Let's turn to the Word of God, to the book of Psalms, as we read the 32nd Psalm. Psalm 32. A Psalm of David, a contemplation. Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord does not impute iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit. When I kept silent, my bones grew old through my groaning all the day long. For day and night, your hand was heavy upon me. My vitality was turned into the drought of summer. I acknowledged my sin to you, and my iniquity I have not hidden. I said, I will confess my transgressions to the Lord, and you forgave the iniquity of my sin. For this cause, everyone who is godly shall pray to you in a time when you may be found. Surely in a flood of great waters, they shall not come near him. You are my hiding place. You shall preserve me from trouble. You shall surround me with songs of deliverance. I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go. I will guide you with my eye. Do not be like the horse or like the mule, which have no understanding, which must be harnessed with bit and bridle, else they will not come near you. Many sorrows shall be to the wicked, but he who trusts in the Lord, mercy shall surround him. Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, you righteous, and shout for joy. all you upright in heart. We turn once again to our Canons of Dort, Chapter 5, and we're going to read Articles 4 and 5 this afternoon. You can find this on page 112 in the back of your Psalter, the Canons of Dort, Chapter 5, Articles 4 and 5, page 112. And there we confess as follows, although the weakness of the flesh cannot prevail against the power of God, who confirms and preserves true believers in a state of grace, Yet converts are not always so influenced and actuated by the Spirit of God as not in some particular instances sinfully to deviate from the guidance of divine grace so as to be seduced by and comply with the lusts of the flesh. They must, therefore, be constant in watching and prayer that they be not led into temptation. When these are neglected, they are not only liable to be drawn into great and heinous sins by Satan, the world, and the flesh, but sometimes, by the righteous permission of God, actually fall into these evils. This, the lamentable fall of David, Peter, and other saints described in Holy Scripture demonstrates. By such enormous sins, however, they very highly offend God. incur a deadly guilt, grieve the Holy Spirit, interrupt the exercise of faith, very grievously wound their consciences, and sometimes lose the sense of God's favor for a time, until on their returning into the right way of serious repentance, the light of God's fatherly countenance again shines upon them. So far, the reading of God's word and our confession. Beloved congregation, the last time in this series, in the canons of Dort, we learned that when God saves a sinner, that sinner will be saved. A true believer in Jesus Christ can never ever lose his or her salvation. And that is not owing to anything in the sinner, because there is nothing in the sinner. It is owing solely to the grace of God, who according to Article 3, having conferred grace, mercifully confirms and powerfully preserves them therein, even to the end. In other words, when God begins a good work, He doesn't leave it half finished. When he begins a good work in the heart of his people, he will carry that work through to the very end of that we may be absolutely certain. But this does not mean, and I trust you also understand that, that preservation, the preservation of the saints is something that's automatic. that it's steady and that it's progressive. It's not the case that when a sinner comes to faith in Christ that the rest is smooth sailing. That he just kind of coasts his way into heaven. The Christian life, the Christian experience is not that of the man who buys a plane ticket and first class. and sits in the boarding lounge until his plane is ready to leave, and he gets on the plane, and he sits on the plane for hours until finally he arrives at his destination. No, it's more like a climber or a, not a climber, but somebody who's, a hiker, that's the word, a hiker who's walking along a mountain trail. Now, if you've ever walked along a mountain trail, you will notice that it's not all smooth sailing. It's not all easy going. There are many obstacles in the way. There are many twists and turns and many dangers along the way. And so it is also in the Christian life and in the Christian experience. It's not all smooth sailing. It's not just one smooth highway to heaven. There are difficulties. There are things that we need to contend with. And one of the things that we need to contend with along the way is the danger of backsliding. And this is what our Canons of Dort deals with in Articles 4 and 5 of the fifth chapter. And we're going to look at that with the Lord's help this afternoon. And we're going to look at those two articles under the theme, the danger of backsliding. The danger of backsliding. We'll consider, first of all, its cause, secondly, its consequences, and thirdly, its cure. These two articles deal, as I said, with the