The OG Playlist: Songs of REPENTANCE | 10/19/2025

All right, well, welcome back, those of you in the room.

It's good to see you on this fall day again.

Notes are available again on the back table.

And you know, someone coming back to my memory in an odd

place. Someone had emailed me about

emailing them the notes. So I need to do that.

If you e-mail me, I'll try to send you the notes.

I'll try to remember to do that. All right, if you're watching

online, so grateful that you are here tuned in with us, whether

it's live with us on Sunday morning or sometime in the near

future, we want to invite you to come and be part of of worship

service with us. Come find us at 115 E Main St.

in downtown Gaylord. This is your invitation.

You're invited. We would love to see you

sometime very soon. All right, if you have your

Bibles, please take and turn them to Luke, Chapter 18.

Luke 18 · chapter mention

Luke is in the New Testament. So it's after Matthew, Mark,

it's Luke, and then before John in the book of Acts.

So depending on what you have at the back of your Bible, maybe

you know, 70% or so through 7080% into your Bible.

Luke chapter 18. Luke is a physician who actually

Luke 18 · chapter mention

doesn't walk with Jesus. He actually in a very detailed

way goes to those who saw the events of Jesus first hand and

he then writes about them to a friend named Theophilus.

OK, so Luke starts his letters by addressing this man named

Theophilus. And so this is his telling of an

occasion where Jesus is going to tell a story.

OK, so this is Luke chapter 18 and I'm going to read to you

Luke 18 · chapter mention

from verses 9 through 14. Luke writes he meaning Jesus

told this. He also told this parable to

some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and

treated others with contempt. And his story is 2 men went up

into the temple to pray. 1A Pharisee and the other tax

collector and the Pharisees, standing by himself, prayed

thus. God, I thank you that I'm not

like other men, extortioners and unjust adulterers, or even like

this tax collector, he said. I fast twice a week.

I give ties of all that I get, but the tax collector standing

far off will not even lift his eyes up to heaven, but beat his

breast, saying, God be merciful to me, a Sinner.

Verse 14 I tell you, this man went down to his house, says

Jesus, justified rather than the other.

For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who

humbles himself will be exalted. This morning we're continuing

our series in Psalms, and I'm going to talk to you about songs

of repentance. Songs of repentance.

Let me pray for us about how great it is to be in your house

and to be with other believers, other disciples, other followers

of you, Jesus. And now as an act of worship, we

take our thoughts captive and we open our minds and our hearts

and we say, speak to us through your word.

This is worship God us receiving from your truth in your word.

This is worship unto you. So be exalted.

We pray through your word in Jesus name.

And everyone loudly together said Amen and Amen.

So this fall I'm doing a series in the book of Psalms.

And the first week, this is the fourth week that we're here.

First week. I just introduced you to the

Psalms. Many of you are very familiar

with them, but some you're new to the Psalms.

You wouldn't even know where they are in the Bible.

So they're kind of there in the middle of sorts.

And the Psalms are 150 chapters long.

And it's it's, it's, it is 5% of the Bible is in the Psalms.

OK. And so the Psalms are ancient

songs that were written between a period of 1500 years, and they

went from like the period of Moses all the way past, like

Shadrach, Meshach and a Bendigo and the character Esther and

Nehemiah, if you know those characters in your Old

Testament. So this is a collection or a

playlist of songs from that era. And so I decided I'm going to

call it the OG, like the original playlist.

And some of you remember creating playlist back in the

80s where you would sit with your cassette recorder.

I mentioned every because it's so funny just remembering it.

We'd sit and listen to the radio.

You might even call the radio station and say, hey, I'm

requesting the song. Right when you shake your head,

she remembers And you'd sit there and you'd you'd push play

at the right time. And you felt so like great in

the accomplishment. You'd have a full cassette full

of your favorite songs, and it was a lot of work.

Nowadays, you just go to Spotify or Apple Music and you get your

playlist just like that, man. It's quick and easy.

But back then we had to work for it, right?

And so nowadays, kids, you just say, for granted, playlists are

easy, right? So we're familiar with a mixtape

or a playlist. And so the Psalms are a playlist

of songs that that the Holy Spirit inspired to be added to

the Old Testament, to the Bible and their vast styles and

different types of Psalms there. And So what I'm doing each week

is in the next weeks to come, even I will be kind of taking

this type of Psalm and this type of Psalm.

Today we're dealing with songs of repentance, Psalms of

repentance. Last week I looked at Psalms

that spoke about, you know, who God is, What is God like?

There's lots that you can learn about in the Psalms.

You read about God as creator and he's merciful, he's all

knowing. And so you read the Psalms and

it gives you more insight into who and what God is like.

And the second week I went to like the most popular psalms,

like Psalm 23, The Lord is my shepherd.

I shall not want some of the other ones.

In the weeks to come, I'll be tackling psalms that seem to

have like difficult theology. There are times you read the

Psalms and you go, man, that doesn't sound very Jesus like,

right? And I'll, I'll get there and

they'll surprise you. OK.

And then there are Psalms of lament where they're like grief.

We're going through loss or maybe the death of a loved one.

There's some great disappointment.

