We turn in our Bibles again to read from Hebrews chapter 12 and then we turn in the Old Testament to Psalm 51. As we have in the past weeks, let's stand together. Hebrews 12 and then Psalm 51. A simple statement by the writer to the Hebrews concerning the importance of a holy life. Pursue peace with all people and holiness without which no one will see the Lord. We turn to Psalm 51 and we continue our reading from the Old Testament. Beginning at verse one. To the chief musician, a psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet went to him after he had gone into Bathsheba, have mercy upon me, O God, according to your loving kindness, according to the multitude of your tender mercies, blot out my transgressions, wash me thoroughly from my sin, my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. Four. I acknowledge my transgressions, and my sin is always before me against you, and you only have I sinned and done this evil in your sight, that you may be found just when you speak and blameless when you judge. Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me. Behold, you desire truth in the inward parts, and in the hidden part you will make me to know wisdom. Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean. Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Make me hear joy and gladness, that the bones that you have broken may rejoice. Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me away from your presence, and do not take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and uphold me by your generous spirit. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever. And we pray together. Lord our God, we would pray even as we have sung tonight that your words would be sweet to our taste, that we would recognize their value greater than the value of the most important and expensive things that we could find in this world. Lord, we confess it is a familiar routine, morning and evening, week after week, to sit under preaching. But we believe what you have said concerning your word. And Lord, grant us faith, both in preaching and in hearing, that it is through the power of the gospel, the foolishness of the message preached, that you are pleased to save those who believe. And that again tonight, Lord, our privilege is to think familiar supernatural transactions which pertain to eternal life. We ask then for the grace to hold fast to Your Word and to believe and to live to Your glory. And we pray in Jesus' name, Amen. We turn again to Psalm 51. and our multi-week study of the doctrine of repentance, which will have two more weeks at least in it. Next week I'll be away, but the Lord willing, next week when Doug Clausen is here in the morning, actually I've been thinking about this in the last weeks, in the providence of God, he will be preaching and speaking on the theme of the mission of the church to make Christ known to the world. And it just so happens that we will be looking at verse 13, that I will teach transgressors your ways and sinners will be converted to you in the next sermon. The part of the full-orb response of the repentant sinner is to not only commit to living a new life, but then to tell the world about Jesus Christ and His saving mercy. And I hope that will fit well on a weekend when we think about the church's duty to tell the world about Jesus Christ. This week, we're not there yet. What have we studied so far? We have studied from a pattern of an Old Testament saint that fell into very grievous sin, what a sinner should do when he or she comes to a conscious understanding, I have sinned against God. What do you do next if the Lord and His mercy pricks your conscience? What next? And Psalm 51 is the answer to that question, what you should do next, how you should respond to God when he reminds you of the simple fact that you're a sinner. As a matter of fact, the inscription again of the Psalm is, this is what David wrote when Nathan the prophet went to him after he had gone into Bathsheba, when he said, you are the man, And David understood, I have sinned against the Lord. At that moment, it's important to think about that moment, because one of the great dangers in our spiritual life is not to turn immediately. Not to turn immediately. There are times, Well, every time you think about sinning, you should turn quickly, immediately. This pattern that we see in Psalm 51 should become instinctive for you. You should be about repentance, and that's the bigger doctrine that we've been studying. The Bible is clear then that this is a psalm for all of us because we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. So if you're a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ, you should already know something of this pattern. It's for all of us. It's again penned by this man who fell into grievous sexual sin and murder and then lied about it all. And this is the way for someone in deep sin to turn to a Savior, Jesus Christ. It's the pattern of true repentance. What have we learned so far about what we should do? The first thing is that it's a prayer. You should pray. David's sin was looking at the beginning and lusting. Just a look. You know, if you were to be found looking and you're reminded that that's sinful, you could, at that moment, fall on your knees and close your eyes and ask God for mercy. David was way down the road of this looking, but what I'm getting at, there's an instinct here. The instinct at the heart of the psalm is to turn away from the sin to God. Have mercy on me, O God, according