Leonard Ravenhill preaches on Psalm 51, emphasizing David's heartfelt plea for mercy and cleansing after his sins of adultery and murder. He highlights the importance of acknowledging one's transgressions and the need for a contrite heart, illustrating that true revival begins with personal repentance and a deep awareness of sin. Ravenhill contrasts David's brokenness with the indifference of modern Christians, urging a return to the conviction of the Holy Spirit and the joy of salvation. He stresses that revival is not a scheduled event but a divine encounter that transforms lives, calling for a genuine response to God's holiness and grace.

The 51st Psalm, reading from verse 1 into verse 13. Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness, according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies, blot out my transgressions, wash me throughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. For I acknowledge my transgression, and my sin is ever before me. Against thee, the only have I sinned, and done this evil in my sight, that thou mightest be justified when thou speakest, and be clear when thou judgest. Behold, I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me. Behold, thou desirest truth in inward parts, and in the hidden part thou shalt make me to know wisdom. Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean. Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Make me to hear joy and gladness, that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice. Hide thy face from my sins, and blot out all mine iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew within me a right spirit. Cast me not away from my presence, and take not thy Holy Spirit from me. Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation, and uphold me with thy free spirit. Then will I teach transgressors thy ways, and sinners shall be converted unto thee. The Bible is composed of 70 books. If you went to Bible school, they told you there were 66, which shows how little they know. Because actually the book of Psalms is five books, not one book. And therefore you add four to 66, and you have 70. 70 is a biblical number. There were 70 elders in the Old Testament, there were 70 that Jesus sent out to preach. The book of Psalms is undoubtedly the best known book, the most quoted book of the Bible. There are roughly, there are 150 psalms, and roughly half of them were written by David, the king of Israel. He wrote 75. Some of them are prophetical psalms, some of them are historical psalms dealing with the past. 18 of them are autobiographical psalms, they're all wrapped around his own life. Out of the 18 autobiographical psalms, there are eight penitential psalms. Out of the eight penitential psalms, one of them must be the greatest. And this without doubt is this 51st psalm. I remember a preacher saying some years ago that most of us are experts in knowing what's wrong with other people. Ask your husband. We know what's wrong with the other person. But one of the unique things about this psalm is this, that while David is in a state of distress, on one hand he has the condemnation of adultery, and on the other hand he has a stain of blood. But one of the unique things and beautiful things about this psalm is this, it's a monologue. He's referring to sin only in the first person. While you say he sinned against Bathsheba, I'm not so sure he did, he sinned with her all right. But in this psalm there is no reference at all to Bathsheba. Oh it's a wonderful psalm, it's the greatest penitential psalm. It's written in my bible on beautiful rice paper on a certain type. It wasn't written that way at all. The man that wrote this psalm didn't dictate it to a dictaphone or a secretary. It isn't written with ink, it's written with blood. It isn't punctuated with periods and commas, it's punctuated with sobs and groans and anguish. The man didn't write it standing up, he wrote it prostrated before God. And I say unique thing is, it's all directed to himself, have mercy upon me O God, according to the multitude of thy tender mercies, run out my transgression, wash me truly from my iniquity, cleanse me from my sin, I acknowledge my transgression, my sin is ever before me. You see the thing that he did in secret was shouting from the housetops. He had lusted and he had committed adultery and then he committed murder to cover his adultery. The man that wrote this psalm wrote that matchless 23rd psalm. Pastor was saying he likes to visit Europe, well all intelligent people do. And if ever you go you must go to Scotland and on the Sabbath day as they call it, you must go into a place there and hear them sing the 23rd psalm as only the Scotsman can sing it. With the rolling R's, the Lord's my shepherd. I can imagine David singing that on the hills of Bethlehem strumming his harp. Maybe he was as near to God as ever he or anyone else ever was. And he gets very