Transcript

00:00 Paul Tripp: Hey, Shelby.

00:01 Shelby Abbott: Hello, Paul. How are you?

00:02 Paul: Good, I always, I always think about this this time of the year. Last year at this time, we were getting home from Geneva, Switzerland.

00:13 Shelby: Yes, that's right. I forgot about that.

00:14 Paul: And... I always think of John Calvin's death. It was May 27, 1564. This man, who still has influence today, died 461 years ago. How's that for legacy? This is an example of legacy on Christian Twitter. There's never a date where that name doesn't come up.

00:47 Shelby: Really? "Luther said this" or... yes, it's pretty incredible.

00:51 Paul: Calvin.

00:52 Shelby: Oh, you said Calvin. I'm sorry. Calvin, yes, that makes more sense, yes.

00:57 Paul: It's just always and whether that's critical or whatever, it just shows the enduring influence of this man who basically was just a pastor. He just wanted to be a pastor and suffered a lot for being a pastor in days where the theology and politics were more intertwined than they even are in our day.

01:25 Shelby: Yes, it's kind of hard to imagine.

01:25 Paul: And where there were wars between Catholicism and Protestantism.

01:35 Shelby: Didn't you visit a bunch of places there, too, that had to do with Calvin?

01:36 Paul: Yes, yes, it was really moving. Just love God's word, love the study of God's word, love preaching God's word and because of that, has left this incredible legacy. One man. So that's my little Calvin moment. I think of him yearly because he's been such an influence in my life. Well, we're going to complete our conversation on evangelism today.

02:11 Shelby: Hopefully.

02:12 Paul: We will.

02:13 Shelby: We will. Okay, good.

02:15 Paul: It's been six hours so far, which I think is wonderful.

02:20 Shelby: I do, too.

02:21 Paul: And I want to focus today on why evangelism is absolutely essential, why it's not an option, why as Christians, we can't be content with being surrounded by masses of people who don't know the gospel story.

02:53 And it's not okay that other people worship other gods or live in atheism or sort of don't have a position on anything. I guess you'd call them a-religious and I think the place where that's best demonstrated is in Psalm 51 because what the Bible presents is there's something deeply, deeply wrong with humanity, deeply broken that makes it impossible for me to be what I'm supposed to be, to do what I'm supposed to do, and to face a future that I don't have to be terrified of.

03:57 It really gets down to the basic very nature of human functioning, of human identity, of what all of us are, who all of us are, why we do the things we do, why we think the things we think, why we say the things we say that there's something amiss.

04:23 And if you pay attention, you know that. You give birth to children and they're not always nice and lovable. You work with people that are not always kind and loving and serving, and you're not either. And marriage is hard and parenting is hard.

04:55 And we often don't use our money well and we struggle with our sexuality, and nations war against nations. Everywhere you look, government is marred by corruption and even religious people fall short of what they say they believe.

05:19 It's just everywhere — violence in the streets — and how can you look around without saying something's gone wrong because you would like to think that human beings are inherently good, but they're not.

05:45 Shelby: All evidence to the contrary.

05:47 Paul: Yes, there's evidence everywhere. I was watching a clip from Bill Maher, who's obviously not an evangelical Christian. He's an avowed atheist, who said you just got to face the fact that people are messed up and I just feel like...

06:05 Shelby: You feel like, yes, precisely.

06:07 Paul: There it is. What do you do about that? So Psalm 51 really, really gets at that. The context is David has been anointed as king of Israel. He has been told that his kingdom will never end because out of his line, the line of Judah will come the Messiah.

06:35 So not only he is king, he is the king of Israel. In fact, Jesus is called the Son of David. This is one of those very, very significant biblical characters because of the anointing of God on him and the position he would play in the whole plan of redemption.

07:02 And he has committed adultery and murder, and Psalm 51 is his prayer of confession. And what's wonderful about this is we get to eavesdrop on this confession by God's plan. [It] would have otherwise been a very private moment between this grieving man, convicted of heart because of what he had done, but God decided to record and preserve this for us, and it's wonderful.

07:52 So I'm going to read the whole Psalm 51 and then, we want to sort of pull apart. And again, our topic is, why in the world should I be an evangelist and I mean that not in a paid professional religious position. Why should every Christian want to be an evangelist? Why should every Christian be prepared to be an evangelist?

08:18 Shelby: Yes, and you had said that Psalm 51 is one is one of your favorite passages in the Bible, yes.

08:24 Paul: And why no one has the right to opt out of this evangelistic calling. Psalm 51 really makes that clear. This is the other thing I want to say about Psalm 51. I love this. There [are] directions at the top of this psalm to the choir master. Can you imagine...

08:47 Shelby: Yes, putting your dirty laundry.

08:47 Paul: Let's just take your darkest, deepest, most horrible confession and God says, I want choirs through the rest of human history to sing this.

08:58 Shelby: To sing it, sing about your adultery, sing about your murder. Yes, it's incredibly humbling when you think about it, incredibly humbling. It's quite amazing that this psalm exists for us today. It's pretty incredible.

09:10 Paul: Yes, and it's a psalm to be sung in services of worship.

09:14 Shelby: To the choir master. If he was like, "Oh, okay, you sure about this, David? All right, here we go."

09:21 Paul:¹Have mercy on me, O God,
according to Your steadfast love;
according to Your abundant mercy
blot out my transgressions.
²Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,
and cleanse me from my sin!

09:35 ³For I know my transgressions,
and my sin is ever before me.
⁴Against You, [and] You only, have I sinned
and done what is evil in Your sight,
so that You may be justified in Your words
and blameless in Your judgment.
⁵Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity,
and in sin did my mother conceive me.
⁶Behold, You delight in truth in the inward being,
and You teach me wisdom in the secret heart.

10:05 ⁷Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean;
wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
⁸Let me hear joy and gladness;
let the bones that You have broken rejoice.
⁹Hide Your face from my sins,
and blot out all my iniquities.
¹⁰Create in me a clean heart, O God,
and renew a right spirit within me.
¹¹Cast me not away from Your presence,
and take not Your Holy Spirit from me.
¹²Restore to me the joy of Your salvation,
and uphold me with a willing spirit.

10:41 ¹³Then I will teach transgressors Your ways,
and sinners will return to You.
¹⁴Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God,
O God of my salvation,
and my tongue will sing aloud of Your righteousness.
¹⁵O Lord, open my lips,
and my mouth will declare Your praise.
¹⁶For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it;
You will not be pleased with a burnt offering.
¹⁷The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;
a broken and contrite heart, O God, You will not despise.

11:08 ¹⁸Do good to Zion in Your good pleasure;
build up the walls of Jerusalem;
¹⁹then will You delight in right sacrifices,
in burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings;
then bulls will be offered on Your altar.

11:20 Shelby: A lot going on here.

11:21 Paul: Wow! You could actually argue — and I will — that you only need Psalm 51:1-2 to understand the utter essential nature of evangelism, that it is absolutely vital that we take up the call to be witnesses to who we are and to what has been done for us.

11:57 Shelby: Because when you said you wanted to go over Psalm 51 in the topic of evangelism, those aren't normally passages that people put together when it comes to the topic of evangelism and scripture. Not many people would go to Psalm 51, so tell me why you chose this.

12:15 Paul: And the reason I chose to do that is because I know in me, I lose my zeal for evangelism. I lose the vital importance of this. It's like, say there was a disease that was infecting humanity and you had the cure. Well, wouldn't you want to give your life to make sure that everyone had that cure? That's what we're talking about.

12:53 Shelby: Right, you don't want to keep it to yourself.

12:55 Paul: And that's what Psalm 51 makes very clear. I think there are a lot of reasons why we don't take up that evangelistic calling, why we don't have zeal to share the gospel, but I think one of them is we become amnesiacs to how utterly vital, utterly essential this is. This literally is the one thing in life that's a matter of life and death and Psalm 51 is one place in the scripture that makes that just absolutely clear.

13:37 So reason why I said what I did about verses 1-2 is they say something about us and something about God that demonstrates that evangelism is absolutely essential because of who we are and because of who God is. And the "who we are" is described by David in three words and this is everybody.

14:17 ¹Have mercy on me, O God,
according to Your steadfast love;
according to Your abundant mercy
blot out my transgressions.
²Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,
and cleanse me from my sin!

Three words that describe the condition of every human being that's ever taken a breath apart from the rescue of God's grace: transgression, iniquity, and sin. Those are not synonyms.

14:51 Shelby: Yes, because I think a lot of people would say those are the same word[s], aren't they?

14:54 Paul: Yes, those are meant to describe different aspects of the brokenness of my heart, of the dysfunction that I was born with. So transgression is meant to picture the more high-handed aspect of sin. Transgression is knowing rebellion. Another word is trespass.

