Amen. Good morning, Agape. God is good. Amen. Amen. I'm going to read from the book of Psalms, chapter 139. I'll be reading from the New King James Version. Word of God reads, Oh, Lord, you have searched me and known me. You know my sitting down and my rising up. You understand my thought of far off. You comprehend my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. For there is not a word on my tongue, but behold, O Lord, you know it all together. You have hedged me behind and before and laid your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me. It is high. I cannot attain it. Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence? If I ascend into heaven, you are there. If I make my bed in hell, behold, you are there. If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me and your right hand shall hold me. If I say, surely the darkness shall fall on me. Even the night shall be light about me. Indeed, the darkness shall not hide from you. but the night shines as the day. The darkness and the light are both the light to you. For you form my inward parts. You covered me in my mother's womb. I will praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Marvelous are your works, and that my soul knows very well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in secret and skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Your eyes saw my substance being yet unformed, And in your book, they were written, the days fashioned for me, when as yet there were none of them. How precious also are your thoughts to me, O God. How great is the sum of them. If I should count them, they would be more in number than the sand. When I awake, I am still with you. Oh, that you would slay the wicked, O God. Depart from me, therefore, you bloodthirsty men. For they speak against you wickedly. Your enemies take your name in vain. Do I not hate them, O Lord, who hate you? And do I not loathe those who rise up against you? I hate them with perfect hatred. I count them my enemies. Search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me and know my anxieties, and see if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. Alright, let's pray. Father, on that day when the trumpet sounds, and the eastern sky lights up, and You appear, and we're all taken up together in the air, and the dead in Christ are raised, and we receive our new bodies, and we see You for the first time face to face, as we just sang, in a moment we'll be like You. I've sung that song for years and I've known that truth but just some reason today it just really struck me. What an incredible thing that I will be like you. It just seems impossible to imagine. I'm trying to imagine what would it be like for me to suddenly be like you and I just can't picture it. And yet you promise it and I know it's true and it's a staggering promise to consider and so I pray Lord that you would help us consider it this morning. Because this passage where David asks you to search him, the purpose of it is to take the next step towards being like you. We can actually have a piece of this great promise even now. And I ask that you would move by your spirit in our hearts this morning to desire that. Teach us how to pray this prayer in Psalm 139, 23, and 24. We pray this in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. The only thoughts that God has about you are true ones, right? And so if you want to be near God, if you want to draw close to Him, walk with Him, and have close fellowship with Him, you can only do that if you adopt His way of thinking if you join him in his way of thinking about you and he God's way of thinking about you Deals only in reality Which means we cannot be near him or have fellowship with him if we're living in a fantasy world If I'm believing things about myself that are not true Then I'm living in a world. That's not the same world that God lives in And God will not join me in my fantasy world. If I want to be close to Him, I'm going to have to join Him. I'm going to have to let go of my fantasy and join Him in reality. I have to wake up from whatever dream world I'm in and come back to reality if I want to draw near to God. The problem comes when I don't know what reality is, what the truth about my own heart actually is, which happens. Jeremiah 17 9 says, The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? And in 1 Corinthians 4.4 it says, my conscience is clear, but that doesn't make me innocent, it's the Lord who judges me. My assessment about myself could be wrong. Proverbs 21.2 says, all a man's ways seem right to him, but the Lord weighs the heart. And Proverbs 28.26, he who trusts in his own heart is a fool. David was a guy who had a pretty good grasp of his own heart. He understood the sin in his own life probably better than most. And yet even David had to cry out to God, search me, expose what's in there. The last four weeks we've been studying through Psalm 139 and we come this morning to the last two verses. Verse 23, search me, O God, and know my heart. Test me and know my anxious thoughts and see if there's any offensive way in me and lead me in the way everlasting. Now if you go back to verse one of the Psalm, you see how it started out. He started the whole Psalm by saying, O Lord, you have searched me and you have known me. And now at the end of the Psalm, David asks God, search me and know me. God has already done it and he's already doing it why ask him to do it and The answer that question is what David is asking for at the end of the psalm is different from what? Happened at the beginning of the psalm. It's a different kind of searching back in verse 1 The purpose of the searching was to show us how much interest God takes in us. He's searching you He knows everything you you're down sitting you're uprising everything you do everywhere you go. He's interested in that He's watching and that's a wonderful comforting truth Now at the end of this Psalm, David is asking for something else. The purpose of this searching is to reveal hidden sin in David's heart to David. David wants to see, he's saying, God search me and then show me the results. I wanna know. And I get all that from verse 24 where he says, see if there's any offensive way in me and lead me in the way everlasting. David wants the sin in his heart to be corrected. If God searched David's heart and found sin but never, revealed it to David, that means nothing happened, right? Because God already knew about the sin. So nothing has happened unless he reveals it to David. That's his desire. If you go to the doctor for an annual checkup, and he runs all kinds of tests, and he gets the test results back, and he's looking, hmm, oh, ooh, my goodness, oh, wow, good night, jeepers. And then, okay, and then he puts it away, and then says, well, see you next year, and walks out. That doesn't do you any good, right? The whole point is for him to tell you. And that's what David wants. So the last two verses of this Psalm, David is saying, show me the test results. Verse one, searching was for David's comfort. Verse 23, searching is for David's information so that he can find out the sin in his life. Now, why would he pray that? Isn't that kind of a morbid thing to pray? I mean, I just want to discover information about what's wrong inside me. Why pray a prayer like that? Three reasons that he gives us in this text. First, we pray this because we need our sin to be exposed because it's like a disease. Left untreated, it will harm us. It will do damage. All sin causes harm, including unknown sin. If you commit a sin in ignorance, you don't bear as much responsibility because you don't know what you're doing, but still, there's damage that's done. All sin does harm. If it didn't, there'd be no reason for David to pray this prayer, right? Why would David ask God to expose what's hidden if it's harmless? It's not harmless. David knew that sin is like a disease. You catch it in the early stages and it's easier to kill, but the longer it remains undetected, the more damage it does. And that's easy enough to observe just in our personal relationships, right? We know that unknown sin can still cause harm. You know suppose. I'm extremely rude in my dealings with people. I'm just rude to everybody I meet, but I don't realize it Well, it still does harm whether I realize