The Confession of Christmas | Psalm 51

Well, good morning St. City, how we doing today?

Well, if I don't know you, my name is Brandon.

I get to serve on the teaching team here at the church and also

get a service one of our pastors.

And so thankful to be with you in this Christmas season and

celebrating Jesus arrival to planet earth in the form of a

baby. And we are just so grateful for

each and every Sunday that we gather.

We're just a, you know, baby church plant here in Tempe.

We've only been around for a few months, but we are excited about

what God is doing in and through our people.

And we just want to invite you to join in on that as much as

you can. That His word is what we believe

in. It's what we trust to keep

sanctifying and changing us from the inside out to be more and

more like His Son. And so I want to invite you to

turn your Bibles to Psalm chapter 51, as we're going to be

Psalms 51 · chapter mention

today, Psalm chapter 51. We are in this series called the

Psalms 51 · chapter mention

Mothers of Jesus, looking at the women in the genealogy in

Matthew where there are five women listed, 5 mothers of Jesus

who are unique in each and every one of them.

Presents for us an inside look at who God is and how he loves

people and why Jesus came on Christmas for people like Tamar,

people like the mother. We're going to learn about

Bathsheba here in Psalm 51. She was 22 years old and she was

in love. She was in love with a man that

shouldn't have been hers to love.

And then the shame came. The national public humiliation

followed and in the 90s we met a young woman named Monica

Lewinsky. Years later she would film a Ted

talk, one of the most viewed Ted talks of all time. 14 million

views later, we would get a behind the curtain view into the

price of shame that Monica Lewinsky paid.

In a gut wrenching confession, she says in that Ted Talk that

she felt like she lost her reputation and her dignity.

I lost everything. And I was deeply, deeply ashamed

at the very worst version of myself.

And that's what shame will do. Now, shame is complex.

It's layered. It's not just what we've done.

It's what sometimes we experience.

It's sometimes what we carry from how we were made.

But today I want to talk to you about this.

The shame that comes from our sinful choices.

The shame that gets you to a painful belief that not only did

you do something wrong and are guilty, but that something is

wrong with you and nobody could ever love you or ever accept

you. That you'd be rejected by people

because you're stuck in rehearsing the situation, frozen

in a self-assessment That you are defined by the worst version

of yourself. You are left guilty and ashamed.

Now imagine for a moment how good it would be if you could

stand before a holy God without blemish, without that situation,

without that version of yourself coming to mind.

That God could not only see you, not only be near to you, but you

would feel the joy of being without a stain, without shame

altogether, and that God could love you despite the worst

version of you. The problem is that many of us

don't actually realize this is a benefit of following Jesus

Christ. This is the power of the gospel.

Because we've let an unnamed enemy until now, shame, crush

our relationships and distort our relationship with God.

We feel unclean with God, therefore we feel unclean with

people, and therefore we hide ourselves.

But you have to name an enemy in order to fight it.

And today I want to help you lay aside the spiritual weight of

shame to crush this enemy that in the story of Bathsheba that

we're looking at today, AKA known as the wife of Uriah in

the genealogy, that she is a woman who is sinned against by

King David. In the story in the Bible, in

Second Samuel 11 and 12 depicting what happened, there

isn't really all much about her. And so I think what we can

discover together, what we can learn together in this Old

Testament passage about Christmas, about Jesus, is

something profound about our shame and the nature of it.

We're going to be in Psalm chapter 51, Psalm chapter 51.

Psalms 51 · chapter mention Psalms 51 · chapter mention

And here's what the Bible says. Have mercy on me, O God,

according to your steadfast love, according to your abundant

mercy. Blot out my transgressions.

Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my

sin, for I know my transgressions, and my sin is

ever before me against you. You only have I sinned and done

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

words and blameless in your judgement against me.

Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my

mother conceive me. But behold, you delight in truth

in the inward being, and you teach me wisdom in the secret

heart. Purge me with hyssop and I shall

be clean. Wash me and I shall be whiter

than snow. Let me hear joy and gladness.

Let the bones that you have broken rejoice.

