Let's ask God, the Holy Spirit, to help us all tonight. Our Father and our God, we are not the brightest bulbs in your pack. We are not the smartest people on the planet. Apart from divine grace, your grace, the promised Holy Spirit, spiritual things are oblivious to us. We don't get it. And two and two can be five or 87 or many things, but it will not be four until you work in our hearts. So at the end of this afternoon, beginning of our evening, may you meet with us by your Holy Spirit. We've come to you in Christ's name. We have good expectation that you've heard us. We have good expectation that you'll bless us. For Jesus' sake, amen. Please turn in your Bibles to Psalm 32. And while you're turning, I want to thank the elders very much for inviting me. It's always a privilege to come here. You all are very sweet, very kind. I wouldn't call you sweet to your face, guys, but you are sweethearts, and I appreciate your TLC. My wife, Cindy, appreciates your TLC, and it's always good to spend time with the Pauls, or the Pazinos, or to the Rennies, and we have had opportunity to see each of them this weekend, although the Pazino kids heard I was coming and they threw up, so that kind of nixed that, and then I was teasing that Jonathan went to a cryptocurrency convention in Vegas and he didn't make it this weekend either. And that's not true, but it'll stand for the time. This morning we looked at the Lord Jesus Christ and the joy in knowing him that he gives. When we sing the song, Fairest Lord Jesus, it's not his physical beauty because none of us have ever seen him physically, but it's the beauty of his person, all that is encapsulated in who he is. And if the greatest thing in life is knowing Jesus Christ, then I submit to you one of the saddest, most difficult things is sensing a separation, sensing a lack of intimacy with him. Psalm 32 is David praying and telling what it was like before he dealt with his sins, before he confessed his sins, when he sensed that he was estranged from God, and then he confessed his sins, he repented, and went back to being close to the Lord. It's not a psalm that says it was written after David's sin with Bathsheba. We don't know the timing. David sinned more than once in his life. You and I sinned more than once in our life. And we have to many times repent of whatever sin we've committed that we're made aware of and that we need to come back to the Lord. So again, I'm reading out of the ESV, the English Standard Version. Again, forgive me for bringing the wrong version, but I suspect yours is pretty close. So I'll read Psalm 32. A mascal of David. I think the New King James says it's a contemplative song. Think about this. Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit. For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night, your hand was heavy upon me. My strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. Selah. I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity. I said, I will confess my transgressions to the Lord, and you forgave the iniquity of my sin. Selah. Therefore let everyone who is godly offer prayer to you at a time when you may be found. Surely in the rush of great waters they shall not reach him. You are a hiding place for me. You preserve me from trouble and surround me with shouts of deliverance. Selah. I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go. I will counsel you with my eye upon you. Be not like a horse or a mule without understanding, who must be curbed with the bit and the bridle, or it will not stay near you. Many are the sorrows of the wicked. Many are the sorrows of the wicked. But steadfast love, covenant love, surrounds the one who trusts in the Lord. Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, O righteous, and shout for joy, all you upright in heart. You can almost feel David's joy, David's thankfulness, David's excitement of saying, you know, I struggled, I was really out of it for a while, and I felt miserable, and I've come and confessed my sins to the Lord, and he's forgiven me, and I'm back to intimacy with him. And that's what this is all about. Augustine had this engraved on the ceiling above his bed. First thing he saw every day was Psalm 32. Now why was that? Well, Augustine knew himself to be a sinner. He knew what his BC days had been like. He knew what it was like to still sin after you're a believer. And he needed that psalm every day. If nothing is more important than knowing God personally through Jesus Christ, then nothing is more important than restoring intimacy with God when you're made aware that your relationship with the Lord has kind of been short-circuited. Why this psalm? Why was this psalm written? Well, David says, I was out of fellowship with you. I needed to come back to fellowship with you. Why do you and I need to know and apply the psalm? Because we're sinners and we do things that we know are wrong and we have to confess and restore fellowship. But there's gonna be six things I'm gonna try to point out in this psalm and you can count them all