it or not if I'm sarcastic with people and I'm always hurting everybody But I don't I don't I don't know that I'm doing that that still causes harm if I tell lies I steal things, but I don't think it's wrong because I was always you know I just thought well as long as it's little it doesn't matter if I use foul language And I think it's okay because I've never read Ephesians 5 obviously those things are still doing harm even though I'm oblivious and I'm acting in ignorance. They harm the people around me. And not only the people around me, they harm me. The sin inside us does damage to our own soul. In fact, in many cases, we act in ignorance and the ignorance is actually caused by the sin. Our ignorance very often is a willful ignorance. I don't know that a certain thing is sin or I don't realize that I have that sin in me because I don't want to know. my eyes have been blinded to it. Or I've neglected some things in the scriptures that I could have learned but didn't. It's not unusual for people in the Bible to be rebuked for their ignorance, right? Because their ignorance is their own fault. It's not always the case, but very often it is. They don't know the truth because they're unwilling to accept the truth. So even our unknown sins cause harm. Harm to other people, harm to ourselves, and worst of all, harm to the reputation of God. Last week we studied verses 19 to 22 all about how outraged we should be about the sins of the wicked because they dishonor God's name and that should bother us. And if I'm outraged at them dishonoring God's name, how much more should I be outraged at me dishonoring God's name? Isn't it true that my sin dishonors God more than the sins of unbelievers? Because, I mean, it's one thing for the king's enemies to war against him, but when the king's own children take up arms against him, that's the most egregious dishonor. So the secret unknown sins in my heart are constantly doing violence to the majesty and the name of God, and it's got to stop. That's intolerable. It's got to stop. So why would I pray this prayer? Because of the harm of sin. The harm it does to me and to others and to the name of God. That's one reason. Another reason is because of the hiddenness of sin. I've got something inside me that can do harm and I can't detect it on my own. It's hidden. I mean, if you think you can easily just do a quick inventory of your heart and figure out the extent of your sin problem in your heart, think again. It's not that easy. So much of our sin is hard to detect. It's hidden, especially the internal things that cause the external actions. which is the root issue with sin. You understand that, right? Notice that David doesn't even ask God to search his actions or his words. He says, search my what? Heart and my thoughts. David understood. Actions are just symptoms of the real disease. Trying to deal with a sin problem at the level of your actions is like trying to deal with a sinus infection by wiping your nose with a Kleenex. It doesn't get to the disease. It's useless. It's so useless if you have a sin in your life to say, just say, I've got to stop doing this action. You've got to go inside, beneath the symptoms, down to the disease itself, which is always, always located in the heart. Always. All sin originates in the heart. Not 80% of sin, not 99.9% of sin. 100% all sin originates in the heart. That's Matthew 15 19 for out of the heart come evil thoughts murder adultery sexual immorality theft false testimony slander You name it any sin the problem is deep down inside That's why David has to pray and say God expose it because it's not something that's observable to the human eye Your your Body and your soul. I mean it all works together kind of like kind of like a computer with software You know if you have a computer The longer you own a computer, inevitably, over time, it starts to bog down, right? It just gets slower and slower. If it gets too bad, it goes too slow, finally we'll take it in and we'll have it run some kind of scan. We'll try and figure out what process is in there that's slowing things down. But it's not immediately visible. You can't just look at the machine and see what's wrong. All we know is this thing's not working like it used to. Our souls are like that. We pick up these hidden sins and they run in the background and create all kinds of problems inside us, right? Like a computer virus and maybe our desire for scripture just isn't as passionate as it used to be, or our love for the saints is kind of patchy, you know? Or our ability to trust God in some area of life is just sort of freezing up. We try to put stuff in practice, we learn, we read our Bible, we learn something, learn something new in a sermon, we want to go and put it into practice and all we get is a little hourglass on our screen, you know, it's just not going, it's not working. And by praying this prayer in verses 23 and 24, David is, basically what he's doing is hitting control-alt-delete, right? You know what that is? Pops up a little window on your computer that shows you which processes are not working so that you can hit end process, right? Get that things out of there, kill it. That's what David wants here. He's saying, God, expose what's wrong, deep down inside, so I can see what's causing the problems. One of the most difficult kinds of sins to detect is attitude sins, right? The sins in the way that you think about things, the way you feel about things. Very difficult to pick up on those sins. You have some sin, you know, this is what's behind most besetting sins. You've got something in your life and it just gets you time and time again. year after year you're fighting against this thing and you keep failing in that area, can't get any victory. In many cases, the reason you can't get lasting victory is because even though you claim to believe that that thing is sinful, in your attitudes, your attitude toward that sin, it doesn't really seem sinful to you. It doesn't feel sinful, evil to you. And so when your soul isn't really convinced that this thing is actually evil, then at the moment of temptation you're going to tend to have the rationalizations are going to sound plausible to you and you'll fall for them. And so we need God to search us and reveal wrong attitudes and wrong perspectives and wrong affections and wrong desires and all these hard to detect diseases deep inside us. And not only are these kinds of sins hard to detect, But once you finally do detect them, and you do discover them, and you deal with them, you repent, you get it out of your life, you get victory over it, new ones are constantly popping up, right? So David says, God, you've searched me. Search me again and again. Never stop until the day I die. Keep on searching me with unrelenting, never-ending scrutiny. Why? Because my flesh never stops creating new rebellious modes of disobedience. My heart is an idle factory and my flesh never runs out of new ideas of ways to sin and so what I need is not a yearly checkup. What I need is more like antivirus software running 24-7 picking this stuff up. I need help in discovering my own sin because it's hidden in my inner man and because there's new sin arising all the time. And then thirdly, because the sin itself has a darkening effect on the mind like I mentioned before. So the more you indulge in a sin, the more blinded and confused you get about that sin. The longer a person lives in a particular sin, the more it starts to feel like he needs that sin in order to be happy. And once your soul thinks it needs something in order to be happy, it's going to go after that thing. And what will happen is your soul will jimmy the data around, the facts around, so that your mind will always end up coming to the conclusion that this thing is okay. If admitting the truth about my sin will mean I have to give it up, and I don't want to give it up, then my mind will just, every time it finds information that points to this thing being evil, it'll just take a detour around that information. My mind won't accept it. Sin has a darkening effect, and not only a darkening effect, but also a hardening effect. that makes your heart more stubborn and less willing to change. Hebrews 3.13, but encourage one another daily as long as it's called today so that none of you may be hardened by sin's