This message on my heart before I knew I was going to preach, but it ties together in some passages of Scripture that we've already been in this revival meeting. And by God's grace, it'll be a blessing to you. I'm looking now at the book of Psalm, please, to chapter 51, back to that wonderful Psalm of David's repentance. The title of my message is The Rededication of David. And I want to give you a few thoughts tonight about your heart. You go to that same verse that pastor read, and we'll begin there and go back to the beginning afterwards. But verse number 17, the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit. The pastor preached about slaying some spirits in your life. And then he says at the end, a broken and contrite heart. Now that's what we're going to preach on tonight. A broken and contrite heart. Oh God, thou wilt not despise. Meaning, if you come to God with a broken heart, he'll give you revival. Do you believe that? And so the reason we don't have revival isn't because of God. It's us. It's us. Let's have a word of prayer. Father, I pray that you would please bless this message. Lord, you know the folks that came tonight expected to hear a preacher with greater experiences and, Lord, a greater ability to preach. And, Lord, I come to you knowing that I have great need of you, great need tonight that you might use this message to be a help to our Christians. I pray that you would get a hold of some hearts and some attention and help us, Lord, if you'd just speak to my heart. Perhaps it'd be enough that you would set our souls afire. Bless this time in Jesus' name. Amen. Tonight at our supper, I thought I'd give you a little update. You know, yesterday the pastor said we kind of got all over him by not drinking coffee, and he doesn't drink milk, and et cetera. We gave him a hard time. We were teasing him, and he said he really enjoyed it. Tonight, Elijah was there, so they talked guns. And I just sat and listened the whole time. Him and Zach taking apart a gun, and their minds talking about every little part. And I'm like, well, that's really nice. You ever get around people you have no idea what they're talking about, you just shake your head? That was what supper was tonight. That's my update about what we did for supper this evening. And let's read again verse number 17. You notice it says, the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart. Oh God, thou wilt not despise. The Lord despises sin. despises sin. The Lord can't look on sin. He died and gave His life and shed His blood so that our sins would be washed away. And when we as believers, I'm talking to people that are believers here tonight, and when we as believers go off into a turning-aside type of life and we find ourselves, as the song says, prone to wander, Lord I feel it, prone to leave the God I love, then what we have done is we have put sin inside of our hearts It comes to the point where we look up to heaven and we say, God, do you even want me? The coldness of our relationship with God is evident. I mean, it gets very cold, like we say, the sky is like brass. I mean, our prayers are bouncing off of the clouds. They're not reaching up into heaven because we've crossed over into a place where we've let sin into our lives. Maybe the sin isn't real big, but it doesn't have to be big. It could be just the complacency that was talked about last night. After all, if you go back to 2 Samuel 11 and read in there about how David came to the place where he had to write this psalm, you'll find that it began that when the kings went out to war, David was complacent to stay behind. And if we even have complacency, or we have really contention, or any of those things that we have in our lives, and we stray, why would God ever receive us? But He does receive us. Because He is our Heavenly Father. He is our God that saved our souls. Mostly because He died for that sin. He died to wash away all of your sins, and His blood is 1 John 1 verse 9. It says that the fellowship with Him, He will cleanse us from all unrighteousness to renew what we have lost in our waywardness, which is not losing our salvation, but losing our fellowship with the Lord Jesus Christ. And why would God receive us? But the promise that we have here is that if we meet God's condition of a contrite heart, He says, oh God, thou wilt not despise. You despise the sin. You despise the contention and the complacency and all of the sins that were mentioned last night. Like one of the brethren said, I needed all five of those, but I probably need 10 stones for the things that are in our lives. So something about what he's saying here is so necessary if we're going to be received back into fellowship with the Lord Jesus Christ. The setting of the psalm is pretty obvious, and you have it recorded in those small words right under where it says Psalm 51 in your Bible. David had sinned. He stayed behind when he should have been fighting, and you can read about it in 2 Samuel chapter 11. He went up to the rooftop at night where he shouldn't have been