When You're Caught In Sin; Know Your Sin

LaRue Baptist Church, OH

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Please stand in honor of God's Word. The Old Testament reading is in 2 Samuel chapter 12.

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And the Lord sent Nathan to David. He came to him and said to him, There were two men in a certain city, the one rich and the other poor.

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The rich man had very many flocks and herds, but the poor man had nothing but one little lamb, which he had bought.

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And he brought it up and it grew up with him and with his children. It used to eat of his morsel and drink from his cup and lie in his arms, and it was like a daughter to him.

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Now there came a traveler to the rich man, and he was unwilling to take one of his own flock or herd to prepare for the guest that had come to him.

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But he took the poor man's lamb and prepared it for the man who had come to him. Then David's anger was greatly kindled against the man.

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And he said to Nathan, As the Lord lives, the man who has done this deserves to die, and he shall restore the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing and because he had no pity.

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Nathan said to David, You are the man. Thus says the Lord God of Israel. I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you out of the hand of Saul, and I gave you your master's house and your master's wives into your arms, and gave you the house of Israel and of Judah.

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And if this were too little, I would add to you as much more. Why have you despised the

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Lord to do what is evil in his sight? You have struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and have taken his wife, and you have killed him with the sword of the

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Ammonites. Now therefore, the sword shall never depart from your house, because you have despised me and have taken the wife of Uriah the

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Hittite to be your wife. Thus says the Lord. Behold, I'll raise up evil against you out of your own house, and I will take your wives before your eyes and give them to your neighbor, and he shall lie with your wives in the sight of the sun.

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For you did it in secret, but I will do this thing before all Israel and before the sun.

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David said to Nathan, I have sinned against the Lord. And Nathan said to David, The Lord also has put away your sin.

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You shall not die. Nevertheless, because by this deed you have utterly scorned the

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Lord, the child who is born to you shall die. Our New Testament reading can be found in the book of James chapter 4, which is on page 1012 in your pew

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Bibles. We'll read verses 1 through 10. What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you?

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Is it not this that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder.

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You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask.

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You ask and do not receive because you ask wrongly to spend it on your passions. You adulterous people.

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Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.

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Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the scripture says, He yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us, but he gives more grace?

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Therefore, it says, God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. Submit yourselves therefore to God.

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Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double -minded.

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Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the

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Lord and he will exalt you. You may be seated. Good morning.

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Open your Bibles to Psalm 51, please. Psalm 51.

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This is the word of the Lord to the choir master a psalm of David when Nathan the prophet went to him after he had gone into Bathsheba.

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Have mercy on me, O God. According to your steadfast love, according to your abundant mercy, blot out my transgressions, wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.

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For I know my transgressions and my sin is ever before me. Against you and you only have

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I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment.

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Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me.

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Behold, you delight in truth and the inward being and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart.

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Purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean. Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow.

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Let me hear joy and gladness. Let the bones that you have broken rejoice. Hide your face from my sins.

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And blot out all my iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.

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Cast me not away from your presence and take not your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and uphold me with a willing spirit.

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Then I will teach transgressors your ways and sinners will return to you.

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Deliver me from blood guiltiness, O God, O God of my salvation, and my tongue will sing aloud of your righteousness.

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O Lord, open my lips and my mouth will declare your praise.

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For you will not delight in sacrifice or I would give it. You will not be pleased with a burnt offering.

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The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart,

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O God, you will not despise. Do good to Zion in your good pleasure. Build up the walls of Jerusalem.

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Then will you delight in the right sacrifices. In burnt offerings and whole offerings then bowls will be offered on your altar.

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O God in heaven, here is your word opened up. And what a what an important subject for us to remind ourselves daily of what we are to do when we're caught in sin.

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What are we to to think? What are we to feel? Where are we to go? O God in heaven, we can so easily forget this fundamental thing in our

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Christian lives. And so may this be a good reminder to the saints and for those who do not know who have never experienced

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Jesus Christ and the forgiveness found in him. Oh, may they see that they need to go to him for salvation.

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They cannot do deal with their sin in their own strength with their own ways. Lord, that only leads to further sin and it leads to depression and sadness and anger and all sorts of things that plagues us.

