Our preacher this morning is Dr. Bob Jones III, our Chancellor, and he's asked that we read the 32nd Psalm. Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile. When I kept silence, My bones wax old through my roaring all the day long. For day and night, thy hand was heavy upon me. My moisture is turned into the drought of summer. I acknowledged my sin unto thee, and mine iniquity have I not hid. I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord, and thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin. For this shall everyone that is godly pray unto thee in a time when thou mayest be found. Surely in the floods of great waters they shall not come nigh unto him. Thou art my hiding place. Thou shalt preserve me from trouble. Thou shalt compass me about with songs of deliverance. I will instruct thee and teach thee in the way which thou shalt go. I will guide thee with mine eye. Be ye not as the horse, or as the mule, which have no understanding, whose mouth must be held in with bit and bridle, lest they come near unto thee. Many sorrows shall be to the wicked, but he that trusteth in the Lord, mercy shall compass him about. Be glad in the Lord, and rejoice, ye righteous, and shout for joy, all ye that are upright in heart." This is the word. of the Lord. We welcome our visitors. We're glad that you're here. Many will be joining us throughout the course of the week. Some of you are pretty excited that your parents, your siblings are going to be here and you're right to be excited. And we're looking forward to what God's going to do for us. Please be in prayer. I know the great majority of you have been already. All is vain, the song says, unless the spirit of the Holy One come down. And it is not by might nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord. It is not the skill of the preacher. It is not the great oratory that he may put forth. The unsaved can be great orators. The unsaved can put together well-crafted messages. But it's what God says to us by His Spirit through His Word that matters. It's not the voice of man that is of any value to us at all. So my prayer is the voice of the Holy Spirit will be the voice that we all hear speaking to us this week. May it be so. Would you open your Bibles please to Psalm 32. I've entitled this, When the dam breaks, the blessings flow. When the dam breaks, the blessings flow. That's what's described in this psalm. Someone has suggested that this psalm, this song, was perhaps the next one that David, the songwriter, wrote after he wrote Psalm 51. His song of penitence, his song of requesting God's forgiveness out of a heart that was so crushed it could hardly stand it. How long has it been since we gathered here who profess to know the Lord ever felt such intense need to cry personally for the Lord's forgiveness as David obviously felt in this psalm. Now, who is it that this is for? We need to understand that at the outset or we're going to miss it all. This is not primarily for a song that the unsaved would pray. This is not a song that a professing believer who is content in his sin would ever pray. He wouldn't. There are many professing believers here in this student body and in our churches who, frankly, are strangers to God's grace. The Bible tells us in 1 John 3 that if we practice sin, if that's the direction of our life, if that's what we seek when nobody knows what we're doing, if we're in the pursuit of sin, we are doing the work of the devil. We are not of God. You can't come to any other conclusion from 1 John 3. So this is not for them. This is not for those who are in sin, enjoy sin, content to stay in sin, happy to be in sin, and frankly, wish they weren't around the kind of preaching that disturbs them about sin. This is not the one this is addressed to. This is addressed in verse six. The one who is godly. Well, you say if David, after he said with Bathsheba and the murder of her husband, how could he call himself godly? This is for those who do know God and want to be like God, but who have stumbled into sin. It's not their practice. In a moment of weakness, and we all are in weak flesh, sinful flesh, in a moment of dire temptation, yielded to sin, and who are so guilty about it and so ashamed of it and so broken over that when God the Holy Spirit intersects them as He did David some 9 months, 10 or 12 months after his sin, Nathan the prophet came, spoke the word of God, he was smitten in his conscience and he came clean with God. That's who this is written to. Those whose hearts are Godward hearts but have been ensnared in a moment of sinful weakness and fallen into sin. And there are those like that here. And it is to you this message is addressed. This is a song with five stanzas. And so we're going to go through them very quickly. Basically, this is an invitation song. I think we can call it that. Just as I am is an invitation song. Come every soul by sin oppressed. There's mercy with the Lord is an invitation song. This is an invitation song. It's a song of invitation to those ensnared by sin from one who used to be. And is inviting those who are ensnared by sin at this moment. Not to continue therein and deprive yourself of the