Janie and I are about the same age and I'm not any good at tech either But unlike her I didn't Take the wiser path and just not have any So I will I'll do my best with this And I am what did you call this morbid black? I She referred to the sound team as being in morbid black, and here I am in black. I call it classic black. And I thought, wow, my topic is the confession of sin. And I just sounded so bleak. And I was a little concerned that the topic would feel heavy to you. And it is a serious topic, it's a very serious topic, but it builds off the adoration that Janie talked about in the first session, because a part of adoring God is knowing Him, and it's also a very big part of the confession of our sin and our relationship with Him. So let's see if I can figure out how to do this, and we'll get started here. Did you say page up and page down? Oh, there we go. Confession of Sin. Where guilt is most terrible, there thy mercy in Christ is most free and deep. From one of my favorite resources in this study, The Valley of Vision. We're going to be singing this hymn after I talk, and I would like to think that I would remember to come back and talk about this particular verse then, but I probably wouldn't since it's right here in my slides. So, I don't know about you, but a lot of times when I'm singing these wonderful hymns, I find myself singing praiseless praise. because I don't know what I'm saying. I'm not paying attention to the words, and so I wanted to just emphasize this third verse of this hymn, stricken, smitten, and afflicted. Ye who think of sin but lightly, nor suppose the evil great, here may view its nature rightly. Here its guilt may estimate. Mark the sacrifice appointed. See who bears the awful load. "'Tis the word, the Lord's anointed Son of Man and Son of God. "'We don't have to bear this load of sin. "'He has borne it for us.'" We're going to be looking, did I go backwards? I am going backwards. Okay, well let's try again. Above the stand? Okay. Okay. We're going to be looking at the topic of confession of sin specifically in prayer as opposed to each other. And there's a confession that we all must make unto salvation. And that confession unto salvation shares many of the same elements as the believer's confession of sin after conversion. All of the elements for both are the same, and we'll talk about what those elements are. But our focus for the most part today is going to be on the confession of sin in prayer for the believer. And some of you may even wonder, why we do need to confess sin as believers. There is a new, maybe not so new, but there is a popular misconception among some churches and pastors that we shouldn't need to confess our sin anymore. There are several heresies surrounding that notion. So we're going to address the question of whether Christians really need to confess sin. Didn't Christ die once for all our sin? Doesn't that mean that we're freed from the law? That we have liberty in Christ? That we should be Christ conscious and not sin conscious. That's actually a slogan that you will hear among some people who say they're believers. Must we confess every little sin constantly or risk condemnation to hell if we die with unconfessed sin? This is a heresy that is taught in a huge religion. Must we confess to a priest or a pastor? Does our confession have to be public? How do we confess and how often? And are we then supposed to walk around all the time like gloomy dust, groveling in the slew of despond because we realize we're so sinful? So I'm not gonna make my outline based on those questions, but these questions will be answered during the course of the discussion. In fact, Janie has already answered some of them in her first talk. No, we don't confess to a priest. Our high priest is Jesus Christ himself. He is our advocate. So I'll be using the terms repentance and confession interchangeably, even though they're not exactly the same word, but biblical confession presumes biblical repentance. So we're going to kind of use them interchangeably. So here is your outline. Oops, that's not the outline. That's right, I had this backwards. This is one of the reasons I couldn't ask somebody else to do this for me because I had my slides in backwards. In case you like an outline to take notes or if you just feel better or listen better if you have a roadmap in front of you, why the need for confession? What is biblical confession and repentance? Then we'll look at Psalm 51. It won't be an exhaustive look at Psalm 51. The Garden of Gethsemane, how does that tie into the confession of sin? And then a conclusion. I don't get too excited when I get to the conclusion because my conclusion is kind of long. So let's just go ahead and distinguish between the confession that's made unto salvation and the confession of sin, the daily confession of sin for the believer. What we have when we make our confession of faith unto salvation is what we normally call judicial forgiveness. That is our once for all forgiveness. by God. That establishes our legal standing with God. That cannot change. It is once for all. This is what we call positional sanctification and it is a free gift of God. There is absolutely nothing that we can do to earn that, to merit that, nothing we can bring into that covenant. And it's more of the type of forgiveness that a judge would give someone. Whereas our relational forgiveness, which is what we're gonna be most focused on today, is daily and ongoing. Because as you probably know, if you've been a believer for more than 24 hours, we still sin as believers. And we can't just presume upon the grace of God that we can go ahead and enjoy this liberty in Christ. Thank him that you forgave all these sins that I'm enjoying. I'm going to sin abundantly so that your grace can abound. But our relational forgiveness depends on our daily ongoing confession of our sin. It's what is part of our progressive sanctification. Sometimes we refer to that as the perseverance of the saints. And it affects our relational standing with God. You know how it is when you have a broken relationship with somebody. I mean, that may be my mother or my father, but if there is sin between us, then we have a strained relationship. We're probably not going to be dining at each other's tables. We're probably not going to be talking really warmly and intimately on