deceitfulness. It can harden you. And add to all that the fact that we've got an enemy who's really working hard at deceiving us into thinking our sin is okay. And he's got a whole culture in his lap and he's got them all on board trying to deceive us. And so the whole culture around us is continually coming up with new names for sins to make them sound not so sinful, right? Isn't that what the world does? They rename everything in the Bible to come out in terms that are kind of not moral issues. For example, the new term for grumbling and complaining. I mean, grumbling and complaining, that sounds like a bad thing. New word for that, venting. Right, venting, that's not, there's no moral component to that. It doesn't sound sinful. I mean, it's just like, who could be faulted for just letting off some exhaust, right? The new word for lack of self-control, compulsive, right? Who could be faulted for just being compelled? What shame is there in being compelled? Sins of worry, sins of fretting, new name for that. I'm just stressed, right? No moral issue there. You put too much weight on a bridge and it becomes stress. That's not the bridge's fault, right? Cowardice becomes insecurity. Discontent becomes coping. Enslaving yourself to a sin becomes addiction. Instead of fornicating, people are just living together. I mean, what could be better than things like living and togetherness, right? Nothing moral about it. See, Satan is the master deceiver and he's constantly working to deceive us into thinking that our sin really isn't evil. It's really not sin. And one of the main tools he uses is the culture around us. They're experts in making sin sound non-sinful. It's not sodomy. It's just being gay. So it's so easy for us to fall into self-deception about our sin. And it's never more true than in times where you're upset about the wicked. like David is in verses 19 to 22. Remember, that's the context. He's talking about how upset he is about the enemies of God. It's righteous anger, which is not sin. If I get angry because somebody hurts me or offends me, that's sinful. That's always sinful, selfish anger, always. Doesn't matter how extreme their offense is. If I'm mad because they're hurting me, that's always selfish, sinful anger. The only time my anger is righteous is if I'm upset, only upset because they're offending God. But if they're offending God, then it's appropriate for me to be angry. In fact, if I have zeal for God's name, I must be angry. That's a good thing. However, even if my anger is righteous, godly zeal and good anger, even then, it so easily pushes me into sin. It's so easy to fall into sin. For example, suppose I turn on the radio, I hear some false teacher who's leading people astray, teaching a false gospel, and he's slamming this door of heaven in people's faces and causing all kinds of problems in people's spiritual lives, and I think about all the damages he's doing to people, and it just makes me angry. Is that righteous anger? Yes, it is. But then at that moment, say Tracy walks into the room, and because I'm angry, I'm short with her or harsh with her, or the way that I talk, and because I'm in a bad mood. Is that righteous? No, that's sin. That's sin. Just that fast, my righteous anger turns into sin. Or maybe I'm angry towards that false teacher and so I start looking down my nose at them like I'm better than them. Just like that, my righteous anger turns into sins of pride and arrogance. James 1.20 says, Man's anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires. I think that applies even to righteous anger. There is a place for righteous anger. We saw that last week. We have to have zeal for God's name. We have to vigorously oppose evil, and we should do so. Our emotions should be involved when we oppose it, and that's good. But in those times when we're doing that, we need to be on the alert, especially in those times. We need to be on the alert because it's so easy for the enemy, when we're upset, to shove us into sin. So it makes perfect sense that immediately after verses 19 to 22, David would Turn to God and say, search my heart and see if, expose if there's any hidden sin. Everything David said in verses 19-22 is good and holy and righteous. However, he knows he's in dangerous territory. Anytime you have any feelings of hostility towards another human being, you need to pray. That's a good time to pray, Psalm 139-23. Search me, O God, and know my heart. Test me and see if there's any. Test my anxious thoughts. Specifically, he says, my anxious thoughts. See, it's when your thoughts are anxious, when you have anxiety and you're worked up, that's when you really need to pray because anxiety-ridden thoughts are just a hotbed for breeding sin. So he says, God, my zeal for your name is making me upset at these people who are ignoring your word and dishonoring your name. I'm irritated at them, I'm frustrated, and so search my heart and show me which parts of this is righteous and which parts are sinful. The righteous anger and the sinful anger so often can just blend together with such undetectable mingling that you can't spot it without a special work of God's grace. So we need to pray this prayer. So why does David pray a prayer like this? Because sin is hidden and hard to detect and because this hidden sin is so harmful and damaging. That's two reasons. Now one more, and this is the best reason of all to pray this prayer. David asked God to reveal if there's any wicked way in him, so that David can not only discover this wicked way in him, but abandon it and exchange it for the everlasting way, a much better way. Verse 24, see if there's any offensive way in me and lead me in the way everlasting. There's two ways, the offensive one, the one that's in me, and the everlasting way that's not within me. And he's saying I need to exchange the one for the other. The word way, Anytime you read in the Old Testament, you see the word way. That refers to the path you take through life, the way that you operate, the way that you live your life, to put it in the vernacular, the way you roll. That's what this means, this word way. You can't get on that everlasting way of rolling as long as you're on the wrong way of rolling. And so the greatest reason of all to try to discover the sin in your heart, the hidden sin in your heart, is so that you can give up the wrong way and be led in the everlasting way. See, when you get caught up in a sin, it's very hard to find your way out of that. It becomes a maze. It's like that neighborhood that's just on the east side of Holly from the Montoya's house. I don't know if you've ever gone over there. You try to go to Montoya's, you take a wrong turn and I think it's that place called Sky Lake Ranch or something like that. You get into that neighborhood, you better have a full tank of gas because it's impossible to find your way out of there. Every street you turn on just leads to a dead end or around to some other street you've already been on. You'll drive around and around. The whole neighborhood is one giant tangled mass of twisted ways leading nowhere and there's only one way out of there and it's impossible to find. That neighborhood is a great example of what sin is like. When you get into sin, every way you take looks promising, ends up being a dead end, right? And there's only one through street, one way that goes somewhere good, and you're not gonna be able to find that way on your own. You have to be led there. In fact, you can't even discover it. It's interesting, David doesn't say, Let me discover the everlasting way. Let me find the everlasting way. He didn't say that. He said, lead me. He doesn't ask for a map. He doesn't ask for a GPS. He says, God, take me personally by the hand and lead me. Why? Why do I have to be led in this way? Why can't I just discover it? The reason is because of the crookedness of my own heart. See, the offensive path, the bad path, the wrong path, that's not just a path that exists out there in life somewhere. That's something that exists inside me. Look at verse 24. See if there's any offensive way in me. See, the sinful offensive wrong way, the reason I roll the way I roll in the sinful ways is because of something that's intrinsic to me. It's inside me. It doesn't just lure my heart. It's part of what I am. An everlasting