15:35 It's like when I say you're a hunter and you've hunted the property that you're on and you see game across the street, but there's a sign that says "Hunting Not Allowed - State Regulation". If you go across that, you're a trespasser. Now, you've seen the sign. You know what you're doing and you do it anyway. It's like parking in the no-parking zone and then you're ripping angry because your car got towed away.

16:17 Shelby: You knew what you were doing.

16:17 Paul: Yes, you knew what you're doing and you thought that there wouldn't be any consequences, that you would get back to your car fast enough before anyone came along and so, you chose to break a law.

16:40 It's like a man who's committing adultery. You don't have to be a Bible-believing Christian to know that that's a massive betrayal of your wife and that night when you're in the motel with a secretary at work, you know that what you're doing is wrong, and you know you know it because you hide it, you lie about it, you cover it.

17:07 Or if [you've] found ways to embezzle a little money at work or to cheat on your taxes, why do we lie, manipulate, deceive, tell false stories about those things? Because in our heart of hearts, we know that we've done something wrong. That's transgression.

17:26 Shelby: Yes, all right, that's helpful to hear about because I know that anybody would be able to probably understand the concept of trespassing and what that means in today with the hunting example that you gave, but it's good to have you break it down for us like that because now, I understand that it's active rebellion. It's purposeful disobedience.

17:48 Paul: Yes, and again, you get that with young children. I've told the story many times of Justin. He began walking when he's about nine months. He just seemed too small to be upright, but he was and because I knew there would be dangers now to him, I took him over to the electric wall socket and I told him, "Don't ever touch this. Don't ever put anything in this."

18:25 And you know, he's picking his nose while I was telling him that, you know, like I'm thinking this is just a waste of time. Well, I'm in the living room reading the newspaper in those days when there were newspapers.

18:39 Shelby: Right, and no safety protocols for plugs.

18:40 Paul: And I hear this little pitter-patter of feet and he I can see him in my peripheral vision, he doesn't know. And he peeks around the corner and he thinks, "He's not watching me," and he makes a beeline for that socket in the wall, but this is the giveaway. Before he goes to put his finger in, he turns and looks at me. What does that tell you?

19:07 Shelby: Yes, he knew exactly what he was doing.

19:10 Paul: He knew he was doing something wrong and he chose to do it. In fact, that peeking around the corner, the tip-toeing, all of that was just part of he couldn't stay away from that thing. And part of transgression is not just its high-hand of rebellion, but there's something that compels us to want to be beyond God's boundaries.

19:38 I wish I weren't compelled that way, but there are places where I still am and so, in those moments where you know you shouldn't be nasty, but just say something nasty, there's something that drives me that makes what God says is ugly, attractive to me and that's part of the whole motivation of the willingness to step over boundaries that I know are there.

20:17 Shelby: Yes, and people know, like you said, they know that things are wrong because of the fact that they were trying to hide them and as much as, especially, in our culture today, we want to try to make our own rules and set up our own perimeters about what we think is good and bad, we know. We know.

20:34 One of the things that I say to college students all the time is there's a reason, there's a term called the walk of shame, so as much as there is a lack of boundaries when it comes to sexuality on a college campus, people still know that they're not doing what they're supposed to be doing.

20:56 And so, when you're walking home, carrying your shoes across a college campus, it's a walk of shame because you did something the night before that you know you weren't supposed to be doing, so even non-believers understand that there's a line. There is right and wrong.

21:12 Paul: Part is that part of the dynamic there is that scripture says God has written the law on our hearts. Part of His common grace is a natural sense of right and wrong. I saw a video of... there's a lot of these out there now because police are wearing body cams and it was a lady who they stopped in a mall for shoplifting, and she had this big flowy dress on and she just said, "No, I would never do this. It's nothing that I would ever, ever do."

21:58 And finally, they said, "We want to take her someplace where you can lift up your dress," and she said, "When I do that..." You could see on her dress, she had leggings on, so she was going to be naked. She said, "When I do that, would you turn off the cameras," because she didn't want to be shamed.

22:25 And under her dress, she had $1,000.00 worth of clothes and she knew; and then, she started crying and you know, "My mother and my husband and," you know, "What are my friends going to think?" And it was just very clear that she just knew that what she did was morally wrong. And so, all of us have part of the brokenness of our heart is that willingness, that being compelled to step over these boundaries that God has set. Well, that's the first word.

23:12 Shelby: Yes, transgression. What, iniquity was next?

23:15 Paul: So iniquity is meant to picture moral uncleanness, that I'm not morally pure. It destroys the delusion that people are basically good and they're corrupted by their environment. You know, so it's a bad family or whatever [your] explanation is. My biggest problem is outside of me, not inside of me. And the thing about moral impurity is moral impurity is moral impurity. If I offered you a glass of water and I put one drop of poison in it, would you drink it?

24:04 Shelby: Of course not.

24:05 Paul: Because that one drop means the whole thing is impure.

24:08 Shelby: The whole thing is contaminated.

24:09 Paul: So you don't need to discuss how impure is impure because pure is pure and anything that falls below that is impure, but the Bible says more. The Bible teaches — and this is sort of the theology of total depravity, which I have to explain — the Bible teaches that impurity reaches to every part of my being. Shall we turn your Bible to Genesis 6? This is God so grieved at the foundationally messed up humanity that He created that He said, "I'm going to send a great flood."

25:04 Shelby: Yes, just wipe them all out.

25:05 Paul: But the statement here in 6:5 is just astounding. I preached this passage as the beginning of a Christmas series. Why was it necessary for Jesus to come? The Christmas story flows out of the grief in the heart of God.

25:30 Shelby: Yes, it's beautiful. Good job.

25:33 Paul:⁵The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth [so it's a big deal] that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

25:49 Shelby: It's like drive the point home.

25:50 Paul: How could it be more all-inclusive than that? Every thought, every intention of the thoughts of his heart — not just every thought, but the intention that builds the thought of his heart — was only evil continually.

26:12 Shelby: Moses is cooking, helping everybody to see it was just rotten and evil all the time.

26:14 Paul: Whoa, that's just devastating and that's that impurity. There's something impure about us, something that makes us not peaceful and not loving and not kind and not patient and not generous and not selfless, and the thing that makes us that is that corruption that's inside of us; and you'd like to think it's not me. The child's been screaming at their sibling and you say, "Why are you angry," who are they going to talk about?

27:26 Shelby: The other one?

27:26 Paul: They're never going to talk about themselves. They're not going to say, "You know, there's something inside of me."

27:33 Shelby: If they do, you've got a savant on your hands.

27:35 Paul: You run over, give them a hug and say, "Jesus is in this room."

27:41 Shelby: It's always something else. It's always someone else.

27:42 Paul: Yes, and we tell the same story to ourselves. We're constantly telling our story. "I'm mad because of the wife you gave me. She always..."

27:52 Shelby: Yes, don't ever say that out loud. But yes, we play the perpetual victim. We're constantly... we're the ones that "because of this environment, because of this circumstance, because this happened to me, therefore, that's why I'm justified in acting the way that I'm acting".

28:10 Paul: Or we blame the traffic, not the fact that we're self-centered, we want to be sovereign and we want the roads to be empty so no one ever slows us down because we're the most important thing in the universe. I mean, we don't tell ourselves that story.

28:26 Shelby: Yes, seems a little more obvious when a kid says the things that we think but we're the same.

28:31 Paul: We just say the idiot driving in front of me is just driving too slow.

28:34 Shelby: Yes, which might be true actually.

28:39 Paul: And I had this moment this week where we got a new car and we were just taking it for a drive, and we went to go out to eat and we were going to have some sake. And I said, "Well, just give us a bottle. We'll have that during the meal."

29:12 And the guy said to me, "Well, no, we don't have it in that size because the bottles are this big." Well, I knew he was lying to me because I have a picture on my phone of the bottle that I wanted to order. I don't know why he didn't want to sell me that and I could feel the rage inside of me.

29:35 Shelby: Because you knew he was being deceptive.

29:37 Paul: Because I knew I was being lied to. Now, that rage is not just about this guy. It's about something inside of me that I wanted what I want at that moment. I don't want you to tell me I can't have it.

29:52 Shelby: Yes, interesting.

29:55 Paul: And I would like to think that moral impurity is outside of me, but it's not. There's still evidences of that. It's why it's hard for me to be patient. Or, you know, when someone confronts you, your ears get red and your chest tightens.

30:13 And it's exactly what's being described there and because we're talking about purity, we don't have to actually talk about how much because one drop makes the whole system impure and we know that from that water illustration I gave. So I'll give you another illustration. If I start shaking this glass and I shake it 'til water splashes out, and I ask the question, why did water come out of the glass, what would be the typical answer?

