Song Of Forgiveness

[00:00:01] Speaker A: Thanks for tuning in to the Met Church podcast. Here at the Met, we are all about connecting people to God and one another. If you have any questions or want more information about what's happening here at the church, then head to our [email protected] we would love to stay connected with you throughout the week through social media, so be sure to connect with us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter now. Enjoy the message. [00:00:24] Speaker B: Good morning everybody. Glad you are here. It's good to see you. We're certainly happy to welcome back our students who just returned from a mission trip to Belize. And Pastor Corey said they had a wonderful time. They all got back safe and we're happy for that. They did a wonderful job while they were there. You know, the rule is when you take students on a mission trip or you take them to camp, you always count them, you know, because you can bring more back with you than you left with. You just can't bring fewer back with you you left with. But they all got back safe and sound and did a wonderful work there with our mission support and all that they did there and believe. So we're grateful to have them back. Now we've been in a series this summer where we're looking at some selective passages in the Book of Psalm. Now, as you know, if you've been here and you followed along with us, the Psalms are the songs of the Bible. They are beautiful. They are incredible. And, and someone has well said that in the book of Psalm, every emotion of man is captured. In the Book of Psalm, you can find bitter and sweet, happy and sad, good and bad. It's all in the Book of Psalm. And what I love about it is when you read the Psalms, you see how honest people were with how they were feeling. Sometimes we're not completely honest with how we're feeling. We don't share a lot of things that are going on in our life even with those that we know best and love us the most. But when you get to the Psalms, it's like these psalmists, they just opened up and they just pour their heart out. They talk about their struggles with God, they talk about their struggles in life, they talk about their struggles with other people. And what you see in the Psalms and in the song writing of these Psalmists is that they are writing in such a way that the honesty and transparency connects with us 3,000 years later. That's the power of music. In fact, most of you who have, have are a fan of music. You probably have your favorite songs. You probably have songs that take you Back to certain times in your life. Maybe when you met that special someone, that was your song. Maybe you had a song when you broke up with that special someone, and that was your breakup song. But those songs capture emotions, and they take you back to events. And that's what the Psalms do. They were writers who were capturing emotions, and when you read them that way, then you can connect with how they were feeling and what they were experiencing, and it enriches your understanding. As you read the Psalms, some of the most powerful music that we have today, and when you think about how many songs have been written and how powerful they are, that talks about a broken heart, that talks about the experiences of life that you go through that are difficult. And songwriters capture that. Sometimes the songwriters talk about things that we do to other people that are hurtful and wrong and how we're trying to make amends and find our way back to that relationship. Then you have songs that are written or about things that happen to us. A betrayal of a friend, the heartbreak that we experience as a result of that. And you listen to that song and you think, man, that's me. That's the experience that I've been through. I like BJ Thomas wrote that song. Somebody done somebody wrong song. Or you have Linda Ronstadt, who wrote that lyric, you're no good, you're no good. You're no good, baby. You're no good. Or you have the Spinners, the Spinners who wrote I'm working my way back to you, babe, and it's about a guy that blew it, and he's trying to get back into the good graces of his sweetheart. Or you have the famous Taylor Swift line, we are never, ever getting back together. Now, that's the only line I know from any Taylor Swift songs, so I'll set your hearts at ease there. Or you have one of my favorites, probably one of the greatest country songs ever written, George Jones. He stopped Loving Her Today. And it's about a guy who loved this woman until the very day that he died. And on the day that he died, that was the day they said he finally stopped loving her. What do these songs do? They capture emotion. What else do they talk about? They talk about the experiences of life. And I'm saying all that because the psalm I want us to look at is a psalm that kind of explores that. It explores not necessarily the pain that a person who was writing the psalm had endured because of what somebody did to him, but the pain that he endured because of what he did to others. And conversely, the result of what he did to others was affecting himself. And finally he reaches this epiphany in life where he becomes sick and tired of being sick and tired. And he does something about it. And he talks about the burden that was lifted as a result of it. And what's