Psalm 32. I'm going to read the whole chapter, Psalm 32. And I'll read from the ESV. 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 through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me. My strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. Selah. I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity. I said, I will confess my transgressions 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, Selah. 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 bit and 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. Amen. Look at that last verse again. Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, O righteous. Shout for joy all you upright in heart. That's a pretty upbeat way to end the psalm, isn't it? This psalm ends on an exuberant note of joy because of all the benefits that come to the righteous. The psalmist is one of the righteous, and so he's really happy. Those benefits, though, don't come to the wicked. The wicked don't get those. Verse 10, many are the sorrows of the wicked. Proverbs 13, 15 says, the way of the unfaithful is hard. A life of sin brings multiplied problems and woes and sorrows and ultimately destruction and death. God's love surrounds the righteous and the upright in heart, but the wicked have multiplied sorrow. So, this is really good news for some and really terrible news for others, right? It's great news for the righteous, bad news for the wicked. My question is, which are you? Which one are you? Are you among the wicked or are you one of the righteous? Now, most people, I think, presented with that question would answer, Neither. I'm not, you know, I'm no saint. I'm in the middle. I'm not a saint. I'm not righteous. I'm not holy. But I'm certainly not wicked. I'm average. I'm semi-righteous. I think that's the category most people would put themselves in, that category, even though that category, biblically, does not exist. There's no such thing. Throughout God's Word, there's always, always just two categories. There's righteous, there's wicked. Every single human being is in one of those two categories. You, I promise you, 100%, you are in one of those two categories. You're either righteous or you're wicked. But which one are you? When you read some of these wonderful promises in scripture that only apply to the righteous, do you ever read those and think, hmm, I don't know, does that apply to me? Given all the sin in my life? What are the criteria for being one of the righteous? Does it mean you just never sin? No sin at all? No, it doesn't mean that. James 3, 2, we all stumble in many ways. If it meant that, there would be no righteous. So, David writes the psalm, he includes himself among the righteous, and then he's clear about the fact that he stumbles into all kinds of sin. So obviously, righteous doesn't mean sinless perfection. Maybe it has to do with the kind of sin. Is that it? Is it the type of sin? That's what most people believe. Most people think that if you commit the really big sins, murder, adultery, stealing, things that would put you in prison, that kind of stuff, then you're wicked. But if you just do the little stuff, you know, the worry or gossip or selfishness or complaining, pride, those aren't such a big deal and they can be overlooked and maybe you can be one of the righteous. Nowhere in scripture will you see that kind of thinking. That is not biblical. And again, that theory runs aground on David. Which kind of sins did David commit? He's famous for murder and adultery, right? And yet, God forgave him and called him righteous. God did not forgive the Israelites in the desert and killed thousands of them for the sin of complaining. So, the idea that it's big sins versus little sins, that doesn't work. It's not big sins versus little sins. It's not sins that hurt people and sins that don't hurt very many people. It's not private versus public. So what is it? What's the difference between the righteous and the wicked? Some people teach that, well, if you're truly saved and you're righteous, then you'll sin from time to time, but it won't be the pattern of your life anymore. Your life won't be characterized by sin. Sin's gonna be the exception rather than the rule. I've heard a lot of preachers say that. I don't see that anywhere in the Bible either. That's not what the Bible says. Jesus taught us to pray that forgive us our sins on a routine basis. We're not occasional sinners. We're constant sinners. We're always stumbling and falling short of God's perfect standard every hour of every day. So if both the righteous and the wicked commit sins, we both do it frequently, we both do the big sins and the little sins, what's the difference? Well, that question is really a two-part question. There's two aspects to that. First, what's the difference, if any, between the behavior of the righteous and the wicked in day-to-day life? And then secondly, how does a person become righteous? What makes a person one of the righteous? So let's start with that second one. What makes a righteous person righteous? And the answer to that question is in verse 10. Look at verse 10. Many are the sorrows of the wicked, but the steadfast love of the Lord surrounds the one who trusts in the Lord. So what's the opposite of being wicked? In that verse, opposite of being wicked is what? Trusting, yeah. In the next verse, those people who trust are referred to as the righteous. So the thing that will make God look at you as one of the righteous, as being righteous, even though you're continuing to commit sins, is faith in Him. Genesis 15, six, believed the Lord and it was credited to him as righteousness. So, whether or not you're a good person or a bad person is determined by whether or not you have faith in God. A hundred percent. That's the only factor that determines whether you're one of the bad people or one of the good people. Whether you have faith in God. Those who trust in God are considered righteous, considered good. Those who are not, those who do not have faith are considered wicked. No exceptions. That's the answer to the first question. If you think becoming a Christian is a matter of earning your way to heaven by doing good deeds, reforming your behavior, going to church, reading your Bible, doing all that kind of stuff, if you think that, you don't have the slightest understanding of what Christianity is, and you're not one of the righteous if you think that way. It is through faith alone that we are saved. The people who were the best at reforming their behavior and following religious rules were the Pharisees, and Jesus told them they are not even in the kingdom. So, that's how you become one of the righteous, through faith. But what about the other question? What about behavior? That's the one I want to dial in on here. Does that matter at all? Is there any difference between the way that the righteous live and behave and the way that the wicked live and behave? And if so, what is it? If we both sin, and we both do big and little sins, what is it? And the answer to that question is in verse five. Verse five describes what is different in the behavior of the righteous compared to the behavior of the wicked. Here it is. David says, I acknowledged my sin to you and I did not cover up my iniquity. I said, I will confess my transgressions to the Lord and you forgave the iniquity of my sin. How is it that David could be considered one of the righteous after having committed murder and adultery? Simple, he repented. That's the difference, he repented. That's it? He didn't have to do anything to pay for his sin? Nope. Nope. He didn't have to show a track record of, you know, six months to show that he really had reformed? Nope. Well, didn't he at least have to say a couple of Hail Marys or pray through some beads or some penance or something? No. He didn't even have to follow the Pope on Twitter. You say, well, what about a religious ceremony? I mean, the Old Testament stuff, something out of the Bible. Don't you have to offer a sacrifice or something? No, no. In fact, when David was first confessing his sin in Psalm 51, he mentioned about God, you're not pleased with sacrifices. And by