trip so far. We will move around by bus, by motor coach, so there's not a lot of walking. If you come on the Germany trip, there's a lot of walking. For some of you, it would be a great trip. For others, it's not your kind of trip. But this is a trip in which we will focus on areas of interest to Presbyterians, and particularly ARP folks. So I am going to leave this literature out here. It's not too late to join. The trip is June 10th to the 24th, two weeks in the first part of June. And the map on this, there's an itinerary on one side, shows you what we're doing day by day. And then on the map, it shows the cities that are underlined or written in are areas that we will tour or spend the night. Basically, it's a week in England and Scotland and then a week in Northern Ireland and Ireland. Okay, that's my commercial message for the morning. Let's bow our heads and join our hearts together in prayer. a loving God, our creator, redeemer, sustainer. You know our hearts. You know our hearts are restless until they find their home in you. And Father, I pray that you would use the word of God this morning to touch our hearts and our minds and our lives that we would indeed be different people. We would be people of the book. When you give us those opportunities to speak to non-Christians who have questions, who are bewildered about their place in life, give us the words to speak, the right words to say. May they come flowing from the Spirit of God. May we be drenched in the Word of God and filled with the Spirit of God to proclaim your truth. We thank you for your presence here this morning in our very midst, in this sacred space. You are here. You're with us. The Scriptures remind us where two or three are gathered, therein you are in the midst. And Father, we thank you that you are here. We pray that what we do and say would honor the Lord Christ. That is our prayer this morning. Father, there are people here this morning who have come and they've They put on their Sunday clothes, and they put a smile on their face, and in some cases, maybe they're faking it. They don't feel like smiling. They're feeling the burdens. They're feeling the weight of the world. And whatever the burden is, I pray that they would lay those burdens at the foot of the cross. We pray, Father, that you would pick up those burdens and carry them as you bore our sins. Father, help us to be good proclaimers and good listeners and good hearers and doers of the Word of God. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. I invite you to turn, please, in your Bibles to Psalm 32. It's a relatively short psalm. That does not mean it will be a relatively short sermon, however. I just want to get that out of the way. Psalm 32, I'm reading from the NIV. I'm not sure which translation you use in your pulpit reading, but I'm reading from the New International Version. Hear the word of God. Blessed is the one whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. Blessed is the one whose sin the Lord does not count against them and in whose spirit is no deceit. When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night, your hand was heavy on me. My strength was sapped as in the heat of summer. Then, I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity. I said, I will confess my transgressions to the Lord and you forgave the guilt of my sin. Therefore, let all the faithful pray to you while you may be found. Surely the rising, the mighty waters will not reach them. You are my hiding place. You will protect me from trouble and surround me with songs of deliverance. I will instruct you and teach you in the ways you should go. I will counsel you with my loving eye on you. Do not be like the horse or the mule, which have no understanding but must be controlled by bit and bridle. where they will not come to you. Many are the woes of the wicked, but the Lord's unfailing love surrounds the one who trusts in Him. Rejoice in the Lord and be glad, you righteous. Sing, all you who are upright in heart." The Word of God for the people of God. A good friend of ours recently was in a church service where they had a children's sermon. before, I guess, the real sermon. And what she heard in this children's sermon caused her to alarm. The person giving the children's sermon was on the church staff, and the woman in giving this children's sermon held up a glass pitcher, a clear glass pitcher full of clean water. And she said to the children, now kids, this water, this clean, clear water, is a picture of you when you were born. But then, you know, as you grow, you face temptation, and you yielded to temptation, and a little lie here, A little disobedience there and maybe a small theft here. And in each of those sins that she enumerated, she poured a little dye into this clear glass pitcher. And it turned the clear water into this murky mess. It's now polluted water. It was filthy, dirty water. But, she said, then you heard about Jesus. You heard about Jesus and what Jesus did for our sins, who covered us with his righteousness. And the woman giving this children's sermon then took some compound bleach or something and she poured it into the water and the water turned clear. And she said, that's what happened to you and you are now clean again, just like when you were born. By the way, I'm not sure I wanted to drink that water with bleach in it, but