We're turning the Word of God once again back to the Psalms and to that 32nd Psalm that we read at the beginning of our service, Psalm 32. And we've read the Psalm once and we're going to read it again to try and get it a little more into our minds. It's my purpose tonight to take an overview of the Psalm. The pastor has on occasions taken the title for his message, What is a Christian? And this psalm really is a summary of what a Christian is and who a Christian is and why they are a Christian. And so that's what we're going to look at this evening. So let's just read through one more time. Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile. When I kept silence, My bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long. For day and night thy hand was heavy upon me. My moisture is turned into the drought of summer, Selah. I acknowledged my sin unto thee, and mine iniquity have I not hid. I said I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord, and thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin, Selah. For this shall every one that is godly pray unto thee in a time when thou mayest be found. Surely in the floods of great waters they shall not come nigh unto him. Thou art my hiding place. Thou shalt preserve me from trouble. Thou shalt compass me about with songs of deliverance. I will instruct thee and teach thee in the way which thou shalt go. I will guide thee with mine eye. Be ye not as the horse or as the mule which have no understanding, whose mouth must be held in with bit and bridle, lest they come near unto thee. Many sorrows shall be to the wicked. But he that trusteth in the Lord, mercy shall compass him about. Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, ye righteous, and shout for joy, all ye that are upright in heart. Amen. Again, we thank the Lord for his word. Let's unite our hearts in prayer and ask his help this evening. Our gracious God, we come before thee this evening, Lord, that we might be instructed from this psalm. An instruction, Father, is what we need. For thou dost look upon us from the heavens, Lord, thou dost know us all through, every part of us. Thou knowest our minds, our psyche, our psychology. Lord, thou knowest all of those things which the world seeks to take hold of and use for its own benefits. But Lord, thou wilt use those things for our benefit and for our strengthening and our encouragement. Gracious God, above that, as the world would use these things for its own purposes. Lord, thou dost give above even the blessings of this life, the joy and assurance of eternity in the presence of the Lord, a joy which is beyond description and beyond our knowledge in this present world. Oh Lord, how many, how many have said that the world in which they live is hell, if there is one. Or perhaps they have used the term purgatory that they're going through. But none has a concept of the glories of heaven except the child of God who has dwelt in the presence of the Lord and has known that uplifting joy which pervades all parts of their life, even in times of hardship and difficulty. Days of heaven upon earth. O Lord, we pray that Thou would cause us to rejoice and to give glory to the God who cares for us, who sent his son to die on our behalf, that we might know the joy of heaven and the promise that we shall one day sit with him in his throne, even as he sits in the Father's throne. O Lord, we pray that thou wouldst cause thy people to rejoice tonight. And Lord, we pray that thou wouldst challenge also those who have not known the Lord, those who follow the teachings of the world. The instruction of men, which they have thought to themselves and have come to their own philosophy and philosophical arguments, seem to convince us that they are right. But O Lord, thou said in my word, let God be true, and every man a liar. O Lord, how often do the philosophies of men change, but thou dost remain always the same. Words written in black and white from the beginning of time. And Lord, still they are true, as true as ever they were, as true as always they shall be. And oh Lord, what a wonderful foundation and assurance is this for thy people. Bless thy word tonight then to every heart and every soul. And Lord, cause us to rejoice that thou hast been pleased to call us into thy presence, whether it be as thy children, the sons and daughters of the Most High in Christ Jesus, or whether it be to hear that gospel which is able to make a person wise unto salvation and to bring them into that family. Blessed thy word tonight we ask thee and guide our thoughts each one for Jesus' sake. Amen. The psalm you will see has a title at its heading which is a psalm of David, Maskeel. The word Maskeel in the Hebrew means instruction. So this is a psalm of instruction. Its purpose is to instruct and it does instruct. It instructs what it is to be the blessed one who is spoken of in the first verse. It instructs and tells us almost the path, perhaps exactly the path of the child of God, how they came to be blessed in the first place and every aspect of our life which is in Christ Jesus. And I want to think about it with you, either to encourage you because you've gone this path and the psalmist's purpose at the end is to instruct us to Glorify the Lord, be glad in the Lord and rejoice and shout for joy all ye that are upright in heart. We should leave this service tonight then rejoicing and really praising God that he should ever call us out of the world because as we read in the book of Romans, we are all sinners. There is none righteous, no not one. There is none that doeth good. There is none of us who deserve the grace of God but the Lord has been good to us and he has blessed us. We should be rejoicing in that. and then perhaps to challenge those who do not know the Lord to see where they are before God and to see that there is salvation in Christ. I want to think first of all of, we're going to work through the psalm from the beginning to the end and I want to think about the first two verses first of all which give us the character of the blessed man. The character of the blessed man is that he is forgiven. Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Now there's no argument here concerning sin, as we saw again from Romans, sin is upon every man. The apostle concluded and the law of God concludes that every man, every woman, every child is a sinner. Sin is bound up in us. Of course the world looks upon sin as those transgressions, those things that we do. and they will look upon themselves and say, well I'm not so very bad. I don't do the things which some people do. I've never done anything really nasty to anybody. I've not mugged a person. I've not been hateful to a person. I've not been a grief to anyone. So I'm not so very bad. You see sin is not just that which we do. That's the fruit of sin, if you like. But sin is that which is inside. It's like a fungus. It's like dry rot. You'll know that in the chapel at Linslade there was dry rot under the stairs. It's like a fungus which grows, but what you see finally in its final manifestation as it begins to produce spores is there is a fruit on it. But when it starts off it's almost under the surface, there's nothing to see, but it's spreading. and it's spreading throughout the damp wood which is there and under the surface there are all these tendrils of the roots of the fungus and then you get the fruit on the top of it. I suppose the same thing could be said of the mushrooms which grow or the toadstools in the garden. You'll very often see toadstools in a ring on the garden. They used to call it a fairy ring. But the reason is because underneath the ground there are the roots. the roots of the fungus and the fungus spreads underneath the surface and there it is. But you wouldn't know it was there until the mushrooms or until the fungi begin to grow up through the earth and then you see that which is on the surface and you say, well here are mushrooms. But you wouldn't have known otherwise. And so the sins which we see there are like the mushrooms which grow on the surface. You say yes, there is sin, but before that fruit appears, There are the tendrils underneath the surface and that is what we have in our heart and that is what God sees. God sees sin. We are all sinners. It's there. It's there. Whatsoever the fruit may be, it is there. And what the psalmist says then is, blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. He concludes first of all that we are all sinners. And he says, the person who is blessed is the one whose sin has been covered. Whose sin has been covered. Not removed, but covered. Not annihilated, but forgiven. Because we are sinners and we have sinned. And nothing will change that. We don't go back over time and those sins are removed. But we are forgiven. It is covered. And what it says then in the second verse is, Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity, imputeth not iniquity. You see our only hope before God is that we are not arraigned before his throne. I don't know, a lot of us will be drivers and I will venture to say that at some point in our lives we've gone past a speed camera which has flashed at us. Perhaps you haven't, perhaps you're really, really good on the roads. And you know, because you were dreaming or thinking about where you were going or because you were in a hurry, you know that you were going too fast. And the camera's flashed and it's a 30 limit and you were doing 40 and you know that you are guilty. and you know that through the door there will come that letter which says you were caught in this particular place by this particular camera you were doing 41 miles an hour and there is a fine. What is your only hope? Come on drivers, tell me what is your hope? Anybody? You're all asleep. There's no film in the camera. That's right, there's no film in the camera. And of course we've been told that very often the cameras don't have film in them. And our hope is, oh, our hope is there's no film in that camera. Because we know that if we are filmed and there is a picture to confirm that we were in the car going at that speed, we will be fine. So it is. If we are arraigned before God and we are brought before Him in judgment, we are guilty. There is no getting away from it. There is no argument we can bring before God and say, yes, well, I did do that, but it was because... There's no argument. No argument. We have broken the law of God. We are guilty. Our only hope is that we are not arraigned. And so the psalmist said, blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity. In other words, blessed is the man who is not arraigned before the judgment throne of God. What a blessing. What a blessing because you see God doesn't just give us a fine for breaking his law. There is a judgment far greater. One that we don't like to think about. David Heather of the A teacher in the school at Linslade has been taking assemblies this week and afterwards one of his students went up to him and said, Sir, I don't like being told that I'm going to hell. Of course, none of us like to be told we're going to hell, do we? We don't want to be told we're going to hell. We don't want to be told we're wrong. We don't