the way, Psalm 51, if you want to learn how to confess your sin to God, how should you interact with God after having sinned? Psalm 51 is the place to go. That is, if you don't know about that Psalm, it needs to be bookmarked in your Bible. is the most beautiful and profound model of how to confess your sin to the Lord ever written. And in Psalm 51, 16, he says, you do not delight in sacrifice or I would give it. You will not delight or be pleased with a burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. David didn't have to do anything to make up for his sin. That would be an insult to God if he tried. He just confessed it and asked God to forgive him, and God did. So someone might ask, Darrell, are you saying that the only difference between the behavior of the wicked and the behavior of the righteous is admitting to wrongdoing? No, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that the difference between the righteous and the wicked is confessing, not just admitting. There's a lot more to confessing than just admitting. David uses, look how thorough David is when he confesses. He uses three different terms to describe his sin, verse five, or his confession. He says, I acknowledged my sin to you. I did not cover up my iniquity. And I said, I will confess my transgression to the Lord. So, all together, he just brought the whole thing out into the open. He stopped hiding his guilt. He called it what it is. He called it sin. He called it iniquity. He called it transgression. It's possible to admit to wrongdoing without actually confessing the evil of it. Yeah, I said those things, but I didn't mean it. Yeah, I did that, but I don't know what happened. It wasn't in my heart. That wasn't me. And the whole idea is, yeah, I confess that I did this action, but my heart is just fine. People will confess the action, because they can't deny that, because people have seen it, but they don't acknowledge any evil source of that evil action. Somehow this evil action came from a clean, pure heart. And Jesus was very clear, that can't happen. That does not happen. All sin takes place in the heart. All of it. That's the only place where sin takes place. Evil actions are only evil because they're expressions of evil attitudes. Matthew 15, 18, what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart and defiles the person, for out of the heart comes evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, and slander. These are what defile a person. There are so many people that never get anywhere in their battle against dealing with sin because they only deal with it at the level of actions. That's all they're doing. They're just trying to pick the bad fruit off the tree. The tree keeps producing it, and they just try to pick it off, and they'll never cut the tree down. They don't understand. All sin takes place in the heart when you confess. When you confess your sin, if you just confess an action and you don't say anything about what happened in the heart, you're not really confessing your sin. You're not coming to grips with the reality. There's no such thing as a sinful action that isn't connected to some evil in the heart. So if your problem is overindulgence in something, and you try to deal with that problem just by restricting your behavior, it's never gonna work in the long term. You're never gonna have success. You gotta deal with the sin of coveting in the heart that's driving that behavior. If the sin is you can't control your tongue, you got a lot of sharp words, you're saying hurtful, harsh things, and you try to deal with that just by keeping your mouth shut, it's not gonna work. You gotta deal with the sins of anger or selfishness or pride or whatever's on the inside that's causing these sinful actions. All sin originates in the heart, and if you haven't discovered what it is in the heart that's causing the evil action, then you can't confess it. If you don't know what it is, you can't confess it, because confession requires acknowledging the whole truth about your sin. And if you don't know what the heart problem is, you don't even know what the whole truth is. If all you say to your spouse is, oh, honey, look, I'm sorry, I was short with you, I yelled at you, I was wrong. And that's all you say? Then get ready to say it again tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day, and on and on. It'll never end. You're still gonna keep doing that stuff until you deal with the heart problem that caused that behavior. A better confession would be something like this. Honey, I'm sorry I snapped at you. I did that because In my heart, I'm greedy for leisure and comfort. And I'm so greedy for leisure and laziness and comfort and anything that seems to interfere with that, I just react with anger. There you're confessing the hard issue. Or maybe, you know what, I'm sorry I yelled at you. Honestly, my heart is so full of pride and arrogance and self-importance that I just act like I'm more important than everyone else. That's why I get mad. like that, that's dealing with the heart issue. True confession goes way beyond just admitting, okay, my behavior was bad. It also acknowledges the heart issue behind it. And it doesn't just acknowledge the heart issue, but also rejects it. And that's a key to confession too. That's part of confession. The New Testament word for confession literally means to say the same thing. It means to agree with God about the sin. True confession is an attitude towards the sin that matches God's attitude towards the sin. You gotta feel the same way about it that he does. If you admit to having done wrong, and you acknowledge it, yes, it's wrong, it's evil, it's wicked, it's sin, but you still love that sin in your heart, then it's not true confession because you're not agreeing with God. God hates that sin. And so if your heart still loves it and clings to it and holds on to it, then you're agreeing with God in your words but not in your attitudes. It's not real confession. That's why it's such folly when people want to say, well, I'll just sin now and ask forgiveness later. If you ask forgiveness later, you're not going to be forgiven unless you truly repent. And in order for you to truly repent, truly confess, your attitude is going to have to completely change, right? If you love the sin now so much that you're willing to just knowingly rebel against God, knowingly say, I'm just going to sin. I know it's wrong. I'm just going to do this. If you love the sin that much, what makes you think that later on your heart is going to be totally different, 180 degrees different, and you're going to hate that sin? If anything, you'll probably love that sin even more after having committed it in the future. Because every time we enjoy the pleasures of sin, we train our soul to love it more, don't we? So the sin now and ask forgiveness later technique backfires because the sin now part causes my heart to be more endeared to sin, to love sin all the more, which makes genuine repentance later that much more unlikely to ever happen. It's not true confession unless the attitude of the heart turns against the sin. And one way you can tell that That's not happening. One of the evidences that it's not, your hard attitude isn't really rejecting the sin is when your confession comes out with a whole lot of excuses attached, right? When you admit to doing something wrong, but then it's always followed by a but, and then words of justification. Yes, I got angry, but you have to understand, I was so hurt by what you said. And anytime you do that, Anytime there's an excuse connected to your confession, what are you doing? You're defending the way your heart is. The condition of my heart right now, I'm defending it. You're saying, my heart is actually okay. Yes, I said some bad things, but it's because I was having a bad day and you didn't even know that I was having a bad day. You should have picked up on that. You didn't pick up on it. So forgive me for reacting the way any reasonable person would react when confronted with someone like you. That's not much of a confession. But that's basically what we're saying when we throw out the excuses, right? We're