Forgiveness In Time & Eternity (04/06/2003)

Turn to Psalm 32, I'm always thankful when

I get to visit with these young people because God directed us to Letourneau, and we had looked at several other colleges in different states,

Virginia, and then all of a sudden we realized we had not thought of Letourneau, we hadn't looked at it, hadn't even thought about it, but I was familiar with the life of the man who founded the school, who by the time he died,

I think he was giving 90 % of his income to the Lord's work and living on 10%.

What a marvelous story, and what a great school. We've been so pleased with it that we're thinking about even letting

Katie go next fall. We'll see how it goes between now and then. No, she'll be going there next fall, and it's been a good experience, hasn't it,

Jenny? God's given you some wonderful friends, given us these same friends, we're thankful for that.

Let's go to Psalm chapter 32. We've been talking about the great themes of salvation for some weeks, and will continue for many weeks to come, the

Lord willing. We've talked about how we're made a part of the eternal plan of God.

We've talked about the redemption through the blood of Jesus Christ, the great theme of redemption being bought and paid for, for the price being set free by the blood of Jesus.

We've talked about reconciliation, we've talked about propitiation, which means that God was satisfied by what

Jesus did on the cross. And then we moved into the idea of forgiveness, and we've been on that for several

Sundays. And I want to take a final look at Psalm 32 today, we'll move, well, we won't quite finish it as a matter of fact, it'll take one more

Sunday to finish this Psalm, but we'll move almost to the end of it. But this morning,

I want to talk to you about forgiveness from this viewpoint, forgiveness in time and eternity.

And we'll specifically be looking at verse 7, hidden, preserved, and delivered.

And so let's read through verse 7, starting with verse 1, Psalm 32, blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.

Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile.

When I kept silence, my bones waxed old, and my roaring all the day long.

For day and night thy hand was heavy upon me, my moisture is turned into drought of summer.

I acknowledged my sin unto thee, and mine iniquity have

I not hid. I said I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord, and thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin.

Say, Lord. For this shall everyone that is godly pray unto thee in a time when thou mayest be found.

Surely in the floods of great waters, they shall not come nigh unto him. For thou art my hiding place, thou shalt preserve me from trouble, encompass me about with songs of deliverance.

Say, Lord. Let's stop there. Let's have a word of prayer. Father, we thank you so much for your word.

We thank you for how we can study it all the years of our lives, and yet each morning when we arise and study it anew, it's fresh, and we learn new things that we had not seen from this eternal book.

We thank you, Father, that you've preserved it for us through the ages so that we have it pure and perfect today.

We thank you for how your Holy Spirit quickens your word within our hearts and allows you to speak to us, for that is the most important aspect of our relationship, is that we hear what you have to say.

We ask that you would do that for us this morning, that you would teach us to speak to our hearts and speak to our minds this beautiful truth of forgiveness.

We ask it in Jesus' name, amen. Well, we have to start at the first because we have some visitors.

We don't want to just start with verse 7, so let's do a little review. Starting with verse 1, blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.

Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity and in whose spirit there is no guile.

David understood forgiveness in a way that no other Old Testament saint understood it.

If you study forgiveness and you leave out certain of these passages in the Psalms that David wrote, you would get a different view of it.

In fact, the view you would get of forgiveness from the Old Testament is simply a view of covering, that they were taught that the sins were covered.

In fact, the little animal sacrifices that they did year after year covered their sins.

And the interesting idea in the Hebrew language, it gives the idea of rolling it forward year after year, and the sins were just rolled forward until the day of the cross.

And that is the concept in the Old Testament. But David somehow, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, is how, but he understood forgiveness more than the other

Old Testament saints. In fact, he teaches a New Testament view of it. He gets into the

New Testament doctrine of forgiveness. And perhaps that's because David, of all the

Old Testament saints, was forgiven for a great sin, maybe a greater sin than some of the others. And so he understood forgiveness.

And he begins to teach about forgiveness. He mentions this word, imputation, in verse 2. Do you see that?

It says, blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity. You won't find that again, really, until you get into the

New Testament study of forgiveness. And so I'm going to, you don't have to turn to this one.

There's some of these I'd like you to, but this one I'm going to go to very quickly. Romans chapter 4, verse 20, where it talks about Abraham.

It said, he staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief, but was strong in faith, giving glory to God, and being fully persuaded that what he had promised, he was able to perform.