brave doesn't he in that 23rd psalm, he says even if I go down to the valley of the shacks, so what? I fear no evil for thou art with me. He wrote the 139th psalm. Somebody, I think it was D.L. Moody once said that if God gave a man the ability to invent a camera that would take pictures of our hearts, none of us would sit for the picture and when we got it we wouldn't show it round anyhow. Psalm 139, this young man is walking majestically with God and he says defiantly almost to God, he says well search me O God and know my heart and try me and know my thoughts and see if there be any wicked way in me. He tears his heart open and says come down every area of my being and search it. He was living in perfect obedience to God, he had no conscious transgression and therefore he says search me, the greatest place in the world to live. When you're conscious you're living under the blazing light of God's holiness. So he says search me O God, come on I invite you, know my thoughts, try me and see if there be any wicked way in me. He doesn't say that in this psalm, he says hide thy face from my sins. As the world would say he is between the devil and the deep sea, he doesn't want God to come any nearer but he says take not thy Holy Spirit from me. I wondered for years why he said that, I never found a preacher with any sense to answer my question but I found it for myself one day. Why does he say take not thy Holy Spirit from me? Because immediately before him there had been a king. You remember Israel wanted to be like other nations, and they said want a king to rule over us and they got a king. In the language of the poet, tall, dark, handsome, Saul the king of Israel. Began to write poetry about him, Saul had slain his thousands. He was an unmatched hero. In America here we kind of poke a little fun at the stuffy English and other people with their dignity. But I notice you go and take your picture cameras to London and take all pictures of the royal family and hang around and see if there's a parade or a show, you like it. You love pomp and circumstance. Why everybody wears a uniform in this country, if he only serves ice cream he has to have a fancy hat on. And you wear a big M if you work at McDonald's. But anyhow, the king was strutting around he began to get a little top-heavy. You see we've forgotten something about the majesty of God. I want to talk about that maybe the night after tomorrow. No no no no. Tomorrow night God willing I speak only if I will pray. On Tuesday night I think I'm God's superman. On Wednesday night I'm holiness. You see in those old days when a man was anointed to be king, it was with pomp and circumstance, the whole of Israel looked on and they took a horn, a cow's horn and filled it with oil and they dropped the oil upon his head. Oil is a consistent type of the Holy Spirit in the Word of God. And so the king of Israel was the first man to be anointed king. And it's all the splendor and pageantry. And the Spirit of the Lord rested upon him. And not only did the Spirit rest upon him, he had gifts of the Spirit because he prophesied. But he ended a suicide. He toyed with the things of God. And when he could find the answer from God. And to me this is the greatest tragedy in the world. Not that the man is deaf and dumb, but he's totally dead to any claim God puts on him. He's the greatest tragedy in the world. The man who says I can sit through preaching and it never moves me. Well God help you, you're damned already. So the king of Israel was there in his majesty and his excellence, but he got into trouble. And the Spirit of God departed from him. And when he could find no answer anywhere else, he went to a spiritist, the old witch of Ender. And she brought up the spirit of Samuel. And he says to Samuel, notice his language will you? He says to Samuel, call upon thy God, not upon my God, not upon our God, upon my God. He says the Lord has forsaken me. And he thought the prophet would say very comfortably, now don't get too anxious, he hasn't forsaken you. The prophet turned around and said God hath forsaken thee. And he went out and committed suicide. There is nothing more disturbing. I have been in many countries, I've been in leper colonies, I've been in insane institutions to visit people, and I've seen people more tortured, earning a good income, living in a gorgeous home, rated high in society, and yet underneath they're tormented by the fact that somewhere in some meeting when the Spirit of God made a claim, they backed off from God. As I said this morning, don't come to the meetings this week, do yourself a favor, stay away. I won't worry if I have to preach to the pastor and his wife, if I get them right it'll be worth it. But don't be coming thinking you'll get by easy, because I'll surely tell you won't. And you may go home bruised, and you may go home scorning that Englishman, but I'll tell you what, once you get