the telephone together. Relational forgiveness is something that is commanded us to be responsible for. We're called to be holy so it requires obedience. Relational forgiveness does require something from us and that's what we're going to be talking about. This is the kind of forgiveness that's more like that that a father would give a child. So There are no sins committed by a Christian that can ever bring us into condemnation. Romans 8 1. There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus who walk not after the flesh but after the spirit. Octavius Winslow said in a wonderful book called The Lord's Prayer, which is in my list of resources, although the soul is washed and is clean every wit, the feet still need continuous washing in the water and the blood. This was shown to us symbolically in both the Old and the New Testaments. The daily washing of the feet, symbolizing daily cleansing from sins, was strikingly foreshadowed in the laver placed by God's command between the congregation and the altar in the Old Testament. I am not an expert on the tabernacle or any of that, but I found this very interesting. Please feel free to correct me about anything I say that's incorrect when we're done, or now, if you think it's important. But you see, does this have a pointer? laser pointer on here does it the orange button thank you oh yes okay so this is the laver that that I'm talking about by God's command that laver was to be filled with water and notice where it is the tabernacle. This is the altar of burnt offerings right here. This is where the sins of the offerings of atonement were made with the blood sacrifices. So God commanded that this be the way the tabernacle was set up. When the person bringing the offering came into the tabernacle, the first thing they did was the shedding of blood for the atonement, the offering of atonement, which was burned on this altar. But then as they approached the altar of incense farther in, they had to then go and wash their hands and their feet, not their whole body, in this laver of water. So even in the Old Testament, God has been consistent through eternity that this is part of the protocol for our approach to God, that we have our legal standing, we have our judicial forgiveness established, but then for the relational forgiveness, we wash daily with the water in that labor before they could get any closer to God's presence. I just found that fascinating. When the Lord filled the basin with water and washed his disciples' feet, He was giving us a New Testament example of the ongoing necessity for daily cleansing and forgiveness. He symbolized that he that is washed in my blood is cleaned from the guilt and condemnation of sin, yet needeth afterwards the daily sanctifying grace of my spirit. Maurice Roberts, in the excellent book, A Christian's High Calling, put it this way. It's almost humorous if you read it with understanding. No sins committed by a Christian can ever bring him into condemnation. All the sins of a believer are pardoned for Christ's sake, but the best actions of the best Christians are all defiled with sin. Sin in the Christian is still sin. Sin is not less sinful when committed by a Christian. And a believer's lifelong duty is to not rest satisfied in his mere forgiveness, but to strive towards unsinning perfection. Understand that we are not perfect, but that we are commanded to strive towards it. A.W. Pink said in a wonderful, it's really just a pamphlet, but it's a very big pamphlet, called Repentance, What Sayeth the Scriptures, in fact there are copies back there on the table that you're free to pick up and I recommend them, said that some insist is a vestige of a past Jewish age denying that God still requires repentance. But Paul says in Acts 1730, which was after the death and resurrection of Christ, but God now commandeth all men everywhere to repent. If we're inclined to say, but didn't Christ come here to fulfill the law? and does not his obedience free us from its demands? Surely you don't mean that the Son of God became incarnate for the purpose of purchasing lawless liberty for his rebellious subjects. Not my words, Pink's words. They're almost none of my original words in what I'm saying today. I just, I know nothing. I have nothing. But Jesus himself expressly declared, think not that I am come to destroy the law or the prophets. I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill. And in Titus 2, for the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, teaching us that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world. New Testament. Proverbs 28, 13, which is very, very classic verse for our subject today. He that covereth his sin shall not prosper, but whoso confesseth and forsaketh shall have mercy. This is the binding law of mercy. And for the New Testament, 1 John 1, 8 and 9. If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. Ladies, 1 John was written to believers. So yes, we are admonished to confess our sins. Scripture affirms that Christ died to purify unto himself a peculiar people. And that's not peculiar in a bad way. You want to be peculiar in this generation, don't you? Zealous of good works. So, not peculiar in being weird and making our own law unto ourselves. And our own elder David Curry said in a recent sermon, we're free from the curse of the law, not from obedience to it. Jerry Bridges said, in the pursuit of holiness, God specifically commands us to be holy in the New Testament. So be holy in all you do, 1 Peter 1.15. Pursue holiness, for without holiness, no one will see the Lord. Hebrews 12.14. The word pursue and the admonition to pursue holiness suggests two thoughts. First, that diligence and effort are required in this, and second, that it's a lifelong task, and it is. The only safe evidence that we are in Christ is a holy life. If we look like the rest of the world, what evidence is there for anybody that we are in Christ? Well, what if I don't confess my sins on a daily basis? Will I still be saved? Well, yes, if you've established your judicial forgiveness, yes, you will be. We're saved by the blood-atoning work of Jesus Christ, that once-for-all sacrifice that secured our judicial standing. Then why do I need to confess it all? We need the daily household or family or relational cleansing for fellowship and relationship. We must learn to