When You're Caught In Your Sin: Know God's Righteousness

Scripture Readings: Psalm 32 and 1 Corinthians 6:9-11

This morning's Old Testament scripture reading is from Psalm 32. Please stand. Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit.

For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night, your hand was heavy upon me. My strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not recover my iniquity.

I said, I will confess my transgressions to the Lord, and you forgave the iniquity of my sin. Therefore, let everyone who is godly offer prayers to you at a time when you may be found. Surely in the rush of great waters, they shall not reach you.

You are a hiding place for me. You preserve me from trouble. You surround me with shalts of deliverance. I will instruct you and teach you in the ways you should go. I will counsel you with my eye upon you.

Be not like a horse or a mule without understanding, which must be curbed with a bit and bridle, or it will not stay near you. Many are the sorrows of the wicked, but steadfast love surrounds the one who trusts in the Lord.

Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, O righteous, and shout for joy, all you upright in heart.

The New Testament reading this morning is in 1 Corinthians chapter 6, starting in verse 9. Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither the sexually immoral, nor idolators, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.

And such were some of you. But you were washed. You were sanctified. You were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and by the Spirit of our God. You may be seated.

Opening Prayer and Introduction to Psalm 51

Open your Bibles to Psalm 51, please. Psalm 51. It is good to see you all here gathered together on the Lord's Day to worship him in light of his resurrection. It is just nerves, but I always have to go to the bathroom before I come up, and it's beautiful to hear the singing in the background.

It really is a wonderful thing to experience, just to hear the saints singing. One day we'll be singing all together in eternity all together. That is going to be marvelous. Psalm 51. We'll read through it again, and we'll start part two of the series.

To the choir master, a psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet went to him after he had gone into Bathsheba. Verse 1, 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.

For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Against you, you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment.

Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me. Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being, and you teach me wisdom in the secret.

Heart.

Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean. Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Let me hear joy and gladness. Let the bones that you have broken rejoice. Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities.

Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. 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.

Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will return to you. Deliver me from blood guiltiness, O God, O God of my salvation, and my tongue will sing aloud of your righteousness. O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise.

For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it, you will not be pleased with a burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken spirit and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.

So do good to Zion in your good pleasure. Build up the walls of Jerusalem. Then will you delight in right sacrifices, and burnt offerings, and whole burnt offerings. Then bowls will be offered on your altar.

O God in heaven, your word is open before us, Lord, and it is always relevant. Lord, there's always something we can grab hold of, a truth that we can glean from. Lord, no matter who we are, where we're at in our walk in Christ in this room, whether we are outside of Christ, there are, I would imagine, people before me that they don't know Jesus.

So whether we're an unbeliever in that state, or there's someone before me who is a very new believer, immature believer who's growing in their newborn state, or very mature believers, God, there is always something for every one of your creatures to grab hold of and respond in faith.

So I pray, God, that that would be our desire now, the people before me, that their desire, they would let go of all the other lesser desires of this world, and they would see that it is good to look at your word, ask for the Spirit's guidance to understand your word, and apply the word to our hearts.

So no matter where we're at in our lives right now, may that be our great aim all together, desiring to do that together as your people. May the unbeliever repent of their sins and come to know Jesus, and may those who know Jesus strive together, Lord, to honor him, glorify him for this great salvific work he has done to purge our sins away from us.

So we praise you for him this morning, and we want to worship him. So may the Spirit help us in this endeavor, for it's he who applies the great work of Jesus to our souls. And so let us look to him, to Jesus, with the aid of the Spirit, with the desire to glorify you forever for what you have done.

In Jesus' name, amen. So we're in the middle of Psalm 51. Last Lord's Day, we had our first part in it, and what I've called this series as we're looking at Psalm 51 is what you are to do, what to do when you're caught in sin.

When You're Caught in Sin: The Series Overview

What are you to do when you're caught in sin? Not if you're caught in sin, but when you're caught in sin. For we started off as unbelievers, and we were in sin, and we came to know Jesus, and he's forgiven us of our sins, and we know that sin likes to hang on.

And so it's not a matter of if you're caught in sin, but when you're caught in sin, what.

Are you to do?

And we saw in the first part, we saw that it's important for us to know our sin. In verses one through six, we talked about the importance of knowing your sin. And it is not a pleasant experience to know your sin, is it?