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O Lord, may you teach us to go to Jesus because it's only him that we can have healing and live the life that you have called us to live found in the forgiveness of sins by his blood.

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So may you be with my lips and be with their ears and may we be reminded that it is good to seek and look and to give

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Jesus everything. All glory and honor and praise to him in Jesus name. Amen.

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The prelude or whatever you want to call this psalm is to the choir master's psalm of David when

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Nathan the prophet went to David after he had gone into Bathsheba and murdered her husband.

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There is something that we like to play in the

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B .B. Silas we like to have go on. I call it I call it just how many of God's laws did you break there?

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And it is a time in which something happened that there's so many sins going on from a root of of sin within the heart that it's almost breathtaking how much sin was actually happened in that short span of time.

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And so we will play the game and it's not really a game and it's serious, but nevertheless it is just how many laws did you break there?

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And one prominent thing time that we we did that there was this time that I came home on Saturday, I think it was late morning, maybe early afternoon.

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And there you know on Saturday a typical chore for us or for the children I should say is to clean out the chicken coop.

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And Benjamin who is oh, I don't know three or four one of those three. He's going to turn four shortly.

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He's at that age where that thing cleaning the coop is exciting to him, you know, like that's like something he's like, yes, you know,

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I get to clean a coop. And the trick is to facilitate the gospel in your child's lives to where they always serve the

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Lord with that kind of passion. But nevertheless, he's at that age where he loves cleaning out the coop, helping out.

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And I said, well, we'll be doing it soon after some time. And so he goes back to playing with this toy.

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All of a sudden I see Josiah come up and who is a little bit older whisper something in Benjamin's ear and Benjamin goes yay and runs out the door.

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And there he goes. And I'm thinking I'm like, I look back at Josiah and he's now playing with that toy.

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I'm like, hmm. I wonder what happened here. So I figured

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I would let Josiah fess up. And I go up to him and I said, Josiah, what do you say in his ear?

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And Josiah's got big eyes. He's looking at me and he's starting to realize that he might be in trouble. And so instead of just fessing up he makes a hole bigger and he says,

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I told him that we were cleaning the coop. I'm like, I didn't say we're cleaning the coop. I said we're doing it later.

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He's like, oh. And I was like, Josiah, why didn't you go with them if you're cleaning the coop? And he just stares at me.

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I was like, you want to try again? What did you whisper? Why did you whisper that in his ear? Because I thought we were cleaning the coop.

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Why didn't you go with them? Just stare. And we went like that for a bit. I was like, I want you to tell me the truth so you don't get a bigger spanking.

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I want you to tell me the truth here. But he just wouldn't do it. And I said, this is what happened, Josiah. This is what

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I think happened at least. And I'm pretty sure is that you wanted that toy and you knew that if you just strong -armed it away from him like a bully,

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I would be nearby and you would get a spanking for that. So you figured, ah, there's a different way. That's not quite stealing even though it is.

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Is that I would tell him that we're cleaning the coop. He would leave his toy because he's excited for it and the toy would be mine.

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That's what I think happened. And he stares at me. Big eyes. Silence. So we played the game.

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We did that segment in the Beebe household of just how many of God's laws did you break there?

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Well, the 10th commandment, you shall not covet. That's where it all began. He coveted a toy that wasn't his and it began there.

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By the way, usually when we fall into sin, the fountainhead of it is coveting something that's not yours.

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But that's the 10th commandment broken by Josiah. He coveted the toy. The 9th commandment was broken by Josiah.

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He bore false witness to both Benjamin and I lying to us, lying to him about cleaning the coop and lying to me about his actual motivations.

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He broke the 8th commandment by actually stealing the toy from Benjamin. He broke the 7th commandment as far as I'm concerned because he committed adultery against his

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God for loving a toy more than him. And then while we're at it, we might as well go to the 1st commandment.

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He had another God before God. He broke the 2nd commandment. He made an idol of the toy. He broke the 6th commandment because he hated his brother and Jesus has said when you hate your brother, you have murdered him.

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He broke the 5th commandment because he dishonored me. So he broke a wide range of commandments and we rightfully went through them all.

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This is what you did in this one act. And Josiah, I can tell he didn't know. He didn't even realize the extent of the sin, right?