danger of backsliding. What is backsliding? Well, the word speaks for itself, doesn't it? Backsliding is literally sliding back. It's going backwards in the Christian life rather than forwards. We're supposed to be running a race. That means we're supposed to be going forwards, reaching for the destination. But sometimes in the Christian life, we end up going the opposite direction. We go backwards instead of forwards. And as I said, this is experienced by every true believer in Christ. Every believer knows of times in his or her life when instead of going forward, they are going backward. Instead of achieving victory over sin, we succumb to it. Instead of experiencing more and more communion with God, we feel at times alienation from God. And this is precisely what's being expressed in Article 4. Now you'll notice how Article 4 begins. It begins by affirming that God confirms and preserves true believers in a state of grace. Now we saw that last time and I just repeated that a few moments ago. When God begins a work, a good work of salvation in us, a true work of salvation, then he also will complete that work, even despite, it says here, even despite the weakness of our flesh. In other words, even in spite of our proneness, to sin, because the child of God still experiences that. He still has a proneness to sin. He's been delivered from the dominion of sin. We saw that last time. But he still has a proneness to sin. Paul speaks of that in Romans chapter 7. Talks about those two laws within his members. And the one law, he wants to do what's right in the eyes of God and live to the glory of God. And there's that other law that's pulling him in the opposite direction. And every believer knows something of that struggle. Nevertheless, in spite of that struggle, Bible teaches that God will bring his children ultimately to glory. Now in spite of this, Article 4 goes on to say that converts, that's children of God, are not always so influenced and actuated by the Spirit of God as not in some particular instances sinfully to deviate from the guidance of divine grace. so as to be seduced by and comply with the lusts of the flesh. What are we saying here? It's quite a mouthful. We're simply saying here that even though the child of God is born again, even though he's a new nature, even though he has dominion over sin, that doesn't mean that he doesn't keep sinning. He does. And there are times in his life that he backslides. Now, the believer doesn't live in sin. believer cannot live in sin, because he's been given, as I said, this new nature. And anyone who claims to be a believer and still lives in sin, that person is deceiving themselves. A child of God has received a new nature, and by means of that new nature he comes to hate sin and to flee from it. And when they fall into sin, they repent of it before God, but they still sin. That's the point. There are times when we backslide, and sometimes that backslidden state can last for longer than it should. Now, we have two very well-known examples of this in the Scriptures, one from the Old Testament, one from the New Testament. The one from the Old Testament is David, and both of these are mentioned in this article. David, as we well know, committed adultery with Bathsheba, and later on he tried to cover up his sin, She announced that she was pregnant by having her husband Uriah the Hittite murdered. We read about Peter and how he denied the Lord three times, even though earlier that same evening he swore that he would never do such a thing, even though Jesus himself predicted that he would do this. What terrible sins these were. How could David, a man after God's own heart, The singer of the Psalms of Israel commits such a terrible act in the eyes of God. How could Peter, one of the inner circle of our Lord, a close friend of our Lord, a leader among the disciples, how could he have denied the Lord? And there are many other examples of this. We can think of Noah, who got drunk in his tent. We can think about Abraham, who lied that Sarah, his wife, was his sister. and who tried to produce an heir through Hagar even though God had said that your wife Sarah shall bear you a son. We can think of Moses who hit the rock and kind of took credit when water came out of the rock and stole something of the glory of God. Yes, believers sometimes fall into very grievous sin. The hymn writer got it right. when he wrote, prone to wander, Lord I feel it, prone to leave the God I love. Now the question is, why does this happen? Why do the saints of God sometimes fall into grievous sin? Why do some of us sometimes fall into grievous sin? Well, the Arminians had an answer to that question, and they said that the grace by which God saves the sinner is deficient. There's something wrong with the grace by which God saves the sinner. It's unable to prevent him from falling into sin. It's able to save him, but it's unable to prevent him from falling into sin. God would like to prevent believers from falling into sin, But he can't. The power of man's flesh, the power of man's sinful nature is still too strong. So man's flesh can sometimes trump