Apart

Apart

(No. 2510)

INTENDED FOR READING ON LORD'S-DAY, MARCH 28, 1897.

DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,

AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON, ON THURSDAY EVENING, JULY
16, 1885.

"And the land shall mourn, every family apart; the family ofthe house
of David apart, and their wives apart; the family ofthe house of Nathan
apart, and their wives apart; the family of the house of Levi apart,
and their wives apart; the family of Shimei apart, and their wives
apart; all the families that remain, every family apart, and their
wives apart." Zechariah 12:12-14.

True repentance is always accompanied by sorrow. It has been said by
some of those of modern times who disparage repentance that repentance
is "nothing but a change of mind." These words sound as if there was
merely some superficial meaning to them and so, indeed, they are
intended by those who use them, but they are not so intended by the
Spirit of God! Repentance may be and is a change of mind, but what a
change it is! It is not an unimportant change of mind such as you may
have concerning whether you will take your holiday this week or the
next, or about some trifling matter of domestic interest–it is a
change of the whole heart, of the love, of the hate, of the judgment
and the view of things taken by the individual whose mind is thus
changed. It is a deep, radical, fundamental, lasting change. And you
will find that whenever you meet with it in Scripture, it is always
accompanied with sorrow for past sin. And rest you assured of this
fact, that the repentance which has no tears in its eyes and no
mourning for sin in its heart is a repentance which needs to be
repented of, for there is no evidence of conversion, no sign of the
existence of the Grace of God! In what way has that man changed his
mind who is not sorry that he has sinned? In what sense can it be said
that he has undergone any change worth experiencing if he can look back
upon his past life with pleasure, or look upon the prospect of
returning to his sin without an inward loathing and disgust?

I say again that we have need to stand in doubt of that repentance
which is not accompanied with mourning for sin! And even when Christ is
clearly seen by faith and sin is pardoned–and the man knows that it is
forgiven–he does not cease to mourn for sin. No, Brothers and Sisters,
his mourning becomes deeper as his knowledge of his guilt becomes
greater. And his hatred of sin grows in proportion as he understands
that love of Christ by which his sin is put away. In true Believers,
mourning for sin is chastened and sweetened and, in one sense, the fang
of bitterness is taken out, but, in another sense, the more we realize
our indebtedness to God's Grace, and the more we see of the sufferings
of Christ in order to our redemption, the more do we hate sin and the
more do we lament that we ever fell into it. I am sure it is so, and
that every Christian's experience will confirm what I say.

In the case of these people mentioned by the Prophet Zechariah, one of
the prominent points about their repentance was that all in the land
were to mourn. They were to look upon Christ whom their sins had put to
death and they were to mourn for Him as one mourns for his only son and
to be in bitterness for Him as one that is in bitterness for his
firstborn. In fact, the lamentation which was to accompany this
repentance is said to be as great as the mourning of the whole nation
when Josiah fell in the battle with Pharaoh-Nechoh at Megiddo–"In that
day shall there be a great mourning in Jerusalem as the mourning of
Hadadrimmon in the valley of Megiddon."

Another special characteristic of this mourning described by Zechariah,
which also distinguishes genuine repentance for sin, is that it is
personal, the act of each individual, and the act of the individual
apart from any of his fellows. The watchword of true penitence is this
word, "apart." How it rings out in the text, "Every family apart, the
family of the house of David apart, and their wives apart; the family
of the house of Nathan apart, and their wives apart; the family of the
house of Levi apart, and their wives apart, the family of Shimei apart,
and their wives apart; all the families that remain, every family
apart, and their wives apart.'"

Sham repentance can do its work in the mass–it talks about national
sin and national sorrow which generally means the mere notion of sin
and the notion of repentance. But when it comes to a true work of the
Spirit of God and men do really mourn for sin so as to obtain pardon,
it is a thing in which each individual stands in a personal solitude,
as much apart from everybody else as if he had been the only man that
God ever made and was without father and without mother and without
descent and had, himself, alone, so sinned that the whole anger of God
for sin had fallen upon him! A man in this condition gets alone, he
bears his sin apart, quitting the company of his fellows and all the
charms that once lured him to destruction. And his lamentation on
account of sin is his own sole act and deed. It wells up from his own
heart. It is not borrowed from others, but, by the effectual working of
the Grace of God, everything about it is of himself.