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But nevertheless, those are the things that goes on as we sin against the Lord. We are breaking a whole bunch of them.

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David is found in a similar situation. It starts off, right, with a certain sin and it leads, and if you read that story, it is amazing how it just leads to greater and greater sin.

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He covets Uriah's wife on the roof. He commits adultery with her.

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He murders Uriah and others with him so that he could cover up his sin.

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He bore false witness about it all and he stole, as Nathan put it, his wife away from him.

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David committed all sorts of sins in a way that is mind numbing. And what might be even,

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I don't know if it's worse, but it's bad nevertheless, is that months go by before he is pricked with this, his conscience is pricked at him, before he realizes just how much he has fallen short of God's glory.

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Because Nathan approaches him and it seems like it's right around when the baby that Bathsheba is pregnant with is about to be born.

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And that's when Nathan comes up and tells that story that we heard from Micah today, a rich man stealing a beloved lamb from a poor man to feed his guests.

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Right? Think about it. A rich man has all these animals that he can use, but he decides to use a poor man who loved that animal to feed his guests.

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And David rightfully, with anger, says that man ought to die. Now what's ironic is in the

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Mosaic Law, that's not a that's not a punishable, that's not something that you would die from.

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But David is so angered about the situation with the poor and the rich and the injustice of it all, that he says he needs to die.

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And not seeing, that's when Nathan says, you are the man. He says, you are the one who has done that to Uriah.

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And that's when David realizes, finally, after months of doing such crazy, terrible sins, he realizes his great fault.

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And he goes and he pens this great Psalm that we have before us of what we are to do when we're caught in sin.

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Psalm 51 is beautiful with that. And it's a reminder that we need to have constantly before us.

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What are we to do with our sin? What are we to do when we're caught in sin? And what will,

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I think I'm going to tackle this in three sermons. The first one will be verses one through six of what

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I call in is that we need to know our sin. We need to know our sin. We cannot be ignorant about our sin.

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But before we give it get into those verses, I just want to say a couple things about the nature of Nathan confronting

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David to get him to realize his sin. Because for us to know our sin, we need to realize it.

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We need to be shown it. And we could see two things about Nathan confronting David that we need to grab hold of and apply to our own heart if we're going to know what to do with our sin and how to deal with it.

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And the first thing that we notice with Nathan confronting David with the sin is that we need to love

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God and love neighbor enough to be willing to confront someone about their sin.

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Did you catch that? We need to love God and love our neighbor, the two greatest commandments, to be willing to confront someone about their sin.

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And if you are confronting someone about their sin and you are not filled with love for God and that person, you are doing it wrong.

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We need to love God and love neighbor enough to be willing to see the cancer of sin in their life and to want to be compelled to with love for them to get it out of their life by showing them their sin.

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Nathan proves to be that individual for David. And this is what we're doing with that.

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Look at Jude 23. Look at Jude 23. We're exhorted to do this for one another.

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By Jude at the end of his little epistle, he says in verse 22 and 23,

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He says, That is, it's very good language to describe what sin is like.

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Are you playing with sin? If you're playing with sin, you were playing with fire that will consume you and kill you and destroy you.

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So when you see someone flirt with it in any way, how dare you not have enough love for that person to want to help them get away from the fire before it consumes them?

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He says, He says,

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So there is this this love that we need to have for God and his commandments that's only produced by the love of Jesus that he's shown to us.

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So when we see others who are not experiencing the life found in Christ and they're in sin, we need to have enough love for God and them to go to them in that love and say, brother or sister,

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I believe you're sinning here, and this is fire. But the second thing

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I want to say about this is notice, the second thing is is that we need to love

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God and hate sin enough to respond in repentance and thanksgiving when someone approaches us about our sin.

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You need to love God and hate your sin so much that when someone approaches you about sin and they are right, you respond in repentance.

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You respond as David responds and pens a psalm. Now, it probably won't be as popular as Psalm 51, but nevertheless, that needs to be what drives you.

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That you would be so overjoyed with love and thanksgiving that your sin has been exposed because you know that it leads to a consuming fire that you repent with thanksgiving.