the grace of God. It can even prevent God from saving him. And we've seen that time and time again. Remember the Arminian always has man in the driver's seat. God's in the backseat, man's in the driver's seat. So it is when it comes to backsliding. It's because God's powerless to do anything about it. But the authors, the framers of the canons of Dort said absolutely no. The reason why believers backslide is not because of some deficiency in God, not some deficiency in the grace of God, but because of some deficiency in the believer. And what is it? What is it that we fail to do that leads to backsliding? Well, we have the answer here in our Article 4. It says, we fail to watch and pray. Watch and pray. When we fail to watch and pray, we will fall into a backslidden state. Now those words, watch and pray, are from the Bible. They're borrowed from the Lord Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. You remember when Jesus took three of his disciples, Peter, James, and John, and he went off into the garden to pray, and he came back, and he saw the disciples fast asleep, and he was upset with them, and he says, well, could you not watch and pray? Watch and pray, he said, lest you enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak. Jesus exhorts us to watch and to pray. To watch means to be on the alert. And in this context, it means to be on the alert for sin. To be on the alert for temptation. It means to have your spiritual antenna fully extended. And when temptation comes along, and you see it there, then you steer far around it. You steer a clear course from it. That's what you do when you're watchful. We need to be watchful. And we also need to pray, Jesus says. We need to pray the petition of the Lord's Prayer. Lord, lead me not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Those two things go hand in hand, don't they? Watching and praying. You can't watch without praying and you can't pray without watching. But when we fail to do that, that's the point that's being made here. When we fail to do that, when we fail to watch and pray, what happens? We end up falling into temptation and we backslide. In fact our confession says we will be drawn into great and heinous sins. Not just little sins, sometimes even great and heinous sins as David and Peter illustrate. And that verb drawn into, it's an interesting word isn't it, it kind of reminds you of a spider's web You know, when you see a fly buzzing around a spider's web, he doesn't deliberately say, oh, there's a spider's web. I think I'll fly into it. He accidentally gets caught up in the web. And what happens if the spider comes out of his hole? Perhaps you've seen those. I used to watch this as a kid all the time. I was fascinated by it. I don't know why, because it grosses me out now. But you see this spider come out of his web, and he latches onto that fly, and he drags that fly into his hole. And he sucks the life out of him, literally. Sucks the life out of him. And that's the effect that sin has on the believer. We're drawn into sin. It confronts us. It's there. We see it. And there's a part of our nature that says, oh, that looks wonderful. I'd like to try that. I'd like to do that. And when we're not watching and praying, we get drawn in. And that happens in one of two ways. It says here, by Satan, the world, and the flesh. Satan is always seeking to draw us into sin. So is the world, so is the flesh. These are the three great enemies of every believer. You notice they're not responsible for our sin. When we fall into sin, even heinous sins, we can't say, well, it was the devil. There used to be an expression when I was growing up as a kid, the devil made me do it. That's not true. The devil doesn't make us do anything. He may entice us, he may draw us in, He may present sin to us and make it attractive to us and plant ideas in our minds such that we want to sin, but He's not responsible for it, neither is the world. When we fall into sin, we fall in by our own volition. Nevertheless, the devil, the world, and our own sinful flesh are three very powerful enemies. We need to watch out for them. We need to pray, Lord, give me grace to overcome those powerful enemies. But sometimes, and it says that too here, sometimes God himself leads us there by the righteous permission of God. It's not that God causes us to sin. God is not the author of sin. James speaks of that. But sometimes he permits us to fall into sin. That was the case with David and Peter, wasn't it? I mean nothing happens beyond God's control. Everything that happens is a result of His sovereign will. Not a hair can fall from our head except it be the will of our Heavenly Father. And so it is when it comes to sin. God sometimes permits us to fall into sin. Now why does He do that? That's a good question. Sometimes it's to teach us a lesson. At other times, it's to teach us how needy we are, how dependent we are upon God, and we fall into sin, and we realize it was sinful in the eyes of God, and then we confess that before the Lord, and we humble ourselves before God, and we say, oh, Lord, how could I have done such a