Hide your face from my sins and blot out all of my iniquities.

Create in me a clean heart, oh God, and renew a right spirit

within me. Cast me not away from Your

presence, and take not Your Holy Spirit from me.

Restore to me the joy of Your salvation.

Uphold me with a willing spirit. Then I will teach transgressors

your ways, and sinners will return to You.

Deliver me from blood guiltiness, oh God, oh God, of

my salvation, and my tongue will sing aloud of Your

righteousness. Oh Lord, open my lips and my

mouth will declare Your praise, for You will not delight in

sacrifice or I would give it. You will not be pleased with a

burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a

broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart.

O God, you will not despise. These are God's words for us

today and I want to help you connect the dots on how what

they mean for your life and what they mean regarding Christmas.

I'm calling this message the Confession of Christmas, the

confession of Christmas, that when Jesus came to planet earth,

he was teaching us something about himself and about his

family that he came to save, people like us that he came to

save. And the confession of Christmas

teaches us this big idea right here in Psalm 51, the story of

David and Bathsheba, that the confession of Christmas doesn't

bring perfection, it brings peace.

That it's not, it's not just that Jesus came to planet earth

that you believed he came, but you're believing something about

why he came. You're assigning A significance

to his arrival on planet earth. And you're confessing, you're

agreeing with God about something that it is not your

perfection that gets you in relationship with God, but it's

with God how he brought peace through the world, was his

arrival, and his Son, Jesus Christ.

There's a lot of talk around Christmas time about being on

the naughty or nice list. My kids are obsessed with all

the Christmas movies, so we're just watching them all the time.

You know, the Santa Claus, elf, all these things, right?

And I think when you're growing up around a Santa Claus culture

like we are, that there's a misconception about what it

looks like to be a good person or a bad person.

That to be on the nice list or the naughty list.

That many of us are convinced that the way to clear our guilt,

to clear our shame from the Ledger with God, to get on the

nice list is by doing more good deeds.

That more perfection in our life, more obedience is what

makes God love us more and like us more.

But make friends. Don't listen to the world,

listen to God. That the way to be spiritually

clean is not by stacking up more good deeds, it's by surrendering

to the Savior and confessing and agreeing with Him.

That is how you erase your guilt and shame.

Because shame can die and peace can live in your relationship

with God and with man. And here's what the Bible's

going to teach us through these confessions of Psalm 51.

There are going to be 3 confessions that are going to

kill the shame in your life. So shame.

Write it like this. Shame dies.

And I confess first that what I've done is sinful.

Shame dies when I confess that what I've done is sinful.

Look back at the text with me. Psalm 51 at the headline of your

Bible will say this to the choir master, a Psalm of David when

Nathan the prophet went to him after he had gone in to

Bathsheba. So this is David's confession to

what happened. This is David's inside.

Look at his heart about what's going on after the mess of

Second Samuel 11, because what David did is sinful.

Look at Second Samuel with me 11 one through 5.

I just want to read it for you. So you know what happened with

him and Bathsheba that in the spring of the year, the time

when kings go out to battle, David sent Joab.

So verse one's telling us David's not where he's supposed

to be. He's supposed to be out in

battle. He's out at his house with his

servants beside him, and all Israel and the armies, they're

ravaging their enemy, the Ammonites.

They besiege them. And David's remaining at

Jerusalem. And verse 2, it happened late

one afternoon when David arose from his couch and was walking

on the roof of the house that he saw from the roof a woman

bathing. And the woman was very

beautiful. So what did David do?

He didn't just see somebody beautiful.

Next verse verse three, he sent and inquired about the woman and

one of his messengers said that is this not Bathsheba, the wife

of Uriah, the daughter of Elium? So David sent messengers and

took her. He sent and he took after he saw

which in the Bible is always code for that's the Sinner when

he saw something and he took it, just like Eve saw the apple and

took it just like last week we saw Judah saw and took Tamar.

David saw Bathsheba, he took her, a woman who was not his

wife, and she came to him and he lay with her.