anyway. We're all aware that in children's sermons, liberties are taken. The children's sermon is not a sophisticated theological treatise, but at the very least, it ought to be true. The children's sermon I just described is a lie. It's a lie from the pit of hell. We're not born pure. We're not born clean. We're born sinners. That's the clear message of Scripture. Three examples, Paul says in Romans 3.23, for we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Romans 3.10, there is none righteous. No, not one, Paul says. Isaiah 53.6 says, for we are all like sheep. We've gone astray. We've all turned, every one of us, to his own way. Now this, of course, is what we call original sin. That's not new to you. According to Romans 5.12, the sin of Adam and Eve, our first parents, was passed on to all posterity. Now we could talk about the justice of that, but that's clearly what the Bible teaches, that the sin of Adam, who was our federal head, was passed on to everyone. I remember when I was in graduate school, I was surrounded by humanists. Some of them were my friends. We were friendly. We chatted. But our worldviews were poles apart. And I remember I had this Jewish professor. We were talking about social problems or something. I don't remember the context. But he said, you know, class, there are still some people in this world who believe in original sin, they call it. And he talked about that a little while, and I thought, he's aimed this at me. He's talking about me. He's calling me out. In that class, I hadn't been terribly vocal, but on occasions, I let it be known as a Christian. I didn't hold to what he was teaching. And so as he talked about that, I thought, I can't let this stand. And so I sat there and I watched my arm go up. And I thought, this ought to be interesting. I want to hear what it is I'm going to say. I want to stick around and hear how this comes out. So he called on me and I said, Dr. Galashoff, I said, I believe in original sin. I said, I believe you pick up most major newspaper most any day and read the headline and it screams original sin. I quoted J.K. Chesterton who said, original sin is the only demonstrable Christian doctrine. And I went on and talked about it a little bit and I had finished. And he looked around the room. I could tell my classmates, some of them, their mouths were agape. And he said, well, as I said, there are some people who still believe in original sin. Apparently Mr. Johnson is one of them, he said. Now we're not sinners because we sin. We sin because We're sinners. It's innate. We're born with it. It was in our DNA when we were conceived. Now the error that this staff member at this church was giving in her children's sermon was promoting what we call Pelagianism. Pelagius was a British or Irish monk, neither country wants to claim him, you know, but he was a 5th century Bible teacher who rejected original sin. He said, we don't need grace to save ourselves. All we need to do is follow the selfless example of Jesus. And we pull ourselves up. We save ourselves, is what Pelagius said. Now, I don't know if the person giving the children's sermon had ever heard of Pelagius or Pelagianism, but in the 5th century it caused quite a stir. The view of Pelagius was countered by Augustine, the 5th century bishop of Hippo. And Pelagianism was condemned as a heresy at the Third Ecumenical Council. It was condemned at several councils, but the Third Ecumenical Council was particularly important because it was not just a regional council, it was an ecumenical. That means both East and Western churches. You know, in the history of the church, There are the first four ecumenical councils of Nicaea, Constantinople, Ephesus, and Chalcedon. are embraced by the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Roman Catholic Church, and most Protestant churches. After those first four, Protestants, looking back, sort of drop out. We say, it's all yours from this point. But in those first four ecumenical councils, our doctrine of the Trinity, our doctrine of God, our doctrine of Christ, they were established by those ecumenical councils. And Pelagianism was on trial, it was on the docket at the Third Ecumenical Council of Ephesus in the year 431, and it was condemned as a heresy, and it was replaced by Augustinianism, or what we call divine monergism. Now the psalm before us today, is a penitential psalm. It's one of the seven penitential psalms. It's all about confessing our sins and being penitent. By the way, that's where we get the name penitentiary for prisons. I'm not sure that they call it that anymore. But when they were formed, the idea was When someone commits a crime and they are convicted and sentenced and they're in jail, we will put them alone in solitary confinement and they will sit there and reflect on what they did that led them to be so confined and they would become penitent in their confinement. That was the idea, so we called them penitentiaries. But what we learned was that as prisoners mixed it up with each other, they became crime schools. They learned the tricks of the trade from other criminals. They didn't sit around thinking of the evil deed that got them into that fix. They sat there thinking of ways they could hone their skills and they could commit the crime and get away with it this time. This is a fitting text, Psalm 32, for the season of