Good morning. Good morning. Blessing to be here with you all at Red Mills Baptist Church. I can't remember the last time I was here, it was about a few years ago at least, but always a blessing to worship with you and to visit another like-minded ministry. And thankful for this opportunity to speak. Today, I'm going to invite you to turn in your copy of the scriptures to the 32nd Psalm. We've already heard from the 73rd Psalm. We've heard from the 29th Psalm. No, no, 49th Psalm, I should say. And now the 32nd. Okay. And so the 32nd Psalm, we read, Emascula of David. Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity and in whose spirit there is no deceit. For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away and through my groaning all day long. For day and night, your hand was heavy upon me. My strength was dried up by the heat of summer. Selah. I acknowledge my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity. I said I will confess my transgression to the Lord, and you forgave the iniquity of my sin. Selah. Therefore, let everyone who is godly offer prayer to you at a time when you may be found, surely in the rush of great waters, They shall not reach him. You are a hiding place for me. You preserve me from trouble. You surround me with shouts of deliverance. Salaam. I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go. I will counsel you with my eye upon you. Be not like a horse or a mule without understanding, which must be curbed with bitten bridle, or it will not stay near you. Many are the sorrows of the wicked, but steadfast love surrounds the one who trusts in the Lord. Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, O righteous, and shout for joy, all you upright in heart. Let's pray. O Heavenly Father, we come before you once again, humbling our hearts before thy majesty. O Lord, your word is purer than gold refined in the fire. And we look now as impure sinners, O Lord, but we have been made righteous and purified by your spirit, anoint our hearts and minds to receive from you today instruction in your word. I pray that we would be humble and that we would be receptive and that, Lord, we would have a correctable and teachable spirit. that we may conform to your word and to your son, Jesus Christ, in whose name and in whose righteousness we stand. And so, Lord, we pray for this today. I pray, O Lord, for myself as well, O Lord. May I experience your anointing. and your Holy Spirit take control of my mind and my heart and my lips. And that as I speak, I would speak forth thy word with clarity, conviction, and truth. In Christ's name, amen. Well, the book of Psalms is without a doubt one of my favorite books in the Bible. And those of us who've been Christians for a long time could attest to the fact that during the darkest times in our lives and the joyful times in our lives, we could always look to the book of Psalms for a word of encouragement. The Book of Psalms is a very rich and diverse book. There are many different types of psalms. But the Book of Psalms is mostly a book of prayers. It is a book of prayers. It is a book of songs. And in this case, our psalm today is a masculine. It is a psalm of instruction. It is a liturgical term, and it describes that there is a purpose for this psalm, that is to teach and instruct. It is didactic. And here we see that King David has a lesson that he would like to share with us. It's a lesson he learned in his own life, and it's a lesson that as all of us believers have learned at one point or another, pass on to someone else. And that is the joy and the blessing of being forgiven of your sins. You see, there's no greater need that we have as human beings than to be forgiven. People are grasping and trying to obtain certain statuses in the world, or they figure, if only I had more money, or if only I lived in a certain location, or if only I had the right spouse, or if my children were obedient, my life would be happy. The scripture here says, blessed is the man whose transgression is forgiven. That word blessed means happy. Not happy in the sense of a worldly happy where we're thrilled with the moment, but true genuine inner happiness that abounds from the joy that is a result of the fruit of the spirit. So the psalm not only is a masculine that is instructive to our souls, but it's a benediction. What is the benediction? It is a word of blessing. Just like the beatitudes in which Christ teaches, blessed is the poor in spirit and blessed are the meek and blessed are those who are merciful, we see here the triumphant blessing, the most important blessing is that we are forgiven. William MacDonald, who is a commentator in the book of Psalms, says, happiness is to be forgiven. It is an emotion that defies description. It is the relief of an enormous burden lifted, a debt canceled, and of a conscience at rest. Guilt is gone, warfare ended, and peace is enjoyed. Hallelujah. Now David understood this well, didn't he? He certainly, we know the king of Israel, he's the one who slew Goliath and, you know, Saul killed his thousands and David killed his ten thousands. But it was a point in David's life where he sunk very low and we all know that story as well, the dark side of David. And that was when he beheld Bathsheba bathing across his rooftop and decided he was going to take another man's wife because after all, he's the king, he could do what he wants. Lost in his moment of darkness, he commits adultery. In an attempt to cover up his sins, he tries to