incredible about it is I talk about the emotion that you read in the Psalms. It really connects. Because when you think about it, God made us to be emotional people. To be happy in moments and sad in moments, to laugh in moments, and to cry in moments. In fact, the shortest verse of the Bible is in John 13:35. It's where Jesus stood outside the tomb of his best friend. And the shortest verse just simply says, jesus wept. Jesus wept. He was emotional. I think Jesus not only wept, I think he laughed. I think he had a wonderful time. I think he knew sorrow, he knew pain. In fact, Isaiah described him prophetically as a man acquainted with sorrows and accustomed to grief. So Jesus certainly knew about it. He experienced the same emotions that you and I experienced. So I'm saying it's okay to be emotional and it's healthy to express your emotion. When you're happy, be happy. If you're sad, be sad. Sometimes when you repress those emotions, it can have a negative effect on you. And there are people who've studied the effects of those who do not have emotional healthy systems. And they don't know how to healthily express those emotions. And in suppressing or repressing them, how it begins to affect them. Not just emotionally, it affects them physically. So it's important that we understand the value of emotional health. In fact, when you read 1st Thessalonians 5, Paul was very descriptive in how he said, God designed us. He said this. He said, I pray that your spirit and your soul and your body be preserved blameless under the coming of the Lord. We call that trichotomy, three parts trichotomy. Now, some people will put the spirit and soul together and separate the body. Call that dichotomy, which is fine, potato, potah to. I just call it trichotomy. Cause that's how Paul describes it in Thessalonians. And think about it this way, Spirit, soul and body. Think about it this way. Spirit is your spiritual right, that part of us that is eternal, the soul. Psuche. We get psychology from that Greek word, psuche. So you are an emotional person. So that's your soul. It's that emotion, that spirit. And then you obviously are inhabiting a body. And these bodies are temporal, they're physical. These bodies One day will waste away and will sleep until the morning of the resurrection, then to be reunited with the spirit and soul that are eternal. But I'm saying that when God made us, he made us as physical, he made us as emotional, he made us as spiritual. Now what I would tell you when you think about yourself in that way is you obviously understand you're spiritual or you wouldn't be in church this morning. Being in church or watching online shows, that you are aware that you are a spiritual person and that you need a spiritual underpinning and you need a spiritual foundation. And if you're going to be healthy, you need to be balanced in all three areas. You need to be healthy physically and you need to be healthy emotionally, and you need to be healthy spiritually. And no one else in the world can be healthy for you. I've talked about that before. I would love, if I could get somebody to work out for me and it benefited me, wouldn't that be great? You just pay somebody and go, you know what? I'm feeling five mile run today, you know, and I sit on the back porch while they go run and all of a sudden I'm feeling better and I'm feeling healthier and I'm getting in better shape and they're doing all the work. That would be amazing. I'd eat a little bowl of Blue Bell and go, I'm thinking, I'm going to need some push ups today, so why don't you do that for me too, okay? Okay, here's another 20. Now we know that doesn't work. Nobody can do your physical exercise for you. Nobody can be physically healthy for your on your behalf. You have to put in the work, right? You gotta see that benefit. That's true of us physically, it's true of us emotionally, that's true of us spiritually. Now if I were gonna give a priority to those three elements of your life, I would give priority to the spiritual element. Here's why. Because of all three of those components, the only thing that is stable and the only thing that is certain is your spiritual life. So I would say, if you're building on anything, build on your spiritual life. I'm not talking about your religion. I speak of your relationship to Jesus. Let that be foundational. Jesus said in 1 Corinthians 3, there's no better foundation. Now listen to the wording of Jesus, First Corinthians 3. There's no better foundation that can be laid than. Than the foundation that is laid. And that foundation, Jesus said, is Jesus Christ. So Let him be the foundation of your life. Now here's why that matters. If you build on your emotions, your emotions are important as we're talking about this morning, but they're probably the most uncertain and the most unreliable part of our life. If you're honest with yourself, we've probably been all over the map emotionally today. I mean, it's 11:33 right now. And think about the emotions you've had this morning. You've tried to get up this morning. Some of you just got up and said, good morning, Lord. Some of you got up and said, good Lord, it's morning. So you've already had, you had an emotion. You got in the car and you navigated the roundabout. Oh, thank you, Jesus. You got here, you had to go through the roundabout and