deal biblically with our sins to maintain healthy fellowship. Psalm 66, 18 says, if I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me. Ladies, that is not a place we wanna be. We need to maintain, We need to maintain our relational forgiveness to walk in the light, for effective service for the Lord, for a clear conscience. Have you ever had a guilty conscience about anybody, about anything toward anybody, and you didn't want to see that person? I have. It's very stressful. It's not peaceful at all. Sin saps our vitality, not only our spiritual vitality, but also our physical, mental, and emotional. I knew a fellow a long time ago who had done something wrong at work. It wasn't terrible, but it had turned into kind of a disaster. And this guy couldn't, I mean, he couldn't function. He would go home from work every day and just go to bed and sleep. And he had a family. But that is how his sin affected him. The best way to prevent God from afflicting and humbling our souls with his own hand is to learn to humble and afflict our own souls. For this is a certain truth. Sin will bring sorrow sooner or later. From Janie's lovely book, Prayers for the Use of Family by William Jay, which is also one of my favorites and also on my resource list. Known to thee, God, are our sins with every aggravation, yet thou requirest us to confess our guilt in order that we may be suitably affected with them and be prepared for thy promised display of goodness. If we don't know what we need, We don't know what we have. We don't appreciate it. We don't adore our Lord the way we can and should. There's a glorious connection between confession of sin and the adoration of the Lord. Well, what are confession and repentance? I'm going to put a formal definition up here by A.W. Pink. It's very long. Don't be scared. I'm just going to leave it up there, and you can look at it or not. You can write it down or not. It is taken from that pamphlet that's on the back table, so you don't need to waste your time writing it down. But I am going to read through it, because honestly, this definition kind of covers everything that I'm going to be talking about today. The formal definition of repentance according to A.W. Pink says, it is a supernatural and inward revelation from God, giving a deep consciousness of what I am in his sight, which causes me to condemn myself, resulting in a bitter sorrow for sin, a holy horror and hatred for sin, a turning away from or forsaking of sin. It is the discovery of God's high and righteous claims upon me, and of my lifelong failure to meet those claims. It is the recognition of the holiness and goodness of his law, and my defiant insubordination thereto. It is the perception that God has the right to rule and govern me, and of my refusal to submit unto him. It is the apprehension that he has dealt in goodness and kindness with me and that I have evilly repaid him by having no concern for his honor and glory. It is the realization of his gracious patience with me and how that instead of this melting my heart and causing me to yield loving obedience to him, I have abused his forbearance by continuing a course of self-will. I can relate to all of that. Holiness doesn't mean adhering to a list of do's and don'ts, mostly don'ts. Our repentance must go much deeper than just regret for individual sins. When we think of repentance, we think if you want to get right with God, you get out your list of things you've done wrong and you tell God how sorry you are for each one of those sins. Well, repentance is not less than this. But it is much more than this. Remember the prodigal's older brother? He had nothing on his list of sins. He says to his father, I've never disobeyed you. And his father didn't contradict him. Yet the older brother remained outside the feast. And then there's the story of the rich young ruler who came to Jesus and said, what must I do to inherit the kingdom? And Jesus gave him some of the laws and he said, I've kept all those laws. I'm sure he was feeling very satisfied with himself and very excited that he was going to inherit the kingdom. But that's not all it required. When Jesus gave him one thing that was required of him, he went away sad, because he wasn't willing to give honor and glory to the king. Well, there are three essential elements to biblical confession. I didn't make a slide for this. I should have, because this is really important. We need to see God as he is. We need to see ourselves as God sees us. and we need to see sin as God sees sin. These three things are all interrelated to each other, so I'm not going to try to separate them from each other and talk about them separately. Well, actually, I did try, but it was way too messy. So it's just all included all together, all through this. We can never possibly know God fully as he is. I mean, Janie mentioned you have a list of, I think, 18 attributes of God in this notebook, and that's not even all of them. And we couldn't even touch on all of his attributes if we talked about his attributes all day. So, for now, we are going to focus on the attributes that are related to our confession of sin, because we are charged with and privileged to grow in our knowledge of the Lord, as Janie talked about. It's a glorious thing to grow our relationship with the Lord. From another wonderful publication, another pamphlet by Edward Payson, called Secret Sins in God's Sight. He says, recollect all that you have heard and seen of God's infinite perfections. And for some of us, it's been a lot of years of knowing the Lord, and we have a lot of history with him, and we've seen a lot of wonderful things from him. Recollect his unapproachable glory, the offices that he sustains, the works that he has performed, the blessings that he's bestowed upon you. Then say what he deserves from his creatures. Adoration, I would say. Does he not deserve to be loved, feared, and served with all the heart, soul, mind, and strength? So confession is the recognition of the chief thing wherein I am blameworthy, namely in having so miserably failed to render unto God that which is his rightful due. Can we refrain from exclaiming with Job, I have heard of thee. Now remember the book of Job, for about 40 chapters, Job has been pretty confident in his standing before God. He's been pretty sassy about some things. And Job was a good