inside the pearly gate, you'll shake my hand and thank God you obeyed the light he gave you. David here I say is in a state of fear, take not my Holy Spirit from me. He's very conscious that he has sinned. The construction of this psalm to me is amazing, we could preach on it a week, but I'm going to let you go home for supper or something in between, you know. After all in the first two verses of this psalm you have three different words for sin. In the same two verses you have three different words for cleansing. Three times in this psalm Spirit is mentioned, twice of the Holy Spirit and once of the human spirit. Three times in this psalm brokenness is mentioned. Three times in this psalm offering is mentioned. Three times in this psalm sacrifice is mentioned. There are three great dividing prayers in this amazing psalm. Do you know one of the greatest tragedies of the day we live in is this, that we've got used to sin. We had a woman live in our street when I was a little boy, and I never understood her. She was always dressed so well, better than anybody in the community. And all my mother would tell me was she was a bad woman. Later I discovered she was what they called in those days by a word that had an awful connotation, she was a harlot. We smoothed it down to being a prostitute, we've eased it off to being a call girl. You see this man here says, take not thy Holy Spirit from me. The greatest thing that God could give America or England tonight would be a great visitation of the Holy Ghost. Oh not in miracles, not swinging on chandeliers because we're excited. I mean a spirit of conviction that would come, because when he has come he convicts of sin. He's a spirit of truth, he convicts of error. He's a spirit of life, he convicts of death. He's a spirit of power, he convicts of weakness. He's the spirit of purity, and he convicts of impurity. He's a spirit of fire, and he convicts of coldness. He's a spirit of passion and power, and he convicts when we're icy and indifferent. Forget this between your little ears my dear lady friend or gentleman tonight. This generation of Christians is, is responsible for this generation of heathen. And there are more heathen people in the world tonight than any period in history. And the only way you can prove you're a true Pentecostal, there's only one way to prove that you were, we're really New Testament Christians. You know what it is? The Church of England says, the Episcopal Church in England says that it, it has, it's in the apostolic succession. That is when they lay their hands, the bishop lays their hands on you, his hands, then you know that hands way back to the upper room were laid on somebody and it's come right down to you. There's one way to prove apostolic succession. You know what it is? Have apostolic success. There's no other way. I don't care how many healings you have in your church, I don't care how many buses you're running, I don't care how many you have in Sunday school. You'll get to that later I guess in the week. Do you know the Holy Ghost is totally incapable of doing anything small. I just thought about that. Everything the Holy Ghost does is majestic. I love the Holy Ghost. This old world on which you and I live is the product of the Holy Ghost isn't it? The world was once a ball of dirt shut up in the womb of the universe and the Spirit brooded over it. It became this majestic world. And the same Spirit that brooded over the dirty old world, brooded over the matrix of the Virgin Mary and can see Jesus Christ in her. And that same Holy Spirit brooded over a bunch of men in the upper room and they weren't clever, they didn't have a degree between them. But the Holy Ghost moved on them. And this wonderful book, I always preach from the living Bible. Do you know why? Because there isn't a dead one. It's a King James Version, it's a living Bible. The other, the living Bible, I wouldn't have it in my house unless I had a can of detergent to spray. The dirtiest thing ever put on the market. There are a lot of dirty words in it, don't let your children read it, it's vulgar. Some of you look very sad, your wife gave you a copy for your birthday, shows how much she loves you. Anyhow, do you know this book is indestructible? Do you know one of the contemporaries of John Wesley was a very brilliant man by the name of Voltaire and he said a hundred years from now the Bible will only be found in museums. You know the Bible has an habit of standing at the graveside of its persecutors. There's one thing you need if you're going to have a real good funeral, you need a body. And they've written the epitaph for the Bible and they've called the bell for the Bible, but nobody's ever destroyed it, you know because God wrote it that's why. It's as indestructible as the church and the very gates of hell will not prevail against it. And you know one other majestic thing the Holy Ghost did? When Jesus