I. It is to this important matter that I now call your attention. And
in doing so our first point will be THE INDIVIDUALIZING EFFECT OF
SORROW FOR SIN.

Let me remind you, first, that this individualizing is seen even when
the mourning is universal Read the text again. "The land shall mourn,
every family apart." If there should ever come such a blessed
visitation of Grace to England that all men should repent of sin and
mourn over it, yet each manwould repent of sin and mourn over it as
much as if he were the only penitent in the entire country! This point
is worth noticing because there are some who fancy that if there should
come a great revival, they would get converted. Perhaps some of you
think that in such a case you would get into the swim and be carried
onward by it, as people are sometimes borne along in a great crowd. Let
me tell you that if you were thus swept along by the stream and had not
exercised individual repentance of sin and personal faith in the Lord
Jesus Christ, it would be of no value to you! It would be a false
religion that you would receive in that way, and it is better for you
to remember and know for sure that you cannot enter the strait and
narrow gate in a crowd, borne in by others, but you must come in
separately and distinctly yourself!

Why should not that be the case with you even now? When there shall be
times of refreshing from the Presence of the Lord, the brightest days
that ever shone in Christendom, yet, even then, every true conversion
must be an individual one. All true faith that shall ever come to you
must be a looking with your own eyes and, all drawing near to God in
repentance must be the act of your own spirit, under the drawings of
the Holy Spirit. Whatever is done by others, even by multitudes of
genuine converts, will be of no use to you. If it is to bring blessing
to you, it must be the work of the Spirit of God upon you individually.

Do notice that foundation fact and let none of us ever forget it, but
let this day of mourning for sin, throughout the whole Church of God,
be as much a time of mourning for sin for me and for you as if you and
I were the only persons in the world who were aware of that sin, or who
had felt at all the evil and the wickedness of it! Otherwise we shall
lose all true repentance in the idea of a national repentance. We shall
lose all sense of sin in the notion that everybody has a sense of sin,
that everybody is humbled in penitence before God and that everybody is
seeking the Lord.

Notice, next, that while this apartness is seen when holy mourning
becomes universal, it also is manifest when there are some few
households humbling themselves before God. Even then, when there are
only a few repenting households, the separation of one family from
another will be seen. The whole of the penitents are separate from the
ungodly around them! They are distinguished as those who are mourning
before God, yet even then, each individual family will be separated,
the one from the other. If it should come to pass that the families of
this Church should begin unitedly to mourn by reason of the great sin
of the times–and I heartily hope that it may be the case–yet even
then, if it is true sorrow for sin, there will be a distinctness
between one family and another family. There will be a sort of
idiosyncrasy around the mourning for sin in this house, or in that
house, which will distinguish the mourners there from all others. You
can manufacture man-made things by the gross, but God's creations are
made one by one. He puts His seal of variety upon all that He creates.

Painters can make replicas of their great works and you may see here,
and there, copies of paintings that are, stroke for stroke, the same,
but God does not repeat Himself! There is a distinctness about the face
of every man and every woman–you may mistake one man for another–but
it is from casual observation, or from partial knowledge. But a man's
own wife does not make a mistake about who is her husband! His child
knows which is his father and does not mistake another man for him. So,
whatever resemblance there may be, there is a difference which is
readily discernible–and if it is so in the natural face of a man, much
more is it so in spiritualfeatures. One man differs from another and
one family differs from another and, consequently, in the mourning,
even when it becomes general throughout all the families of Christ, yet
each family still keeps itself somewhat apart from the rest and differs
from every other.