That's a great definition of faith, by the way, is when you are fully persuaded that what

God says he will do, he will do. Being fully persuaded that whatever

God says he will do, he will do. And this is where Abraham was.

And look at the rest of it. It says, therefore, it was imputed to him for righteousness.

Now, I do want you to turn to this one. Turn to 1 Peter chapter 2, in verse 24. Because if we don't understand imputation, we cannot understand forgiveness.

Because God's forgiveness is not like man's forgiveness. And we tend to look at it through human eyes, through the eyes of our experience with our fellow man, and we miss the whole idea of God's forgiveness.

It doesn't work that way at all. With humans, to forgive means to blow it off. Just let it slide.

Yeah, I know you did wrong to me, but you've asked me to forgive you, so I'm just going to let it go. We're okay.

Our relationship is restored. With God, it does not work that way. Because of God's justice, it is not possible for him to just let it go, or to blow it off, or to let it slide.

He can't do that. His justice would not allow it. God has said from the beginning of time, the wages of sin are death.

He said, in the day that you eat the fruit thereof, you shall surely die. The soul that sinneth, it shall die.

The wages of sin is death. All through the Old Testament and the New Testament, that is God's first and premier law.

He cannot break his own law. So therefore, when you sin against him, he cannot just overlook it and say, okay, that's forgiven, like a man says to another man.

It doesn't work that way at all, and yet that's how we might think it works until we really begin to study the doctrine of forgiveness in the

Bible. David gives us such a great view of it from the Old Testament, and we go into the

New Testament, and we see this word imputation used many times, but David knew that that's where it began.

Now, look at 1 Peter 2, verse 24. You have to look up a couple of verses to see who this is talking about.

You'd figure it out, of course, but in verse 21, it says, Christ also suffered.

So this is talking about Christ. So verse 24 is Christ, who his own self bear our sins in his own body on the tree.

Now, think about what it's saying. Jesus Christ, his self, bore our sins in his body when he was on the tree.

Now, turn to 2 Corinthians 5, 21, if you would, and you should mark this in your

Bible next to 1 Peter 2, 24, and vice versa. Go into 2

Corinthians 5, 21, and mark 1 Peter 2, 24, because these are the two greatest verses in the

New Testament that help us understand what imputation means. Imputation is an accounting term.

It means to take something from one person's balance and deposit it in the other person's balance as if it were his.

And so now, look at this. We saw already that our sins were in Jesus' body when he was on the tree.

Now, look at 2 Corinthians 5, 21. For he hath made him, that means

God the Father has made Jesus, to be sin for us who knew no sin.

That doesn't mean we knew no sin. It means Jesus knew no sin. So it says that God the

Father has made Jesus, who knew no sin of his own, to be sin for us.

Why? That we might be made the righteousness of God in him.

Now, both sides of imputation are shown in that one verse. First, what we see is that God sweeps through all of history, and as we studied in Sunday school this morning,

Brother Greg, that was a very good lesson, by the way, but we studied in part of the lesson that he taught, it dealt with the sovereignty of God.

It dealt with the concept of foreordination and predetermination, and those are all very deep subjects.

God did give them to us, however, to study, so we're aware of them. It's difficult for us to understand them from a human viewpoint because we're in time, but God's not.

But what the Bible has taught is that God swept through all of time, the Old Testament days, our days even into our future, even out to the point where we die or are raptured, whichever happens, all the way out till the end of time on this earth, or at least the end of this age, as the

Bible speaks. And he took all of the sins of those whom he has known from the beginning, and this idea of the

Bible idea of foreknowledge is not just knowing, but it's knowing with love. It's knowing with agape love.

And for all of those, he took the sins, every sin, past, present, future of each of those, and placed them in the body of Jesus.

Now, what happened was that God then looked at Jesus when he was on that cross, and there is a moment when

Jesus said, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? At that moment, God separated himself from Jesus Christ.

Now, the Bible says Jesus had done no sins of his own. He was tempted in all points, even as we, and yet without sin.

And yet God turned his face from him, and he suffered spiritual death at that point.

Death simply means separation. He was separated from God at that point. Why? Why is it?

How could God the Father look at the perfect one as he was suspended on that cross and spiritually separate himself, thereby killing him?

Spiritually, how could he do that? Because when he looked at Jesus, he saw you and me.