deceive her husband by having him brought back from the war, which he should have been himself. He attempts to get Uriah to sleep with his wife several times and is unsuccessful. And after his plot fails, he resorts to murder. He orders his general to have Uriah put to death Put it in the front line of battle. You see, David sinned, and what he tried to do was sweep it all under the rug, hoping it'll just go away. All right, how many times do we do that? We sin and we have areas of our life that are not right with God, and we just kind of sweep it under the carpet, hoping it'll just go away. But, you know, sin is like a tire you try to bury in the ground. You could try to bury tires under the ground, they keep coming to the surface. You see, we need our sins covered only by one person. The only person who can cover our sins is our Lord Jesus Christ, through the atoning blood of his sacrifice. So we live under the new covenant now, and we understand that blessedness even more. But David understood this in a personal level, and this psalm not only is real to him, but it is real to us, because we understand the full capacity of it, in light of the cross. And so as we go into this today, I want to ask you a question. Are you happy? Do you have the joy of the spirit? Do you consider yourself blessed? Some of us may be wrestling with misery or despair or anguish to some extent or another. And what I really want you to consider is today, have you truly thought about how blessed you really are, knowing that your sins have been forgiven? Let's dive in. The first point of my sermon I wanna do is to look at this idea of blessedness, and this is in the first two verses, because in order to understand the blessedness of being forgiven, we have to know what we're being forgiven of, don't we? So we have to understand there is a consequence, there is a cost to sin. Sin isn't free. When we sin, there's a price to pay. The Bible says the wages of sin brings death. And that death process is not the immediate physical death that we think of, that's the end result. And that only leads us to eternal death, but it's a slow death, a spiritual death, a painful death. There's a torture of soul. And so when David says, blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, he's realizing and acknowledging here that sin had cost him a great deal. The problem with most people in society today is they do not even acknowledge the existence of sin. And I was talking with a brother yesterday, we had over for fellowship, And one of the things we were discussing is the makeup of our region here in New York. I'd say the majority of people are, religiously speaking, are Roman Catholic, probably Jewish right behind that. But evangelical Christians, I think it's across the board like less than 3%. So when we talk about the concepts of sin, and above that, the largest group of people that make up this area are nuns. They're non-religious, they're atheists. And so when you talk to an atheist, when you talk to a person who does not believe in a God, an all-powerful monotheistic God, and you bring up the concept of sin, that's rubbish, it's laughable. Because hey, what's good for you may not be good for me and vice versa. Morality is relative. And so the idea of sin for most people is not even something that people take seriously. But one thing people do take seriously is the result of sin, that's a tortured conscience. People, whether they know it or not, are living with tortured souls and tortured consciences because of their sin. We were made in the image of God, we were made to live for the glory of God, and we fail to live up to that standard, it does something to us that destroys us. And so people look for solutions to these tortured consciences, because these tortured consciences cause us physical, psychological, emotional, and spiritual decline. Where do they go? They go to the psychiatrist. They go to the medicine, they go to illegal drugs, they go to alcohol, they go to pleasure, they go to materialism, they go to everything to try to assuage and silence their conscience, which is shouting against them. Do you know there is an epidemic of mental illness in this country? I was speaking recently to a member of our church and they have a relative They have a relative who desperately needs mental health help right now. You cannot get a psychiatrist from here to New Jersey. They're backed up. There's waiting lists, six months waiting lists to get a therapist. When I heard this, I was baffled. And this poor person is just desperate for someone to help their relative. People went nuts this past year. It's amazing how you see when people don't have God, how they implode inwardly. You see, people choose the wrong medicine because they don't know what the disease is. You can't cure the disease until you know what it is. And you see, the disease is not a disease of the body, it's a disease of the soul, and it's called sin. Sin is a radical offense against the Holy God. It is defiance, rebellion, and the breaking of God's moral laws. We are all sinners by nature. That means we were born sinners. Original sin was passed down to us through Adam, and we are sinners by practice. We're very good at practicing our sin. but sin brings consequences. Death is the end result, but on the way to death, we deal with guilt. Guilt brings shame, and shame brings fear, and fear brings judgment. Now, the Holy Spirit uses 14 words in the Old Testament to describe sin, four of which are in our text today. And I'd like to look at those four words. The first is transgression, transgression. Now, transgression is very easy to understand. 