This individualizing is further seen in the distinction between family
and family when both fear the Lord. In our text we have quite a little
list of families given in order to make this Truth of God clear. Each
family has its peculiar sin and a specialty must be made in confessing
it. There is, first, the family of the house of David, that is, the
royal household. And the house of David was, as kings went in those
days, a superior household. Kings' households have not often been of
much account, but David's, though it was a long way from being perfect,
was better than the best of the ungodly royal houses in those days. Yet
there was something for the house of David and all the kings of the
house of David to mourn over, for the sins of royalty are royal sins,
and those are sins, indeed, which come from those who wear crowns and
are leaders among the sons of men. Therefore the family of the house of
David must mourn apart.

Next, we are told that the family of the house of Nathan shall mourn
apart. Take that to be the family of a Prophet–the family down at the
Manse, if you like. There is some particular sin in the minister's
household which makes it proper that his family should mourn apart. Or,
it may refer to the family of that good man in the Church who is
distinguished for his walk with God. Yet, even in hisfamily there is a
something which, when God the Holy Spirit visits it as a Spirit of
intercession and of mourning for sin, will cause it to mourn apart.

There will be something about each household which it does not like to
tell others. And even in the house of Levi, which is so near to that of
Nathan–for the Prophet and the priest often go hand in hand–yet, when
their families are gathered together to confess sin, Nathan prefers
that the family of Levi should not be at his house and Levi is anxious
that there should be a closed door when he and his household are
mourning before the Lord. You will be right if you let the family of
Levi represent the household of a gracious people, for now that the
priesthood is the common property of all the elect of God, I do not
care to distinguish Levi otherwise than as a believing man in whose
house there is a Church of God and all whose family are of priestly
rank. Still, even there, among the holiest and best of saints, among
those devoted to the service of God, among those whose very lives are
spent in work for God, there will be some sin that shall make the house
of Levi wish to mourn apart from all others.

Then there was to be the mourning of the family of Shimei. We do not
know who this Shimei may have been. Some commonplace person, perhaps.
Possibly his was a household in which there had not been the fear of
God. But when the Grace of God comes to it, then the house of Shimei
begins to mourn apart for its own special sin. You see, dear Friends,
that the one blow I have kept striking upon the anvil is this, "apart,
apart, APART!" All this mourning, however similar it might be in the
one case to the other, is presented to God separately by each
family–and if ever families were marked off, the one from the other,
by a most manifest line of demarcation, it was in the night of weeping
when, as at Bochim, they drew near unto God in prayer apart.

Notice, next, that this separateness is carried very far by the fact
that, in each case, it put the family apart and their wives apart.
These people were one flesh, but when their hearts were made flesh,
they had to offer separate supplications. The common sin of husbands
and wives should be confessed unitedly, and there is nothing more
natural, more beautiful, and more edifying than for husbands and wives
to pray together, to confess sin together, and to offer thanksgiving
together. In all these they may be most fittingly one. Yet there is and
there must be some sin which the man shall bring before God and before
God, alone, feeling that even his dearest one would be an intruder in
that act of personal mourning for sin. And when the Spirit of God is in
the woman's heart, she feels that, though she has no earthly secret
from her husband, yet there is something between God and her soul into
which even her husband cannot enter. Her mourning for her sin, when she
first seeks the Savior, would be hindered by her husband's
interposition, so she gets alone. And his mourning for sin, when he
first seeks the Savior, or when afterwards he is conscious of some
backsliding and longs to return to his Lord, must be apart and alone.

No, you dearest ones, when we enter into the closet and shut the door,
you must enter your closet and shut the door, for, in the dealing of a
soul with God, it must be One and one, the one Mediator standing
between them two, but no other individual interposing. This family or
that family was to mourn apart as a family, but then the individuals
composing each family were also to be separate in their confession
before the Most High–"every family apart, and their wives apart."

