2 Sam 12:13, Then David said to Nathan, "I have sinned against the Lord." And Nathan said to David, "The Lord also has taken away your sin; you shall not die. 
	We are in the contemplation of the heart after God that was the characteristic definition of David’s life before The Lord. David sinned, and sinned grievously and manifestly because he was a man fighting the battle with the sinful human nature that infests all of us. He was, however, a man whose heart was after the Lord to the fullest possible extent. He sought to maintain a relationship of love and honor and obedience and reverence unto God.
	This was especially evident in the manner in which David would confess his sin before Jehovah and seek after God’s forgiveness. This was because David could not live without the knowledge that he was pleasing Jehovah to the maximum extent of his abilities. As much as David would give into selfish lusts and actions, all the deeper and greater was his heart to reconcile with God and to make those changes in the course of his walk which would bring back the smile of God’s countenance. 
	His entire being could not function without that heart to heart and Spirit to spirit walk with God. Even after David would stumble so badly, he would repent of his sins, change his ways, and honor the Lord in whatever needed to be done. This was in order to, once again, be fully and wholly pleasing to The Lord God Almighty.
	Please turn to Ps 32:1-5, where we have the heart of this relationship detailed for us. Ps 32:1-5, How blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, Whose sin is covered! How blessed is the man to whom the Lord does not impute iniquity, And in whose spirit there is no deceit! When I kept silent about my sin, my body wasted away Through my groaning all day long. For day and night Thy hand was heavy upon me; My vitality was drained away as with the fever heat of summer. Selah. I acknowledged my sin to Thee, And my iniquity I did not hide; I said, "I will confess my transgressions to the Lord"; And Thou didst forgive the guilt of my sin. Selah. 
	Notice some very important elements of what it means to try to hide our sins vainly and futilely from the eyes of God. Many of us have had intense times of spiritual drought and upheaval. This is when we, like the Psalmist, would try to hold our sins to ourselves. We would try to just ignore them, hoping that The Lord would forget about them. Rather than the radiant walk with God that we were used to, there would be that utter lack of any seeming response from God. 
	We would try to act like nothing was amiss, yet there would be no life in our walk on this earth. It would be a spiritual numbness that amounted to absolute emptiness within our essence. We would mouth the words, we would show up to worship the Lord, we would pray, we would sing those songs from memory, we would even quote scripture, but in it all, there was nothing to be found of God. 
The joy that once filled our hearts and minds and words and prayers and mouths was gone. Instead it was all hollow and empty actions of merely custom and habit and ritualistic practice. Not real communication with Jehovah, no thrill of worship and peace and joy and life! Just barrenness and complete lack of any true value in the actions and sounds that emanated from us. 
	In our dealings with other Christians, there would be that underlying sense of guilt and shame and jealousy that they were still able to enjoy their salvation and relationship with God while we were being crushed and mangled with our guilt and our sense of dis-ease and discomfort before the Holiness and the Righteousness of The Lord. We would look for every excuse to avoid any communication or interaction because, instead of fellowship, there was just spiritual misery and humiliation in our minds and hearts. 
	Our inner beings would twist and turn with the realization that we had disappointed the One Who had so loved us as to save us unto Himself through His very death on the cross in our stead. Rather than expressing our love and earnest thankfulness for that salvation, our sin caused us to turn our backs to the very Being of Love. We would spurn His every encouragement to repent and to receive His forgiveness. We would actually be so miserable in our defiant stance of self-righteousness that we would become physically sick and anemic in the every activity of daily life. 
Such is the course of those who choose to try to defend themselves and their actions of disobedience, thinking that they, that we, can tell God that we are just as good in our sin as we are in Him. We thumb our noses at Him and even dare Him to prove that we are wrong and that His way is better than the course that we have chosen. …When I kept silent about my sin, my body wasted away Through my groaning all day long. For day and night Thy hand was heavy upon me; My vitality was drained away as with the fever heat of summer. Selah.
After whatever time it may take for us to get so sick of our sinful attitude, behavior, and defiance, when everything within us was stifled and weary and worn out, when our lack of peace and joy beat upon our chest with the weight of the world smashing any aspect or spark of life that may once have bloomed forth from our hearts, then we would call out to the Lord to forgive us. We would join with the reality that the Psalmist has set before us. 
We always have to acknowledge to God that we were wrong and He was always perfectly and lovingly right to hold us to the accountability of that which we so selfishly set before Him in our lives. …I acknowledged my sin to Thee, And my iniquity I did not hide; I said, "I will confess my transgressions to the Lord"; And Thou didst forgive the guilt of my sin. Selah.
We continue with the encouragement by the Psalmist, in Ps 51:1-4. There is a reality that is expressed concerning the loving kindness of The Lord to forgive all iniquity when we agree with God that we did shamefully in our lives. Jehovah is always so wondrously and amazingly gracious to forgive when we are truly repentant and anxious to have our relationship of holiness with Him restored.
Ps 51:1-4, Be gracious to me, O God, according to Thy lovingkindness; According to the greatness of Thy compassion blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, And cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgressions, And my sin is ever before me. Against Thee, Thee only, I have sinned, And done what is evil in Thy sight, So that Thou art justified when Thou dost speak, And blameless when Thou dost judge. 
	There is that aspect in all of this that we want to be cleansed from our sin, from our iniquities. That is why we agree with God that things need to be different from within us. 