there at that time because of the closeness or proximity to another that was not clothed. Bathsheba appealed to him, and as king, he thought, well, I'm entitled to have my way. I can have my pleasure. He inquired as to whom that woman belonged, and it was one of his mighty men. What a shame. It was treachery involved in this sin. And not only that, when he finally sinned and then she's going to have a baby and gave word back to him, he sent for Uriah. Uriah comes back. He sends him home. Say, go and spend the night. He says, I'm not going to go there because all of the soldiers are out sleeping. Why should I be in my home? Then the next night he got him drunk and Uriah had more character drunk than David had sober. But in order to hide his sin, he had Uriah killed. Wow. Something about that rings true with the fact that I have often thought I would never, by God's grace, I will never do those things. By God's grace, nobody in here will ever do what David has done. But you don't know how far sin will take you. The little sin that you're playing with right now, oh, nobody knows what that sin is, you think. Nobody knows the lustfulness or the internet mess that you've made. I mean, you're actually in your mind blaming those internet people. Well, if they're going to promote this kind of stuff, then it must be okay. Hey, just because something is legal does not make it moral. I'm not doing anything illegal. You can go get drunk. And as long as you're not driving, to be drunk is not illegal, but it is immoral. You don't know how far sin will take you. David never intended that night to do wrong. I'll bet when he said goodbye to Joab and all the soldiers, he never thought he'd ruin his life. Now he's gonna reap the rest of his life. But that even makes it more important for you to realize that wherever you are in this sin, any sin, maybe it's just gossip. Gossip. Now all of us have gossiped. I say that like I say all of us have lied. We can't go on with this facade that says, hey, I'm perfect, I'm a great Christian, look at me, I look good. I've done everything the church wanted me to do, so everything is fine, preacher. But wait a minute, not everything is fine. It's amazing to me how much damage a little bit of gospel do. Amazing how a little bit of attack of one person and criticism and going after one person destroys the unity of the church so that I had to spend most of the first part of this year preaching over and over again about unity. And if you were here, you knew that God had to prune this church over and over again until he gave us a spirit of cooperation. I don't think those things are necessary. I think we don't need to lose anybody else. Because you can get right with God if you have a contrite heart. Please look at the first six verses here. Have mercy upon me. I want you to notice while we read this, just notice the first person pronouns. And you'll notice something about having a contrary heart. Have mercy upon me, O God, according to Thy lovingkindness, according unto the multitude that Thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquities, and cleanse me from my sin. For I acknowledge my transgression, and my sin is ever before me. Against thee the only have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight, that thou mightest be justified when thou speakest, and be clear when thou judgest. Behold, I was shaped in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me. Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts, and in the hidden part thou shalt make me to know wisdom. The contrite heart, it's our first point tonight. You know what you see about David when he got right with the Lord? His rededication had nothing of a defensive spirit. Nothing of a defensive spirit. I have found that if I step too much into the realm of a personal application in a sermon, you know, I care about you. I really do. And I don't want to see the devil destroy your life or the lives of your children. That'd be horrible. So, but if I step a little bit too much into that step on, oh, well, that pastor, everybody knows that you're talking about me. Step a little further, more specific into somebody's life, and I'm preaching more specifically about particular sins that the person, it makes the person in the pew uncomfortable. Do you know even sometimes you move? I mean it, Adam, it's funny. Oh, moving around in your seats. I step a little bit more and then it comes to the place where there's a defensiveness that says, pastor, nobody should be that specific about sin. You're calling me out in front of everybody. You're getting too personal. Why would I ever do that? I think that at times it feels to you like I just have a personal vendetta. Like, I'm gonna get that guy. And I write my sermons like, I'm gonna, you remember that guy? I'm gonna put his name right here, and I'm gonna get him. I used to know a preacher like that. In his margin of his notes, he would say a deacon's name, get him, right there. Kind of funny. But I know what sin will, I've watched it, I've seen what sin