II. Now, secondly, HOW DOES THE INDIVIDUALITY GENERALLY SHOW ITSELF?

Well, in many ways. So truly is mourning for sin a personal thing, that
each individual sees most his own sin and feels himself to be alone as
to character That man who has truly repented of sin believes that under
some aspects, he is the greatest of all sinners. He is not so absurd as
to charge himself with certain sins which he never committed, which
probably he never had the opportunity to commit–but he is wise enough
to see that our guiltiness before God not only depends upon the act
committed, but upon the will to commit it and upon the spirit–and very
much upon the Light of God against which a man has sinned, and upon the
peculiar circumstances of favor and mercy which the man, himself, may
have forgotten, but which prove him to have been most ungrateful in the
commission of sin. I do not know about your sin, dear Brother–you may
be worse than I am, but I do know my own sin so far as to feel that I
hope you are not worse than I am–and to believe that I myself must
take no other place than among the guiltiest and cry, "God be merciful
to me a sinner." Hence, each man's confession is necessary apart,
because there is a different character in it.

Generally, mourning for sin is separate as to place. When a man is
under a sense of sin, he likes to get alone. I knew one who, in his
soul-trouble, resorted to a saw-pit. Many have hidden behind a
haystack, some have gone into the barn. Into all manner of strange
nooks and corners we go when we are mourning for sin, but solitude has
wonderful charms to a bleeding heart. You feel above all things that
even if it is the open street, you must get into some sort of
solitude–if necessary, even the awful solitude of being lost in a
crowd! Thus, man recognizes the individuality of his sin by wishing to
get apart even as to place.

And I am sure that it is so as to time. True mourning for sin is not a
matter of hours and days. You cannot say, "Now it is time for me to
mourn over my sin and I must keep on so many minutes, and then have
done." Ah, no, dear Friends! When a man is ill, when he is consumptive,
or has a bad cough, if he comes to Chapel, you think to yourself that
you would like him to cough during the pauses in the service and not at
other times. But, poor Soul, he cannot help himself–he must cough when
he must cough. And when a man has a groan in his soul, he cannot groan
according to the position of the sun! He cannot take down a book of
prayers and say, "Now is the time for the confession of sin. And now is
the time for this, and now is the time for that." He cannot follow the
rules that may have been best in somebody else's case. All the time
some are praising God, he will still be mourning, and when others are
lamenting with broken hearts, he is smiting his heart to think that it
will not lament and will not break! The things of eternal life cannot
be set according to carnal time–they will come according to their own
way and thus, every man and every woman must mourn for sin apart–and
there is no regulating them by the movements of the clock.

Not only are they separate as to place and time, but they get apart as
to manner. Some can weep over their sin, but others could not shed a
tear if they were offered the world for it. Some are silent in their
agony. Others cry aloud. One man feels that his heart is
broken–another envies him and wishes that his hard heart would break.
One person is full of misery on account of sin. Another says–

"If aught is felt, 'tis only pain, To find I cannot feel."

There is a separate form of mourning about each true penitent and let
no one say of himself, "I have not mourned for sin because I have not
mourned as somebody else has done." Perhaps if you had been exactly
like somebody else, there might be a suspicion that you were a mere
copyist and not an original work of the Grace of God! So, true mourning
differs in its manner.

Do you not also know, dear Friends, that each person who mourns for sin
has his own secret–a secret which he must not tell to anyone but the
Lord? It were a pity that he should tell it to human ears. There is a
something in each individual case into which a stranger cannot enter.
You may have read John Bunyan's Grace Aboundingand you may have noticed
that most of his biographers say that Bunyan's account of himself was
generally blackened by a morbid consciousness–which also shows how
little they know about the matter, for the man who has led the purest
life when he is brought before God by the humbling influence of the
Holy Spirit, is the man who almost invariably considers himself to have
been viler than anybody else! It is possible that John Bunyan was not
worse than any other gipsy tinker. He may have been a great deal
better, that is to say, in the judgment of the blind bats that try to
see what he was like, but he knew himself better than they knew him,
for he had seen himself in the strong light of the Holy Spirit! God had
turned the bull's-eye of the great lantern of the Law full into the
man's face and so he had a better idea of his own character than you
and I have. And what he did tell us is not all he knew–he would not
have dared to tell it all–it would have been wrong that he should.