was lying on a slab of stone the old devil went in and said I've just been in and felt at him he's dead, he's as dead as King David, he's as dead as King Solomon. We've only got to keep him there about another half hour and we can put the world in hell, there's no chance. That was the first countdown, the first countdown wasn't in Cape Canaveral, you're dumb if you think that. That was 2,000 years after the first one, the first one was a resurrection morning. And Jesus was there in the tomb and there was a stone over the tomb and there was wax over the stone and seals over the wax and soldiers over the wax and the seal and the stone. And the devil says we've only 10 more seconds to go and if we can keep him there we'll damn the whole human race. And Satan says I'll have to do something else, I'm not very sure, he pulls tricks that fellow, what will he do now? And so Satan says he's dead because I just touched him but I better be sure about it, I'll roll all the sin of the world against that stone. That'll keep him quiet, no that maybe that won't do. So he said to every demon in hell, come on demons get your shoulder near that stone. Now we've got the stone and the wax and the seal and the soldiers and all the sin of the world and every demon in hell and he says hold it just 10 more seconds and we'll damn the whole human race. Hold it now, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2 and suddenly I like that Hamish, got a bit of scorn in it, you know low in the grave he lay Jesus my saviour. And the last verse says death cannot keep its prey. Jesus my saviour, he tore the bars away. Do you know why? Because in that last split second when the devil thought he had him, the Holy Ghost jumped in a second before that and touched him and Jesus rose from the dead. Because Romans 8 says the spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead, shall quicken your mortal body. Isn't it amazing with such a fantastic story that the church can be so dull. I heard of a woman that she'd been trying to get her husband to church for long enough, she got him there for a Sunday morning service and halfway through the service he got up and walked out. As she was going out the pastor said oh Mrs. Brown I'm so sorry, I don't know I must have offended your husband because right in the middle of my sermon when you were looking that way he got up and walked out. I'm so sorry. Oh she said don't worry he always walks in his sleep. Isn't it amazing how dead church can become when we lose sight of the majesty of the Holy Ghost and the majesty of the book of God. And all his work is full of majesty. And this is why David again says here he's anxious, take not my Holy Spirit from me. When he comes, if the Holy Ghost shoots an arrow in your heart you wriggle and squirm half the week, and I hope you will. For I'd rather you have two or three nights without sleep on earth than a million nights in hell without sleep anyhow. You see the Bible talks about iniquity but we change the word from iniquity to infirmity. We call sin weakness, God calls it wickedness. The Bible says that the sin in man is enmity against God. We try and pass it off merely as error. The man that wrote this psalm, keep this in mind, was a king. The Amalekites were not at the door. On this occasion his son Absalom is not trying to steal the throne from under him or steal the crown off his head, that's not his worry. Listen to what he says, my sin, my sin, my sin is ever before me. Do you know why? Because in the back room there was a girl making meals for him, she was a servant girl and she'd had a baby and every time it screamed he remembered the child he fathered to Bathsheba and that child's cry in there was like an arrow going into his heart. You know why he says my sin is ever before me? Because when he looked out of the window of his castle he saw a smart young soldier and when he saw him he remembered he put one of the finest young men in his army to death in order to get his wife. Don't you think for a minute that revival is an easy thing. I would make a gambling guess right here that nobody in this building has ever been in a revival. Oh you've had a special meeting at your church, began Sunday night and finished the next Sunday night, who are you to tell the Holy Ghost when to finish anyhow? I think maybe the most impudent thing even in full gospel churches is we tell the Holy Ghost to come eleven o'clock Sunday morning and leave at twelve. They've got a bunch of deacons anxious to get home and watch the football match, the Rams are going to play the Goats. And so they're itching to get home for a football match and please Holy Ghost come back at seven o'clock tonight till eight o'clock and then we won't need you till Wednesday night. Isn't that ridiculous? One sign of revival is that the lights don't go out in the sanctuary maybe for months and months and months when the Spirit of God begins