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(upbeat music) - Hi, this is Pastor Tom, and I want to welcome you back for a look
at the book of Psalms. We're going to look at Psalms six through 10 this week,
beginning with today, Psalm six. Psalm six is one of seven Psalms that have come
to be called the Penitential Psalms.

Psalms 32, 38, 51, 102, 130, 143, and here, Psalm six. These are Psalms where
David, or whoever wrote the Psalm, their heart is being poured out in prayer for
the wrongs that they have done. It's a Psalm of asking God for forgiveness.

So this Psalm tells you how to pray to God for forgiveness. Now, let me just be
clear. Once you come to know Jesus Christ, the moment you say, "I need your
forgiveness," whether that happened a year ago, or a month ago, or 40 years ago,
that moment, Jesus Christ forgave you every sin, past, present, and future.

So when you go to Christ to ask for forgiveness now, you're not going to get
forgiveness. You're going to remind yourself of the forgiveness that he's
already given, and that's a good thing to do. That's a healthy thing to do.

In this Psalm, David is sorrowful over his sin, and he tells God, again and
again, in the book of Psalms, you're going to learn this simple lesson. If you pour
out your sorrows to God, he will heal your sorrows. If you keep your sorrow
within, you're going to continue to be overwhelmed by those sorrows.

And this Psalm is an example of the two things that you must do when you embrace
the gift of God's forgiveness. You have to confess your sins, and you have to
trust that the Lord has heard you, that God heard you. Let's look at those two.

First, you confess your sins. You ask for God's mercy. You see this in this
Psalm.

You ask for God's healing. And as you confess your sin, of course, you're
confessing your sorrow over your sin. God, I'm sorry that I did this.

But sometimes, that expression of sorrow can become strangely impersonal,
strangely transactional, like a business transaction. It's like, Jesus, I was
wrong, but I know I'm forgiven, so thank you. And the emotion is taken all out
of it.

In this Psalm, you see David confessing, as he confesses his sin, he confesses
four other things that need to be a part of your confession as well. These are
confessions that remind you of the horrible reality of sin, and that also bring
you God's strength and God's expression of grace into the midst of that. So as
you confess your sins, your sorrow for your sin, you also confess your fears.

When David was confessing his fears, he said, "Do not rebuke me. " Psalm 6:1, "O
Lord, do not rebuke me in your anger, "or discipline me in your wrath. " As
you're confessing your fears, you're saying, "Lord, I know I deserve to be
punished for what I've done.

"Without what Jesus did on the cross, I would be punished. " And the truth is,
even knowing what Jesus did, I'm afraid I'm going to lose your blessing. I trust
that you will discipline me in love over this sin, not in anger.

But God, I have to admit that sometimes I'm afraid of your anger, because I know
the reality of my sin, that I do it again and again. And so I come to you, and I
confess that fear, and I pray that in the place of that fear, you put a sense of
your grace in my life. That's confessing your fear to God.

You also confess your weakness. David confessed, "I am faint, I am weak. " In
verse two, "Be merciful to me, Lord, "for I am faint, O Lord.

"Heal me, for my bones are in agony. " In this confession, you're in essence
saying to God, "God, I'd like to think I'm so strong. "I'd like to think I'd
always make the right choice.

"I'd like to think that I'd never fall to temptation, "but the truth is, I did.
"And the reason I did is, I'm weak. "I chose to follow my selfishness "instead
of following you.

"That's why I need you, God. "I need your strength and your healing. " This is a
confession that helps you to recognize in the midst of your sin that you are not
the way out of your sin.

Only God's strength is the way out. So you confess your weakness. Third thing
that David confesses here that I need to confess as I'm confessing my sin, is
you confess your pain.

Verses three and four, "My soul is in anguish, O Lord. "O Lord, how long? "Turn,
O Lord, and deliver me.

"Save me because of your unfailing love. " David confesses that he is in anguish
because of his sin, and maybe that is even what resulted in his sin. Our sin
often grows out of our pain.

