upon him while he is near; let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the Lord, that he may have [what?] compassion on him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

Why are we told to seek the Lord in our sin? He wants to show us compassion, his abundant pardon. Is that my first thought about God when I sin? No, but that’s what’s true. And why do we have to be reminded of this? Because I often have a diminishing view of God of how I think he views me versus how he actually views me. God’s thoughts are not just higher than my thoughts to show the infinite distance between God and myself. Yes, that is true. But the verses that come right before this are a call to repentance. And why do we struggle with repentance? Because of how we think God views us. The truth is that God’s thoughts and ways towards us as sons and daughters are so much greater than how we actually think God views us.

Remember Christian sitting in that cell? Christian’s diminished view of how he thought God saw him, i.e., focused on condemnation and despair, is what kept him from leaving the cell that he had the key for the whole time. So, we don’t come to God in repentance because of our own goodness. We come to our Father, Abba, our Father because of his character and his goodness.

Invitation number 3 — The gospel invites me to see the seriousness of my sin. Verse 3,

“For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me.”

The New Living translation says it this way —

“I recognize my rebellion; it haunts me day and night.”

David owned his sin. When David says I know my transgressions, it doesn’t mean like, oh yes, I identify that I commit adultery, hid my sin, and committed murder. It doesn’t mean that he knew about the sins that he had committed. That word “no” is the Hebrew word “yada,” which means to be intimately acquainted with through experience. That’s how David knew his sin. So, when my sin in my life is viewed as small and inconsequential by me, I don’t need a big savior. In fact, I like to step in and say, “Hey, thanks God, but I’ll take it from here. I’ll save myself.” But when we receive this invitation of the gospel to see the seriousness of our sin and see the largeness of our sin before God, I need a big savior, and his name is Jesus. Amen!

Invitation number 4 — The gospel invites me to see who my sin is against. Verse 4,

“Against you and 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.”

Another way to say this is “you will be proved right in what you will say, and you will win your case in court.” The statement seems so odd to me. And thinking through why would David say, “Against you and you only God have I sinned?” I mean, what about Bathsheba? What about hiding his sin from Israel? What about Uriah? But here’s the truth that we have to understand, and this is what I’m seeing more about myself, that when I sin, every sin that I commit, every sin is always traced back to a poor view of God. That is what started my center. My view of God got off, and I just kept going my own way.

So, let me give an example of this. A harsh or critical statement against my wife is because she didn’t meet the expectations that I had of her. I had those expectations of my wife because I love control and my agenda getting met. And I have those values in my life because I have deep seeded passions within me from me that want to go my own way. And I have those deep-seated wrongful passions within me, those motivations because at some point my view of God got off. So, here’s the bright spot — through repentance, God puts new motivations and desires within me, which creates new things that I value, which alters my expectations and allows me to speak to my wife in patience, in love and grace, all because of the gift of repentance. So, my offenses with others can only be corrected once my view of God is corrected through repentance. This is such a great gift.

Invitation number 5 — The gospel invites me to see the source of my sin. Verse 5,

“Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.”

Biblical repentance means this for Antone — My sin is not because of my wife and the way she responded, not because of my kids because they did something that irritated me, not because of a co-worker that mistreats me and does not treat me the way I want to be treated, nor is my sin because of some experience or circumstance that came into my life that I said, “I don’t like this.” I have to admit that my sin comes from within me. That is hard. Oh, that’s hard! And one of the ugliest parts about Antone is trying to push my sin off to other people or other circumstances. It’s one of the ugliest traits about me. But God calls this into this depth within repentance.

Invitation number 6 — The gospel invites me to boldly approach the solution to my sin, who is Jesus. Verses 6-9 —

“Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being, and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart. Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, I should be whiter than snow. Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones that you’ve broken rejoice. Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities.”

To only acknowledge my sin and to just acknowledge it and stay there keeps me, like Christian, focused on condemnation and despair, never using the key of Promise that God has already given to me as a gift. I want us to hear the enormity of David’s request. This comes after adultery and murder. I want you to hear what he’s asking of God.

Number 1 — Mark me as pure and no longer a target of sin. Big ask. Number 2 — Give me back my joy and gladness. Big ask. Number 3 — Wipe my sin from your memory and extinguish my guilt. Big ask. And I, on the outside, looking at David, I want to just sit him down and say, “You have the audacity to commit adultery, murder, and then go to God and ask him to mark you as pure, give you back your joy again, and never remember your sin again?!” The answer is yes. I mean, that’s what Jesus is. He tells us in Hebrews. We can go confidently, boldly before the throne of grace to obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need. So, yes, when I sin, I can go boldly before my Father and ask for these things. He wants to show us his compassion.

Invitation number 7 — The gospel invites me to see God’s promise not to leave me as I am. Versus 10-12,

“Create in me a clean heart, O God, 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.”

That word “create” that David uses is the same word “create” that we find in Genesis 1:1 — In the beginning God spoke, and something existed that did not exist prior. That’s what “create” means.