And so those Psalms are there to give voice to our grief and our

sorrow. OK, so this week we're looking

at Psalms of repentance. And last week I said to you that

I, I never want to be guilty of grabbing what I call like the

low hanging fruit. Like if you're picking apples,

it might be that the best apples are way up high at the top

right? So you want to reach high to get

the best. You don't want to just grab the

ones at the bottom right. And last week when I was

teaching on who and what God is like, and I wanted to seem like

low hanging fruit. No, these are really profound

truths. Well, that was last week.

This week I will tell you like get ready because this is

challenging. What I'm going to talk to you

about is it you, It takes a little effort to get your head

around this idea of repentance. So this is like we're going to

reach high and we're going to connect some dots and see some

challenge teaching truths that we should add, disciplines that

we should add to our life. Now in this series, we'll see.

If I continue to do this, I think I will, is that every week

I'm starting in the New Testament and that's, it might

seem odd to you. It's like you're starting in the

New Testament and then you're going back to the Old Testament.

I thought it's a series on the Psalms.

It is. But each week what I'm doing is

I'm grabbing a place where the Psalm is being quoted in the New

Testament. And I want to just really just

get this into your thinking is that the Old Testament is

valuable. The New Testament, just the

Psalms alone are mentioned over 100 times in the New Testament.

And some Christians, they come to Jesus and they're like, I

don't know if the Old Testament if I need to read that or get

that. Some Christians go as far to

say, oh, I just want the red letters of Jesus.

All I need is the red letters. It's like, no, you don't need

just the red letters. You need the entire New

Testament. And the Old Testament is

valuable also. And so we saw Jesus quoted it

last week. We saw Peter quoted it.

And this week I'm going to show you a surprising character that

quotes and draws from the Psalm. So my pattern so far has been I

grabbed something from the New Testament that is quoting the

Old Testament in order to establish the importance of the

Old Testament. Now Jesus taught with parables

and a parable is a story and these stories had some like

surprise truth or profound pivotal moments where Jesus

would like bring great truth and wisdom.

OK. And he uses the story of the

Pharisee and a tax collector. Again, this is a made-up story.

It's, it's a story to to show a point and Jesus tells us brief

story, but there's so much profoundness here.

And I'll just show you what we've already read is that

there's two postures at hand here.

There's a Pharisee and a Pharisee was a, it was a

religious leader, but not like in a pastoral way.

It was more of a religious leader in like a sect or like a,

like a political way. OK, so I'd like to think that

the role of a pastor is to be caring and relational with

people. The Pharisees were not that way.

They were not caring and they're not relational.

They were separated from people, and they thought themselves, as

in the story, as more righteous and better than others because

they followed the rules more to the T in the certain sect of

their faith, OK. And they were very political and

they were maneuvering and they were manipulative, all of this

stuff. You have this Pharisee, and he's

going to have a posture of prayer, and his posture of

prayer is that he's going to stand.

According to verse 11, he's standing by himself.

And what we get from this is that he's not with the people,

he's not in the group. He he's in the temple, but he's

kind of found a place to like stand out.

It would be like if someone came up here and they stood right in

the front. They're like, they're standing

by themselves and like watch me pray and they're just right down

there and watch how I pray. And he's praying out loud where

everyone can hear him. He's like, I'm not like the

worst scum of the earth. I'm not like the adulterers and

I'm not like the, and he, and he says I'm not like this tax

collector. And in his prayer, when he says

this tax collector, it's like he sees the tax collector and he's

being critical of him thanking God that he's not like the tax

collector. It's not a great posture of

prayer. Then you get this, you get this

posture of prayer from the tax collector that he's praying far

off. Maybe he's like in the temple,

but maybe he's like in the back feeling like, you know, I'm just

going to be back here quietly and this is where I'm going to

connect with God. My posture of prayer is not

grandstanding in front of others.

So he's standing far off and his prayer is simple.

The prayer that the tax collector prays is God be

merciful to me, a Sinner, Pharisee, I'm so grateful.

I'm not like these people. And the tax collector says God

be merciful to me, a Sinner. And the tax collectors, maybe

you know, this, they were considered like the, the most

hated because the Romans had conquered that part of the world

and they were taxing all the, the kingdoms that they'd

conquered. And what the Jew Romans would do

is they would take somewhat of that ethnic group, people group,

and they would make them collect the taxes.

So now you have a Jew collecting taxes from a Jew.

And they were corrupt and they, the Jews were paying taxes.

They hated that a Jewish person was taking from them.

So they were like the outcasts. They were the ones who were not

going to be invited to the parties and they were not

popular on Facebook. Maybe they had very few friends

on Facebook, Who knows? So he says this in his prayer,

God be merciful to me, a Sinner. He says it far off.

Now, what I want to show you is that the tax collector is using

a phrase, a popular saying, and it has an origin.

I'm going to take you to where it is, but to kind of illustrate

how phrases have origins. We have familiar phrases that we

use and maybe you don't know the origin of some of them.

For example, the idea that the buck stops here.

You ever heard that phrase before?

The buck stops here. And what does the buck stop

here? It means?

It means it's like I'm responsible.

I'm I'll take, I'll take charge here.

You can count on me. The buck stops here.