you're dealing with people that don't understand what that's like. It's not a four way stop. But anyway, here it is. It affects you emotionally just getting to church and then you walk in here and maybe you have a great experience, maybe you don't have such a great experience. Experience. The point is, we're like this emotionally. You're up one minute, down the next, happy one minute, sad the next, good one minute, bad the next. So I'm saying if you build your life on that, and some people do, that's why people who build their lives off their emotions, their friends will begin to saturate their presence with their absence. I mean, you'll run people away because you're building on something that's so unstable. Unstable. So emotion, you don't build on that. And physical, you say, I'm gonna build on my physical. I'm getting shape. And you should. But what are you gonna do if your health breaks? What are you gonna do if you need that surgery? Or what are you gonna need if you get sick? I'm saying if that's foundational, you can't always rely on it. Cause your health can break. You can be healthy and still have health problems. I'm just coming back to the premise of my little point here. And that is if you build on your spiritual life, then the emotions can shake when you, the physical can have its issues, but you have something you can always build on. So make your priority your spiritual life. But I'm saying you have to gauge it. You have to gauge it. I can't see the gauges in your life and you can't see them in mine. But sometimes the emotional gauge will begin to ping. And it'll begin to ping because it's making you aware of a problem that exists somewhere in your emotions. And sometimes the emotional gauge will begin to peg because maybe you're overheating somewhere. Physically you're overdoing it in some or you're not resting really well over here. So emotionally you're beginning to see this needle move because something's happening with you physically. So sometimes emotions are a great indicator of something else that's going on in your life. Sometimes the emotion meter will ping a little bit, cause something's going on spiritual. You just don't feel like there's a connection between you and God. You feel like there was a time when you were closer to God than you are. And so emotionally you're feeling it because it's making you aware that there's a problem somewhere else in your life. So I'm saying give attention to these gauges. Watch your physical gauge and your emotional gauge and your spiritual gauge, because all of those gauges will make you aware if a problem exists. I told you. My friend Dan Hooper, when his daughter Mindy got her first car, she was 16, she got the first car, and so they were so excited. It was a pre owned car, but it was a nice car. And he told her, he said, honey, you gotta keep the check the tire pressure. He showed her how to do that. Make sure, you know that the oil is changed regularly. He told her about how to do that. And of course, typical. Some of us had daughters that were better at that, and some of us had daughters that weren't so good at that. And so we had to kind of come behind him and help him a little bit with that. And so he said that one day she calls him and she says, dad, my car's smoking. I'm on the side of the road, I don't know what went wrong. And so he comes to where she is. We come to find out, long story short, she hadn't put oil on that thing in forever and it finally just burned up. And when the mechanic got in there to try to assess what it was gonna be to fix the car, he realized that the little light on the dash had been on for such a long time, warning her. But guess what? She had a picture of her boyfriend that was covering the light. And I'm just saying, sometimes other things and other people can keep you from seeing the reality of what you're dealing with and the honesty to actually deal with it, because you've got other things in front of you and you're not honestly assessing where you are. That's why I salute you. And I compliment you for being at church and giving the Lord this hour of your time so you can stop and process and worship and think about your spiritual life. And be. Be open to the word of God and be sensitive to the spirit of God to say, lord, show me if there's something I need to learn and teach me, is there something I need to know and instruct me and guide me, is there a path that I need to take? And so you give attention, and obviously you give priority to your spiritual life. You wouldn't be here today, and you certainly wouldn't be watching online. So I'm just suggesting that when you get to the psalm that we're going to look at, here is a man who is just tortured emotionally because he's been affected by something that he did that impacted him spiritually and is having effect on him physically. And so here is the story of King David and the great transgression that he speaks of in this passage. In fact, look with me in Psalm 32, just five verses we're gonna explore together. And I hope we can learn something this morning together that will cause us to be healthy. Notice what he said. Blessed is the one happy is the one whose transgressions are forgiven, man. When you have a transgression in your life and you can have that thing dealt with and forgiven, he's saying, that's the