thing? And the Lord teaches us something, doesn't he? He teaches us something about our sinfulness and our utter dependence upon God. The point is that sometimes God permits us to fall into sin, and the best way to avoid this, the best way to avoid backsliding, beloved, is to watch and to pray. Now maybe some of you are thinking to yourself, well, why should I bother doing that? Why should I even avoid backsliding? Because, well, if I'm a child of God, God's going to forgive me anyway. All I have to do is confess my sin and God will forgive. And the Bible says if he confesses our sin, he's faithful and just to forgive us all of our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. So, why bother? Well, because there are some serious consequences. And that's our second point. What are the consequences of falling again and again into sin? What are the consequences of backsliding? Well, they're listed for us in Article 5. There's a number of them listed here, I think five of them. It says there, when we backslide, we very highly offend God. When we sin, we highly offend God. Now, that's an important statement because there's a view out there that says that when we are converted, God is blind to our sins. He doesn't see sins because they've all been atoned for by the blood of Jesus Christ and that has led some to say even that it's okay to sin. Kind of a radical form of antinomianism, but this is utterly false. It's not what the Bible teaches at all. God doesn't turn a blind eye to our sins even after we are converted. No, he's highly offended by them as we confess here and sometimes even chastises us for them. Now since that is so, should that not cause us to avoid sinning? To avoid backsliding? Why would we backslide? Why would we knowingly, deliberately, consciously fall into sin when we know that it offends God? God, who is our Creator, who if we're a child of God is our Redeemer and our Sanctifier. who has been so good to us, who is so gracious to us, why would we do anything to offend him? But we do. When we sin, we very highly offend God. Secondly, it says here, when we backslide, we incur a deadly guilt. A deadly guilt. Now, when you read that phrase, You'd be forgiven if you were to question how that can possibly be, because we would think to ourselves, well, is it not true that in justification, the guilt of our sins is taken away? Absolutely, that's true. Well then, how then can we incur deadly guilt if we have been justified by faith in Jesus Christ? We have to understand our confession here is speaking not objectively, but rather subjectively. Objectively it's absolutely true that our sins are taken away, the guilt of sin has been completely removed, it's been satisfied by the Lord Jesus Christ who died on the cross, but subjectively From the point of view of our personal experience, we do sometimes feel the burden of our sin. We can even feel ourselves to be at times in a state of damnation because of our sins. There are times in our life we can feel, oh, I've sinned too much. This sin that I've committed is too great. The Lord is going to punish me now. Maybe I'm not even a child of God. That can happen. Now, to be sure, that dissipates when we come to make confession of our sin and we repent of our sin, and we'll talk about that a little bit later, but until then, we feel this deadly guilt pressing upon us. A Christian in Pilgrim's Progress carrying that big burden of guilt until it was finally released that the cross Calvary. Thirdly, he says here, when we backslide we grieve the Holy Spirit. That's a biblical phrase that comes from Ephesians 4 verse 30. Paul writes, do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. How do we grieve the Holy Spirit? By the way, the fact that we can grieve the Holy Spirit reminds us that the Spirit is not an energy, he's not a force, he's not some impersonal power, he's a real person, he's a person, he's a third person of the Holy Trinity. And as a person, he experiences grief. He experiences joy, too. But he also experiences grief. And when do we bring the Holy Spirit grief? We bring the Holy Spirit grief when we sin. And you understand why that is so. Because the task of the Holy Spirit is to sanctify the believer, to make us more and more holy. But when we sin, we put obstacles in the way. We frustrate the work of the Holy Spirit. And that grieves him. I think of, you know, children. Imagine your mom spending hours and hours cleaning the house, and you come along. You come in from outside, and your hands are all muddy, and you don't wash your hands, and you touch the walls and go to the fridge, and you've got mud all over the place, and there's mud on your shoes. And how is she going to react to that? She's going to be very upset. She's going to be grieved. The same is true when it comes to the Holy Spirit. When we backslide, when we fall into sin, we grieve the Spirit of God. We also interrupt the exercise of faith. That's the fourth thing that's mentioned here. Interrupt the exercise of faith. You notice that faith itself doesn't disappear. God doesn't remove faith from us. The child of God will always have