defending the condition of our hearts. When you truly agree with God about your sin, your whole being just declares war on that sin in your heart. You'll hate it, you'll reject it, you'll take whatever steps you can possibly take to defeat that sin in your life. If you say, I'm sorry, I repent, But there are steps you could take to fight this sin in your life to make sure you're not going to commit it again. And you refuse to take those steps because they're too inconvenient or too costly or whatever. That's not true confession. That's not true repentance. And you won't be forgiven. Even though you are admitting to the sins, God's not going to forgive you. True confession identifies the root in the heart, says the whole truth about it, and rejects it. That's confession. Another symptom of false confession is when the sin is understated. Sometimes we give excuses, other times we just downplay it, right? We try to say it in softer terms so we don't look so bad. Notice that's the opposite of what David does here. Look what he does in describing his sin. Instead of trying to clean it up and downplay it and save face a little bit by understating it, he does just the opposite. He goes out of his way to describe every aspect of his sin. In the opening statement, three different words he uses to describe his evil. Transgression, sin, and iniquity. And the same three words in verse 5 in his confession. I confess my transgression, I confess my iniquity, I confess my sin. Transgression has the idea of rebellion against God's will. All sin is a departure from God's will. That is the deepest and darkest and ugliest thing about our sin. is the fact that it departs from God's will. It's the worst thing about it. You know, and that's an important thing to understand because most people think what determines how bad a sin is is how many people it hurts. Right? Hitler hurt the most people, therefore he's the worst sinner. That's the way most people think. The number of people it hurts and how much it hurts the people, that's secondary. The severity, that's not what measures the severity of sin. That is a man-centered view. Can you see how that's man-centered? It's measuring sin by how many people it hurts implies that man is supreme and what hurts him is what matters most. No, the measure of evil and good is not people, it's God. God's will is what's good. God's will is good. Anything contrary to that is evil. People who have man as supreme, they can't understand why these sins that don't seem to hurt anybody are counted as sins, because it doesn't hurt anybody. That's because they think man is supreme. God's will is supreme. Anything contrary to God's will is wicked. So transgression is any departure from God's will or movement away from God. And David says, I was involved in transgression. I rebelled against your will. Secondly, sin, that refers to acting wrongly or missing God's way. behaving the wrong way, taking a path that's different than the path that God says is best. David says, I did that too. And then the third term, iniquity, which refers to crookedness. It's a lot like our word perversion. It's got that same negative taste in scripture as the word perverse. Just taking God's straight way and twisting it into something perverted. And David says, I was a pervert. I was a pervert. My heart rejected your will. I've gone my own way. I've twisted and perverted your way." See, he's covering every aspect of anything. He's not trying to understate his sin. He's saying everything. He doesn't want anything to be hidden anymore because he wants every ounce of poison in his soul to be dealt with. And so he confesses everything he can find. Martin Luther once said, forgive imaginary sin. He does not save imaginary sinners. If you want to be forgiven, you better confess real sin. You better confess what's really there, because God only forgives real sin. And whatever you want forgiven, you better confess. Because God will only forgive what you confess. It's not in your interests to understate your sin when you're confessing. Now when I say God only forgives what you confess. I'm not saying that he won't forgive unknown sin. We know that God will forgive sins that you don't even know about. There's a provision in redemption for that. What I'm saying is he won't forgive sins that you do know about but you refuse to confess. So, who are the righteous? They're those who trust in God and they trust in him so much that when God says this is the right way and they find their heart going the opposite way, When they see that, they stop and they reverse course and turn back to God. That's confession, that's repentance. So, that's the difference between the righteous and the wicked. The difference in the behavior of the righteous and the wicked is the righteous confess and repent and turn back to God. The wicked sin and just cover it up. They hide it, they make excuses for it. They blame everybody else for it, they blame other people, they blame circumstances, they even blame God. Or they just try to, maybe they try to make up for it, you know, try to do some religious stuff to cancel out their guilt, some good deeds. Or they might apologize for it, you know, enough to get everybody off their back, but then once it blows over, they go right back to their sin because they still love it in their heart, they haven't rejected it. Or maybe they'll even resolve to change. They get, they're sick of this sin, they say, you know what, I'm gonna change. And I'm, I'm resolved to change within reason. But it's always within reason. They won't take any drastic steps. They might pray about it a little, read a few Bible verses, make a resolution, maybe write it down on a paper. Those are the responses of the wicked. But if you're righteous, how do you respond to your sin? You confess it, you repent. Instead of your soul continuing to cling to that sin, your whole inner man turns against it, you declare war on it, you become clean about it, you put it out in the open, you confess it, and you do everything you can possibly do to get rid of it. and not within reason, everything you can do. Jesus talked about gouging out eyes and cutting off limbs and taking extreme measures against your sin. Now, one other question before we move on. When you confess, to whom do you confess? Do you just confess it to God or do you have to also confess it to people? Confessing to God is easy, right? Confessing to people is hard. What do we have to confess to people? Who needs to be involved? When we just take a glance through scripture, we know there's sometimes you need to confess to people, right? James 5, 16, confess your sins to one another. So we need to confess to people. Which people? Which people? How many people? For sure the people you sinned against, right? You got to confess to them. Luke 17, 4, if your brother sins against you seven times in a day and turns to you seven times saying, I repent, you must forgive him. So in order for him to be forgiven by you, he's got to come to you and say, I repent. He's got to confess to you. So the rule of thumb is your confession of sin involves everybody you sin against. The circle of confession is just as wide as the circle of offense. If I'm meeting with 20 people and I fly off the handle in that meeting and lose my temper and sin, I need to confess that sin to the whole group, right? If the sin is public, the confession should be public. If the sin is private, public confession might not be appropriate. It would be impossible for all of us to confess all of our sins to everybody all the time, right? So you confess to the circle of offense. That's one principle. Confess to the people involved, confess to the people who are hurt by it, confess to the people who know about it. The other principle is this. Confessing to people, we should confess, if confessing to a certain person will help you in your fight against that sin, do it. Right, do it. Some sins are almost impossible to escape as long as they remain secret. But if they're brought out into the open, they're easier to fight. If you confess it, you know that you're gonna have to confess it again next time it