blessings and the freedom of God, that sin is denying us today. This is a song of invitation from a sinner who responded to an invitation. It's a song of mercy. Verse 10 tells us that. It's about how much we need God's mercy and how much God wants to bless us with his mercy and about how to receive his mercy. So the first of these five stanzas is simply this. It says, blessed are the forgiven. Blessed are the forgiven. Look at verses one and two. Blessed. That means how very happy is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. How very happy is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity and in whose spirit there is no guile or no deception. How very happy is The person who walks with God that has been ensnared by sin and is living in deception as though he's not in sin. He hasn't fallen and broken his fellowship with God. He's trying to keep up appearances. In whose spirit there is no guile, in whose spirit there is no deceit. There are those here walking far from God. who by your attitude and your demeanor, your conversations, you are deceiving yourself and others that all is well between you and God. How very happy is the man that is not like that. How very blessed are the forgiven. What are they forgiven from for their rebellious acts? That's what transgression is, the essential fallen nature of man, we are rebels against God. Sin is anarchy. It took place in heaven when Lucifer said, I will exalt my throne above the throne of God. I will be like the Most High God. That's anarchy, trying to overthrow God and His plans and His purpose. Sin is anarchy. It's rebellion against God. It's every man turning to his own way, apart from God's way. It's man wanting to overthrow God and His dominion, His authority and His plans. When did you or I last feel any overwhelming need to cry out to God for forgiveness from our transgression, our rebellion toward God? When was the last time we felt the overwhelming need to say, God, let your cleansing blood cover my sin from your holy eyes? Instead of that, do you know how we try to handle conviction for sin? Try to explain sin away. We try to redefine sin. That's what the church at large, I'm afraid, is doing today in many, many cases. Just as a friend reminded me a couple of nights ago, he said, you know what's happening in our country when we can't control something, we make laws to legalize it. The drug problem's out of control, so it's probably only a matter of time until drugs are legalized. That's how we get rid of the problem. How do we sinners get rid of the sin problem? We redefine it. We say it's not really sin after all. No matter that God says He hates divorce, we say, well, it is probably okay in many cases to solve our marital problems by divorce. And if the church at large is saying that, and the courts have already said that for a long time, there's no opprobrium connected with it, so okay, divorce isn't so bad anymore. It's not really a sin. But God still says He hates it. Sexual sin, pornea, any kind of sexual sin, whatever it may be. The Bible is very clear about how God feels about it, whether it be adultery, fornication, homosexuality, any kind of sexual sin. The Bible is very clear. It's sin. But the church comes along in order to pacify people in its congregation who won't repent of their sin. who want to live in it and still keep up appearances by going where good doctrine might be preached from the pulpit. And the preacher just ignores those things that are sins and maybe just doesn't preach about them. Or maybe he just tries to redefine them in the context of modern culture. So sinners don't feel like sinners anymore, that they've created really any offense toward God. We even do the same thing with regard to music. And I know a lot of you are going to turn me off at this point, but I make no apology for this because it's right. In Psalm 137, too, the question is this about God's people in Babylon, in pagan Babylon. How shall we sing the Lord's song? In a strange land. It wasn't that it was inappropriate for them to sing songs about Jehovah there. It was very appropriate to sing songs about our Lord wherever we go. The other night, we were out at a friendship banquet, and on the way back, the van driver, who was a believer, I said to Tamara Jones, who was the music for the evening, the soloist for the evening, I said, Tamara, sing some songs for this man. It was a delightful African-American guy, loved God, and she sang a wonderful Negro spiritual. It was a real blessing. I really enjoyed it. He enjoyed it. And spontaneously, just, we were all shouting, having a good time, spontaneously reached out, hugged her, thanked her, praised God for it. It's always appropriate wherever we are to sing the Lord's songs. But what they were saying is, in this psalm, what the psalmist was saying is, how shall we sing the Lord's? How shall we sing that which belongs to Jehovah? How shall we sing music that is appropriate for Jehovah when our hearts Not in a good relationship with Jehovah here. We are in captivity Maybe they were mad with God for putting them there instead of listening to the prophets repenting and turning from their idolatry They remained