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Far too often, and I am guilty, I've been guilty of this myself, especially when someone really close to me like my wife points out my sin, as I want to then say, well, you know, he or she didn't really approach me right, you know, wasn't really that loving.

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It was kind of rude actually, you know, they spoke truth, you're in sin, it's true, and you know it, but you're like, well, they kind of did it rudely and now my feelings are hurt.

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What are you doing? You're really just not wanting to deal with the sin. You're making excuses. You're hiding it.

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You're dealing with that sin and as we're going to get to in a way that is not allowed and will not lead to your good.

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Whenever we make all sorts of excuses when someone confronts us to not deal with it then and there, you know, to be honest with you, the person could have done it in a way that was not very not very strategic.

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I don't know. They could have done it in a better way. We always could do things in a better way. But if it's true that there's sin in your life, that should be enough for you to say, well, he could have done it a better way, but oh well, he showed me my sin.

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Praise God. I'm going to deal with it now through the Lord. I mean, do you really think that Nathan, whenever he approached

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David and he says, you are the man, do you think he said it all nicely? I don't want to hurt his feelings. I'm David, you're the man.

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No, he said, you're the man, you idiot. You're the guy. Don't you see that? And David, and David instead of getting offended that he would be so mean to him, he instead pens this great psalm of what to do when you're caught in sin.

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Love it. It's such two, I think, important things that we need to love people enough, show them their sin, and we need to love

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God and hate sin enough that when we are shown our sin, we go to work in the way that God has ordained.

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Because there's a way to go about it. I'm kind of jumping ahead, I think, but I think it's helpful to say it here.

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There's two different ways to go about our sin. Everyone, everyone wants to hide and do away with their sin and the guilt and the shame.

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Everyone wants that. I don't care if you have an atheist friend. They don't like the feeling of the guilt and shame with sin.

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We all share as human beings that same desire to get rid of our sin. And there's two different ways you can do it.

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You can do it in a way that God has ordained, which will lead to your life. Or you can do it in a way that God has not ordained, which will only lead to depression, sadness, anger.

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The list goes on. David here gives us great teaching of what to do. What has God ordained us to do when we are caught in sin?

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What are you to do with your sin when you realize you are in it? Well, I think in verses one through two, and this is all under the umbrella of know your sin.

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Know the sin which will enable you to know God and how to deal with it appropriately. And I see here in verses one through two, show

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God your sin. Always. You're caught in sin. The first thing that you should want to do is get a big spotlight and show

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God the sin. And it's not as if God is like, oh, I was blind to it. Now I see it. But the point is that for us to deal with it appropriately, we want

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God to see it. I want God to see it. I want to confess it. I want to show him. I want to say this is what I've done.

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And I think that's what we see here. There's four petitions right in the row in verses one through two. One and two.

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In which if you notice, he says, have mercy on me, oh God. He says in verse one, look at it a little bit down, blot out my transgressions, wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, cleanse me from my sin.

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Four petitions in the row, all saying the same thing. Get rid of the sin, please

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God. It is like he realizes his sin and he just needs it to be gone.

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Blot out my transgressions. That has a terminology of annihilate it,

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God. Annihilate this sin. Wash me thoroughly from it.

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Completely cleanse me from my sin. We have David. All you can think about is, oh

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God, see my sin and deal with it, please. Now, why is that so important for us to mark?

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Because in our natural state, in our sinful state after Adam, the first thing that you're going to want to do is to hide it from everyone.

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To even hide it from yourself if you can. To hide the guilt and the shame of it. To just ignore it. I don't want to put a spotlight on it.

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I just want to forget it. I don't want God to know about it. I want to just run away from it.

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Adam and Eve have been doing it since the very beginning. When they sin, they hid in the trees away from their covenant

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God. And we have followed the way of Adam and Eve in our natural state.

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The first thing we're going to want to do is hide in the trees. But instead, what has David told us to do?

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What is David doing in this psalm? He puts a spotlight on it and he says, God, deal with this, please.

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It is a humiliating thing. It kills our pride and God loves that.

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We are to want a spotlight to be on it. Very opposite of the way our flesh wants to deal with it in which we try to hide it.