30:55 Shelby: The typical answer would be because you shook it, but because I know what the answer is, I thought of what you would say, but that's what almost anybody would say. Don't shake the bottle and then, the water won't come out.

31:08 Paul: But the telling word in the illustration is water. The reason water came out of the glass is because water was in the glass. I could shake this glass for an eternity and milk wouldn't come out of it because milk isn't in it or orange juice or what do you like? Diet Coke?

31:32 Shelby: Coke Zero, but close.

31:34 Paul: Okay, so moral purity means nothing can come outside of you that wasn't inside of you.

31:46 Shelby: Already there in the first place.

31:47 Paul: It's my mom's classic response when my uncle was getting drunk at a family gathering and saying things he shouldn't say. And she said, "Nothing comes out of the mouth of a drunk that wasn't there in the first place."

32:00 Shelby: Yes, that's true.

32:01 Paul: That's exactly what this is talking about. So it's not just that I'm a rebel, it's that I have moral impurity in me and got to get this connection. It's the moral impurity that actually makes stepping over the boundaries attractive to me.

32:27 Shelby: Because it's inside of me, that's why I want to do the transgression.

32:29 Paul: It's only the evil inside of you that hooks you to the evil outside.

32:33 Shelby: Yes, that's good.

32:34 Paul: That's why monasteries didn't work.

32:35 Shelby: Yes, you don't sin right into the monastery.

32:39 Paul: Yes, you can't build walls and separate yourself for your own impurity and so, you see the connectedness to these words that it's because I'm impure that I just want to step over these boundaries even in places where there's a check inside of me.

33:02 That man who's driving to the motel to meet this woman who's not his wife is already rehearsing his story that he's going to tell the next morning because he knows it's wrong. He's not going to go into his house that morning and say, "I didn't really work all night. I was having sex with somebody other than you."

33:31 And he's attracted to that because there's something impure inside of him. Two words are already just devastating and what we know is we're seeing these two words play out around us and inside of us everyday.

33:52 Shelby: All the time everyday, yes, and while there's something, like you said, inside of us that hooks us to the sin outside of us, we know that it's wrong. We do it anyway. I'm reminded of Romans 7 of, "I just keep doing the things that I don't want to do? Who's going to save me from this?"

34:12 And so, when you're thinking about the context of this psalm and how you connect this to evangelism, it really is important that we're diving into this. It's really as important to help people see that they need to be rescued from something because if they don't think they're in any danger, if they don't think they're bad, what's the point of a Savior? What's the point of a Rescuer? What's the point of Someone to come and wash them if they don't think they're dirty in the first place?

34:37 Paul: And for us, it's important that we understand that this is describing all of humanity except those who've been rescued by God's grace. That should break our hearts. It should be important to us. We should care about that and we shouldn't view people just as functions out there or bodies that drive by us or pass by us on the street.

35:05 Shelby: Yes, or even to your point, what some people had said before, projects, things to be fixed. Like if you're in ministry, looking at the people that God has called you to minister to as projects or problems to be to be corrected.

35:21 Paul: Yes, because you learn the way of whatever what you want it to be.

35:23 Shelby: What you want in ministry is. Yes, exactly.

35:27 Paul: And then, the third word is sin. If transgression pictures rebellion and iniquity pictures moral purity, what sin is meant to capture is inability. The normal illustration that is given is that sin means missing the mark.

36:01 Shelby: Right, like your archery thing.

36:03 Paul: You pull back the arrow, the target's in front of you, and you'll always miss it. That's not what's being described here. What's being described here is I pull back the arrow and every arrow falls short of the target. And I could pull that back a million times, I would never reach the target. That's what's being described.

36:29 What's being described by sin is standing in the middle of a gymnasium with 40-foot-high ceilings and I'm told what I'm supposed to do in life is jump and reach the ceiling. And I jump 'til I'm exhausted and I realize I will never be able to do this because what we were created to do, to not live for ourselves, but to live a life for God's glory and every word, thought, intention, choice, decision, interaction is actually impossible for us.

37:18 Shelby: Yes, which again, this is something that feels like bleak, sad, bad news, but there always has to be that precursor of the bad news to understand the good news. So this might seem like, as you're talking to someone about this who doesn't understand scripture, they don't have a framework for God even, maybe breaking this down for someone and helping them to see that they'll never be able to jump and reach the ceiling is not damning them. It's not cursing them. You're actually doing them a favor. You're helping them to see that they fall short, which is a good, good thing.

38:01 Paul: Yes, the way the gospel works is that you're not at all interested in the good news unless you've heard and accepted the bad news; and the bad news is bad news. We should not sugarcoat that. It is bad, bad news; but think about this.

38:24 When your doctor sits you down and tells you have cancer, you leave the office feeling sicker, but you're in a better place than you were the day before because you now know what's wrong with you. Hopelessness is the doorway to hope.

38:51 You'll never reach out for what God has to offer until you give up on you. If you walk around thinking you're good and thinking everybody else is your problem and you'd never do a bad thing, think a bad thing, say a bad thing if it weren't for what you've been through or where you are or who you're around or whatever situation, location, or relationship, you will never, ever be interested in what God has to offer you unless you accept the terminal nature of your spiritual sickness, you're not interested in the great Physician. So it works.

39:35 Shelby: Yes, it's really helpful to understand that and sometimes, especially, if you're speaking to the younger generation, they don't get that they're bad. They don't understand and so, one of the ways that I've helped young people, as I've been working with college students for over twenty years, I've helped young people to understand this is to say I liked comic books before it was cool. Now, it's cool. It wasn't cool back when I was in middle school.

40:00 And so, one of the things I liked about comic books was, not only could you see what people were saying to one another by reading the dialog that was in the word bubble, you could actually understand what a character was thinking because they would have that little like cloud above their head and there would be words in there.

40:16 And then, I said, "Okay, let's imagine that everybody had a little cloud above their head and you could read or see what anyone was actually saying or picturing in their mind 100% of the time. Everybody could actually see what was going on in your brain 100% of the time.

40:34 And then I just pause and go, "Still think you're good," because if you went through and cataloged all the things that you think and all the pictures that run through your mind, from walking across a street and seeing people or sitting in your car and wondering why the person in front of you is the biggest idiot or the sexual things that go through your mind or the comparisons that go through your mind or the condemning things that you say to people in your mind, you would not believe that you're still a good person.

41:07 And that kind of helps people to understand it's like, "Oh, I'm not bad just because of the bad things that I do. I'm bad because of the things that I think," and actually helping them to get to a point where they go, "I'm bad because I am bad, because I'm a sinner, because it's part of who I am," but most people don't understand that.

41:27 Paul: So those three words together — transgression-rebellion, iniquity-moral impurity, sin-inability — are in the purest sense of this word damning. We're cooked because we cannot live up to what we were created to be and we have no ability to work ourselves into God's favor. And I want to look at another passage that talks about that a little bit more before we quit today, but I have to say this. These first two verses have good news, too.

42:20 Shelby: Yes, it's not all bleak.

42:24 Paul: And the reason we've spent all this time on the bad news is because it just makes the good news shine ever, ever brighter and let me read again.

¹Have mercy on me, O God,
according to Your steadfast love;
according to Your abundant mercy
blot out my transgressions.
²Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,
and cleanse me from my sin!

42:48 Wow, there's just so much there. The only reason that David is able to now approach God — because he's a transgressor, he has demonstrated his impurity, he has fallen short of what God anointed him to be — the only reason he could approach God is because he has some understanding in his head and heart that God is a God of mercy.

43:22 David knows that there is forgiveness with God. That's what God's mercy does and the Bible says mercy triumphs over judgment, so God will withhold His anger. There's a way for mercy to flow and the whole biblical story is that God was marching history toward this moment when Jesus would come, live the righteous life that we could not live, die the death that we should have died as a penalty for our sin, rise again, conquering sin and death, ascend to the heaven in a royal, priestly reign, interceding for us so there would be mercy, so there would be forgiveness, so transgressors, the iniquity, sinners could approach God and believe that there would be forgiveness.

44:22 Shelby: Yes, this is gospel stuff and so, as we're thinking about evangelism here, it's really important that we help people to understand this in our culture today because we point out the bad so that people can understand the good.

44:36 And usually, when people are faced with a problem like the bad — let's say we do highlight the fact that they are evil and they understand that they know that they're a sinner, that they are a transgressor, they are full of iniquity, they are a sinner, they get to this point where they get that — the natural knee-jerk reaction to knowing that inside your heart is to say, "How do I fix it?"

44:57 It's the rich young ruler. "What must I do to inherit eternal life? That is the normal response to something like that. When we see a problem, we go, "I have to fix it," and you really need to be intentional, as you're talking to people about the gospel to say, "Hey, that inclination in you, it's that 40-foot ceiling. You cannot reach the ceiling. You can't get there," so that despair that people have of "I can't do anything about that" should very quickly point them to the fact that it's this big flashing arrow, you say, one big pointing finger that leads people to the true solution because the solution cannot be found inside of you, which is a really huge cultural thing right now.