in it. They got the judgment that God said would come if they didn't repent and Now they just don't feel like singing Jehovah's songs In this land of captivity So if you don't much sing here or in church back home Because you don't have any joy of Jehovah in your heart. We sing Jehovah's songs here. And you don't sing because Jehovah is not in your heart. And the joy of Jehovah is not there. And you just can't sing because your heart is blighted. I'm amazed at how many people don't sing in congregations in good churches. How should we sing Jehovah's songs? The Bible is very clear. There are some songs that belong to Jehovah that are clearly his music. And they're clearly songs that are the devil's music. They're the songs that the devil uses to corrupt hearts in the bars. Songs that are clearly given to affirm in sinners' hearts that it's okay to cheat on their wives and engage in illicit sexual activity and to drink and to take drugs. It's all an affirmation of their sin, and that's why they love it. They don't want to repent of it. They want to be affirmed that it's really okay to live this way. And so people like that are not going to feel that there's any transgression that needs to be forgiven or any sin that needs to be covered by the Lord. The entire human race is engaged in rebellion against the Creator. But how very happy are those whose sins are forgiven. Second stanza. Wretched are the unbroken. Verses three and four, when I kept silence, my bones became old through my roaring all the day long. For day and night, thy hand was heavy upon me. My moisture is turned into the drought of summer. This is a description, in David's honesty, about his unbroken heart when he was still in his sin, before he repented. He's saying, this is how it was when I was an unbroken, unrepentant sinner. I was spent. My bones felt like old bones. I ached inside. Maybe even had some kind of actual physical infirmity as a result. of the sin that was heavy upon his heart. He said, I was roaring, I was moaning, I was grieving all the day long. I hurts. This is how I felt and nobody knew about it. He said, I kept silence. I didn't tell anybody. I lived in deceit. I lived in guile. I didn't want anybody to know. I just hoped that this conviction would leave me. I hoped that this sin issue would just somehow go away on its own accord. That somehow I could work myself out of this pain that was in me as a result of my sin. That maybe I could go beyond the point of conviction. I could get so busy with the affairs of the kingdom. I could get so busy by going to my office, working hard, trying to transfer my energies to other things and my duties, that I could occupy my mind with other things and get away from my conviction. I'm really very convinced that the distractions of entertainment, people always connected with Music wherever they go in their iPods. They've isolated themselves from the real world and they just don't want to hear things except what they force into their ears they just They just don't want to hear if they don't want to hear the voice of God even He said the moisture Has dried up in me Energizing SAP if you will the strength of life, the juice of life, the energy of life, like blood carries nutrients to the body, that which carries nutrients to the soul. My soul wasn't moist anymore because it wasn't getting the waters of the Word in it, and I was dried up inside. I was withered. The vitality was gone. Do you feel like that today, some of you? You used to know spiritual vitality. You used to enjoy God. But you don't anymore. When you fell into sin, you lost his fellowship. You lost the awareness of his approval. And he's far from you. And you don't even bother to pray because you know your prayers aren't getting answered because Scripture said, if I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord won't hear me. So you're not even praying, you're not even bothering. You've cut yourself off from your life. David was experiencing the consequences that hidden and unconfessed sin in the life always bring to us. Listen to what the scripture says that they are. Here are the consequences hidden and unconfessed sin always bring to the life. First of all, separation from the fellowship of God. Isaiah 59.2, your iniquities have separated between you and your God and your sins have hid his face from you that he will not hear. Separation from fellowship with God. The consequence of hidden and unconfessed sin. Secondly, guilt. Ezra, when he returned to the people of God to help them in restructuring their lives in the new land where they had returned from captivity. Ezra 9, 6, he said, Oh my God, I'm ashamed and blushed to lift up my face to Thee, my God, for our iniquities are increased over our head and our trespass is grown up into the heavens. He said, Lord, we are drowning in our iniquity. They've increased over our head. We're drowning in our sins. And they're so great, Lord, I blush, I'm ashamed to even look up to your holy heaven and talk to you about these things. David said in Psalm 40, verses 12 and 13, innumerable evils have compassed me about. My iniquities have taken hold upon me, so I am not able to look up, just