Psalm 6

Well, church, turn with me, if you will, to Psalm chapter six.

Psalm chapter six.

And today our passage is all about the distress of sin and the relief of repentance.

So I don't know about you, but one of the most miserable things I experience as a born-again believer in Jesus Christ is the pain in discipline I undergo when I willfully sin.

When I was an unbeliever, I didn't have this problem.

I loved sin.

I could drink it down like water, I could eat it like it was ice cream cake.

I could eat it all day long, zero conviction.

And sure, maybe I had a little bit of remorse or regret here or there, but I enjoyed it.

However, since the day that God called me out of the grave and gave me a new nature and a new identity, my appetite for sin has changed.

I can't enjoy it.

When I choose sin, the Holy Spirit is grieved in me.

God in his love brings about discipline.

I immediately feel horrible.

As Ali Esther Begg once said, he said, the most miserable person on earth, it's not an atheist.

It's a child of God who is willfully, habitually sinning.

If you are a Christian, you know exactly what I'm talking about.

God will not let you go on sinning and misrepresenting his name.

God is not an enabler.

He will not allow us to adore and cherish the murder weapon that killed Christ.

Like any good father, he will not allow his children to live like the devil.

He is a jealous God and he loves us, which is why he exercises discipline, that we might be more convinced that sin stinks and that obedience is beautiful.

This is what Psalm 6 is all about.

What does divine discipline look like?

What do we do when we find ourselves in it?

And how do we find relief and restoration from it?

All of this is answered for us in Psalm 6, through the life and prayer of David.

Now David truly was a man after God's own heart, but he was also a man who made many mistakes in his life.

The best of men are men at best.

And thank God for this wonderful psalm that gives us personal relatability and provides for us the sweet remedy of restoration through repentance.

So David starts in verses one through five by describing his experience of divine discipline.

He says, O Lord, rebuke me not in your anger, nor discipline me in your wrath.

Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am languishing.

Heal me, O Lord, for my bones are troubled, my soul also is greatly troubled.

But you, O Lord, how long?

Clearly David is experiencing God's discipline.

In other words, his affliction, he believes, was caused by his sin.

In any time that we experience divine discipline, there are three common human reactions which are seen here by David.

First, we question God's motivation and character.

Secondly, it causes us to seek him.

Discipline draws us closer to God, or at least it should.

And lastly, we think that God forgot about us.

He put us in time out and he forgot.

So first, we see in verse 1 David questioning God's motivation for disciplining him.

I remember as a child, my parents would discipline me when I rebelled and was being stupid.

And I remember them saying, honey, we're doing this because we love you.

And I remember thinking, no, you don't.

If you loved me, you wouldn't be grounding me, you wouldn't make me cry, you wouldn't take away my toy, you must hate me.

In the same way, from a human perspective, we so often interpret God's loving discipline as his wrath or fury.

It feels as if God is mad at us, which is why David says, God, do not rebuke me in your anger, don't discipline me in your wrath.

Now, this isn't necessarily a true statement.

According to Hebrews 12, God disciplines those he loves.

According to Romans 8, nothing can separate God's people from his love.

So everything God does for the true believer is done out of deep love.

God's wrath has passed over us because we bear the righteousness of Christ.

In Christ, legally, we stand before God blameless.

However, it doesn't always feel that way.

I sin, I make a stupid mistake, and God disciplines me.

He takes away certain privileges from me.

He removes his felt presence from my life.

He allows me to get into very difficult situations.

He allows bad consequences to occur in my life.

And my life starts falling apart.

And the Holy Spirit in me is grieving.

God's mighty hand of conviction is upon me.

David even says here, Lord, my bones hurt.

I've been there.

I've been so sick in my sin that my bones hurt.

When I experience this, my natural thought is, God must hate me.

He finally looked at me, repeating the same old stupid sins, and he said, Jimmy, I'm done with you.

I'm removing your name from the Lamb's book of life.

I tried so hard to make you right, but you are so hard-headed.

He's scowling at me.

His fury has been kindled.

Surely he's going to reserve a spot for me in hell.

Can we all not relate to David here?

God's discipline comes and we wonder, God, are you mad at me?

Is this your judgment and your fury?