Then she returned her house and the woman conceived and she sent

and told David, I am pregnant. David commits 3 sins right there

in those three 5 verses 3 sins. He breaks three of the 10

commandments. First, he covets a woman that is

not his wife. That's one of the 10 commands

you shall not covet that is not his wife.

He sees her, he covets her, and then what does he do?

He commits adultery with her. David is married, she is

married. He commits adultery with her and

to cover that sin, to cover his shame of committing that sin,

David goes crazy. He finds out she's pregnant.

And then the next 10 verses we find out here's how I'm going to

solve that problem. I'm going to kill not, I'm not

only going to kill her first, I'm going to try to get her

husband to sleep with her so that it looks like it's his

baby. So he gets the guy home and he's

like, hey, let me get you drunk and let me you sleep with your

wife. And then then it won't look like

I got her pregnant. It'll look like you got her

pregnant. And that doesn't work because

Uriah has more character than David.

And then eventually David's left with no option in his mind but

to murder Uriah Bathsheba's husband.

And in his shame, it drove him to make more sinful choices

after more sinful choices after more sinful choices.

And then we get to Psalm 51, and David is telling us what he's

thinking. God, have mercy on me.

Verse one, have mercy on me according to your covenant

steadfast love, according to who you are, according to the God

you introduced yourself as to us.

Have mercy on me. Don't give me what I do deserve.

Withhold your judgement upon me is what mercy is saying.

It's miraculous. And David is pleading with God

in verse one, according to your steadfast love, according to

your abundant mercy, blot out my transgressions.

Give me a cosmic white out over my sins.

Blot it out. Wash me from my iniquity because

I feel dirty and unclean. Cleanse me from my sin.

What David did is sinful. He saw a woman who wasn't his

wife. He committed adultery with her,

and then he committed murder. And in verse 4, David said

something very interesting in the midst of his sin.

Against you, Lord, and you only have I sinned.

That's interesting because he definitely sinned against

Bathsheba. He definitely sinned against

Uriah. Would you agree?

Yes. But what David is highlighting

for us that in the moment of your repentance, in the moment

of your confession, the person most egregiously sinned against

is not the person you see on planet earth.

It is the God. You cannot see that the first

thing to get right in the midst of your shame is not getting

right with others. But you have to get right with

God because he's the person most violated by your sin against

you, and you only have I sinned. David is right sizing his sin

before a holy and big God, and we must do the same.

He's confessing the deepest reality that every sin is first

rebellion against God himself. Now you might be thinking to

yourself right now like, OK, so David is obviously sinful.

I've heard about King David in the Bible.

I maybe have not read this story in a long time or this chapter,

and I didn't realize just how bad he was.

I ain't as bad as that guy, right?

Maybe you're not putting yourself in the same category as

David, but listen to me. Sin is not something that's a

lot is needed to contaminate the whole thing.

If I this is going to be graphic intentionally so brace yourself.

If you were to have a soda and somebody would leave a drop of

urine inside of it, is that whole thing contaminated?

Would you drink it? If you say yes, leave.

OK, like it's it's not a lot needed to contaminate the whole

thing. Sin is the same way.

Sin is the exact same way that it actually breaks the entire

thing. It contaminates the whole being.

That one sin makes you eternally sinful, eternally worthy of

judgement before a holy God. Once it's unclean, it is forever

unclean. But listen to me.

That is why Jesus came, because there is no hope of you cleaning

yourself up. Perfection is not the answer for

peace. Perfection is not the way for

God to be in relationship with you.

You won't be able to do that. That's not your way of through

it and there isn't. It happened in your life like

David, a sin that you've committed, a pattern that you go

back to, a struggle that you keep falling into.

That you might not have committed adultery, but you

might have lusted after somebody in your heart.

You might not have committed murder, but you might have

committed character assassination with your words.

That that's the nature of sin. It goes beyond just what we do

on the external, that it goes so deep internally in our life, in

our heart, that we need a miraculous solution.

We need a real savior. Otherwise, how the heck are we

going to have peace with God? How are we going to be free from

shame? How are we going to get that sin

out of our cup? I think we do a few things to

try to get around with our sin other than turning to Jesus.