path to happiness. And then he went on to say, not just the transgressions that are forgiven, but have their sins that are covered. He's saying, I learned something, man. I learned something about the transgressions that I had made, the sins that I'd committed. And when I finally got to the point where God forgave me and I got to the point where those things were covered, I was so happy, I felt like a ton had been lifted off of me. And then he says in verse 2, Blessed. He picks it up again. Blessed is the one whose sin the Lord does not count against them, and whose spirit there is no deceit. Meaning, I dealt with this thing. It's not hovering over me. It's not following me around. I finally dealt with it, and now I'm free from it, and God has forgiven me of it. But notice the transition in verse three when he's saying, let me think back before these things were dealt with. Let me think back before I was honest about the things that I had done and where I was. He said, when I kept silent, I didn't admit it to myself. I didn't admit it. What I'd done to anybody else. I just kept silent. And that's human nature, man. When we do something wrong, we say something. We. We tend to hide that. We don't wanna be honest about it. And it's just. It's part of how we're all wired. I'm not hating on him. I'm saying we're all like that. He said, when I did this, he said, I kept silent, but here's what happened to me. My bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. Now he's using some metaphorical words to help us understand how he was feeling. Remember, he's an artist, he's a lyricist, he's writing a song. And he's saying, when I didn't deal with the things that I had done, I suppressed it. I ignored it. I didn't deal with it. He said, all of a sudden it starts affecting me. It's affecting me emotionally. It's affecting me even physically. I feel like I'm hurting. I mean, I'm physically hurting because of something that's wrong. And my emotional gauge was over here pinging at a 10. And my spiritual gauge now is pinging and my physical gauge is pinging. And he's saying, when I didn't deal with this stuff, when I kept silent about it, this is what happened. Look at verse four. For day and night, he said, I couldn't get a relief. I tried to go to bed. I think I can just go sleep. I. I can. I'll feel better tomorrow, but instead I wake up. He said, day and night. Notice how he describes how he was feeling. Your hand was heavy on me. Your hand was heavy on me. Can I tell you if you belong to God and you're one of his children? When you are not in a good relationship with him and you go away from him, his hand will be heavy on you. And when I say that, I don't mean that as a punitive thing. I don't mean his hand is heavy on you in the sense that he is judging you. God doesn't judge his children. The Bible says judgment is reserved for the wicked. In the final days of accounting on the earth. He doesn't judge his children any more than you or I judge ours. No parent in the room ever said, I judged my child. I went Old Testament on them. Now, you may think that way or think about that, but that's not really what you do. What is the difference? You don't judge them. You chasten them. What is chasten? It is the consequence of an action. And every parent is free to kind of determine what that looks like. Because you have to determine it based upon your child. You know what works and you know that that strong willed child may take a more harsh response than the compliant child. So you kind of do that based upon the child. And God does that with us too. I don't know how many compliant children are in the room. This morning you were a blessing to your parents. Cindy and I raised a very good compliant child that had their moments, but overall was great. And then we raised that strong willed child. The strong willed child usually is the second born because if you have them first, you may not have a second one. I was a strong willed child. How many strong willed children are in the house? You're not ashamed to admit that? Yeah, my brothers and sisters, what that meant was in order to correct us, our parents hand was a little heavier on us because it took a little more to get our attention. Somebody said people change, one of two reasons when they know enough that they want to or they hurt enough that they have to. And it's motivation. And so sometimes God would just motivate these hardheaded kids. And obviously King David was hard headed. He said, man, I tried to keep silent. I repressed this. I didn't deal with this. And all of a sudden it's affecting me. Not just spiritually, it's affecting me emotionally. I'm unhappy now. It's affecting me physically. And I just feel this pressure. I feel God's hand is on. I feel pressured. And God is not letting me get away from this. He's not letting me escape this. He is keeping the pressure on day and night. Well, God loves him too much. He loves us too much to let us get by or go without dealing with something that could destroy us. Sometimes you have that cancer and if it's not detected or even if it is detected and it's not dealt with, it doesn't go away. It gets worse and it may metastasize and then it could take you out. And so when God identifies something in our spirit that is metastasizing, he makes us aware of it. And now the onus is