But where did the phrase start? I understand in the 1800s when

Cowboys in the West would play poker, they would have a knife

like a, a big knife. And whoever was the dealer, I

understand the deal would rotate around the table and there would

be different dealers. So when you were dealing you,

you had the knife, they called it the buck and you'd stab it

into the table. And it was a way of being

protected, right? You're like, OK, right now I'm

responsible. I'm the one who has the buck, as

they call it the knife. And then when you were done

dealing, it was the next turn. Then it went around the table

and the next guy would take the knife and right, and now he has

the buck. The buck is here.

So then I understand Harry Truman comes along years later

and he takes that that background and he put on the

doll on the door, a sign on the door of his office that said the

buck stops here. And what he was saying is like,

I'm responsible. I all right, you can count on

me. I'm in charge.

OK. But it started the origin was at

a poker table with a knife stabbed in the table.

And now we say it like, oh, yeah, we say it all the time.

The buck stops here and we know it's like, Yep, I'm the one

that's in charge. OK, What about kick the bucket?

This is a little dark. This is a little darker than

that. So when people say, oh, so and

so is about to kick the bucket, right?

We know that means they're about to die.

But the origin of it is that when, when sometimes people when

they would hang somebody else, they would stand them on a

bucket and then they would put the noose around their neck and

they kick the bucket out from underneath of them.

It's really terrible. It's a dark thought, right?

So the next time you're talking about someone said, man, they're

about to kick the bucket, you might want to say it

differently, right? It's kind of a dark origin.

OK, so that's the kick the bucket idea.

Or what about close but no cigar?

I understand that touring carnivals when they used to have

like games, We have games here in Alpenfest and, and maybe you

get a teddy bear or something like that nowadays, but you used

to be able to win a cigar. So let's say you got close to

winning at a carnival game. The the carnival people would

say, well, you're close, but no cigar.

You don't get a cigar, right? close.

And then finally, this idea of jump on the bad bandwagon.

If we're going to jump on the bandwagon, it used to be in the

early 1900s that like a, a wagon would travel, maybe in a parade

with a political candidate on the wagon and there would be a

band. And if you were in great support

of that political candidate, then you might jump on the wagon

and might go down the parade with them to show your support.

So nowadays we use that phrase, jump on the wagon.

Well, what I want to show you is that the tax collector is taking

an ancient Psalm and he's using it in his prayer.

And This is why Jesus says he goes away justified because he's

utilizing the tax collector, not the Pharisee.

The Pharisee is supposedly the religious one, but he thinks

himself self-righteous and he's boasting about how he's not like

other sinners. But watch the tax collectors

going to lean into a Psalm written by David and it's Psalm

51 and this is how David says it in his song.

And Psalm 51 I'll read you 2 verses.

It says, have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast

love, and according to your abundant mercy, blot out my

transgressions and wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and

cleanse me from my sin. Now I showed you Jesus quoted

the Psalms, Peter quotes the Psalms on the day of Pentecost.

And now Jesus in the story takes a tax collector and now the tax

collector is drawing, also quoting from the Psalms in the

story that Jesus it's telling. Now this is not my own idea.

I'm not just making this up. I often want to remind you that

I'm not coming to you with original ideas.

And sometimes I feel like maybe the Lord of the Holy Spirit will

prompt me in some way. But usually I'm really studying

and reading. I'm not coming to you with some

far fetched, I think thing that no one else has ever seen.

If you ever hear a preacher go, I'm going to tell you something

nobody else has ever seen in the word of God before.

This has never been seen. Then just close your ears.

Don't listen. That's right.

Because they're full of something.

OK, so you don't want that, right?

You want. Yeah.

Christian thinking scholars and other Christians have thought

the same thing. I'm not making this up.

OK. And again, anytime they make it

up, just run. In fact, I'll expound that.

In the Old Testament or in the New Testament, in the early

church, there was a early heresy where those who were, they were

called the Gnostics, and the Greek word for Gnostic meant

knowledge. And early on there were some

Christians running around going, oh, I have some knowledge that

nobody else has this. Nobody else's has seen this yet.

Oh, the Lord has shown me something nobody else's got.

They were called the Gnostics, J And oh, I didn't tell us the

first story, J I'm sorry. GNOSTICS, the Gnostics.

And they were heretics and they were coming up with things that

no one else had seen. And Paul addresses them in some

of his letters, right. So I'm not, I'm, I'm not the one

who's going, wow, look, the tax collector, No one else has ever

seen that. The tax collector's like David.

No, I'm telling it's stacks and stacks and stacks of

commentators and commentaries say this.

And what is a commentator? A commentator is a person who

comments on an event, right? So there are commentaries that

you can read that will comment on Scripture when it's difficult

to get your head around a certain passage of Scripture.

I would encourage you to use commentaries.

And you know, the commentator often, like think about a sports

commentator, right? They're going to talk about that

when you watch football today, they're the sports commentators.

They're making comments about the game.

Some of you are commentators. You've got a lot of comments

about a lot of things, right? You're a commentator even though

you didn't know it. But certainly there are Bible

commentaries. And nowadays it's so easy to,

when you read a passage that you're confused about, you go,

what is this? What does this mean?

And you're trying to figure it out.

You can go. I'll suggest even instead of

your notes, biblegateway.com. That's an easy one to remember.

biblegateway.com. And when you get there, they

have tons of free commentaries. And all you have to do is put

in, you know, Psalm 51 verse one, and there will be comments

from reliable people that are not, you know, I'll name names.