1 John 3 tells us that sin is the transgressing of God's holy law. It's law-breaking. God is king. He created us in his image. He is the ruler of the universe. And just as he has established natural law, he has established moral law. And these are moral absolutes. They are codified for us in the Ten Commandments, which clearly revealed to us the righteous character of who God is and who he expects his people to live up to. And any violation of those Ten Commandments is what we call a transgression. It's breaking the law. And just like when you break the law in the world and you have moral codes in our legal system, you get arrested and go to jail and you pay a price, there are consequences to breaking God's law. But in order to acknowledge that there is a law, we have to acknowledge that there's a lawmaker and that God has a right to rule our lives. He has a right to tell us how to live. He owns us. We do not belong to ourselves. The second word that's used here is the word sin, which we use, you know, sin is sin. But the word here simply means it is a lack of what is required. The word sin in Hebrew literally means missing the mark, missing the mark. It means falling short, being defective, not measuring up. Well, we know what scripture tells us that definition in Romans 3.23, for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. You know, think of a bow and arrow. You know, you're aiming for that bullseye and you fall short. You're missing the mark. That is what sin is. You're falling short of the standard that God has required of you. You're defective. The third word used here is iniquity. The word means perverted, twisted, crooked, corrupted. Just recently, my computer crashed. And when it crashed, I got a little dialogue box that came up on the screen. Your hard disk has been corrupted. In other words, it's broken. The files are messed up. It's all warped and out of whack. You have to literally wipe the whole disk clean and reinstall the software in order to get it working. That's what sin is for us. It is a corruption. It's a twisting. It's a breaking down of who we are as God's image bearers. We are all broken people. Sin breaks you. It messes you up. It twists and perverts the purpose for which we belong. It's like for an example, right? God created a man and woman to be married. One man, one woman. That's God's design. So God has created us with sexual desire and ability and that's the proper place for that is marriage, right? But sin corrupts and twists and perverts that and we see the result of that in all the things that take place outside of marriage and redefining marriage and all the corruption we see in our society today. God gave us those desires, gave us those abilities, but for a place and a purpose. Sin corrupts, perverts, twists, and leaves us broken. And finally, deceit. Finally, deceit. Sin is a deception. Sin has a deceptive nature. The book of Hebrews tells us that the deceitfulness of sin could harden our hearts. And in Hebrews chapter three, verse 13, It tells us that, beware of the deceitfulness of sin, which could harden your heart. Sin makes lies to you. You know, it's interesting, because again, Paul says to Timothy in 1 Timothy 3, that false teachers, they're both deceiving others and being deceived themselves. Right? Sin just, it deceives us, it lies to us, it makes false promises. If you sin, you'll be happy. If you sin, you know, you'll enjoy yourself. If you sin, you'll achieve the success you want. It's all lies. Because in the end, sin feels good, but in the end, it kills you. Not only that, but it creates deception. You deceive others, and you really, ultimately, the only one you deceive is yourself. Because God knows everything and sees everything. It's not until we're honest with ourselves that we can truly find the cleansing of our conscience and the relief of that burden. Therefore, David could say, blessed is the one who is forgiven. He could shout this with joy because he experienced all the different aspects of sin and he acknowledges and proclaims that it is a relief to be cleansed and washed and renewed by God. God has not imputed our iniquity to us, but rather he has imputed it to his son, 2 Corinthians 5.21, tells us he made him who knew no sin to become sin for us, that we may become the righteousness of Christ. God covers our sin and covers our shame with garments of righteousness, in the abundance of his redeeming love. It is removed from his sight forever, and he has released the penalty of sin. What more can we take joy in? The second part of my sermon today is the concealing of sin brings pain. The concealing of sin brings pain. So David in his psalm is remembering what he went through in this time where he contained or he withheld and concealed his sin with Bathsheba. Verses three and four says, when I kept silent, my bones wasted away. and through my groaning all day long, for day and night, your hand was heavy upon me, and my strength was dried up, as by the heat of summer." Most scholars believe it was about one year that David carried the sin with Bathsheba around with him. Within that one year period, it took a toll on him. He lied to himself, he lied to others, and in the end, he was lying to himself. He was destroying himself. And it is a lesson on the penalty of unconfessed sin. Unconfessed sin eats away at our inner man. It