way is not within me. That's outside of me. And so what I need is for a guide to come and take hold of my hand and pull me along away from the path that's inside me to a better everlasting way. And so we ask God to lead us out of our sin to the everlasting way because that way is so good. It's so much better than our way. It's the only way to true joy. And so it's worth any sacrifice to get on that road, any price. If that road, to get on that road that leads to the everlasting way, If it takes me through pain and suffering and sickness and sorrow and death and everything else, it's still worth it. It's worth it. Oh, that enough faith would well up in our hearts to where we would be able to believe that that way is better than my way. It's better because it's the only path to God's presence. See, no way is taken by itself. For a way to be taken, There either has to be an internal bent towards that way or an external leading in that way. And our natural bent is just like David's. It's towards the way of destruction. It's like David, we cry out to God and say, lead me in the path that's the only path that's not a dead end. So is this a morbid prayer? Not in the slightest. David is praying for something of exceeding value. Look what he's asking for. What would be morbid is if David would have prayed for what he deserved, right? If he said, search me, O God, know my heart, try me, test my anxious thoughts, find the sin in me, and when you find all the sin and wickedness in me, God, slap me across the mouth. You know, that would be morbid. But instead of asking for what he deserves, what does David ask for? Look what he asks for. He asks for grace. He said, God, once you find all this sin in me and all this wickedness in me, overlook it. and forgive it. And instead of punishing me for it and giving me what I deserve, just give me the greatest gift there is. What an outrageous prayer! I mean, who does he think he is praying a prayer like that? Audacious! It sounds like an outrageous prayer, but actually it's exactly the prayer God wants us to pray. God is fine with us praying that. We can do that. He's fine with us because that's right in line with what He's already thinking about us, what He wants. When God searches His children, when He tests our heart, when He seeks out sin in our hearts, it's never so that He can condemn us or punish us. That's not why He does it. He searches us to expose what's in us, destroying us, so that it can stop destroying us. So this seemingly outrageous prayer is something we're allowed to ask God for because of his unbounded mercy for his children. We can ask for this, as outrageous as it sounds. Think for a second, what did David just get done asking in the previous paragraph? He said, God, kill the wicked. I hate them, the wicked, you know, they punish them, they deserve to die because of their sin. And then he says, search my heart and expose my sin. If God searches David's heart, And he finds a whole lot of wickedness in sin. Doesn't that put David in the category of the wicked? No. No, not at all. If God searches your heart, if you're a believer and God searches your heart and finds wickedness there, that doesn't put you in the category of the wicked. There's still a distinction. You read any psalm, there's always a distinction between the wicked and David, even when David is in sin. Why? David had a fundamentally different attitude about his sin than the wicked have about their sin. See, this is the difference between a child of God and an enemy of God. We understand that the thing that makes you a child of God and not an enemy of God is faith, right? We understand salvation comes through faith. When you trust God enough to follow His way, that changes your attitude towards sin. It has an effect the way you think about sin. love their sin and they want to keep it hidden so that they won't have to give it up. David hated his sin and wanted it exposed so that he could give it up. The difference between the wicked and the righteous is not that they sin and we don't sin. The difference is they love their sin and cling to it. We hate our sin and repent of it. Only, I mean, one of the ways that you can tell that you're a true believer is the desire to get rid of your sin, right? The hatred of sin. This is something people ask me all the time, how do I know for sure if I'm saved? I don't know, I've got doubts. I don't know if my conversion was genuine and if I'm a true believer and how can I know for sure? And one of the best ways, one of the best tests is this, the mark of a genuine believer is somebody who hates his or her sin. And you'll pay whatever price to get rid of it. You know, a lot of times people come in here I tell you, this is a mark of true believers. I see this in the church, and it is unusual. It doesn't match what you see in the world. This desire to have your sin exposed, I do not see that in the world. I see it all the time in the church. People come in here, a lot of times I'll preach a sermon, they'll come up after me and say, oh, Daryl, that sermon just grinded me to powder. And they mean it as a compliment. That's their way of saying, hey, nice sermon. Great sermon, pastor, I feel like I got two black eyes and a bloody nose, keep it up. What's wrong with us? Why are we like that? Why are we masochists? We just like pain, emotional pain and guilt? No, we love a convicting sermon because we hate our sin so much we're thrilled when it gets exposed so that we can deal with it. We gladly go under the knife of the great surgeon if that's what it takes to get rid of this stuff. And so a lot of times people come and they'll say, oh man, I went to two or three churches. I didn't want to stay there because I'm never convicted and I come here and I'm convicted. We're thrilled when a sermon is convicting because it gives us the ability to take one more step closer to being like Him, which is our goal. We want righteousness. We crave righteousness. If you don't have that, if you don't have a compelling desire to be more holy and more righteous and more pure, that is a good reason to question whether you're genuinely saved. The desire for righteousness in the heart of a true child of God is so extreme, we will suffer in order to get it. Look at what David says. Have you ever thought about what David actually says here? He says, search me, O God, know my heart, that's one thing, but then he says, try me, test me, and know my anxious thoughts. He's asking to be tried. What's the primary way that our faith is tested by God? Suffering, right? The furnace that puts our hearts to the test is the fire of suffering. That's when you find out where your sin is, right? Isn't it when you have a lot of pain or experience a great loss that sinful motives and sinful attitudes bubble up to the top and they become exposed? Can you see that? David is so intent on wanting to discover his hidden sin in his life, he goes so far as to ask God for trials. We test ourselves in the fires of our own Self-examination and things come out pure gold, but but they still need to go through God's hotter furnace of scrutiny to verify that That it's really gold or to burn off the hidden dross. And so we pray for that That's an amazing thing because this realize this is hidden sin Have you ever gotten to the point where you you have some sin in your life? And you're just so defeated and discouraged and you're sick and tired of it And finally you just cry out to God's like God take this away get it out of my life I don't want it anymore. I don't care what you have to do. Just smash me to pieces, whatever, trial, anything, just get it out. Have you ever gotten to that point where you're that desperate to get rid of a sin? That's where David is here, but it's not a particular sin. He doesn't even know about the sin. He's just saying that about sin he doesn't see. He's saying, God, reveal my unknown sin. Send me through the furnace just to expose it. And if it means my heart is just gonna have to be racked with pain, or something's going to happen to me that's going to cause me sorrow every day for the rest of my life. I don't care. Whatever it takes, expose this sin. I want it out of my life. I want it exposed. I want it dealt with. That's the heart of a true believer. And it's an awesome thing to pray. I mean, this is a