on us to deal with it. And David said, I was aware, but I didn't deal with it. It was just getting worse and worse. And I felt like man, day and night, the hand of God was heavy on us. I read a devotional one time, I think it was Oswald Chambers and he was talking in the devotion about the tendency that most Christians have to try to help our brothers and sisters when they're going through a hard time. And that's a wonderful quality that we have. We've got a big old $4 million building that sits right over here that really underscores the value of our church and is set aside to help people who are going through a crisis. It's a resource center. We help them with necessities to get them through a crisis, and we can connect them with resources to help them get back out on their feet. And so I get it. I think that's part of what a church is to do. I think that's part of what Christians are to do. We're to help people when they're broken, when they're hurting, when they're falling. But the point of his devotion that struck me, that I never considered it, is he said, Christians have a tendency, when we see a brother or sister on the ledge about to fall as we run and we try to break their fall. We catch them and we try to break their fall. And sometimes they land on us and they break our arms and they fracture our legs and they get up off of us and dust themselves off. And sometimes they don't even say thank you and they walk away. And so we're left there broken because we broke their fall and we're feeling hurt because they didn't appreciate the effort we made to try to help them in a crisis. So that's the groundwork for his devotion. Then he said this. This is what struck me. He said, have you ever stopped to consider that in some cases it could have been God who pushed them from the ledge? Wow. And thought of that? He wasn't saying we don't try to help people. He was saying that there are some people that don't get help until they hit the bottom. I had a guy tell me in church one time, he said, bill, I doubt, I doubt if I would have ever trusted Jesus. I doubt if I would have ever looked up had I not hit the bottom. I had to hit the bottom before I looked up. It's a strong willed child. And sometimes, man, it's not that God doesn't love us. It's a way that he does love us when he lets us hit the end of that rope and says, look, it hurt, didn't it? Now don't do that again. I mean, Jesus put it this way when he was talking about a relationship with him. And this is a passage that has puzzled people for a long time. I think I understand it where he said this. He said, if you're right, I offend you. Pluck it out, you're better to go into heaven with one than into hell with two. He said, if your right arm offends, you, cut it off. You're better to go into heaven with one than into hell with two. Let me tell you what I think he wasn't saying. I don't think he was saying that God is a sovereign sadist that takes pleasure in people's pain. That's not what he was saying. Here's what he was saying. In my estimation, he was saying that if it takes tragedy, if it takes pain, if it takes that to bring a person to Jesus, God is more just to allow that pain than to let that person go merrily on their way out into eternity without him. God will do what's necessary to reach people, and he'll do what's necessary with his kids to keep them close. And sometimes pain is necessary. Sometimes God allows his children to go through. And David was saying, basically, God's hand was on me, man. It was just. He wasn't letting me get by with this. And I'll tell you this. You can walk away from God as a Christian. You can. You can walk away. But if you belong to him, you can't stay away. At some point, in some season, he'll bring you back. It's the story of the prodigal. The prodigal father never gave up. So the prodigal Father never gave up looking for his son. Day and night, you see the image of a dad on the porch looking for the boy who had gone astray. And one day, the boy hit the bottom. I mean, in Luke 16 or 15, it said he came to himself. Epiphany, that's where David is. In Psalm 30, he came to himself and he finally said, I'm going back to the Father. And the Father didn't say, you moron, what were you thinking, you little ingrate? You know you're gonna scrub toilets. No. He said, look, welcome home. We're gonna have a feast and a party. We're gonna celebrate. I'm gonna put a new robe on you and a new ring on your finger. You are my. You're always my son. So I'm saying you don't stop being a child of God. When you go astray, you're always his child. Two things that hold you to God, and these are the things that held David to God. Number one is your relationship to him. Number two is your fellowship with him. Did you hear that? Your relationship to God and your fellowship with God. When you receive Jesus Christ as your savior, he becomes your father. You become his child. And that is eternal. I believe once saved, always saved. I believe in eternal life security. Otherwise if you take the other side of that, then Jesus would have to come back and die for us again. Because salvation only took us up to the point where we sinned. And now what are we gonna do with these sins? Well, the cross is no longer. He's gotta come back, die again, and we'll get us up to here and he'll keep dying on the