The reason why we so easily want to hide our sin or to cover it in ways that are not ordained by God is because it is such a difficult thing for sin to be exposed and say, God, please deal with it, because we are proud people.

When we see that, the first part of what we are to do when we're caught in sin is to know it, to understand it, and to allow the process of it to make us feel terrible, because that's what sin does. That's the results of it, and that's what drives us to our Savior who meets us in our.

Need.

Part Two: Know God's Righteousness

But our first step is to know sin. And a few things I thought about this with where we're going ahead in the future now is part two, is to now know God's righteousness. It's not enough just to simply know our sin and say, woe is me, and be depressed people.

We do talk about sin a lot, don't we? And unrighteousness and wrath and all those things. But that's not all we talk about, because we highlight the grace and the mercies of Jesus Christ. We do the former to get to the latter, and we like it like that.

And so it's important that as we know our sin, and that's the first step when we're caught in sin, to know it, to understand it, to see the negative effects of it, to see how bad sin really is. It's supposed to then cause us to know God's righteousness.

You need to go move forward into knowing God's righteousness. It reminds me of my brother joined the Navy, and he was in boot camp when 9 -11 happened. And I was 11 years old, and I remember that just being a very scary thing.

It wasn't long after that he got out of boot camp, and he was stationed in Virginia. We got to go visit him, and so we went to Virginia. And I was spending time in the ocean because I was young and dumb and didn't realize that everything is literally trying to kill you in the ocean.

Don't go in the ocean.

Go to the Great Lakes. It's great up there. You don't have to worry about that. And I was in the ocean with my brother, and I just remember being a young boy, and the waves were particularly strong. At least I remember them being strong, because I was just a little boy.

And they just knocked me out. And I was just rolling around in the water getting knocked out by waves. And I remember it was fun, but if that was to happen for too long to where I didn't know which way was up, that would have been a very scary experience.

So thankfully, it wasn't too bad to where I got my footing under me, and it ended up being all right. But imagine being in a state where you're just being tossed and tossed and tossed. What is so scary about that?

Because you don't have any footing under you. You don't know which way is up. You don't know what's going on. You have no footing. And also, I remember Sarah and I being married. And I don't think we had any kids.

Maybe we just had one. That was many moons ago. And we went to a place up north in Michigan. And there's a lighthouse. There's lighthouses all over the place up there. And we went to one where you could go up into the lighthouse, and you're on the ledge.

And so it's just all you have a railing, and you're on the ledge. And I don't do well with heights. And so it was just a very scary. I didn't enjoy it one moment. And I just kept on wanting to feel the structure and wanted to feel what was underneath me to know my footing, know where I was at.

Because it just was not a good feeling to be feeling like I was out there, right? And so what I constantly wanted to feel for in that situation, if you're like me, and you don't do good with heights, what are you wanting?

You're wanting to feel the ground, the stableness below you on your feet. You want to feel something stable that's stable in the ground. And just like when I'm in an airplane, I don't like airplanes. When I land and I go to my destination, it feels so good to be on the ground again.

Well, it reminds me, sin is very much a process. James says it's like being tossed in the waves, right? There's no direction. And it's a terrible experience to be caught in a sin in that state to where you have no footing below you.

You have no footing beneath you. You're just being tossed over and over and over again. It's a very unstable process. It's not supposed to be comfortable. And so what we need to do is know our sin, to know what it does, how it creates discomfort, how it is not a nice feeling because we feel like we're just being tossed to and fro.

And then we need to know God's righteousness, which is our stable ground beneath us. Just like whenever you are scared and way up in the sky, you want to get closer to the ground, closer to where you are, what's stable beneath you.

You kind of want to, well, it's the same thing. We want to right away, when we feel like we're getting tossed to and fro, to right away reach solid ground. We want to right away remind ourselves of God's righteousness that will stabilize us in the midst of a sin that has a tendency to make us go every which way.

This is what we must do. We must remind ourselves, you must remind yourself when you're caught in sin of your righteous standing before God, if you're in Jesus. When you are caught in sin, the terribleness of it, you must remind yourself of your righteous standing in Jesus.

And then from that, expecting practical righteousness to comfort you in that. You see, one of the things that we can fall into, I'm going to get to the text, is that when we're in sin and we're not comforted and it's a terrible feeling, we want to feel.