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Again, it's normal and good to want to cover our sin. It's a completely normal thing when you see the unbeliever want to just, now

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I don't want to say it's a good thing, but it's a normal thing to want to just ignore or forget about it. No one likes to feel feeling of guilt.

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No one likes to feel ashamed. No one likes the feeling that they did something wrong. That is a very normal feeling.

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But the problem is we can do it in very sinful ways and we can do it in very godly ways of how to cover it up.

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Sinful ways is to ignore it. That's a very common one. I'll just ignore it and pray it goes away.

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Or to downplay it. Well, it's not that bad because my neighbor down the street, they did that.

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To downplay it is another very clear tactic of trying to get rid of the guilt, the shame. Ignore it, downplay it, or excuse it away.

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Oh, I was under a lot of pressure. I was under a lot of pressure. I was under a lot of stress. That's why

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I yelled at my children. We excuse it away. It's so easy for us. Instead of putting the spotlight on it for God to deal with it, we do other things.

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Excuse it away, ignore it, downplay it, and you'll hear it over and over again in the saint's heart, let alone in the unbelieving heart.

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You'll see it all the time. They'll acknowledge their sin, but they'll do these things to try to hide or get away from the guilt.

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Those are ways that God has told us not to do. Praise be to our

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God that he tells us a way to get rid of our sin. And not only to get rid of it to where we're justified before his sight, but also to get away from the consequences of the sin, i .e.

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guilt and shame and fear. And God's way to do it is to put a spotlight on the evil for God to see.

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Why? Because of who he is. Because of who God is. Did you notice the two according to's?

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The four petitions for God to see the sin and to deal with it, but it's on the foundation of who

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God is. What does he say? According to your steadfast love, according to your abundant mercy.

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Steadfast means there's something that's putting pressure against it to break it, but God's love continues anyways.

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God's love is tested. I think that's okay to say by our sin because we are not lovable in our sin.

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But he is steadfast in his love that he loves us despite the fact that we are not lovable. He's steadfast in his love.

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That's his character. We know that and so he encourages us to go to him in his appointed means to take care of our sin.

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He is abundant in mercy. Not just a little bit merciful, but he goes on and on and on with his mercy.

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So as we know the character of God, it encourages us not to go our own way with our sin, but to go to God with our sin.

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For he is steadfast in his love. Abundant in his mercy.

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Remember what Paul says in Ephesians 2. He says, But God, because he is rich in mercy, great in love with which he loved us.

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This is the foundation of his work of grace that he gives to the saints because of who he is.

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So when we do the counterfeit way of dealing with sin, we are making a theological statement about who

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God is. God is not steadfast in mercy. He's not abundant in love.

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I think I said that backwards. Abundant in mercy. He's not steadfast in love. That's what we're saying when we refuse to go to him with our sin.

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When we're going down a counterfeit way, we are saying a theological statement about God. He is not actually those things.

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That is what we are doing. That's blasphemy, beloved. It's not cute to do such things. It is not cute to live with bad theology.

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No. Instead, we are to remind ourselves who God is and based off of that great principle, we then go to him, as David said, and say, look at this sin,

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God, relying upon his character to deal with it in a way that is thorough and complete.

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Because he's rich in mercy and great in love, he will have mercy on you, blot out the sin, wash you and cleanse you completely.

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He does not make a mistake in that, beloved. But when you fail to deal with your sins

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God's way, you are making an erroneous theological statement.

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So we need to know our sin. We need to know God. When we deal with our sin in a way that's ignorant, we are saying we are ignorant about God.

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We are to deal with sin God's way. We need to know our sin. Because he says in verse 3, when we realize just how bad sin is and what it does, we will rush to God to get rid of it.

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And we'll talk about this more in the coming sermons, but it has such a cancerous death effect on us.

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We see eternal damnation. It's a completed thing. And we get a taste of it in this life.

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If you notice, the more you flirt with sin, the more your life is terrible. And we'll get the eternal reality in God's wrath if we do not deal with our sin his way.

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So we need to know our sin. We need to know the consequences of it. And that will drive us to God right away for him, because of his character, to deal with it his way.

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Because look at verse 3. He says, four, four, I know. In light of what was just said, for I know.

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Deal with the sin. Deal with it, please, because of who you are. Because I know my transgressions and my sin is ever before me.