One thing we try to do is we try to hide our sin.

We don't let others see it or we try to hide it from God.

And this is a self protection. We make it look like we have it

all together, like we've got it figured out, like we don't even

really sin that much. That's self protection.

We try to wash it ourselves. That's self righteousness.

David tells God wash me, but we try to wash ourselves with doing

more good deeds, stacking them up, saying God look at me, I'm

doing a lot of good things. Or we try to cancel it

ourselves, which is self justification.

We rationalize it saying it wasn't that bad or that's just

the way that I am. That's just how I respond to

stressful situations. We hide it, we wash it or we

cancel it. But there is a better way, and

it's to fall on God's mercy and confess it.

That we confess our sin as sinful.

That this verses one through 4 are not just about having an

affair or committing murder. This is about sins of the heart,

your selfishness, your pride, your greed.

That you need to be this broken over your sin.

Shame dies when I confess that what I've done is sinful, But

not only that second point. Sin dies when I confess that

what I've done is not only sinful, but shameful.

Sin dies when I confess that what I've done is shameful.

Shame ruins relationships. It ruins our reputation.

That's why we want to hide. Like in the Garden of Eden when

they first sinned, they were naked and unafraid before they

sinned. And then the first thing they do

is they try to cover themselves in their shame because they want

to hide from God their sinfulness.

It disrupts your sense of being clean and pure and righteous,

that when you commit sin, that's what happens.

And David gets a right sense of the shamefulness of his sin.

And first, second Samuel 11, the end of the chapter, it says that

the thing David had done had displeased the Lord.

Yes, your sin is sinful, but it is also shameful that one of the

consequences, one of the consequences of sin is the

experience of shame that you're intended.

Actually that when you read when sin happens in your life, that

that's one of the things that breaks, that's one of the things

that fractures is that you feel shame because of sin you did,

which was shameful. And so David comes to a

theological conclusion in verse 5.

He said, behold, I was brought forth in iniquity and in sin did

my mother conceive me. David has a conclusion here

that's helpful for us, is going to teach us about the nature of

being a human being. It is this that you are not a

Sinner because you sinned, but rather you sin because you're a

Sinner, that you were born in iniquity.

The thing that made you a Sinner was not because you did the

sinful thing. You are a Sinner.

That's why you did the sinful thing.

That means new behavior isn't going to fix it.

Your shame probably doesn't get fixed by doing more good things,

by being more perfect. Peace won't come to your life

through that way. You need a new heart.

You need a new mind. You need to be brought from

death to life, reborn. That's why if David says in

verse 6, Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being, and

you teach me wisdom in the secret heart, then he goes

through a list of things about asking God to clean him from his

shamefulness. He says, purge me in verse 7 and

I shall be clean. Wash me and I'll be whiter than

snow. Let the bones you have broken

rejoice. Let God, would you hide your

face from my sins and blot out all my iniquities.

This is the man confessing the shameful nature of the things he

has done. And I'm sure David, like many of

you, that when he was taking advantage of Bathsheba, he was

not considering how guilty, how dirty and how broken he was

going to feel from his actions. That's not what was on his mind,

but it was the outcome of his sin.

And that's what sin will do. It'll sound good at the moment

to lash out in anger. It'll sound good at the moment

to look at that thing on your phone you shouldn't be looking

at. It'll sound good to type that

comment on social media That'll make you feel better because you

once again, you're just getting angry at somebody and you dunked

on them. You felt self-righteous in it.

It'll feel good in the moment. But in the end, here's what sin

does. It steals your joy, it kills

your peace, and it destroys your life.

Sin wants to take you out and take you down, and God wants

shame from that sin to die in your life.

He just wants you to live trapped in that prison cell.

Now you might be asking yourself if, if God wants me to feel free

from shame, why should I look at my sin then as shameful?