eats away at our conscience like a termite eats away at wood. It destroyed him from within. And he uses very graphic terms to describe what it was like. It affected him physically. He says, when I kept silent, my bones wasted away. David was an agile man. He was a warrior. He was not a scholar. He did not sit home and read books. He was a warrior. This is a man who was physically fit. He was a warrior who was undefeated, yet his guilty conscience wore him down physically. You know, we have to remember we're connected spiritually and physically. When we're spiritually sick, it affects your physical body. I believe many times we're dealing with physical sickness in our life because there's unconfessed sin in our life that's eaten away and rotting us to the bone. His strength was sapped, his body was wasting away, his conscience probably prevented him from eating or sleeping, and as a result, he was breaking down. It affected him mentally. It says he was groaning all day long. The word groaning is often in connection with despair. Oh, you ever feel like that? You ever wake up? Oh, you know. This is the groaning that David endured. He was groaning, his emotions, his soul was tormented. One time he was a happy man, but when he concealed his sin, he was utterly miserable. In fact, you could just remember the part when Nathan the prophet came to him to confront him with a sin. How was David confronted? Well, Nathan used a parable. He used a parable about a man who had a lot of sheep, and then he stole the one sheep that one poor man had. And you see the way David reacted, get him, kill him, I want him here, I want him dead. You could see that own misery, that anger in him wanted to just, you know, let's get this guy. He was probably very irritable and tormented. It was because of his own sin. David, that's you, Nathan said. Oh, that must have broke him. Unconfessed sin and guilt will do tremendous damage to the mind. I believe a majority of psychological problems that people have are a result of unconfessed sin. Now, let me clarify that. That does not mean that there are people who have a biological chemical imbalance. There are some people who clearly have nothing to do with themselves or their sin, just they have a biological issue, they need treatment. But I believe for the most part, people who have psychological, emotional problems, it's due to unconfessed sin in their lives. Their souls are tormented. Thirdly, it affected his relationship with God. He felt the heaviness of God's hand upon him. He says, your hand was heavy upon me. I don't know if you guys ever felt the hand of God upon you, but I have. It's a heaviness that you can't describe in words. It was his guilt. It was the shame of knowing that he had sinned against a holy God. The finger of God alone would be crushing to us, just as pinky. And speaking in anthropomorphic terms, of course, how much more when God's hand is against us? This is a colloquial expression that demonstrate the heaviness and gravity of sin. We don't take sin as seriously as we really want to. We take it lightly. But sin brings consequences. It brings the heavy hand of God against you. You know how you know the hand of God is against you? I know. It's when nothing goes right in your life. You ever feel like that? You ever go through a season where it just seems like everything imaginable is going wrong? Right? The universe seems like it's against you. That's the hand of God. God in his love and grace disciplines us as children. And sometimes that discipline is painful, Hebrews 12 tells us. But he loves us so much, he will give us the little spankings we need in life. And we will feel the heaviness of his hand upon us. He will frustrate you, confound you, and thwart you until you turn to him. In the end, David says, my strength was dried up like the heat of summer. He was no longer the carefree shepherd of God's people. He'd become listless. His failure to repent drained him of all his zest for life and depleted him of his spiritual energy. This is what it is when you deal with unconfessed sin in your life. It takes a toll on you. Proverbs 20, 13 says, whoever conceals his transgression will not prosper, but he who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy. And Jesus promises us that whoever confesses his sin and tells us 1 John 1, that Christ is our high priest. He is faithful and just to forgive us and cleanse us of all unrighteousness. So let me make clear, positionally, we have been forgiven. We're going to heaven. There's nothing that could change or reverse that verdict of justification that God has given us. But in this life, we're stumbled along the way. We are going to sin, we're going to fall short. And although we may not experience eternal judgment before God when we die, we will experience the temporal pains and judgments of sin in this life. And it's a reminder to us that to enjoy the fullness of eternal life that Christ purchased for us, we must walk in the ways of our Lord. Thirdly, confession brings mercy, verse five. I acknowledge my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity. I said, I will confess my transgressions to the Lord, and you forgave me. Well, David would not be writing this Psalm if he didn't repent, amen? We wouldn't even be talking about it. So it was a dark period in David's life, but ultimately he acknowledged his sin, he turned from his sin, he repented of his sin, and he found mercy, he found forgiveness. Ultimately, he recognized his sin