will do. A little bit of being lazy with your children, a little blind spot here and there, and then they grow up to be rebels. It's like you play with them and coddle them, you don't discipline them when they're this tall, and then they're messing with you when they're this tall. And nothing but heartache. I see your life going the wrong direction and I'm not supposed to say anything. It's as if, it's as if the church people want me to come here and just preach happy things. Like Zacchaeus. I mean, isn't it wonderful? I can teach you a Sunday school lesson like I teach the kids. Right, all the kids know the song we sing every week. Oh, be careful little eyes what you see. Right, all the little kids. And we have fun. but you want me to preach that way without being specific about sin, and that is not a contrite heart. Now, I'm not trying to make you comfortable. I never said if you come to church here, come here because this is a church that makes people feel comfortable. My job is not to make you feel comfortable, but it's there to make you feel uncomfortable with your sin so that between you and God, you'll deal with your sin. And David, he couldn't hide it anymore. There was nobody, he didn't even, and when Nathan came, he didn't say to David, let me teach you a principle today. Something good's gonna happen to you today. No, he said what? Thou art the man. He pointed his finger, and I could see that old Nathan with his bony finger pointed at the face of the king of the land and telling him, you're the dirty scoundrel! who stole a man's wife and in treachery killed him to hide it. He didn't really care if it was too personal. And you know what? David didn't go behind his back and tie his hands and say, preacher, you're not supposed to talk that much. That's specific. That's too much for us. And my heart is broken because of the condition of people who want to be defensive about their sin. And the preacher with all of, you think I wanna make you upset, you're crazy. I mean, you think I wanna make you feel like, well, I'm not comfortable in that church, I'm gonna go find another church. The reason I preach hard is because sin will destroy you. And because I love God and I love you. That's why. But if you fight, I'm gonna have my way, then you don't have a contrite heart. I mean, you might think your heart is contrite. It's not contrite. Contrite, we're gonna define in a minute, but one of the keys is there's no defensive spirit. Not only that, there's Noah's pastor talked about the blame game. He didn't look around and say, well, you know, the devil made me do it, or my daddy, he sinned, so I had to sin, and on and on, and all these ideas. Society dealt me a bad blow. I have ADHD, OCD, and all the rest of that. I have reasons. You know what he said? Before God, it's my sin, my transgression, my iniquity. And at the end of the verses in verse 17, he said, I deserve to be despised by God, but God says, thou will not despise. In other words, it's time to come home to Jesus and get things right. A contrite heart, what does it mean? It's an interesting word. I don't know if you've ever studied this. I've mentioned it before in a couple of sermons, but it means to be crushed. The word itself literally means to be ground into small particles. According to Bible dictionary, it says to be humble and repentant before God, crushed by the sense of guilt and sinfulness. The Old Testament concept is expressed with the basic idea of being crushed or beaten to pieces. So God is saying, hey, take your heart. To have a contrite heart is not one that is brazen against truth or standing against anybody that would point out sin, but one that is literally mourning and broken down. This same word is used in exodus. When Moses came down from that mountain and they were doing all this folly, worshiping that golden calf, he broke those two tables of stone, but then, if you'll read on, he took that golden calf that Aaron had made and he ground it into powder. That word of grinding, by the way, he put it in their drinking water and made them drink it. And that was what God thought about their sin. You understand, what we get involved with becomes part of who we are. When somebody goes out and becomes a murderer, they only have to murder one time. And this is what they did. They became idolatrous. And He says, hey, by way of illustration, drink what you've worshipped. It'll be part of you. But when He crushed it, that same word is described as what makes a heart contrite. In Psalm 89, it tells us in verse 10, that is the Lord will crushing the enemies, Frequently, Proverbs tells us that God taught Israel not to crush the poor. Indeed, the king is to crush the oppressor of the poor in Psalm 72 verse 4. In Psalm 9 verse 9, it says the poor are referred to as literally crushed under the weight of those that are oppressing them, and that God would be their refuge. They can thus come to God in prayer knowing that what God wants is a broken spirit and a contrite heart, God will revive the spirit of such an one. So Isaiah