As there are words in Heaven so high that it were not lawful for a man
to utter them, so are there words down here in the deep corruption of
our fallen spirits that it were not lawful for a man to utter save in
the ear of the Most High! Therefore, each individual must mourn apart.

III. Our time is running so fast that I must go on to notice, thirdly,
HOW WE ACCOUNT FOR THIS INDIVIDUALITY. Why is it that each man thus
mourns apart?

Well, in part, it is to be accounted for by that natural and
justifiable shame which prevents our confessing all our sins before
others. I take it to be an awful violation of the natural delicacy of
the human mind when any person is invited to make oral confession to a
priest. I can myself scarcely conceive of anything that could be more
degrading to the heart and more injurious to the conscience than the
infernal brazenness of heart that permits anybody to attempt such a
thing! As the inspired Prophet would have said, they must have "a
whore's forehead" before they can dare to unmask their hearts before
their fellow men. No, no, Brothers and Sisters, such a thing must not
be so much as namedamong us! What shame remains in us ought to prevent
such a shameful or shameless thing as that. Hence, our mourning must be
apart.

Secondly, in such a case, the heart desires to go to God, Himself, and
the presence of anybody else seems like an intrusion between our soul
and our God. The man looks around the room. He is afraid that somebody
may come in and disturb his devotion, so he turns the key in the door.
"Now," he says, "my God, it is to You that I would speak. I should not
like a dog to hear what I have to say to You, now that I come and
honestly and openly lay bare my heart for Your inspection, hating the
very garment spotted by the flesh, and desiring to be washed thoroughly
from my iniquities."

Further, the man is conscious that his guilt has been all his own. He
dissociates himself, when he truly repents, from everybody else. He
does not think of laying the blame on those who tempted him, or on
ungodly parents who neglected his education. He looks for nobody to be
his scapegoat except the appointed Scapegoat. He says, "I have sinned
and done this evil in Your sight, O my God, and I stand before You,
alone, to confess it." And therefore he gets the pardon of his guilt.
This, indeed, is a sure sign of sincerity. If you can only pray in
public, you do not pray at all! If you can only join in the general
confession, you have uttered a public lie! You are only right before
God when it is your own sin, felt in your own heart, confessed by
yoursefbefore your ownGod, unknown to anybody else and altogether known
to Him.

Dear Hearers, have you all done this? Have you all repented of sin? I
am glad that so many are willing to spend a week-night in listening to
the Gospel and I always have hope that there is some religious sense
about you that leads you to this mid-week service. But still, permit
this personal question–Has religion been only a family matter to you?
Are you what you are because your mother was so or your father was so?
Are you of this religion or that because it is the national
faith–because your pedigree has brought down with it your creed? This
will not do! Remember, you have to be born alone, you will have to
diealone, you will have to be judgedalone and you must be born again
alone! And therefore there must be for yourself a personal sense of
sin, a personal'seeking to Christ, a personal acceptance of pardon
through the precious blood. Is it so with you all?

Our days are running swiftly away–we are all getting older and coming
nearer to the end of life. If you have never confessed sin, I entreat
you to do it now. If you have never been delivered from its terrible
curse, seek to be delivered now! Before you close your eyes in what may
be the last sleep you shall ever know, confess your sin and trust in
Jesus! O God, help us each one separately thus to come to You! It is
with this plea that I close my discourse–let us make personal,
complete, and searching investigations into our own case before God.
Let us go before Him with our own personal acknowledgments, with
nothing borrowed from others. Let us not make a masquerade of religion,
but let us go before God as we are, confess our sinful state and seek
pardon for the sake of Him who died, the Just for the unjust, that He
might bring us to God.

And then, dear Friend, if you have really made this confession and have
found peace with God, then go forth and try to bring others. Having
lighted your own torch, let it not burn in your private chamber, only,
but go through the streets with it–go into the darkest places and let
that light flame forth! But take care that it is not dimmed by any
repetition of the sin you acknowledge. It is no use pretending to mourn
for sin and then to keep on in it–

"Repentance is to leave

The sin we loved before,

And show that we in earnest grieve

By doing so no more."