cross. When Hebrews described the sacrifice of Jesus, it says, this man paid one sacrifice once and for all. Ephesians 1 says, the minute you become a Christ follower, you are sealed with the Holy Spirit unto the day of redemption. The day of redemption is the day he calls his children home. Your salvation and mine is as good until we step into the presence of God. So what if we sin and we do sin, David sinned, you and I sin, all God's children will sin. So what happens? God makes provision. It doesn't affect the relationship we have. But here's what it does affect the fellowship. Think about the relationship you have with your spouse or your significant other or even your children. You can have a falling out, you can be angry, you can be hurt, you can be mad at them, you still love them, you just don't like them right now. Anybody relate. Don't look at, don't look around right now. Cause I'm just telling you, some of you might be going through that right now and you're kind of looking over there getting the sneak eye. So don't do that. I'm just saying that's normal. That's normal. You can love people that you may not like in the moment. You say, I just need a break. I'm just upset. I gotta cool off, I gotta deal with this. It's that they're no longer. It's not that they're not your child anymore. You didn't suddenly just disown them. It's not that they're not your spouse anymore. It's just that all of a sudden you got to a point where relationship is okay, but your fellowship's not okay. That's what I'm driving at. When a Christ follower sins, when you do as David has done, when you walk away, then the result of it is relationship is good. You still know your Heavenly Father is there. You still, he's pursuing you, but you just are out of fellowship with him. That's why it says in First John 1:9, if we confess our sin, he then is faithful and just to forgive Us, our sin and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. So what David had done is he had suppressed. He had denied he hadn't dealt with the thing that he had done. And he knew it was wrong. And he wasn't dealing with it until it started eating on him. I heard about a guy that checked in this cheap motel in the little town. It wasn't a Motel 6, it was a Motel 3. You know, wasn't really good. You know, wasn't a Super 8. It was a nominal 4. You've been one of those. And he checked in in the middle of the night. He called the front desk, and the guy goes, what's eating on you? He said, well, that's what I want to know. So David had. He was just eating on him. I mean, this thing was bothering him. He said, I kept silent. Look at verse four. Day and night, your hand was heavy. And notice it now. My strength was sapped as in the heat of summer. And then, look at the next word in verse five. Then. Then he didn't turn around until then. Strong willed, child. He had to feel the hand of God heavy on him day and night for a long period of time. He had to feel that his strength was gone. He didn't have anything. He had to feel that way until then. Then. Okay, God, I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired. I'm tired of how this is making me feel. I can't any longer deny this. I can't any longer refuse to deal with this. I'm at a place now where I've got to deal with this. I gotta face it. Verse 5. I acknowledged. I acknowledged my sin. I didn't cover up my iniquity. I was open, okay, God. It's not like God didn't know. You think our failure to confess to God means that? Let me turn that statement around. You think us confessing something to God is making him aware. You think God, when he hears us, go, lord, I'm sorry I did this, or I said that, or I shouldn't have done what? And he goes, I didn't know you did that, you sick puppy. You think, no, your sins won't shock God. He's hurt it all. He's already aware. You know what confession is? Confession. If you confess our sins, you know what the word by definition, you know what it actually means? It's agreement. The word by definition. To confess is to agree. Here's practically what it means. It means when I sinned, when I walked away from God, we were in disagreement. You said don't do it. I had my own ideas. No, I'm gonna do what I wanna do. God says don't. You did. Or God said do, and you didn't. I mean, you just did something he said you shouldn't do. His word forbade it. You did it. So you went eyes open and you went ahead and you did the thing you caused. So once that happens, and once you cross that threshold, you know there's sin there. And you went ahead and it's interesting. I don't miss this. Before I forget it, there are two words he uses to describe what he's going through. He uses the word trespass. I'm sorry, transgress. And he uses the word sin. Now, I know when you hear transgress, like I just said, you think trespass. Remember when Jesus was teaching us how to pray in Matthew? He said, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. There's a difference between transgress and trespass. And let me show you this. In this case, David describes what he had done as a transgression. Verse one, I transgressed and sinned. Now, he didn't say, I've trespassed and sinned. Here's the difference with the distinction. And it's important to understand his confession. To transgress means to violate a boundary. Willingly, obediently, with