just to make sure I got all six of them in there. Some of you are like, you only had five. I only found four that you actually named. So here they are, the six. First of all, how blessed to be forgiven, verses one and two. How blessed to be forgiven, amen. Verse three and four, how miserable unconfessed sin makes us. How miserable unconfessed sin makes us. Verse five is kind of the hinge at the middle of the psalm, when sin is finally confessed. Fourth, why we ought always every day to confess our sins, verses six and seven. Every day we should confess our sins. Fifth, while we must not be stubborn and willful in not confessing our sins. Verses eight and nine, I'm sure that has no application to most of you, but we've heard of people who are stubborn and willful. That's irony. Anyway, the bottom line, the great divide between those who confess their sins to God and those who don't are verses 10 and 11. There's a difference between those people who confess their sins to God and those who never do. So let's jump in and look at Psalm 32, how fantastic, fantastic, wonderful, great, Precious it is to have intimacy with God restored when you know you've been out of fellowship with Him. Now sometimes we don't even know for a while we're out of fellowship with Him. I mentioned in my prayer earlier that we're not all the brightest bulbs in God's pack and sometimes we're kind of dense. We have a low wattage when we should have a higher wattage in terms of we just don't see things or we're the kind of people who I'm so engaged in being busy I don't stop to think and if I do stop to think and if I stop to pray the Lord might get my attention. How blessed and fantastic to be forgiven. David's nearly shouting this. When I read this over and over and over again, I get the sense he's so pumped, he's so excited. For when you became a Christian, your eternal life, your relationship with God, it's a permanent thing. It is. Once you become a Christian, you don't un-become a Christian. That's your relationship with God, but your fellowship is your moment-by-moment, day-by-day aspect of your relationship. And you've heard these things, you know this. Fellowship can be good and intimate, it can be bad and weak. In Isaiah 59, verses 1 and 2, Isaiah says, behold, and that's a good word in the Bible, it sounds antiquated, but behold means check this out, mark this, look at this closely, behold. The Lord's hand is not so shortened that it cannot save. God doesn't have a withered arm. His ear is not so dull that it cannot hear. He doesn't need one of those cornucopia things. He's not dull of hearing. He's not gotten old. But your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face so that he does not hear. The reason why your prayers aren't being answered is because God can't hear you. It's not because God can't do anything. You have offended him. You need to stop what you're doing and get right. Your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God. The relationship's still there, but the fellowship has kind of come to a screeching halt. The most important thing, I'll repeat this, and I don't mind repeating things because repetition aids learning. Any teacher knows that. The most important thing in your life, in my life, is my relationship, your relationship with God. It's the most important thing. I know you've said that several times today, and I'm being master of the obvious, but sometimes what should be obvious ain't obvious to us. We're kind of dull. A temporary loss of intimacy with God should make you miserable. Who are the two most important people in my life? My Lord and my wife. Who do I not want to be out of fellowship with? My Lord and my wife. If I know I've done something to offend or hurt her, or I've done something to offend or hurt my Lord, I want to make it right. I don't like being out of fellowship with them. For some of you, you go, well, I can go for days, it's no big deal. Well, that says bad things about you because it should be a big deal. Do you love your Lord? Do you profess to love your Lord? Do you really love Him? Do you love your spouse? Do you mean they're the second most important person in your life? To lose intimacy with your spouse, your children, your parents, it's really a sad thing. And losing intimacy with the Lord is even sadder. David goes on here in verse 1 and 2 to talk about four spoilers. that harm intimacy with God. He talks about transgression, whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered, so it's transgression. Sin, transgression is breaking a law. Sin in the Old Testament is missing the mark. Here's the bullseye, and you didn't even hit the target, you went over here and landed in the woods. Whom the Lord counts no iniquity, iniquity is pollution, depravity of soul. And finally, in whose spirit there is no deceit. I've been lying to God, I've been lying to others, and really I've been lying to myself. I haven't been dealing with reality. And David goes on to describe the deceitfulness of sin. Psalm 36. I like the way the NIV says this. Verse 