Lent. Lent is, say, the 40 days prior to Easter, the resurrection. It's a time of confession, self-denial, fasting, forsaking of sinful activities and habits. Now, Protestants, of course, do not observe Lent, at least not the way Catholics observe Lent. But confession, self-denial, fasting, forsaking sinful activities, those aren't things that we should simply do for 40 days. It should be part of our Christian lifestyle. We don't put brackets around it. We don't have a big blowout on Fat Tuesday and then, you know, go and get the sign of the cross on our forehead on Ash Wednesday, and then for 40 days we stop doing things we shouldn't be doing anyway. When I was a kid, I had a neighborhood Catholic family, and one of my good friends for Lent used to give up popcorn for 40 days. Even as a kid, I thought that was pretty pitiful. You can do better than that. Popcorn? This kid loved popcorn, but I still thought that was rather petty. We observe Lent by looking to Christ and his cross and his atoning sacrifice. It's not simply a 40-day event. Now, the basic problem of Pelagius was that he did not have a serious view of sin. He said the sin of Adam affected only Adam. Pelagius rejected what we call federal headship, Adam as our representative. You know, when Puritans came to America, the New World Puritans, and they're teaching their kids how to read, they would teach them theology at the same time. They made these kind of flashcards so their kids to learn the alphabet. And the letter A, big letter A, read thusly. A, in Adam's sin, sinned we all. That's what the Bible teaches. It's original sin. Adam was our federal representative. The Bible takes sin seriously. Psalm 32 takes sin seriously. The primary focus of Psalm 32 however, is the benefit, the blessing that follows confession of sin. Some of you will know the name Noel Coward. He was a British playwright. He died in 1973, but he, in sort of a tell-all book near the end of his life, he wrote an autobiography and told the story that he sent an anonymous letter to 20 prominent men in London. Some of them he knew, some of them he didn't. But the anonymous note read, quote, everybody has found out what you are doing. If I were you, I would get out of town, signed a friend. All 20 men left town. No kidding. What if you opened your mail one day and found such a note? What would race through your mind? Are you thinking of specific sins? Have you confessed and renounced those sins? Or are you trying to hide them? Many scholars believe that King David wrote Psalm 32 after his adultery with Bathsheba, and the murder of her husband, Uriah, coordinated by David in an attempt to cover up his sin. David was not only involved with the cover-up, he orchestrated the cover-up for over a year. He was the architect of this. David was involved in a kind of organized crime, you see. So for over a year, David tried to live with his secret sin, and the guilt was destroying him. It was eating him up. Psalm 32 begins the same way Psalm 1 begins. Blessed is the one. Blessed is the man. You can insert woman. Blessed is the woman. Blessed is he or she whose transgression is forgiven. whose sin is covered. Verse 2, Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity, in whose spirit there is no guile. This is such a powerful truth that Paul, in his most systematic letter, the book of Romans, quotes these two verses. You'll find this Romans chapter 4, verses 7 and 8. You don't need to turn there, we just read it in Psalm 32. Martin Luther used these two verses as scripture proof for one of his greatest insights, I think, about the doctrine of justification. Chad mentioned that Howard audited my class this summer. You know, he liked that class because he took it for free. See, that's really the issue there. But we were inaugurating our Greenville site of Erskine Seminary on Pleasantburg. The ARP offices have moved there, and we have a campus there. And that's where Howard took that class. On Martin Luther, that's how I got off on this rabbit trail. But Martin Luther. had this great insight about the doctrine of justification. Using the Latin language of his day, Luther described our situation as Christians as simul justus et peccator, that is, at the same time, righteous and sinner. Simul iustus et peccator. Simultaneously, righteous, we've been declared righteous by God the Father, because when the Father looks at us, he sees us through the blood of Christ. And we are righteous. Positionally, we are in Christ and we are righteous. But then there's the other reality. We live in a fallen world. We still struggle with the world, the flesh, and the devil. And so our situation is one of, at the same time, righteous and sinner. Verse two in the King James Version uses the word impute. The Lord imputeth not iniquity. The word impute means to charge, to transfer, to ascribe something, to credit something. Now at the heart of the gospel is a double imputation. My sin is imputed to Christ. And we receive his righteousness. Such a deal. I want us to see this in Scripture. Turn to 2 Corinthians. Wake up your neighbor there and tell them to turn to 2 Corinthians chapter 5 verse 21. I still hear pages turning, so I'm pausing. I was preaching outside of Atlanta, and it was a little church, and there was only one entrance and exit. That's probably illegal, but anyway, it was the front door. And I was