He saw our sins. He saw every sin we've ever committed, every evil thought, every evil deed we've ever done from the time we were born to the time we died.

Now, if you think about this, this happened on Earth time about 2 ,000 years ago. You weren't born yet.

So it certainly covers your future sins because they were all future when God did this from your point of view.

But from God's point of view, who is the eternal I Am, he's not bound by time. So he just swept all of the sins of his people and placed them in the body of Christ, imputed your sins to him as if he had done them, took your sins out of your account, put them in Jesus' account, and then slew him spiritually.

That Old Testament picture of the scapegoat, where the priest raises his hands over the heads of the people and then places his hands on the head of the goat and sends the goat out into the wilderness never to return, that wilderness pictures hell.

It pictures a place where no water is. It pictures a place where God is not, the absence of God.

Perhaps it even pictures a place called hell that even God himself will forget someday.

Hey, kid, have you ever thought about that? Have you ever thought about the concept of the people that go to hell? It's a real place.

It's eternal death. It's not a cessation of their life. It is an eternal living in hell separated from God.

And you know, God, we know, has the ability to forget our sins because the Bible says he's forgotten our sins as part of forgiveness.

Not only has he removed them as far as the east is from the west, he has forgotten that we did them. God can do that.

God the Father can forget our sins. Wouldn't it be amazing if someday when we get out beyond the great white throne judgment, out beyond the thousand -year millennial kingdom, and when we are eternally with our

Lord, and those who are going to be in hell are eternally in hell if God simply chose to forget hell, but it's still there.

I don't know that he'll do that. I know this. We will not know it's there because he's going to erase it from our memory banks.

The Bible teaches that. He'll remove those thoughts from us. We will not be aware that some of our friends and perhaps even family, classmates, so forth, are there.

We won't be aware of it for all eternity. We'll be aware of it for a thousand years during the millennial kingdom, but after that,

God erases that so that we won't have sorrow. I wonder if God will forget about it too, but I'll tell you this, even if he does, it's still going to be there.

Can you imagine being in a place of total separation from God like the rich man said in the story of the rich man and Lazarus?

He said, dip the tip of your finger in water and cool my tongue for I am tormented in these flames.

There was a great gulf fixed between he and paradise. That great gulf is always there.

He knew very clearly he could not go from that place. He didn't even seem to think about the idea of him leaving that place for all eternity and being there and perhaps

God himself choosing to forget you're there. What a loneliness. What a place.

But isn't it wonderful that when God looked down and he saw Jesus, he saw your sins and mine in his body and he paid the price for sin.

He died for sins. The wages of sin is death. He was our substitute.

He was not only like the scapegoat, he was like the other goat that was used in the sin offering that was slain.

The innocent lambs and goats that had no sin and they were slain in that blood of the

Old Testament covered their sins and rolled it forward year after year until Jesus came and when he died on the cross, the true lamb of God, even the

Old Testament saints' sins were then removed. So the removal of sin is a different idea than the

Old Testament where it was just a covering and yet David saw this and David understood that it is by imputation.

It's because God has taken our sins and placed them in the body of Jesus and he died with them.

Now the last part of 2 Corinthians 5, what was it, 17,

I've already turned my page from it, 21, right, 521 says, so that his righteousness would be in us.

That's the second half of imputation. God then takes the very righteousness of Jesus and places that in your account.

Now that's a little bit harder for us to believe and understand because we know that we're sinners, don't we? But I want you to think about this for a moment.

We know that it's true that God looked down at Jesus Christ on that cross and turned his head from him and allowed

Jesus to die spiritually. So therefore, we know that when God the Father looked at Jesus that day, he didn't see

Jesus. He didn't see his perfection. He didn't see his righteousness, his holiness. He saw us. Now we know that's true.

We don't doubt that. So we should not doubt the second part of the same verse that says now when he looks at you, he does not see you.

He sees Jesus. He sees his purity, his cleanliness, his righteousness, his perfection.

And that's what he sees when he sees you. And that's why you're forgiven. And that's why you're saved. And that's why you'll be in heaven.

And that's why he didn't turn his head from you. And you'll never have to say, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

You'll never have to say that. You'll never have to experience it. You'll never even know what he experienced. Even in heaven, we will not be taught what he experienced because we can't be taught something we didn't experience.