1 and 2. He says, an oracle in my heart. An oracle is a prophecy given by God to a prophet, but becomes a burden. It becomes a weight. An oracle in my heart concerning the sinfulness of the wicked. Quote, there is no fear of God before his eyes. For in his own eyes he flatters himself too much to detect or hate his sin. This is a person who, if not habitually, much of the time is just clueless about stuff they're doing that is wrong before God and wrong before others probably. And I have to ask the hard, obvious question, do you flatter yourself and rarely ever see your sins? When was the last time you ever confessed a sin to the Lord? When was the last time you ever confessed a sin to a family member and asked their forgiveness? That's too painful, I'll go on. Are your sins as offensive to you as the sins that you see in other people's lives? I can't believe they do that. Well, what kind of stuff do you and I do? If you do not have Jesus Christ as your Savior and Lord, then transgression, sin, iniquity, and deceit make you really just fit for hell. You're not in a good place with God. David is rejoicing that he's no longer under the power and misery of this four-headed monster. He says, yes, I had a problem with transgression, but it's forgiven. I have a perfect substitute was condemned in my place. That sin deserved judgment, and Christ stood in my place, and I'm forgiven. He said, yes, I had sinned. It's been covered with the blood of atonement of the sacrificial lamb. I sinned, the Old Testament said, the soul that sins must die. Well, the sacrificial lamb, Jesus Christ, died for my sin. Iniquity, well, He says it's not counted against him. It's counted against the sacrificial lamb and the scapegoat. And as to deceit, he's no longer dealing with his sin in this way of denying, denying, denying. It's like some of our souls are like insurance companies. You file a claim, deny. You file another claim, deny. You file another claim, deny. Right, well if it's bothersome to you that insurance companies do this, what about if the Lord convicts you of something and you're just always in denial? This morning we had a sweet time talking about the joy of just knowing the Lord. What an awesome person he is. To have your sins forgiven. To say, you're at the water cooler at work or you're at school and someone says something to you, you say, I know God. If you really think about it, the top of your head should blow off. I know God. but then does recognize that I sinned against him, and that fellowship really dims, sometimes becomes almost dark, and I need to restore fellowship with him. That's verses one and two. He's delighted, he's excited, he's jubilant that his sins have been dealt with. And in verses three and four he says, this is how bad I felt before I dealt with my sins. For when I kept silent, At this point, you're not denying it, you're just not even talking about it. When I kept silent, he refused to confess his transgressions, he refused to deal with his sin, he refused to acknowledge his iniquity, he refused to acknowledge that he was lying. It's true, everybody on the planet is a sinner. God has nobody else to work with except sinners. That's the only manpower pool he has is sinners. But only Christians confess their sins to God. And then, sometimes, not all Christians faithfully and regularly confess their sins to God. I knew I was a sinner, as I shared this morning, when I became a Christian in early 1969. But I didn't know how bad a sinner I was. I didn't see the depth of my depravity. I didn't see the nooks and crannies my sin lived in. And so over the years, the Lord drags them out of the dark corners and the cracks and crevices, and he shows you more and more of your heart, your sins. And so what do you and I do? Do we stonewall? Oh, nobody's perfect. True, but that's not really facing up to our sins, is it? Are you good at deflecting conviction of sin? Or as someone said, do you have a Teflon conscience? Nothing sticks. If you feel hurt, I'm sorry. What is that? That's not a confession. That's just saying you got a problem. They started it. That was kind of good when you're six and your sister was five, but it doesn't seem as significant when you're older and you, well, they started the argument and I finished it. David's thinking of a time when he stonewalled his sins. Now, what do parents do when you have a child who isn't facing up to their sins? Do you say, well, dear, Reginald is being very difficult. But nobody's perfect, so we'll just let him go on. Well, you can't do that. That's a bad parent. Lord, dear, what are we going to do with Reginald? Well, the Lord Jesus Christ, God the Father, God the Holy Spirit, do not have any juvenile delinquency. The juvenile delinquency is a term that's almost disappeared because there are no bad kids. There's so many bad situations. Anyway, so you have this kid who's impossible to deal with. But it used to be that kids like that would end up in, not in juvie court, but they would end up in a high school penitentiary. But they don't