to your lovingkindness, according to the multitude of your tender mercies. The first thing is to immediately turn to the Lord in prayer. Early. Quickly. You can't do this fast enough. Fall on your knees before God. The second thing we see David doing is he does it in the hope of God's mercy. We looked at that in the first sermon. But he does it with the acknowledgement of sin. Already when he's asking for sin to be blotted out, blot out my transgressions, cleanse me from my iniquity, cleanse me from my sin. For I, verse three, acknowledge my transgressions. You fall to your knees. You pray to the God who you know is the only source of mercy and forgiveness and you begin by acknowledging. Quickly. God sets the standard against you, and you only have I sinned. That's the acknowledgement. Verse 4, I've done evil in your sight. You are a just judge. You would be right to destroy me. You stop arguing with God. Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me. Lord, I'm not only sinned by this action, but it requires me to confess that my constitution by nature is polluted with sin. I am a sinner. Stop arguing. Immediately turn. Acknowledge your sin. Confess your sin. Tell him specifically what you have done. Acknowledge that holy standard. Confess your specific sins to him. We'll get to this later in the sermon, but repentance. Our Westminster Confession of Faith has this in the chapter on repentance. Repent of specific sins, particular sins particularly, not just broadly. I've sinned in some way, but Lord, you saw what I did. I confess it to you. I turn from it, naming what you've done. The fourth thing we've seen is to seek God's forgiveness of sins. Ask for forgiveness. Recognize that it's an offense to God and it has polluted and defiled you. You need cleansing and it alienates you from God and you need restoration and believe that only God can do this by His supernatural saving power. And you seek this through Jesus Christ alone. Now, what I've described is often, as I intimated before we confessed the doctrine of repentance, it's often what many people who think themselves to be Christians or are weak Christians or perhaps aren't Christians because they don't understand repentance at all, a lot of people stop right here. That's it. I have repented. As a matter of fact, many people, if you ask them what repentance is, what I just described to you, would be their sum total definition. I have repented. Many Christians again even stop here. And there's a reason why we might pause here. Because as David says, when I confess transgression, you forgave the iniquity of my sin. Or as the Apostle John says, if we confess our sins, he's faithful and just to forgive our sins. And the confession of sin by a true believer should bring immediately already a sense of joy and relief as we believe what Christ has done for us. But that's still not repentance. Even though there's a sense in which the relief of forgiveness through the blood of Christ's cross could so overpower you with joy and gratitude that you couldn't remember anything else except this wonderful mercy, you still have not met the definition of repentance. As a matter of fact, the Apostle Paul in Romans 6 anticipates even that the fullness of the forgiveness of sins could be used, in a sense, to stop before we fully repented. This is what he says in Romans chapter 6 and verse 1. What shall we say then? And he's talking about justification and the righteousness that brings eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord, which is so full and free and glorious. He asked this question. What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? In other words, if there's so much grace and forgiveness and mercy and justification in the cross, Could we continue in sin and just receive more grace? Do you remember what Paul's answer is? Certainly not. How can we who died to sin continue any longer in it? That there's a turn or a change of life that is part of repentance. To look at our definition that we just confessed together. that we turn from all our sins to God. That includes acknowledgement, confession, asking for mercy. But then, we purpose and endeavor constantly to walk with Him in all the new ways of obedience. There's a new way of life that flows that is connected to our confession. A lot of people think, if my sins are forgiven, nothing really needs to change. Nothing really will change, maybe, or needs to change. Life will continue as usual. Not so with David. David expects and prays for, and this is important, major life changes in connection with his request for forgiveness. As a matter of fact, three specific restorations in verse 10 11 and 12. Three major restorations. He expects that God will not only forgive his sins, but change his heart, his behavior, his relation to God, his relationship to others, and that the result will be a strengthened church. There's a whole flow all the way to the end of the psalm. But we want to focus on verses 10, 11, and 12, and look at three restorations, and understand the following, that if you ask for forgiveness, you should also anticipate that nothing concerning that sin should ever be the same in your life again. You need, in God's saving mercy, more than forgiveness. You need a restoration to God. And here again in the text, three things that need to change that David prays for. The first is a clean heart. We're going to look at that in the first place. He understands that the former desires and patterns of his heart that led him