They're not Jehovah Witnesses, they're not Mormons, they're not

universalist, they're not other unreliable, in my opinion,

scripturally traditions, right? I'm encourage you

biblegateway.com, very just reliable, and go there and find

comments, commentaries to help you understand scripture when

you run across something that you don't understand.

So I'm telling you that stacks of commentaries connect the

origin of what the tax collector says to what David said in Psalm

51. When David says God be merciful

to me, a Sinner, he is saying the same.

And going back to Luke 18, This is why Jesus says, I tell you,

this man went down to his house justified rather than the other.

For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who

humbles himself will be exalted. David humbles himself by saying,

God be merciful to me. This tax collector does the

same. Now Jesus takes the tax

collector and the pair and the, and the, the Pharisee and he

like turns the ideas of culture on its ear.

There's a there's a saying that we use on its ears.

What is the origin? The origin?

Is it like if you take someone and you put their ear where

their feet should go, you've turned them on their ear, right.

So Jesus often was doing this like society and culture thought

this, this is the Pharisee is obviously better than the tax

collector. Not according to Jesus.

God often has his way in his thinking of going, I'm going to

shock you, I'm going to surprise you.

You thought it was like this, but I'm showing you it's

different. Jesus shakes things up.

He flips the script, the tax collectors better than the

Pharisee. Now in the Psalms, what I want

you to see is that we're not going to do the Psalms like

chapter one through 150. I'm not teaching them that way.

I'm taking groups of Psalms and I'm kind of grouping them

together. OK, So I took the most popular

psalms. We did that.

This week we're doing songs of repentance.

On weeks to come again, I'll do songs of lament, songs of grief,

all there's so many different types of psalms.

This week we're talking about songs of repentance and the one

of the scholars would call this a penitential Psalm.

That's a big word. I don't expect you to remember

that. But a penitent person is a

person who confesses sin and wrongdoing and seeks

forgiveness. That's a penitent person.

If you're penitent, you go to someone that you have wrong.

You go to God, you go to someone, your spouse, your

children, a friend. And when you're penitent, you go

and you say, I'm sorry. I did.

That was not how I intended to come across.

That wasn't the best me. I'm sorry, I'm penitent.

And from penitent we get the word penitentiary.

And this is a curious thing because the word is evolved.

A penitentiary used to be a place where people went when

they were sorry and they went like to pay for their wrong.

Nowadays A penitentiary, when we think of a penitentiary, most

time we think, well, everyone who's there is innocent, right?

If you saw Shawshank Redemption, remember, everybody in the jail

was innocent according to them, right?

So you don't find, sadly, a lot of penitent people in

penitentiaries anymore. Now, Psalm 51, let me read a bit

more of what David says. He says have mercy on me, Oh

God, according to your steadfast love, according to your mercy,

blot out my transgressions and wash me thoroughly from my

iniquity and cleanse me from my sin.

Just those two verses are so great.

It's such a simple prayer that when you need to repent in your

life and the reality is this is not a one time occasion.

It's something that should be happening in life of Christian

ongoing throughout our life. I'll unpack that more.

This is a good Psalm to know Psalm 51 to know to, to even if

you don't memorize it, there's a couple phrases from it, if you

at least get those like the tax collector, he just took one of

the phrases and he prayed it and he was honored by Jesus.

Now I'm, I'm going to take a long tangent and I want to

unpack what repentance is and what it looks like.

And then I'm going to come back to Psalm 51 and I'll read more

of it to you. But I'm warning you, here comes

a long tangent. OK, what is repentance?

Repentance is a change of mind or heart that leads to a turning

to God and away from sin and the context of our faith in

Christianity. Repentance is I've been going

this way. I've been is the picture is I'm

all about me. I'm the king of my life.

I'm the Lord of my life. I reign over by life.

I'm about self and when we repent, we turn and now we say,

now God, I want to be about you and your ways and Jesus, I want

you to be the Lord of my life. I surrender to your lordship.

I'm made for that. So I, I turn from this and I

turn over here God to you. And that's what repentance is.

It's a turning, it happens throughout our lives.

And let me present you this theology and doctrine.

You cannot be a Christian without repentance.

You can't be a Christian without repentance.

It's a turning. When we choose to believe in

Jesus, we're turning towards God.

So did we find this, first of all, the premise of what must we

do to be saved? Well, at its simplest form, we

must believe in the Lord Jesus and you'll be saved.

We find this in Acts 16. This is Paul and Silas are in a

jail and there's like an earthquake of sorts and they're

about to escape and this jailer asks them this question.

Then he brought them out and he said, sirs, what must I do to be

saved? And they said believe in the

Lord Jesus and you will be saved, you and your household.

Now Paul in this occasion, he doesn't say, OK, you have to

repent. He just simplifies it.

You, you believe in the Lord Jesus, but then you go, well,

what is believing look like? And Luke in Acts is not

recording the entire conversation with the jailer,

but I'm sure that Paul's saying believe and be saved.

And then the jailer's going to say, well, what is believing?

Look like Paul is going to unpack.

Well, it looks like turning. There's a turning that happens

in your life when you turn towards God in Jesus.

And sometimes sometime back, I really wanted to simplify

believing in Jesus as the point of salvation because some

Christians want to be like Jesus and to be saved.

You, you follow Jesus and you give to the church.

You follow Jesus and you say this prayer or use this

particular little type of worship.