to work. And David here is bowed down under the under the scorching inner burnings. That's what the Holy Ghost does. You've never had pain. We've heard the women say well of course the greatest pain in the world is childbearing. It may be, it may not be. But there's no pain like the pain of the Holy Ghost when he gets older, men and women. There's no relief, you can't find a place of escape until you say a final no to God. David is bowed under his sin, his adultery, his murder, his faithlessness, his harpies hung on the willows. He has no song. And when you've no joy you get something they call happiness which happens to hang on another word called happening. But true joy belongs to the children of God, nobody else in the world has it. Isaiah 12 says with joy shall ye draw water from the wells of salvation. The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy. And Jesus prayed that we might have his joy fulfilled in us. Joy? You mean it's a joy to hang on a cross naked? He tried to be decent, he put a few rags around Jesus on the cross. Don't believe it for a minute, he was there stark naked, it was part of his humiliation. And yet for the joy that was set before him and there was Gethsemane in the way, he had joy. Do you know what joy is? And in the Christian life I say only the Christian has it. It's complete conformity to the will of God. And know that you're embracing all that God sends with a cheerful, joyful, happy spirit in God. The first prayer David prays out of the three prayers is this, have mercy upon me. That's a great word isn't it? I say you should go to Scotland to hear the Scottish people sing Psalm 23, you'd need to go to Wales to hear the Welsh people sing. Oh my, they sing, they sing when they talk you know, they talk in cadences, beautiful. But if you go in this church in Wales and they sing a hymn like this, great God of wonders, all thy ways displayed and attributes divine, but countless acts of pardoning grace above all other wonders shine, who is a pardoning God like thee? Come on today, have you given a passing thought to the millions who are heathen without God and without hope, or were you lost in a football match this afternoon, or reading a magazine, or sleeping on your little bed? Can you see a little woman bent on a stick going up a hill there in Japan and throwing a few grains of incense to an extinct volcano and muttering a prayer, and when she comes down she doesn't know whether God heard her prayer or not. Oh I've been in heathen countries, I've been up where there are cannibals, I've been in areas where people bow and howl in the night when their people have died. Heathenism is an awful thing. Our salvation doesn't move us enough to go and take what we've got, the people who are lost. And the great tragedies again of our day is we've forgotten about the lostness of men, how lost they really are. We see an old bum on the street there dirty and smelling and say poor thing, he's lost his sense of decency, he's lost this. Listen the man that just went back in the past in the Lincoln Continental is as lost as that man in the gutter, the only thing he doesn't look as bad. Our institutions are filled with men and women who are mentally unbalanced to our age. The main problem is not the problem that they list, the main problem is sin, it's rejection of God, it's defiance of the known laws of God. I like the, I don't like David's sin. No sir, I don't like any sin. But I like the way he comes, he doesn't come pleading, you know, the divine right of kings, superiority. He comes penitent, he comes broken. He says a broken and a contrite heart, oh God. And if sin doesn't break your heart, it broke God's heart anyhow. I like the hymn you sang tonight, it's a lovely hymn, with a rotten verse at the end, pardon me. Hmm? That last stanza is horrible. Prone to wonder Lord, I feel it. Listen brother, try that on your wife, go home and sing to her tonight, prone to wonder wife. Oh, who's the other woman you're interested in, she'll say. It sounds very humble, prone to wonder. I don't feel like I want to wonder from God, I'd like to be a hundred yards nearer him every day. Prone to wonder, forget it. You see, God will put up with your ignorance, God will put up with your poverty, God will put up with the weakness of your body, but he won't put up with your sins. I remember preaching at a classic meeting in London, England. Beautiful old church. And just before I stood up, a preacher at the side of me says, you know there's something wonderful about this church. Do you know who used to preach here? I said, no. Top lady. You know, he wrote that hymn, Rock of Ages, clefts for me. Let me hide myself in thee. And I got hold of that desk and I rubbed my feet on the floor and thought, well, there's been at least two great preachers in this pulpit. I thought, well, it's nice to stand here and be able to preach in a pulpit like this great