happens, because you're accountable to this person. That helps. That's a tremendous help in fighting against especially enslaving sins. There are sins that I commit in my own mind and heart, and nobody sees them, nobody knows about them, nobody's directly hurt by them, but I still confess them. I'll confess them to Tracy, I'll confess them to my accountability partners, to the elders. I'll confess them to people who are close to me, people who can help me. Because I want help in fighting the sin. This is taking one of the steps against sin. Anytime you realize that, okay, if I were to confess this, then there's a likelihood that it'll end this sin in my life sooner than if I keep it quiet, then you need to confess it. Because if you don't, you're proving you're not serious about fighting this sin, right? You care more about your reputation than about holiness. And that's not a mark of true faith. When Job described his innocence, one of the things that he mentioned that proved that he was a godly man was the fact that he didn't hide his sin from people. He confessed his sin to people. That's Job 31, 33. If I have concealed my sin as men do by hiding my guilt in my heart because I so feared the crowd and so dreaded the contempt of the clans that I kept silent and would not go outside, then let the briars come up instead of wheat and weeds instead of barley. So obviously he's talking about confessing to men because he's concerned about the opinions of men. He says, I didn't do that. I didn't keep my sin secret. I didn't keep it private. I confessed it to people. And this is hard for us in this culture because we live in a private culture, right? We worship privacy in this culture. We're all about privacy. And the result of privacy is devastating. The result is superficial relationships. You know, we only expose the most obvious and innocent looking pieces of information about ourselves to one another. If you're one of those people who loves privacy, privacy will do two things for you. Number one, it'll save you the embarrassment of people knowing the real you. It'll do that. And number two, it'll prevent you from ever knowing the deepest and most profound joys of love. Because you'll never have a real love relationship with anybody because they won't know the real you. So they can't love the real you. And not only that, you do a lot of harm to a lot of other people when we do that. When we pretend there's nothing wrong with us, We're harming everybody in the church. You get a whole church of people pretending that they all have their act together and they don't do anything wrong. Then somebody else, someone new person comes into the church, he sees that immediately. First thing he says, wow, I guess I can't let the truth about me get out here. All these perfect people. And so now that guy's doomed to shallow, phony relationships because he can't be genuine and transparent. And eventually everybody starts thinking they're the only ones. Everybody in the church thinks I'm the only one struggling with sin. And they get paralyzed with guilt and discouragement and they're all alone and they can't ask for help because they can't admit the truth and pretty soon everybody's on their own. And the church is not a church. No one can get grace through fellowship because everything's top secret. Privacy is always the enemy of intimacy. Always. The righteous are a community of honest, open people about their sins. And when you do that, when you do confess your sin, I mean all that is what confession means. And that's kind of an introduction to the sermon. Now I can start the sermon. Let's look at verse 1. When you confess your sin, I had to make sure you understand what I mean by confess. When you confess your sin, you will be showered with God's blessing. I mean deluged with blessing. Look at verse one. Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven. This is a celebration. Just picture the emotions of David writing this. Whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity and in whose spirit there's no deceit. That word blessed means you have reason to celebrate. You have reason to be happy. It means things are good for you. Your life is in great shape. You've got a lot to be happy about. There's two different words in Hebrew translated blessed. This one's the stronger one. This is the more upbeat one. This is a very upbeat way to begin the psalm. And then we saw the end of the psalm, verse 11. Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, O righteous, and shout for joy, all you upright in heart. This psalm begins and ends with jubilance. Jubilance. Which is amazing because it's a psalm about what? Sin! It's considered one of the penitential psalms. It's a psalm about sin and how to deal with your sin. The whole thing is about repentance and confession, and that is a happy topic for the Christian, for the one who can be forgiven, the one who's restored. And David lists four aspects of restoration. Let's look at them one at a time. The first three of the four are metaphors that describe what this restoration is. He starts with the word forgiven. Blessed are those whose transgression is forgiven. And this particular Hebrew word, fascinating word, it literally means to lift up or carry or take away. Just pick something up or carry it or take it away. That's what the, it's very, very common thousands of times in the Old Testament, this particular Hebrew word. It's such an interesting word to study because when it, subject of the sentence is the sinner, this word means to be guilty. When the subject of the sentence is God, this word means to be forgiven. See, if you're the subject, if you lift up and carry your own sin, you're condemned, you die. That's an example of that word used that way. with the sinner as the subject. Exodus 28, 43, there the priests are required to wear the priestly garments in the holy place, lest they bear guilt and die. And that word bear is this same word. Lest they carry their own guilt and die. You carry your own guilt, you die. But if God carries it, if he bears it, that means you're forgiven and you live. He takes it away. He carries it, he picks it up, he takes it away, When he does that, he takes away your culpability. He takes away the punishment that you deserve and actually makes you innocent. I mean, make sure you understand. He's not just taking away the guilt feelings. A lot of people interpret it that way. They say, oh, you're under this weight of guilt feelings and God takes away that burden. That's not what it's saying. It's saying way more than that. You understand the difference between guilt and guilt feelings, right? Those are not the same. Those are two different things. It's possible to have guilt, to be guilty of doing something and not feel bad about it. Isn't that possible? You actually committed the crime but you feel fine. You don't even realize it was evil and so you just, you don't feel any guilt. It's also possible to have guilt feelings and no actual guilt, right? You feel guilty because you thought you did something bad and you didn't. Those are two different things. Guilt is an objective reality that does not depend on how you feel. It means you actually deserve punishment for wrongdoing regardless of how you feel. Guilt feelings, and we understand that in our legal system, right? You send somebody who's guilty, they actually did the crime, they say, but I don't feel guilty. You're still going to jail. It doesn't matter how you feel. That's real guilt. Guilt feelings are an emotion that may or may not actually match up correctly with real guilt. This word, to pick up and carry away, is not talking about God just lifting the guilt feelings off of you. He's lifting the guilt. You understand that? It refers to the actual removal of guilt, which is an inconceivable mystery. I mean, if you want to talk about paradoxes in the Bible, hard things, things that are hard to grasp and understand, people struggle with, you know, the doctrine of the Trinity, how can it be three persons and one God, I don't get it, or people struggle with free will, divine sovereignty, how can God just let people use their own free will