both eyes open. It means I did something. I knew it was wrong, I knew I shouldn't, but I did it anyway. It said, posted no trespass. I climbed over the fence. I shot something over here on your land. Both eyes opened. I did the thing. I have transgressed against God's law. Trespass means I violated a boundary, but I wasn't aware of it. There wasn't a fence there. There wasn't a postage sign there. I accidentally wandered onto this property. Even though I'm illegal and what I did was wrong, I didn't do it willingly. I didn't do it knowingly. You see the difference? Jesus is talking about forgiving those who trespassed, those who swerved into our lane. And they weren't intentionally trying to hurt us, but they hurt us or those that we hurt. And we didn't mean to. We sinned against God, but it wasn't intentional, but it happened. So, Father, forgive me for this trespass. But David uses a different word. He's using a word transgress. It means I did what I did and I knew it was wrong when I did it. And the result of that, the second word he uses is the Word sin. And sin in the Bible means to miss the mark of perfection. Romans 3:23. For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. What does that mean? It means that we've fallen short. Let's say the glory of God is atop of that screen. That's perfection, the glory of God. That expression just, you could summarize it or define it this way. The glory of God is everything God is, He's glorious. So the glory of God is all that God is. So when I sin, I miss the mark. So I say if I wanna live a perfect life, I've got a flat footed from this floor, I've gotta jump and land on top of that screen. Not possible, it's never gonna happen. I mean I cannot in my own strength do that. So I have fallen short. If the standard is the top of the screen, if the standard is per perfection, all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. All of us need a savior. So David was saying, I recognize what I did was wrong. I know it fell short of what God had planned for, but it wasn't what God intended me to do. In fact, when you read the story of David and you know the problems that he had and the sin that he committed with Delilah, most everybody in the room are familiar with all that, don't really have time to go and explore all that. But I'm saying he was in a place that he shouldn't have been in. The Bible says it was a time when the kings went forth into battle, but David stayed in Jerusalem. He should have been out with his guys fighting the enemy, but he stayed home. And it goes back to a principle that I teach from time to time. That is, if you are where you're supposed to be, and if you're doing what you should be doing, you won't be where you shouldn't be and you won't end up doing what you shouldn't be doing. So every day when you wake up, just say, I wanna do what I should do, so I won't be doing what I shouldn't do. Because when you end up doing what you shouldn't do, it's cause you quit doing what you should do. So David was where he shouldn't have been, doing what he shouldn't have been doing, because he's not where he should have been and he wasn't doing what he should have been doing. And so he owned it. I went in with both eyes open and I tried to hide it, I tried to deny it, I tried to Repress it. I didn't deal with it until I was so miserable. I just was so unhappy that I finally said, notice it. Now look at verse five. I acknowledge my sin. I didn't cover up my iniquity. Get the phrasing, cover it up. You know what's beautiful about God is whenever you go to him in confession and think about it this way, when I uncover my sin before God and I confess, he covers it. When I try to cover it, he uncovers it. He exposes me. Anything you cover before God, he will uncover so that he forces you to deal with it. But conversely, anything you uncover before him in confession, he'll cover it and put it as far as the yeast is from the west and never bring that up against you again. And David said, man, that's what I was so sick of. I was just, God, I'm ready to deal with this. I want to ask people that I've hurt to forgive me. God, most importantly, I want you to forgive me. And David came clean with God and man, he just felt like this weight had been lifted off of him. He said. I said, I will confess my transgressions to the Lord. And look now, you forgave the guilt of. Of my sin. Don't miss the phrasing of that. God not only forgave the sin, he forgave the guilt. He not only forgave what he did, but he gave how he felt about what he did. You see that? That was the part that brought him to confession, was how he felt about what he did. He felt the guilt. That was the trigger that tripped him being honest about it. Was he sick of feeling guilty? He was sick of feeling miserable all the time. He was sick of being so unhappy when he knew the source of his unhappiness was he had crossed a line. He had transgressed and sinned before God, and he hadn't dealt with it and confessed it and owned it and got forgiven of it. And now that God has forgiven him, wow, he doesn't feel guilty anymore. There's people, I talk to them every weekend and many of them watch me online that are carrying burdens God didn't design them to carry. And some of you may be here this morning. You're carrying some guilt that God didn't design you to