45:42 "You are enough. You're everything. You're good. You could pull yourself up by your bootstraps. You can get it done if you believe in yourself." And while that sentiment is admirable and I understand what people are trying to say, it's actually just not true at all. It's not true and we have to help people to understand that there is a huge problem that they cannot solve and that must push them to a Savior who solves a problem for them.

46:09 Paul: Yes, and so, at the heart of the gospel is not what I can do for God to somehow appease Him, about what God in Christ has done for me that I couldn't possibly do for myself. It's the great religious fault line because you have religion that says there's some way of appeasing God.

46:39 I offer sacrifices every day. In Hinduism, they call that puja. First thing in the morning, you make a sacrifice to an idol or its indulgences or keeping track of my righteousness or whatever it is. The fault line between true religion and false religion is just that — that the truth is my only hope is the one who I've offended, that somehow, someway, He has mercy and so, we're watching David do this outrageous thing. This is the One he's shaken his fist in the face of and he's now saying, "Have mercy." It's amazing.

47:40 Shelby: Yes, it's pretty incredible.

47:43 Paul: He's either suicidal or he's on to something.

47:50 Shelby: Yes, and this is the building blocks of the gospel. This is what people must understand and if you read this again, if you look at almost all of Psalm 51 is one long, humble admission that he needs God because he's beseeching God to say, "You're the one God who needs to have mercy according to your steadfast love, according to Your abundant mercy. You're the one who needs to blot out my transgressions. You're the one who needs to wash me." He can't do any of that. He's asking God to do it for him and that's what the gospel is. We're asking God to do what we can't do ourselves.

48:24 Paul: So that the adjectives here are important. It's steadfast love and so, what we want to tell people is the love of God is sturdier than their rebellion. It's sturdier than their iniquity. It's sturdier than their sin. There is no force more powerful in the universe than the force of divine love.

49:02 That's just beautiful. That's why I said steadfast love and, man, you got to believe that or you'll know that you're a sinner and you'll hide and you'll lie and you'll manipulate and you'll compare yourself to other people because you don't think there's any hope out there, but this pathway of delusion and denial and comparison.

49:30 It's just that "emperor has no clothes" self-righteousness that I preach my righteousness to myself because I don't have any hope of anything else and David is saying, "No, no, no, no. There's something out there that's bigger and more powerful and greater, and it's God's love."

49:57 Shelby: Yes, and I think that it's easy to point out "obvious sins" in the lives of people. For example, this is murder and adultery — pretty obvious sins. Not like, "Whoops, I accidentally fell into murder. Whoops, I accidentally slept with someone who wasn't my wife." Those are big sins.

50:21 Paul: Oops, I've done it again.

50:25 Shelby: There's something on my bingo card that I never thought we'd have.

50:27 Paul: You know, if you rearrange the letters of Britney Spears' name, it spells presbyterian with no added letters?

50:41 Shelby: Is that true?

50:42 Paul: Yes.

50:44 Shelby: Why? Why do you know that?

50:46 Paul: It's just very scary.

50:49 Shelby: As soon as you started talking, too, I saw that look on your face. You're about to say something profound and ridiculous, and that is profound and ridiculous that you know that. I've never heard that before my life and now, I've lost my train of thought. I don't know what I was going to say. What were we talking about?

51:07 Paul: You were talking about over and over again, repeated.

51:12 Shelby: Repeated sin?

51:14 Paul: Yes, you said, "Oh, I've done it again."

51:17 Shelby: Oh yes, yes, okay, so "I've done this again", but it's really important to help people understand that there are sins of commission and sins of omission as well. There's sometimes when we don't do the right things that we should do. That actually is sin as well and the thing that I wrestled with the most growing up was I would avoid the dirty sins, the obvious sins, and that I would live the self-righteous sins.

51:46 Paul: Wait, wait, let me stop you.

51:47 Shelby: Yes.

51:49 Paul: The fact that you had those categories is a problem. I mean, how delusional is it to have good and bad sins? That's the purity thing. Like, "I'm putting this, this is a good poison."

52:04 Shelby: Just a smidge of poison, yes, cherry-flavored.

52:06 Paul: "But it's good poison."

52:07 Shelby: Yes. Well, you use the word "damnable" earlier and there was that one theologian who said, "I needed to repent of my damnable good works," and a lot of times we do these self-righteous things that help us to feel like I'm better than other people or I'm not as bad, so God's going to look at me and kind of compare things and go, "Well, you're better here because they're an adulterer, but you're just, you know, you're a prideful person. They're a murderer, but you're just a gossiper."

52:39 There's no "just". There's none of that. It's like you said, there's no bad sins and good sins. The categories are just completely off, but we justify those things in our minds and we think, "Oh, some of this stuff doesn't apply to me." No, no, no. Everybody's in the same category of transgressor. Everybody's in the same category of moral failure. Everybody's in the same category.

53:00 Paul: And what David is trying to say is you don't have to be afraid that God's love is going to break under the weight of your sin. It's sturdy, steadfast love and then, he says, "According to abundant mercy." Now, one of the things that happens when your heart gets softened and you began to see your sin, you see it everywhere. It's crushing. I've told the story of my own anger and how I was in the process of destroying my life and my ministry and my marriage by my anger.

53:39 And once God revealed that to me and opened my eyes, the next several months were very painful because I saw that anger everywhere I looked. I mean, there are moments where I felt like I couldn't breathe. That pain is actually the pain of grace because again, it's only when I accept that that I really begin to cry out for God's mercy.

54:04 But what he's saying here, when you see your sin as being abundant, God's mercy is more abundant. The abundance of God's mercy is greater than the abundance of your sin and this is not just... I think it's so important to say David is not just describing what God does, He's describing who God is.

54:33 He is a God of mercy that's abundant. He is a God of love that's steadfast and sturdy. That's who God is and so, you don't have to be afraid of dumping your book bag of iniquity at His feet because He's just that merciful and He's just that loving; and He says, "You come to Me and I will not turn you away." That's just so beautiful.

55:03 Shelby: It is beautiful and again, culturally, people don't think that about God. They think, "I've stepped out of line. Therefore, God has got this clipboard of a checklist of all these bad things that I've done, and He's got a furrowed brow and He's tapping his foot."

55:18 And you think if you go back to Him, He's going to be like, "Well, well, well. Look who decided to show up after they rebelled." No, it's Luke. 15. He runs to meet you. He runs to embrace you. He runs to celebrate the fact that you have repented, but it's not the typical view that people have.

55:36 Why would they hide? Why do we hide when we sin? Because we think God's going to be mad at us and He's going to punish us. That's the whole reason why we hide is because we're afraid and so, let's come to grips with the reality of who God is. He's abundantly merciful. He's steadfastly loving. This is another very important thing to communicate as you're sharing the gospel with people.

56:01 Paul: And because He is, there's one more thing I want to just mention, these first two verses. He says, "Wash me thoroughly from my sin." David understands that God's response to our sin is not just merciful and not just loving, it's complete.

56:28 Jesus did everything necessary so I could stand clean before God and so that finally, sin would be completely eradicated from inside of me. God's mercy is thorough. His steadfast love is thorough and, I mean, it's just so beautiful that someday, I will be completely delivered from me.

57:00 I'm not there yet, but I'm way far ahead of where I was, praise God; and I'm not, today, where I will be someday and it's not just my perseverance that's making that happen. It's that God will not turn from the work of His mercy. He will not turn from the work of His love until that work is complete.

57:25 Yes, He will save you and then, He will, as you say, unzip you, get inside of you and then, live the Christian life for you to sanctify you, to make you more and more into the image of His Son. I like that we're breaking down these words here. You use the adjectives and intentionally.

57:45 I think "thoroughly" is a word maybe I've just skipped over or read and not really given a lot of thought to, so I'm really glad that we broke that down specifically because it helps me to see the magnitude of my sin and the magnitude of God's grace and mercy.

57:59 Paul: And one more word: cleanse. If something needs to be cleansed, it's because it's dirty, so God's work is not to give me a new situation or a new relationship or a new boss or streets that don't have traffic. The thing that needs to be dealt with is me, so this water that's poisoned needs to be purified. It needs to be cleansed and that's just such a beautiful picture.

58:45 Sin is indelible ink on a white shirt and you can do all the human things you try to do and that shirt is done, unless there's some kind of cleansing thing that is able to remove that spot and that's the cleansing blood of the Lord Jesus Christ that makes us clean, that there's possibility of me standing before God right here, right now today clean; and there's a day when I will be actually completely clean. My standing is clean today because of what Jesus has done, but I will be completely clean someday.