says, in Isaiah 57-15, we'll get to that verse in a minute. Turn over with me to Psalm 34, since you're right there. Keep your place in Psalm 51, we'll come right back. Psalm 34, and notice in verse 18, These two ideas are tied together. The Lord is nigh. What does that mean? He's close. The word nigh is near. He's close. Isn't that what we want? We want the breath of God to be fresh in our lives. We want God to be near. We want the miracles to be available. We want His power. We want witnessing power and power over sin and a demonstration of wisdom in our life. But how does that happen? It doesn't happen because you harbor sin. But the Lord is nigh, He says, unto them that are of a broken heart. And saveth such as be of a contrite spirit." The spirit of man. The pastor referred to this yesterday, talking about the spirits that he referred to. You know, a spirit, the word it can be talking about, your attitude. He talks about that in 1 Timothy that we'll get to in chapter 4 on Thursday nights. He says, to let no man despise thy youth, but be thou an example of the believers in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, and in faith, and in purity. And in spirit, he's talking about be an example in your disposition, in your attitude. But there's something that is more about this spirit that is more about our constitutional nature, who we really are. We have in our life then, we have the influence of the Holy Spirit, and we are quick to always say, the Holy Spirit led me, this is God's will. And then there's the influence of an unholy spirit, whether it be the devil or one of the devils, one of the, we call demons, that's not a Bible word, the word is devils in the Bible. But the idea that you could be led away, and it's good preaching to say, you know what, if you're not led by the Holy Spirit, then you're led by the devil. And in one sense, there aren't three ways. There's only God's way and the devil's way, because there's a way that seemeth right unto man, but the ends thereof are the ways of death. And that's the same destination as the devil's way. But hear me, there is a spirit of man, and independent of having your spirit and your heart in a contrite state handed over to God, we have a will that opposes God. And much of what we call the will of God, many times, is nothing more. I'm not saying it's the devil that's pulling you away, but it is our own desires, our own spirit saying, such and such is the will of God, or such and such is what God told me to do. And it really amounts to just your inner spirit desiring something. It's a very difficult thing. So we have that influence, it's not really a dichotomy where we have one the devil or the Holy Spirit. I've thought about this before, because when people talk about speaking in tongues, and then we say, well, they claim it's the Holy Spirit, and it's not according to the Bible, so it can't be the Holy Spirit. And we're saying, but they're sincere people. Are we saying it's the devil himself, like an unholy spirit? And I'm saying that it's their own spirit. Because the same phenomena is accomplished in these false worshiping out in certain areas of the world, where they work themselves up into the same frenzy. It is the spirit of man that is oftentimes contrary to God, and God says, I will receive a broken and crushed spirit. But that isn't the way we live. Proverbs 18 verse 14, the spirit of man will sustain his infirmity, but a wounded spirit who can bear. God gave you this to get through some things of life. But when your heart, when your spirit is wounded inside, they're saying, it's hard to even raise your head in life. And that's the way we see people. I mean, they don't need a psychiatrist. They need to come to the Lord and watch God restore that spirit within them by his power and strengthen you by his spirit in the inner man. Zechariah tells us in chapter 12, verse 1. In the second half of that verse, it says, Ecclesiastes even talks about what happens when we die, that the spirit of man returns up to God and the spirit of a beast doesn't, it returns to the earth. They don't have a soul that will stand before God. I'm sorry about that, all of you that thought you were gonna have your dog go to doggy heaven. But there might be dogs in heaven, just so you know, if you really want to know. But in Romans 8, verse 16, think about this. It makes this verse make sense. In verse 16, the Spirit, capital S, God's Holy Spirit itself, beareth witness with our spirit that we are the children of God. So the object is that when we're looking at what we are, we're a body, we're a soul, and we're a spirit, and our soul is like the immaterial body that holds within it what the Bible describes as our heart, and our mind, and our will, and we find that everything comes out of the heart. Out of the heart proceedeth all of these things. It's like the hard drive of your body and your immaterial part of you. It's the part that will live on forever, and the spirit works with your will to stand in opposition to God. And God says, I want your