Those are the things that say, you know, what do you need to be

saved? You need to believe in Jesus.

OK, and what does believe in Jesus?

What does it look like? It looks like an initial turning

and watch. Jesus is going to mention this

often. Jesus mentions repentance over

and over again Matthew 417 from that time.

In other words, the time where John the Baptist was killed and

martyred for his faith. From that time Jesus began to

preach saying repent for the Kingdom of heaven is at hand.

Turn turn to God through Jesus and Mark 1 the same Mark is

telling the same story that Matthew tells now.

After John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee proclaiming

the gospel of God and saying the time is fulfilled and the

Kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the

gospel. Luke were quotes Jesus.

He says, no, I tell you, but unless you repent, you will all

likewise perish. Oh, you're familiar with John

316. I don't have it in your notes,

but it says, For God so loved the world that he gave his only

begotten Son, that whosoever believes and him will not

perish. And Jesus is saying here, you

know, you take both of these truths that Jesus is presenting

and you blend both of them. When you believe on Jesus, you

won't perish. But Jesus then says, no, I tell

you, but unless you repent, so He's adding to it, but unless

you repent, you will also likewise perish.

To turn to God, become a Christian, it takes repenting.

That doesn't mean that you clean yourself up and you stop doing

whatever sinful thing you're doing.

That's not what it takes to come to God.

You turn towards God and then that leads to repentance.

That turning then begins to change who you are as a person.

Peter on the day of Pentecost in Acts chapter 2, he's preaching

Acts 2 · chapter mention

and he says the story. Now when they heard this, they

were cut to the heart. They're hearing Peter's sermon

and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, brothers, what

shall we do? And Peter said to them, repent

and be baptized, everyone of you in the name of Jesus Christ for

the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of

the Holy Spirit. Repentance is talked about by

Jesus, by Peter, the sermon on Pentecost, and then it's talked

about by Paul. Watch in Romans, Paul says, or

do you pursue them on the riches of his kindness and forbearance

and patience, not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead

you to repentance. Paul is saying you presume on

the riches of God when when you continue in your sin and you

don't turn. And he's saying, listen, the

kindness that you received, you received the salvation of God

when you were saved, when you believed you were saved, OK, and

you started this turning, but that turning now continues when

you're going to chase after the ways of God.

And Paul says the kindness that you've received from God, God

continues to be kind and gracious and merciful to you.

And that kindness is meant to lead you to repentance through

ongoing turning. John Piper, who's a pastor

preacher that I enjoy, he says this repentance means more than

merely stopping sin. It means turning from the love

of sin to the love of God. So when we start to say, God,

I'm going to love you more than anything else in my life.

I'm going to nurture and grow within me a love for you.

And that is then going to lead me away from a love of sinful

behaviors and sin in general. And then CS Lewis in Mere

Christianity, he says, now repentance, I love this.

He says, now repentance is no fun at all.

It's something much harder than merely eating humble pie.

So if you think repentance is just you going to God or to

somebody else and saying, hey, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

That's not quite repentance. It it really real repentance.

It's not fun. It's something much harder than

merely eating humble pie. It means unlearning all the self

conceit and self will that we've been training ourselves into

like we're born. And if we're not, especially in

the culture in which we live, the culture in which we live

will permit and promote you to be selfish and self-centered and

to go for instant gratification to be all about yourself.

It will promote all that to be sinfully all about self.

God is calling us to a point where no, we turn from that and

we turn to him. We're like, OK, Jesus, I'm

receiving your forgiveness in your grace and now you're going

to show me and you're going to you're going to you're going to

challenge me here in the season mindful challenge me there.

God, you're going to continue to grow me.

Now watch this. There's an initial turning that

leads to salvation, initial salvation.

But then watch there's an ongoing repentance for all of

us. That's a good discipline.

And how do I know this? Well, in Revelation 2, four

through 5, John the Apostle, the disciple of Jesus, he has a

vision of heaven. We call it Revelation.

But before he has this great vision of heaven, he meets face

to face. Jesus appears to him, and Jesus

addresses 7 different churches. OK, so he's going to speak of

seven different churches. I won't go into great detail

about it, but three of the churches, he's going to tell

them to repent. These are churches.

These are existing Christians and Jesus is telling them

repent, which leads you to believe.

It's like, oh repentance isn't wow, that's for Christians too.

Oh it's for people who are far from God, not saved yet all.

But then you become a Christian and you're told to repent again.

Jesus says in Revelation 2, four through 5 to this church,

Remember therefore from where you have fallen, repent and do

the works you did at first, what you did when you first became a

Christian, that fervor that you had a commitment, that love that

you had for the Lord. Jesus is saying, go back to

that, come back to me in that way.

Repent, which means that there is ongoing repentance in the

life of a Christian. And many Christians don't have

the discipline to know. It's like, Oh yeah, confession

and repentance is part of life. And for some of us, you came

from a Christian tradition where they so pounded the idea of

repentance and confession that it was like overboard.

And you had to walk around in shame all the time thinking I'm

a worm, I'm a worm. I'm nothing but a worm.

There are some church traditions that that's that's like in their

weekly confessions. I'm just a worm God.