fearful thing to ask for. We need to realize what we're saying. This isn't something we do lightly. We sing that little chorus like we did at the retreat, and we're going to do here again in a minute. Search me, O God. We get to that line, this part, try me and know my thoughts. That's not something we should sing lightly. That's a huge, realize what you're asking for. Realize what you're asking God to do. Don't ask God to try you and test you and then freak out a week from now when he answers the prayer. Some of you might be going through some real hardship right now and who knows, maybe that's God answering the prayer of when we sang this song back at the retreat. It's a scary thing to pray, but we pray it anyway because we hate our sins so much and we long for righteousness so much. And if all that just strikes you as extreme and that's just a shock to your system, you're like, what on earth? I've never heard of anything like this. If that's new to you, it could be that you have been influenced by a generation of preachers who just keep constantly saying, God loves you just the way you are. Or you sing the song, you know, come just as you are to worship. We have a generation of come as you are type churches, right? That's the new fad today, come as you are. Jesus loves you just the way. Now, does Jesus love you just the way you are? Yes, absolutely yes. But he doesn't always love the fact that you are that way. He loves you just the way you are, but he loves you way too much to leave you the way you are. And I don't want to disparage every church that has that slogan. Some of them don't mean I mean, some churches, when they say, come as you are, all they mean by that is, look, you don't have to clean up your act before coming to God. And that's all they mean. Is that true? Absolutely. That's right on. You do not have to clean up your life before coming to God. You can't. However, if you're not coming to God in order to have him clean up your life, then you're not really coming to God. And we don't ever come to God just as we are to worship. We repent of our sins and prepare our hearts before ever approaching the holy presence of God in worship. I'd be fine if a church had a slogan like that, but they added another line. Like if they said, come as you are, stay to be changed. I think that would be a good slogan for a church. Come as you are, stay to be changed. But all too often the implied message is just come as you are and stay as you are. Jesus loves you just the way you are, therefore no need to make any changes. And that is a message that people will pay money to hear. There are millions of people who will crowd into churches to hear that message. They want a church that will affirm you're just fine with God, you don't need to change anything, you don't need to give up any sin, you don't need to repent of anything. And so that message is being preached and we have been bombarded with that so many times for so long that it might actually be a jolt to our system to read this and discover that the heart of a true follower of Christ is one who hates his own sin so much that he'll pray God, try me, send me through the fire to expose my sin so that I can get it out of my life. And so the reason we pray this prayer is because our sin is damaging, it's deadly, we hate it, we want to be rid of it at all costs, but it's hidden so deep down inside we can't detect it and so we need God's help to expose it so that we can forsake it and be led by God's hand into the everlasting way. That's why we pray the prayer. Second question, that's why we pray the prayer. Let me ask you this, how does God answer this prayer? If I ask God, God, search me, reveal the sin in my life, and he says, okay, how do I get the answer? How do I find out what the sin is? Is he just gonna send me an email? Is it just gonna pop into my head? Oh, this is my sin. I mean, how is he gonna answer this prayer? How does God bring us to the point of being conscious of sin? The answer to that is in Romans 3.20. It is through the law that we become conscious of sin. That's the purpose of God's law. God will tell us the test results of this scan the same way he tells us everything. This is always the way he communicates. Through his word. Doesn't James 1.23 say that the word is like a mirror that shows me my sin? If you want to be able to discover your hidden sin in your heart, you've got to strive to have a deeper and ever deepening understanding of the commands of God in His Word. The Bible teaches us what righteousness is, what sin is, and we study that in the Word. And the less acquainted you are with what He says in Scripture, the more easily you'll be deceived. So we've got to have a thorough understanding of the law of God to get the answer to this prayer. And that requires more than just academic knowledge, right? We want to learn it in order to live it, to apply it. That's when you find out where your sin is, and when you start to apply it. There are some people, they just study the Bible, study the Bible all the time, and all they're doing is just gathering academic information so that they can win a debate, or impress somebody with their knowledge, or teach something, or write something, or whatever. But they're not really putting it into practice, and so they never discover the sin in their life. I mean, they're the kind of people, they're listening to a sermon the whole time, and they're taking notes, and they're just thinking about, oh, all these various people that really need to hear this message. And they're never on the list. They have all kinds of ideas about what's wrong with everybody else but not about their own hearts. We're just so much better at spotting specks in everybody else's eye and incapable of spotting logs in our own eye, right? This is the way we are. So we pray for God to reveal our sin to us and then we search the scriptures to pinpoint exactly where we've departed from his way. And his spirit opens our eyes. He answers our prayer by opening our eyes and enlightening us to see, aha, here's an area where I've strayed. See that? And when I say pinpoint the specific ways, that's crucial. We need to be specific, not just general. It's not a good thing to just sort of be down on yourself in general. You ever been around people like that? They walk around under just like a cloud of generalized guilt. Oh, I'm just a bad person. I'm just a crumb, you know, whatever, and I deserve punishment. And you ask them, okay, what specific command in scripture did you disobey? And they can't give you a clear answer. When a person talks about being a terrible sinner, but he can't put his finger on any specific sin, it could be that he's not really genuinely concerned about fighting against sin in his life. Because if we're really concerned about sin, we're going to take the time to figure out what are the specifics of my sin so that I know what I'm fighting against. So we look to the scriptures for the answer. And one of the most important ways that God opens our eyes to the truth when we're looking to the Word of God for answers is the counsel of the saints around us. People, listen to what people say. When there's something in your life that all the most godly, spiritual people around you are all saying, hey, that's sin, that's sin, but it doesn't seem like sin to you, you're convinced it's okay, that's a major red flag. If you find yourself keeping certain things secret, because the folks at church, they just wouldn't understand. You know, pastor, small group, prayer group, accountability, they just wouldn't understand. No matter how much I explained it to them, they wouldn't understand. They're locked into these traditions. If that's ever the case, maybe the reason that people wouldn't understand is because They haven't fallen for the same rationalizations that you've fallen for because they can see right through those because they're not captivated by the sin that you're captivated by. And so we need to listen to the counsel of godly people around us. Listen. Now, I'm not saying that you just automatically accept whatever they say. I'm definitely not saying that. Don't do that. If you cannot see for yourself in God's Word that this thing is sin, then don't accept it. If you search your own heart as honestly as you can, and you don't see that