May true holiness spring out of your repentance and may this go side by
side with an earnest endeavor, by the power of the Holy Spirit, to
bring others to repent apart as we have done, through Him whose Cross
is the sole hope of sinners, who Himself, living and pleading for
sinners at the Father's right hand, is the one lone Star that makes
glad the midnight of our guilt. Oh, look you away from self to Christ!
If your confession of sin is offered without thought of Him, away with
your confession of sin! Repentance is nothing apart from Christ. Look
to Him through your tears, through your depression of spirit and say,
"Just as I am, I cast myself at those dear feet that bled out life for
me, and look up to the torn side which is the one cleft of the rock
where the sinner may hide himself away from the tempests of eternal
wrath."

God bless you, Beloved! May we meet in Heaven to sing together, though
on earth we must mourn apart, for Christ's sake! Amen.

EXPOSITION BY C. H. SPURGEON: PSALM51.

Although we may have been preserved by Divine Grace from any gross and
open sin, yet let us read this Psalm in the spirit of penitence. I
always feel afraid of myself if I cannot read this Psalm from my heart.
Surely some pride must have entrusted my spirit and taken away its
humility and its tenderness, if I cannot join in David's penitential
prayer. I think that all of us who have the Spirit of God within us
will feel that these words are suited to us as well as to poor
brokenhearted David.

Verse 1. Have mercy upon me, O God. ' 'I cannot do without mercy,
though I am Your child and You must give me great mercy, or it will be
no mercy to me, for little mercy will not serve my turn. ' Have mercy
upon me, O God,'without stint and without end."

1. According to Your loving kindness. "If I must set You a measure, let
Your own Nature be the measure of Your mercy. I would view You in the
most tender, brightest light–according to Your kindness–yes, Your
loving kindness." Surely that is one of the sweetest words in our dear
mother tongue, and no other language contains a sweeter one–
"according to Your loving kindness."

1. According unto the multitude of Your tender mercies blot out my
transgressions.' 'You cannot blot out such multitudes of sins unless
You have multitudes of mercies, but inasmuch as there is no counting of
Your mercies any more than there is counting of my sins, let the bright
drops of Your mercy be equal to the black drops of my transgression.
When I view my sin in its blackness, then I cry for mercy according to
Your loving kindness. And when I view my transgressions in their
multitude, then I cry for pardon 'according unto the multitude of Your
tender mercies.'" Is not this a blessed prayer? It could not have come
from David if he had not felt the greatness of his sin–and it will not
suit you, dear Friends, unless you, also, are taught by the Spirit of
God to know what a bitter thing sin is.

2. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.
What a washing that is! The penitent desires to have it done
thoroughly–"Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity." "Leave not a single
spot, for one speck would be sufficient to shut me out of Heaven. I
must be spotless to be admitted there. 'Wash me thoroughly.' Wash not
only this outward stain, but this inward defilement. Wash me through
and through–'thoroughly'–till there is no trace of my sin. So wash me
till I am cleansed and made perfectly clean." There is none but the
Lord, Himself, who can wash us after this fashion. Each of us may say
with Job, "If I wash myself with snow water, and make my hands ever so
clean; yet shall You plunge me in the ditch and my own clothes shall
abhor me." If we made the sea to be our bath, we should sooner crimson
every wave with our iniquities than one single stain of guilt should be
washed away by the waters of old Ocean. It is a Divine work to cleanse
from sin–therefore say, dear Friend, "Lord, You must wash me if I am
to be washed; but do it thoroughly. 'Wash me thoroughly from my
iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.'"