No, that that's not at all what this is about, but it is about

being open to saying God when you convict me, when you

challenge me. But people who get stubborn and

unwilling to listen to the promptings and Holy Spirit to

grow to different depths and God, they miss out because

they're not willing to have ongoing repentance, ongoing

turning in their life. So you're, you're saved, you're

a Christian, but there's things in your life you need to turn

from. OK.

And I love what Timothy Keller says about this in his book The

Prodigal God. He said repentance is not just

the way we enter the Kingdom of God, it's the way we make

progress in the Kingdom of God. You want to make progress in

your Christian life. And then it takes you being open

to promptings from the Holy Spirit where you need to come

back to God and say, like the tax collector and like David,

God have mercy on me, a Sinner in the midst of your grace, I'm

going to turn and I'm going to go your way.

Instead of a way, there's a way for you.

Now, what I want to show you is that the Psalms offer some

prayers of repentance to help us in ongoing repentance that leads

to progress. There are seven of them.

There are 7 Psalms out of the 150 that are very uniquely given

to us as prayers of repentance, and they're valuable.

And in your life, again, there might be a time where you're in

grief. OK, I want you to know the

Psalms about grief. There are times where it's like,

oh, I want to know how great God is.

I'm going to read that Psalm. There's some psalms that are

like an encouragement to sing and to worship.

We want to know those. But there are psalms that are

there that give an example of how to repent, and they're

beautiful. And Psalm 51 is one of them.

And David writes to the choir master and you're heading in

your Bible, it'll say to the choir master Psalm of David and

watch in the heading. It gives the occasion when David

said have mercy on me, O God, he said it in the heading in your

Bible says when Nathan the prophet went to him after he had

gone into Bathsheba. Now you know the story of David.

It's so. I mean, even outside of the

church, it's following. David kills Goliath with the

stone, the slingshot. David becomes king.

He's a musician. He plays a harp of the likes,

and he becomes king. And you know the story, David's,

it's a season where he should go off to war, but he doesn't.

And he's on the roof of his house and he sees Bathsheba.

And some would say he has an affair with her.

He commits adultery with her. But I think it's really more

than that. I think it's more like assault

maybe, and abuse. And David does this terrible

thing. He takes Uriah the Hittite's

wife, Bathsheba, and he abuses her, and he's a king and he

loves God and he does this terrible thing, but not only

does he commit this terrible sin, but then I won't read you

the story. But in Second Samuel 11, you can

go read the story this week. He sins in this way, but then he

covers it up. And to cover it up, he brings

her husband home and he tries to set it up where her husband

would impregnate her because now he finds out she's pregnant.

His name is Uriah the Hittites. And Uriah, to honor his fellow

soldiers, he won't go and be with his wife.

He stays away. And so because of this, David

continues the cover up by murdering Uriah the Hittite.

He hasn't put on the front lines of battle knowing that he will

be killed. So David, I mean, his sin is so

horrible. He, he has this sexual sin, then

he covers it up, then he murders Uriah and then he marries

Bathsheba and it's terrible. I mean, it's, it's, it's

horrible. So in Second Samuel chapter 12,

2 Samuel 12 · chapter mention

what happens is that leads up to the context of Psalm 51.

It says this is, this is the song that David sings when Uriah

or when Nathan confronts him, Nathan the prophet confronts

him. So Nathan goes to David and

second Samuel 12 and he's going to tell David a story.

It's a parable. Nathan tells a parable to David,

as Jesus often told parables. And the parable that Nathan

tells in brief, Nathan says, David, there's a traveling rich

man and he has lots of sheep, and he goes into an area and he

takes a lamb from a man who has only one lamb.

And this one man loves this lamb so much.

But the rich traveling man takes that lamb and he slaughters a

lamb and they eat it. And David's furious at this

story. It's like this is terrible.

And David said whoever has done this thing should be put to

death. And then watch this in second

Samuel 12 seven. Nathan said to David, you, you,

you are the man. And we use that phrase like,

yeah, you're the man, you know, in a flippant light way.

That's not the way it means to us now.

But when Nathan says to David, you, you are the man that did

this right there and then in Second Samuel 1213, what is

David's response? He could have Nathan put to

death. He's the king, he's the ruler.

He could do whatever he wants. But instead he repents.

He repents, he turns in verse 13, David said to Nathan, I have

sinned against the Lord and you're going to find that from

that conviction that he has an awareness of how terrible his

sin is. Then we get Psalm 51 that the

tax collector quotes in Jesus. This parable.

Now aware of this is what's happened to David.

Psalm 51. Let me read you more of it.

It's 19 verses long. I won't take the time to read

all of it, but I'll read you one through 4 and verse 7.

Then eight through 13. David says, have mercy on me, oh

God, according to your steadfast love, not because I'm deserving,

but God, have mercy on me because you're loving.

And according to your abundant mercy, God, you're merciful.

And blot out my transgressions, and wash me thoroughly from my

iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.

For I know my transgressions. And my sin is ever before me

against you. Only have I sinned and done what

is evil in your sight, so that you may be justified in your

word and blameless in your judgement.

And purge me with hyssop. Hyssop is an Evergreen herb that

it has healing qualities about. It's in the mint family, I

understand. And David's using it like a

metaphor. Like God purge me, like purify

me with hyssop, and I shall be clean.

And wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.

They're not very familiar with snow where David was, but he

romanticizes it and it's cleanliness.