spirit and I want your heart to be broken. And until it is, then we're just in a very bad way deciding our own course of life without God being in charge. And what's going to happen to that at the end? And now you can get mad at a preacher all you want. You can be really angry with a preacher, but ignore the preacher for a moment and think about what the Bible is saying. that until we come with a broken heart and a broken spirit before God, he says, until then, I'm not receiving you, but if you do, he says, God is nigh them that have a broken spirit. Is your spirit broken before God? Isaiah 57 verse 15, I'll read this now, you don't have to turn there. For thus saith the high and lofty one that inhabiteth eternity. Think about your God, isn't it awesome? He inhabits eternity. whose name is holy, I dwell in the high and holy place with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble and to revive the heart of the contrite ones. So here again, a third place, we see it in scripture. where the words soul, spirit, and heart, humble and contrite, all fall into the place of forgiveness and fellowship and restoration, and that the opposites are not receiving that. Revival is a return to obedience to God, but it's more than that, it's a renewal. It's like you should come away from revival with a very strong awareness of the presence of God throughout the day. Like all of a sudden you're talking to the Lord and you're asking His opinion of things and you're humbly walking, submitting as best you know how to His word and to His will and to His Holy Spirit. That kind of thing doesn't happen because you determine it, God has to show up. And God says, I'll be near to you if you have a humble heart. But what does James chapter four, first Peter chapter five, and going back to I think Proverbs chapter three say about this? That God resisteth whom? The proud. But giveth grace unto the humble. He's not interested in how well we can do for Him. He's not impressed with us. He's actually disgusted with our involvement in sin. What's your entertainment like? Does it please God? If the God of heaven were standing right next to you, would you watch the same things on television? Would you wear the same clothes, go the same places, say the same words, have that lazy work ethic that you call a work ethic, but it's laziness? You'd go into this crazy debt and amount this kind of thing where you're saying, I want because of lust for things, I wanna have what I'm not supposed to have yet, and on and on and on. If God were standing right next to you, And that's the problem. He is. He's right there. In fact, as we've heard many times that we are sealed by the Holy Spirit of God until the day of redemption, which means that He does not leave, as we see in the passage in Psalm chapter 51 alluded to. But He does not leave. He says, instead, He is grieved. In chapter 4 of Ephesians, in verse 30, And grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption. He hates your sin, He hates my sin. And if we're gonna have revival and see the power of God that shakes the community and turns your family around and brings your wayward children back home and gets them to know Christ as their Savior, or gives you the wisdom to rear your children the way God wanted, or to have the power in your home to watch your wife or your husband, to have a wonderful relationship within the home, the power of God and His wisdom and everything He has for you. It comes with revival. And it comes at a cost. A contrite heart. Matthew Henry said, it is a sharp work wrought there, no less than the breaking of the heart. He says, not in despair, as we say when a man is undone in sin, that his heart is broken, but in necessary humiliation and sorrow for sin. It is a heart breaking within itself and breaking from its sin. It is a heart pliable to the Word of God and patient under the rod of God, a heart subdued and brought into obedience. It is a heart that is tender like Josiah's and trembles at God's Word." He finishes that phrase with, "'Oh, that there were such a heart in us.'" Do you have a contrite heart? The second thing, going back to Psalm 51, verse number seven is that we have noticed here a clean heart. The byproduct of this, yes, but also something that he requests. In verse number seven, it begins, purge me with the hyssop. So the hyssop is like an interesting branch, a little bushy thing that when you pick it up, the ends are almost like one of those straw brooms. They used it around the house to clean in those days. It was almost like our tumbleweed, but enough of a stalk that it could be used like a broom. When the children of Israel were getting ready for the Passover, and they sacrificed the lamb, and then they were standing, had to stand, with bitter herbs, No leaven in the house, and they were eating that all night. The requirement was to apply the blood of that lamb, where? To the doorposts and the sides of the house. Right? You remember this story? And the Lord said, take a hyssop branch and dip it into the blood and put it on