Our thoughts, our desires, our motivations, our will all need to become more and more fully aligned with Him and with His will. We ask God to cleanse us and to deal with us compassionately and graciously so that, instead of fighting against Him, futilely arguing our rights and our concepts and our human intellectual disparities, rather than trying to convince Him that our minor indiscretions can be offset by our greater good works, we just simply ask Him to work His will in our lives to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 
We agree with God that we have sinned and that we no longer want that self-will to be part of our life. We choose God instead of self to rule and overrule in every single, large or small area of our lives, now and forevermore.
	Again, hear the Psalmist, in Ps 130:1-4, as we are further pushed ahead into the manner in which God will find true delight in us His creation. No more defenses against His wondrous and miraculous work of love and mercy and forgiveness. Every detail of our heart and mind is unto Him and for the sake of His glory in the walk that we have with Him. There is the recognition that all the work of God to cleanse away the filth of our old being is a good and perfect work set in His love and forgiveness of our sins and trespasses.
	Ps 130:1-4, Out of the depths I have cried to Thee, O Lord. Lord, hear my voice! Let Thine ears be attentive To the voice of my supplications. If Thou, Lord, shouldst mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? But there is forgiveness with Thee, That Thou mayest be feared. 
	Next we hear from the Lord in Prov 28:13+14, with the fact that we cannot hide our transgressions from the Lord if we want to go on in Him. The one who tries to deceive the Lord only deceives oneself. There will be a hardness of heart and mind that congeals within a person who tries to deny the fact that our sins need to be dealt with by God. The harder we fight against the Holiness and the altogether Righteousness of God’s work to cleanse us from all our iniquity, the harder our heart and the greater our calamity in this walk that we have on earth.
	Prov 28:13+14, He who conceals his transgressions will not prosper, But he who confesses and forsakes them will find compassion. How blessed is the man who fears always, But he who hardens his heart will fall into calamity. 
	The Prophet Isaiah, in Isa 6:1-7, recounts the manner in which we are all to view the course of the life that we have on this earth and the work of God to manifest His testimony for the sake of those who need to so see Him. He is high and lifted up and His glory fills the whole of His creation. That is the truth that needs to be proclaimed by His people for the sake of the redemption of the lost as well as the edification of those who need to be strengthened and encouraged. That necessitates a cleansing work by God within those who see Him in all His splendor and majesty right now, seated as The Only Sovereign over the entirety of this realm 
	Isa 6:1-7, In the year of King, Uzziah's death, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, lofty and exalted, with the train of His robe filling the temple. Seraphim stood above Him, each having six wings; with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one called out to another and said, "Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord of hosts, The whole earth is full of His glory." And the foundations of the thresholds trembled at the voice of him who called out, while the temple was filling with smoke. Then I said, "Woe is me, for I am ruined! Because I am a man of unclean lips, And I live among a people of unclean lips; For my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts." Then one of the seraphim flew to me, with a burning coal in his hand which he had taken from the altar with tongs. And he touched my mouth with it and said, "Behold, this has touched your lips; and your iniquity is taken away, and your sin is forgiven." 
	Accordingly, we need to recognize the fact of our inadequacies. We are not basically good, as this world so overwhelmingly tries to tell us. The lie is that we are all really good at heart and there is no need to look for anything outside our self lives and our self worth. There is no need to consider the Holiness of God because we are well able to strive for the full measure of human potential on our own.
	However, as one who saw the truth, the prophet was struck with the full measure of the uncleanness that dwelled within him. He was calling out in the reality that he was sinful and unworthy to be in the presence of the glory and the majesty of God. He needed to be cleansed from his iniquity by the only One Who could do such an awesome and glorious work. His sin needed to be forgiven and his being cleansed by God in the working power of the Hand of God, even through the burning coal of God’s Holiness. That is the reality that needs to be brought to the lost and the deceived of this age.
	Another who acknowledged this truth was King Hezekiah as recounted in Isa 38:17-20. He had been on his death bed, facing his mortality when he cried out to the Lord in his anguish and strife. His focus was on the fact that only God could save him. Only God could deal with all the sins and the guilt and the manner of his disobedience to the Righteous and Holiness of God.
	Isa 38:17-20, "Lo, for my own welfare I had great bitterness; It is Thou who hast kept my soul from the pit of nothingness, For Thou hast cast all my sins behind Thy back. "For Sheol cannot thank Thee, Death cannot praise Thee; Those who go down to the pit cannot hope for Thy faithfulness. "It is the living who give thanks to Thee, as I do today; A father tells his sons about Thy faithfulness. "The Lord will surely save me; So we will play my songs on stringed instruments All the days of our life at the house of the Lord." 
	The loving kindness and the mercy and the grace and the forgiveness of sins by Jehovah must be the eternal chorus of His people. It is good to give praise to the Lord for all that He has done in the redemption of a people unto Himself. 
To be forgiven, we need to agree with God that we have sinned and that we no longer want to have that as a part of our lives. We must beseech The Lord to cleanse us with the fiery coal of His Holiness and Righteousness in order that we can proclaim His goodness and awesome majesty to all those who are in our spheres of influence. So be it.
Then David said to Nathan, "I have sinned against the Lord." And Nathan said to David, "The Lord also has taken away your sin; you shall not die. Amen.

This morning’s benediction is 1 Sam 15:22. And Samuel said, "Has the Lord as much delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices As in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, And to heed than the fat of rams. Amen.