do that anymore. But the Lord has his way of dealing with people. In the kingdom of God, in God's family, there are no juvenile delinquents. If you have a hard head and a harder bottom, the Lord goes, I can deal with you. I can deal with you. There are no permanent Jewish delinquents. If you're a Christian, the father trains his children. Hebrews chapter 12. Our earthly fathers trained us the best they knew how. Meaning they didn't mean to screw up when they did, but none of our parents were perfect. But it says God chastens us, God disciplines us for our good. And God's perfect in his ways. For example, when you discipline a child, they're to connect the pain of discipline with the rebellion of their sin. If you rebel and disobey, pain comes. That's one of the helpful things you're supposed to learn. So what pain did God bring to bear upon David to make him see and confess his sin? Well, he says in these verses, my bones wasted away. He felt like a noodle. He was just evaporated of strength. Through my groaning all day long, I sighed and groaned and felt bad about my misery. For day and night, your hand was heavy upon me. My dad had big hands, and I've met some big men with really big hands. And when they laid their hand on your shoulder, you felt it. That was a big hand on your shoulder. Well, imagine if God wants to put his hand on you, you feel it. Day and night, your hand was heavy upon me. My strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. I spent most of my adult life in the South, and if Atlanta was hot and humid, Dallas was hotter with no humidity. It was just, people say, it's dry heat. When it's 108, you don't care. It's just hot. My strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. Hebrews 12 teaches that no chastening is pleasant. It is painful, but it's supposed to yield the peaceful fruit of righteousness. Proverbs 28 verse 13 and 14 is straight shooting. If you want to be a hard head, if you don't want to confess your sins, this is what Proverbs says. Whoever conceals his transgressions, hides his sins, will not prosper. Okay. But he who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy. Yes. Blessed is the one who fears the Lord always, But whoever hardens his or her heart will fall into calamity. I'm not threatening you, I'm just telling you what the Bible says. And I don't want any of you to be perpetual hardheads. The Bible doesn't teach Christian perfection. John Wesley taught that he had reached Christian perfection. He had a perfect love for God and man. Well, Methodist theologians up through the 19th century really didn't see that in scripture, but breakaway groups said, no, we need to teach Wesleyan holiness, complete sanctification. And so you had the Free Methodists, the Wesleyan Methodists, the Nazarenes, the Salvation Army were all breakoffs from the Methodist Church, because we need to get back to John Wesley's teaching on total sanctification. Well, other Bible students have still never seen where Wesley gets that you're going to reach perfection in this life. We are to be lifelong repenters and confessors. We are to be lifelong confessors and repenters. You've heard the joke about the guy who says, I told my wife I loved her on the day I married her, and it's still in force until the day I revoke it. Well, you know, is that supposed to warm her heart? Is that supposed to be something wonderful? In the same way, I confess my sins the day I became a Christian, and I'm good. No, you're not. You're kind of clueless, actually. Our Baptist confession reminds us that we are to repent of particular sins, particularly, they're not trying to be clever, they're trying to be accurate. We had a lady join our church, and when sharing her testimony, she said, I went to join a Reformed Baptist church in this other state, and they asked me to share my testimony to see if I was a believer, and I said, yes, I've repented of my sins and believed on Jesus Christ. And they said, well, can you name us some of the sins you repented of? She couldn't think of any sins particularly she'd ever committed that she needed to repent of. Well, then it's questionable if she ever really repented because she never saw anything particular she needed to be sorry for or repent of that displeased God. Why does unconfessed sin make us miserable? Because God, the Holy Spirit, who lives within inside us, makes us miserable. He makes it so. Pain of conscience, pain of conscience, is God the Holy Spirit's way of getting our attention. Years ago, I went to the Christian Medical Society in Atlanta, one of their meetings, and they had Dr. Paul Brand as the guest speaker. You may have heard of some of his books. The Gift of Pain, for example. That sounds like a sad book. But Paul Brand was the world's leading doctor of leprosy, Hansen's disease. He had served in India and he served in Louisiana, Carville, Louisiana, where there was a leprosarium until recently. The only other leprosarium left in the United States is in the island of Molokai in the Hawaiian Islands. And he said that