man as far as comparative goodness goes among us earthly creatures. But when God spoke to Job directly for the first time, Job says, I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now, mind, I see of thee. Wherefore, I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes. To repent beyond dispute is to change our minds as to the divine character and begin to look upon God as he is, an absolutely perfect and infinitely glorious being, infinitely worthy of supreme love and honor and obedience. And in the light of this glory, to begin to view our disaffection and rebellion as altogether inexcusable and infinitely criminal And in this way, take all the blame to ourselves which God lays upon us. But when the Holy Spirit enlightens and convicts a soul, his language becomes, against thee, thee only have I sinned and done this evil in thy sight. There is throughout repentance an eye toward God for it's only in that way that it can be godly. God is the offended party. He is the measurer of the offense. He is the judge and he alone. God and man differ very widely in the opinion that they entertain respecting almost every object. In nothing do they differ more than in the estimate that they form of man's moral character and of the sinfulness of sin. In the sight of God, our sins are incomparably more numerous, aggravated, and criminal than they appear to us. If we would see our sins as they appear to him, that is, as they really are, we must place ourselves as nearly as is possible in his situation and look at sin as it were through his eyes to the extent that we can. With the infinite God pouring all the light of his countenance around you, review your lives. Contemplate your offenses and see how they appear. Consider all our words even, anything vain, silly, impious, deceitful, unkind. How does such language sound in heaven? In the ears of angels, in the ears of that God of truth who gave us our tongues for noble purposes. What a disclosure is made when the dissecting knife of a spiritual anatomist, we lay open the human heart with all its dark recesses and expose the lurking abominations that it conceals, not to the light of day, but to the light of heaven. Angels would stand aghast at the sight. I certainly, I would leave town. I would. It is wholesome to the soul for believers to remember these dark facts about themselves. It is biblical to do so. We don't stay there, we don't grovel there. The good part is that Jesus pulls us out of that. Whenever we seriously contemplate the holiness of God, our natural reaction is to say with Isaiah, woe is me, for I am ruined. Therefore, it is important that we receive the same assurance that Isaiah received. See, your guilt is taken away and your sin is atoned for. How much more that means to us when we truly understand who God is, what our sin is to him, and what we are. If you struggle with what to say in prayer, I mean... You all have, I'm sure, heard people who are just wonderful prayers. You just want to hear them pray. Some people are better conversationalists. Some people are better with words. If you want to deepen your conversations in prayer, I highly recommend the book that Janie talked about this morning, William Jay's Prayers for the Use of Families, and Valley of Vision. There are 30 pages of prayers in the Valley of Vision that are focused on repentance. Sin is not a violation of human rights or of some abstract code of morality or human decency. It is a violation of God's law, an offense against him, a rebellion and despising of his authority, not an abstract standard of Christian ethics. Remember the publican in Luke 18. He recognized that awful moral distance which sin had taken him from God. He was deeply conscious of his utter unworthiness to gaze upon the Holy One. He unsparingly judged himself. He realized that his only hope lay in the sovereign mercy of God. from Luke 18, and the tax collector standing afar off would not so much as raise his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast saying, God, be merciful to me, a sinner. I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other, for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled. Everyone who exalts himself will be exalted. Did I lose my mic? So too, the thief on the cross, they knew who they were. They recognized who they were. And they were ready to receive forgiveness. He has to deal with God personally in an individual capacity. No church interposes between him and God. No church may intercept his approach to the throne of God. The church cannot stand between me and God to answer for my guilt. You cannot depend on your church to do that for you. We stand face to face with God alone, charged by him. by sin. The purpose of confession, at least one of them, is for us, and this leads us to worship and adore Him more and more. So we're going to look a little bit at Psalm 51. This is not by any means an exhaustive study of Psalm 51. I listened to a 16-part sermon series on Psalm 51. I listened to it twice, so my few pages of notes will not begin to touch the depths of treasure in this psalm. But I feel like I need to set the stage for this. David is the king of Israel at this time. He's committed adultery with Bathsheba. She was married to Uriah. When she tells David that she's pregnant, David tries to cover up their sin by having her husband, Uriah, who is one of his most faithful and skilled warriors, killed in battle. What treachery, what kind of a friend is that? And he did manage to cover things up, at least from Uriah, because now Uriah is dead. And other of David's men had to be aware of what he had done, because they had to arrange Uriah's murder. But David has gone on for a year or so now. He married Bathsheba after Uriah was killed. And by now she has given birth to their sinfully conceived child. And at this point, the prophet Nathan enters the story in 2 Samuel. Then the Lord sent Nathan to David, and when he arrived, he said, There were two men in a certain city, one rich and the other poor. The rich man had a great number of sheep and cattle, but the poor man had nothing except one small ewe lamb that he had bought. He raised it, and it grew up with him and his children. It shared his food and drank from his cup. It slept in his arms and was like a daughter to him. Now a traveler came, whoops, Went too far? Doesn't want to