Lord, Teach Me How to Pray - Psalm 51

celebration like no other. In Jesus name

I prayed. Amen.

All right. So, we're about halfway

through Well, we are actually halfway

through our series, Lord, Teach Me to

Pray.

And so, if you've been with us every

week, hopefully you've picked up on the

fact that the Lord's Prayer is not just

something that you memorize and you say

before a ball game. It is so much deeper

than that. It's actually a road map to

the Christian life. Every phrase teaches

us something about who God is and who he

created us to be and how we can have a

relationship with him. We've learned to

pray things like Our Father because we

understand that that all of our our

prayer starts because we actually have a

relationship with the creator God. We've

learned to pray hallowed be thy name

because God deserves our worship before

he receives our requests. We've learned

to pray thy kingdom come because we know

the kingdom of God is so much better

than the kingdom of the world or these

kingdoms that we try to build for

ourselves. And last week we learned to

pray a pretty difficult part of the

prayer, which is thy will be done

because we discovered that even when we

don't know God's plan, we do know God's

heart. And so, we can trust him and to

doing the right things for us. And so,

now Jesus turns turns his attention from

God's glory to one of our greatest

needs, which is forgiveness. And this is

the part of the prayer that should hit

close to home with everybody

in here today because every one of us

knows what it's like to sin. We know

what it's like to fail and we know what

it's like to break stuff that God has

given us.

We we've carried guilt. We've carried

shame. And so, we know what it's like to

need another chance, to need need a

mulligan, to need a a do-over. And so,

Jesus teaches us in the prayer how to

receive just that when he teaches us to

pray, forgive us of our trespasses.

Now, all of that begins with honesty.

We'll be in Psalm 51 today. Psalm 51 is

a song that was composed by King David

right after a very specific incident in

his life.

He was attracted to another man's wife.

Her name was Bathsheba. And he had an

affair with her, and she became

pregnant. And so, to cover up the the

scandal, he had her husband killed by

putting him on the front lines of the

battle, and then commanding the other

soldiers to pull back away from him. So,

the prophet Nathan goes to King David,

and he tells him a story. He says there

was this rich king who had lots and lots

of sheep. And then there was this poor

man who had one little lamb.

And one day, the rich man was hungry,

and he decided instead of slaughtering

any number of his thousands of sheep

that he had, he would take the one poor

man's lamb and slaughter it for his

meal. Then Nathan looks at King David

and says, "What should be done to this

man?" And King David becomes indignant,

and he says, "This man should die."

And in one of the most poignant

statements in the history of the world,

Nathan looks at King David and says,

"Well, thou art that man."

So, King David's scandal was exposed.

The truth was out. His life came

crashing down in that moment, and he

composed one of the most famous prayers

that's confession that's ever been

written in Psalm chapter 51. So, let's

Psalms 51 · chapter mention

read a little bit of that.

Starting in verse one.

He says, "Be gracious to me, God,

according to your faithful love.

According to your abundant compassion,

blot out my rebellion. Completely wash

away my guilt and cleanse me from my

sin.

For I'm conscious of my rebellion, and

my sin is always before me. Against you

and you alone, I have sinned and done

this evil in your sight. So, you are

right when you pass sentence. You are

blameless when you judge. Indeed, I was

guilty when I was born. I was sinful

when my mother conceived me.

Now, here's the good news for us today.

There is a process by which, no matter

how bad you have wrecked your life, you

can receive forgiveness and God can help

you with restoration.

Isn't that awesome?

You you you get a heavenly do-over, no

matter what you've done. But, repentance

is not just telling God that you're

sorry. It it's so much more than that.

It it's a change that emerges from

within your heart and changes your

outward expressions.