faith. The child of God will always cling to the Lord, will always look to the Lord as the only hope and ground of his salvation. We need to distinguish between the habit of faith and the exercise of faith, the habit or disposition of faith that's worked in the heart of the believer the moment he's born again. The moment he's born again and converted to God, he receives this habit of faith that never disappears, that's always there. The believer will always believe, he'll always trust in Christ as his Lord and Savior and King, but when we backslide, the exercise of faith is interrupted. And that means we don't live out of faith the way that we should. And then things become dark. And we can even sometimes despair. We can lose hope. And we can stop praying and stop reading the Word of God. And we can feel like God is a million miles away. This is what happens when we fall into sin. The exercise of faith is interrupted. God doesn't want us to live like that. He wants us to live out of faith and the blessings of faith. But backsliding prevents this, and that's why we need to avoid it. It says here, too, that when we backslide, we very grievously wound our consciences. When we backslide, we don't kill the conscience. The conscience will always remain. Just like faith always remains, the conscience always remains. We can wound the conscience. And by that we mean we can become insensitive to sin. And that makes sense, doesn't it? The more we expose ourselves to sin, the less sensitive we're going to be about sin. This is why watching movies with violence, for example, or illicit sexual activity, it's such a bad thing to do because you desensitize yourself to what you're watching. So that after a while, gaming is the same thing. So after a while, it doesn't phase you anymore. You think it's almost normal. And this is what happens when we fall into sin. We desensitize ourselves to sin. We wound our consciences. We blunt them. And when that happens, we can sometimes fall into deeper and deeper sin. And so how we should avoid backsliding, beloved? There's one more consequence of backsliding that's mentioned here. We can sometimes lose the sense of God's favor for a time. No, we don't lose the favor of God, but we lose the sense of God's favor. We lose the sense God is on our side. We lose the sense that God is our loving, faithful, heavenly Father who loves us, who cares for us, who delights in us. The psalmist puts it like this, he hides his face from us. You find that phrase often repeated in the book of Psalms. What does that mean? It means we don't sense that God's smile is upon us, but rather his frown is upon us. That's a terrible thing. Because the child of God wants nothing more than to please God and to bask in the communion of God and the fellowship of God. But when he falls into sin, when he backslides, God hides his face. Things become dark. And so congregation falling into sin, backsliding, is a serious matter. It has serious, serious consequences. And because of this, we must always watch and pray We must maintain a close walk with the Lord. We must keep up daily communion with our God. We must read his word, study his word, be fervent in prayer, avoid sin, purge sin out of our lives by the grace and power of the Holy Spirit and live to his glory. Because the consequences of not doing so are very, very severe. Now maybe hearing all of this, you're thinking to yourself, well, that's me. I'm in a backslidden state. And I'm suffering these consequences. Is there hope for me? I say to you, yes, there is. And that's our third point. There is a cure for backsliding, beloved. Now what is the cure for backsliding? Well, if you look carefully at the last sentence in Article 5, it said there, after listing all the consequences of backsliding in Article 5, the statement is made, until, here's the light at the end of the tunnel, until on their returning into the right way of serious repentance, the light of God's fatherly countenance again shines upon them. Isn't that beautiful? I spoke a moment ago about God hiding his face. That's what happens when we live in sin, when we fall into sin, and it's unconfessed and it's unrepented of. God hides his face, but when we repent and we confess it before the Lord, then the light of God's fatherly countenance shines upon us. That's what we want, isn't it? That's what we need. We need the light of God's fatherly countenance to shine upon us, and that can happen. In the way of serious repentance. The word serious could perhaps better be translated as genuine. In the way of genuine repentance. You see not all repentance is genuine. There's a lot of false repentance out there. We have examples of that in the Bible. Simon the sorcerer. It says in Acts chapter 8 that he believed. he was baptized but his repentance wasn't genuine and we know that because later on when he tried to buy the Holy Spirit with money that Peter told him that he was poisoned by bitterness and bound by iniquity and therefore he said you need to repent of your wickedness and pray God if perhaps the thought of your heart might be forgiven. That's not the kind of