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My sin is ever before me. What does he mean? Everywhere he looks now that his conscience has awakened to this terrible sin that he's committed against Uriah and with Bathsheba.

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Everywhere he looks, he sees that sin. It's everywhere he looks, he sees it. It is so now dominating his conscience and his mind that he cannot get his mind off of it.

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It haunts him. Wherever he looks, sin is there. It's almost as if sin is omnipresent.

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It's everywhere. Now, why is sin everywhere in that case? When our conscience is tearing at us and it's just everywhere, why does it feel that way?

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Because God is everywhere. Because his standard is everywhere. God is everywhere we look.

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And when we have broken his command and go against him, it is everywhere in our eyes. You have broken

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God's law. Because look what he says in verse four. Against you and you only have

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I sinned and done what was evil in your sight. Now, I don't think he's downplaying what he did against Uriah.

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But I think the point that he's getting at is ultimately my problem here is I sinned against God. And since I sinned against his holy goodness that is eternal and everywhere, now everywhere

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I look, I carry the burden of being a sinner, a broken sinner.

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And that's all I see everywhere I look. I think connected with this, if we go to Romans 2, we see the gift of a conscience.

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And I call it a gift of the conscience. Romans 2 .15, Paul says, when talking about specifically people who don't have the written code, the written law, we're not gonna get into that.

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But he says in verse 15, they show that the work of the law is written on their hearts while their conscience bears witness and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them.

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On that day, when according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus.

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So God in his kindness has put the law, so to speak, on our hearts and we have a conscience that's enlightened by it.

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And so whenever we go against his standard, our conscience is there to tell us you messed up.

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Our conscience is there to tell you, you are in bad territory, my friend. You need to do something now.

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You see how that's a gift from God? And I know we can think that our conscience is a curse because if we go against it and we go against it and it just keeps on weighing us down with guilt and shame and we don't deal with it.

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All it does is just a heavy burden. But conscience is given by God so that you would act in a way that is in keeping with his commands.

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What are we to do with our sin? When your conscience is guilty and it's loaded, we are to go to the one who

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God has given us for the forgiveness of those sins. That's what it's supposed to draw us to. But when we fail to do that, all it does is just weigh and weigh and weigh and it is a curse to us.

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And so here, David is saying, his conscience is wearing down, it's bearing down.

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His sin is ever before him and he is so much in guilt and shame, right? My sin is ever before me because it's you and you only that I sin against and done what is evil in your sight.

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Your terrorized conscience is meant to lead you to the

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God who is steadfast in love and abundant in mercy. To witness his washing and his healing, to take care of that guilt and shame.

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But when we're not doing that, it is just a curse. When you seek other remedies to try to cover up your guilt and shame, it creates a terrorized life for you.

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People wonder why. I'm not saying your depression is always the result of sin, but it seems like it's an awful lot that people are overwhelmed with depression and sadness.

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And what's sad is they have a world that tells them, well, you just need, it's a physical thing that you need medication to just dumb it down.

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But a lot of times, I'm not gonna say all the time, but a lot of times, most of the time, that depression is a result of your conscience.

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And the issue is taking care of the sin that's causing your conscience to scream out. But instead, we try to dumb down the effects of a

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God -given gift to you to go to Jesus. Many times in counseling, people come with the presenting problem of depression or sadness.

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And I can tell you a lot of times, at least in my experience, it's because they're living in some kind of sin and their conscience is playing its part and they need to repent of it and turn to Jesus.

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And they'll see that their depression, their sadness, I won't say goes away completely, but it certainly goes down.

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But when we rely upon other things and we try to dumb down the effects, oh, I love it. It only gets worse and worse and worse.

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We need to see that a lot of times the way that we live our life, when we are trying to just live with sin and our conscience is screaming, is a gift from God to show us that we need to go about this

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God's way. We need to understand our sin and the purpose of it to lead us to Jesus, to go to it about God's way and not do it our way.

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So he says in verse four, People interpret that differently.

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It's not 100 % clear, but it seems to be saying that in this whole ordeal of falling into sin, of our conscience hitting us hard, of us feeling guilty and shame,

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God has proven himself to be true in what he says about sin. Sin is bad, it's wicked. You have committed a great sin against a holy

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God. The negative effects come forth from it naturally. So he's saying this whole feeling that he has of sin ever being before him, of this weight that he feels, it is actually proving and justifying the words of God and proving his judgments to be blameless.