told, at the end of the sermon, go out and de-greet the people. And so they were in a line. They're coming. And some of them, it's the only way out. They don't really want to say anything to me. I mean, they're not going to say anything about the sermon. It was a bomb, so they're not going to go there. So I'd had people come up and shake my hand and say, I really like that tie, they would say. I'd say, thank you. But one man was coming at me, and I knew that he had something on his mind. And he got into my face, and he said, young man. And I said, yes, sir. He said, when you announce a text of scripture, would you give us time to find it? So, I've been stalling now, so you could find 2 Corinthians 5.21. Listen to this. God made him, that's Christ, who had no sin to be sin for us. so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. This is the great exchange. He takes our sin and we receive his righteousness. Research at the University of Manchester, England has shown a clear connection between guilt and depression. And that's exactly what we see of David in verses 3 and 4. Let's read this. Sorry, I'm still in 2 Corinthians. Psalm 32, verses 3 and 4. When I kept silent, David said, my bones wasted away. Through my groaning all day long, for day and night your hand was heavy on me. My strength was sapped as in the heat of summer. David had this unconfessed sin, he bottled it up. It had a crippling effect on his life. His unconfessed sin was a barrier between himself and God. And David experienced the anguish of body and soul when he tried to conceal, he tried to cover up his sin. David couldn't talk to God unless he first confessed his sin. This is exactly what Psalm 66, 18 says. Listen to this familiar verse. Psalm 66, 18. If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me. Unless David got to the point where he confessed his sins, God would not hear him. We've all been in that position, we've prayed and prayed and knew that our prayers were getting no higher than the ceiling. There's a barrier, there's a wall. David apparently became physically incapacitated for carrying this burden, this load, this backpack full of unconfessed sin. And this trauma that David faced finally is dealt with in verses five and six. Now David is writing this under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. We know what Paul Harvey would say the rest of the story. Because David comes clean here, but we know that he hid it for a year. A year has passed between verse four and verse five. And we know that Nathan the prophet came to him and pointed his finger in David's face and said, thou art the man. That's when David came clean. But the trauma ended in verses five and six in his repentance. Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity. I said, I will confess my transgression to the Lord. And you forgave the guilt of my sin, David says. What does it mean to confess our sins? It's not just to be sorry. We're all sorry. Confession means to agree with God about them. Before David confessed, he and God were on opposite sides of the fence. God was condemning his sin and David was defending himself by rationalizing and excusing his sin. Now here's the great irony of all of this. David was trying to cover his sin. But with his confession, Jesus covered his sin. That's the great exchange. David was trying to hide his sin. But with his confession, God himself became his hiding place. It's the great exchange again. Look at verse seven. You are my hiding place. You protect me from trouble. You surround me with joyful shouts of deliverance. Selah. Three times in Psalm 32, we have that word selah. We don't know exactly what selah means. It's thought to be a pause used in poetry, a pause for effect. We might say a pregnant pause. Pause and think about it. Let it sink in. God himself becomes our hiding place. David is now experiencing the blessings of a clean heart, the blessings of confession. He finally came clean, so to speak. Now my sermon title is, Confession is Good for the Soul, and it is. But confession is nothing compared to forgiveness. James 5.16 says, confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. Healed of this burden, relieved from this burden of sin. There's no joy in trying to cover up our own sins. First of all, we can't do it. We're not able. They'll eventually be exposed. I remember reading about a contractor who was visiting a company and was about to make a bid on a certain project. And the executive he was speaking to excused himself from his office for a few minutes while he went out on business. And so this guy who's about to submit his bid is standing there, and he notices that on the desk in front of him is his competitor's bid sheet. He can see it except the bottom line. The bottom line was covered up by this large can, and he was so tempted. If he knew what his competitor's bid was, he could see it and modify it a little bit, and he could get the bid. And so he's weighing this and took the bait, lifted up the can, Thousands of tiny silver beads began pouring out from the bottom of the can. He watched in dismay as these beads covered the desk and the floor. The executive walked in, of course. Contractor was busted. He was found out. There was no way he could clean up all of those beads before the executive returned. We can't cover up our sins. They're going to be exposed. Secondly, we