Better.

And it's a very bad idea, a cotton candy kind of an idea, to just go for whatever makes us feel good. And we cannot do that because we know that's not long lasting. We must look to our standing of righteousness in Jesus Christ before God to receive that good feeling, so to speak, as we'll get to.

In other words, our positional righteousness is what people, theologians like to call it, our positional righteousness, our position before God needs to bring us the comfort before God when we're in sin.

We are positionally righteous in Jesus Christ and that brings about a practical righteousness in our hearts and minds and it comforts us. What does that look like? Well, I think that's what David is referring to here.

We see verses 7 through 12. I think he goes from verse 7, he talks about our positional standing before God. Being positionally right, being on God and his righteousness, being positionally righteous before him.

And then he goes to the practical righteousness of what it looks like in us in verse 8. And then he goes back to positional 9, back to practice in 10, back to positional 11, and back to practice in 12.

Positional Righteousness in Christ

What does that look like? What am I referring to? Hopefully we will show that here with these verses. So first, whenever you're caught in sin, remind yourself of your positional righteousness in Christ.

Look at that in verse 7.

It says,.

David knows his sin. It's egregious. His sin with Bathsheba against Uriah, right? His adultery, everything that's going on, his sin. And what does he cry for? He cries for the reminder of positional righteousness.

Purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean. Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow. What does he mean by purge me with hyssop? What is that language? I think he's saying the same thing when he says wash me.

Purge me with hyssop. He repeats it with wash me. What does he mean by that? Well, hyssop, if you're not aware, it's a plant. And if you know your plants well, you probably won't agree with me. But when I see it, it reminds me of lavender, right?

And it's like branches are a plant. And how it was used in Old Testament worship sacrifices is you would get a bunch of it and you would dip it in the blood of the sacrificial animal and you would smear the blood with it, okay?

Does that make sense? That's what David has in mind as he's considering being positionally right with God. And that is only done by blood. And he considers the hyssop bunch in which you dip it in blood and then you use that to apply the blood.

You following me there? An example of that would be Exodus 12. If you want to turn there, look at Exodus 12. We'll see that in play. Look at verse 21. This is the first Passover, right?

And if you don't know,.

The first Passover was when Israel as a nation was enslaved to Egypt and they were about to be brought out by the great arm of God. And he does this by killing all the firstborn of the Egyptians, showing his wrath to them, but he protects Israel by what?

The Passover lamb. The blood of the lamb was placed on the outside of their house, indicating that the wrath of God does not belong in there. Does that make sense? So that's what's going on there. So he says in verse 22, in order for this to be done, to avoid the wrath of God, he says in verse 22, take a bunch of hyssop and dip it in the blood that is in the basin and touch the lentil and the two doorposts with the blood that is in the basin.

None of you shall go out of the door of his house into the morning, right? They should be protected in the home with the blood of the lamb on the outside. For the Lord will pass through to strike the Egyptians when he sees the blood on the lentil and on the two doorposts.

The Lord will pass over the door and will not allow the destroyer to enter your houses to strike you. You shall observe this right as a statute for you and your sons forever. And when you come to the land that the Lord will give you, as he promised, you shall keep this service.

And when your children say to you, what do you mean by this service? You shall say, it is a sacrifice of the Lord's Passover. For he passed over the houses of the people of Israel in Egypt when he struck the Egyptians but spared our houses.

And the people bowed their heads and worshiped in light of that. So what do we have going on there? That the Israelites were positionally righteous before God by placing that blood outside. Their position was of righteousness.

The position of the Egyptians were of wrath. I'm sorry, that's cute. It's hard to concentrate when a baby's up there like smiling at you like that. That's just, oh, that's good, that's good. Talk about God's wrath here too.

It's just like, gotta reorganize my thoughts here. So the position of Israel was of one, of righteousness because the blood kept the wrathful presence of God out, right? So you see what we mean by positional righteousness.

We need to, and when we're caught in sin, remind ourselves of our position of righteousness before God.

Right?

Now, of course, that's, these are Old Testament things. They're shadows. The blessed substance belongs to us and the new covenant. What is the new covenant? What is the substance? What did David have in mind when he referred to this?

He didn't have in mind the hyssop and dip in the blood because that really didn't forgive him of his sins that he needed right there. That didn't provide the eternal forgiveness of sins that he needed.