what leprosy is all about is not the popular conception. It's not like your nose suddenly falls off or your fingers fall off or whatever weird thing or you watch Ben-Hur and you see his family, his mother and sister having leprosy and it's pretty gross. He said, leprosy is a disease where you don't have any more pain receptors. Well, he says, no, not really, because pain keeps you from really wrecking your life. He says, being an Indian, watching a person drop something into the fire, and because they have no pain receptors, they reach into the fire with their bare hand and pull it out, but now with a charred hand. Or a man fell asleep on his table, and his hand fell against the kerosene lamp on his table, and he woke up to the smell of smoke, and it was his own hand smoldering against the kerosene lamp. Or someone out in the yard raking, and there's a splinter in the handle of the rake, He had just gouged out much of the palm of his hand, but never even felt it. He said, leprosy wrecks your life because you don't feel things. And you bump and scrape and hit and burn and do all these things. You just start losing appendages because you don't feel anything. He says, pain is God's gift to keep us from worse things. So it is with our soul, as with our body, that God, the Holy Spirit, is like our pain receptor, If God didn't make our consciences painful and wounded by our sinning, we just continue on down the road to perdition. What makes us stop and say, wait, wait, wait, wait, I can't keep going this way? What made you, when you became a Christian, come to see that I'm displeasing to God? Something in me is wounded by how I'm living. I feel wrong. It's God the Holy Spirit. He is God's pain receptor, so to speak. When God the Holy Spirit is offended and grieved, you know, it says, don't grieve the Holy Spirit. Don't quench the Holy Spirit. I think it's important here, if you notice at the end of verse four, there's a little word, selah, and Hebrew scholars aren't quite sure what the word means, but hey, who's gonna contradict me since nobody knows, but I think it means pause and think about this. Think about your life. Are you very sensitive to the Holy Spirit? Do you go long periods of time and never even think about offending the Holy Spirit? If my body is the temple of the Holy Spirit and God lives within me, And if I do something obviously wrong, sinfully wrong, scripturally wrong, then I should feel that the Holy Spirit would make me feel grieved that I've done this to him. In a healthy relationship, we don't like to hurt our spouse. We don't like to hurt our children. We don't like to hurt our parents. And they have ways of letting us know they're offended. They're hurt. Well, I think God the Holy Spirit can show us if we take the time to think about this. Let's move on. Number three. When sin is finally confessed. Look at verse five. I acknowledge my sin to you and I did not cover my iniquity and I said I will confess my transgressions to the Lord and you forgave the iniquity of my sin. Again, Selah. Well, I acknowledge my sin. I did not cover my iniquity. I said, I will confess my transgression. You've seen enough lawyer shows on TV. Did you do this? Did you confess? I did it. What does confess mean? The charges against me are true. I did this. The charges against me are true. If God the Holy Spirit's convicting you, can you go, God the Holy Spirit's conviction of my heart is true. I acknowledge I did this. In 1 John 1.9, one of the first verses I learned as a Christian, because I needed, I can tell you a lot of great verses to go to when you sin, because I'm a real sinner. 1 John 1.9, if we confess our sins, wait, he didn't say when you confess your sins, it's not automatic, he says if we confess our sins. Meaning there's a temptation for some of us, maybe all of us, not to confess our sins very often. If we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Now, there's two ways of looking at our sins, and I think 2 Corinthians 7, 10, and 11 has those for us. It talks about godly sorrow and worldly sorrow. Here comes Dad with the belt. I'm really, really sorry that I did this. That's one kind of sorrow, worldly sorrow. You're suffering the consequences, but you're not sorry for the sin. My pastor is preaching through the Judges, and one of the sad things in reading the book of Judges, and I encourage you to go back and read them this next week, is that Israel would do a bunch of bad stuff. God would say, fine, I'm going to let the Amalekites, so the Philistines, scourge you for 20 years. And they're going to come home and complain, and it's so hard, and life is so hard, please deliver us. So he said to deliver, and they've been delivered for 30 or 40 years. They wouldn't change their sinful habits. They'd still go on worshiping idols. But at least they had relief from the outer scourge. And then he'd send another one back and forth. You don't see them confessing their sins. You don't see them pleading for mercy for their sins in the Book of Judges. You see them pleading for, please