man, Top Lady. You remember what he says down in that hymn, Nothing in My Hands I Bring. The only way you'll get to God is by bankruptcy. You haven't got a thing that will commend you to God except your misery and your sin. You start parading your virtues and your grandfather was a bishop or a circus rider or a circuit rider or something, you won't impress God. I get sick to death of these great TV preachers who, if you'll give to our program, you tell them from me there's nobody sponsors God. You may sponsor them to live in a gorgeous big home. They live in homes so big they could drop your house in the backyard nearly. All on your tithes and offerings, the dear darling thieves that they are. The only thing that will commend you to God is your total helplessness, your bankruptcy. And I say again, David doesn't plead anything at all. He doesn't say, well Lord, just look at the record of Psalms I have written. I mean, don't look at this rotten day I've lived and this sin. Look how I've upheld you. I've written some wonderful, you remember that psalm I wrote, Lift up your heads all ye gates and be lifted up. I could see Jesus coming. Now look at all this little sin of mine. And then he looks at his hands. You remember Lady Macbeth talks about that dirty spot with all the perfumes of Arabia County raised. And David knows there's no way for him to find an answer to his problem except that he comes as a sinner, comes broken, comes contrite. I remember preaching one night in a church in England. I was assistant pastor to Dr. Fawcett, who I think is maybe the greatest preacher in Scotland today. We had had a woman coming to the meetings. She was notorious. She was a big woman in the district. Well, she weighed about 300 pounds. And I preached the message that night, 1932 it was. I remember preaching that night on, If you forgive not your brother, neither will God forgive you. We used to get about 400 Sunday night. The people all filed up and she waited for me. The deacons had gone too. I want to talk to you. I said, all right, let's talk. Not here, not here, in the office at the back of the church. Okay. Walked down the church, opened the door, she came in, I went in. I said, take a seat, I'll sit here. She shut the door and she stood behind the door like this. You couldn't see the door. I called her name, I said, what's wrong? What's wrong? Oh, don't, don't ask me a thing like that. What's wrong? She said, you held me up before the congregation in ridicule. You know I'm the biggest drunkard in the district. You know, I hit my husband, I fought a cop the other week and knocked him out. I'm a gambler, I'm everything that's vile. And you just made sport of me. You held me up to ridicule. Oh no, I said I wasn't thinking of you at all. Oh, come on, of course you were. You kept looking over and pointing your finger like that at me all the time. Well I said, it's getting late, let's get to business. What's your problem? Well, I want to tell you something. I haven't spoken to my next-door neighbor for five years and I haven't spoken to the other one for three years and I'll go to hell before I speak to either of them. I say, well goodnight, you go to hell, I'm going home. She said, what? I said, do what you say, go to hell, I'm going home. I'm not talking to my neighbors. Well I said, God won't change his plan for you either. I just bowed in prayer and waited and she said, I've had trouble with my neighbors. I don't mind confessing to God here but I'm not going to apologize to neighbors. Well I said, go home, let me go home. I was at the prayer meeting at seven o'clock this morning, I preached three times in the day, I want to go home. Well there's only one thing in the way and I wasn't moving her anyhow. She stood there with her arms up. So I thought, well this is a siege, I'd better get settled for the night or something and I just bowed and then in a few seconds I heard a, I looked and there she was crumbled up by a chair, sobbing her heart out. I waited a little while and then she said, I'm glad you stood up to me like that brother Ravenhill. I thought maybe I'd get by but you're as stubborn as I am and I don't want to go to hell. And if God will forgive me tonight, I'll go to my neighbors and tell them. She started to cry. She almost shook the building. And then she lifted one of these big bags that ladies carry and she took out cigarettes, matches, lipstick, gambling tickets, cinema tickets. Oh boy, it's a church bazaar nearly on the D. And I said, well, well, what's all this about? She said, well if I'm coming, I'm coming clean. I said, good. Oh you won't need cigarettes, matches, not even lipstick. You won't need those other things. She prayed like a child and got off her sweet and pure as a child. Three weeks after I preached on hell, she went home and told her husband. He told her to go there. Woke up at two o'clock in the morning, she was weeping. He