Because there's a difference between conviction and

condemnation. There's a difference between

conviction and condemnation. Conviction is having a sense of

guilt before holy God for what you've done, and it brings

freedom. Condemnation is having a sense

of guilt for who you are. Condemnation goes hand in hand

with shame because if you're in Christ, you keep going back to

the old you, not the fact in reality of Romans 81, that

therefore there is now no condemnation for those of us in

Christ Jesus, that Jesus paid for your shame.

And so the believer is not meant to live under condemnation.

You are free from that. You're free from shame.

And conviction is actually the moment where you actually look

at your sin and realize that it's sinful and shameful what

you did before. Holy God, that's different.

Conviction is the violent sweetness of God.

It cuts to your heart and it makes sure that sin doesn't lie

comfortably in your life and you have to have a gross view of

sin. You have to think it's terrible,

like it's urine in the cup terrible for you.

Conviction is the difference. Excuse me, conviction and and

condemnation is the difference between an athlete getting to a

post game interview and he goes, hey, I made a bad play versus

I'm an embarrassment. Conviction.

I did a bad thing, I made a bad play.

Condemnation. I'm an embarrassment

internalizing it. And the believer is not meant to

be there. We are meant to be free from

that because apart from grace, condemnation is where all the

world sits under judgement, under wrath, needing God's

mercy, needing to be free from our shame and guilt.

But condemnation is the prison cell of unforgiveness in your

life. God does not want you to live

there in unforgiveness. It is the result of it.

And here's what I know because I've been there, that that it

happened one day phrase. You haven't.

It happened one day phrase in your mind and in your heart.

And it'll hide in a comment like this that you'll say, man, I

just can't forgive myself for that.

I just can't forgive myself for that.

That you know what you did is sinful.

You know what you did is shameful.

That's not actually something you need to agree with or

confess. But freedom.

Listen to me, person saying that freedom isn't on the other side

of you forgiving yourself. Freedom, peace is on the other

side of God forgiving you. That you need to receive the

forgiveness of God. He needs to wash.

He needs to purge. He needs to blot out your

iniquity. That is not your responsibility.

Your responsibility is to confess that Lord, what I've

done is shameful and sinful and I'm in desperate need of your

grace and your love and your forgiveness.

That is the cleansing you need. That's why in verse 7 he says

purge me with hyssop. Now hyssop is a word I would

assume you're not very familiar with unless you like trees.

I don't like trees. Hyssop was what was used in the

Bible by priests for purity rituals.

OK, and this was Dave. It's a little branch that they

would use to wipe blood. Interestingly, in Exodus, it one

of the greatest miracles in all the Bible at the Passover in

Exodus chapter 12, that they, the Israelites, actually used

Exodus 12 · chapter mention

hyssop to take the blood of the lamb and to spread it across the

doorpost of their house. That that's what hyssop was used

for. So when David's saying that he's

saying hey Lord, Passover my sins.

Hey Lord, look past my sins, purge me with hyssop.

Clean me like you would in a priestly ritual not realizing

David is at this point in time. He's not realizing he is

foreshadowing something incredibly true of the Bible.

That the same instrument of protection in Psalm 51 hyssop is

the people need. An exodus was the blood stained

branch of a lamb. I bet you can already see it

that Jesus is actually the true hyssop that you need, the true

cleansing that you need. That the confession of Christmas

is not that you have perfect and that you can clean up your own

life, but rather you need Jesus's blood to cover your life

so that you would be forgiven, so that your iniquities be

blotted out, so that God would hide His face from your sins.

You would be stuck in sin, stuck in shame if not for Jesus

Christ. He is the only hope for anyone

on planet earth for their sins to be taken care of.

That's it. This is how The Dirty are made

clean. How the ashamed become

unashamed. It's Jesus Christ, the true

hyssop. Because shame will tell you that

you need to hide from God because you feel dirty, you feel

gross, you feel ugly, and guilt will tell you that you did

something wrong. Shame will say because I did

wrong, I am unlovable. Condemnation will say there's no

way back, but listen to me. Conviction says this, I did

wrong, yes, I am guilty, yes, but there's only one way to

peace, only one way to God, only one way to be washed as white as

snow. It's Jesus.