59:45 Shelby: Right, and I love that you're talking, "Let's not throw the shirt away. Let's not pitch the water. Let's work with what we have," and I think our tendency to go, "I've screwed up. Therefore, I need to be expelled. I need to be thrown away and God needs to start with someone new."

1:00:04 But no, that's the whole point. Even the new heavens and the new earth, heaven will come to earth and restore this planet. He's not going to just pitch the planet. He's going to restore the planet and He doesn't just pitch us. He restores us, He works in us and there's something incredibly beautiful about the fact that He doesn't give up on us.

1:00:25 He works in order to clean us, work with the raw material that He has in the beginning that was tampered with by us, impurified, made unclean, and now, He's going to work to restore us to what we should have been in the first place; and that's beautiful. That that gives me hope.

1:00:48 Paul: So, yes, it is just no better message than this. What happens then in verses 3-4 is really interesting. Verses 3-4 have to be 3-4, not 1-2 and here's why. It's the operation of God's abundant mercy, it's the operation of God's steadfast love that opens my eyes to who I actually am, that breaks through the blindness.

1:01:25 That person you meet on the street or on a college campus or at work, they don't know what a terrible condition they're in. They're blind to it and so, part of what mercy does and what love does is, in part, to us spiritual sightedness so we see ourselves because think about this.

1:01:52 I can't grieve what I don't see and I can't confess what I haven't grieved and I can't repent of what I haven't confessed, so that God knows that if I'm going to actually continue to pursue Him, continue to reach out for His mercy, He's got to impart to me that sightedness.

1:02:19 So David says what a change in his life! "I know my transgressions and my sin is ever before me." That's the result of mercy because that's not natural for us. That kind of knowledge of sin is not natural. I mean, we have some sense of wrong globally, but that my sin is ever before me? That's not how we live.

1:02:49 Shelby: Yes, and this acts as a mirror to help us to see the truth of what's going on in our face, so we are transgressors.

1:02:57 Paul: There's two parts of this new awareness that's the result of God's mercy and God's love is, first, it's the totality of my sin. I see my sin everywhere. I thought here's a man who's confessing two sins who now says, "Oh, my goodness, it's everywhere." That's the first thing and that's mercy that allows me to see this. The second thing is "against You only have I sinned and done what is evil in Your sight".

1:03:34 Shelby: Yes, a lot of ink has been spilled about what this means, so I'm really curious, as your mouth is agape.

1:03:41 Paul: Well, you would expect that David would say, "My sin is horizontal. My sin is against Bathsheba and Uriah, and I'm grieved by that," but he flips the script on us here and he says, "It's against You that I've done this,

1:04:11 Now, what does he mean? Why would he ever say that unless what mercy has done is begun to reveal to David his true identity as a human being, what it is. I was made for God. Everything in my life is a result of God. I'm not writing my own story. I didn't choose my own gifts, my mentalities don't belong to me, my personality, my psychology, my emotionality, my relationships.

1:04:55 It's all God and if everything that I am, all of my capacities and gifts and ability to think and emote belongs to God, how outrageous is that that I would use those very same gifts and abilities to do this to Him, shake my fist in His face and go out and do exactly what I know is wrong before Him.

1:05:26 Shelby: Crazy.

1:05:27 Paul: And so, there's a way in which every sin is vertical. Think about this. If I say something evil to somebody else, I'm using one of most human of all capacities, the ability to communicate. It's one of our God-like capacities because God can communicate in words and we can communicate in words, and we have thoughts that somehow become vocabulary.

1:06:07 It's just craziness and words have power. I can say words to you that will actually cause a physical reaction in you, make you cry. There's a proverb that says words give life, words bring death and, basically, says you choose that this powerful capacity that I've been given, I'm using for something that's dark and wicked and evil. How could you not say that's against God?

1:06:39 It's not just against that person. "It's a violation of the gift that I've given you." Imagine — this is a silly, stupid example — but imagine I'm a parent and I've given you a new car, and the very first day you have that car, you run over the person in high school who's been your bully and kill him.

1:07:12 Would not the parent be grieved? Would not the parent think, "I wish I'd never bought that car." Wouldn't the parent think, "What are you doing?" The parent would feel the personal nature of that and that's just a dumb human example.

1:07:28 Imagine that woman I'm having adultery with, she was created by God. She was created for God. My ability to think it through the car that I have, the money that I have, all the physical materials that are part of that, all are created by God. Sin is never just a horizontal thing, but I don't naturally know that and so, what mercy does is illumines me, first, to the everywhere-ness of my sin, the totality of it, but the verticality of my sin.

1:08:10 Shelby: Yes, the reason why he says, "You and You only have I sinned against," I think that's where a lot of people get hung up. I know maybe I've been hung up on that as well because there is obvious sin, that he sinned against Bathsheba, he sinned against Uriah. Why is he saying, "God, against You and You only?" I understand that what you just communicated, but why is he saying "only"?

1:08:34 Paul: It's a matter of gravity that "in light of the outrageousness of what I've done against God, this is less". That's why he said, "Right now, what is overwhelming my heart is not just the humanness of the crimes, but the crime against You. I feel like it's You and You only." Does that make sense?

1:09:05 Shelby: Yes, that makes sense.

1:09:08 Paul: So it's like you've experienced that in conviction. It's not just that you've yelled at your wife. You feel, "God, how could I have done this after all You've done for me?" You feel that it's "You and You only," and it's one of the things that illumining grace of God's mercy and God's love is it's so important that I feel the weightiness of the sin against God. Otherwise, why would you not just confess to human beings? Why would you confess to God?

1:09:58 Shelby: Yes, yes, which made Jesus saying, "You're forgiven. Take up your mat and walk," such an outrageous thing. It's like who can forgive sin but God alone? Yes, I like that you've broken this down this way because it's like, "Okay, God gave David the position that he was in as a king. He gave him the ability to say, 'I want that person.'"

1:10:24 He gave him the ability to communicate and breathe the air that He gave him, and give him the power that he had in order to commit these sins. Yes, when you break that all down, if you sin against someone by yelling at them, God gave you the vocal cords in your throat to be able to say the words that you can say. He gave you the air in your lungs to be able to move the air across the vocal cords. If you have to think about these things, there's an intentionality you have to have.

1:10:51 Paul: Every capacity, every relationship, every location, every physical thing that you use to sin belongs to God, so I'm not just using my stuff in a way that should not be used. I'm using God's stuff. Sin is moral thievery. I'm stealing and saying, "Doesn't belong to you, it belongs to me; and I'm do what I want with it," and that's outrageously vertical because it does belong to Him and to be used in the way that He has chosen it to be used.

1:11:34 So again, it's one of the things I want to say about the Bible. Do this with your Bible, what we're doing because if you don't, you miss all the good stuff. I mean, we're taking time to pull these concepts apart. These concepts were recorded and preserved for us because God loves us. These nouns and adjectives and verbs, we need and they change the way you hear this thing.

1:12:09 Now, David is saying... this is where it goes next. "If sin truly is outrageously vertical, then you're justified in your judgment of me." What is the big question people ask all the time? How could a good God ever judge people? How could He ever condemn people? And David says, "I get it," because you can only ask that question if you minimize the outrageousness of what our sin is in the face of God.

1:12:50 Shelby: Yes, there were two teenagers. I do some stuff with the youth group in my church now, which I never thought I would do stuff with middle-schoolers and high-schoolers because I've always been a college student kind of person, but I've been really surprised by how much I have affection for these young people before they reach college age.

1:13:09 And there was an incident that happened recently in a school close by to where I live, where four people were killed. And these two girls were talking to me and the youth pastor about how could God allow something like that to ever happen, and it's a good question. I like that they're wrestling with these honest questions and they feel they can ask those questions of the youth pastor and people like me who's an elder at the church.

1:13:38 So first of all, I applauded them for asking those questions but then, me and the youth pastor went through, we talked about the Tower of Siloam [I think it's what it was called] that fell on the guy. Jesus talking about how, basically, they weren't worse than other people. It just... this is the nature of sin.

1:13:58 Sin deserves punishment and all of us — if God really gave us what we deserve — all of us would be dead immediately. He would destroy us, wipe us off the face of the earth. Going back to Genesis, what you were talking about earlier.

1:14:12 We are evil all the time and I think it's important to help people see that, "Hey, you're not a good person who does bad things every now and then. You're actually a bad person who deserves judgment all the time." It helps you to feel the weight of the fact that, "Oh, we should be punished for this. We should feel a sense of guilt, a sense of condemnation about our sin," because it's the reality of who we are in comparison to God. God is perfect.

1:14:46 Paul: And again, it sounds so terribly negative, but if God's judgment isn't just, His grace isn't necessary because you'd just blow it off.