sin, or you don't see this command in God's word, don't accept it until you can see it for yourself. But, if all the most spiritual people in your life are telling you this thing is sin, or they would be saying it if they knew about it, if that's the case, then maybe you need to go back to the scriptures and pray for God to give you a more honest heart, and say, search me, O God, and pray this prayer, and ask Him to reveal what's hidden. All right, so we've learned why we need to pray this prayer and how God will, how to hear God's answer to the prayer. Now what? Now what do we do? We say, okay, God, search me, know my heart, expose my sin. And he says, okay, here it is. And we say the scripture, we find, okay, all right, there's one, there's one, there's one. Now I know about all the sin in my life. Now what do I do? I mean, that can be so discouraging and so crippling that You feel like you're just going to collapse under the weight of feelings of guilt and regret. And so your heart just starts to collapse on itself with self-condemnation. And then the devil wants to join in and he's condemning you and kicking you while you're down. And then all the people around you are jumping on the bandwagon. They want to condemn you too. And everything in you just wants to run away and just hide. What do you do? Don't run away and hide. Don't hide from your sin. Bring it right out into the open. Confess it to God freely, without any excuses. If other people are involved, confess it to them. Ask their forgiveness. Ask God's forgiveness. And when you've done that, then trust that the punishment that Jesus suffered on the cross was enough to cover the guilt of your sin. Are you gonna fight against it? Yes. You wanna overcome this? Yes. And we got all kinds of things that we do to try to help with particular sins. How do you get victory in these sins? But from now until you have victory, you confess that thing and then you trust God. Okay, the punishment that Jesus suffered for this sin is adequate. And when all the shouts of condemnation rise up from the devil and from your enemies and from everybody else and even from your own heart, you know what happens to those shouts? Everybody's trying to tell God, this person is condemned. You know what happens to those shouts? They run, they smash into the iron wall of Romans 8, 1. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. None. There is no condemnation. Next time the devil starts trying to remind you of your past, just remind him of his future. He's the one that's condemned, not you. And if your heart keeps trying to pipe up with self Condemnation, just your own heart just starts condemning you. 1 John 3, 19, this then is how we set our hearts at rest in his presence whenever our hearts condemn us for God is greater than our hearts. His judgment trumps your judgment, it trumps the devil's judgment, it trumps the world's judgment, it trumps everybody's judgment. His judgment is the only thing that matters. So instead of wallowing in self-condemning guilt and regret, we look up from the disaster of our own evil way and we see there the hand of our Father extended down to us and we take it and we follow Him and He leads us out of the maze of the dead end ways of sin into the one eternal everlasting way that leads to Him and we find that way, the way that we thought was the pathway to happiness and that we had to have in order to be happy, turns out it was a prison of dead ends and a crushing burden and our hearts swell with joy that now we have been set free from that. That's the prayer. Any questions about the sermon? Okay, Joyce. I think the question is, what if you're counseling somebody, their heart is hard, and they say, I can't see this in God's word, I don't see it in my heart, it's not there. But you know it's there, you know for a fact it's there, then what should you do? And the only thing I can say is just what I said in the sermon, that is, ask them to look again with an honest heart and keep looking. But you don't ever want them to just defer to you. You don't ever want them to just say, well, you're the expert, I'm not, so I'll just go with what you say. We can never have our convictions based on another person. We have to have them always based on the Word of God. And so if they can't see it in Scripture, then they shouldn't do it. They shouldn't do it unless they can see it. And if they do it without seeing it in Scripture, that doesn't solve the problem. They need to do what they do in response to what God says, not in response to what anybody else says. So there are times when, there's been times in my life when everyone around me said, this thing is wrong, or this sin is in your life, and I couldn't see it. I tried, as honestly as I could, I got on my knees, I tried to see it, and I couldn't see it. And I honestly believe that in those times, God would not want me. I do remember one time when I finally said, okay, I think they must be right. They've got to be right. All the most spiritual people in my life are saying one thing. They must be right. I must be wrong. I'll just go with what they say. I think I was wrong to do that. Because God will not put it out of your reach. He'll let you know. If you honestly want to know, even if you're self-deceived, God will lead you out of that if you honestly pray this Psalm 139. And so you just urge him to keep praying Psalm 139. Right. Well, that's why I said, if everyone is saying, if the spiritual people in your life are saying this is sin, and you don't see it, don't blow it off. That's a huge red flag. Go back to the scriptures, and with all the honesty you can muster, pray Psalm 139. Yeah. Jen? So, okay, good question. What do we do in a church discipline situation where, you know, I see, maybe you see the sin in someone else's life. It's crystal clear. It's not a judgment call. It's, there's no question, they're doing something that the Bible says not to do, and they say, you know, maybe they're committing adultery or something, and they say, yeah, I'm committing adultery, but I just don't see it's wrong. I think the Bible allows for that. And you say, no, it's wrong, and you try and show them from Scripture, and they just won't see it and won't see it. What do we do? We, as a church, I mean, they have a responsibility to do whatever they believe Scripture says. We, as a church, have a responsibility to do what Jesus told us to do in Matthew 18, and that is, if it's crystal clear the person's in sin, then you confront the person, and if they won't repent, you bring a couple others to verify that it's crystal clear. And so that's what the witnesses are for. So you bring the witnesses, one or two witnesses, and so then the group of you confront the person, and then the witnesses might say, wait a second, that's not so crystal clear. And so then you drop the matter. But if the witnesses verify, yeah, there's no question, this is sin. The Bible says not to do it, they're doing it, this is sin, no question. Then you take it even to another step, you have the whole church verify it. And then once the whole church verifies it, then if the person won't repent, then you would put them out. So they don't have to necessarily agree in order for church discipline to go forward. Okay, so if we have a greater experience of the indwelling Holy Spirit, why do we still have so much trouble with hidden sin? My guess is that we have far less trouble than they had. I'm guessing that in David's time it was far much harder to detect hidden sin. They just didn't have as much revelation, they didn't have the Holy Spirit inside them like we do. So believe it or not, I think we do have it better. But the heart is still desperately deceitful. The heart is still that way. Alright, so the relationship between the heart and the mind. And what do you go after first in dealing with sin? Do you try to deal with your thought processes or your affections and your desires and your inclinations? I'm not sure I would put a strict order. I think it's a cycle. My thoughts contribute to my affections. My affections contribute to my thoughts. And so it's kind of a swirl where I address some of this and that enables me to address more of the thoughts. Once I get my thoughts straightened out, that helps me address my affections a little more, which helps my thoughts