give me relief from my spankings. Please give me relief from my whipping, so to speak. Don't, please take this off me. I don't like the consequences. but they're never sorry for their sins. That's a very grievous thing. And as I was listening to the pastor preach and looking at the passage, I had to think of my own sins. How often do I bellyache about the consequences, what's going on in my life, but do I repent of my sins? Do I complain that my sins are grievous to God? Anyway, godly sorrow and worldly sorrow. Godly sorrow, I'm sorry, I sinned against you. He says, foresee what earnestness this godly sorrow has produced in you. Earnestness. I would need to really deal with this. I'm going to deal with this. See what earnestness this godly sorrow has produced in you. But also what eagerness to clear yourselves. Now I don't think he's trying to say you get a shyster lawyer to get you off for what you did. I think he's saying you cleared up this whole mess. You did this, okay, and you got to clean up the mess. One of the things parents have to teach kids is you make a mess, you clean up the mess. You leave your clothes on the floor, you pick up your clothes. Things like that. What eagerness to clear yourselves. What indignation. Can't believe I did this. What fear. God, I've sinned against you. What longing? I don't want to be this way. I want to clean it up. What zeal? What punishment? At every point you have proved yourselves to be innocent in the matter. I don't think he's saying it never happened, but you've cleaned up the mess. You made a big mess by your sin. Now you need to methodically go back and clean up the mess. True confession is always paired with repentance. It's not just enough to say, I'm sorry I did this. I want to keep on doing it, but I'm really sorry. No, that's not it. True confession is always paired with repentance. Always. Psalm 51, 16 and 17, but verse 17 especially. The sacrifices of God, the kind of sacrifices God wants, isn't going through the rigmarole of public sacraments. He says the sacrifices of God are a broken and contrite spirit. What's a broken and contrite spirit? There are times when you do something and you acknowledge, yeah, I kind of did that. But there are other times when you have such a broken heart that you did it, that you not only see this sin, but you see the other sins that hang out with it. Because most sins hang out in packs, they don't hang out by themselves. Why do I keep doing this? What's going on in my heart? Oh God, I've sinned against you. Please forgive me. A broken and contrite heart. Oh Lord, you will not despise. Now, even though I was an English major, I never knew the word litotes. What that meant? You go, litotes, what's that? It's almost like irony, but you're kind of saying the opposite of what you mean. No, God doesn't despise a broken hearted sinner. That's the people he likes to draw close to. I love to draw close to human beings who see that they're not the world's greatest thing and that they've sinned and they want to confess their sins and I want to draw close to them. He doesn't despise The broken-hearted sinner, he draws close to the broken-hearted sinner. In the world, you confess wrong in front of people and they mock you or ignore you or turn away from you. God draws close to the broken-hearted sinner. What does David say in the second part of verse 5? And you forgave the iniquity of my sin. The guilt, the pollution of my sin. Selah. You can almost hear the joy. You forgave me. Years ago, I was in one of the most tawdry, terrible situations as a pastor. I had to help another church deal with a pastor who had fallen. And he was coming to visit his old church. They never really figured out what he was doing while he was there. And he was supposed to come and confess his sins. But what he did was very much manipulated the people. He shared part of what he did, but not the whole thing. But it was really sad to watch. But there was something off. The entire evening just felt wrong, and it took me a while to process it. But it was a scary thing, because it was like you gave him a pistol that had 100 bullets in it, and he went up and shot every one of those people in the heart. There was universal weeping after he got through, supposedly confessing his sins. But I knew that there had been an insincerity about it because, as I subsequently discovered, it was just kind of a con to get beyond this so he could do what he wanted to do. Anyway, I won't go into that. But I met with him the following Tuesday. This was a Friday night. I met with him the following Tuesday for lunch. His name was Eddie, and I said, Eddie, how's it going since you made your confession Friday night? Do you feel close to the Lord now? No. I still feel far away from him. I said, well, help me here. Here's Psalm 51, verse 17. It says, a broken and a contrite heart, O Lord, you will not despise. You seem to be saying that the Lord's denying your broken heart, that he's staying away from you. Do you think he's a liar? Or do you think maybe you aren't