1:15:00 Shelby: Yes, yes, thanks. Appreciate it.

1:15:02 Paul: Yes, "He's evil and I'm just going to deal with him." But if His judgment is just and that judgment is an indictment of all humanity, then His grace is necessary and for us to tell the story of his grace is absolutely essential. That all goes again to ^4bthat You may be justified in your words and blameless in Your judgment. Now, think about this. David is saying to God, "If you condemn me, I cannot blame You at all." Wow! I mean, it's only God's transforming grace that gets you to that point.

1:15:53 Shelby: Yes, for sure. You had said that Psalm 51 was one of your favorite[s]. This is one of my favorite sections in the entire Bible as well and it's as we're going through this even now, I've studied this so many different times, I'm seeing things, layers of things or peeling back things that I'd never seen before.

1:16:08 Every summer, when I was leading a summer mission with Cru with college students, we would study as a staff team, the book of Jonah. Not very long, but going through Jonah, I felt like every single time we studied Jonah, there was always something new that I would discover, always some little insight that would happen from another person or we'd be talking through things and I didn't even see that there before.

1:16:33 And so, I'm seeing things even right now as we're going through this. I'm like, "I didn't see that before." Pulling those things apart, finding those diamonds or mining for treasure here and it's here in the scripture. You got to take the time to go through it.

1:16:44 Paul: Yes, and again, I want to remind people who are watching or listening that we're doing this kind of detailed archeological work in this passage, so that people would get the motivation that they need to see how important it is to share the gospel with people.

1:17:09 It's not getting people to come to your church or even so you can say they become a Christian. It's this is life and death, and Psalm 51 just makes it so clear. So let's go on. You get all these insights that David's getting about his condition, about God's mercy, and about the vertical nature of sin; and then, he says something that is so important to add.

1:17:51 ⁵Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me. What's he talking about there? That it was an illegitimate conception? That's not what he's talking about. He's talking about "I've had this problem from birth". He's talking about the innate, natural nature of sin.

1:18:24 Sin is not the product of your environment. It's not the product of your history. It's not the result of your track record. You're born with it and that is so important to understand. That means everybody I encounter has this problem and either they've sought God for the help that He alone can give or they haven't, but everybody has this problem. There's no one that doesn't. Let's take a detour to Romans.

1:19:12 Shelby: Always a good detour, Romans.

1:19:17 Paul: Romans 3. Now, Paul is speaking in basically confronting the Jews who would hear the gospel and think, "Well, we've been followers of God for generations. We're in a different category," and so, he says, "⁹What then? Are we Jews any better off? No, not at all. For we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks [Greeks just mean the rest of us], are under sin, ¹⁰as it is written: 'None is righteous, no, not one.'" That's the inescapable, innate nature of sin. No one understands, no one seeks for God. And these are, wow!

1:20:23 Shelby: And he's quoting what Psalm? Psalm 14?

1:20:26 Paul: Yes.

¹²All have turned aside; together they have become worthless;
no one does good,
not even one.
¹³Their [throats are] an open grave;
they use their tongues to deceive.
The venom of asps [or poisonous snakes] is under their lips.
¹⁴Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness.
¹⁵Their feet are swift to shed blood;
¹⁶in their paths are ruin and misery,
¹⁷and the way of peace they have not known.
¹⁸There is no fear of God before their eyes.

1:21:04 Shelby: In case you were wondering, this is how the nature of humanity is.

1:21:09 Paul: And so, I think the "behold, I was shapen in iniquity," the tendency is to want to find the exception clause when you talk about sin. "Well, no, I'm not Romans 3. No, that's not me," and so, David turns and says, "Actually, speaking for all of humanity, I was shapen in iniquity."

1:21:47 So the wicked go astray from the [what's the next word?] womb, speaking lies. There's no exception clause. Again, we're talking about why evangelism is necessary. After all of this, that already tells us how necessary it is, this is one more element. Sin is inescapable. You can't work your way out of it. You can't wish your way out of it. You can't be born out of it. You can't buy your way out of it.

1:22:30 Shelby: Which, when you phrase it like that, seems obvious, but in reality, if I'm honest, even as I look at my own life, I'd try to buy my way out of it through good works, through religion, through being obedient to the authority figures in my life, to trying to buy the favor of God, put in the dollar bills into the vending machine of religiosity, acting right, saying the right things, doing the right things, and expecting God to bless me in that vending machine, that His blessing would drop to the bottom as a result of that.

1:23:08 But no, no, no, no, no. You can't do that. You can't buy your way out of it. You are Romans 3. That is that and again, like we were saying, this bad news points you to the good news. It ushers you right into the good news.

1:23:25 I've asked people, too. "Do you actually believe that people are morally good, even when they're... we see all this bad stuff," I said to this one guy. He was like, "Well, when kids are born, they don't know how to be bad." I'm like, "Have you ever been to a playground? Have you been around kids at all?"

1:23:50 Usually, you're talking to college students, they're like, "No." But if you go to a playground, just sit and observe. Well, I don't know. That's kind of weird, but you'll see very quickly how kids are not good. They're actually very selfish.

1:24:04 They're very, very bad and that's why we need to be pointed to this. We need to help people see that people are not born as a clean slate or even tipping toward morally good or tipping a little bit toward morally bad. They're just bad. They're bad.

1:24:18 Paul: Yes, I watched one of my grandchildren as a little infant in a high chair just wipe all the food off the plate onto the floor and then, have that look like, "Now, what are you going to do?"

1:24:34 Shelby: "You better clean it up."

1:24:36 Paul: "I'm obviously not going to eat."

1:24:40 Shelby: Yes. "This? If you make me something else, maybe I would."

1:24:42 Paul: Wow, you think...

1:24:44 Shelby: Yes, I know. Kids are... or it's the pitter-patter to try to find the electrical socket. It's the same thing.

1:24:49 Paul: So when you've accepted all that we have talked about of the nature of sin, your next response would be, "Okay, God, what do you want from me,", and that's what David addresses next. ^6aBehold, You delight in truth in the inward being.

1:25:12 Boom! Because it's not "be a little nicer, be a little kinder". It's that this thing inside of me has to be completely rectified. It has to be ruled by what is good and true and lovely and right; and it's not. This is what God delights in. He delights in that inner purity.

1:25:43 How much did He delight in that? He harnessed the forces of nature and controlled events of history to send His one and only Son to suffer and die so that maybe there would be truth in my inward being. So that gets back to your "how can I fix this" and that verse... what is that?

1:26:11 Shelby: Verse 6?

1:26:12 Paul: 6 says you can't because what God delights in is not within your natural reach and he says that, "^6bYou teach me wisdom in the secret heart. My only hope of ever getting there is You. You're the one. What You delight in only You can create inside of me." That's why you share the gospel.

1:26:47 Everything you would long for for all these people around you to be, it's out of their reach. Don't get mad at them. Don't just hate that person who bumped in front of the line in front of you because what you want for them is out of the reach. What they did is the most natural thing in the world and what God wants for them is out of the reach. That's why the whole story of scripture was marching toward God providing what we couldn't provide for ourselves.

1:27:29 Shelby: Yes, I think trying harder is usually the default of the human heart of seeing the problem and trying to fix it and white-knuckling our way into success because we see it in other areas of our life. If we work hard, we can get to a certain point, but this is really highlighting the bleakness of where you're at, what your condition really is and you cannot fix it.

1:27:58 Paul: So your irritation with others, your anger with others, your impatience with others is anti-evangelism. You're giving way toward that instead of saying, "There's something better for these people and I could actually be part of that." Does that make sense?

1:28:22 Shelby: Yes, yes, and it's not only the things that you say. Of course, it's the life that you live. I think one of the most powerful testimonies of the gospel is the way that you live, day in, day out around the people who don't know Jesus, whether that's in the walls of your home or your neighbors next to you or the people who sit next to you at work or the people you run into all the time on a continual basis, the coffee shop or the grocery store or whatever. A lot of times, what we say is powerful. God can use that, but the power behind much of my evangelistic strategy is behind how I live.

1:28:58 Paul: And actions and words of irritation, anger, impatience are anti-evangelism because they're condemnation and not grace. And it's easier for me to condemn you than to reach out to you with the message of the transforming gospel.

1:29:32 Shelby: Yes, and let me ask you this because you're on X/Twitter a lot and you see the kind of conversations that happen between Christians. We'll say just that blanket term there of people who argue about a lot of different things or condemn a lot of different things.

1:29:54 Naturally, they look at stuff. There [are] people who built entire platforms, their entire livelihood is based on condemning other people and it bothers me a lot when Christians do that to other Christians, and they would respond with, "I'm defending the truth. I have to point out the lies that exist."