said, Annie, what are you doing? Weeping. Why? Because I'm going to heaven and you're going to hell. Who says so, Ravenhill? Oh Ravenhill again, forget it, go to sleep. Woke up again about an hour later, woke up again. You're still crying. She was at our house next morning, we were bacheloring by the doctor and myself and I opened the door there, a great big face, as big as Texas it looked and her tears running down. She said, did you hear? I said, no. What? Oh, she said, three o'clock this morning, George, my husband, he got hold of the bedclothes and threw them over and he jumped over the edge of the bed and he knelt in the corner and he said, God be merciful to me a sinner. And she said, I got out of bed and out at the side of him. He got saved. Great. Three weeks after that, to that Sunday morning, she was at the door again, weeping again. Oh, come in. Big happy woman, she'd walked about a mile. Did you hear the news? No. Come in, come in, can I make you some tea? No, no, no. I want to tell you about the Ravenhill. She said, I keep smiling and I cry and I smile and I, well I said, what's the problem? Oh, my husband works in the coal mine. He was to come up out of the mine, they don't have the walking mines like you do here, they go down three, four, five thousand feet. Ten minutes to six in the morning, he was to leave at six o'clock. Ten minutes to six, the roof came in, wiped him out. They scraped him up and put him in a bag and brought him home and wouldn't let her see him. She said, you know, it's wonderful to think he's in heaven because I got a problem. I've got my three children to raise and I don't know how I'll do it. I'm not used to work. But you know, as I thought about it, I thought, well, do you know it all really hung on the neighbours because I forgave them and I went and asked and told them I was sorry and then God forgave my sin and then I told my husband and he got his sins forgiven. And if I hadn't have obeyed God, he'd be in hell. You never know where it ends, do you? Either blessing or cursing. David committed adultery, yes he did, and then he committed murder to cover it. Yeah, you're right. And then he came home one day and as he went in his castle, there was a body and he said, turn it over, who's in it? Oh, it's my son, who killed him? And his other son said, I killed him. You killed your brother? Why? Because he took my sister in that room and molested her. What did the old poet say? The mills of God grind slowly but they grind exceedingly fine. And I change that a little and say the mills of God grind slowly but they grind exceedingly, they grind always to time. What did he sow? Murder. What did he reap? Same thing. What did he sow? Sexual impurity. What did he reap? Same thing. You think you're smarter than God? You think that you've covered something over? No, no, no, no. One of the horrors almost of revival is this, that God begins to take the mask off and throw the doors open and we see the sins that we hid away and they haunt us and torture us. I preached in the First Methodist Church down in Dublin's Fair City in Ireland. I remember a number of people came to Christ. Three years afterwards, we were up in a conference in the north of Ireland. Cheery Irishman came up. He says, sure, now you remember me. I said, sure, now I don't. Ah, he says, to be sure, we were in the First Methodist Church the night you preached. I remember that well. Well, I don't remember you coming forward. No, no, we didn't come forward. Wife and I went home. I'll make a cup of tea, John. Ah, I don't want any tea. Ah, well, I was making it for you, I don't want any. And he said, we went upstairs to bed. And she sat on one side of the bed and I sat on the other side of the bed. Eleven o'clock, twelve o'clock, one o'clock, two o'clock. Mary, hmm, why don't you get into bed? Get into bed yourself. It's two o'clock. I know what time it is. Why don't you get into bed? I can't get into bed. Why don't you get into bed? I can't get into bed. Why not? Somewhere when that preacher was preaching tonight, it was just as though he sprang a door and all my sins began to walk round and round in my mind. Things I'd excused and said didn't matter too much, but tonight they all became such monstrous, evil, horrible, stinking things. Oh, that's amazing, she said. I felt the same thing. He said, Brother Aveniel, that was two o'clock. About three o'clock, I yanked the bed away from the wall and said, I'm not sitting here all night. So he said, I walked round the bed that way and she walked round that and we were going round and round, not saying a word to each other, just going round and round. And then suddenly she hit the deck and cried and found peace. She undressed and got into bed and said, You got into bed? Yeah, I feel wonderful. My burden's gone. I feel all clean inside. Somehow God has chased all those rotten old sins away. I just feel wonderful. I feel wonderful.