3. For I acknowledge my transgressions: and my sin is ever before me.
It is a great mercy when it is so with us, for when our sins are before
our face, God will put them behind His back. When we do not see our
sin, then God sees it, but when we see it aright, then God will not see
it, for He will put it away forever. As for you who think yourselves
innocent, by that very fact you are proved to be naked, poor, blind and
miserable! But You who are, in a spiritual sense, poverty-stricken, you
who confess your guilt, shall find pardon, for the plea of, "Guilty, my
Lord," is that which God answers by a sentence of acquittal.

4. Against You, You only, have I sinned, and done this evil in Your
sight: that You might be justified when You speak, and be clear when
You judge. David's great iniquity was a sin against many, but he had
been brought to learn what few see–that the virus of sin lies in its
being against God. Last Sabbath evening, our subject (Sermon #2509,
Volume 43– "The Sinful made Sinless") was that "sin i s the
transgression of the Law" and I tried to show that the very essence of
its sinfulness lies in the fact that it is rebellion against the will
of God. So, David here puts his finger on the great black blot and
shows that he knew where the chief mischief lay– "Against You, You
only, have I sinned, and done this evil in Your sight: that You might
be justified when You speak, and be clear when You judge." Let God do
what He will with us, He cannot treat us worse than we deserve. If we
were banished from His Presence into a hopeless eternity, we should not
dare to complain. He is justified when He speaks! He is clear when He
judges!

5. Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive
me. "I am bad from the fountainhead of my being, and wrong all through.
It is not only what I do that is wrong, but I, myself, am wrong. I am a
double-dyed traitor, and born of a traitoress." I doubt not that
David's mother was as good as any mother. Probably she was a true child
of God, but, for all that, David and all of us have the old tendency to
sin from the very fact of our descent from fallen parents. "Who can
bring a clean thing out of an unclean? Not one."

6. Behold, You desire truth in the inward parts: and in the hidden part
You shall make me to know wisdom. Ah, Friends, that is the troublesome
part of the matter! We might be able to rectify the external wrong and
to reform our outward actions, but who can make his heartclean? You can
prune the tree, you may cut it to almost any shape you like, but you
cannot make the deadly tree bring forth healthy fruit. You cannot
change the sap, or alter the nature of the tree's roots. What but a
Divine Power can do this? "In the hidden part You shall make me to know
wisdom." But nobody else can.

7. Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be
whiter than snow. I think that this is grand faith for a man, blinded
by his tears, broken-hearted through his sin, to feel that God can make
him clean. "Take You the hyssop, as I have seen my father do on the
Passover night, when the lamb was slain, and the blood of it caught in
the basin. Have I not seen him dip the hyssop in the blood and then
sprinkle it on the lintel and the side posts of the door? Have I not
seen the priest dip his bunch of hyssop into the sacrificial blood and
then sprinkle all the people and so make them ceremonially clean? Lord,
You have a better hyssop dipped in better blood! 'Purge me with hyssop,
and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.'"
Possibly you know, dear Friends, that the verse may be read in the
future tense–You shall purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean. You
shall wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow." This is grand faith! I
do not know that the faith of Abraham, as a saint, when he offered up
his son, was greater than the faith of David, as a sinner, when he
believed that God could make even him whiter than snow!

8. Make me to hear joy and gladness; that the bones which You have
broken may rejoice. Beloved, it is a sweet thing when we come to close
dealings with God like this. David needs cleansing, but he will not
have it except from God. He needs peace and comfort, but he will look
only to God for them–"Make me to hear joy and gladness." If you go out
into the streets when you are sad, you may hear sounds of joy and
gladness which will seem like a mockery of your sorrow. "As vinegar
upon nitre, so is he that sings songs to a heavy heart." But when God
speaks in mercy. When He opens our ears to hear His melodious accents
of pardon, then the very bones which have been broken begin to rejoice!
Probably there is no more refined pleasure of a human kind than that
which comes to a man who is getting convalescent, one who is gradually
being restored after a very severe illness. So there is certainly
nothing more sweet than that calm quiet happiness which comes of
pardoned sin when the broken heart begins to be healed–"Make me to
hear joy and gladness; that the bones which You have broken may
rejoice."

