True Confession

Sermon Summary:

This powerful exploration of Psalm 51 invites us into the raw honesty of King David’s confession after his sin with Bathsheba. We discover that true confession isn’t about defending ourselves or minimizing our failures, but about pouring out our hearts before a God who already knows everything yet waits for us to come home. The sermon challenges a common Protestant misconception that once we’re saved, ongoing confession becomes optional. Instead, we learn that confession isn’t how we get back into God’s good graces—it’s how restored people stay close to a gracious God. David’s plea for God to ‘create’ in him a clean heart uses the same Hebrew word from Genesis 1, reminding us that God specializes in bringing something genuinely new out of nothing. The beautiful image of a three-year-old walking away from the dinner table because the mess was too overwhelming captures our tendency to disqualify ourselves from God’s presence. Yet God, like a loving parent, is more than willing to clean us up because He wants us at the table—not just for our sake, but for the community and for His mission in the world. This isn’t about self-repair or shame; it’s about recreation for the sake of relationship.

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Sermon Points:

• True Confession
• Re-Creation
• God’s Hessed Love

Key Takeaways:

• Confession is not optional for believers but an ongoing spiritual practice essential for maintaining close relationship with God
• True confession involves honest acknowledgment of sin without defense, minimization, or blame-shifting
• David’s prayer demonstrates that restoration comes not from trying harder but from asking God to create something new within us
• The Hebrew word “bara” (create) in Psalm 51:10 is the same word used in Genesis 1, indicating only God can bring genuine newness out of nothing
• Confession is not just for personal relief but for restoration to community and participation in God’s mission
• God’s hesed love (steadfast, faithful, self-giving love) is the foundation that makes confession safe and restoration possible
• We often distance ourselves from God because of our mess, but God desires to clean us up and bring us back to the table
• Confession transforms the abyss between us and God into a bridge of connection

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Scripture References:

• Psalm 51 (primary focus—David’s prayer of confession after his sin with Bathsheba)
• 2 Samuel 11-12 (the backstory of David’s sin and Nathan’s confrontation)
• Genesis 1 (reference to God’s creative power using the word “bara”)
• The Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6:9-13—”forgive us our trespasses”)
• 1 John 1:9 (“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins”)

Stories:

• Katy’s childhood memory of jumping the fence with her friend Austin to pick blackberries, experiencing immediate guilt, and confessing to her parents
• The biblical narrative of King David’s sin with Bathsheba, the murder of Uriah, and the prophet Nathan’s confrontation
• The story of Ben (one of the pastor’s triplet sons) making a mess with tacos at dinner and walking away from the table saying “I can’t, it’s too messy,” which serves as a metaphor for how we distance ourselves from God when we feel too broken
• Frederick Buechner’s quote about confession transforming the abyss between us and God into the golden gate bridge

Sermon Transcript:

Good morning. Good morning to those joining online, maybe even those peeking in from Rome to make sure that we’re behaving, doing our part. I want to begin today with a story from my childhood growing up in Conroe, Texas. I grew up there till I was 11 and then moved to the country. And when I grew up in this little neighborhood, I had some neighborhood friends.

And one of my neighborhood friends named Austin, I went over to his house to play. And we were like four or five, just right when you start letting kids even go out by outside by themselves. And his parents said, you can go outside, you can play in the backyard, but you can’t leave the backyard. And my friend Austin was a temperature and he, he said we need to jump the fence because I saw some blackberries and we need to go pick those blackberries. So we jumped the fence, we started picking blackberries.

And in that very moment, a neighbor car drove by. And I felt that pit of the stomach guilt, that stomach drop. I knew I had done wrong. And the moment I got home, I went and found my parents and confessed that I had done this. They probably saw it happen.

I was that young, but I knew that to move forward from that moment, to be able to be right with my family, to ever look my dad in the eyes again, I had to go to my father for healing and for a path forward.

In our Old Testament we get a story of King David who had his own stomach dropping moment of guilt. I’m going to tell this as if it’s Katie’s kids Bible, okay? David was the king of Israel and God gave him a lot. He was the king, he had power and wealth and authority. He had a right relationship with God and he was living a good life.

Then one day, David was tempted by sin far more serious than picking blackberries. David stole someone else’s wife, he got her pregnant. And instead of dealing with that grave sin, he made it worse. He had that man killed in battle to cover it up. The Bible describes it like this.

The thing David had done displeased the Lord. So God sent a prophet named Nathan to help David realize that he had sinned and displeased the Lord. And through Nathan’s story that he told David, David realized that he had sinned and sinned big. The only words that David says after this is, I have sinned against my Lord. David knew that in that moment, his sin not only affected the people around him, but it was first and foremost and most seriously a sin against God.

Though we only get his one line of Confession in the book of Second Samuel. It seems that later he must have sat down, if you will, and penned a psalm of confession.

As many of you know, when we get to the Book of Psalms, we don’t always know the context or the backstory of many of them. We can’t pinpoint where they came from. But when you get to Psalm 51, we’re given a clear heading that gives the full context to this psalm. I see you opening it. You can look for the director of music.