And then in verse 8, he continues in his song of

repentance. And he says, let me hear joy and

gladness. Let the bones that you have

broken rejoice. Hide your face from my sins and

blot out all my iniquities. And then he says this classic

phrase that is worth memorizing and praying throughout your

life. Create in me a clean heart of

God and renew a right spirit within me and cast me not away

from your presence and take not your Holy Spirit for me and

restore to me the joy of your salvation and uphold me with the

willing spirit. And then this is a profound

thing that David says. He says then I will teach

transgressors your ways and sinners will return to you.

David's like Lord, once I experience your forgiveness and

your mercy, then I'm going to go tell other sinners,

transgressors about how you forgave me and they will return.

They'll turn to you. David goes on to till you know 6

verses later. But I encourage you to go read

that. But my encouragement to you is

to know these psalms and to have them like in your back pocket

when you need to pray this when you find yourself in a place,

you're like, OK, God, I, I, I disobeyed your best.

I fell short God of what you wanted.

And now I'm in this place and God, I, I want to pray for

forgiveness. I'm not sure what words to use.

These words are great. Have mercy on me.

O God, create in me a clean heart and, and, and then I'll go

teach transgressors your ways and sinners will return to you.

Now I want to give you just the components of repentance.

When David is repenting, he has conviction.

He knows what he did is wrong. He ignores it for a while until

he's confronted by Nathan. But then when Nathan confronts

him, he's convicted. He realizes that what he did was

sinful and what he did was wrong.

We have the same. The Holy Spirit will prompt us

also when we're open. And then there's contrition.

In other words, he has a contrite heart.

And a contrite heart is when we are actually sorry for what

we've done to another person or before God.

And we can ignore it or we can be contrite.

And it's a bit of sadness. It it's contrite.

We're saying, God, yeah, this, this grieves me, God, that I was

this way. Now, again, I'm not encouraging

shame. I'm not encouraging you to walk

like you're a worm. You're a worm.

What I'm encouraging is to read these Psalms and utilize them to

go to God and say, God, I've sinned.

I need your forgiveness. So I'm coming back to you again.

God forgive me, and then I'll go tell others about your

forgiveness. So there's conviction, there's

contrition. And then also we are to confess

our sins before God and sometimes others, not all the

time, but sometimes others one to another.

And when you can, the confession of your sin, whatever it might

be, it actually leads to healing and victory in the future when

you're willing to confess. And then finally, it takes a

turning or an action. Now I'm going to turn from the

sinful thing that has a grip on me or the sinful behavior or

this, whatever it is in your life where you're falling short

of God's best, it's considered sin.

And so God is calling you an ongoing, He's calling you to

ongoing repentance. Now, there are other Psalms.

I would encourage you to take the notes.

If we run out of notes, Kathy, will you make us some more back

there? I think I see.

So I have them listed here in your notes.

And I would love it if you took these home.

And it's Psalm chapter 6, which is a plea for mercy and healing.

Psalms 6 · chapter mention

And Psalm 32 is about the joy of forgiveness.

The confession leads to. You can read that Psalm 38 is

about the pain of grief that's brought on by sin.

Sometimes we experience grief over our sins.

Sometimes it's small, but still there should be attorney.

But there are other times in your life where it's like, man,

this is huge and it's led to grief.

And grief could be depression or anxiety or panic attacks or

other things, but you can be LED out of that and lifted out of

it. And it's a Psalm of someone

who's in great physical pain about their sin in Psalm 38.

And if you're in that place, go pray.

It's a great one. Psalm 11-O2 is a declaration of

dependence and a cry for restoration.

OK, so now they're they're crying out.

And when they're crying out for this restoration, the period of

time is like again, post like Daniel and the lion's den,

Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego and the fiery furnace.

It's late in the history of the Old Testament.

This is this is a people group. This is an entire people group

have disobeyed God and they're crying out as a people group.

So if you want to pray for your country, any of your state or

your city, then this declaration of dependence and a cry for

restoration is more of a prayer for a people group.

Then they perfumed us to Psalm 1:30 the day.

I've taught on this before. In fact, I teach them this often

when I go to other churches. I've taught on here twice when I

came to interview here and Memorial Day weekendish and

2018, I actually preached Psalm 130th.

The day perfumes, which means from the depths they perfumed us

is Latin for out of like the depths of despair.

And I taught that. I know I taught again about a

year ago. And so the day perfume Psalm,

that's a great one to go read. Psalm 143 is loosely grouped

with the penitent Psalms, but it's an urgent plea for guidance

and vindication. When someone has vindicated

vindicated, they're cleared of blame.

So if you want, if you say God, I want to be vindicated.

Maybe maybe you were wrong, but not not as to the extent that

someone might be accusing you of.

And so then you can go and you can pray this like God, I need

you to vindicate me. Like God, you declare me free of

blame. So these are psalms to know and

to go utilize. And maybe you're in a place

today where you're in one of those situations.

I encourage you go pray the Psalm.

Use it as a prayer. Repentance in the life of a

Christian should become an ongoing discipline.

And in my testimony, I would say to you, I'm 55 years old, I've

been following the Lord. I got to say when I was 8 years

old, I did that turning. When I was 8 years old, I turned

to God. But in my life there have been

times where it's been big, where it's like God, I have mercy on

me, a Sinner. God have mercy on me, God, a

Sinner. I take the posture of the tax

collector. Sometimes it's small.