Lord, please, I beg you, let this not be your anger, but please remind me that this is your immeasurable love.

It's your grace.

It's actually your mercy.

God's discipline causes us to come face to face with the nature and the character of God.

Secondly, God's discipline, it causes us to seek Him for help.

Parents in the room, isn't it amazing how your kids seek comfort from you when you are the one who disciplined or afflicted them?

I can make my son Jay so upset when I take away his toy, I put him in time out, he weeps and he cries.

But in his affliction, the irony is, who does he want to comfort him?

Me.

God's discipline is never meant to draw us further from him, but closer to him.

As Stephen Charnock once said, it is often the rod of discipline, not the staff of comfort, when we learn best.

So there are many reasons why God disciplines us.

He does it to teach us the sorrows of sin.

He does it to conform us more into the image of Christ.

He disciplines us to reveal areas of our life that are still worldly and reveal complacency.

But the overall goal of God's discipline is to bring us back to Him.

That we would be reminded that He is all we need and He is all we have.

He is our summum bonum, our highest and ultimate good.

Which is why David, after undergoing discipline, he cries out to God, Oh, heal me, Lord, and be gracious to me.

You know, suffering, even if it is directly coming from God Himself, draws us closer to Him.

The wave of affliction crashes us against the rock of Christ.

This is the Romans 8.28 principle, that God uses all things, the good, the bad, and the ugly, yes, even our failures, for our good and for his glory.

Thomas Case says this.

In the sharp and bitter waters of affliction, God washes out the dust and clears the eyes to discover sin and thus see our need for God.

As bitter as God's discipline may be, in the end, it has a way of drawing us back to Him, renewing our affections towards Him.

It keeps us Christ-centered and on the narrow way.

He knows exactly what we need to endure so that we might learn the sinfulness of sin and the joy of obedience.

So that we, like David, would cry out, I need you, Lord.

Heal me, help me.

And lastly, David is wondering where God is at at the end of verse 3.

God, how long?

Did you forget about me?

Is there a limit here?

I'm languishing, I'm in pain, my stinking bones hurt.

How long, O Lord?

Have we not all been here?

We serve an idol.

We try to cover up our sin with worthless fig leaves.

We stop worshiping God and we go off and we do our own thing.

And God begins to discipline us.

And in the moment it feels as if God has totally abandoned us.

And we begin to wonder, will he ever restore me?

And in frustration, we say, Lord, I get it.

Sin is bad.

It's ugly.

It's killing me.

It's making me sick in the head.

But my goodness, don't you see how miserable I am because of it?

How long are you going to allow this misery?

God, please, I beg you, grant me some relief, some restoration and some comfort.

Which causes David next to appeal to God's deliverance, his love and his fame.

Look at what he says in the next verses, in verses four through five.

He says, Turn, O Lord, deliver my life, save me for the sake of your steadfast love.

For in death there is no remembrance of you.

In Sheol, who will give you praise?

And so David makes two appeals here.

The first is God's character, his steadfast love.

If God continues to let David suffer, what will that say about God's love?

It's the same appeal Moses made on behalf of Israel in Exodus 32.

Moses says, Lord, if you destroy them, the Israelites, what will the Egyptians say?

They will say that you were powerful enough to bring them out of Egypt, but you were not loving enough to get them to the promised land.

David appeals to the love of God.

By the way, God doesn't need reminded of his love.

This is more of David reminding himself of God's love.

He needs reminded in the midst of divine discipline that God's love is still towards him.

God's steadfast love will be proved and revealed.

If you are a true believer in Jesus Christ, I don't care what sin you have committed, you are loved by God because you have been cleansed by the blood of Christ.

However great your sin, as we just sang, his mercy is more.

Secondly, David appeals to God's fame in verse 5.

He says, If I die, says David, there will be no remembrance of you.

Have you ever felt like God's discipline might kill you?

Seriously, I have been so convicted at times, I thought I might get struck by lightning if I walked outside.

And in some extreme cases, that can and does happen.

We see that actually in 1 Corinthians 11.

There were believers who were taking communion in an unholy way.

Some of them were actually taking communion to get drunk, and while there were poor people, poor believers in the room, they were eating all the food.

And so people were literally starving in the church during communion.

In which Paul says, that's why some of you are sick and some have died.