But, the problem is that this real, true

repentance can be hard to access for a

lot of people, because truth is, we make

really good lawyers uh when we're

dealing with ourselves. We we we're

really good at being our own defense

attorneys. Uh so, last week, I I took

the church vans over to the gas station

to get them gassed up after the mission

trip, and um you know, the church vans

with like the church logo on the side

and the address on the side and the

phone number on the side. Like, no

pressure when you're driving those

things, right? So, thanks a lot, Mike

Adlet, for that. I'd rather go incognito

rather than have the whole world know

who I am, because you never know, right?

So,

me being the idiot I am, I went to the

gas station, but I went in through the

exit.

Yep. So, in my defense, see, I'm already

doing it. In my defense,

uh I I started building my case. So, the

>> [snorts]

>> the signs are like this high off the

road,

kind of hard to see, right? Uh there was

no clear entrance on Country Club Road

to this particular uh gas station.

Anybody could have done what I did, and

the good news was, nobody was coming out

as I was going in. So, I completely

justified myself. I felt great, filled

up the van, and then on my way out

through the correct exit, by the way,

this guy had the nerve

to come in through the exit.

And I wish I could tell you different,

but I was furious.

>> [laughter]

>> I was so mad. I'm like, "What's this guy

doing? Can't he read the signs?"

And I'm telling you the Holy Spirit got

a hold of me and gently reminded me that

I had done the exact same thing like

literally 10 minutes before. Now,

I'm going to guess that I'm not alone in

doing stuff like that this time, right?

Okay. All right. I see some heads

nodding. Thank you for the support.

Um

but it is amazing that when we do

something wrong, we always have our

reasons, right? When we do something

wrong, we always have our reasons, but

when somebody else does something wrong,

they have their problems.

That's the human nature. That's the

flesh that won't go away until we get

our new bodies in heaven. This is the

battle that we all face every day,

Christian, non-Christian. That's just

human nature. We instinctively defend

ourselves when we know that we have done

wrong because we don't want to admit

that we were wrong. And that's exactly

why repentance is so difficult. It's not

just saying I'm sorry to God. It's so

much more than that because before God

can change you, we have to stop being

our own defense attorneys. But before

God can change us, before we can really

truly experience repentance, we have to

stop justifying our words and our

actions. So, in my house, we have a

phrase and it's called own your mess.

So, Buzzards, we own our mess. We know

we're going to break stuff. We know

we're going to do things wrong. We know

we're going to We know that we're going

to mess up. And so what I try to teach

my kids and myself is that when those

events happen, we need to own the mess

that we made. Don't justify it. Don't

deny it. Just say, "Hey, look, I screwed

up. I messed up. I did this. This is my

part in the problem."

See, David says

that he can see from the beginning of

his life what he was like.

So, repentance happened for King David

when he admitted his contribution to

this mess that had been made. And he's

saying, "Look, I know I've been this way

since birth, prone to wander. Yeah, I

feel it. Prone to leave the one I love."

Tim Keller says repentance begins when

we stop denying what we're capable of.

And what that means is there's not a

whole lot of difference between the kid

with the cookie crumbs all over his face

that denies eating the cookie and the

adult that cheats on their taxes. Like,

yes, it's uh different actions, but the

instincts come from the same species. We

are all broken at a heart level, and we

need to admit that we have a problem.

But, how do you expose the real problem?

Well, I think that's given to us in

verse 4.

David says,

"Against you and you alone, I have

sinned

and done this evil in your sight."

David says something that seems almost

impossible to understand. He says,

"Against you, God, and you alone, I have

sinned."

Well, time out, cuz I bet Bathsheba

would disagree with that statement. I

bet her dead husband, Uriah, would

disagree with that statement. I bet

David's family would disagree with that

statement. I bet the nation of Israel

would disagree with what uh King David

just said.

So, we have to understand he's not

saying that he did not hurt other

people.

He's not denying the impact that he had

on their lives.

What he is saying though is very

profound. He is saying that every sin

that people commit

begins as a sin against God.

So so every outward sin has an inward

idol. Every sinful action begins with a

sinful affection. We don't just break

God's rules, we replace God with

something else. So when we sin, we're

replacing God often times with things

like human approval. We care way more

about what they say than what he says.