Other times in my life it's been big.

And I've had to say, God restored in me the joy of your

salvation, created me a clean heart again.

And these Psalms give voice to those times in your life where

you're crying out for a new turning and a new forgiveness,

new repentance. It should be an ongoing

discipline in our lives. And again, if you came from a

discipline of Christianity where they shamed you within the every

week, you were just, you had to come in and act every week like

you, you grovel and you come in. I've been to Israel and I've

seen people crawling on their hands and feet and bleeding like

to the Church of repentance in Jerusalem out of guilt and

shame. It's like that is not what God

is calling us to, but God is calling us to ongoing repentance

or turning in our life as we sense His conviction to greater

heights in obedience to God. 2nd Corinthians 2 verse 10 says for

godly grief produces a repentance when you feel godly

grief and it leads you to repentance that that is going to

lead you to salvation without regrets.

Whereas worldly grief produces death if you take upon yourself

worldly grief, which is that again, groveling and like I'm a

worm, I'm terrible. Look, I fell in this area of my

life again, Oh, I'm so terrible, I'll never get over it.

I'm horrible. And you go to God in that

posture. No, that's not the posture that

will lead you into victory out of whatever you need to repent

of whatever you need to change in your life.

But if you'll come with these Psalms, the posture of the tax

collector, the posture of David and you can be lifted out of it.

Now I want to give you just some application as we wind down and

I want to just every week, most of the weeks I want to start

doing even more consistently is that I want to give you

opportunity for that initial turning.

Maybe you've come to North life or you, maybe you someone has

told you about Jesus or you've been wrestling with the claims

of Christianity and you've, you've you've not yet taken that

point. I've taken the action of saying,

OK, I'm in. I'm going to do the initial

turning towards God. And at that point, when you have

that initial change or decision, Jesus, I'm going to follow you.

We call that salvation and you turning towards God and you turn

towards God and you're like, God forgive me a Sinner and you're

granted forgiveness through Jesus because of what Jesus did

on the cross for us and his, his death, his burial and his

resurrection and what Jesus is doing even now with the Father.

When we surrender our lives in repentance, then we receive the

salvation of God. And if you've never done that,

if you've never made a decision to become a Christian, then I

want to pray with you. I'm going to do that in a

minute. And when you pray to receive the

Lord, then my encouragement to you is to tell somebody, whether

it's me or friend, tell someone that you received the Lord.

And then I encourage you to be baptized.

We'll have baptisms here in a couple months.

We just had them in September. We'll have them again.

And when you get baptized, it's your way of saying God has

cleanse me, I'm resurrected, I'm made new, I'm alive in Christ.

OK, so that's one application if you've not made your initial

repentance. But then my question to you, if

you've been a Christian for many years, is, is there something

that you need to repent of that's ongoing in your life?

Jesus says to the church in Revelation, I have this against

you, you've lost your first love.

And he says, go back to the things you did at first, repent.

And maybe there's some areas in your life where you need to do

that. Repentance is also a discipline

and an act that ongoing Christians do.

And then my third application question for you is, are you

willing to be like David where he says, I'm going to go tell

other transgressors? You going and telling others,

it's like I've received the forgiveness of God.

It's been so grand in my life. It's so life changing.

I want to tell you about it. It's worthwhile.

And David gets his sight on that even early on and his

forgiveness that he receives in Psalm 51.

I hope that you take this message and that you wrestle

with it and you go, OK, God, where do I, how do I do this in

my life? What does repentance look like

in a way that's not not walking in shame, not groveling, but

instead experiencing the ongoing forgiveness and mercy of the

Lord that comes when we are in tune and sensitive to areas in

our life where we need to repent?

Let me pray for us. And if you want to make that

decision to follow Christ for the first time to turn towards

Jesus, then I'm going to pray. And I encourage you to echo this

prayer with me. You can pray.

Jesus, I come to you and I say I believe in you, and because I

believe in you, I can receive your salvation.

So I turn from selfishness and my sinfulness and I turn towards

you, God, and I say Jesus become the Lord of my life.

I receive your salvation that is eternal.

I will live with you eternally. And I receive that eternal life

now here, not after death, but I receive it here, and it will be

with me there after death, but I receive it now.

So I receive your life and your breath and your spirit in me.

Jesus come and reign and rule in my life and show me what it

looks like to follow you in Jesus name.

And everyone said Amen and Amen. Let's all stand together.

Don't forget Wednesday night this week is out at Fleming

Farm. Hope to see you there.

And then the following Wednesday are the students leading us in

worship. We look forward to having you

out that night with us also. Now before you go, I want to say

a blessing over you. So if you'll receive this

blessing, pause and open your heart as I bless you and sway

before you go. And now may the Lord bless you

and keep you, and may he make his face to shine upon you.

And may the joy of the Lord that is unspeakable and full of glory

made a bound to you. And may the peace of God that

passes all understanding, may it surprise you in the midst of all

the challenges that life brings. And then may the mercies of the

Lord, the forgiveness of God that is new every morning, may

be especially new to your now and your mornings to come.

And now may the Lord Jesus Christ guard your heart and your

mind. You are salt and you are light.

Go now and be salt and light unto the world.

You are blessed. We'll see you again soon.