like Ezra. There are more than the hairs of my head, and my heart therefore faileth me. Be pleased, O Lord, to deliver me. O Lord, make haste to help me." Unconfessed and unrepentant of sins, hidden in the heart, bring separation from God's fellowship, bring guilt to the life, bring enslavement to sin's dominion. The longer they remain hidden, the more we think about them, the more it is easy to continue committing them We haven't been caught yet. Nobody knows about them. We seek the enjoyment of them, the flesh, and Satan become our masters. John chapter 8, the Lord Jesus said, beginning in verse 34, Verily, verily, I say unto you, whosoever commits sin is the servant of sin. And the servant abideth not in the house, but the son abideth ever. If the Son, therefore, shall make you free, you shall be free indeed. Sin, unconfessed, harbored in the life, unrepented of, brings hardness. The longer it's there, the less it bothers us, the less we feel the shame of it. And we eventually get to the place where we say, I don't care. Some of you are there. You're in the, I don't care. You've left it there so long. Ephesians 4.19 describes you or any of us who would get in that condition, who being past feeling, have given themselves over to lasciviousness to work all uncleanness with greediness. First, there is this guilt, there is shame, there is this aching of bones, there is the drying up of the moisture of the soul, and then after a while, If the repentance doesn't come and the sin continues to be hidden, it will bring us to the place where we start seeking it with greediness. We can't wait for more. Stanza number three, the released are the repentant. Verses five and six, I acknowledge my sin unto thee, my iniquity have I not hid. He finally came to the right place. I didn't try to hide it anymore. I said it's an act of the will. That is a conscious confession. I said I will confess my transgression unto the Lord. And when I did, thou forgave us the iniquity of my sin. For this shall everyone that is godly pray to thee in a time when thou mayest be found surely in the floods of great waters. They shall not come nigh unto him. Repentance begins with acknowledgement, I've sinned. If you read this companion Psalm 51, he said it, I repented of my iniquity, my transgression, my sin. It's very personal. It occurred at a moment of resolution. When the scripture comes to us and the heavy voice of the Holy Spirit is upon us, at that moment, we say, Dear God, forgive me I have sinned. That's how the prodigal son did. You read the passage. There he was in that place of famine, soul famine, famine of food. eating pig's food that they wouldn't eat. He said, the servants in my father's house are better than I am. I will go to my father. It was an act of resolution. That's what must happen to us. That's what happened to David. That's when the change came. And now he desires for everybody to know the pardon he had come to know. Look at verse 6. For everyone that is godly shall pray unto thee in a time when thou mayest be found. Surely the floods of great waters, they shall not come nigh thee. When you find God's pardon, you don't face God's judgment. When the floods of judgment would otherwise sweep over you, you have sheltered yourself from those. And God will see to it that they come because He's a just God. David has said, this is what everyone should do. Everyone should find the peace and the blessedness and the very great happiness that I found when I responded to God this way in a time when He could be found. That doesn't mean that any time is not a good time to repent. when the spirit of conviction is on us, in the moment in that service, or in that dorm room, or behind the wheel of that car, when the voice of the Holy Spirit is so powerful and pleads us to come in repentance, to confess and acknowledge that we have sinned, that's the time. the Lord can be found. The fourth stanza of this song tells us that protected and instructed are the restored who have our sins hidden and forgiven. Psalm 99, the Lord also will be a refuge for the oppressed, a refuge in time of trouble. Look at verses 7 through 9 here, thou art my hiding place. Thou shalt preserve me from trouble. Thou shalt compass me about with songs of deliverance. I will instruct thee and teach thee in the way which thou shalt go. I will guide thee with my eye. Be ye not as a horse or as a mule, which have no understanding, whose mouth must be held in with bit and bridle, lest they come near unto you. Psalm 27 5, in the time of trouble, he shall hide me in his pavilion. In the secret of His tabernacle He shall hide me. He shall set me upon a rock. And did you notice what David said here in verse 7? God, I have been compassed about again with the songs of Your deliverance. God, I can't help but sing now about Your songs of Your deliverance of my sin. I wonder if David wrote any song at all during those months and months when he was an unrepentant. unforgiven child of God trying to hide his sin. I doubt if he could write any song. I mean, how could you do that when you know God's chastisement is upon you, that you're far from Him? When you're groaning in your misery and you're