and still see to it that all His sovereign plans happen and not be the author of evil, or people struggle with the origin of evil, where did evil come from, why did God allow, you know, all these mysteries in Scripture, I've got to ask God all these questions, you know, I think One of the most mind-boggling mysteries of all the whole scripture is this one. How can God remove actual guilt? I mean, how does that work? If I rob a bank, a judge can waive the penalty legally, right? He can let me off. Or a counselor might help take away the guilt feelings. Or maybe a drug or something could do that. But the actual guilt is still there. I'm actually guilty of committing a crime. When God forgives, he takes away the actual guilt so that I am in no way culpable for that sin anymore. Jeremiah 50, 20, at that time declares the Lord, search will be made for Israel's guilt, but there will be none. For the sins of Judah, but they will not be found. And I will forgive the remnant I spare. God says, I can run a search for this guilt and it won't be found. Takes away the guilt. That's the first metaphor. First reason you're blessed if you're forgiven. Just picture the sin and guilt being lifted up, carried away by God, never to be seen or heard from again, ever. The second metaphor is the word covered. Blessed is the one whose transgressions are forgiven or carried by God and whose sin is covered. That's also a blessed thing. That's a wonderful thing to have it covered. When we sin, there's a certain amount of shame connected with that, right? There's shame, even after we're forgiven. When that shame is exposed to people, it's painful, isn't it? I mean, aren't there people, they'll do anything. There are people that will do pretty much anything to keep people from seeing the full picture of their sin. I mean, there are things about us that are so ugly that if they were exposed, we would be horrified. I mean, you just think about yourself at the worst, the things, the thoughts, the attitudes, the gross things that you've done, thought of, whatever's the worst bottom of the darkness of your heart, if that were just plastered on the screen up here and everybody could see it, you'd never want to see, you'd never want to face these people again, right? You'd just want to crawl in a hole. We need to have our shame covered up. We need to have it covered. But if we try to cover it, it won't work. It'll backfire. Proverbs 28, 13, whoever conceals his transgressions will not prosper, but he who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy. So if you try to cover up your own sin, God'll just expose it. It won't work. But if you expose it, if you bring it out into the open through confession, God will cover it, and then it'll be covered indeed. It'll be really covered, and you will be blessed. He'll cover up your shame. He'll make it so that that's not viewed. See, forgiveness, this is a real important thing to understand. Forgiveness is not just a matter of having the punishment waived. Oh, now I don't have to serve my sentence. That's not, there's way more to forgiveness than that. Forgiveness is mainly a matter of the restoration of the relationship that's been broken, of the person you sinned against. As long as that person you sinned against is still looking at you through the lenses of your sin, you're not forgiven. Even if they aren't punishing you, even if they say, oh, I forgive you, If they're still looking at you that way, they haven't forgiven you. If you did some horrible thing in the past, there's some terrible thing that you did, and people always look at you as, oh, he's the one who did that. You're not forgiven, as long as that's going on. If that sin colors the way people look at you, if that sin colors the way people think about you, and it colors their emotions they have towards you, those people have not forgiven you. When God forgives sin, He not only takes away the guilt so that you no longer have to suffer the penalty, he also hides the sin from his own eyes. What does that mean? Does that mean he doesn't know about it? No, he knows everything. What it means is when God looks at you, your past sin has no effect on how God thinks about you. No effect. It doesn't matter what you did, it doesn't matter how severe, how disgusting the sin, even if you cursed God, it doesn't matter. Whatever damage you did, whatever damage your sin did, once it's forgiven, it plays no role whatsoever in how God thinks about you, how God views you, and how God feels about you. None! It doesn't have any impact on any of that. It doesn't have any impact on how God acts toward you either, and that brings us to the next metaphor, the third one. Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity. That means God doesn't credit what you did to your account. It doesn't count. It doesn't count. It's a do-over. You ever wish you could just have a do-over? You go golfing, I always want those. I make a stroke, it's like, okay, that doesn't count. Now if you're playing with someone who's insisting on rules, then it doesn't work, then it always counts. But we do things a lot worse than a bad golf shot that we wish, oh, I wish I didn't count. This is what this word means. It doesn't count. God doesn't count. That is blessedness. And if it doesn't count, that means it has no impact on the way that God treats you. He's not going to deal with you according to your sin. It's not on your record. This word translated count is the same word in Genesis 15-6 that I read earlier. Abram believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness, it was counted to him as righteousness. Paul quotes this verse in Psalm 32, in Romans 4, that famous passage on imputation. David says the same thing when he, verse six, when he speaks of the blessedness of the man to whom God credits righteousness apart from works. Blessed are those whose transgressions are forgiven and whose sins are covered, blessed is the man whose sin the Lord will never count against him. By the way, I hope you don't read things like this in the Old Testament and think, well, that's great for David, but it's different in the New Testament. That doesn't apply to me. That's for Old Testament Jews. That's a different dispensation. I'm in this dispensation, so none of that applies in my case. When you read something in the Old Testament about sin, about forgiveness, about how we interact with God, about repentance, that's the same in the New Testament as the Old Testament. David thought it was the same. It's the whole basis for Romans 4. So these aspects of sin and guilt are the same for us as they were for them. So when you confess, if you have faith in God, He will not count your past sin against you, which means this. God has a way of counting that is governed by more than just my actions. Right? If he's not going to count my sin against me, he must have a way of counting that is governed by more than just my own actions, which is news to the Catholic Church. The Roman Catholics reject that idea. They say that's legal fiction. God's pretending. No. It's right here. This is exactly what it's saying. He doesn't count. The sin is there. God doesn't count it. And then the fourth aspect of this restoration, verse 2, blessed is a man in whose spirit is no deceit. No more living in the shadows trying to cover up your sin. This is a wonderful aspect of the blessedness of forgiveness. You get to just be free. You don't have to lie anymore. No more lies. No more trying to keep your story straight. No more trying to avoid being found out. No more trying to cover things up. No more hiding. Once you're forgiven, you can just be you. You can just be totally honest. You can be totally honest with your past. Yeah, I did that thing, but I'm forgiven. That's not me. That's not on my record. It's like that's a different person. The man is what he is, not what he was. So God's forgiven. Yeah, that's in the past, but I don't have to be ashamed. The shame part of it is being covered by God. So I can just be open, honest. I can just be me. I can just be free with who I am and not worry about it. A marvelous aspect of blessedness. Nothing to hide anymore. Such