straighten out more, and it kind of cycles up. And so I would say all of the components of the inner man, if you want a detailed study of how the various components of the inner man, your desires, your inclinations, your attitudes, your internal bents, your thoughts, and your emotions, how those fit together and how to diagnose each one of those for sin, I did a study of each one of those in scripture, and I found what does the Bible say about how to diagnose thought sins? And what does the Bible say about how to diagnose desire sins? And, you know, each one. And the results of that study are in the Wise Counsel book. So that book, Wise Counsel, is in our library. You can get on that. There's a whole chapter on diagnosing sin, and it breaks down each one of the parts of the inner man. So that might help. Yeah, yeah. So you have sin in your life, ongoing defeat with sin, and it causes you sorrow, and it should cause you sorrow. On the other hand, you have joy in your life, and you almost feel guilty about the joy you have in your life because it doesn't seem fitting to go with the sorrow that you also have at the same time. I think it's biblical to have both sorrow and joy going all the time, which is possible. We're complex beings with complex emotions. We're never 100% anything, right? And so there's always a measure of just about everything going on inside you all the time, and there's always some sorrow. If there's some sorrow somewhere in your life right now, raise your hand. Okay, if there's some joy somewhere in your life right now, raise your hand. Okay, see? So that's the way we are, that's the way God made us, that's the way God is. He simultaneously has joy and sorrow, doesn't he? And so that's possible. I think, though, two things I'll say about it. One, our joy should always be greater than our sorrow. I mean, there's moments when sorrow just is overwhelming, but generally speaking, we move through life with a joy that's greater than our sorrow. Because the victory is greater than our failure. The remedy is greater than the disease. So that's one thing. The other thing I'll say Our joy is greater than the world's joy because our sorrow is more painful than the world's sorrow. See, the world's sorrow, the world isn't capable of very profound joy because they only have superficial sorrow. I mean, their sorrow is superficial. I lost some money. I got sick. Some temporal, temporary thing. That's as sorrowful as they can get. And so the only joy they can have is if that stuff is reversed, right? But we're capable of huge sorrow. eternally horrible things, you know? And that we grieve, we sin against our master, the creator. I mean, that just, that's crushing, that's huge sorrow. And when that's turned around, we have joy that's more profound than anything the world could ever conceive of. So our joy is more profound because our sorrow is more profound. The reason, the thing that Tim was talking about there was, And when I left Creekside at the absolute bottom of my life, the most crushed I've ever been in sorrow over failure and sin and everything else, it was one of those times when I couldn't, I could barely open my Bible. I was paralyzed physically with emotional pain. It was the most grief I've ever experienced in my life. And my sister gave me a greeting card. And I'll never forget it. I'll never forget it. I'm sure you've probably all seen this painting. It's a well-known painting on this greeting card. It's that guy who, he's just kind of slumped like this, and Jesus is behind him holding him up. And in the guy's hand is a hammer. And he was just hammering a nail, Jesus, to the cross, and now he's crushed, and Jesus is holding him up. There's no words. It's just this picture. When she gave me that card, I looked at it, I think it came in the mail, I opened it up, I looked at it, and I think it's the only greeting card my sister's ever given me, but it literally took my breath away. I mean, I just, I looked at that thing, and it just struck me, and I've never, I mean, the sense of forgiveness and comfort and joy that came over me at that moment, I can't even put into words. And it's not like it's a new truth. I mean, I've known for some time, the idea that Jesus died for my sins and I was the one that caused his suffering, that wasn't new information to me in 2005. But he opened my eyes to see the truth of it, and the way that he opened my eyes was out of the pit of sorrow. There's just some glorious things about God that you just can't quite see until you're way down there. And then you can see why they're so glorious. And so I had joy at that moment that I doubt any unbeliever has ever experienced. Because I had sorrow right before that that I doubt any unbeliever has experienced. Good question. So you don't want to get to the point where you're inconsolable. You're so down on yourself for your sin that God tries to forgive you, and you're like, no, I don't want to hear it. I'm a worm, I'm a wretch. I don't deserve any favor right now yet, God. I still need to be punished some more. And you're like Rachel, weeping and refusing to be comforted in Scripture. We don't ever want to be like that, where we just want to wallow in our guilt, which there's some strange thing about guilt that makes you want to just stay in it for some reason. We don't want to do that. But on the other hand, we don't want to have the error being glib about our guilt and taking it so lightly that I'm just like, sorry Lord, please forgive me. Ah, now it's over, good. And we're good now and I'm back and we're not really taking it seriously. So how do you know when is it time to say, okay, I've wept enough. Time to get up and return to joy. It's okay to smile again. It's okay to laugh again. It's okay to pursue that again. When do you know that it's time? You know, that's not, I can't give you a black and white answer to that, but I'll tell you that in that period of my life that I just described, when I was in that deep sorrow, and I was just crushed under guilt, and I knew the Lord was displeased with me, and I could feel, it was the first time in my life I could feel His anger. Which, He'd probably been displeased with me plenty of times before that, I just didn't feel it, I wasn't alert enough to it, but at this time I felt it. And I knew He was displeased with me. And I can remember the moment when that just lifted and it was okay to have joy again. And the only thing I can say is, if God gives you, watch for indications that his anger has passed. For example, you open the Bible and he lets it feed your soul instead of just being print on a page. you walk out on your front porch and you smell the nice crisp air of fall and it, ah, this is nice, you know, and it just kind of, you're able to enjoy a good thing that you weren't yesterday able to enjoy. Or, you know, any, all these little gestures that God enables you to receive his expressions of love to you, it's like, okay, okay, God, I wouldn't have expected it this soon, but I'll take it, you know, That's kind of the indicators that I use. So you get somebody, they're claiming to be a Christian, but they're not repentant. And if you try to deal with them at all, then they just take it as condemnation. Oh, you're condemning me, you're holier than thou, whatever. Obviously, you want to pray for someone's heart, for the Lord to bring conviction. It's the Holy Spirit that brings conviction. But it's also the Word of God, and it's the light that exposes the darkness. And so I would say, you know, in every occasion to bring up the Scriptures, do so, even if it doesn't seem to point to their specific sin. I mean, just any Scriptures, it's amazing the ability that the Holy Spirit has to use anything in God's word to bring people to conviction. So where there's an opportunity to bring up scriptures, and then living a holy life, just living a righteous, godly, holy life in front of that person can expose sin. So yeah, it's sad. It's sad when it doesn't bring a person to repentance. It's interesting when a person like that feels condemned by the church, and they won't condemn themselves. I mean, they won't condemn their own sin. They won't repent. When a person does repent, you see the reaction of the saints. And it's so affirming. Once in a while you get those people that they're legalistic, and