like that either. If someone comes up and criticises us, we don't like that. We don't want to hear it. But it's better, as he said to the student, if what we are saying is true, if the Bible is true, wouldn't you rather that we told you that one day you stand before God and he casts you into hell and you'd never hurt? The psalmist says, blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity. He doesn't put it to our account. There is no arraignment written. There are no charges to answer. How can that be? Well, because the charges are written to one who has paid the penalty for us. Christ has taken it on our behalf. But then there are these other words at the end of the second verse and it says, in whose spirit there is no guile. in whose spirit there is no guile. The reason that the psalmist puts these words at the end here is because our hearts are deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. So the Bible tells us. And if in our spirit there is guile, we will have deceived ourselves that we are this person whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. God will not judge me because I'm a nice person. Because I'm kind to people and I do things for people. Because I go to church. Because I went to Sunday school. Because my mum and dad are Christians. Because I'm a Christian. Well at least I'm not a Muslim and I'm not a Hindu and I'm not any of these other religions. I'm a Christian so therefore God won't do this for me. He won't bring me in arraignment. But we are deceiving ourselves. And that man who is deceiving himself, who has guile in his spirit to deceive himself, there's no blessing in that. There cannot be, surely there cannot be anything worse than standing before God in judgement, thinking you're alright and suddenly discovering you're not alright. That you've never known the salvation of the Lord. The psalmist goes on in the third and fourth verses concerning conviction, the conviction of the blessed man. So now he is beginning to explain the path which he has taken and the path which every person who is the Lord's has taken. He says, When I kept silence, my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long. For day and night thy hand was heavy upon me. My moisture is turned into the drought of summer, Selah. I acknowledged my sin unto thee. I kept silence, my bones waxed old. Now here he is talking about conviction. Here he is saying that there was sin in my heart and in the end it shows in verse 5, I acknowledged my sin unto thee. So that's the sin which he speaks of and my iniquity have I not hid and I will confess my transgressions. Here are the three words which are used in the first verse, whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered, and to whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity. So these are the three things. These are three parts of sin. Iniquity is a perverseness of twisting things. It's that guile which we spoke of at the end of verse two. It's a twisting of the truth for our own benefit to make ourselves feel better. Then the transgression is the breaking of God's law. God says don't do this and we do it, that's transgression. And sin is where God says do do this and we don't do it, that's sin. So that's the three aspects really of our guilt before God. And these things the psalmist has. But what he is saying in verses 3 and 4 is, when I kept silence, before I confessed these things to God, my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long. For day and night thy hand was heavy upon me, my moisture is turned into the drought of summer. I was under conviction of sin. I was under conviction of sin. Because you see, before we can come to the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved, there must be something to be saved from. And if we've convinced ourselves that we're alright, we don't need to be saved, we don't go to the Lord to be saved. If we convinced ourselves that this is just the way things are then why do we need to be saved? We're quite safe. But the first thing that God does in that soul which he is going to save and bring to himself as he begins to bring us under conviction of sin and he says, Thou art the man. And we begin to understand, yes I have transgressed, I have sinned, I am not what I ought to be. There is something in me which I recognise as not being good. The law of God of course picks those things out. The Ten Commandments pick those things out. And in the New Testament there is a more fine point put to them. In fact the Lord Jesus says, except your righteousness exceed the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees, you shall in no wise enter into heaven. And when we think about the law, well there are two in particular in the New Testament which are picked out for us. And it is really pointing to that which we said before concerning the fungus which is underneath the surface. And what the Lord is doing is He is saying look, forget the fruit which you can see which is on the surface, which is very evident, forget that for a moment. I want you to look a bit deeper. Because it could be you haven't done. the things which are on the surface. That doesn't mean that it's not there beneath the surface. And first of all he says that if a man look upon a woman to lust after her, he has committed adultery with her in his heart. You see it doesn't need to be adultery. It doesn't need to be a sexual act. It doesn't need to be that the person is taken away from their spouse. or the fornication is committed. It needs to be just that which swells and wells in our hearts when we look upon someone. And