Sometimes we replace God with this idea

of comfort. Sometimes it's like in King

David's situation, it's chasing after

pleasure. We'd rather have pleasure than

Jesus. Sometimes it's success. We'll

push aside all the things that God wants

us to do in order to achieve all of our

own goals and sometimes it's just basic

control. We need to control everything

and so we tell God to take his hands off

the wheel. And in those moments, we've

all decided basically the same thing

that there is something in life that is

more valuable than our relationship

with God with God. And so that's why

every sin is ultimately a worship

problem.

So when you understand that sin begins

with a worship problem, then you can

kind of start working on it at that

point. So last year my yard looked

terrible. I mean just absolutely

terrible. If there was something awful

that could be in your yard, it was in my

yard. Every weed known to man, moles,

grubs, all of it. My yard looked like

it was it was a tragedy actually. And so

uh I I decided as a man that I was going

to take control of this situation. So I

set some money aside and I was like, you

know what? I've got this. And I went to

Lowe's and I got some weed killer and I

got some grub killer and I got some

um

started watching some videos of people

that have PhDs and like lawn care

maintenance and stuff. And it was great.

Like I stayed with it for a while. But

then the worst thing happened and that

was the fact that my yard actually

started to look pretty good.

It did on the It looked great on the

surface and you know what I did? I got

lazy and I stopped working on it as

hard. And then we had this instance

which I'm calling emergence emergence

day which happened in September and that

was the day that literally 200 million

grubs came up out of my lawn and went

into my garage. How they got in my

garage I will never know but it looked

like it snowed in my garage when I

opened the door and these suckers

started molting into the concrete inside

of my garage and it smelled like a

dumpster in there. I had to power wash

my garage to get these things out of the

garage. See and at that point I was

like, "Okay, yeah, I'm still a man but

I'm not that kind of a guy I guess so

I'm going to just have to admit here I

don't have the time or talent to deal

with this situation and so I called

TruGreen and they came over and they

started spraying my weeds and spraying

the grubs and you know what they did

differently than me?

They stayed at it. The lawn started

looking good. They didn't call me up and

be like, "Hey, we're done. It looks

good."

No, they're like, "We're going to come

spray it even though it's green."

I'm like, "What are they doing?" And

then I started looking at the chemicals

and the things that they put on my lawn

and I realized that they were treating

things underneath the surface that I

couldn't see. They understood something

about the lawns that I didn't and that's

that you don't just deal with what's

visible, you deal with the thing that's

happening inside underneath. Otherwise,

the problem is going to come back.

And so

I feel like that's kind of how some of

us treat sin.

We're We're like, "Well, you know what?

I'm just going to stop yelling at my

wife. I'm going to stop gossiping about

my neighbors. I'm I'm I'm going to stop

looking at that website." And And that's

great. There's There's actions are good

things that we should stop doing. Those

are good goals to have, but they're only

dealing with the surface level problem.

That's the expression. That's the

behavior of the sin. The sin is

something that happens deep down. And so

that's what Jesus is getting at with

this part of the Lord's Prayer when he

talks about this thing called

repentance. And when you're asking God

to truly forgive you, it you're asking a

much deeper question than what should I

stop doing? You're asking the question

of well, why do I keep going back there?

Well, what's going on underneath the

surface in my heart that's causing me to

to make these decisions and say these

things. What What is it that I'm loving

more than God in these moments of

weakness?

Because it's until God changes the root,

then the negative fruit is going to keep

coming back into your life.

So what we have to do in order to truly

repent and be forgiven is to let God

identify the root cause of the behavior.

Once you know what that thing is, maybe

it's insecurity, maybe it's a trauma

that you haven't dealt with. It could be

a lot of things, but when you deal with

that heart level issue, it changes how

you express yourself to the world around

you. But I feel like a lot of people

don't get to this point because they're

scared of this act of repentance.