1:30:11 But I also have seen non-believers look at the lives of Christians and see how they bicker back and forth about things that are secondary issues quite often and they go, "No, thanks. That's just not for me." So what would you have to say to people who live their lives through social media in many ways that just constantly are tearing other people down, whether that be the culture or other Christians?

1:30:41 Paul: Well, I would say what the Bible says. That's a good answer, that the winning team is mercy, not judgment. Mercy triumphs over judgment. I want to be part of the winning team and ultimately, God's response to all this evil that we've been talking about was not judgment. Does He judge? Yes, He does, but to provide mercy.

1:31:20 The end of the story will be a world where peace and righteousness reign forever because of God's mercy. I want to be on the winning team and so, I'm going to speak truth, but with words of grace. I'm not going to out-condemn somebody who's tried to condemn me. I just don't think that that moves in the direction that the story is moving it.

1:32:01 Shelby: Yes, that's good, really helpful.

1:32:03 Paul: I'll give you an example. It's living eschatologically. It's living with the future in view. Let the future shape your present. That's what the Proverbs is about. People don't realize it because Proverbs aren't mechanical.

1:32:20 When The Proverbs says ^15:1A soft answer turns away wrath [and] a harsh word stirs up anger, it's not saying that every time you speak softly to an angry person, you'll turn off their anger. You know that's not happening, but it's eschatologically saying meet Christ who, when threatened, didn't threaten, but committed Himself to a heavenly Father who judges all things justly. That meek Christ will win.

1:32:48 Go in the direction of the story because ultimately, all that evil anger will be silenced and the meek will inherit the earth. Isn't that beautiful? So every proverb has the gospel in it and every proverb is telling the whole story. The whole biblical story is embedded in every proverb and if you ask those proverbs to be instantaneous, you'll quit believing in them.

1:33:12 Shelby: Yes, or you want to plug them in.

1:33:14 Paul: Because it doesn't work mechanically for me like that, but The Proverbs are telling you a story. Go in the direction of the story.

1:33:23 Shelby: You're aligning yourself with Jesus, who ultimately fulfills all those things.

1:33:26 Paul: And so, I want to respond with the movement and the end of the story in view. That's really been helpful for me with social media. I want to be moving in the direction that the winning team is moving in and it may not look like winning right now, but I'm winning.

1:33:53 I think of Muhammad Ali against George Foreman doing the rope-a-dope. He just covered himself up and let George Foreman punch, punch, punch, punch, punch until his arms were exhausted, he could barely hold him up and then, he won the fight.

1:34:15 And at the beginning of the fight, people thought, "Oh, there's been betting. He's throwing this fight." He knew exactly what he was doing. In the same way, I'm willing to take loss right now because there are many, many times when losing is actually winning. Maybe not today, but ultimately.

1:34:38 Shelby: Yes, and that requires an enormous amount of patience and, of course, wisdom on your part because there have been people who have reached out to me knowing that I know you going, "Has Paul compromised in this area," and I'm like, "No, no."

1:34:53 But there's a whole world that exists out there because of social media. Because of the internet, our entire lives are out there and everybody can see stuff, and everybody's got an opinion about stuff. And anybody who's influential like you, they want to figure out and make commentary about.

1:35:09 You make one little statement that could be taken out of context or misinterpreted in certain ways and they are ready to attack; and yes, it garners clicks. It gets money and people usually go with the flow of whatever is "successful" or "impactful" and numbers usually drive people, whether that be followers, likes, dollars, whatever.

1:35:34 And so, they go down that road and then they start to believe their own narrative of "judgment triumphs over mercy", but no. I like your answer because it's really helpful to practically apply what we're talking about here to today's world because if you're a merciful person and you're sharing the gospel, you're going to communicate the gospel in a totally different way than a judgmental person sharing the gospel because we've all seen that. We've seen examples of both.

1:36:04 Paul: Yes, this is not meant to be an advertisement, but you just did the study guide for my book, Forever[: Why You Can't Live Without It], and that's what that book is about. It's not a book that is so much about eternity. It's about living today in light of eternity. How much your life changes when you keep the final end of the story in view.

1:36:24 That's what The Proverbs are meant to do for you and people don't know that, that every proverb is telling you the story and repeating the story over and over again; and you live then, with that story in view. That's what wisdom does.

1:36:39 Shelby: Yes, it drives what you do today, the decisions you make today.

1:36:42 Paul: So ⁶Behold, You delight in truth in the inward means "I can't fix this, only God can fix this". And then, ⁷Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.

1:37:00 Shelby: There's some alarms that should go off there.

1:37:03 Paul: Yes, and this is one of these places where God in utter single-word intentionality is trying to connect the parts of the story. Where do we first hear of hyssop? It's in Egypt when the final plague is the killing of the firstborn son of the Egyptians and God told His people to dip hyssop in blood and paint it on their door frame.

1:37:38 It's The Passover. It's a picture of redemption, so we're getting David is connecting the grace that he needs to pass over grace, but all we also know it's connected to the future because on the cross, the gospel writers are very intentional in saying that it was hyssop that was dipped into the bitter liquid and we know that, "Oh, Jesus is the Passover Lamb." So we know then that "purge me with hyssop", David is speaking better than he knows. That's a cry for Jesus. That's a cry for the Passover Lamb. Isn't that beautiful?

1:38:30 Shelby: Yes, I get so excited about this kind of stuff.

1:38:32 Paul: Because ultimately, the fix is Jesus. Grace is a person. His name is Jesus. Love is a person. His name is Jesus. Mercy is a person. His name is Jesus and so, God wants us to know that through David, He's putting a plan in place that will deliver the one who is the hyssop that David is crying out for.

1:39:08 Shelby: That will wash me again. You get that with that cleanse again, whiter than snow. Maybe you know a little bit about that. You titled one of your books Whiter Than Snow[: Meditations on Sin and Mercy], the precursor to New Morning Mercies[: A Daily Gospel Devotional].

1:39:19 Paul: Yes, Whiter Than Snow[: Meditations on Sin and Mercy] was also written on Psalm 51.

1:39:23 Shelby: Yes, it's beautiful. I had underlined hyssop and put Jesus here in my notes that I write on the margins and I usually, whenever I try — especially with The Psalms and The Proverbs — whenever I see allusions to Christ, I always write it there because I want to remind myself that Jesus is all over the place.

1:39:45 He's not just in the New Testament. He's in the Old Testament as well and so, this is really exciting to see that word, hyssop, and like I said, that alarm should go off and you go, "Where have I heard that before?" It should point you somewhere.

1:39:57 Paul: So sin is inescapable. It's everywhere. It's vertical. You can't fix it. Jesus is the only fix. I mean, if that doesn't make you want to share the gospel...

1:40:15 Shelby: Yes, yes, and that's a good gospel presentation. It is. It helps people to see, it lays out the story for them, but it helps them to see the points of the fact that there is a problem. God created things to be good. There is a problem. The problem is you. Jesus is the solution.

1:40:33 Paul: So I can't resist saying this. If you're out there thinking that the gospel begins in Matthew and you don't go to the Old Testament for the gospel, you haven't read Psalm 51. I mean, I could take this page out of my Bible, fold it on my pocket and I could do evangelism for the rest of my life just out of Psalm 51. The Old Testament is rich, rich, rich with the gospel and so, one of the ways you read through the Old Testament is hunt for the gospel, hunt for Jesus in the Old Testament and be willing to dig.

1:41:26 And, you know, like for me, the hyssop thing, I first noticed it on reading the gospels and I thought, "Why would they tell me of the branch? Why do I need to know the branch?" And once you sort of research that word, oh, my goodness, that word has the whole story in it. So dig. Now, two things where I want to take us before we're done here. First, ⁸Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones that You have broken rejoice.

1:42:12 Shelby: Because I can see people going that does not make any sense at all, so what's your explanation for this?

1:42:17 Paul: Well, shorthand is God is so concerned, lovingly and mercifully about your heart, He's willing to break your bones to get there and that is shorthand for all the trials that God sends our way. All of those are sent by God to deliver us from ourselves, to deliver us to Himself. Hardship in the hands of a Redeemer is a workroom for mercy and so, ultimately, you rejoice.

1:43:05 I've told my story many times of my sickness and not being able to get out of a chair and surgery after surgery, and realizing I would be sick for the rest of my life and all of a sudden, be confronted with the fact that much of what I thought was faith in Jesus wasn't.

1:43:26 It was self-reliance and pride in my ability to produce. And when I got there, I was just filled with such joy that finally, I was experiencing what it really meant to trust Jesus and joy so great, I can say this without hesitation. If I had to go back there again and go through what I've gone through, I would do it again to get what God has given me through that experience.