We won't know. We won't know what it meant when that scapegoat went off into that wilderness and that pictured

Jesus on the cross that day when he said, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And he was in hell.

Physically, his body was still alive, but his soul and his spirit were in hell, in darkness, in fire, in a state of eternal falling, a state of eternal hopelessness.

And he did that for us so that now when God looks at you, he sees the perfection and the righteousness of Jesus.

That's the doctrine of imputation. You can't have forgiveness from God without that happening first.

God never really forgave you if you think of it as human viewpoint. It's not like he said, okay, it's all right.

Just go on, we'll let you in. He didn't do that. What he did was he imputed your sins to Jesus, and Jesus paid the price.

Then he imputed his righteousness to you, and when he sees you, that's what he sees. So yes, you're forgiven because you never did the sin.

Now, I know that's hard to understand, but that's exactly what is taught in the New Testament, and David understood it in Psalm 32.

So let's go back to Psalm 32 for a moment, and let's move on because this is ground we've covered.

Where we're heading is this. This sets the ground in the first couple of verses to understand what we mean by positional forgiveness.

There are two kinds of forgiveness taught. There's positional forgiveness, and that's from the Father's viewpoint, and that means he doesn't even see your sin.

It's already been removed. You don't have it anymore. Now, you're still living in time. The Father is not bound by time.

From his viewpoint, you're already glorified. Remember in Romans chapter 8 where he goes down the list and he says those who are predestined are called, and those who are called are justified, and those who are justified are what?

Glorified, and it's present tense. You are glorified. That's God's viewpoint. So from God's viewpoint, he has already imputed

Jesus's righteousness to you. Your sins are gone. You have no sins. You're perfect. So yes, you're forgiven.

So that is forgiveness from eternity's viewpoint, from God's viewpoint, outside of time, and yet we live in time, don't we?

We're in a different dimension. We live in time, and we still have a body of flesh which pulls against everything we would want to do for God, and sometimes when we walk in the flesh for a few moments or a few hours, we sin, and we're very aware of that when we do.

And yet if we're very well schooled in the scriptures, we know that we have no sin. It's been removed already.

Even before we did that sin in time, God had already swept all of our sins into the body of Jesus, and he's paid for them, and yet psychologically, we can't deal with that, can we?

Because we're in time. We don't live outside of time. We don't understand that dimension. Some of you guys, any of you guys mathematics majors?

I know Letourneau's big on that. Okay, so you don't really go, what do you go? The little junior college next door?

No, I'm kidding. No, I know you have to take, they're known for math and so forth.

But in mathematics, you can study the idea of dimensions. And Brother Bill over here's a mathematician, teaches math, and he could also teach physics if he chose to.

I don't know if they have you do that right now, but he does do that from time to time. But we've talked about dimensions before, and isn't it true,

Brother Bill, that it's very difficult for us to understand any dimension that's higher than the dimension we live in?

We can understand three dimensions, cuz we're three dimensional, and we can understand two dimensional idea, and even a one dimensional idea.

But it's hard for us to think in four dimensions. Now, you have formulas for it, but we don't understand them.

So we can deal with it mathematically, but from an emotional viewpoint and even a psychological viewpoint, it's almost impossible to deal with.

So it's very difficult for us as God's children, even knowing what God has said through David and through all the

New Testament scriptures that teach imputation. And the fact that our sins are gone, even the ones we haven't done yet are already gone.

And even though we're walking in a body of flesh that really still pulls against God, someday that body even will be glorified.

In other words, you could put it this way. Right now, your soul and your spirit is saved. Your body is not, but it shall be.

In fact, there are two words for two ways redemption is taught in the Bible. One redemption is the redemption you have now, the redemption of the soul.

But the second way you'll find it used is at the rapture, which is called the redemption of the body. The whole thing's gonna be glorified, and God sees us that way.

But it's hard for us to think that way, especially when we come to a place where we fall into the flesh, and we sin, and we have just sinned.

And here we're supposed to be God's child. We're supposed to be above that. We're supposed to be seated in the heavenlies.

In Christ, we shouldn't be sinning, and we do, and guess who comes? The accuser of the brethren. What's his name?

Satan, the devil. And he comes and he accuses you in your heart.

He says, you're so dirty, you can't pray. Look what you did, you don't even act like God's child. Are you sure you are?