a liberating thing. So with this forgiveness comes a degree of honesty. It changes you. Alexander McLaren says, God's kiss of forgiveness sucks the poison from the wound. It is so good to be forgiven. So good. But I know some of you have a nagging question still. Some of you are thinking, what if I just keep committing this sin over and over? And I mean, will God still forgive me? Isn't that bogus repentance if I commit it? I say I repent and I confess and then I commit it again. Am I forgiven? Well, it depends. It depends. One possibility is your confession really isn't real confession. It's bogus confession. In that case, no, God won't forgive you. But what if it's true confession? You're doing everything you can to fight against the sin. You're doing everything you know to fight against this sin. You're taking whatever steps you can take, but you just keep stumbling again and again and again and again and again and to the point where you think, God must be sick and tired of hearing my prayers of confession. I'm sick and tired of hearing my prayers of confession. It's just getting old. Does God still forgive even then? Let me ask you this. What does God require of you? when it comes to repeated offenses. Yeah. Luke 17.3, your brother sins against you seven times in a day, verse 4, and seven times comes back to you and says, I repent, forgive him. And then in Matthew 18.21, Peter said to Jesus, Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins to me? Up to seven times. And Jesus answered, I tell you not seven times, but seventy times seven. God requires that we forgive one another an unlimited number of times and that we keep no record of wrongs. Do you think God requires more of us than He's willing to do? Are we, are our hearts more gracious than God's? If He requires us to forgive innumerable times, if He requires that we keep no record of wrongs, you better believe God keeps no record of wrongs and when you sinned and you've repented, there is no limit to how much He will forgive. And how many times? No limit. He's so eager to forgive. He's not reluctant. Look at the psalm. He's calling us. Look at anywhere in the Bible. He calls us to come to Him with our sin. He's more eager to forgive our sins than we are eager to be forgiven. Oh, the blessedness. If we'll just receive that, just humble ourselves and repent and receive that forgiveness. Blessed is the person who's forgiven. Will you do that right now? Will you just pray and ask God, say, God, is there anything I need to confess? Anything that I've rationalized? Any sin? Search me, oh God. Know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts. And see if there be any wicked way in me. And lead me in the way everlasting. Just pray that Psalm 139 prayer. Ask Him to expose anything that needs to be confessed. And when it comes to your mind, confess it come clean with God, just say the whole truth about it, and reject it in your heart. Just see to it your heart rejects it. And then trust in the Lord Jesus Christ to just carry it away. And He will. And you'll be clean. And for those of you who have already done that, you've already confessed, you confess your sin to God as a way of life. You do that as soon as you woke up in the morning, this morning, you do it when you go to bed, you do it all through the day. If that's you, I just want to urge you this morning, celebrate your forgiveness. Celebrate it. Man, I wish we could have sung those last two songs after the sermon instead of before, because we should be singing about this. I mean, celebrate. Imagine, if you have trouble celebrating, if this is just kind of old news to you, imagine this. Imagine what it would be like not to be forgiven. Just think about that for a minute. What would it be like, what if God were still holding all of your past sins against you? All of them. I mean, you might be one of those people who's really hard on yourself. You're way too hard on yourself. You might be mired in self-condemnation, always putting yourself down. Even you, even the most self-condemning person on the planet, doesn't hold himself responsible for all of his past sin. You couldn't. It'd be impossible. You don't even know all your past sin. You can't even conceive of a fraction of it. We don't have good enough memories. If we could feel, I believe, if we could feel the weight of all of our guilt, even for one second, it would crush us to powder. We'd probably die. If we could just feel all that weight in one shot. I mean, imagine never having a fresh start, ever. Never, every single sin, new sin, just added to the pile. Forever. You could never just wake up and say, okay, today's a new day, or this is a new week, I'm gonna start afresh. No fresh starts. Just the guilt that you feel right after, you know, when you've been racked with guilt, your conscience is racked with guilt. Imagine that never goes away. It just gets more. Every single sin just makes it worse forever. And God just keeps getting madder and madder and madder at you every time you sin, and it never lets up. All that would be reality if not for forgiveness. Do you understand that? It would be. Spurgeon said, brethren, unless my sins are taken away by the Lamb of God, they remain. Unless they're laid upon Christ, they crush me. Unless they are covered by His expiation, they lie there before the throne and cry out for punishment. Unless His blood is wiped out, the record that is against us, the black page, stands forever. But if you've repented, it's all gone. You're clean. It's all forgiven. Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, O righteous. Shout for joy, all you upright in heart. Amen. You might think, well, how do I know for sure? I just don't know for sure. Is it possible to know for sure that my repentance is real so that my forgiveness is real? Can you tell when it happens? Can you tell when that moment is where you confess a sin, and God is displeased, He turns His face away, and He turns His face back towards you, and you're forgiven, and all is right between you and God? Can you feel it? Can you tell? Is it possible to tell when that happens, and if it's happened, for sure? And if so, how? Well, that's the question David's gonna answer for us next time. Let's pray. Father, we bless Your name for forgiveness of sins. Thank you. And now as we turn our hearts towards your table and we worship you in this way, Lord, continue to do this work in our hearts of bringing to mind anything that's in between us and you that needs to be confessed so that we can know the blessedness of forgiveness and that you can have the glory of being the great forgiver. Pray this in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ who gave his life so that this could be real. Okay, we just have a couple of minutes here left if there's any questions about the sermon. Okay, go ahead. If you sin against a person, then I think, yeah, you need to go to that person and ask their forgiveness and confess it to them. But if it's not anything that involves that person, then I would say you would just do it between you and God, unless confessing to the person would help you fight the sin in some way. Okay, so the question is, I've always thought of repentance as something that you need to muster up or you need to work on. It takes effort in your own heart to try to do that, but then I've read some other things that say, no, no, it's a gift from God. It's something that God grants. So which is it? The answer is it's both. There are scriptures that talk about God granting repentance, right? Pray that God would grant them repentance. It is a gift from God, but, it's very important, just because something's a gift from God doesn't mean it doesn't involve effort. Most of God's, or many of God's gifts involve effort, right? God gives us grace, that's a gift, it's a free gift, and it involves effort. That's why Paul said, I worked harder than most, than all the rest of the apostles by the grace of God. His grace in me was not without effect. The effect was hard work. So he grants the hard work. He grants you the motivation to do the hard work to bring yourself to a point of repentance, because let's