Which is why David pleads here, God, don't let me die.

For the fame of your name, if I am dead, how can I praise your name?

I will not be able to declare your goodness among Israel and tell of your wonderful deeds.

And at first glance, when you read this verse, it seems like a very selfish plea.

But God doesn't need David to be a witness.

God could raise up 10,000 men in Israel if he wants.

God can minister through rocks and donkeys.

Okay, God doesn't need David.

God's plans and purposes will prevail with or without us.

Plus, at least in this season of his life, David hasn't been a good witness.

Obviously, he's made some pretty big mistakes.

So, why should God trust David in this matter?

We have all heard stories all the time of people getting arrested, committing a crime, getting investigated by the IRS, who cry out to God and they say, God, I'm so sorry.

I'll never lie, I'll never cheat, I'll never steal again.

Save me from the situation, the consequences of my actions, and I will serve you all the days of my life.

And God gives them mercy, but they never keep their promise.

And so the reason David makes this plea is because he knows deep in his inner man that his ultimate priority in life is to magnify the God of Israel.

David doesn't want his life to end short because of a sin relapse.

Even though David has momentarily profaned God, his overall goal in life is to glorify the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

And he knows, despite his current sin, that there is still work for him to do as king, to behold Yahweh among Israel.

So although I've been playing around with sin, my deepest, most inner man is reminded that I want to live for God.

I want to finish well.

I want my legacy to be this.

Not that I died serving idols, but I died faithful to the one true God as I proclaimed his kingdom on earth.

Let me not die abusing the blood of Christ, let me die courageously proclaiming Christ crucified.

What a glorious plea.

It's not, hey God, you need me, therefore don't kill me.

Not at all.

It's this God, although I deserve death, I know that there is still work for me to do.

To praise your name, to remember you here on earth, and to be a faithful servant.

Next, David addresses the excruciating pain that he is experiencing from his sin.

He gives us insight on the consequences.

He says in verses six through seven, I am weary with moaning.

Every night I flood my bed with tears, I drench my couch with weeping, my eyes wastes away because of grief.

It grows weak because of all my foes.

Behold, church, the wages of sin.

Moaning, weeping, tears, grief, weakness, demonic influence.

I truly believe that God's method of discipline, most of the time, isn't so much him actively making things hard for us, but more so just him removing his protective grace.

You want sin so bad?

You are so determined to cling to that idol?

You really want to keep doing that hurtful thing?

Fine, go.

Go for a season and have it.

See what it produces for you, see what it gives you.

Leave me, the one true God, go and get intimate with demons, and let me know how that works out for you.

It's the prodigal son.

If you are so determined to go and rebel, to go live in the world, to leave your father, so you can go party and have some fun and partake in this evil system.

Go, go and find the so-called life that you are looking for.

But I will be right here, says God.

In fact, I will meet you on the driveway when you return, when you learn that there is no life, there is no purpose, there is no hope apart from your Heavenly Father, living with him in being in his presence.

Sin takes us deeper than we want to go.

We can never contain it.

Its desire is to consume us.

It lies to us, saying, hey, there's pleasure here, but it always produces death.

Sin will take you farther than you want to go, it will keep you longer than you want to stay, and it will cost you more than you want to pay.

And you know who quoted that quote was Rabbi Zacharias, which is the irony and should make us all tremble.

When you when we choose to live our life apart from God, you can expect emotional, mental, spiritual anguish.

You can expect the enemy's loud voice of guilt and condemnation because you just gave him a seat at the table.

You can expect the feeling that no one loves you, that you're all alone, that life has no meaning.

You can expect a surrounding of torment and darkness.

Why?

Because that is the fruit of living apart from God.

That is what sin produces.

Sin destroys.

And so, yes, God is loving enough to discipline us when we choose it.

So David expressed his feelings, he's vented a little bit about God's method of discipline, he has appealed to God's love and fame, and he has laid out the sorrows that sin has brought him.

So, church, where is our comfort in all of this?

Can we be restored?

What should our response be when we fall into sin and begin to experience God's discipline?

Thankfully, we are told how in verses 8 through 10.

David says.