God says, that shows you that sin is there. You may not have done it. You may have restrained yourself. Circumstances may have restrained you. But be clear, The potential is there, sin is there. The other one which we read of in 1 John is murder and I presume that all of us can say, well I've never killed anybody, I've never murdered anybody. We would all start to get nervous if one of you had killed someone and it wasn't found out But we can, I hope, all say, I've never murdered anyone. But John says, if a man hates his brother, he is a murderer. Because murder comes out of hatred. It comes out of the violence which is in the heart of man. And we can look around the world and we see sin, the manifestations of sin, springing up all over the place. In the Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq, there were things going on there which we discovered in the news of the degrading of prisoners. These were ordinary soldiers. They had never done anything like that at home. Neither would they have done. But in the fog of war, such as it's called, people do things which they never would have done. How can they do that? How can they? What is different? It's just as immoral in war as it is anywhere else. because it's there in our hearts, because we are sinners. And what happened to the psalmist and what happens to those who call upon the name of the Lord is God begins to convict us of our sins. And I remember times when I kept silence and my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long. And at night time you couldn't sleep There's a story told of a person in Northern Ireland, and it's a true story. He was a man who lived in Northern Ireland, Banbridge, and he was watching the television the night Tommy Cooper died. Tommy Cooper, of course, was on stage and he collapsed on stage. Everybody thought he was messing about because, obviously, that's what he did on stage, he messed about. But he died. And this man came under the conviction of sin in such a way as he wouldn't leave his house to go to the church. He phoned for the minister to come round and see him. He dared not go outside in case he was hit by a car, in case he had a heart attack, in case something happened to him and he had to get right before God. Such was the conviction upon his heart. And had he kept silence, then his bones would have waxed old. Day and night the hand of the Lord would be heavy upon him. His moisture turned into the drought of summer. There are many who languish under the conviction of sin. Those who do not recognise what it is which is upon them. People who go into depression because of things in their past. Not knowing that there is forgiveness, that there is cleansing, that there is a release from all of this in Christ Jesus. Being told by the world there is nothing, there is nothing. Just forget about it and carry on with your life. They can't, because the hand of God is heavy upon them. Then we see the confession of this blessed man. We might say just before we pass on to this, You could say, well surely that's not much of a blessing. Not much of a blessing that your bones wax old and you roar all the day long and God's hand is heavy upon you and your moisture is turned into the drought of summer. Not much of a blessing in that. That's sort of a misery. If that misery brings you to Christ, that's a blessing. That's a blessing like no other blessing. If it brings you to salvation in the Lord. And he says then in verse 5, and here is the confession of the blessed man, I acknowledge my sin unto thee, and mine iniquity have I not hid. I said I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord. Here is the confession. You know we go before God and we seek not to cover up anything. There is nothing that we're going to hide away. We're going to bring it all out into the light of God's words and into the light of his gaze and we're going to tell the Lord everything. We may not tell another person everything. And maybe nobody else in the world knows the things that we have done or the things that we have thought or the considerations that we've had in our hearts and the perverseness which might be with us. No person in the world may know. but before God we confess all things. We bring it all before him and we say to the Lord, Lord why is my heart such a pit of corruption and iniquity? How can I even think the things which I have thought? How can I ever do the things which I have done? How can I even consider how I might be able to do some of the things that I wanted to do? What uncleanness there is in me And we see there in that fifth verse that when he acknowledges his sin, his falling short of the measure of God, and his iniquity, his perverseness and twisting, and his transgression, the breaking of God's laws, when he comes before the Lord in this confession, when he comes before the Lord in this contrition, in this sadness before the Lord, Thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin." God forgives. That is the Christian. That is the Christian. Forgiven. Forgiven. Written across the name of that person, the word forgiven. An arraignment before the judge, before the throne of God? No. Forgiven. The judgment of God? The condemnation of hell? No! Forgiven. That's the Christian. It comes with that confession before the Lord. Not a confession to a priest or a preacher or a friend or whatever, but a confession before God. For it is God that forgives sins. As the Pharisees rightly said, when Christ said, thy sins are forgiven thee, who can forgive sins but God only? None. That's why our confession is made to God. He deals with