Maybe you just lost your salvation, he'll say. Which, by the way, is impossible. Your sins are already removed.

They're already gone. You're already glorified in God's eyes. He's not an Indian giver, by the way. But I'll say this,

Satan comes and speaks to you and tries to convince you all that could happen. That's the opposite of faith, is when we believe him rather than what

God has said. God says, I've taken every one of your sins before you were even born and placed them in the body of Christ and killed him with your sins.

Crucified him for your sins. And let me ask you this, how many times does Christ have to pay for your sins?

Is his blood efficacious? Is his blood, as the theologians say, sufficient?

But I don't like that term because it sounds like it's barely enough. Is his blood powerful enough, one drop of it, to remove every sin you've ever had or ever will have in your whole life?

Yes, and if it's not, you've just blasphemed him, by the way. If it's not, you say, what about these that say you can lose your salvation?

They always think, well, if you come back and get back in church and tithe again, you can get it back. But Hebrews chapter 6, verses 1 through 6, teaches very clearly that if that were true, that if you could lose it, you would have to re -crucify

Jesus to get it back again and therefore put him to open shame, blasphemy. So some of our brothers believe that, or those who call themselves brothers, and I think some of them are saved, they're ignorant.

They don't understand what one drop of Jesus' blood is worth. They don't understand what you're worth.

I love what Brother Otis teaches, he's not with us today, he's ill today. But he asked you, what is the value of yourself if you're born again?

And he said, if you ask any banker, they'll tell you that the value is established by the price paid. What was the price paid for you?

Jesus' blood, let me tell you, is sufficient. It is not only sufficient, it has removed every sin that will have ever been in your life at the moment you face

Jesus. And by then, you're safe. It will have removed every sin. It's been imputed unto

Jesus and his righteousness has been imputed unto you. David starts there with forgiveness.

But you know what David understands is that we have to deal with forgiveness in time also. It's wonderful to explore the heavenlies and to study the doctrines, the little bit of light that God has given us about his viewpoint.

The doctrines of predestination and election and foreordination. What was the verse we studied this morning where it's about the

Gentiles that said, And all who were ordained to eternal life believed. It's an amazing verse.

It implies that those who were not ordained could not and did not believe. All that's true.

Don't ever throw that out of your Bible just because you don't understand it. It's true. It just happens to be God's viewpoint. And since we're in three dimensions and he's in who knows, what do you think, brother

Bill? Infinite dimensions. We can't look up to that and understand it, but we can know it's true because God told us about it.

But you know what? We live here, don't we? We live in the old three dimensional world. We live in time and we're moving one direction.

Can't go backwards. We're moving one direction toward the finish line. And David deals with that, too.

So let's look at Psalm 32 and look at verse three. When I kept my silence.

Now, look what David's going to talk about. The idea of confession of sin. Haven't you ever asked the question, why is it that God teaches us that our sins are totally gone and we're completely glorified in his mind already?

And then he comes back in 1 John 1 9 and says, we have to confess our sins when we do them. How do you fit those two together?

Do you know that that's just as difficult to do as to fit the sovereignty of God and the responsibility of man together and say they're both true at one time?

It's just as difficult. You just may not have thought about it that way. You just probably just said, OK, I'm supposed to confess my sins.

Haven't you ever asked why they're already gone? Why do I have to confess them? If I don't confess them, does it mean

I didn't go to hell? We know that's not true. So why do I have to confess my sins?

It's interesting, we talked about how Leviticus chapter 16 many places, but I took it from Leviticus 16 and verses one through four, where it talks about the priest and the garments that he wears when he goes in to do the sacrifice and the

Holy of Holies. Those robes of garments are pictured robes of righteousness that we get when we're with the

Lord in heaven. But it also says that he had to wash the flesh, wash his flesh in water before he put on the robes of righteousness.

That picture's earthly end time confession. It's both pictured through types in the Old Testament.

But when we look at it, what we find is we have to have confession primarily for us. It is a psychological benefit for us to confess our sins, just as it is when a little child sins in the family.

And I've got five of them. Some of them practically grown, some of them still working on that.

But they've all had whoopings before. And you know what?

I think Jenny would testify that it's not me that threw her out of the house. She's living at Laterno, not because I threw her out of the house.

I said, you sinned against the family and I had to whoop you. Just get out of here. You're not my child anymore. Now, many people think that's how

God is, but it's not. You see, there's positional forgiveness, which is from God's viewpoint, where you're forgiven.