really repenting? And I knew I had him. Is God not true to his word? Or is he not really repenting? Because God was obviously keeping hands off from this man's conjoined. Is God a liar or can he be trusted? Which is it? A broken and contrite heart. No, he will not despise it. He draws close to a truly broken and contrite heart. You go, well, I can't lower myself because, you know, when you make yourself that vulnerable, other people take advantage of you. That may be true, but in a sense, who cares? If you have God's favor, you can live with people not thinking you're the world's greatest person. Almighty God loves you. Almighty God is committed to you. Almighty God thinks you're his precious child. That's no small thing. Fourth point, verse 6 and 7, why we ought always to confess our sins. He says, therefore, based upon what I've just said, let everyone who is godly offer prayer to you at a time when you may be found. God says over and over and over in his word, today, today, now, if you hear my voice in your heart, don't harden your heart. Confess and repent of your sins now. Don't wait a month. Don't wait till next Friday. Confess them now. And then he says, surely in the rush of great waters, They shall not reach him. What does that mean? Well, if you've ever, I've lived in Southern California and spent time out West and they have canyons and arroyos and they're mostly dry. But if there's a few inches of rain up there, pretty soon it comes rushing down the canyon. Have you not seen any videos on TV of what happened to Western North Carolina when they got those deluge of rain and rivers that were 20 feet wide and a foot and a half deep or 30 or 40 feet high? It's awful. It's a picture of judgment. Surely in judgment they shall not reach you. And what's David's jubilant bottom line? Because I did confess my sins to you and didn't hide them. You're a hiding place to me. I can run to you, Father. You will accept me. You're a hiding place. You preserve me from trouble. That's why I run to you. You surround me with shouts of deliverance. That's why I'm a happy child of God. You forgive my sins. I'm a sinner. I will be a sinner until I get to glory. They say a lot of times that old people like to look forward to the second coming of Christ or going to be with the Lord so they won't have to go to the doctor every week. I went to the Lord so I don't have to go to the doctor. Well, there's something better than that. You won't sin anymore. You won't sin. You won't grieve your best friend anymore. You won't sin against him ever again. You'll have a resurrection body and then new heavens and a new earth. What a privilege to be a Christian. So that's why I ought always to confess my sins. Always, always, because he's a hiding place to me. He preserves me. He surrounds me with shouts of deliverance. Verse 8 and 9, fifth point, we're getting there. Why we must not be stubborn and willful in confessing our sins. Oops. Why did I have to go there? God is speaking here through David, or maybe David's passing on the conclusions he's reached, but here's his counsel. I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go. Well, I need instruction. I need teaching. When I'm off the beam, I need someone to get me back on the beam. The person who heeds God's discipline and obeys God's command is promised that he will teach you. And he says, I will counsel you with my eye upon you. It's one thing for a teacher to teach the class. It's another thing for the teacher to sit down with a student and say, let me counsel you on what you need to be doing here. And so there's a greater intimacy and personal counsel than there is in teaching a class. A counselor sits down with you one-on-one, a teacher instructs the whole class. Both are important. God does both to you. There have been times in my life when I lack direction. Not very many times, but there have been times when I lack direction. What should I be doing? How should I be using my lifetime? And I have to come back to passages like this. Well, Lord, is there any sin in my life that's grieving or quenching the Holy Spirit that I need to be made aware of so that I can repent of it and confess it? And I can have your counsel and I can have your teaching. On the other hand, David says, well, I can think of a couple of animals that are like a lot of people I know. Be not like a horse or a mule without understanding. Now, I'm not an expert on horses or mules, but they're big, they're strong, and it's interesting to watch a 110-pound girl have this 1,500-pound horse that she's riding, and the horse does what she wants. It's incredible. Now, usually there's a bitten bridle in the horse's mouth, and if the horse doesn't do what she wants, what you do is you pull on the reins and there's a metal clamp that goes around the horse's tongue that says, I told you to stop. Stop. Or I told you whatever. And the point is that you have to train these bigger, stronger animals by pain. You don't like a horse or a mule without understanding, which must be curbed with a bitten bridle