So, David makes two big requests, and we get two outcomes because God does not want to leave us as we are. First request — Create what is not there at all. So, think new heart affections that lead to new fruit. Number two — David asked to renew what is there, but maybe in a broken and weak state. So, think of his joy then think of a ruined city that needs to be built up and restored again. David begs God to not deprive him of His Holy Spirit. And two outcomes — Give back my joy, God, which is interesting that David recognized that joy comes from Jesus. It’s not what David does or creates. And second — Be a willing support. Support me, God in this hard process of repentance. Be a willing support that I can lean on.

Invitation number 8 — The gospel invites me into a broken spirit and contrite heart. Verses 13-17,

“Then I’ll teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will return to you. Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God, O God of my salvation, and my tongue will sing aloud of your righteousness. O God, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise. For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I will 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.”

“Broken spirit” means maimed or crippled. A “contrite heart” means a will that has been shattered. This is not David being discouraged or defeated. It’s David saying, “It was my will that got me to where I am. I want you to shatter my will, and I want you to remake it to something that pleases you.” And David says, “God, you will not despise that type of offering.” “Despise” means to raise the head loftily and disdainfully. Let me illustrate this. David says, “God, would you receive my gift of a broken spirit and contrite heart?” God does not do this — “Hmm. Yeah, we’ll see.” God does not do that. But yet, when Nathan confronted David, he used the same word “despise” in 2 Samuel. Nathan confronts David.

“Why have you despised the word of the Lord, to do what’s evil in his sight? You have struck down Uriah the Hittite with a sword and have taken his wife to be your wife and have killed him with the sword of the Ammonites.”

David, when he’s looking lustfully at Bathsheba, perhaps a thought is going through his mind, the command of God,

“Thou shalt not commit adultery.”

David did this — “Hmm. Yeah, we’ll see.” David despised the Word of God, but when David came with a broken spirit and contrite heart, God did not despise that. Is that not encouraging? Oh! God wants to desperately do that for us, friends. I know it’s hard to say, “God, you are absolutely right. God, I am utterly wrong.” That’s hard. That’s going down. But God wants to press us through this to push up to the most glorious invitation here.

This is number 9 — The gospel invites me into restored joy and transformed worship of God. Verses 18-19,

“Do good to Zion and your good pleasure; build up the walls of Jerusalem; then will you delight in right sacrifices, in burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings; then bulls will be offered on your altar.”

Whatever view you have about repentance today, the end goal is always freedom, and it’s always worship, the right view of God, worshiping him in full joy and in full restoration.

Paul Tripp made this comment about worship. He said,

“Worship, according to Scripture, is an ongoing captivation of the heart that overflows into your life to produce desire, word, and deed.”

When my captivation of my heart goes against Jesus, that’s when I start going my own way. And God says, “I want to provide a way for you, Antone. It’s called repentance.” It’s a sweet gift so you can experience the joy and the worship that you’re really wanting in your heart.

You know, if you were to look at the first twenty to twenty-five years of my marriage to Stefanie, you would have found a guy who is steeped in passivity and people pleasing, who really did not know how to, as Paul commands me in Ephesians 5, to love my wife like Jesus loves his church, to wash her with the water of the Word, and to love her as if she is my own body because she is. I struggled. But then if you were to step into my marriage in the last ten to fifteen years, you would see that my marriage is getting redeemed. And that — get this — Jesus is actually putting new heart affections into my heart of love towards my wife that I had never had before. God is patiently teaching me there is mercy and kindness, even in my brokenness still, to love my wife with the gospel. If you were to ask me, why did I change? Did I get six steps to being a great husband? Read a book? No. You know what changed me? It was repentance. That was the catalyst that started the change in my life that is continuing even today.

So, Church, what do we do with this passage? We receive it for what it is, an invitation to see the kind and gracious hand of our Father when we sin. Believe this freedom today, that in repentance, whatever you thought it might be, this is what it is. We find abundant mercy, we find cleansing, we find renewed joy, new gladness, healing, God never remembering my sin again, Jesus creating new heart affections within me, God renewing what is broken and restoring my joy, Jesus being a strong support for me to lean on, now having a right view of God, praising God for who he is, and true worship.

My prayer today is that God rekindles in our hearts what repentance truly is and allows us to see it as a kind and gracious gift of our Father. It’s a sweet gift that he has given us. I close with this in the book Gentle and Lowly.

“Go to him. All that means is, open yourself up to him. Let him love you. The Christian life boils down to two steps: [I love these.] 1. Go to Jesus, and 2. See #1. Whatever’s crumbling all around your life, wherever you feel stuck, this remains, un-deflectable: his heart for you, the real you, is gentle and lowly. So go to him. That place in your life where you feel most defeated, he is there; he lives there, right there, and his heart for you, not on the other side of it but in that darkness, is gentle and lowly. Your anguish is his home. Go to him. If you knew his heart, you would.”

Father, this is such an awesome passage. It is hard to repent, Father, because we want our own way. We don’t see our sin like you see it. We want to feel justified in what we do. Father, do a renewed work in my own heart that I see repentance for what it is. That’s your kind gift to me from a gracious Father and getting me back to joy and worship of you. Father, for those struggling today and not knowing how to get unstuck from their sin, Lord, give them the freedom that is offered here in this chapter of Psalms. And we pray this, Lord, for your glory and for our joy, Lord, in Jesus’s name. Amen.