the doorposts, like a paintbrush. And then this is the illustration. It was what applied the redemption blood. And he's saying here, purge me with a hyssop, meaning, hey, Lord, apply the blood. And in David's day, 900 years before Jesus would come. They had faith in what Christ was going to do, looking forward to the sacrifice when the blood of the Savior would run down that cross and His blood would be shed for eternity's sins, past, present, and future. David's saying, put me and my sin under the blood. And what you find is even before the blood was shed, the blood was efficient. It was enough. Purge me with the hyssop that I may be whiter than snow. Don't you want to be free from the guilt of your sin and its stain in your life? Don't you want to say, Lord, everything's right with you? Oh God, I'm so sorry I left you. I'm so sorry I committed these sins, but I long for a heart that's not plagued by this guilt and by this constant awareness that I have displeased God. Oh, that I could find a place where my heart could be accepted in the presence of Almighty God. And God says, I already provided for it. The blood is enough. A contrite heart becomes a clean heart because the blood is applied. Purge me with the hyssop that I shall be clean. Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow. Notice that one of the results here, and I'll speed this up because of this, that he says, make me, in verse eight, to hear joy and gladness, that the bones that thou hast broken may rejoice. So rejoicing always results. I don't know what people get in their mind, they get this idea, I want my rights, I have my right to my sin, and you know, those people, I've got bitterness in my heart, and I have my right to my bitterness. You're a lousy, really, I mean, unhappy person. And the time you come to Jesus, everything you see here is, the result is rejoicing. Say, yeah, he broke my bones, yes. Because I think in that spirit, it feels like you have a bunch of bones standing there against God. And God says, crush those things. There's your will built up with a strong, strong backbone. I'm not going to give in. God says, crush it. Don't just break it, crush it. Be contrite. And he says, I'll receive you. And that process, produces the joy you're longing for. In many cases, Christians in their life have never grown to the place where you feel, actually feel and are aware of the presence of God. Many Christians get saved and then they just dwell there. They're glad to get rid of some sin. Your life goes better and you've gotten rid of some of the major things in your life. You're not so embarrassed by your sin, but You're not really ever learning to walk with God. You don't know what it's like to hear the Spirit's impression from the Word of God and from the Spirit upon your heart and moving you really to do things. You've lost what it meant or you never knew what it meant. And God says, hey, if you have a contrite heart, I'll put you in that relationship. But if you stand in pride, you're not gonna get it. Contrite heart and a clean heart. Now one other thing I notice here. is that you get down to verse number 10, create in me a clean heart, oh God, and renew a right spirit within me. So we need a right spirit, okay? But I want to draw your attention to the beginning of that, create in me, that's a plea to God, that's a request. Why? Why, because God is the one that has to do that. You see this verse that we have here for vessels unto honor, 2 Timothy 2, and it says, If a man therefore purge himself from these, he shall be a vessel unto honor. But there comes a point in your life that especially if you've held out your hands to sin and said, shackle me again. After all, the Bible says, to whom you yield yourselves, servants to obey. His servants you are, whether unto sin, unto death, or of obedience unto Christ. So you're to be freed from that sin at salvation. There's no sin that should have domination over your life, but we put ourselves in the shackles of sin again. And as this verse says, if you purge yourself, but you can't. because being confident of this very thing that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ. But this verse says yourself because if you'll come with a heart desiring that freedom from sin and love for God, God will do the rest. He will meet you there because He loves you. Because He's ever so burdened that you would come and unburden that sin and guilt in your life, and that you would live a life that's really, yes, we have problems, but we're free. We get to have the blessed presence of God in your own prayer closet. Kind of place where you come out, like, a little bit joyful and feeling like having a, what we call bapticostal fit, you know? Like a little bit of shouting when you're with Jesus. I'm glad that I know Christ. I've been there. Maybe you've been there, but it's been a long time. What's in the way? Something's in the way, because he says, Christ is near to those that have a contrite heart. Maybe our spirit and our heart are standing in opposition to God. Go with