No, David was looking ahead to greater promises, right? And we see this in Hebrews 9. Look at Hebrews 9. Jesus is our Passover lamb. It's his blood that protects us from the wrath of God. It's his blood that makes us in a position of righteousness that protects us from the wrath of God to the Egyptians, i .e. the world, right?

Look at Hebrews 9 and we see the substance of these Old Testament shadows. Hebrews 9, look at verse 11. But when Christ appeared as a high priest, a priest is one who did the sacrifice, who applied the blood, right?

When Christ appeared as our high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent, not made with hands, that is not of this creation, but he entered once and for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves, but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption.

For if the blood of goats and bulls and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer sanctify for the purification of the flesh, what he's saying there is if those animal sacrifices did something beneficial in the land of Israel that they could stay in there, the blood of Jesus does something for us that's greater than being in a land of Israel.

It was pointing to something greater. What was that? How much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God?

Remember what sin did, right? Sin is ever before me. He can't escape it. We can't escape it when our conscience is bearing down on us. There are people before me right now, your conscience are terrorized with sin.

What is the only answer for you? It is that you would rely upon the blood of Jesus to put you in a position of righteousness before the Father so your conscience is no longer plagued with such shame and rightful guilt.

For those who belong to the lamb, we have his blood on us and so that causes us to go from a guilty conscience to freed in Jesus Christ. He is the greater, the substance of that Passover lamb. And he says in verse 15 in Hebrews 9, therefore he is the mediator of a new covenant so that those who are called may receive the promise eternal inheritance since a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions redeemed, I mean, I'm sorry, committed under the first covenant.

For where a will's involved, the death of the one who made it must be established. For a will takes effect only at death since it is not enforced as long as the one who made it is alive. Therefore, not even the first covenant was inaugurated without blood.

For when every command of the law had been declared by Moses to all the people, he took the blood of the calves and the goats with water and scarlet wool and look at the word again, hyssop and sprinkled both the book itself and all the people saying, this is the blood of the covenant that God commanded for you.

And the same way, he sprinkled with the blood both the tent and all the vessels used in worship. Indeed, under the law, under the Old Testament, under the Mosaic covenant, almost everything is purified with blood and without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins.

Thus, in verse 23, it was necessary for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified with these rites, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. For Christ has entered into the holy places made without hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself, not with into the copies, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf.

Nor was it to offer himself repeatedly as a high priest enters the holy places every year with the blood not his own, for then he would have to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world. But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of,.

Who?

Not an animal, but himself. And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment, so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin,.

But to save those.

Who are eagerly waiting for them. So what are we saying here? There's a lot of words I know,.

But the main point is,.

Is that the blood that we claim, the blood that we need to remind ourselves that is eternally effective, is the blood of Jesus Christ that covers us, that keeps the wrath of God away from us so that we can receive his grace instead.

As Israel did not receive the wrath of God with the death of the firstborn, instead that passed over them, so Jesus causes the wrath of God to pass over us when we believe upon him. Our righteous standing before God is dependent upon the blood of Christ.

So when we're caught in sin, what must you do? When your conscience is overwhelmed with your treason against your holy maker, what must you do? Acknowledge your sin and remind yourself of your righteous standing before him, not by your own work over abilities, but because of Jesus.

That is the gospel, beloved. This is why, and we see it in beautiful poetry, if I may use that language of Revelation, we see, look at Revelation 19, we see the same principle shining forth. Look at Revelation 19, verse 11 through 16 might be the most exhilarating text of the Bible.

Then I saw heaven opened and behold a white horse. The one sitting on it is called Faithful and True and in righteousness he judges and makes war. That's our Lord, beloved. This is the second coming when he is not going to mess around with sin, let it go on anymore.

Now he comes and he's on a white horse, his name is Faithful and True and in righteousness he judges and he makes war. In verse 12, his eyes are like a flame of fire and on his head are many diadems and he has a name written on it that no one knows but himself.

This is one in which he sees everything. All sin, nothing is hidden from his sight. But look at where we are, look at those who are saints, look at those who have been covered by his blood. He is clothed in a robe, dipped in blood and the name by which he is called is the word of God and the armies of heaven arrayed in fine linen, white and pure, were following him on white horses.

