Make Me to Hear Joy and Gladness

The point: When conscious of sin, enter the closet of prayer, open your Bible to Psalm 51, and pray this psalm to God with spirit and understanding.

David's recapitulation of his confession is compared to a man mowing his lawn, going over the same ground again to ensure a more thorough and complete job, illustrating the depth of David's repentance.

But we're studying this psalm, I trust, with an end in view that as we are conscious of sin, when God sends his nations to us, we will be able to enter the closet of prayer and open our Bibles to the 51st psalm and pray this very psalm to our God, not only with the mouth and the lips, but with the spirit and with the understanding. We've seen that the only refuge of the convicted sinner is the mercy and loving kindness of God. We've considered the essential elements involved in true confession, acknowledging the fact of sin, verse 3, acknowledging the nature of sin, verse 4, acknowledging the ...

2:05 - 3:27 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: Martin explains David's plea to 'hear joy and gladness' as a desperate cry for a new, joyful 'tune' after enduring the 'doleful dirge' of a convicted soul, defining joy as a…

David's spiritual state is likened to a man in a dark dungeon, constantly hearing a funeral dirge, who desperately cries out for joyful music, conveying the oppressive sadness of a convicted soul.

So briefly we shall look at the words, and then we shall consider some of the great principles that are found in those words. Now notice what he says. Make me to hear joy and gladness. Picture a man shut up in a cage in a dark dungeon, and all day long, through the dungeon's walls and through the little opening, the wired or barred opening, there come the dull, doleful tones of a funeral dirge from morning till night.

4:42 - 5:16 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: He interprets David's 'broken bones' as poetic language for excruciating inner pain and discomfort due to sin, emphasizing that the desired 'rejoicing' signifies a profound…

Martin quotes Charles Spurgeon's 'Treasury of David' to vividly describe the profound agony of David's 'crushed bones' and the miraculous transformation when God cures, making every wound a 'new mouth for song,' emphasizing the depth of restoration.

Now, David says, Lord, if you'll but speak the word of joy and gladness, that will be my experience. It'll be like unto a man whose bones have been crushed, and now those bones are healed again. Let me quote from the treasury of David, which has afforded me some little gems of thought from time to time in this study, and this one was a great blessing to me, and I want to read it to you. On this very phrase, what did David mean that the bones that thou hast broken may rejoice?

11:17 - 11:50 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: The first lesson is that David understood the proper relationship between happiness and holiness, never praying for joy until he had thoroughly dealt with his sin, recognizing…

The state of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, being 'holy and happy' before the Fall and 'miserable and sinful' after, illustrates the principle that holiness is the root and soil of happiness.

Why? Because David saw the relationship between happiness and holiness, namely, that holiness is the root and the soil out of which happiness grows. In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve were perfectly happy because? Because they were perfectly holy.

16:52 - 17:14 Read in full sermon

Driving home: David recognized this basic principle that happiness and holiness were inseparably related and that holiness was the root and soil out of which happiness grew, so he never dared even pray for the restoration of joy and h…

The world's crazed pursuit of happiness without holiness is compared to rats following the Pied Piper, highlighting humanity's desire for the fruit without the root.

But they do not want anything. They do not want anything to do with the root and soil out of which happiness grows, namely, a right relationship to God and to His Holy Law. If you were to go down Main Street tonight and say, I have a sure formula for happiness, brother, they'll fall in behind you like the rats behind the Pied Piper. Everybody wants to be happy.

18:39 - 19:01 Read in full sermon

Driving home: You see, David is recognizing a principle that I trust we recognize, that though our sin can forfeit the blessing of God, there's nothing we can do to get it back. Only God can give it to us.

The inability to reattach a severed hand or revive a clipped flower bud illustrates that while humans can forfeit God's blessings through sin, they lack the power to restore them; only God can.

Let me illustrate. I have the power tonight, humanly speaking, the physical power, to cut off my right hand. If I were to take a nice heavy axe or cleaver and come down, I have the power to cut off my hand. But you see, I don't have the power to put it back on me.

25:28 - 25:45 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: The second lesson is David's acknowledgment that only God can restore the joy and gladness that sin has forfeited, illustrating that humans can destroy blessings but cannot…

David's exuberant dance before the ark, and his wife's reaction, is used to illustrate the intensity of the joy he once knew and now seeks to have restored, contrasting it with a dry, lifeless religiosity.

David said, God, you put a joy in my heart that makes that look like kid stuff. This is the psalmist who wrote and said, Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless His holy name. The one who got so blessed one time he danced a jig in front of the ark. And his wife said, hmm, Pentecostalism.

27:27 - 27:47 Read in full sermon

The point: If God withholds joy after confession, stay on your knees, keep asking, seeking, and knocking, trusting His promise to be found.

Martin recounts disciplining his son with a belt for his first lie, explaining that the prolonged 'smart' of the punishment was intended to make the sin's terribleness memorable, illustrating God's disciplinary purpose in allowing believers to remain in heaviness for a time.

God has wise purposes for it then. May I mention just one or two quickly that I hope will be of encouragement to some of you? It's one of his ways to discipline us so that we won't return so quickly to that folly again. You see, the first time my son lied, and he's not here tonight so I can say it, the first time that I knew he lied, I felt there had to be a punishment commensurate with the nature of that kind of a sin.

30:20 - 30:46 Read in full sermon

The point: Do not try to play your own tune of gladness; wait for God to play the tune of joy and help you to hear it.

A song leader telling people to put fingers in their mouths and pull up a smile is cited as a 'travesty on Christianity,' illustrating the futility and artificiality of trying to manufacture joy instead of waiting for God to grant it.

And so we go around and everybody knows that we're playing our own tune. But if you'll stick with it and continue before God until God is pleased to send the breath of his joy into your heart once again, that joy will be a joy that comes not by an external dream, but that flows up from within the heart of a man who's embracing with gladness and gratitude a long awaited blessing from the living God. Actually, I've been in meetings where the song leader stood up and said, now everybody take your two fingers, put it in the side of your mouth, and I'll pull it up. What a travesty on Christianity.

33:58 - 34:34 Read in full sermon

The point: Thank God for breaking your bones, for loving you enough to bring misery to check you from self-destruction and turn you to the way of peace.

The story of an Eastern shepherd breaking a wayward lamb's leg and carrying it until it heals, ensuring it never strays again, illustrates God's loving but firm discipline to keep His children safe from self-destruction.

return unto the Lord, for he has snitched on us and he will heal us. He has wounded us. He will bind us up. He has slain us. He will make alive. That's the principle of the scripture. I am told in reading, I have not been there to observe, that an oriental and eastern shepherd will take the little sheep that is persistently wayward to the little land, that will not learn how to fall in with the flock and stay with its mother, that he will take and deliver it. He will take and deliver it. He will take and deliver it. He break one of its limbs and then carry that lamb upon his arm while the bone...

41:45 - 42:50 Read in full sermon