our sin. And then we see the conservation of the blessed man. gone through that conviction of sin, and confessing our sin before the Lord, and having our sins forgiven, so that we are this blessed man whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered, and unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile. Now we come on to the conservation of that blessed man. We are now in Christ. We are now members of Christ's body. We are now protected by him. His hand is upon us. Our sins are dealt with. We belong to him. And then the psalmist goes on and says, look at the blessedness. Now there is a great blessedness and he begins with it. And he said there is a great blessedness on the man who has come under conviction and who has confessed his sin and whose sins are forgiven. That's enough. That's enough. What a blessed man that is. A man blessed of God. But then he says this, For this shall every one that is godly pray unto thee in a time when thou mayest be found. Surely in the floods of great waters they shall not come nigh unto him. Thou art my hiding place. Thou shalt preserve me from trouble. Thou shalt compass me about with songs of deliverance. Here is the conservation of the blessed man. The Lord protects us. The Lord preserves us. The Lord has his hand upon us to keep us safe. We are conserved in Christ. The floods of great waters shall not come nigh unto him. In the Hebrew, the word floods is actually a singular. Surely in the flood of great waters they shall not come nigh unto him. And perhaps in the mind of the psalmist is that flood of great waters. in the day of Noah. We know, and if you've heard the preaching of the word over any number of years, no doubt you've heard, that the ark of God, the ark of Noah I should say, was pitched within and without with pitch. And the word there is kafar, which means atonement. So it is covered, it is covered. And Noah and his family and all that were inside the ark were protected from the judgement of God. And so, the child of God is protected from the judgement of God. When the flood of great waters come, it will not come nigh unto me, because the Lord is my hiding place and he will preserve me from trouble. He shall compass me about with songs of deliverance. I've, over the last few weeks, been visiting people in hospital and one of those people, the Lord has taken home to himself, Aldrich, She had cancer which came back with a vengeance in the end. And I sat with her in the hospital bed and looked upon her face and the peace that surrounded her was amazing. Irenical is a good word. It comes from the Greek for heaven, heavenly. She was dwelling in the presence of the Lord. You could feel the presence of the Lord when you were with her. Here she was, she had a few days left to live and she knew it. But the joy of the Lord was there in such a wonderful way that instead of people going to the hospital to encourage her and to make her feel better, we went to the hospital and came away feeling better than we did when we went in. Because she was the one who was giving the blessing, so to speak. And I said to her when I visited with her, you know, we're here praying for you. But what we need is for you to pray to us, pray for us, because we need your prayers while you're this close to the Lord. What a wonderful thing it is. And when you're visiting somebody in that situation, especially when you get to my age, I was just reminded this today, the older you get, the more you think about the end of your life and how long you're going to last. Especially when you look around and you see what happens to some people. Just this week, Alison's husband is in hospital and he's had a heart attack. He's 34. Well, I'm 47. So I'm thinking to myself, well, you know, I'm not exactly a thin Lizzie and my diet isn't possibly the best it could be. And the last time I ran a marathon, Well, I never did actually. And we don't know, do we, how long we're going to last or what may come upon us. Jason was in the right place when he had his heart attack. He was in the hospital. He'd already had chest pain gone in to the hospital and he's alright. He's had a warning. But there are those of that age and younger that have had heart attacks and have dropped dead. Some of you will know Sharon McAllister. She used to come and worship with us and her husband had a massive heart attack early in the morning and the doctor said he was dead before he hit the ground. But what a wonderful thing it is to be hidden in Christ, protected by him, to know the presence of the Lord, preserved from trouble. And in those times when we even know the end is coming, compassed about with songs of deliverance. I was out on Saturday, I visited Jason and I also went to visit Edward. Now Edward's 90. And you can expect somebody of 90 perhaps to be in hospital. Surely by that age you're sort of thinking to yourself, I can't have very much longer to go when you get to 90. But the Lord is within and there is a blessing upon his heart and a joy in his heart. You know the most wonderful thing when you go and visit someone who is old and is in hospital, the most wonderful thing is If they know the Lord, they're not looking back over their life and thinking, oh, it was wonderful when I was young. I used to do this and I used to do that. No, they're still looking forward. 