stop on that page. Now a traveler came to the rich man who refrained from taking one of his own sheep or cattle to prepare for the traveler. Instead, he took the poor man's lamb and prepared it for his guest. David burned with anger against the man and said to Nathan, as surely as the Lord lives, the man who did this deserves to die. Because he has done this thing and has shown no pity, he must pay for the lamb four times over. Then Nathan said to David, thou art the man. Why then have you despised the command of the Lord by doing evil in his sight? Then David said to Nathan, I have sinned against the Lord. The Lord has taken away your sin, Nathan replied. You will not die, nevertheless, because by this deed you have shown utter contempt for the word of the Lord. The son born to you will surely die." And he did. Why did David need Nathan to tell him he had sinned? Didn't he know? Of course he did, that's why he tried to cover it up. Of course he knew. His conscience was slumbering and it needed awakening. He had used a very popular fig leaf to cover his sin. We have lots of ways to lull our consciences. Entertainment, alcohol, soothing words. Oh, it's not so bad. Everybody does it. You're really a nice person. Or diversions, distractions, busyness. We have lots of ways to lull our consciences. Nathan's private dealing with David prevailed more with him than all the public means David had enjoyed for a whole year. So count it a great blessing of God to have a friend or a pastor who will watch over you and deal privately and plainly with you if you are in sin. Seek out friends like that. We all have great need of it, for self-love so blinds us that we cannot see what is amiss in ourselves. Psalm 141.5 says, let the righteous smite me, it shall be a kindness, and let him reprove me, it shall be an excellent oil that shall not break my head. Let's be Nathans to one another. That's one of the things that a church body does. We never enter into Psalm 51 until we've been wounded by God, either through a Nathan in our lives, a word from scripture, from a friend, from a hymn, from a sermon. So we're going to look a little bit at some of the verses up close. Psalm 51, verse one, have mercy upon me, O God, according to your loving kindness, according to the multitude of your tender mercies, blot out my transgressions. David wrote this psalm immediately, I presume, very shortly after Nathan confronted him with his sin. And this is how he responded. And he pled for grace and mercy, not justice, for he knew he deserved judgment. We come before God's judgment seat already condemned, just as David did. The only thing that will save us is the plea for mercy in the name of his son. The Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgressions and sin. That's how God is described in Exodus 34, 6. And in the case of Peter, when he denied Jesus, immediately while he yet spake, the cock crew and the Lord turned and looked upon Peter, The reminding and accusing sound in providence and the melting glance of the divine eye in grace meet together. This is a Rembrandt painting. It's darkened with age and you can't really see very well, but that's okay because I'm not sure he ever meant you to see very well. This is supposed to represent Jesus back here. This is Peter and the maid who has now confronted Peter three times. Aren't you one of his disciples? Aren't you with him? Don't I know you? And Peter has denied his master three times, as Jesus had told him he would. And right at this moment, Rembrandt is depicting when the cock crew the second time. And Jesus turns and looks at Peter. And what do you think his expression said? You think it was anger? Disgust? I'm going to get you? No, it was kindness. It was love. I'm sure it was sadness. This was a sad time. Not happy stuff here. I love the way Candlish says that from the book on the list by him. The reminding and accusing sound in Providence and the melting glance of the divine eye in grace meet together. Nothing will humble the heart so kindly or make it melt in godly sorrow as the consideration of the love of God. It was not the crowing of the cock twice that made Peter's heart melt. It was the look that Christ cast upon him. Without that free remission of sin, what kind of contrition could there really be? It would be forced. You would feel like you had no choice. God's not going to force us to be contrite. That isn't contrition. That isn't repentance. So, if there were no free remission of sin, if we were gonna forever pay the price for our sins without receiving this forgiveness, the best we could hope for would be abject, servile humiliation, perhaps. But at the bottom of that would still be our pride And on top of that, bitter hatred and resentment toward a harsh master, somebody that you could never please, no matter how much you wanted to. Because ladies, you know, I think most of you know, we can't not sin, even though that is our desire. It's when you experience the fatherly love of God as in his own son, Jesus Christ, he opens to you his great fatherly heart and by his gracious spirit draws you to himself. When he sees you afar off and runs to meet you and takes you in his arms and falls on your neck and kisses you, it is then that the heart is truly broken and the spirit becomes contrite. Haven't you found that to be true? When somebody's kind to you, that just brings the gusher of tears a lot of times. In the human government, justice is central and mercy is incidental. When you're in the courtroom on trial, they're looking for one thing, justice. But in the divine government, mercy is central, and justice is incidental. God, in his dealings with the sinner, works from the center of love to the circumference of justice. Not until love, these are not my words. Remember, almost none of these are my words. Not until love has exhausted all its resource, not until mercy has uttered her last appeal to the sinner, to repent and turn, Does justice step forward to arrest the criminal and hail him to judgment? Can we then hesitate to throw ourselves at the feet of his pardoning mercy, who has said, come now, let us reason together. Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. Though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. Have mercy upon me, O God, David said. This is the only thing a convicted sinner has once Nathan has come to you to throw yourself on the mercy of the court. If I uncover my sins to God, he will cover them. Open the floodgates of confession to God so that rivers of mercy may flood into a formerly hardened heart. I can, in repentance, draw water from the wells of thy joyous forgiveness. We'll go on to verses two and three. Wash me thoroughly for my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. For I acknowledge my transgressions and my sin is always before me. We must see sins as they are. True repentance presupposes a frank and broken-hearted acknowledgment of our wicked failure to keep God's righteous law. In Psalm 51, David talks not of his failures, mistakes, or infirmities or weaknesses, but instead of my transgressions, my sin, my evil, my iniquity. True repentance abhors gentle names and euphemisms for sin, nor does it seek to cloak wickedness. Adam and Eve covered their sin with fig leaves. And we have our own whole wardrobe of fig leaves these days. I'm not going to take the time to go over them. I'm sure if you're like me, you're well-acquainted with almost all of them. But the cloak of silence was David's choice of fig leaves, trying to cover his sin. Just remember that the silencing of your conscience by any of these means does not mean you are forgiven or cleansed from them. They are coverings. They will not prosper. You will not prosper. Verse four, against you, you only have I sinned and done this evil in your sight. To God alone does this smitten soul apply, to God against whom only he has sinned. He alone is the offended party, to him alone I have to answer, and he alone can forgive. You may satisfy the priest, you may conciliate your brother, you may pacify your own conscience, What will it avail you if your sin as against God still stands out? When a man or woman fully comprehends what their sin is with respect to themselves and with respect to the living God, they will irresistibly fall on their faces before him and say, as Isaiah did, holy, holy, holy. Woe is me, for I am undone, for I am a man of unclean lips. The second part of that verse, that you may be found just when you speak and blameless when you judge, fallen man is not on trial. He's a criminal already under sentence. There is none that doeth good. No, not one, Romans 3 tells us. That is God's indictment against each of us. The present issue between God and the sinner is, will man bow to or endorse with his heart God's righteous verdict? Repentance is the heart's acknowledgment of the justice of God's sentence of condemnation. Confess means, I'm sure you've all heard this over the course of your Christian life, confess means literally to say with. So we confess our sins, yes, but we confess Christ. We confess, we say with God whatever he says. And when he says this is the righteous judgment, we confess that with him. This is a part of repentance. All heaven ought to love and adore thy glorious majesty, should I receive my just desserts and perish forever. He would be totally justified. But thou canst have mercy on whom thou wilt through Christ Jesus. In all really godly sorrow for sin, the smitten soul, the contrite spirit, must be brought to own not only the reality, but the righteousness of the condemnation of his sin. It might seem indeed, as if men had thoroughly satisfied themselves, that it would be unreasonable and unrighteous on the part of God to judge them. Oh my goodness, do you ever hear this? God would never condemn somebody to hell. Well, I don't want anything to do with a God like that. Do you hear this? Am I the only one that hears this? People have fashioned their own God because they don't like the way God acts. This is tragic. So they have thought he is unreasonable and unrighteousness to judge them. So securely do they reckon on his indulgence and impunity, and so indignantly do they rebel or protest against the slightest infliction of severity or the faintest threatening of wrath. In truth, on that kind of footing, if there is no righteousness in the condemnation, if there is no deserved judgment or penalty for our lawlessness, then there is really no room for anything like free grace or sovereign mercy at all. They think of it as an entitlement. We have to see ourselves and our sin as God sees them and him as he is to confess that with him. It is a boon which I am entitled to expect, these are the scoffers, without anxiety and will be disposed to accept without gratitude as a mere matter of course, almost as if it is a redress of a wrong. You hurt my feelings. Winslow says, Octavius Winslow in the Lord's Prayer, the stern unbending language of the law is, pay me that thou owest. From this demand, there is no release. The claim must be met. The obligation canceled or the penalty endured, either in the person of the actual debtor or in the person of an equivalent surety equal to the justice and extent of the demand on the part of his elect people The Lord Jesus has paid this great debt of obedience. Candlish says, for what do I see as I stand now defenseless, awaiting the stroke of the inevitable bolt of wrath? What do I hear? So righteous is the stroke impending over me, so inexorably just the judicial retribution which I have deserved, that even in richest and freest mercy, it cannot be averted or turned away. It must descend and take effect. It must come down. But upon whom? Not now upon thee, but upon Jesus. My surety answering in the judgment for me. Upon him crucified for me, upon me crucified in him. Surely now I may see and feel condemnation to be righteous. Salvation is a free gift to us, but it was so costly to our Savior. Verse five, behold, I was brought forth in iniquity and in sin. My mother conceived me. This is not a reference to any illegitimacy on the birth of David or his conception at all. This is an acknowledgment of the depravity of man, the total depravity of man. Our whole lives present one unbroken series of We're going to be talking fast here. Our whole lives present one unbroken series of duties neglected, of favors not acknowledged. This is an acknowledgment of the depravity of man. None of us has a pedigree we should take pride in. We must confess that we are the offspring of a long line of rebellious parents, which has produced in us a nature that is depraved and degenerated from its primitive purity and uprightness. We come out of the womb