me to verse 13, and we'll just finish this up with point number three and the last point, the consecrating heart. In verse number 13, then after all the cleansing is done, look what David says, then will I teach transgressors thy ways, and sinners shall be converted unto thee. Deliver me from blood guiltiness, O God, thou God of my salvation, and my tongue shall sing aloud of thy righteousness. O Lord, open thou my lips, and my mouth shall show forth thy praise. So we have some results that David said, if I can be clean, God, I'm yours. And the result of being clean is that he wanted to get involved in service. Now notice two things about this. Verse number 13 is that first you have to have a then in your life before you can become a servant of God. So the Lord doesn't accept our service if we're doing it with a wicked heart. Have you ever read what it says there in Proverbs 21, verse 27? The sacrifice of the wicked is abomination. And then he says, how much more when he bringeth it with a wicked mind? You see, people wanna look good in a church, and they come and they do the activity of service for God, but their heart is not right with God, and God is not looking down on that saying, hey, that's a good thing. He's looking down at it and saying, hey, why don't you get right with God? but then when you get right with God and your sin is washed and he brings that joy and the overflowing joy in your life, then there comes that point in verse number 13, that first word, then, then I wanna do something for the Lord. Then you'll want to serve him because you love him, not because you wanna be seen of men. It's kind of a interesting thought. So we become servants of God when we get right with God. And you don't need to serve God until you get right with God. So let's get busy, we have a lot to do for the Lord. So historically, when there's been real revival, meaning people coming to God, meeting his requirements of a contrite spirit, in the history of revivals, the results of revival have always been righteousness in that area and many souls coming to Jesus Christ. which of course increases the work, but the Lord built into the system that when we get right with God, the first thing we wanna do is go and reach others with the gospel and the great message. I think it's because the reality of the touch of God is that it's not just something we're doing as a religion, but it's something that God moves in our hearts and we wanna tell everybody, hey, I've met with Jesus, he's real and he can meet your need too. And we're not ashamed of him. Why would we be ashamed of somebody who so graciously forgave us? The consecrating heart. A non-repentant person is not ready to serve properly. A person with a heart that is about looking good is not ready to serve God properly. A person with a heart that is resistant to truth is not ready to serve God, and they may not even care to serve God. But if you'll go through the process of having a contrite heart, you look down and you say, I don't deserve to be forgiven. And afterwards you say, God, please let me serve you just because of how good you've been to me. Where Paul said in his service, he said, I am a debtor both to the Jew and to the Greek. Why? He got right with God. If you get right with God, I won't have to beg you to be in visitation or at least to be involved in some way to do the work of God. I won't have to find somebody, oh, they promised to clean over here and it's not being cleaned. They just stop. They don't even tell us they stop. In other words, we've broken the building down into certain jobs, you know, because it's so big and it's a lot of cleaning. You can come and get a job. But oftentimes people that come and say, I want to do the job. And by the way, I'm not talking about the cadres who served cleaning this building and then their health fell apart. I'm talking about people who are very capable, who have volunteered and said, I want to do this great job for God. And I can tell it's not in a contrite spirit. There's something missing there. And as their pastor, I just say, yes, you can do it. But I know and it's never failed that within a few weeks or you wouldn't be surprised how and you never hear about it again. Oh, that's not being cleaned anymore. Oh, no. They just they told somebody who knew me to tell me to tell my son, to tell my friend, to tell his friend, to tell me. That's too much for them. And listen, I'm not trying to bend anybody's ear to serve the Lord. The Bible says to serve the Lord with gladness, meaning it should come as kind of a result of being with God. The more you're with God, the more you say, I owe Him, I love Him, I want to serve Him. In fact, it is the most important thing I do is serve the Lord. Consecrated means that it belongs to God and not to me. Belongs to God and not to sports. It belongs to God and not our Brother out here, we have to say this, we have to preach this way. And not to our Bass Pro Shops. Hmm. That's an unpopular thing to say. You have to know where your heart is. The second thing under