Even in the middle of the act, you're already forgiven. It's the same way in a family. When my children disobey me, they're already really forgiven.

They just don't know it. But they never leave my love. They never leave my household. I don't kick them across the street for my neighbor to raise when they need a spanking.

What do I do? I spank them. And then I hug them and pray with them until they stop crying.

And then I tell them, it's all over. It's behind you. And that's not a pun, by the way.

Get it, behind you. I say, it's behind you. Now, let's move on.

And it's forgotten. And you know what we do after that? We go play. A lot of times, we'll go right out of the study.

The study is the place where you get the whoopings. And we'll go into their room, and we'll play.

Now, did I really need them to ask me to forgive them? Well, I'm human.

So maybe as a human father, I needed it a little bit. But I didn't need it near as much as they did. Because when they say,

Dad, I did do that, and I'm sorry, it cleanses their little hearts. And they know they can move on now.

And that's why God gives us this end time teaching of forgiveness in the

Bible. It does not contradict the outside of time forgiveness. It doesn't contradict the fact that you really have no sins, because God's already taken them from you from his viewpoint.

It doesn't contradict that, because you're still living in time. And you may do a sin tomorrow. You might let your mind wander, not listen to this sermon, be sinning right now.

That'll wake some of you up. But anyway, you're in time. And when you face the fact that you got out of a place where you're commanded to be, which is to be filled with the

Holy Spirit, and you disobey God, that's one of the greatest sins we do right there.

We're always thinking of the acts we do. The sin is we got out of being filled with the

Holy Spirit, and we walked in the flesh for a few moments or days or weeks, hopefully not. And we sin at that point.

And we're supposed to come back to the Lord, even understanding the fact we're already forgiven, and the sins are gone, and we don't have them.

And we're still supposed to come to him and confess our sins. What does it mean in the Greek to confess our sins?

It means to name them and to agree with God that they're terrible. Agree with God that they're terrible.

And he says, then God is faithful, which means he'll do it every time, because really, it's already done.

That's how faithful God is. From his viewpoint, it's already happened. All of this has already happened.

It's already done, so he cannot not be faithful. That's good, bad grammar, but it makes the point. And so he is faithful, and he is just.

Why is he just? To forgive us of our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. He's just because Jesus has already paid for them.

They've already been in his body when he was on the tree, and they've already been sent to hell as if with the scapegoat. And so God is just to forgive us.

So yes, he is faithful every time, and he is just because it is right, because Jesus paid the price and shed his blood and eliminated our sins to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us.

Now, that's the most unbelieved verse in the whole Bible. You say, well, it can't be.

That's a familiar verse. Yes, it is. Because when you sin and the accuser comes to you and says, look how dirty you are, you can't pray right now.

You believe him. And so you don't. So you stay backslidden for another day or two or three and sin some more.

And yet what God says, look, if you'll just name your sin that you just did. Now, that means don't just generally say, dear

Jesus, forgive me of my many sins. Amen. No, that's not what it means. Name what you just did.

Now you try that next time you sin. You try naming the filthy sin you just did to a holy

God and say the word to him and say, I just did that. And I'm sorry. That's what it means. That's not easy.

You know what? The thought of that will keep you from doing that sin next time. If you really knew what confess meant.

But when you confess that, you know what it says? He is faithful and just not only to forgive you because you're already forgiven, but to cleanse you.

That's the washing that the priest did. Remember when Jesus put the towel around him and he washed their feet and Peter said, don't wash my wash my feet.

I wash your, but you don't wash my feet. Jesus said, well, then you'll have no part with me. And he said, well, wash my whole body then.

And Jesus had to rebuke him again. He said, no, you still have it. You don't need to have your whole body washed.

You are cleansed. That's positional forgiveness. That's from the heavenlies. Your sins are already gone. You're cleansed.

You're wholly cleansed. He said, but I'll wash your feet because you're still walking in the earth dirt. You're still defiled sometimes by the things of this world.

I will wash your feet. That is this confession, this end time forgiveness.

It doesn't mean that God has to forgive you over and over again like human fathers do. You're once forgiven.

Did I hear that once already this morning? You're once and for all forgiven that you ask him to forgive you.

You confess your sins because as a child, it restores your psychological and heart relationship with God is more for you than it is for him.