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God has declared himself to be worthy of all obedience. God has declared himself to be eternally good.

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And so any sin against this eternally good and awesome God is going to carry with it an eternal weight of sinning against him.

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A heavy weight that's impossible for us to bear. So this negative effects that he's feeling is actually proven true what

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God has said about sin and about his own character. So when we see our own sin manifested, it also manifests the word and judgments of God to be true.

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Our guilty conscience bears witness to it. So this is the effect of our sin.

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This is what sin does. This is the disobedience that comes from disobeying a beautifully perfect, eternal, awesome

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God. It carries with it such a weight that we cannot bear. And it's not even like, it's like a one -time event.

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Okay, I did a little bit of sin there. I'll just not do it moving forward. But look at verse five.

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The problem is so vast. It's so beyond what we can fathom. They says, behold, there's two beholds here.

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Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me.

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So it's not even a matter of I just do some sin sometimes. But it's a matter of you were born in utter corruption.

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This teaching of original sin, that our sin problem is not because we do a little bit of a sin, but it's our very nature is to sin because of our federal head,

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Adam, who represented us when he fell. Adam fell, so we all fell. If you say unfair, get over it.

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Adam fell, so you have fallen. Adam fell in sin, so now your very nature is to sin.

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This is the state of man, is that you would be born a sinner.

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Your natural inclination is to be disobedient to God. And so your natural inclination, when you are faced with your sin, is to do it in a way, to relieve it in a way that God has not ordained.

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The problem is beyond anything we can actually consider. It's beyond anything that we can actually fix ourselves.

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It's beyond us. And that's exactly how God wants it. Because imagine if God fixed an issue for you that you probably could have done yourself, maybe if you worked hard enough.

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There'd be a lot less glory he would have for fixing a problem that is well beyond anything that you could fix.

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No, it's not that you just sin a little bit, it's that your very nature is a sinner. And so if you need, if you want solution, if you want a remedy to it, you must turn away from your own abilities and turn to God, which is what

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David is saying at the very beginning of the psalm. I was brought forth in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me, in verse six, but behold, you delight in truth in the inward being.

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God delights to see his people know the true nature of their sin.

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God delights to see that you handle your sin in a way in which you understand it and you understand

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God and you understand the only remedy is to go to God. God delights in truth in the inward being in which you say, the only one who can take care of this is my

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God. And you teach me wisdom in the secret heart. God doesn't leave us in our sin.

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God doesn't leave you in your sin. God teaches you wisdom in your sin to know what you are to do with your sin.

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You are not to handle it your way. You are not to rely upon yourself. You are to rely upon God. You are to take what he gives you and understanding and say, okay, this is the way

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I must go. And with concluding this, where must we go?

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Where must we go? Well, look at Exodus 34. I find it wonderful. I think

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David has his mind on Exodus 34 as he wrote this. But I started off the sermon talking about the 10 commandments and how we so naturally break it.

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And even whenever we commit one sin, it's because we committed all sorts of sins of commandment breaking, right?

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We have the 10 commandments here. It was written, it was given in 20, and Israel quickly disobeyed it, broke it.

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And Moses, to reflect that, broke the tablets of the 10 commandments and he has to go up and get a new one.

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And in that process, Moses just wants to see God's glory. Show me your glory. And I find it fascinating with all this rebellion going on, with all this sin going on with Israel, God shows

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Moses his glory. And some revelation. And the way he reveals himself is comforting to our sinful souls.

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Yes, we break God's commandment. Yes, we break his law. But look at the way God chose to reveal himself to Moses.

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Imagine that. Think about it for a second. If someone says, who are you? What kind of person are you? What are the first few things you're going to say?

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What are the first few things you're going to say about yourself? You're going to try to get to the essence of yourself, I would imagine, of what kind of person you are.