face it, it's work. To be thorough in dealing with your sin is work, we just naturally do that, naturally. I mean, you read Psalm 51, and if you're gonna pray a prayer like Psalm 51, even if you're gonna pray Psalm 51 and mean it, there's a lot of work involved in that, internally. It's not something that's just easy. So yeah, it's a gift from God, it's grace from God, it's granted by Him, but it's grace that moves you to action. Doug? Okay, so I said that God will take away your sin and guilt and carry it away, never to be seen or heard from again, but then judgment day comes along and we have to give an account for our sins and we're gonna suffer loss. How do you reconcile those two things? Honestly, Doug, I've never been able to have a good answer for that. I don't know for sure exactly what the answer to that is. I suspect that what it means when it says the sin is forgiven and taken away, What that means is God's not holding it against you. He's not holding a grudge. He's not angry at you. He's not dealing with you according to your sin. He's not letting your sin color the way he thinks about you or feels about you or looks at you so that you're right with him, you're close to him. But there's still a day when you're gonna have to give an accounting, not to satisfy his anger or wrath, but simply because that's the way he raises his children. And so, The closest I can come to thinking about that is with your kids. They do something, they're in trouble. They mouthed off to dad, now they're at odds with dad, dad is upset with them, and that continues until discipline is carried out, and once discipline is carried out, and their tears flow and everything, and then it's all reconciled, and there's a big hug, and now there's nothing wrong, there's nothing at odds between dad and the kid anymore, they can wrestle on the floor, and everything's good. There's some consequences that have to be dealt with, and those consequences are still in force. Don't confuse consequences for sin with God's displeasure. They're not always the same thing. Like David, God was upset with David. The thing that he did displeased God. God was upset with him until David finally confessed, Psalm 51. But after David confessed, now God and David are close again, there's nothing between them. But were there continuing consequences the rest of David's life? Yeah, there were. Sword came into his family, the child died, all these consequences. So you can have consequences for your sin that are an expression of God's disfavor and anger, but you can also have consequences for your sin that are not his disfavor and anger, they're just consequences, they're just teaching you. But he's pleased with you. and you're not at odds with him. So I think that's what it means, is you're forgiven in the sense that you're not at odds with God anymore and the relationship is just fine, but there's some consequences, and one of those consequences is Judgment Day, you have to give an account. If I'm wrong about that, I'll give an account for it on Judgment Day. It's the best I can do for now, I guess. Well, in the Roman Catholic system, they have a deal where you have to confess to a priest and get absolution and get forgiveness of your sins. Is that a real confession? I think in some limited cases, yeah. It's probably genuine. People, the best they know, that's all they've ever been taught, that's all they know, they don't understand that there's no other mediator between us and God besides Jesus, and they'll go in there and they'll sit with the priest, but really, they're confessing to God and their heart is right. I think that's true with some of them. But for the most part, the Roman Catholic system teaches a system where you get absolution from doing rituals like going to confession and taking communion and doing things, and those automatically pay for your sin regardless of what's in your heart, even if there's no true repentance. And if that's what they believe, which is what most Catholics would follow, then no, there's nothing that's happening there spiritually. And I made the comment in the sermon about the Pope and Twitter. That was in the news this last week where the Pope said, you get absolution for your sins, you get some indulgences just by following me on Twitter. And that sounds just so absurd to us. But when you're in a system of ritualism, then there's nothing wrong with an up-to-date ritual, a modern-day ritual, as opposed to an ancient ritual. What does it matter? So that's not strange to them. But that was the whole problem of Phariseeism. They thought forgiveness came through rituals rather than faith. Those consequences aren't necessarily a marker of God's displeasure. They might be in some cases, but they're not always. There's a huge difference between bearing the consequences of sin because God is angry, He's displeased with you, and He's trying to bring you to repentance. or bearing the consequences of sin and God is pleased with you. You know, a man is a Christian. He gets caught up in some thing and commits a crime and goes to prison. He's sentenced to 20 years in prison. And he first gets to prison and after a month there, he finally falls on his knees and repents. That first month is agony because God is displeased with him. He's at odds with God. He's still covering up his sin. He won't repent. It's horrible because God is not there. God is not all the things that God does when He shelters a person. God has turned His face against him and it's horrific for him during that first month. But then after that, he finally drops his knees, he confesses, he repents, he gets right with God. Now God is pleased with him, he's totally forgiven, and he has God's favor now, and God's face is on him, and he can be, the rest of those 20 years that he spends in prison, yeah, that's a consequence, but he can be, he can have a life of joy. The whole 20 years he's in prison, he can be full of joy. I mean, if God's presence isn't with you in the cell, and his face is turned towards you, You can be just as full of joy there as anywhere on the planet. The amount of joy you have is not a function of whether or not you're suffering consequences of sin. It's a function of whether God is near you and His face turns towards you. And so, yeah, it doesn't mean consequences go away. David was forgiven, he still had consequences. The sword came, he lost his baby, and all the rest. His agony of verses 2 and 3 was turned to the rejoicing of verse 11. Yeah, good point. Anything else? Right. Yeah, but I'm glad you brought it up again so I can repeat it. When I say God only will forgive the sins that you confess, I don't want you to think that He won't forgive you if you just if there's unknown sin in your life, obviously nobody would be forgiven. There is a provision in the cross for unknown sin. There is a provision in the Old Testament system for unknown sin, and that is a picture of the cross. So God will forgive your unknown sin, but the point I was making is about sin that in your heart you're not willing, you know about it, you're just not willing to confess it, you're not willing to repent of it. That's the sin that I was talking about, that he won't confess. Did you have your hand up? So what do you do if you confess, you sinned against somebody, and you would like to go and confess to them and ask their forgiveness, you've already done that with God, you want to do it with the person, but the relationship is so broken and fractured that the person won't even talk to you, they won't give you the opportunity to do it. Then what do you do? You know, I think that's an issue where Paul said, as long as it depends on you, live at peace with all men. As far as it depends on you. He throws that in because he knows that it doesn't always depend on you. And it's a comforting verse because it tells us that God does not hold you responsible for any part that doesn't depend on you. And so as long as your willingness is there, your heart is there, that counts. God counts that. That's what he's looking for anyways, your heart, right? That's all he's looking for is what's in your heart. And so if you do everything you can