9. Hide Your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquities. It is
not, "Let the evil be hushed up, let not my people hear about it," but,
"Hide Your face from my sins." It is not, "Help me to forget that I
have been a criminal." No, but, "Hide Your face from my sins." "And,
Lord, when You are blotting out my iniquities, blot them all out–those
that have never come to such a public head as this great sin with
Bathsheba. Lord, when You begin blotting out my sins, make a clean
sweep of them all. Draw Your pen right down the page of my
guilt–strike out every item that ever has been recorded there! 'Blot
out all my iniquities.'"

10. Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within
me. Do you notice how David blends justification with sanctification?
His prayer for pardon is always accompanied by a prayer for purity! He
does not want to have his sin blotted out and then to continue
sinful–he cries "Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right
spirit within me." "I have marred it, so come, Lord, and renew it. Your
handwriting on my conscience has grown dim. Come and write upon me in
bolder characters which can never be erased."

11. Cast me not away from Your Presence; and take not Your Holy Spirit
from me. Are you praying these prayers, dear Friends, as we are reading
them? I am sure you are if you have ever enjoyed the Presence of God,
if the Holy Spirit is your daily companion. And if you have lost that
heavenly Company, if you have lost that comfortable Presence, I know
that you are crying to get it back–and it will come back at your cry.

12. Restore unto me the joy of Your salvation; and uphold me with Your
free spirit ' 'Make me happy, O Lord, but oh, make me steadfast! In
delivering me from my sin, deliver me from ever going into it again!
Make me like a burnt child that stays clear of the fire. O my God, come
back to me!"

13. Then will I teach transgressors Your ways; and sinners shall be
converted unto You. Dear Friends, there is nothing that helps us to
preach so well as a sense that we are sinners and that God has had
mercy upon us! Come up fresh from the washing, dripping with the blood
of cleansing, and every drop will seem to plead with sinners that they,
too, would come and be washed! Live near to the Cross and there is no
fear about your preaching so that sinners shall be converted unto God.
Sometimes we seem to get into a kind of spiritual rose water–we appear
to be so very superfine, that we have to condescend to poor sinners and
preach down to them from our supreme heights! And they never get a
blessing that way–but when, by deep experience, we are put upon their
level and feel that, as Christ has saved us, so He can save them, then
do we speak with power and unction!

14. 15. Deliver me from blood-guiltiness, O God, God of my salvation:
and my tongue shall sing aloud of Your righteousness. O Lord, open my
lips; and my mouth shall show forth Your praise. David is going to
preach and to sing, too! And he will do it all himself–just now he
needs nobody to help him. He is so given up to the service of his
Master that he will be preacher and praise leader, too. He will say,
and he will sing, that God is a righteous God. That was an amazing
theme for a blood-washed sinner–"My tongue shall sing aloud of Your
righteousness." But, believe me, nobody understands the righteousness
of God but the man who understands sin–and who also understands the
wondrous mercy by which it is put away through the bleeding Sacrifice
of Christ! When we have reached that point, then can we and then willwe
show forth His righteousness!

16, 17. For You desire not sacrifice; else wouldIgive it: You delight
notin burnt offering. The sacrifices ofGodare a broken spirit Bring
these sacrifices, dearly Beloved, bring them to God now! Bring your
broken spirit, bring your troubled conscience, bring your bleeding
heart, bring all your trembling on account of sin! Bring it all to
God's altar now.

17-19. A broken and a contrite heart, O God, You wiil not despise. Do
good in Your good pleasure unto Zion: build You the walls of Jerusalem.
Then shall You be pleased with the sacrifices of righteousness, with
burnt offering and whole burnt offering: then shall they offer bullocks
upon Your altar. There must be great sacrifices of joy when great sin
is put away by a great ransom–"Then shall they offer bullocks"–not
lambs, but bullocks–"upon Your altar." God help each of us henceforth
to offer bullocks upon His altar, not the poor little things such as we
have previously brought, but some great consecrated offering let us
bring unto the God who has forgiven all our transgressions and blotted
out all our iniquities!