90 years old, looking forward to seeing the Lord. Looking forward to be restored. Looking forward to the joy of eternity in Christ. Looking forward to meeting those old prophets which they have read from the scriptures and the apostles and other people. Looking forward to being in the presence of God for eternity, wonderful, 90 years old, looking forward. Ah, so many who have visited and they can only look back, no prospect, only retrospect, and have never come to this point where they have called upon the name of the Lord. We see then the concurrence of the blessed man, Because the blessed man concurs with God and walks with him. And the Lord says, and notice because up until this point the Lord has not spoken. He has worked upon the person's heart and he has brought them to himself and he has delivered them and they are rejoicing in their salvation. But now, being preserved in the Lord, being saved, now the Lord speaks and says, I will instruct thee and teach thee in the way which thou shalt go. I will guide thee, I will counsel thee with mine eye. and the Lord guides us. You see, the Lord doesn't just save a person and leave them, but he guides us through our lives. There is a change, and that's why the Christian is different to the person in the world, or most certainly ought to be. And if you're not, and you say you're a Christian, then look again to your heart. If there's no difference between you and the world, then look again to your heart. Have you ever come under conviction of sin? Because if you've been convicted of sin, And you have felt the hand of God upon you and you have known this roaring and this heaviness and this drought of the summer. What are you doing in sin? What has sin to do with you? Why would you ever want to touch it? That's not to say that the Christian is without sin. But it is to say that the Christian doesn't rejoice in sin, love sin, desire to dwell in the midst of it. The Lord says, I will instruct thee. And he does instruct us. He instructs us through his words. He instructs us through our conscience which is renewed in Christ. He leads us and guides us through life. But he does so with his eye. We must be looking to him to catch that look which he has upon us. And then there is the consolation as our time has gone. The consolation, it says, But he that trusteth in the Lord, mercy shall compass him about. Be glad in the Lord, and rejoice, ye righteous, and shout for joy, all ye that are upright in heart. What is consolation? Being consoled. being comforted. This is the comfort of the child of God. God has done all of these things for you. You are a blessed man. You are a blessed woman. Be glad in the Lord and rejoice. Why? Look at verse 10. Many sorrows shall be to the wicked. Many sorrows. Sorrows in this world, sorrows in the world to come, sorrows in death. And if there are not sorrows in death, because not everyone gets sorrows in death even, And they go out plunging into the abyss thinking, oh it's alright with me. Only to come face to face with God their judge, they have not even thought about. What a terrible, terrible thing that would be. But he that trusteth in the Lord, mercy shall compass him about. Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, ye righteous. Shout for joy, all ye that are upright in heart, not the one in whose spirit there is guile, but the upright in heart. We have opened our hearts to the Lord. We have said, Lord, I am a sinner. There is no doubt within me that I am a sinner. There is no doubt within me that I could do what the most wicked have done. If the circumstances had been different, if I had been brought up with their upbringing, if I had been put in the situations they've been put in, that I would have been no different because sin dwells in my heart the same as in theirs. But the Lord has saved us. What a rejoicing. But I want to finish with these words at the beginning of verse 6. It says, For this shall every one that is godly. The Hebrew there for the word godly is chassid and it means gracious, a recipient of grace. For this shall everyone who has received the grace of God pray unto thee in a time when thou mayest be found." To be this blessed man, to be this blessed woman, to know our sins forgiven and the joy of the Lord, to know the company of the Lord and the protection of the Lord and the salvation of the Lord. Every person who receives the grace of God will pray to God in a day that he mayest be found. They will pray. If you have never prayed, you are not this blessed person. You are the wicked who will be troubled. The apostle says today is the day of salvation. The prophet in the Old Testament whom he cites says today is the day of salvation. Today is the day that the Lord mayest be found. And if God is gracious to you, then you will cry out to Him. And if you have not cried out to Him, you have not received His grace, nor His forgiveness, and you are condemned. The arraignment will be written, and you will stand before God for your sin, not necessarily what you have done, but what you are, is what God looks at. Let's pray. Our gracious Father, we pray that Thou would challenge every heart in this church tonight. We have spoken of those things which You have revealed in Your Word. The Psalmist's purpose in writing this Psalm, Lord, was to instruct us. But we can see even from the Psalm that it's not enough to receive instruction. For the Psalmist himself says that that blessed man comes under the conviction of sin from God. It requires that you should trouble the heart. Oh Lord we pray that thou would trouble the heart of every person who is lost and who is wicked in thy sight, a sinner without hope, without salvation, without redemption, without Christ. Trouble their hearts lest they come to the end of their lives and stand before God accused and guilty. Bless your word tonight we pray, for Jesus sake, Amen.