They just don't understand the joy and

the peace that comes from actually being

forgiven.

See, there's this type of repentance

that really doesn't change anyone for

the better. It's kind of emotional

repentance. It's like this thing where

you get caught doing something you

shouldn't do and you feel ashamed and

you're disappointed in yourself and so

you go and through tears you ask for

forgiveness and all that's great, but

a lot of times those people walk away

from those situations and they still

feel the the guilt.

They still feel the the shame of their

actions.

And and friends, the devil loves that.

He absolutely loves the fact that you

still feel that way. He wants you to

feel guilty. He wants you to feel

ashamed. And so, what do you do? You

begin to believe, "Well, I'm a failure.

I'm a mistake. My I'll never change. God

must be tired of hearing from me because

I've done this 50 times, and I've had to

pray forgiveness every single time." And

so, we start identifying ourselves

as failures, as guilty people, as

shameful people.

That's not the repentance that David is

praying in Psalm 51.

Friends, when Jesus teaches us to pray,

"Father, forgive us of our trespasses,"

he is not inviting you into a state of

constant guilt and shame. He is inviting

you into a life of constant grace.

Listen to David's prayer beginning in

verse 6 now.

Surely you desire integrity in the inner

self. And you teach me wisdom deep

within. Purify me with hyssop, and I

will be clean. Wash me, and I will be

whiter than snow. Let me hear joy and

gladness. Let the bones you have crushed

rejoice. Turn your face away from my

sin. Blot out all of my guilt. God,

create a clean heart for me, and renew a

steadfast spirit within me. Do not

banish me from your presence, or take

your Holy Spirit from me. Restore the

joy of your salvation to me, and sustain

me by giving me a willing spirit.

Not once does he pray, "God, make me

feel worse. God, make me feel guilty.

God, make me feel ashamed. God, help me

to to pay my penance."

No, he says, "Wash me.

Create in me a clean heart. Renew a

steadfast spirit within me. Restore the

joy of your salvation."

He's asking for so much more.

David knows that repentance isn't just

looking back at your sin and dealing

with the consequences of that. It's

about looking forward to God's grace.

Because that future grace is what's

ultimately going to give you the courage

to be honest with God. To be authentic

before your father. Look, if God was a

judge, we should all be hiding under the

pews right now. If he was just a judge,

we should be hiding like Adam and Eve in

the garden. Because we've all sinned and

fallen short of the glory of God. We

should be scared. We should be on our

knees. But that's not the posture that

we take because we also know, according

to the prayer that Jesus is teaching us,

that God is a loving father who is full

of grace. And because he's a loving

father, we can step out into the light

as broken as we are

and receive that steadfast love and

forgiveness. Because God's love is

greater than your deepest failure.

Now, friends, I have no idea why this

came to mind this week, but when I was

like 7 or 8 years old, um I got one of

these cool little dart guns for

Christmas. They're the ones where you

kind of pull back the the lever and then

you pull pull the trigger and shoot the

rubber dart with the suction cup on the

tip. You know, I thought it was cool.

So, I got it for Christmas and my mom

had those little fake candles in the in

the windows, the ones with the colored

bulbs on top. They're made out of

plastic. And for some reason, I'm

standing in the living room. I'm like

I'm like I'm going to take a shot at one

of the candles. Cuz odds are you're not

hitting the candle, right? All the way

across the living room, I shoot the dart

and by some miracle, I guess Dude

Perfect would have like recruited me if

they saw this video. Like I shot the

dart. The dart didn't hit the candle. It

hit the little bulb on top of the candle

and then stuck to the window. It was the

greatest shot of my life.

But at the same time, I'm like, oh no,

I'm dead.

>> [laughter]

>> I I I know how much those things cost. I

million dollars for all I knew. I

thought my mom was absolutely going to

murder me. And

as if God has a sick sense of humor or

whatever, like the dart is literally

hanging from the window like as a

confession of my guilt right there on

the window. So I'm like, you know what?