It's Jesus. And it is hard to imagine that

when God looks at me, that's what he sees, because I'm deeply

aware I am not as white as snow. But that's the confession of

Christmas. That's what Jesus does in his

mercy and his love. He cleans us from the inside

out. He purges us.

And that's just a great thing about the Bible that it doesn't

actually sanitize its heroes like King David.

That's not the story God's interested in writing.

Like, if I were writing a story, I'd probably elevate David a

bit, probably hide some of this story, you know, make sure my

hero looks more like a hero instead of an antihero.

But this is King David, the man after God's own heart.

This is King David, the one who slayed Goliath, who spared his

greatest enemy's life, the one who's the primary author of the

book. We're reading Psalms right now.

That's him. This is Israel's best king, and

he still falls short of Jesus by a lot.

That's the story of the Bible. There's no earthly achievement

that you can do to get to God. But God came to you because you

needed him to. You needed Jesus to save you.

You. He is the hero you were looking

for, the hyssop that you need to clean your soul.

Because like you, like I, David needed cleaning.

He's a Sinner in need of freedom from his shame, from King Jesus.

He looked forward to him in faith.

We look back to Jesus in faith. Saint City, the Gospel frees you

from the prison, from the chains of having to be perfect.

That's what confessing that your sin is shameful does.

You are not perfect. Even the week past you committed

sinful and shameful acts. But let me announce to you once

and for all that Jesus is the perfection your heart needs and

your soul longs for. Would you let him adopt you?

Would you let him cover you with his forgiveness?

You need not live a perfect life, but you can't live a life

with a peaceful conscience, even from your worst decisions, that

the step of a life free of shame is admittance and confession.

That you are a Sinner who has done a shameful thing and in

desperate need of a good and merciful God.

Shame dies the moment you confess that no achievement you

can hang your hat on, no other righteousness to claim just

Jesus. So confess that it happened to

God. As shameful that's a true

confession is, it's naming and owning your sin to God.

Name it as sin, own it as your sin and avoid the temptation to

blame shift. Avoid the temptation to sanitize

it. Name your sin, Own your sin,

Lord. It was shameful and sinful when

I sought pleasure and sexual intimacy outside of my marriage.

That was me, Lord. It was sinful and shameful when

I pridefully judged my coworkers.

That was me and I own that, Lord.

It was sinful and shameful when I went throughout my day being

prayerless. I own that.

That was sin and it has to break your heart because it killed

your Christ. That's what sin did.

It put Him on the cross to die for and it was the grace and

mercy of Jesus that held him there to cover a multitude of

sins. He has cast them as far as the

east is from the West. And when you realize that, and

you draw close to God instead of running from Him in your shame,

you can marvel at the mystery that the shamefuls can stand

unashamed before God. So shame doesn't have to have

the last word in the story. Yes, what you did is sinful.

Yes, what you did is shameful. But what else do we confess?

We don't just have to confess our sin.

We have to confess the truth, which is this, the Third Point.

Shame dies. And I confess that what I need

is God's mercy. That's what you need most in

your life. I thought I needed most of the

Bears to beat the Packers, and it was great last night.

It was awesome. Hear me out.

And it was a good Saturday. But what I need is the new mercy

of God each morning. That's never ending, that never

ceases, that never stops. God's mercy is what you need

most. David had every reason to be

stuck in an eternal cycle of shame, of guilt and regret,

every reason to feel unacceptable before God.

But mercy is what frames his whole confession.

Look back at verse one. Have mercy on me, O God,

according to your abundant mercy.

That means God's got a mercy spending account that never runs

dry. That as much mercy as you need.

He's got plenty of it and then some.

That's why in verse 14 David can say deliver me God from my blood

guiltiness before you. I am guilty.

What I did was sinful was shameful, but God, you're the

one who saves and I'm going to single out of your

righteousness. I'm going to open my lips and my

mouth will declare your praise for you will not delight in

sacrifice or I would give it. Think about David's a king.

There's a lot of money he doesn't have in this moment, no

amount of cattle he couldn't kill off for a sacrifice.