as sinners. No one caused it, no circumstances can be blamed. All our righteousness is indeed like filthy rags, Isaiah 64.6. The prodigal's older brother's sins included pride in his good deeds. and self-righteousness in using his moral record to put God and others in his debt to manipulate them. You might have seen that in some people. What must we do then to be saved? We must repent of the things we have done wrong, certainly, but we must also repent of the reasons or motives we ever did anything right. I did not understand this. I have been blessed to be churched most of my life, and as a young teenager, I would hear people's testimonies that I thought were really interesting and very exciting. They had lived such depraved lives and talked about how God had just miraculously rescued them out of these horrendous lives. I actually said, I wish I had a more interesting testimony. Well, that was before I was actually saved. I was a religionist. Before that, I thought I was saved. I had gone through the motions. But when we understand what God has done for us in that moment when he saves us, then we don't complain about not having an interesting testimony. We marvel that he would stoop to save us at all. Oops, skipped again. Do not cast me away from your presence and do not take your Holy Spirit from me." We don't talk a lot about the Holy Spirit, but we need to understand how vital the Holy Spirit is to us in our Christian life. I mean, he's unseen for the most part, but he indwells us. He's our guarantee of our salvation. He's the earnest that Christ imparted to us, and he enlightens us to understand God's word, he gives us wisdom, he convicts us of sin, he imparts wisdom to us, and on and on. We have no idea what it would be like to live as a Christian without the Holy Spirit. And we don't ever think about quenching or vexing or the Holy Spirit departing from us. But this is what David is pleading for. Please, this is the last desperate cry of somebody who's on the verge of apostasy, that God will take away his Holy Spirit from him. Because God says my spirit will not always strive. That is the worst disaster The last worst thing that could happen to somebody. We fear losing a job, an income, a child, a spouse, a loved one, money, a house, a car. But we can go for months without ever worrying about losing the Holy Spirit. Well, at the end of this psalm, David goes into a more outward focused look on things. He says, then will I teach transgressors your ways, sinners shall be converted, deliver me from the guilt of bloodshed, oh God. the God of my salvation, and my tongue shall sing aloud of your righteousness, O Lord. Open my lips, and my mouth shall show forth your praise." So now that he's laid out his case before God, he has confessed his sin, he's confessed God as his Savior. and accepted his manner of dealing with it, then he now has time to think about claims of his fellow men. So the first impulse of the restored penitent is to go forth from his closet and tell what great things the Lord has done. You owe it to the God of our salvation to show forth his praise. Now we're going to go quickly to Gethsemane because we're running short on time. The best meaning that I can find, I learned this from Justin, Justin Beach, one of our teaching elders, is that Gethsemane means oil press, specifically olive oil. Gethsemane was an olive grove. This is where we're given an exquisite example by the Lord Jesus of what godly sorrow and grief over sin look like. In Matthew 26, then Jesus came with them to a place called Gethsemane and said to the disciples, sit here while I go and pray over there. And he took with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, that would be James and John, and he began to be sorrowful and deeply distressed. Then he said to them, my soul is exceedingly sorrowful even to death. Stay here and watch with me. He went a little farther and fell on his face and prayed saying, Oh my father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me. Nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will. Then he came to the disciples and found them sleeping again and said to Peter, What, could you not watch with me one hour? Watch and pray, lest you enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak. Again a second time he went away and prayed, saying, oh my father, if this cup cannot pass away from me unless I drink it, your will be done. And he came and found them asleep again, for their eyes were heavy. He left them, went away again, and prayed the third time, saying the same words. Then he came to his disciples and said to them, are you still sleeping and resting? Behold, the hour is at hand and the son of man is being betrayed into the hands of sinners. I had often wondered what was it in the Garden of Gethsemane that caused him such grief and anguish that he sweat drops of blood. Luke's account describes his sweat as great drops of blood. And I'd heard people say, well, he knew he was going to be crucified the next day. Yeah, but that didn't seem to explain it. And this is Olive Grove. This picture here is kind of an aerial view from the Mount of Olives. This could be approximately where Gethsemane was. It's close to the city of Jerusalem. That's Jerusalem in the background. We know it was walking distance because they took him back to Jerusalem that night. This may or may not be where the Garden of Gethsemane was. I am told that there's no way that those trees were there when Jesus was in the Garden of Gethsemane, that olive trees don't live 2,000 years. But I don't know that for sure from my own personal knowledge. There's a lot of symbolism and significance in the fact that this took place in Gethsemane, the olive press. There probably was an olive press there in an olive grove. Olive oil has been historically associated with wealth. Priests were anointed with olive oil, and that oil, the anointing by the priests with oil, gave them glory, authority, and responsibility to serve. Kings were anointed as a sign that God had chosen them to reign. And oil was used to provide light in lamps. The olive branch has historically been a symbol of peace, but also of triumph and victory. So the word Messiah means anointed one. So all of these things come together in our Messiah. He has the wealth of the world. He is our priest. He is our king. He is our