I'm just going to go and admit to mom

what I did. And again, I thought she was

going to be extremely upset. And she

wasn't happy, but I wasn't met with the

explosion of anger that I thought I

would be met with. And it was actually

kind of funny cuz looking back on it, I

think my dad was a little bit proud.

He's like, "That's my boy."

>> [laughter]

>> I taught him to shoot that .22 back in

the day. Like so anyway,

um

there was consequences of course. I lost

my allowance

and I had to pay for a new thing of

bulbs or whatever, but ultimately there

was grace and there was forgiveness.

Why? Because my mom loved me more than

she loved that stupid candle.

Now I know it's a dumb illustration, but

it's also very true to what God does for

us. That's what grace ultimately is. God

doesn't pretend our sin isn't serious.

He nailed his son to a cross in order to

pay for sin. Sin is ugly. Sin is gross.

Sin is serious, but here's the thing.

God loves us more than he hates the

thing that we broke.

He loves us more

than he hates what we've broken.

And that's why repentance is not the end

of joy.

Repentance is the pathway back to it.

And friends, if you ever truly repent

and if you've ever experienced the

forgiveness of God, it changes your life

and we see that in the Psalm as well.

Look at verse 13.

So after David has experienced

forgiveness,

real true repentance and forgiveness. He

says in verse 13, "I will teach the

rebellious your ways, and sinners will

return to you. Save me from the guilt of

bloodshed, God, God of my salvation. And

get this, my tongue will sing of your

righteousness. Lord, open my lips and my

mouth will declare your praise."

Notice what happens after David

experiences God's true forgiveness. He

doesn't say, "Woo, glad that's over. Now

I can finally move on with my life."

It's not what he says. He says, "I'm

going to go out and I'm going to re-

teach the rebellious your ways. Now that

I know what forgiveness really feels

like, I'm going to go out and I'm going

to tell the people that have not

experienced that all about you. My My

tongue is going to sing of your

righteousness. I'm going to write a

bunch of Psalms and we're going to put

them in a Bible and people are going to

sing them during worship services in

Camden County in 2026. Like he says, 'My

mouth will declare your praise.'

I'm not going to shrink from what I've

done. I'm going to make amends and I'm

also going to declare the praise of God

because now I've felt what it's like to

have my guilt truly removed. See, when

you experience repentance, it restores

joy. It produces worship and ultimately

it creates witnesses.

I'm telling you the greatest witnesses

for the gospel are people that have

walked down some really, really rough

roads in their life.

You talk to the people that know what

it's like to be forgiven of some deep,

serious sin, and those people are

typically the ones that will can talk

about Jesus in a way that most of us

can't. They're the ones winning people

to the Lord. So, don't think that God

can't use your journey to change the

world. That can actually be the fuel for

the fire. See, forgiven people can't

help but tell people where they found

their forgiveness.

So, what do we do? We look to the We

look to the cross.

We look to the cross and we look to

what Jesus did for us. The The

forgiveness that we receive from that

cross where he died for our sin, but he

did not stay dead. He He rose from the

dead so that we could rise to a new

life. So, don't settle for carrying that

guilt that Jesus already carried to the

cross for you.

You don't have to carry that anymore.

You don't have to carry the guilt or the

shame cuz Jesus already nailed that to

Calvary's cross. So, today bring God the

broken pieces of your life. Admit your

part in creating the mess. Help God or

ask God to help you identify the the

idol that created the problem in the

first place. And then ask him to remove

that temptation. And then find a joy in

knowing that your Father God loves you

more than your mistakes. He is full of

grace. Receive his forgiveness. Lose the

guilt. Lose the shame. Experience the

the joy of God's love.

And then get to work in the power of the

Holy Spirit trying to restore the things

that were broken because of the

decisions that you have made.

And then ultimately tell others about

the grace that you have found in Jesus.

That's the power and that's the beauty

of praying,

"Father, forgive me my trespasses."

Let's pray.