repentance that's going to reconcile us to God. In order to be reconciled to God, our repentance needs to be true. It needs to be sincere. It needs to be genuine. It needs to be the real thing. And what is true repentance? Well, you need to read Thomas Watson's book on repentance, Puritan paperback. It's a wonderful, wonderful book. But let me go to our Heidelberg Catechism. Catechism defines true repentance of the Lord's Day 33 as a sincere sorrow of heart that we have provoked God by our sins and more and more to hate and flee from them. So true repentance consists of at least three things. First of all, there's a sorrow for sin. Secondly, there's a hatred of sin. And thirdly, there is a fleeing from sin. And if any of those things are missing, it's not true repentance. It may look like true repentance, and the person may be gushing tears. But if any of these things are missing, it's not true repentance. And if we haven't truly repented, the light of God's fatherly countenance will not shine upon us. But when there is, And there is that true repentance. Oh, how wonderful that is. David speaks of that in Psalm 32, which we read earlier. David recalls in that Psalm the time when he sinned against God. We don't know what sin he committed. He doesn't tell us. But he sinned against God. And for a while, it seems as though he tried to cover it up. Ignore it. Swoop it under the carpet. Pretend as though it wasn't there. And he didn't repent. He didn't confess it before the Lord. He just went his merry way and pretended as though everything was hunky dory. But it had a very negative effect on him. He says when he kept silence, his bones waxed old. That's how the King James has it. Waxed old through his roaring. the day long. Day and night, he says, the Lord's hand was heavy upon me. My moisture was turned into the drought of summer. You see what he's talking about? He's talking here about a disruption in his relationship with God. He no longer felt communion with God. He no longer felt close to God. He felt dry and empty inside. Until what? until he acknowledged his sin. He says, I acknowledged my sin to you and my iniquity I have not hidden. I said I will confess my transgressions to the Lord. And then what? Oh, I love this. You forgave the iniquity of my sin. That's the cure. The cure to backsliding, the cure to sin is to confess it before the Lord. Don't be ashamed. Don't be ashamed to confess even your most heinous thoughts. God knows it all anyway. Just tell him. Tell him, Lord I had this sinful lustful thought. I had this angry murderous thought. I had this blasphemous thought. I did this, I did that. I shouldn't have done it. It was displeasing to the Lord. It was against your commandments. Oh God, I confess it before you. Please forgive me." And he will, upon true, sincere repentance. But if you don't do that, what then? Well, your bones will wax old. Through your roaring, your moisture will be turned into the drought of summer. The hand of the Lord will be heavy on you. There is a cure for backslidden sinners. It's in the way of confession. It's in the way of repentance. And repentance and forgiveness can be given. Because Jesus Christ came into the world, and he went to the cross, and he took upon himself the burden of all of the sins of his people, every one of them. Also all those sins of backsliding, he took them all upon himself. And when we come to him confessing our sins, he doesn't impute them to us. but instead he imputes to us his righteousness. He grants us freely his forgiveness and he imputes to us his righteousness so that we stand before God as though we had never sinned. We may rest assured, congregation, that no matter how deeply we may fall into sin, And no matter how many times we may fall into the same sin, God will never leave us, nor forsake us. The work that he has begun, he will surely finish. David sinned greatly against the Lord. Peter sinned greatly against the Lord, and yet both men are now in glory. Not because of anything in them, but because of everything in God. Because he is faithful. because of Christ and what he has done. And so he invites backslidden sinners this afternoon to come to him. Remember the story of the prodigal son. He was a young man who sinned grievously against his father. He spent his inheritance, the Bible says, with riotous living wickedness. When he came to himself finally, he resolved to go back to his father and to ask him to become one of his servants after confessing his sin and unworthiness. And you know what happened when the father saw him still a long way off? He ran to meet him. He kissed him and embraced him. And before the son could ask to become one of his hired servants, the father gave him the best robe. put that ring on his finger and sandals on his feet and commanded the servants to kill the fatted calf and to invite all of his friends and neighbors together for a celebration. This is how willing the Lord our God is to forgive backsliding sinners. Oh, do you believe that today? Then go to him, repent of your sins, confess them, before His face, that He will forgive, that He will restore. Amen.