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And God is revealing himself to Moses. And what are some of the things that he, what are the first few things that he says? And look at verse 4, 34,

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Exodus 34. So Moses cut two tablets of stone, like the first, and he rose early in the morning and went up on Mount Sinai as the

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Lord had commanded him and took in his hand the two tablets of stone, the 10 commandments. The Lord descended,

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I mean, again, he's holding the commandments that Israel just broke. The Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there and proclaimed the name of the

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Lord. The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, people, this is our God right here.

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The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.

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He keeps steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin.

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How amazing is it that he reveals who he is and he starts off by saying, this is who

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I am. I am a God who forgives. You are wicked sinners, but I forgive. I'm steadfast in my love.

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Don't ever think that you need to run from me. I forgive. But he's a

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God of judgment who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children to the third and the fourth generation.

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And Moses quickly bowed his head toward the earth and worshiped. Our God is a consuming fire.

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He will judge sin. But what's beautiful about our God is he is merciful and he has judged sin already in Jesus Christ.

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Are you one of those saints who look to Jesus for your sins to be covered, to have your sins dealt with now by Jesus?

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And in that, there's so much benefit to be had. You know that your guilt and your shame can be taken away. You know that if you are found in Jesus right now, there is no reason for you to be guilt, to feel guilt and shame because Jesus has taken that upon himself.

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What a great gift it is to see in the one part of your brain how much you have fallen short, how much you have sinned, but see in the other part,

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Jesus Christ who has came to die for sinners like you so that you place it upon him.

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You say, Jesus, look at my sin. Look at it. Look what I've done. Look at this. Because I know that you're steadfast, you're abounding in your mercy and love for me.

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You will take care of this. Do you know how much of a benefit that is to you?

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How much of a benefit it is to tell your children about that God who Jesus has came to die for sins and it can be theirs if they just look upon him and live a life of obedience to him?

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What a benefit it is to us. We don't need to live with guilt and shame. Everyone wants to get rid of it, but let's do it

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God's way. Look to Jesus. If you're an unbeliever and you've never known

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Jesus, repent and look to Jesus. If you are a believer and you're living in the weight of sin, look to Jesus.

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He has taken care of sinners. He has taken care of sins. He has died for sinners like us. Close your eyes and see our

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Savior on the crossing. It is finished. It is complete. I've came and I've done the work that the

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Father has given me to do. There goes your shame and guilt. And then in that, you have the strength to say, and I will sin no more.

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I will grow in the mercies and grace found in Jesus. I will continue to rely upon Jesus and he will do an amazing work of washing in me.

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What a God we serve, beloved. Do it his way. Don't do it your own way. There's people before me,

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I'm sure, who are dealing with sins right now and you know you're not doing it the proper way. The answer is look to Jesus.

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Live for him. Have him forgive you of your sins. By simply believing upon him. Believe in who he is.

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His character. And he will never forsake you or abandon you. I promise you when you go to him in true faith.

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What a God we serve. Oh Lord. Oh God. Sin truly is ever present, isn't it?

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God, you are a perfect God. Perfect in your standard. And we are creatures who are lost in sin.

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Not only do we do acts of sin, but our very nature is sin. We're born in sin. What a need we have for Jesus.

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I'm so thankful that all the scriptures, the reason why you could say in Exodus 34 that you are abundant and steadfast in your love and mercy is because you had

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Jesus in mind as you said it. Anytime we see your grace shine forth, it's because Jesus Christ is being glorified.

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Lord, we know that the only means we can have, only means that will be sufficient to actually deal with our sin in a holistic way is to go to Jesus, our

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Lord. So God in heaven, I pray that that's what I would do in my own life. Lord, help me not to be a hypocrite and to downplay sin or to try to ignore it.

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But let me bring it to your throne of grace. Oh God in heaven, that we would have a people that would not try to hide their sin like so many churches fall into.

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And it creates false and fake worship and fake fellowship. But instead, we'd be a type of people that we expose it, that we would shine it, that we'd be happy that people would show us our own sin, that we'd be happy to show others their sin because it is a blessed thing to look to Jesus.

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And that's the end of the revelation of our sin. It's Jesus. Oh Lord, let us be that kind of people because we know that when we are living a life of obedience to Jesus, there is life to be had, overflowing to all who are around.

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So may you forgive us of our sins in Jesus. May we live in light of this reality and may Jesus be praised in that.