Confess that pain to the Lord. Lord, I was looking for some place of comfort.
Instead of turning to you, I turned to that old habit.

I turned to that old relationship. I confess the pain that's in my life. Or you
hear David saying here, "How long, O Lord?

" How long? Our sin often comes out of our impatience. We want something to
happen.

It's not happening on our timetable, so we try to advance God's timetable, maybe
through our anger, maybe through our selfishness. Confess your impatience to the
Lord. Even say to God, "Lord, how long?

" Even as you're praying that, remind yourself that all of God's delays are for
the purpose of our growth. If God is waiting, it's for a reason, and the reason
is you. He wants to be at work in your life.

I like what Warren Wiersbe says about this. He says, "The question we should ask
should not be, "when will I get out of this, but what can I get out of this?
"What does God want to teach me?

" And then you confess your weariness. That's the fourth thing. "I am worn out,"
David says, "from my groaning.

" Sin wears you out. It gives you this soul weariness. And instead of pretending
that everything is okay, confess that weariness to the Lord.

In verse six, "I am worn out from my groaning. "All night long I flood my bed
with weeping "and drench my couch with tears. "My eyes grow weak with sorrow.

"They fail because of all my foes. "Away from me, all of you who do evil, "for
the Lord has heard my weeping. " Now, for you it may not be I flood my bed with
tears, but I feel dead and empty inside.

Both come from soul weariness. And confessing that your soul is weary is one of
the ways that you remind yourself of what your sin has done to you. These are
confessions, emotional confessions from David in the midst of his sin.

It would be good to include in your confession of sin, because they are
reminders not only of what sin has done to you, but also how God can bring you
out of that sin into his grace. The way that you and I confess our sin is, first
you confess, but second you trust. You trust that God has heard you.

Psalm 6, 1 to 10 are all about this trust from beginning to end. David begins by
this confession, but all through it, he's thinking of what he's going to say at the
end, 'cause he knows where his heart is. So in verses nine and 10, "The Lord has
heard my cry for mercy.

"The Lord accepts my prayer. " Why would he pray unless he trusted that God
would accept his prayer? Then in verse 10, "All my enemies will be ashamed "and
dismayed.

"They will turn back in sudden disgrace. "The Lord hears my weeping. "He hears
my cry.

"The Lord accepts my prayer, "and my enemies will turn back. " Now for David,
those were physical enemies, the people who were battling him. "For you it might
be the inner enemy of mistrust "or fear or attacks from Satan.

"Confess and trust. " That's what you do when you sin. 1 John 1, 9 gives us the
example in the New Testament.

If we confess our sins, we confess, then he is faithful and righteous to forgive
us our sins. Then we trust. You confess, and then you trust that God has heard,
and then he will act.

Now how do I know that he will act on that confession? Well, look back at verse
four in Psalm 6. He will act because of his unfailing love.

Because of God's unfailing love in verse four, you can be confident in verse
nine. "The Lord has heard my cry for mercy. " So let's take some time to pray to
him.

And Father, we come to you in a spirit of confession and trust. We don't want to
minimize our sins. We don't want to minimize what you did on the cross.

And so we confess the pain that that sin has brought into our lives and other
people's lives. We confess the pain that that sin grew out of in our lives. We
confess our own impatience.

We confess the hurt in our own hearts and the hurt that that's brought to other
people's hearts. And as we confess, we trust. We trust that you hear our
confession.

You heard it the first time we confessed. We trust that the power of the cross
is real. And we trust that whether we feel it or not, your forgiveness is given.

'Cause it's not a matter of how we feel. It's a matter of what you've done for
us on the cross. It's the matter of your unfailing love.

So God, we trust that you have heard our cry for mercy, that you do accept our
prayer. And we thank you for the cross, the cross of Christ, where the world and
all the spiritual powers are shown that your forgiveness is eternal. Your
forgiveness is guaranteed.

In that spirit of trust, we pray. In Jesus' name, amen. Tomorrow, we're going to
look at Psalm seven, a Psalm about when you've been hurt by the words of others.