But he realizes something. It's not a sacrifice that you're

looking for, God. You're not going to be pleased

with the burnt offering, the sacrifice that you're looking

for. In the moment of my repentance,

God, in the moment of my confession, in the moment that

I'm trapped in my shame, trying to be free and trying to want

peace for my life instead of this debilitating, crushing

memory of what I've done. What does he call out to that?

The sacrifices of God are broken spirit and a broken, contrite

heart. Oh God, you will not despise.

Mercy is not getting what you do deserve.

David does deserve judgement. What he did was terrible and

shame would say that David is unacceptable because of who he

is or what he has done. Make him not want to go to God

right now, make him want to hide.

But mercy who God is says because of Jesus I am not who I

am or what I've done, but rather I am in Christ and because of

him I can run to God. I think of the Apostle Peter,

one of Jesus best friends who denied him, denied him after

spending years with him, that he was on a beach. 1 morning Jesus

was on a beach and Peter's out in the water and he sees his

resurrected friend Jesus, and he runs to him, runs to him.

And Jesus, after the moment of Peter's worst mistake where he

was running from Christ at the end of the Gospel of John, he

runs to him and Jesus receives him with open arms and some fish

tacos. That's who Jesus is, is my

point. Shame would want you to run away

from him. Shame would want you to stop

going to Jesus, thinking that it would ruin the relationship

forever. But Jesus is not fragile.

He doesn't reject you, He welcomes you and says in your

confession, your repentance come to me, all who are weary, all

who are heavy laden and I will give you rest.

Mercy is shocking to us because we feel like we have to earn it,

that we have to earn it, which is why many of us feel stuck in

our shame. We feel like we have to earn it

and that we don't deserve it. But you know what?

Like if God would just let us try harder, we could get to a

spot where we feel like we're worthy of His mercy and His

grace in our life. But some of us are stuck there

because we've never repented of why we're unashamed to begin

with. You see, many of you are living

ashamed in your life right now, not because you've sinned

against God in an action that you committed, but rather in

your heart you've lost favor with your false God, human

approval. Here's what I mean.

Some of you here, you're living in shame because you are living

for the God of human approval. And that heaven for you is not

about being with God, it's about being raved about.

And hell is people disapproving of you and that on the altar of

your worship of approval, you're the one who gets sacrificed

because something has to get sacrificed for a God.

So you put yourself on the altar.

And what leaves you ashamed is that you keep coming up short.

You can't get enough people to like you.

You can't, you can't go about your life and everybody worship

you. You don't even really want the

worship. You just want to be liked and

loved and seen. And so you feel ashamed because

you feel rejected by people. You don't feel approved by them.

And here's how you can know this is you, that when the first

time, when you sin, here's the first thought that goes through

your head is what are people going to think about me?

This is how you know you're not, you're not in a place where your

conviction is going towards God, but it's going towards people

that you're caring less about getting right with God and

caring more about what others think of you.

Listen to me, friends, The first thing that you have to do in

confessing and the first truth that you need to know is that

you need God's mercy and the sinful shameful thing.

You confess that to God and you care about getting right with

God, and God takes care of your relationships.

He takes care of your reputation.

He takes care of the rejection you thought you would receive

from others. You don't need it because you've

been approved by God because of what Christ has done for you.

That is the best place to live on planet earth, which is God's

unending mercy. It is not a hotel that He

visits. It's a home that He lives in.

God's mercy doesn't visit our deepest shame and our guilt and

regret and just pass through like a hotel.

That's not how Jesus does it with mercy.

But it's the home that we live in with Him that every time you

go to Jesus, guess what? He has mercy upon your shame,

mercy upon your sin. Mercy had Him running toward us

when we would run away. It means our haunting shame is

not a problem for Him, but it's the very thing he loves most to

work with. Our sins cause his love to surge

toward us, not away. That's why in verse 10, the

title of the chapter in your Bible says this.

Create in me a clean heart, oh God, and renew a right spirit

within me. David realizes that mercy isn't

just him needing a second chance.

It's not him needing God to fix his behavior.

What David needs is a new clean heart.