So look what he teaches right in Psalm 32. After David talks about this awesome doctrine of imputation that his peers didn't understand, we understand it with hindsight because we have all the

New Testament verses that teach it to us. He moves right in and he talks about so he's verses one and two.

He's talked about this positional forgiveness from the heavenlies, how God views it. Blessed is the man into whom

God does not impute sin. When you go and you sin tomorrow, he doesn't even impute it to you as if you did.

I don't know why I picked you. I just, you know, you look like the greatest sinner on that. Sitting next to my daughter is probably the reason scoot over a little bit.

No, you when you sin tomorrow. God doesn't impute that to you.

Do you know what that means? It means you didn't do it in his mind. Jesus did it.

And that's why he killed Jesus. That's it. That's incorrect. It's incredible.

So he teaches that. But look where he moves in verse three. When I kept silent.

So now David's implying I should confess my sins, even though I know verse one and two is true. David didn't have a problem putting these two outside of time and inside of time concepts together.

He said, when I kept silence, my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long.

That's what will happen if you don't confess. If you go several days in sin and you don't come before the

Lord like a little child should and say, I did this. Here's what it was. I'll name it.

And I'm sorry. Cleanse me. Then all of a sudden your bones begin to wax old.

You begin to groan on the inside of your heart and soul. Another thing happens.

Verse four day into night. Your hand is heavy upon me. You see, God is a father. And until he sees you confess, he will keep a heavy hand on your life.

You won't have peace and you won't have joy. You may be hiding for a few moments from God, not wanting to meet with him and naming what you did.

I mean, that's understandable because it's an awful thing to have to say a sin to a holy God. But you can't be happy till you do go to the study, so to speak, and take your whooping.

Now, what's wonderful about God sometimes when you confess first, he doesn't spank you. Now, I'm not that way.

And my older children say that I've become more that way with Ben and Matt. But they're wrong.

They're just not around the house. Well, Paul is. Moving right along. For a day and tonight, my hand, all it is, my hand's not quite as heavy as it used to be.

That's the problem. My moisture is turned unto the drought of summer.

You see, he has no moisture. It's like he's in a dry land. Why? He's already he stands forgiven.

But psychologically and in time as a human being, he has not confessed it to God. And therefore, he he feels like he's in the desert because his relationship with God, his father son relationship with God is is separated, not in the sense of salvation, but in the sense they're not going to go to the room and play.

They're still in the study. You see, it's that way with God. Now, verse five, he takes care of the problem.

David says, Now I've come to a place where I'm tired of God's heavy hand on my life in this desert that I'm in and my tears and my bones or I'm groaning from the inside.

I want to have that relationship restored where the Lord and I are walking together.

So first five, I acknowledge my sin to the mine iniquity. Have I not yet?

I said I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord. See how he talks to himself.

He says self. It's time to confess. That's what you need to do. And thou forgave us the iniquity of my sin.

Selah. For this shall everyone that is godly pray into thee in a time when thou mayest be found, you know, and let me go on with this.

Surely in the floods of great waters, they shall not come nigh to them. Do you know that that is a stern warning?

That if you do get in the flesh, we call it Baptist, call it backsliding.

Get into the flesh and you backslide. There is a stern warning here that you should come back and confess quickly, not wait.

Because if you put it off day and a day and a day and a day and you continue to walk away from God and you walk in sin as a born again believer, it implies here that great floods of waters could come.

That heavy hand of God could get to the place where he says, you know, they're not moving back to me like I want my children to.

And there could come a great chasing. Chasing and God uses more than a paddle. Everyone in here besides the small children are old enough to know that when he spanks, it can be anything.

It can be cancer. It can be heart disease. It can be an automobile accident. It can be anything, anything that he chooses to use in your life to bring you back.

Because to be with him is more important than to have all your members, to be honest. And when you move away so far and so long and you don't quickly come back to him as a little child should and say,

Lord, I can't believe that I did that sin and name that sin and say, just cleanse my heart. And then you move on and you're right with each other.

You can walk and live and serve or with a little illustration, you can play together again. But you put that off.

There's a stern warning here. Floods of great waters. He says he won't come to him at that time.

Do you suppose that means it can get so bad? You can move so far away in your heart and mind from your own father in heaven.