Depart from me, all you workers of evil, for the Lord has heard the sound of my weeping, the Lord has heard my plea, and the Lord accepts my prayer, all my enemies shall be ashamed and greatly troubled, they shall turn back and be put to shame in a moment.

Friends, if you are here this morning and you are miserable because of your willful, habitual sin against God, and even though you can kind of put on a good front, deep inside, you're spiritually depressed, and you can feel God's discipline, and the spirit is resisting you, and your sin has kind of clouded your judgment, and you just don't see a way out.

You're not sure if you can ever get back to the sweet fellowship you once had with God.

Friends, listen to me.

The answer is literally right here.

It is repentance and answered prayer.

Agree with God that you were sinning, renounce the evil things that you have participated in, and cry out to God until He assures you of His forgiveness and restores the joy of your salvation.

That is what David experienced here.

Yes, sin has distressed you, and God's loving hand of discipline has weighed heavy upon you, but the relief of repentance and answered prayer, it's at hand.

Yes, your sin runs deep and it's ugly, but as Hebrews 7, 25 says, it says that Christ is able to save completely those who come to God through him because he lives forever to intercede for them.

We have an advocate, a mediator, a perfect savior who can grant us total relief, forgiveness, and restoration to any wrong turns that we have made in our Christian journey.

This is the first step to this is repentance.

Repentance, it simply means to change your mind.

It's a change of mind, a change of heart and action that results in turning away from sin and returning to God.

Without repentance, you will prolong your misery, or worse, you will sear your conscience.

That is what David does here.

He renounces evil.

He says, Depart from me, you workers of evil.

He perhaps was seduced by people to engage in sinful activity.

The first step towards healing is renouncing all evil that we have dabbled with.

David knows that there are spiritual forces out there.

People even, constantly whispering in our ear, come join us.

It's okay.

Everyone's doing it.

A little sin won't hurt, it'll make you feel good.

You deserve it.

Which is why he almost abruptly says, Get away from me.

Be gone, you workers of evil.

What David is doing here, he's drawing a line because Satan wants us to feel like you and I are no different than him.

He especially does this when we fail.

We say we're Christian.

Then evildoers get us to fall, then they say, aha, you're no different than us.

We're all in the same boat here.

We're not much different, you and I.

And in some senses, that is true.

But David, after a moment of repentance, he renounces his union with evil and he draws the line of truth and says, Listen, we're not friends.

Our natures are different, our future is different, our purpose is different, we serve different gods.

Yes, I may have joined you in evil for a season.

I may have fallen, and you got your laugh for a moment, but I am reminded now of whose I am.

So get away from me.

Depart from me, you workers of evil.

Where did David get this sudden boldness?

Back in verses six through seven, he basically was in the fetal position of death.

But now he is standing boldly with a trumpet sound, get away from me, all you who are evil.

He literally goes from saying, God, if you kill me, my dead body can't praise you, to all of a sudden saying, Be ashamed, enemies, God is on my side.

How did this happen?

Well, he explains how in verse 9.

He has this sudden boldness and this assurance, because the Lord has heard his plea and accepts his prayer.

If you didn't notice at this psalm, if you read through it, something happened between verses seven and eight.

It's as if David was crying out to God, wrestling with God, but then all of a sudden, in the middle of the psalm, as he's writing it, God showed up and answered him.

God showed up in the middle of David's plea, and David feels again the Lord's presence, receiving his comfort and reassured love.

This is the power of coming to God in prayer.

We go into the prayer closet on the verge of giving up, but we come out so transformed, so renewed, so touched by God that we walk out of our prayer closet, rebuking evil and drop-kicking idols.

This church is the relief of repentance and answered prayer.

This, friends, is how you escape willful sin.

This is how you find relief if you're undergoing divine discipline.

If you're there now and you want a way out, it's right before you.

Ask, seek, knock.

Like the persistent widow, pound on the door of God's mercy and love and don't give up until He answers and responds.

And if there is a prayer, by the way, that God loves to answer, a prayer that is totally in line with his nature and will, it is this.

God, please restore my sweet fellowship with you.

In case you forgot, Christ is in the business of advocacy.

His very name is Savior.

Dane Ortland says this.

We tend to think that divine anger, it's pent up, it's spring-loaded, and that divine mercy is slow to build.

It's just the opposite.