or they will not stay with you. The point of the bit or the bridle, the point of the pain is to remind the rider, to remind us humans that the pain that God inflicts upon us is to make us submit and to do his will. Let me ask you a question. You don't have to raise your hand. I'm not gonna say, every head bowed, every eye closed. Are you known for being a stubborn, strong-willed person? A headstrong person? Are you known as a person who submits to admonishment and rebuke without fuss? Or do people know if they say boo to you, then World War III is about to ensue? Does your family know that to show you something you have done will usually lead to arguments and even outbursts? If you're laughingly known as, well, I'm just kind of ardent. She who must be obeyed. Maybe that's your title. You need to go home and repent of your hard-headedness. That's not something to boast about. Being hard-headed and stubborn and willful is not something that a Christian glories that it's part of our BC lifestyle that needs to be mortified. Believers who know their Bibles know that God faithfully chastens wayward children. I had a man in my church who called me up one day and he said, Pastor, I need your help. I said, what's the matter? He goes, I know I've not been walking with the Lord. I know that I've been willful and disobedient. And today when I drove up after work to my house and my wife and kids were on the front porch and I was getting the mail, I saw them and I felt really bad that, you know, If I'm really a Christian, God should be chastening me, because I know I'm not walking with Him, and I know that, you know, who the Lord loves, He chastens, and I'm not being chastened, and I'm being disobedient. So, am I not a Christian? I said, well, and we talked about it and prayed. That was on Friday. He calls me up on Monday. Pastor, guess what? I got fired today. I go, okay, and where's this going to go? And he says, well, he said, I was number two in the company. And he says, it doesn't make any sense why they fired me, but I think the Lord had them fire me to get my attention. So I let him be the interpreter of his own providence. But that did get his attention, and he did start walking with the Lord. Then he goes one day, what? I'm scared. I don't have a job now. What's going to happen? What's going to happen to my family? I said, well, maybe for the first time in a couple of years, your children and wife are in a better position because you're finally walking with the Lord, and you can be the head of your home, and you can be a spiritual leader instead of being in la-la land, and you're not being the man of the home you need to be. There are different kinds of responses to the Lord's chastening. Have you heard the story of the child with the tender heart and the tender bottom? Or have you heard of the child with the hard heart and the tender bottom? That's a scary place to be. You know what it means to have a hard heart and a tender bottom? Oh, don't hit me, you're gonna kill me. And they have no intention of changing, but they don't want you to touch their bottom. Well, some of us adults can be much like that. Well, the slightest discipline, we're all screaming and yelling, but we have no intention of changing. That's a scary place to be. What kind of professing child of God are you? Sixth and final point. Verses 10 and 11. There's a great contrast, he says here, between those who are repenters and confessors of their sins and those who blithely go on being self-willed. Many are the sorrows of the wicked, but steadfast love, covenant love, surrounds the one who trusts in the Lord. Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, O righteous, in shouts of joy, all you upright in heart. It goes back to what we looked at this morning. There's no better place in the world than to be close to the Lord. There's no better place to have a joy-filled life than being close to the Lord. And if sin is keeping me from being close to the Lord, then I need to confess my sin. I need to repent of my sin. I need to ask the Lord's forgiveness. We don't want to be people with hard heads and tender bottoms and not really deal with our sins. And as a result, spend much of our life in la-la land, but not in intimate communion with the Lord. Amen? Amen. Let's pray. Father, thank you for the work that you've done in the lives of all the saints here. Thank you for what you've taught them about yourself and about salvation. Thank you for the insights into their lives that you've shown them. But there are still things that we will see over the course of our life, things that maybe you've been trying to show us already and we've not been real keen about dealing with it. Lord, I pray that you would make us like David, that we would be able to tell others with a shout how wonderful it is. to experience forgiveness of our sins and cleansing, and to be restored to intimacy with you. Please give us grace. Today is the day of intimacy. Today is the day of confession. Help us to be intimate with you. We ask in Jesus' name. Amen.