was against God and God alone. Psalm 51.4, another psalm of penitence, David proclaims against you and you only have I sinned. Alexander McLaren comments, you have not got to the bottom of the blackness of sin until you see that it is flat rebellion against God Himself. Yes, in your sin you may hurt other people, you may hurt yourself, but the greatest offense is against God Himself. You are offending a holy, righteous, majestic God who gives you life and breath each day and who paid the penalty for your sin with the blood of His dear Son. It's not until you realize that our sin is against Him will we find true forgiveness, true mercy, true relief. Confession leads to healing, it leads to forgiveness. We cannot experience that till we confess. Pride is what keeps us from coming clean, isn't it? It's the only thing that keeps us coming clean because we think we're justified, we excuse, we make reasons. Well, I acted this way because. Often when I do marriage counseling and I sit down with a husband and wife, there will always be that one spouse who says, well, you don't know what a jerk she is, or you don't know what a jerk he is, and that's why I act the way I do. I have to act this way. They justify their position of their sin because of the way the other person acts. We will always make excuses for our sin. It goes right back to the garden. God, the woman you gave me, it's her fault. She made me do it. If it wasn't for her, I'd be okay. So that's nothing new in marriage counseling, right? It goes back to the first marriage counseling session that ever existed. But we can always find justification for our sin, but it's not until we just come out and say, you know what, Lord, I have sinned against you. I repent and I am sorry, forgive me. And then David says, the Lord forgave the iniquity of my sin. I wanna stop for a moment to think about that. This was David's personal testimony of God's mercy shown to him. The word forgive in Hebrew is nasa, and it literally means to have a burden lifted away. David's burden had been removed, he felt the immediate relief of knowing God's forgiveness. And I want you to think about that, because unconfessed sin is like a heavy burden. It's a burden that weighs you down. John Bunyan captured this reality perfectly in his allegory, Pilgrim's Progress. In Pilgrim's Progress, remember Christian is the story of a man, or the story of Christian is the story of a man who was burdened by the weight of sin. Christian knew the law, he knew his sin, and he realized he had a burden on his back that he could not, with all his effort and his greatest strivings, remove. And that was David. And that's all of us apart from Christ. We're like pilgrims in this world. We carry a heavy burden we cannot ever remove. It weighs us down and besets us. It's not until we come to the cross where that burden is removed. In John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, he writes this about Christian when he comes to the cross. He says, he ran thus till he came to a place somewhat ascending, and upon that place stood a cross, and a little below in the bottom a sepulcher. And so I saw in my dream that just as Christian came up to the cross, his burden loosed from off his shoulders and fell off from his back and began to tumble and so continued to do so until it came to the mouth of the sepulcher where it fell in and I saw it no more. The moment we came to Christ, the burden of our soul rolled away, rolled away into the sepulcher of death forever. And yet, sometimes as believers, we wanna pick that burden back up again. Jesus offers us true rest, true relief. He'll take that burden. Matthew 11, 28, come to me, all you who are labored and heavy laden, for I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. Our next point. Because what do we learn from this? What do we learn? What is the lesson of all this? Well, David is writing this as an instruction. So in verse six, we see, therefore, in other words, based on everything I just said, here's the lesson. Let everyone who is godly offer prayer to you at a time when you may be found. And surely in the rush of great waters, they shall not reach him. You are a hiding place for me. You preserve me from times of trouble. You surround me with shouts of deliverance. The first lesson that we learn is to seek God at the right time. Seek God while he might be found. Those who are godly should offer prayers to the Lord while he may be found. And this, I think, is interpreted two ways. Number one, it reminds us that the longer you stay mired in your sin, the harder and more recalcitrant your heart becomes, the more corrupted your soul becomes, the more diminished the light of the gospel becomes in your life. Sin hardens the heart. Don't put off till tomorrow what you could do today. For every day that you delay to repent of unconfessed sin is a day that your heart gets harder and harder and harder. It will eventually consume your whole life. And ultimately, if you don't confess your sin and repent, and you fall away, it proves you were never a believer to begin with. So the good news is if you're a believer, if you're a Christian, you're gonna repent, just like David did. But if you just keep trucking along in your sin until you silence your conscience completely, over the years I've seen it, those are the people who walk out the door and never come back. Because they didn't seek God at the appropriate time. It also teaches us that our days are numbered. It teaches us our days are numbered. You don't have tomorrow promised to you. You do not have tomorrow promised to you. You can get on the road right now and someone could broadside you and your life would be over like that. That quickly your life could end. I was talking to my next door neighbor the other day. You know what she said to me? Her best friend's son, 45 years old, good shape, walking out to his car, boom, had a massive heart attack, dropped dead right on the street, fell down, collapsed. He was on his way to work. He didn't know his life was gonna end that day. And so it is with us, we never know when God's gonna call us home. Seek God while he may be found. 