1:43:59 I don't look back on that with bitterness, with regret. I look back at this thankfulness. I am a hard-hearted man. God couldn't tickle me with a feather. He had to hit me with a hammer, but it was a hammer of mercy and He broke my bones, and I'm so thankful that He did it. And I have a level of rejoicing... people that knew me well, before and knew me after again and again say, "You're a different guy." I'm so thankful for that and that's what he's talking about.

1:44:37 Shelby: And apparently, I'm a hard-hearted person, too, because, you know this, I suffer with chronic nerve pain and I can look at that since 2009. It's been over a decade of wrestling with pain and looking at how God has broken my bones, so to speak, I can look at it and say I've hated the pain.

1:45:00 I've hated it, but also at the same time, it's been the most spiritually beneficial thing for me, so I can look at both, of this thing and say I hate it and I love it; and those are not in conflict with one another. Physically, it's been the worst thing in the world for me. Spiritually, it's been the best thing in the world for me. The spiritual outweighs the physical.

1:45:17 Paul: And both are true.

1:45:18 Shelby: And both are true, yes, at the same time and it reminds me of the psalm that says ^119:71It [was a] good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn your statutes. Like, it's good for me that I was afflicted? It's good God brought affliction into my life? Why? So that I could dive into the word more heavily and understand who He is and what the gospel is.

1:45:37 And a greater understanding of the gospel and greater depth spiritually is always going to outweigh anything else. It's always going to outweigh the physical, even though the physical is always something that we're reminded of, which is why fasting is such a big deal for a lot of people.

1:45:51 Paul: So I want to just do a couple final things. ¹⁰Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. ¹¹Cast me not away from Your presence, and take not Your Holy Spirit from me. It's very, very important to understand that the greatest gift of God's abundant mercy and steadfast love is not forgiveness. The greatest gift is Himself.

1:46:23 This is the one place where the gift is the Giver. That's why David says, "What I need is You. I need Your presence. I need Your Holy Spirit. I need You. If You are the fix, then I don't ever want to be separate from You."

1:46:43 And what God gives us in His abundant mercy is Himself because sin separates us from Him. He gives us Himself and that's so beautiful. It's not just that the richest man in the world gives you $10 million. He moves in with you and He becomes life to you, and you can say it's no longer me who lives. I's this Guy living through me and that's exactly what Paul says. "It's no longer I who lives this Christ who lives in me."

1:47:23 So the ultimate thing that David is crying out for is not just, "Can we be cool?" It's, "I need You because without You, I don't have any hope," and that's why he says, "Please, please, please, don't take your Holy Spirit from me." It's so beautiful and so tender and so sweet. It's exactly what's needed.

1:47:52 Shelby: To chase God, not what's in God's hands.

1:47:54 Paul: And when he has God's presence, he will have joy and salvation, and he will have a willing spirit. I like this because this is a capstone to what we talked about. He says, "¹³Then I will teach transgressors Your ways, and sinners will return to You." If you've heard everything that David has written and the way we've tried to unpack what he's written, how could you not say, "I want to tell this story"?

1:48:27 Shelby: Yes, because there's evangelism right there in verse 13.

1:48:29 Paul: Oh, absolutely. It's so important to see that's the immediate turn of this passage.

1:48:38 Shelby: Yes, 1-12, okay, I get it and then, 13. "Then," then what you can do about it? ^13aThen I will teach transgressors Your ways. It's interesting, too, that if you look at this from his perspective, he's the transgressor in this.

1:48:53 He's dealt with his own stuff first and, "Now, I'm going to turn because You've dealt so bountifully and graciously with me." It's the woman at the well. It's like, "Come meet a Man who told me everything about me. I have to tell people about this. I have to, immediately."

1:49:09 Paul: So I want to give you an exhortation, a challenge everybody who's listening or watching that every morning you would pray verse 15. ¹⁵O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare Your praise. Our problem is not that there's not a wonderful story that talks about the tragedy of sin and the grandeur of the mercy and love and grace of God. Our problem is not that this horrible story doesn't have a good end or that our dark condition doesn't have a solution.

1:49:57 Our problem is we have closed lips and our lips may be closed because of busyness, because lack of care, because of self-righteousness. I mean, the catalog, endless. Write it on a card and put it somewhere where you'll see it everyday. ¹⁵O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare Your praise.

1:50:25 May I be open-lipped, not to tell my story and how great I am or be satisfied with being nice to people and having polite conversations, but that I would have lips open to declare Your praise. Beautiful.

1:50:48 Shelby: Yes, it really is.

1:50:49 Paul: And I will confess I fall short of that.

1:50:54 Shelby: Yes, I do, too.

1:50:54 Paul: I'll have days where for me, it's my project orientation. I've got things to do. I've got to get done. So, for example, because we live here in Center City, the Reading Terminal Market is in Philadelphia here is it's a great food hall and that's my grocery store and I'm just... I got ten minutes to run in and out of there grab the things we're going to need for dinner, and I'm going to see faceless human beings that I couldn't care less about because I'm on the quest to get what I need and get out of there. It's kind of a miserable way to live.

1:51:42 Shelby: It really is.

1:51:43 Paul: And I'm guilty of that. Now, there are times, by God's grace, where I do slow down and I do treat people like they're made in the image of God, and try to say things that open up conversations where people will thank me for a tip and I'll say, "Well, God's blessed me and I feel like I should pass on those blessings."

1:52:08 Or they'll ask me what I do and I tell them a writer, and they ask me what I write and I tell them everyday things. "What's your take on those things?" I say, "Well, I believe the Bible is the best story ever and it really is helpful for living in all those places," and that opens up a gospel conversation.

1:52:30 Or people ask me about my art and that gives me an opportunity to say, "I think there's a Creator and He's made the world beautiful; and I want to find ways of making you see that beauty in different ways."

1:52:43 Shelby: Yes, and if you're a believer, this is the most important thing about you. Talk about the most important thing about you.

1:52:49 Paul: You have something in your life that opens doors. Everybody does. You have some interest or something about you as a person or ways of telling your story. We just need to have open lips and often, we don't and it's not the fault of the message, and it's not a fault of God's character. It's that we close our lips and we make ourselves the main thing, rather than what is really the main thing — tragedy and grace.

1:53:39 Shelby: Yes, I mean, I've heard you say this many, many times. You are not the center of the universe. God is the center of the universe. You're not the main character in your own story. God is and so, people talk about what they love. They do.

1:53:54 You talk about the things that you love, whether it be nice food or seeing beautiful things, art-wise, travel, those kinds of things. I talk about what I love. If you love Jesus, you just talk about what you love and you communicate with tenderness, compassion because you want other people to be introduced to the greatest love that you've ever experienced. Why would we not want to talk about that?

1:54:19 Yours is busyness, mine is fear of awkwardness, not wanting to make situations uncomfortable for people and so, I make assumptions that they don't want to hear before I even say anything. I make those assumptions and that often prevents me. I do it imperfectly as well, prevents me from talking.

1:54:38 So like you said, there's a list of things that people can talk about that prevent them from sharing the gospel, from opening their lips; but take those things to God. Take those things. "Hey, this is what's preventing me from opening my lips. Would You help me? Would You change me?"

1:54:55 Paul: Yes, first, mercy and grace.

1:54:56 Shelby: It's good place to be.

1:54:59 Paul: I want to say a final thing. We've done eight hours in evangelism and I know for many people out there, that may be overwhelming and you may think, "I can't listen to eight hours on this topic," and I get that, but you'll binge watch 8, 10, 12 hours of a Netflix series or something on Hulu.

1:55:25 I really do believe that for many of us out there, these are eight hours that can change your life and put you in a very different place, not so much with a sense of duty, but with a sense of joy and I really encourage you, make this investment.

1:55:49 We slow down in these conversations because we think they're so important and they're worth slowing down for. And I can say this not because I've been involved in producing these eight hours. I wish when I was 20, 23, I'd have had these eight hours. It would have changed me. I have to entrust to the Lord who has forgiven me for all the time that I wasted before I really got the gospel and got how essential it is, and the joy of being part of telling that story.

1:56:29 Shelby: Yes, young people listening, too, that the most valuable resource you have is not money, it's actually time and so, utilize that time well,

1:56:37 Paul: Yes, so make the investment and I would encourage you, this is great fodder for a small group to listen through this series, watch through it, and discuss it. It can be tremendously helpful and life-changing for you as a group of people.

1:56:58 And it's great to go through it with somebody else, so you're not holding one another accountable, but you're encouraging one another and you can have ongoing discussions. Luella and I love it when we hear a really engaging sermon because the next few days, it's what we're talking about and it just gets inside of us, so may that happen.

1:57:16 Shelby: And God can use weak and meager, frail people like you to change other people's lives. No greater privilege.

1:57:23 Paul: Beautiful. Well, thanks, Shelby.

1:57:25 Shelby: Thank you, Paul.