so they'll still try to condemn someone even after they've repented. But most true saints, I think, somebody's genuinely broken over their sin, there's so much warmth and encouragement and acceptance and so little condemnation. It's just kind of interesting the twisted perspective that unrepentance gives a person. Okay, Scott. Yeah, I think with explanation. I think if we give explanation, now, just as I am, that song's a little different, because that one, just as I am, without one plea. So the very next line explains, meaning, I'm coming just as I am, meaning, I'm not offering anything to you, God. I don't have anything to offer you, God. And I think just as I am is not gonna cause anybody to think, oh, I can just stay and sin. I mean, that's a song of brokenness. Come just as you are to worship. That one just rubs me a little the wrong way. I think it's okay to sing as long as there's some kind of explanation to make sure people don't misunderstand. Or you're not in a culture where people are going to misunderstand. But when we've sung it here, we've just changed that one line. We've tweaked the one line. I forget what we say. Come... I can't remember what we say. We say something. We change that one little bit. Now is the time. Well, actually, that's what it says. The first line, now is the time. Second line, just as you are. We changed that second one. But yeah, I mean, people are not going to be deceived by that song, I don't think. But people who have already been bombarded with that message could hear that song and it would confirm their deceit they're already in. And so I would just want to have a little word of explanation. Yeah, how do you pray, try me, God, expose my sin, and also pray the Lord's Prayer, lead me not into temptation? Because trials are tempting, aren't they? In fact, the same Greek word is translated trial and temptation, it's the same word. It depends on the only way that we can discern which it is. Is this a trial, a test from God, or is this a temptation, an enticement towards evil? has to do with the intent of the one sending it. So every hardship we ever go through is both a trial and a temptation. God is providing the trial part, Satan is providing the temptation part. God is never enticing us to evil, but he does put us in tempting situations. And it's the devil who provides the enticement part, trying to draw us into evil. So God is not guilty of tempting us because of the fact that he never pulls us in the direction of evil. but he does, every trial he puts in our lives functions as a temptation to evil. That's why it exposes the sins in our hearts. But the activity that God is doing is a purifying activity, an exposing activity, not a sin-causing activity. If I sin as a result of this trial, it's because of something that was already in me, and it's just being exposed now. So, yeah, that's an interesting thought. Okay, I said anxious thoughts are a hotbed for sin. And the question is why? I took that, I mean, I took that from the passage where he says, he specifies, I want you to search specifically my anxious thoughts. And then I also combine that with my own experience. When I'm worked up, I'm just more prone to sin. When I have anxiety and I'm worked up about something, It's very easy, even if it's a righteous kind of anxiety, for it to tip over into sin. And so I have to be especially cautious in times like that. So to answer your question, I would get it from the text itself, the fact that he specifies that, and then it's confirmed by my own experience. Okay, how do you inventory your thoughts and secrets in order to expose your unknown sins? I did a study, a while back of how to diagnose sin in every different aspect of the inner man. So you've got your thoughts, your mind, right, and your affections, what you love, your emotions, you've got your attitudes, you've got perspectives on things, you've got inclinations, all these different aspects of the inner man. And so I went through each one and found what does the Bible say about each one of those, how to discern what's sinful and what's not. And the results of that study are in that book, Wise Counsel. So the Wise Counsel book, it's in the library, and there's a chapter there on diagnosing sin. I think it's called diagnosis or something like that. That chapter breaks down each one of those, each aspect of the inner man. There might be six or seven of them. and has all the passages of scripture that I could find for diagnosing each one of those. So I don't have a short answer to your question, but that chapter should cover that. Great question. Okay, so you got a situation where a guy has, he's going through hardship in his life and it's creating anxiety, anxious thoughts, but he doesn't see those anxious thoughts as sin. Because David says, you know, search my anxious thoughts. I think that's different. David's anxious thoughts are because of the sins of the wicked, and his anxious thoughts are because God's name is being dishonored, and that should create some anxiety in us. But just going through hardship shouldn't necessarily create anxiety. You know, Philippians 4 says, be anxious for nothing. So it shouldn't create anxiety except for the anxiety that's necessary to get us to take action. So if it's the kind of anxiety where he has to wrestle with something in order to take action, what anxiety is supposed to do. But if it's something that's out of his hands, something that he has no control over, then anxiety is the wrong response. The right response is trust. And that anxiety needs to be replaced with thankful trust. Does that make sense? Is there a hand up here? Okay, go ahead. Somebody revved their motorcycle right when you said, I heard the, we're surrounded in the world by experts at recasting sin in non-sinful sounding terms, and as Christians, we fall into that same thing, and then, oh, what do you say to somebody who's getting wrapped up and swept up in that kind of lingo? They adopt it, and then it affects their outlook, and they don't see. I think as much as possible, we need to try to return to biblical lingo. There's a value to the biblical lingo. The names, and this is also something that's covered pretty extensively in the Wise Counsel book. The names that God gives to particular sins and activities are designed to show us what the problem is. You can actually see what the problem is and how to fix it very often just by using the right name. There's so many times in a counseling situation where someone will come to me and they're at wit's end. They say, I've got this problem. I can't overcome it. I don't know what to do with it. and it's bipolar or whatever, and we'll say, okay, tell me exactly what the symptoms are, what's going on in your life, and they list it out, and by the time they list it all out, I say, okay, well, the biblical name for that is this, and the biblical name for that is this, and as soon as I say that, they're like, oh, I can see the problem, and I can see the solution, thank you, and they're on their way, and I don't even have to tell them what to do after that. It's obvious. many times, not always, but many times it's obvious once we get the right terminology attached to it. Because the terminology God used is designed to expose to us and show us the nature of the problem itself. And the terminology of psychology in the world very often is designed to obscure the nature of the problem or to mix it with three or four other issues that are not the same thing and create confusion. And so, again, I would refer you to the Wise Counsel book. In the early chapters, it goes through that. The basic answer to your question is, it's hard to do. It's hard to take these terms we've heard our whole life and say, wait a second, that word is not in the Bible. What would be the biblical word to describe that thing? And man, that's a hard process, but when you can do it, it really brings a lot of clarity. Okay, one more. Yeah. Yeah, that whole list I gave about, you know, this word becomes this word and everything, I just took that right out of, I just plagiarized that right out of my own book. But there's a longer list, actually, in, can you do that? Can you plagiarize your own stuff? In wise counsel, the list is about twice as long as the one I gave in the sermon, so. I'm gonna have to sue myself.