to the place of sin, they need to be changed. The second thing he prays for to change is that his former alienation from God on account of his sins that there would be a restoration of communion. Do not cast me away from your presence. Do not take your Holy Spirit from me. And then third, he prays that the former guilt and sadness that we have looked at Psalm 32, the laboring under a guilty conscience, that that would turn into joy. Joy inexpressible and full of glory, as the Apostle Paul describes the life of the Christian. So we'll see these three great restorations in relation to repentance, and we'll look at them one by one from the text. First of all, he prays for a clean heart. Create in me a clean heart, O God. You know that there are certain things in life that are dependent relationships. If you don't have A, You can't have B. If you have a child, you need two parents, a mother and a father. If you have fire, you know that you need oxygen. If you have green plants, you know you need light for growth. If you have water, you know that you have hydrogen and oxygen. And you know that you need these two components to make the one thing. And if either one is missing, you do not have the whole. In repentance, we have the matter of the approach to God and confession, asking for forgiveness, and then the turning away from sin. True forgiveness of sins cannot exist without a correspondingly changed life. That is, without B, changed life, there's no A. And I want you to hear me say that again. We'll explain it carefully in a moment. Without a changed life, there cannot be forgiveness of sins. You might say, how can that be? I know it's a strong statement, and we'll study and explain that from the Scriptures, but I want to emphasize on you the importance of a holy life before God. Psalm 115. Who may abide in your tabernacle, Lord? Who may dwell at your holy hill? What follows is a list of characteristics of the person that are necessary to abide in the presence of God. He walks uprightly, works righteousness, speaks the truth, doesn't gossip, doesn't do evil. honors his friends, hates sin, honors those who fears the Lord, swears to his own hurt, and does not change. He's not greedy. He who does these things will never be moved. We just read Hebrews 12 and verse 14. Without holiness, no one will see the Lord. It's a very plain statement. Now, many have made shipwreck of Christianity, not understanding a relationship between two doctrines. Now, Paul says, be transformed by the renewing of your mind, and I know it's a Sunday evening, you may have had a busy day, but strong theology makes a strong Christian. Now, you could have a lot of theological knowledge in your head and be puffed up with pride and not be a strong Christian, that's a separate problem, but you won't find a strong Christian with a weak understanding of the word. There are two great doctrines in the scriptures that we need to understand as we grow in grace. One is called justification and one is called sanctification. They are doctrines that lie at the heart of what it means to be a Christian. Justification is about what Christ has done for us in his cross work, especially. Though His resurrection cannot be separated from our justification, He was raised for our justification. But, the forgiveness of sins comes through Jesus Christ's substitutionary work. He goes to the cross in our place, takes our penalty, our sins imputed to Him, the guilt for our sins He carries. His righteousness is given to us freely, imputed. It's a double imputation. We're our sins to Christ, Christ's righteousness to us. We receive this by faith alone. We believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and in believing we have forgiveness and righteousness provided, a covering for all sins, past, present, and future, sins we've forgotten, sins we've not yet committed. It's a remarkable doctrine. Inseparably linked. Oh, let's go back for a moment. How do you receive justification? By faith. Holy Spirit worked faith. The Holy Spirit takes residence in your heart. He gives you eyes to see Jesus. He convicts you of your sinning. He drives you to the cross. The result of this is that the Spirit of Christ is living in you. Supernatural divine power is at work in you, which will never be taken away. And now Christ works in you. He imputes to you His righteousness. And then there's another word we can use, He infuses grace. That means He works in you by His divine saving power to make you more like Christ. He's changing you. And you can't be forgiven and united to Christ in your justification. and not be being changed and united to Christ and the power of His resurrection and the new life and the new creation that He came to give. It's impossible to have one and not the other. They're inseparably linked together. The Son of God died to pay the penalty for your sins. And we should have no interest ever in going back to our sins because of our love for Him. But also we know that the Spirit is at work to make us more like Him. So if you're forgiven, you love Christ, And Christ is at work in you by His Spirit, and you submit to His Lordship. And this cannot be untied. So, if the theme is dealing with sin and repenting of sin, don't think that you can have forgiveness and hold on to your sin. That thought needs to die. I want you to think of what you're asking for when you say, Lord Jesus, please forgive my sins. Lord Jesus, on the basis of your holy, sinless sacrifice, greater love has no man than this to lend to lay down his life for his friends. I have offended you and the Father. I've grieved and quenched the Holy Spirit. I would like your forgiveness, and I plan to do that again. God forbid we ever think like this. Now we know that sometimes in our weakness, we do it again. May the Lord deliver us from hypocrisy. David keenly understood this. Verse 10. Create in me a clean heart, O God. Lord, make a change within. Calvin argues that in the psalm here, this is exactly what David is doing. He's moving from justification to sanctification. He's understanding that as he asks for forgiveness, he doesn't ever want to go back again. He understands that there was something wrong in the core of his being, and he uses very powerful language, create in me a new heart. That's the verb. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Lord, where there is nothing by nature, make something that is beautiful to you, a clean heart. The source and the fount of my being out of the heart flow the issues of life. Lord, it's clearly corrupted. I did a horrible thing, a series of horrible things against you. Lord, make it new. God, with the same supernatural divine power with which you made the universe, clean my heart. and purge its desires. Work with that same power within me. Make it clean, O God. Make a clean heart. What is your heart? If you've been in the men's study and the ladies' study last year, there's a very good book by Craig Troxell called With All Your Heart. And in it, there's this wonderful reminder that what we think of, sometimes you've heard these terms, head knowledge and heart knowledge, as if you could pit your thinking against your heart. The biblical view of your heart is that it is the the totality of your inward being, including what you think about and how you think, your affections, what you love, and your will, what you decide. And the prayer is, Lord, there is something in me that needs to be cleansed. My own inward being, Lord, make it clean. The totality of my inward being, work with creative power, new creation power. Change my understanding, my affection, my will, make it pure. And the same sentiment is in the next phrase, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. The city of my heart is in ruins, Lord, build it up again. Renovate, build, renew. And he believes that only God can take his inward corruption that began with his original sin, conceived and born in sin, add it to his actual sin, flowing from a corrupted, unclean heart that is in ruins. And he cannot pray for forgiveness without praying for heart change. That the fount that produced the evil would never be the same again. And he believes that God can do this. Just like He said, Lord, wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. With the same faith, He says, Lord, make my heart clean. Renew me in the inward man. The things that I have done come from an ugly darkness inside me, and I need your delivering power. This is the same thing that the prophets would speak of. For example, in Ezekiel 36, the promise of the new covenant is what? that God would give his people new hearts. And I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you. This is the exact language, creating me a clean heart, renew a right spirit within you. The promise at the end of the Old Covenant, or at the fading of the Old Covenant, looking towards the coming of Jesus Christ is a new heart and a new spirit, an inward supernatural divine renovation of your being. by divine creative power. That you would be created in Christ Jesus, new. His workmanship created for good works, Ephesians 2 and verse 10. What does this mean concretely for your life? That means if you ask God for forgiveness, in the same prayer, following David's pattern, you ask him Lord, the place from which this came, me, use your divine creative power and mercy and change it. I don't want to go back ever again. Change it, Lord. If you ask for forgiveness, ask for deliverance from the power of sin. These two prayers should never be separated. This also helps us to understand something about how we view sanctification or God's making us different people every day more and more. Sometimes we have a wooden view of sanctification that goes like this. Well, I asked Jesus to forgive my sins, and now I, by my own strength, try to overcome them. No, that's not in David's understanding of it. Lord, the same power that cleanses is the power that can change my heart. Sanctification is a gift from you, Lord, and it is a gift. When Jesus Christ went to the cross, he purchased your justification and your sanctification. The gospel is much bigger than many believe it to be. His purpose was to present you holy and blameless to the Father. When he ascended into heaven, His great mighty act that signaled on Pentecost, his presence at the right hand of the Father, the tongues of fire and the sound of a mighty rushing wind was the gift of the Holy Spirit on the church in a measure never experienced in human history before. And Peter said, what you now see and hear is what Jesus Christ who died and rose again, this is what he went to heaven to do, to give you the Spirit. so that you could ask for forgiveness and pray in the same breath, Lord, give me a clean heart. Renew a right spirit within me. Purchased on the cross, granted to us, worked out in life. Second thing, if you ask God to forgive your sins, plan to forsake them. Don't only ask for the clean heart, but start making plans not to go back lest you quench and grieve the spirit and