this is that it'll make you praise the Lord. You read in verse 14 and 15, like in verse 15, O Lord, open thou my lips. You've never praised God like you would if your heart were finally clean. And you just can't help it. I mean, if somebody like, try to keep it in. I mean, God is good to me. He's been so good to me because he forgave me again. Before a Christian can repent of his waywardness, he must first, before a person can, he must first be a Christian. If you're here and you're not saved, the first entrance into this relationship begins at the new birth. And we'd love to show you how to be saved if there's somebody here in that condition. When a Christian sins, he grieves the Holy Spirit and he loses. You do not lose your salvation. but you lose some things. Man, you lose your rewards. You lose your strength against other sins. Man, you lose your testimony. You lose your opportunity to witness to people. They look at you like, oh yeah, but I know what you're up to. Like, you're not, then you're gonna tell me? Like one guy told me he would go down and do awful things and then he'd witness to people? Blah! Something's wrong. You lose your fellowship, you lose your peace, you lose power, you lose your productivity for God. All the time, the answer is clear. Return to God with a contrite heart. He's waiting for you. Spurgeon had this to say. He talked about the painfulness of that work in your heart. He said the following, when you are alive, you will love God's precepts. and those precepts will revive you. He said, but they pain me, says one. That is often how people are revived. While a person is drowning, we have heard that the sensations are often very delightful and peaceful. But when he is fished out of the water, as soon as he begins to recover, the blood begins to tingle in the veins and the pain is intense, the choking, The pain of returning to life is sometimes terrible. This is Charles Spurgeon. He goes on, he says, well, so it is with God's precepts when he revives us with his precepts. These precepts pain us because they show us our shortcoming, expose our faults, and humble us. That is the way to be revived. When you are numbed, you know that it is next door to being dead. But when that numbed flesh of yours begins to come to life again, you have felt it. You must have felt it. When the blood begins to circulate by the rubbing, the sharp pain wherever you were numbed, and it is excited, Be thankful for that pain. It's an indication of life. One time, have you ever had an abscessed tooth? I had one that I was just trying to see if I could make it through, right? Not spending money on a dentist. And I was in a pretty bad shape. My mouth was swollen. And I finally got up to the dentist. And the dentist said, I can cut that open, drain all of the infection. Disgusting, isn't it? And he said, but I can't numb it. It won't numb. And so I said, go for it. When they're doing that to your mouth, you can't even bite on a bullet. So they went up there, and they took that knife, and they cut the side of my mouth on my gums, so much so that it took about four stitches. It was that bad. And it was very painful. And the result of it was that the infection got out, and I was able to heal. And what that pain taught me is that I was very much alive in my mouth. It was very alive. I sat there, gripping the arms of that dentist chair, right? You talked about white knuckles. And I'm looking up, and I'm in tears coming down my face. You know, like, you ever do that where you try to ignore the pain? And I try to, my mind is that way. You don't want to hear, it's not even an important story. But I try to analyze the pain. Like, why am I feeling this way? Can I separate? Can I compartmentalize? All the while he's cutting, and I'm like. Thank God you're alive. Spiritually alive, I'm talking about. Thank God for salvation. And if some of this feels like, pastor, if I really got right with God, I'd have to go and expose the sin. And that would hurt too much. Then thank God you're alive. But let's get the infection out of your life. Let's come to Christ because he promises, oh God, thou will not despise. Are you yet tired in your sin? weary of hiding it, weary of failing over and over and over again. Don't you want to have the victory, finally have victory? God wants you to have that. He describes it as the state of somebody who's willing to take their spirit and their heart and crush it before God. Are you willing to come to God that way? Let's stand together, we'll pray. Have a time of invitation. You ought to be afraid if God is not speaking to your heart. The experiences are from the Word of God, they're not really from me. The Word's speaking to you, and you need to respond. the trail to the auditorium, to the platform here to pray, it might be what you need in order to begin the road back to that right relationship with God and that victory you've longed for. Father, I pray that you bless those that come. Pray that you stir our hearts to be right with you from these meetings. In Jesus' name, amen.