You need God to breathe on your life.

That's Christianity. And that's what Jesus died to

give. A righteousness that outweighs

every mistake you've ever made. And sin won't taste bitter.

It won't be awful until Jesus tastes better.

And mercy is what Jesus gives as a gift.

So how are we going to receive God's mercy?

It's as easy as ABC. I'm not an elementary school

teacher, I promise you, but I'm wanting to make it memorable for

you. How do you receive God's mercy

for your life? God's mercy rushes toward us

first when we admit our brokenness.

How do you receive God's mercy? You admit your brokenness.

You look at your life and you realize just how fractured it's

become because of your sinful choices.

And you say I am a Sinner, broken and ashamed, in need of

rescue. God, I admit my brokenness.

Second, God's mercy rushes toward us when we believe in his

Son, that we look at Jesus as our true hyssop.

Who is going to purge us? Who's going to clean us?

Who's going to give us righteousness when we couldn't

have it ourselves? Admit, believe in Jesus Christ,

believe in his bloody cross, his empty tomb, the occupied throne

he sits on and say that is the only hope for my brokenness.

The only hope of rescue from my shame is Jesus Christ.

And that will bring in my life peace, A conscience that is

clear, a reputation that is clean.

Why? Because of a Christ has done for

you on a cross. And finally, when we confess

that mercy isn't a one time moment in your life where you

turn from your sin and you get saved.

That's not it. Mercy is non-stop.

You need God's mercy just as much today as the day when you

got saved. So go to him, confess and

confess and confess, because God draws near to the broken

hearted. He wants your broken heart over

your sin. He wants your contrite spirit,

that this is the one to whom God looks, the one who is humble and

contrite in spirit, the one who trembles at his word, says

Isaiah. So don't leave today stuck

chasing perfection when peace is ready and promised for you.

That the biblical opposite to shame in the culture, that it

was written in honor, but in our soul.

You know what the opposite of shame is?

It's peace. It's right relationship with God

and right relationship with people.

It's a clear conscience because the guilty stain has been

removed from your life. I can say that one of my

greatest battles in the faith has been walking through the

shame of my past. That when I'm in worship over

there, the thing that's hardest to find joy in is when I look

back and I see all the sinful things I've done, all the sinful

comments I've made, all the selfish choices I've done, all

the stain of my sin. All I sense at times is my

dirtiness before a holy God. But the thing that gives me joy,

the thing that pulls worship out of me, is that I have a Christ

who washed me clean. I have a Christ who took away my

shame, who paid for it with his blood.

That I have a Savior who I look to the founder and perfector of

my faith, who for the joy set before Him, went to the cross

for my sake, despising the shame, so that I may have life

with Him. And I can lay aside every single

weight that entangles so close to me and keeps me from running

as hard as I can after Jesus. And in those moments, there's a

song that always comes to mind for me because I just can't

believe this is how God sees me. Would you listen to the words

that all my days I've been wearing, the mistakes I've made,

like a coat I could have thrown away.

I should have brought it to you. And so, God, show me what you

see when you look at me. Show me what is real more than

what I feel. Because I have stains, it's

true. But when your light shines

through, oh God, we all look like stained glass windows to

you. No more stains, no more chains,

no more shame. That's what the mercy of Jesus

does. The confession of Christmas

doesn't bring perfection, it brings peace.

Would you pray with me, Lord? Thank you for the grace and

mercy of God that washes us clean, that purges us, that

blots out the sin that we know is there, that is sinful and

shameful, but we have a Savior who's bigger than it.

Oh God, will we not try this Christmas to be more perfect, to

be more righteous, but rather God, will we look to Jesus

Christ, the one who is perfect, the one who had mercy, the one

who loved us to set us free from our sin and shame?

And God, would you set us free from the prison of it?

That is not intended to be a place where we live.

God, that you paid for that with your life.

And so, Lord, would we not run from you, but we run to you in

our sin, that when we fall, when we fail, when we do the thing

that we wish we had never done, we run to you instead of a way.

Jesus, we love you, we worship you now.

Amen.