2 Corinthians 6.2, we're told, behold, now is the favorable time. Behold, now is the day of salvation. The promise is that when we do offer the right prayers to God at the acceptable time, the floodwaters of judgment will not overtake us. This is similar to the promise of the Lord in the Sermon on the Mount. It's about building your house upon the rock. Matthew 7, 24, everyone who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock and the rain fell and the floods came and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall because it had been founded on the rock. Jesus is our rock, he's our hiding place. And because of him, our lives are hidden in Christ Jesus. Colossians 3, 3. Therefore, with strong confidence, we can face God on the day of judgment and be found in him. We can say like David in verse seven, you are my hiding place. You preserve me in trouble. You surround me with shouts of deliverance. Seek God while he may be found. Secondly, what else do we learn from this? Do not resist the will of the Lord, verses eight through nine. It says, I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go, and I will counsel you with my eye upon you. Be not like the horse or mule without understanding, which must be curbed with bitten bridle, or it will not stay near you. We are to be instructed in the way we should go. We are instructed by God's holy word. Now, if you are born again, you're a new creation, God has written the law of God in your hearts. So you will want to follow God's law. But sometimes, rather than acting like sheep, following our good shepherd, we act like mules and horses. The Bible uses metaphors of animals quite a bit, right? The Lord says, don't cast your pearls to swine, right? Gentile woman says, even the dogs get the scraps from the table. The greatest metaphors were sheep, we wander away and we have a good shepherd. But here, David says sometimes we could be like mules and horses. Well, how do we resemble mules and horses? Well, it's either when we're getting ahead of the Lord and running away from him, or it's when we resist and dig our heels and we're stubborn and we don't follow his will. The horse is an animal, unless restrained, will always run ahead of its master. The mule, on the other hand, is a stubborn animal who always refuses to move forward when led. David was like a wild horse. He rushed into sin. He held it back like a stubborn mule. It wasn't until he repented that he found himself to be a sheep in God's sheepfold again. The warning is this. Don't get to a point where you have to be led by bit and bridle. God does not wish to treat us like that, but he will if he has to. Be like humans. We're created in the image of God. We have understanding. We have minds. We have souls. be like sheep who follow our good shepherd." This is a warning for the person who will not humble themselves before the sovereign rule of God. If we do not submit to the Lord, he will control us. He will put the bitten bridle in us. Psalm Proverbs 26.3 says, a whip for the horse, a bridle for the donkey, and a rod for the back of fools. Thirdly, know who you are. That's the next lesson we take away from this. Learn who you are, verse 10. Many are the sorrows of the wicked, but steadfast love surrounds the one who trusts in the Lord. Know who you are, verse 11. Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, O righteous, and shout for joy, all you upright in heart. See, David ends with calling attention to the blessed estate of those who are pulled into a covenant relationship with God. He does this first by stating the many sorrows of the wicked. Those who persist in their sin, those who persist in their rebellion against God will accumulate sorrows. They will accumulate sorrows in this life, and their sorrows will follow them into eternity. While they may enjoy the momentary pleasures of sin, their destiny will be eternity of sorrow and anguish of soul. On the other hand, those who trust in the Lord are surrounded by his steadfast love, his chesed love, his covenant love, his unconditional, unrelenting, always and forever love is the lot of the righteous. It is that love that gives us the strength. It is that love that enables us to move forward. And because he loved us, we love him. And this is the love of God that he sent his son to die for us, to redeem us, to give us eternal life. This whole sermon tells us two things. Number one, if you're not a believer, if you're not a Christian, I'm not saying that you're not religious, but because if you're here in church, there's some religion in you. Right? But it's telling you that if you have not been born again, if you have not come to true saving faith in Christ, the burden of sin will weigh you down and destroy you and ultimately follow you into eternity. The good news is if you come to faith in Christ, if you