You can be like the prodigal son and be so far away out there in the pig slop that you're so overwhelmed that Satan, the accuser, come and convinces you, comes and convinces you you're too dirty.

And God just takes you home early from the human newborn. There is a sin and a debt. He just takes you on home and cleanses, cleans you up there.

Could that be the warning here? I'm not saying I know for a fact that's what this means, but I know this is a stern saying where he says, surely in the floods of great waters, they shall not come nigh into him.

Now let's move to verse seven because I want to close with this thought. Thou art my hiding place.

Thou shall preserve me from trouble. Thou shall encompass me about with songs of deliverance.

Selah. Isn't it interesting that David moves from verses one and two where he deals with imputation.

He deals with positional forgiveness and then he moves into what we could call experiential forgiveness where you're in time and you sin and you need to confess to God and be forgiven and cleansed in that sense of the word.

He moves from that and he goes into detail about what it's like when he doesn't confess his bones grown from within.

He's in a desert place and then he says, and then I confess and it shows what it's like when he confesses. He's walking with God again and then he gives a warning to those who put it off.

He just says the godly man when he confesses should, I mean, when he sins should confess quickly.

The same moment you do the sin, you should come back to your right mind and confess and be cleansed is what he teaches here.

So he deals with this in time experiential forgiveness, but then he ends by going back to the outside of time position.

Look at it there in verse seven. Thou art my hiding place. You see,

David knows he needs to confess and he brings his sins before the father as a father son relationship and says,

I did this. I know what's wrong and I'm sorry. Cleanse me. And he goes through this process and he is restored all the time, though he is remembering what he knew in verses one and two.

He's remembering that from God's viewpoint, he was really already forgiven the whole time.

When you think about the three words that are used in verse seven, hidden and preserved and delivered, and you understand that that is from the passive viewpoint, it means that someone greater than you did this to you.

You can't do these things yourself. You can't stop the sinning yourself.

You can't confess yourself. You can't bring your thoughts of your mind all the time to do the right thing.

But God is working in you because he's your father. Listen, there have been times when I went and chased down my child, took them to the study, spank them and then help them to admit what they had done and why it was wrong and tell me they're sorry and hug my neck and get right with me.

They weren't just running to the study. Do you know

God does that with you all the time? You are hidden in Christ.

You were preserved. Psalm 37, 28 says, For the Lord loveth judgment and forsaketh not his saints.

They are preserved forever. And the seed of the wicked shall be cut off.

You are hidden in Christ. You're hidden in Christ in the sense that it even changes your very affections.

Do you understand that being hidden in Christ changes the very things that you want to do?

It changes your want to. You've heard preachers say that before. Probably it's true. Colossians 1 says, If you then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God.

Set your affection. That's what I want to do. Set my affection on the things above, not on things on the earth, for you're dead and your life is hid with Christ.

I am hidden in Christ. David understood that when he said there aren't my hiding place.

So we are hidden. We're preserved. But we're also delivered. Psalm 18 to says,

The Lord is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer. My God, my strength and whom

I will trust. My buckler, the horn of my salvation and my high tower. He brought me forth also into a large place.

That's what it's like just after you've confessed. You're right with God again. He delivered me because he delighted in me.

You see, it goes from time to eternity, from time to eternity. We're connected by the

Holy Spirit. We're seated in Christ. Right now, this morning, you think you're seated on that hard pew that gets harder the longer

I preach. But you're really seated in the heavenlies, in Christ. You are hidden in.

You are preserved. And you are delivered. Thou art my hiding place.

Thou shalt preserve me from trouble. Thou shalt encompass me about with songs of deliverance.

Let's stand in that prayer together. Father, we thank you for your word.

We ask you to bless us by keeping it in our hearts and minds. Keep these truths of our positional salvation and forgiveness in our hearts and minds.

Lest we believe the accuser when he tells us we're too dirty to pray. And yet, keep it within our minds that we are right to confess our sins.

And to do so very quickly and to walk with God. Not to walk in this desert place that we're in when we're unconfessed.

And help us above all verses to believe 1 John 1 and 9. That you're faithful and just to forgive us of our sins.

And to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. That we may go forth and walk in joy and peace with you every moment.

And not succumb to the lies of the accuser or the brethren. Lord, we ask you to bless our hearts with these truths.

Bless the meal we're about to have together in our fellowship time. Bless our afternoon Bible study and the baptism we're going to have.