A Psalm of David, when the prophet Nathan came to him after David had committed adultery with Bathsheba. So we know exactly why David penned this. We know exactly why he wrote this down.

So with all that in mind, I want this. I want us to read this together.

But when I do it, I want to invite you to be open to how the Spirit of God might use this in your life today.

David’s story is our story. It’s Israel’s story. It’s my story. It becomes our story when we sin, and it disrupts our relationship with our God. So Psalm 51 invites us to honest confession.

And when I read this, I would invite you to not just listen as a spectator, but as an apprentice.

David is trying to teach us how we can come back to God after we sin. Let’s read it together.

Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love, according to your great compassion. Blot out my transgressions. Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from sin. For I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me and against you. You only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight.

So you’re right in your verdict, and you’re justified when you judge. Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me. Yet you desired faithfulness even in the womb. You taught me wisdom in that secret place. Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean.

Wash me and I will be whiter than snow. Let me hear joy and gladness. Let the bones you have crushed rejoice.

Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquity. Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me from your presence or take your holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit to sustain me. Then I will teach your transgressors your ways so that sinners can turn back to you.

Deliver me from the guilt of bloodshed, O God, you who are God, my Savior, and my tongue will sing of your righteousness. Open my lips, Lord, and my mouth will declare your praise. You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it. You don’t take pleasure in burnt offerings. My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart.

You, God, will not despise. May it please you to prosper Zion, to build up the walls of Jerusalem. Then you will delight in the sacrifices of the righteous and burnt offerings whole. Then bulls will be offered on your altar. Let us pray.

Lord, we pray this morning that in the reading of your word that you would speak to our hearts. Lord, I trust that you’ll show us your love wherever we need it today. In Jesus name, Amen.

This is what I want you to hear today. For David, then for us now. True heartfelt confession opens up a pathway for restoration and for life. The first thing we see in Psalm 51, the first nine verses, if you will, is a posture of true confession. David doesn’t defend himself.

He doesn’t minimize what he’s done. He doesn’t shift blame. He just pours out his heart before God. He knows he’s sinned. He names it honestly, and he trusts that God will heal him.

He believes that bringing his sin into the light is the only way forward.

I worry this is where many of us struggle, many of us who claim to be Baptist or Protestant. It’s that we’re rightly taught and we emphasize that salvation comes through the confession of sin and trusting in Jesus, and that that work is complete on the cross. It’s finished. And so somewhere along the way, we can start to believe that ongoing confession in our lives before God is optional or even unnecessary. We had a seminary professor who said he felt like the Protestants threw the baby out with the bathwater.

At the Protestant Reformation, they were so worried that we would become legalistic people, that we would revert to Catholicism, that we gave up personal confession as a practice, as a people. But in fact, Scripture calls us to a life of confession. When the disciples ask Jesus how he ought to pray, he looks to his followers and he says, pray like this. Lord, forgive me my trespasses, as I forgive those who trespassed against me. That’s our daily prayer before God.

Lord, forgive us our sins so that we might be restored into right relationship with you. John tells us that when we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. And he says that so we can Walk in the light. Continually walk in the light. I want you to hear this.

Confession isn’t how. This type of confession, daily confession of sin isn’t how we get back into God’s good graces. It’s how restored people stay close to a gracious grace God. And we have to be practicing it in our personal lives.

When I talk about renewal and recreation, I want us to look at what David actually asked for. If you still have it open, look at verse 10. He says, Create in me a pure heart. He asked for the renewal of his spirit. In verse 11 and 12.

He asked for restoration, for joy. David asks God that God would give him a willingness. Did you catch that, Lord? Will you give me a willingness, a willing spirit to sustain me? Notice what David does not ask for.

He doesn’t ask God to try to help him try harder. He doesn’t ask God for more discipline or a second chance to prove himself. He asked God to do something only God can do. When we come to God with our sin, we surrender power back to God. We ask God to recreate us and we lay down the idol of being self made people.

The Hebrew word that David uses there for create is bara. It’s a God word. It’s a God verb. It’s the same word used in Genesis in the beginning. God created.

It’s the word for bringing something genuinely new out of nothing.

So when David prays created me a clean heart, he’s not asking for a little help to get over the hump. He’s not saying, God, I’m really close, can you just give me a little push? He’s saying, God, I have nothing to offer but my honesty. And if anything good is going to come out of this, you are going to have to create it.

I wonder if some of you have ever believed that nothing good could come from your story. You can think of a sin or a failure or a wake of damage that you’ve created things that have pushed you out of right relationship with the people around you and ultimately out of right relationship with God. And I want to ask you today, what if today you believed. We believed that God can still create something out of nothing.

He can give you a new heart. He can restore your joy. He can grant you a willing spirit not by erasing the past, but by redeeming you in the present moment. God doesn’t promise to rewind your life and remove all the consequences. But he does promise renewal and restoration and a sustaining spirit.

But it begins not with self repair. If you came here today to think that you can do it on your own, but you might just need a pat on the back. This is about surrender, coming to the father, naming what is entangling us and lifting our gaze to be seen and loved by God.