repent of your sin, if you confess your sin and come to Christ and throw yourself at the mercy of the cross, you will find forgiveness for your souls and it will be healing to you. by his stripes we are healed. And that healing is not talking about physical healing, it's talking about the healing of our soul that's been destroyed and broken by sin. On the other hand, it's also a warning to us believers. And I said earlier in this sermon, we still fall into sin, right? That battle is real. Galatians 5, the flesh and the spirit. And there are times as Christians, you are going to sin. In fact, if you're honest with yourself, you sin every day. You sin multiple times a day. The danger is that we get so comfortable resting in our eternal security in Christ that we have a casual attitude towards sin. David was elect. David was chosen by God. He was chosen from before the foundations of the world, and God had a plan that he was gonna save and redeem and bring him to the end, but David fell short. He messed up. And he brought horrible consequences into his life because of his sin. Don't play with sin, guys. It's like playing with a serpent. They'll bite you. And I believe as Christians, we take sin far too lightly. It not only will destroy you, it'll destroy everyone around you. It'll destroy the church if the corruption spreads. A little leaven leavens the lump. I think we need to be vigilant on this. We need to take every sinful attitude, thought and act and rebellion against God and bring it into submission to the cross of Jesus Christ. We must never trivialize sin. We say, well, I'm not committing adultery and I'm not murdering anybody. Just a little white lie. There is no such thing as a little white lie. There's no such thing as a little sin. All sin is offensive to God. And the more you continue it, the less you will experience the grace of his presence. To me, that's the greatest loss when we sin. I believe that when David was in this period, he did not experience the gracious presence of God during that period, because he grieved the Holy Spirit. His greatest cry in Psalm 51 was, take not thy Holy Spirit from me. He saw what happened when God took the Holy Spirit away from Saul. Saul became a tormented man. Demons came upon him. And if you read all about Saul in the latter part of his life, you could see all the symptoms of a man who's psychologically tortured. And David says, I don't want that because if you take the presence away from me, I'll be lost. I have two daughters. We all have children. And my daughter sometimes will bring me great joy and pleasure. And I love being around them. And there's times when they defy me and rebel against me and disobey me. They make me very angry. And there's a distance that takes place in that relationship. I may not say goodnight when they go to bed. They won't know the gracious presence that I will show to them when I love them. I still love them, but there's a sense where I withhold my gracious presence. There are times as believers where we do not experience the gracious presence of God, but rather His hand is heavy upon us. but praise be his name. Because if you feel his heavy hand, that means he's still in your life. That means he hasn't forsaken you. That means he still loves you. Let me turn to Hebrews chapter 12 and we'll end with this. In Hebrews 12.7, it says, for the discipline, it is for discipline you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? If you're left without discipline in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. Here's the good news. If God is disciplining you right now in your life, you're feeling his hand, that means you're his child and he loves you. If you're in big sin and everything's going good for you, that's a scary place to be. If you're not feeling the weight of God's hand upon you and you know you're in deep sin, then that should trouble your soul. But when God loves you, he will always discipline you and correct you and bring you back to where you need to be. And it will carry out its purpose. What is the purpose? Well, it tells us here in verse 10, for they disciplined us, speaking of our parents, for a short time as it seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good that we may share in his holiness. God wants us to be holy. Verse 11, for the moment, all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who've been trained by it. Let the blessing, the happiness of forgiveness be real in your life today. Count your blessings, name them one by one and put forgiveness at the top of that. God has forgiven you, you are blessed, you are more happy than you could imagine. And in light of that forgiveness and in light of that grace, walk in that joy, walk in that happiness. And don't go back to the very sins that God has forgiven you of. Repent every day, turn from your sin every day, turn to Christ, begin every day at the foot of the cross, and may the joy of the Lord be your strength. Let's pray. Father in heaven, thank you for this word that you've put on my heart. I thank you, Father, for more importantly, your word, these words that David penned. Thank you for the work you did in his life and how it transferred over to us. Oh my God, I just pray that we would share and know this joy. Lord, we are your children, and we wander sometimes, we fall away, and we know your displeasure at those moments. Oh Lord, may we repent and come back, and may we truly bask in the joy and blessedness of forgiveness. In Christ's name, amen.