light. He is our peace. He is our triumph and victory. Well, olives were, it was not easy to be olive oil. It was not an easy thing to become olive oil. This is an actual olive press, apparently still in use. It's not glamorous. They're throwing in fresh olives here on the bottom, and that's a very, very large, very, very heavy stone that's crushing the olives to press out the oil. But after they're mashed in the basin there by the stone, the mash is taken and put in soft baskets. They're porous and stacked. The baskets are stacked. You can see there on top of each other. And a very, very, very heavy stone is placed on top of it to crush it down further. and express the rest of the oil out of the olives. And you can see it coming out there. It looks red at first, like blood. So a lot of symbolism there, because Gethsemane is where the crushing happened. But early this year, I got a taste of that crushing feeling that I think Jesus was experiencing in the garden. I received a letter. It was from someone close to me, someone I dearly loved. It was actually from one of my children. In this letter, His child gently and respectfully enumerated the sins that I had committed against him many, many years ago. They were ghastly sins such that I would never willingly discuss them with anyone. The accusations against me were true. My face literally burned with shame as I read the letter. I had known at the time I sent it that I was that he had completely forgotten about it. Not only had he not forgotten about it, he explained to me in this letter how my sins against him had influenced him to adopt his own sins. And those sins had grown into something even uglier. And it cost him dearly. His life had become a wreck. He didn't blame me. He owned his own sins. But the effects of my sin on his suffering were clear. I was crushed. I was devastated, absolutely smitten with grief over my sin. Knowing the devastating and irreversible effects of my sin on my child was a grief almost too much to bear. This was my taste of Gethsemane. This was my Nathan moment. If my one occasion of sin could so crush me, a sinner who is well acquainted with sin in my life, How much more crushing the weight of all the sin, of all the elect, of all time, on the sinless Lamb of God, who had never known sin. The realization by Jesus of becoming sin is, I believe, the source of his excruciating anguish that night. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. Is that telling me time's up? Probably. Oh yes, okay. Isaiah 53 is a parallel passage. I won't read that but I hope that you will. This is where we're told that Jesus was wounded, prophetically, wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement of our peace was upon him and with his stripes we were healed. The forgiveness of sin. Why do we confess? The forgiveness of sin is too divine and costly a pearl to cast before swine. In other words, God holds this, his own and sole prerogative, at too high a rate to exercise it in behalf of a sinner too blind to and who is the willing slave of his sins. Repentance is in his eye so divine and gracious a word, the humble and contrite heart so spiritual and precious a sacrifice, that to this man and to him alone will he look with an eye of forgiving love and complacent delight, and upon him only will he bestow the cost of salvation. or we can receive the pardon of sin. Can we for a moment suppose that God will bind this precious jewel upon a brow that has never bowed before him in penitence, confession, and prayer? Sin's wounds have been opened and you've sensed its guilt, its power, and its remnants still remaining in you. Now ask God for the healing and help that he alone can give to deliver you from sin's guilt, condemnation, and power. Feel in your heart a deep sense of your need for God's mercies. If you would have a soft heart, able to mourn for sin, you must conscionably frequent the faithful ministry of the word. Strive to live under a forcible ministry such as will search your heart. Is not my word like a fire, saith the Lord, and like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces? Would you then have your heart so softened? Bring it to this fire. Bring the great, the measureless, the longstanding and accumulated debt, and in penitence and faith, cast it down at the footstool of mercy and see if God will not be true to his word. If we confess our sin, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sin. Let's pray. O Thou Most High, it becomes me to bow in Thy presence. Yet in my lostness thou hast laid help on the mighty one, and he comes between to put his hands on us both, my umpire and mediator, whose blood is my peace, whose righteousness is my strength, whose condemnation is my freedom, whose spirit is my power, whose heaven is my heritage. Oh Lord, no day of my life has passed that has not proved me guilty in thy sight. Prayers have been uttered from a prayerless heart. Praise has been often praiseless sound. My best services are filthy rags. Though my sins rise to heaven, thy merits soar above them. Though unrighteousness waits me down to hell, thy righteousness exalts me to thy throne. All things in men call for my rejection. All things in thee plead my acceptance. Grant me to hear thy voice, assuring me that by thy stripes I am healed, that thou wast bruised for my iniquities, that thou hast been made sin for me, that I might be righteous in thee. that my grievous sins, my manifold sins, are all forgiven, buried in the ocean of thy concealing blood. I am guilty but pardoned, lost but saved, wandering but found, sinning but cleansed. Give me perpetual brokenheartedness over my sin. Give me a broken heart that yet carries home the water of grace. Thank you, thank you, Lord. for your word. Thank you for faithful saints through the ages who have pondered your word, studied your word, and set it down in writing so that we could learn from them. Thank you for this gathering today. Thank you that we can gather around your word to know you better and to honor you and love you more. Please be with us. Bless our time as we fellowship around a meal together downstairs. Thank you so much for those who've labored to prepare it for us. We pray for the afternoon service to you, Father, that you will be honored and glorified and pleased with what we do. In Christ's most holy name, I pray. Amen.