do, then God doesn't hold you responsible for anything else. But keep trying. You never know, they might soften over time. Pray for them to soften so that you can restore that relationship. Yeah. Okay, so somebody hurts you, but they don't think they did anything wrong, or they confess to some little piece of it, but not most of it, or whatever, half of it, not the other half. What do you do when somebody's hurt you and they they're not repentant? I mean Jesus said if your brother sins against you rebuke him and if he repents then forgive him and He says if they repent and God he won't he doesn't forgive us unless we repent so repentance is required What if they don't repent? What if the person hurt me and I'm angry with him, or I have bitterness against him, or I'm holding a grudge, or I'm getting revenge, or I'm kind of cool towards him, or whatever, and he won't repent? Well, if I'm holding a grudge, I need to confess that as sin, I need to drop that. I can't hold a grudge. I can't be cool towards him. I need to be warm. If he's a brother in Christ, I need to be warm towards him. I can't withhold intimacy and warmth and love from a brother in Christ. If I'm holding a grudge, I need to confess that, get that out of my life, that's sin. If I'm taking revenge, I certainly need to get rid of that sin. But, even if I do all that, I'm not holding a grudge anymore, I'm warm towards the person, my heart is wide open, if he will reconcile, I'll reconcile. If he'll ask forgiveness, I'm available. There's no animosity. Even if I do all that, That's really not what scripture calls forgiveness. That's what scripture calls patience. You're being patient with the person until they repent. Then once they repent, then you can forgive. Because forgiveness always involves full restoration of the relationship. And that can never happen until there's repentance. It's a two-sided thing. And so when the question comes, if they don't repent, do I need to forgive? And I always get in trouble with this because if I say no, people misunderstand that. They think I mean, oh, it's okay to hold a grudge and be angry and look down on them. No, no, no, no, no. None of that is right. You have to be soft-hearted towards them. You have to be loving and kind towards them. You can't hold a grudge. You can't be bitter. But I just wouldn't call that forgiveness. I would call that patience. So to answer your question, keep being patient. Keep being patient and understand, overlook what you can overlook. You know, there's sometimes People don't confess things, not because they're hard-hearted, but just simply because they're not taught. They don't have the understanding. They don't have the knowledge that what they are doing is evil. And that's a place where we can sometimes just overlook it. We can just say, we can actually have compassion towards them. They haven't been instructed. And I'm sure if they were instructed that they would confess that part. I know there are times where my wife might hurt me, and she doesn't even know it, but I know if she knew it, she would ask for my forgiveness, and so that's all I need to know, and I don't even have to tell her, and we don't have to go through the whole rigmarole. I'll just overlook the whole thing, because I know her heart. I know if she knew she hurt me, then she'd feel bad, and so I can just overlook the whole thing. Well, no, I don't think, I don't see any place in Scripture that says future sins are already forgiven. In fact, I don't even think that would have any meaning because forgiveness is the restoration of something that's been broken. First, it has to be broken before it can be restored. So, I know a lot of people teach, yeah, sin is forgiven, past, present, future. I just don't think the Bible says that. So, sin is rebellion against God's will. If you commit a sin, and then right as you commit the sin, get hit by a truck without confessing, what happens? The answer is, if you're a believer, then you would go to heaven. Because salvation is through faith, and if you're trusting God, then all your sin is forgiven, even the sins that you don't know to confess or haven't had time to confess or whatever. None of us are perfect in our confession. So you don't lose your salvation every time you sin. Otherwise nobody would go to heaven because nobody's perfectly nobody perfectly confesses anything So I don't I don't mean to say that your your salvation is lost every single time you sin When I said you won't be forgiven if you refuse to confess What I mean is with temporal forgiveness God will not your relationship with God will not be right During that one second between committing the sin and getting hit by the truck, you're not really right with God. You'll still go to heaven, but your relationship with God isn't what it should be at that time. You don't have the intimacy. His face might be turned away. Might be why you got hit by the truck. There is a, you know, 1 John 1, 9 says, if we confess our sins, if we are confessing our sins, present tense, I mean, if you're the type of person who, in general, you confess your sin, when you see it, you confess it. If you're that type of person, then He'll forgive your sin and cleanse you from all unrighteousness, even the stuff that you don't know to confess or you haven't confessed yet or whatever. So, yeah, that's a great question. Your sin isn't, your salvation is not canceled when you sin. your relationship with God is harmed. Okay, Lori? Okay, so Scripture says you're a new creation, you have a new nature, and you're just radically transformed at salvation. And yet, there's this picture of we're almost just like the wicked, except that we confess. I mean, we just still stumble and fall every day. How do you reconcile those two? I would say that It's a radical difference between sin being in your life and being your enemy, and sin being in your life and being your friend that you love. There's a radical difference. If I sin a hundred times in a day and I'm fighting that, I'm warring against that, it grieves me, it causes me to turn back to Christ in repentance, all of that stuff, and some unbeliever sins a hundred times in a day and he just loves it, That is a radical transformation of character and indifference. A huge, huge difference. Now, I'm not saying that a Christian sins as much as a non-Christian. You don't. And the longer you're a Christian, the less you sin. The fewer the sins. And so, as we're sanctified, we're becoming more and more like Christ. So I'm not trying to say that we sin just as much as them. But what I'm saying is that the difference between us and them isn't just a matter of sinning fewer times. It's a matter of every second of every day, our attitude towards sin and our attitude towards God. Yeah, I think it's possible. I mean, I think as long as you're thorough in your confession, I think that it doesn't mean you have to mention every detail of every sin every single time you mention sin. But if there's something you're hiding, then I would say it's not real confession. So, Jim, did you have your hand up? Yeah, all those statements in 1 John about continuing to sin, nobody who continues to sin is saved. That's what John says. Nobody who keeps sinning is saved. But what do you mean by keep sinning, John? And he tells us what he means at the very beginning of the book, chapter 1. He tells us, I don't mean sinless perfection, because obviously he says if you claim to be without sin, then you're a liar. So he's not talking about sinless perfection. He tells us at the beginning, he's talking about people who sin and repent. They confess their sin. That's what he means by those who don't keep on sinning. Keeping on sinning doesn't just mean sinning, it means continuing in unrepentant sin. That's what John means all through the book whenever he talks about continuing in sin. He's talking about continuing in unrepentant sin. And he clarifies that in chapter 1, but he doesn't restate that clarification every single time. So that's the short answer. The long answer, you can go back and hear that sermon on that verse that we did because I went into a lot of detail in that message.