Divine mercy is ready to burst forth at the slightest prick.

When will we learn that most of our sorrows in life and many of our self-inflicted miseries remain because of unconfessed sin and a refusal to go to God in prayer?

When will we learn that Christ actually wants our sin, He wants our troubles, He wants our sorrows, because He is the only one fit to deal with them.

Oh, what peace we often forfeit! Oh, what needless pain we bear, all because we do not carry everything to God in prayer.

It is only through repentance and prayer that David now has a fresh, newfound victory over his enemies.

He says in verse 10, All my enemies shall be ashamed and greatly troubled.

They shall turn back and be put to shame in a moment.

Now, I don't know about you, but when I sin and I experience God's discipline, I feel like evil is winning.

I feel like the enemy is right when he says, I'm a pathetic, abandoned loser.

Sin has gripped me, Satan has tripped me in my own flesh.

Says, how many more times are you going to keep letting God down?

But through repentance and answered prayer, we are reminded, oh wait, evil's not winning.

Sin hasn't overtaken me.

Wait a second, Satan, aren't you already in a defeated position?

And wait a second, I am forgiven.

God is for me.

God's love has never left me.

Nice try, world.

Nice try, Satan, but God answers me because I am his child.

And if he answers me, then that means that he is for me.

Which means you better run.

You better be ashamed for trying to deceive me or laughing at my failure, because God is on my side, I am his child, and he is for me.

And if he's for me, who can be against me?

And he will do, what will he do to those someday, to those who tried to destroy his chosen ones.

This is what's available, church, to us today through repentance and prayer.

What an amazing example David sets for us.

This psalm not only articulates our emotions when we experience God's discipline, but it also provides for us the solution, the remedy.

I have counseled a lot of men over the years in both pastoral and uh parachurch settings, uh, many men who struggle with uh some form of destructive behavior, and it's killing them.

And they know it.

And a lot of the times they tell me, Jimmy, I've tried everything.

I've gone to counseling, I've been to 20 rehabs, I did EMDR, I did followed every doctor's advice out there.

Nothing works, in which I always ask them, when is the last time you ever so sought God in prayer, crying out to him for however long it takes until he revealed himself to you, until you were so overwhelmed by his felt presence?

And when was the last time you just looked up to the sky and said, God, I confess that I am in sin and I need your help to turn from it and return to you?

And most of them, most of them say, I have never done that.

I've never done that, or I can't remember the last time I've done that, in which I reply, Well, you say you're a Christian.

You've sought all these other means, and you're frustrated that nothing is working, frustrated that God won't take away your struggle or misery, but yet you are not pursuing God's most ordinary means of grace, which is seeking God in prayer with heartfelt repentance.

Turning from sin and turning to God in prayer is the starting point.

Other therapies are fine, but if you don't start with repentance and prayer, I don't care what other form of method you seek out there, you're wasting your time.

Because this is God's method of restoration.

Only He can fix the guilty conscience, only He can forgive our sin, only He can give us new affections, and only He can restore the joy of our salvation, and only He can give us His peace, which surpasses all understanding.

And this church is our application for today.

If there is unconfessed sin in your life, bring it before God immediately.

Don't wait until tomorrow.

The longer you wait, the more miserable you will become.

Reflect on areas where sin has taken root in your life and ask yourself: is this temporary pleasure worth the long-term consequences?

And if your heart is heavy with conviction, ask yourself why.

Where have you compromised?

The path to relief is clear.

It's through repentance and prayer.

There is no sin too great that God's mercy cannot cover.

His arms are open, ready to receive you back.

It is through repentance that God restores and lavishes his forgiveness upon us.

It's through prayer that God will renew your spirit and give you the boldness, like David in the Psalm, to stand against the enemy.

Are you struggling?

Are you being divinely disciplined?

Are you troubled by your sin this morning?

Most importantly, do you even want to be restored?

Then I beg you, by the authority of Scripture, let go of your addiction, dump the poison down the drain, pull your lustful eyes off the webpage, lay aside your resentment, quit mistreating and neglecting your spouse, stop all known activities that are that are against the will of God, and drop to your knees and seek the Lord who is healer, and humbly accept the forgiveness that Christ offers and walk in the freedom of a restored relationship with God.

Church, let us pray.