offend the Christ who died for you. It's not a small thing to ask for forgiveness. Ask for a divine new creation, clean heart, so that you'd have the inward ability to obey and believe even. Sanctification. is rooted in our faith in Jesus Christ. I am the vine, you are the branches. He that abides in me bears much fruit. How about the parable of the sower? Those who believe, some 30, some 60, a hundredfold, you plead with God. You say, Lord, you not only promised forgiveness, you promised life and fruit. You believe him. You believe the whole gospel. And here's the hard question. Which means, and it's this, if you've been asking for forgiveness for years and never bothered to turn and change, that would be a sign of very serious sickness of the soul or unbelief. A time when it would be good and right to ask God, what's wrong with it? A changed heart, a restoration of fellowship, the second thing here in the text. Verse 11, do not cast me away from your presence, and do not take your Holy Spirit from me. A second restoration, not only a change of heart, but a restoration of communion. Some people say, I feel so far from God, I'm not sure he exists. If God is real, why isn't he speaking to me? What's the assumption in that phrase, if God is real wise and he's speaking to me? The assumption is that I have the ability to hear, and the problem is with God. But the Bible says that sin creates distance between you and God. It has an alienating effect. It brings alienation from God. The unbeliever's always alienated. Can the believer be alienated from God? Not completely, ever. However, when David says, do not cast me away from your presence, do not take your Holy Spirit from me, he understands that the effects of wandering in the fields of sin cannot be an increase of communion, but a breach in his enjoyment of fellowship with God. In other words, he's running from God. And he feels that and he understands it. He has a sense of the possibility of two things. Lord, I deserve to be cast away. Do not cast me away from your presence. And I deserve to have your Holy Spirit's presence and power be taken away from me. Now, is he saying a believer can lose salvation? He's not saying that. Look at the text carefully. Do not take your Holy Spirit from me. He believes the Holy Spirit is in him. but with a sensitivity of conscience and a longing for the restoration of his relationship with God. He pleads for its renewal after his sin. He understands that he would deserve the loss, that sin has marred the fellowship, even between David, a believer, and God. In the New Testament, we have language that is similar. Paul says, do not quench the spirit, do not grieve the spirit. And we know that sin will, unrepentative and apart from the restoring mercy of God, will leave you away from the presence of God. What happens to Adam and Eve? Driven from the sanctuary and from the presence of God. Cherubim with a flaming sword, cast away because of sin. Israel in the wilderness, destroyed by the angel of death when they sinned. And then Christ, the sin bearer in our place, think of this. As he becomes sin for us, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? David says, I understand that my sin, its penalty could be the loss of communion. I recoil and I ask for your mercy. That I would not be alienated from you, the fount of all goodness, life, loveliness, righteousness, holiness, and salvation. Lord, if you were to cast me away, I would die. If I would not have your spirit, I would not have life. A couple things to learn again. Sin is dangerous. It puts you on a path where you are leaving the favorable presence of God. Like the prodigal, the moment you turn to sin, you have decided to march out of the Father's house. Now, he and his mercy, so many times we do this. Sometimes, my little Miriam, if you let her out the back door, she has no idea about the dangers of the world and she loves the outdoors more than the inside of our house. Matter of fact, everyone who walks by right now puts up her little arms and says, take me outside. If you put her down outside, she'll just run. She doesn't know the dangers out there. Now, she's not sinning. I think she's just exploring. But inadvertently, she's leaving safety and the communion of home and family. Sin is intentionally leaving the safety and communion of the presence of God and the family of God. It's an offense to God. It's denying the love of Christ. It's jeopardizing the highest good. It's tracing your birthright for a bowl of soup. A brief sexual encounter for David was enough to do all of this. It's a breach between God and man. What Christ has done at the cross is to restore that communion and any sin strikes at His work. Christ has come that this might be true. Behold, the dwelling place of God is with men. Pray then, secondly, in your restoration for a restoration of fellowship with God in the presence and power of his Holy Spirit. Third, that your former guilt and sadness would be restored to joy and gladness. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and uphold me by your generous spirit, verse 12. There's never too much to review the ground we've covered. We acknowledge, we confess, we seek forgiveness. The promise is if we confess our sins, He's faithful and just to forgive our sins. We pray for restoration, that the power of sin would be broken, that communion would be restored. This comes with the promise of God. I will deliver you from the power of sin. I will delight in you and you in me. And this is eternal life that we may know God and fellowship with Him. If you don't have this, You, your heart and life is aching, empty, helpless, and sad. There is no satisfaction of the human heart in this life that can be found anywhere until you have peace of conscience with your Father through Jesus Christ, which comes by confession, acknowledgement, and asking for forgiveness. There's no victory over sin unless God creates a clean heart and renews a right spirit within you. There's prayer, urgent prayer for God to cause his face to shine upon you, that his spirit would be powerfully at work in you and that you would know his nearness and friendship. But David here asks for even more. He says, out of that, restore to me the joy of your salvation. Uphold me by your generous spirit. This is a remarkable request. Do you realize how bold this is? Do you realize what Christ came to do for you? Think about how deeply David has offended his Lord and Savior, how he has blotted the name of the line of David with sin after receiving the Davidic covenant. He says, I can ask for forgiveness, I can ask for transformation, and then I can ask for God to make my heart happy again. after it was made sad because I sinned against him. Or the joy that I once knew because of your forgiving mercy, Lord, I hunger to have it again. He's asking for a total restoration of salvation and an experience in the heart by the power of the Holy Spirit. Uphold me by your generous Spirit. He understands that sin confessed, forsaken, brings a total restoration to his communion with God. As a matter of fact, it will bring him to the place of the enjoyment of God as if he had never sinned. And he asks for it. It's amazing. Show me your saving mercy again, O God, even though I just sinned again, in a way that all my sadness would be turned to joy. In the New Testament, this is even commanded, rejoice in the Lord always. And again, I say rejoice. Imagine, we often pray for revival, imagine what a witness it would be to the world if we would not only confess our sins and forsake them, but be characterized by a kind of joy and wonder at the mercy of God and the covenant of grace. that we even after we had sinned might have a life of joy and gladness in him restored. A couple more things to learn from the text. There's a grand unifying principle that I want to come back to from the beginning, fourth place here. Forgiveness and restoration are inseparably linked together. Repentance and the grand arc of repentance includes not only confession and the seeking of mercy but the restoration of a life of communion with God, which includes our obedience and our joy. And when you repent of sin, you need to aim for the whole repentance, not bits and pieces, not stopping halfway, but with the boldness to pray, also create in me a clean heart, Let your spirit not depart from me, and Lord, make my heart happy in your saving mercy again. All the way to the end. You chase repentance to the end of restored communion and fellowship with God. This might help you in your repentance. It's kind of dismal to stop halfway. I've confessed it. Or no, I confessed it, I hate it. turn me from it, fill me with your spirit, and overwhelm me again with the joy I had, perhaps, when I first came to you. That's what we're praying for. And that's what God promises to give. Thomas Chalmers had a famous sermon, I've probably quoted the title before. It's worth reading. The Expulsive Power of a New Affection. When you understand what repentance is, it's clearly not a drudgery. It's a turning of the whole person back to Jesus Christ. It's a, you were headed this way and you just did a 180 and you are running back to the one who you love and who has loved you. Nothing matters, you leave it all behind. A new affection for Jesus Christ and a longing for communion with Him means there's nothing in this world worth holding on to if it costs me that. The second thing to learn is, I said it before, but this arc of repentance traced in the text means that your view again of what Christ came to do If you stop halfway in your repentance, there's a sense in which you only are going halfway with Jesus Christ. I just want your forgiveness so I feel better. No, no, no. You want his forgiveness. You want his transforming grace. You want communion with him and that joy inexpressible and full of glory that only he can give. You long for it to be restored. What are you ultimately longing for then? Heaven. The day when all that you've been praying for, longing for, and striving for will be realized in perfect bliss forever. Three restorations. Create in me a clean heart, oh God. Do not cast me away from your presence. Restore to me the joy of your salvation. This is part of that great positive arc of true repentance. Let's pray. Pray for help that we might repent in this way, where so often we stop halfway, we've felt guilty and bad about what we've done, we know we need some remedy. But we pray for the grace that propels us or beyond, or that hunger for holiness, that dependence on your Holy Spirit, which is so exemplary in David here, or that longing for a restoration of peace with you and joy in our hearts that will never end. Lord, a sense of the foolishness of having traded all that is good and holy for something that is empty and nothing. Lord, we pray that you would magnify and increase the work of Christ in our hearts as we think of true repentance. And we ask in his name, amen. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you his peace. Amen.