Every time I preach here, y’ all want me to show pictures of the kids? I tried it once, without it, there was a revolt. So I brought them back. So most of you know if you’ve been worshiping with us for some time, and if not, my husband, Ryan and I have triplet boys. We had them while I was here.

It was very public. Y’ all all kept us alive while we were doing it. And so Sam, Ben and Jack. And then I think we have a family photo. That’s us.

So that’s Ryan. Ryan teaches in our young adult. Ryan’s the BSM director at DBU and he teaches in our. And he’s really great. He’s really got broad shoulders and he’s a really good guy.

He’s right here. Yeah. So that’s Ryan, Sam, Jack and Ben. They’re three and they are exactly what you would think. They bring so much purpose and joy and meaning to our lives.

And they’re also three, three year olds every day. So the other, the other night a couple weeks ago, we were at dinner at our house and Ben, Big Ben, was in quite the mood. He was just in a quintessential three year old mood. And we were sitting at the dinner table, table. I had made crunchy tacos for dinner and Ben could not self regulate.

He could not keep it together. And he just continued to just pour the tacos in his lap. Just wouldn’t even take a bite. Just kept freaking out and just more tacos in the lap, more tacos in the lap. And we tried everything reasonable to calm Ben down.

I even made him a whole new taco, put it back on his plate. But finally Ben got out of his chair, climbed down and just started walking away. And I called back and I said, ben, come sit with us. And he said, I can’t, it’s too messy. I cannot sit in this mess.

Some of y’ all know Ben, the Sunday school Andy. He’s in your Sunday school class. I cannot, I cannot sit in this mess. And he just continued to trek further away from our table.

I’ve lost my way.

He’s walking away. And here’s the reflection. This is us. Sometimes we’re not three, but we get in such a mess that we created and we just think it’s better if we’re just not at the Table. I have just got to get distance from this.

It’s too messy. I can’t even sit at the table anymore.

We think the mess disqualifies us. We think we need to clean ourselves up before we can get back to the table. And, and here’s the thing with me and Ben. I was more than willing to clean Ben up. Why?

Because I love Ben and I want Ben at the table. Also because Ben has brothers and Ben ruined everybody’s dinner.

And we.

You’re not an only child in the kingdom of God. And when you walk away from the table because you think your mess is too big, you leave a void and God’s mission is thrown off and he goes after you and offers to clean you up. Not so you can just feel better emotionally. You don’t confess just to get it off your chest. It’s very secular.

You confess to get put back in a right place so that you can be back in the community of God. For your sake, for the sake of others, and for the sake of God’s mission in the world that’s bigger than you. We have gone very wrong as a church in America on that. Your relationship with Jesus is not just about you. It’s about your neighbor.

And you need to confess your sins so that we can all be right in the kingdom.

That’s the offer that David is trusting when he writes this psalm. It’s not self repair, it’s not shame, but it’s recreation for the sake of relationship.

There’s one more thing I’m not sure I’ve made clear. And it’s the reason that any of this is possible. It’s God’s chesed love. Look. Look back at the very first verse.

Verse 1. David begins his confession like this. Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love, according to your great compassion, blot out my transgressions. David doesn’t start this by that promise to do better. He doesn’t start by explaining himself.

Oh God, you don’t understand. I just. He starts to appealing. He starts by appealing to who God is. David knows the heart of the Father.

He’s already experienced God’s love through his calling as a little shepherd boy, through God’s protection throughout his life, through God sending Nathan to confront him and redeem him back. So David doesn’t approach God hoping that God might show kindness. He approaches God trusting that God is kind. Chesed, that word used there in verse one. That’s God’s steadfast, faithful self giving love.

It’s love that doesn’t quit when we fail. It’s the love that stays. And David knew that if anything is going to make him right again, it won’t be his effort, but it will be God’s loving kindness. Because our lives are rooted in the character of God.

I grew up personally in my life with a lot of fear around sin and confession and the wrath of God took a long time for me to realize how much God his character is love. So I don’t want to miss this moment. For kids, youth in here, parents, talk to you all in a second. I want you all to know that the God that David is writing about is, is the God that was revealed in Jesus. And we’re in his hands and he loves us.

He’s revealed Himself over and over and over as this hesed God. He’s dependable and he’s steadfast. His plans are better than anybody else’s. And he. He comes to us in Jesus to restore us back to relationship with Himself and in his presence.

In the presence of God, you’re safe and you’re loved.

So kids, I want you to know when we pray to this God, he loves you and you can trust Him. And adults, parents, I want you to know that when we pray to this God, he loves you and you can trust Him.

So acknowledging God’s hesed love for us that’s rooted in his character, it ought to humble us, it ought to keep us on our knees before God and hopefully it invites us to surrender ourselves back to a loving God so that we might be recreated into all that he wants us to be again and again.

Theologian Frederick Buechner puts it like this from a different angle. To confess your sins to God is not to tell God anything God doesn’t already know until you confess them. However, they are the abyss between you. When you confess them, they become the Golden Gate Bridge.

So today I want us to do just that. I want to go to God in confession.

I want us to trust God’s love. I want us to trust that God knows everything and just wants you to come to him as a father.

So in a moment we’re going to take the Lord’s Supper together.