So you notice what's going on there, Jesus is coming back in a second returning and he's coming to judge the wicked. Just like he came with the Egyptians in Israel, he came to judge the Egyptians, so he's coming in a second coming to judge the world.

And he has a robe dipped in blood, why? Because of his sacrifice, because there's an army behind him of saints who have made their robes white because of his red robe. His red robe has made your robe white.

And so instead of being in front of him in which we see his terrifying wrath, his eyes of fire coming down, we are behind him as we witness him ending sin in the world. So instead of being before him with his wrath, we are behind him because of his grace.

We are protected from his wrath. Verse 15, just to finish out what's before us, from his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations and he will rule them with a rod of iron. He will tread the winepress of his fury, of the wrath of God the Almighty.

And on his robe and on the thigh, he has a name written King of Kings and Lord of Lords. If that imagery of his righteousness being displayed in judgment scares you or offends you, it probably means that you have not been made righteous by Christ himself.

Because whenever you have been forgiven and you come to his standard through the forgiveness of sins, you cry out for righteousness just as much as he does. So that's why the saints are behind him enjoying watching sin being done with once and for all.

The point that I'm getting at here is that when we are caught in our sin, the sin that he is coming to judge once again, what do we need to remind ourselves of? We do not try to make ourself feel better in different ways.

The only way we can feel better is when we acknowledge our sin and know God's righteousness, the standing that we can have before him by the blood of Jesus. This is exactly, this is exactly what Paul talks about in Romans 3.

The positional righteousness of the saint in Christ. This is what he refers to in Romans 3. In verse 21, well, even if you look at one, right? The thesis of this book of Romans, look at chapter one, verse 16, for I'm not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.

For in it, the gospel, the righteousness, remember we're talking about the righteous standing, we can have before God our position of righteousness, right? So in the gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith, for it is written, the righteousness shall live by faith.

So God's righteousness is manifested and given it to people by their faith in Jesus. And that's exactly what Paul says going back to that thought in chapter three, verse 21, but now the righteousness of God has been manifested.

Now, beloved, you know what a really wonderful thing is? Is that when Paul says the righteousness of God is manifested, it is not to say in his wrath against all unrighteousness. Remember, Jesus is going to display his wrath, but he's not gonna display it to everyone, will he?

There'll be a people that he doesn't. And in that, Paul says his righteousness has been manifested, but apart from the law, apart from the acknowledgement or the show of our sin, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believed, for there is no distinction, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, but we are justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, through his sacrifice, through his death.

God put forward Jesus as a propitiation by his blood to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness because in his divine forbearance, he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time so that God may be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

So there is an aspect in which God's righteousness is on display. Righteousness is the opposite of sin. It's right living, it's holiness, it's non-sin. And his righteousness is on displayed in the fact that he poured out our sins on Jesus on the cross and in that, Jesus and his righteousness is given to us.

So that's why it can be said that God's righteousness is displayed in the gospel because our sins are done away with and we're made righteous by him. So therefore God's righteousness is on display. And what a wonderful thing that his righteousness is on displayed in grace and not just judgment.

That is our hope, that is our comfort, especially when we're caught in sin, we're overwhelmed with it. What must we do? We must remind ourselves of the gospel of Jesus Christ. That I am made righteous despite the sin because Christ has came and done away with sin by his work on the cross.

That is how you need to comfort yourself in your sin. If you do it any other way, it is cotton candy comfort and it will not last in eternity. We need to find comfort in our positional righteousness in God because of what Jesus Christ has done.

Practical Righteousness Flowing from Positional Righteousness

When caught in sin, the saint repents and reminds himself his standing in Christ, his positional righteousness. Now what comes forth from that? What comes forth from the fact that we are positionally made righteous before God?

It must have some kind of effect, right? It can't just be a true reality and not show itself in any way. There must be something that comes forth from it and this is what is called practical righteousness.

You get it? Positional righteousness, we are made righteous before God. That's our standing because of Jesus and what flows forth from that, the fruit that produces, that comes forth from that is our practical righteousness.

Our practice becomes righteousness and this is what I think David gets to. Verse seven, Purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean. Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow. That can be my positional righteousness because of the blood of Jesus and then we see the practical righteousness coming forth from that when he says in verse eight, let me hear joy and gladness.