shouldn't try and cover up our own sin. It's only right to confess our sins to God. Listen to Proverbs 28, 13. He who conceals his sin does not prosper. But whoever confesses and renounces them finds mercy. It's a great exchange. Only Jesus can cover our sin and make us right with God. Many of you are familiar with the late Dutch writer Corrie ten Boom, the woman whose family hid all of the Jews during the Holocaust. Corrie Ten Boom talks about confessing our sin. She says, Jesus takes our sins, many of which we tried to hide unsuccessfully, but Jesus takes our sins and buries them in the deepest part of the ocean and puts a marker that says no fishing. God forgets our confessed sin and so should we. Don't carry it around. Don't beat yourself up because of the past. If your sin is confessed and renounced and forsaken, forget it. God has. He doesn't put a record of our sins in a closet. He obliterates them. They're gone forever. Gone and forgotten. Now to summarize, there are two benefits we receive when we take cover. in God. First of all, we are surrounded by God's protective care. Let's look at verses 6 and 7. Therefore let all the faithful pray to you while you may be found. You know that suggests there's a time when God may not be found. It's too late. Surely the rising of the mighty waters will not reach them. You are my hiding place. You will protect me from trouble and surround me with songs of deliverance. David has learned his lesson and he moves from testimony, personal testimony to exhortation. Now he becomes the preacher. He exhorts us to confess, to come clean and know God's forgiveness. This exhortation is to the godly, the saints, the holy ones, those people that belong to God. When David uses the phrase, while God may be found, that's another way of saying today is the day of repentance. Today is the day of salvation. None of us has a guarantee of tomorrow. Right now, my calendar is set on spring break. If I can hold out for another week, I'll have my own spring break. But we have no guarantee of tomorrow, let alone spring break. David says, call to God while he may be found, before the time of trouble comes, before you're found out. When you take cover in God, you are surrounded by God's protective care. The second benefit is found in verses eight through 11. I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go. I will counsel you with my loving eye on you. Do not be like the horse or the mule, which have no understanding, but must be controlled by bit and bridle, or they will not come to you. Many are the woes of the wicked, but the LORDS, and there you see LORD in all caps, That's the Tetragrammaton, that's the four-letter designation for God in the Hebrew. Yahweh, that's the covenant name for God. It's the name for his covenant people. But the Lord's unfailing love surrounds the one who trusts him. Don't be stubborn. Don't be like a horse or a mule. Soften your heart, be quick to confess, ready to repent of your sins. Charles Spurgeon once wrote, God does not want to use the bit and bridle. He wants to guide you with his eye. But if you refuse this gentle guidance, then it will come stronger from the bridle and the bit. And if one severe trial does not sanctify you, Spurgeon writes, expect another more rigorous, whatever that is. In some case, we're so slow to learn these lessons. God brings catastrophe. It's the logic of our own unrepentance and our own sin. Sometimes it's the still small voice. Sometimes it's the two by four in the back of the head that we need. David finishes this psalm by rejoicing and singing because he's in a safe place. He's under the shield, you see, of God's protection. God has become David's hiding place. So also is our soul secure. Jesus said in John 10, 29, my father which gave them me is greater than all and no man is able to pluck them out of my father's hand. Not only are we protected in our situation, our soul is secure. So I leave you with a question this morning. Who is covering your sin? Are you covering your sin? Or have you asked God to cover your sins and take your burden, relieve you of this backpack of sin that you're carrying around? You think you're hiding it, but it's bulging under your coat. You're wearing this big backpack full of sin. Is God your hiding place? Confession, my friend, is good for the soul. Forgiveness is found in Jesus Christ alone. Take cover in God. May He be your hiding place. Blessed is the man or woman whose sins are covered by Jesus Christ, our Savior and Redeemer. Amen. Let's pray. Our gracious Father, we are people with burdens because we still live in a fallen world, and we battle, we often don't battle enough the world, the flesh, and the devil, but it's a reality. And if there is unconfessed sin, I pray that we, today, in fact, before we leave this room, would do business with you, we'd confess that sin, we'd relieve that burden. We want to embrace the great exchange. You take our sin and we receive your righteousness so that we have right standing with the Father and restore our fellowship as well. Father, may you open the windows of heaven and pour out your blessing on this congregation. Bless them as a body of Christ, as a member of the AARP Synod. Bless each individual here, in their private lives, in their personal lives, in their work lives, in all that they do. Bless them singularly, we pray. Amen.