just aching all day long and there's no vitality in your soul, you can't produce songs like that. You can't sing them, let alone write them. By the way, since songs of deliverance, songs about God's forgiving grace and mercy and restoration burst out of him once he got right with God. I think it's very clear that music has moral consequences. It's very clear. When the soul is living in sin, the music of God is not in the heart. Other songs may be in the heart, songs confirming of sin, songs sung by those far from God. About the glories of sin, those can be in the heart. Music produces effect in the life. Music has moral effect. And he was singing here music that, because he was right with God, had a new and wonderful effect on him that it didn't have when he wasn't right with God. And now this forgiven man becomes an instructor of us. Verse 8, I will instruct thee and teach thee in the way which thou shalt go. I will guide you with my eye. I will show you what it was like as an unrepentant child of God. I will show you what it was like when I was living in a strange land, unbecoming to a man of God. Let me tell you about it. Let me keep you from the miseries that I experienced. This is a song of invitation that we would not follow where he went. This is an appeal. This is an instruction from a man who had been where no child of God should ever have to go. David understood what stubborn and willful sinners like himself were. He described himself as he describes any of us who are willfully Walking apart from our Lord He said when we do that, we're like the horse or the mule verse 9 that has no understanding and We're so rebellious That we have to have a bit and a bridle to hold us in So we don't do harm Stubborn like a mule, incapable of understanding, unwilling to come to the one who owns us. Do you know? My wife and I've had horses in the past. She particularly loves horses. Our daughter loves horses. Most girls love horses. And I enjoyed them okay. But you know what happened? When my wife or my daughter would go out to the pasture and would call their horse's name, the horse would come running and want to have his head scratched. A horse in submission to its owner wants to be with that owner and wants affection from that owner. But he said, a horse that's not in control, a rebellious horse, is of a different sort. The last stanza, verses 10 and 11, says this, spared and glad are the upright in heart. Verses 10 and 11, many sorrows shall be to the wicked, but he that trusteth in the Lord, mercy shall compass him about. Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, ye righteous, and shout for joy, all ye that are upright in heart. David said, When you're right with God, you spare yourself many sorrows, pains and grief of wickedness. He was speaking from personal knowledge. We read about that earlier in this psalm. David pleads with them to exchange their sorrow. For mercy. For God's loving kindness. He said upright hearts. want others to know the Savior's pardon that makes it possible to have such a heart. Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, ye righteous, and shout for joy, all you that are upright in heart. Psalm 107.2, let the redeemed of the Lord say so. It's natural. It's expected. You don't have to try. You just do it. You're so glad. You want everybody to know that They can have these loving kindnesses of God just like you have when they get right with God. You don't want them to miss out. You don't want them to live in misery of life. They boast of this new condition. It's entirely of Him that they get to enjoy it. And they want everybody to know that they can be also made straight in heart by the mercies of God. As we face this week, my prayer is the whole week will be a week of invitation. The kind of invitation that this psalm is. To people who love God but aren't right with God, to come clean with God. And I pray that as the week goes by, every service will be one of conviction and every one will be one of invitation whether one formally is given or not. But it's always an invitation to any of us who sit under the sound of God to taste and see that the Lord is gracious. I want us by our response to choose in consideration of verses 1 through 4 to be a very happy man and not a blighted man. In consideration of verses 5 and 6, to respond by choosing forgiveness of God instead of judgment of God. In consideration of verses 8 and 9, to respond to choose to heed and not to harden. As some in this room have done for so many services for so many years, just get harder. And in verses 10 and 11, in consideration of those to choose a life surrounded with God's mercies and not a life surrounded by sorrows. Our response will have everything to do with whether this week brings to us what God intends for us to have. I am not going to give an invitation this morning of a public sort. I want this week to be a week of invitation where service after service, God the Holy Spirit speaks and speaks, and we respond and respond. So when it's all over, we'll know blessings that are unprecedented in our lives. And we can be people that God pours out His joys to. He wants to do it. Why would we not have it so?