carry. Let me tell you something. Once God has forgiven you, forgive yourself. Once you've been honest and did what David has done, forgive yourself. Some of you may be still feeling guilty and you're still carrying a burden this morning. That's A self imposed guilt. And that's not God. That's something you're bringing and you're doing to yourself. So quit that. Stop it. I mean, you're talking and asking God to forgive you of something he's already forgiven you of. So forgive yourself. Walk out of here saying, I, I have been honest about this, but I've uncovered it before my heavenly Father. He's now covered it and he doesn't even see. Let me give you this. This is free like the rest of it. And by the way, this was just my introduction. I didn't have time to get to my outline. So I've 1201. So we're done now. But for my note takers, I'll give you my outline so I don't get emails this week. Okay, so I'll close with that. But here's the deal. Here's the thing I don't want you to miss. Once, Once you have been honest and open with God and you brought that before him and you said, God, this is what I'm dealing with. This is what I'm. This is, this is, this is, this is it. Then all of a sudden, man, he lifts that. He places the sins against the cross. Sometimes. Listen to this. Sometimes God will abort the harvest of sin in the life of his kids. What do I mean by that? Sometimes he'll even remove the consequence of the sin. You see, you can still have committed a sin that you're forgiven of that you still have to bear a consequence for there are people in jail right now that would tell you that they've been forgiven. God's forgiven them. Even the people they've harmed may have forgiven them in court at the time of sentencing. But they still had to go to prison. They still had to. There's a penalty assessed to that. That's why the Bible says, he that sows to the flesh will of the flesh reap corruption. What's my point? My point is sometimes a Christian can sin and bear the scars of their sin. You'll never convince me that David didn't bear some scars from the mistakes and the sins that he had committed. I know he did. I don't have time to get into it, but I can tell you about 2 Samuel 12, when Nathan confronts him back when he was not dealing with this, and he tells a story and calls him out, said you, the man. And when you track his life from there, he paid fourfold, which was the requirement under the Levitical law for the transgression and the sin that he had committed. Forgiven but he still paid a price. I'm just saying sometimes when you wrestle with the Lord, you walk away with a limp. Forgiven. But you're gonna limp. You walked over here, you're gonna limp back. And sometimes you're like. But sometimes God will take the harvest of sin. Let me use this word. He will abort the harvest of sin. And he can do that and be. Just. Because he takes that result of sin and puts it against the cross. He just said, I'm not gonna let that come to fruition. I know it should in your case. I think you learned your lesson, so I'm not gonna. There won't be anything else beyond that. I'm gonna put that against the cross. And he can forgive. But I'm saying there are times in your life when you're forgiven, but you'll still walk with the Lamb. Doesn't mean you're not forgiven. It just means it's a consequence of a mistake that you made. And that's okay. We get that. And David was understanding the weight that was lifted off of him when he finally dealt with his transgression and with his sin. Here's the outline. Let me give it to you. Note takers, here we go. First point I was gonna tell you about was to clarify. Find the source of your unhappiness, clarify it. David, did that. Number two, classify. Is it a transgression or a trespass? Is it something I've done or something someone's done to me? So clarify. And number three, crucify. Name it and nail it. Deal with it once and for all. And that, all of you, that takes outlines. That's the end of that. You know what a sermon is anyway? Are you curious? You know what a sermon is? This is simple. A sermon is I get up and tell people what I'm gonna tell em. And then the second thing I do is I tell em. And then the third thing I do is I tell em what I told em. That's all it is. So I hope this morning we've learned a little more about the song of forgiveness. Let's pray together. Father, thank you for these wonderful people who are here on this summer Sunday to hear from you, to worship you, to be a part of this experience. And, Lord, first and foremost, I pray you'll lift any burden that's represented in this room, help us to walk away from this room with the tools that we need to help us live happy and joyful lives. I pray finally for my friends here who may never have trusted you as their personal Savior. I pray this would be the moment where they humble their heart before you and they say, lord Jesus, right now, just as I am in this room, in this moment, come into my heart and forgive my sin. With everything I know about me, I now trust all that I know about you. And I ask this in Christ's name. Amen. [00:42:09] Speaker A: Thank you so much for tuning in today. If you have any questions or prayer requests, please contact us by visiting metchurch.com so that we can follow up with you this week. Week. We look forward to seeing you next week.