The Joy Of Forgiveness

The Blessedness of Forgiven Transgression

Turn with me, if you would, to Psalm 32, this morning. Psalm 32, and reading from the King James. 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 became old through my roaring all the day long. For day and night thy hand was heavy upon me. My moisture is turned into the draught of summer. I acknowledged my sin unto thee, and mine iniquity have I not hidden.

I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord, and thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin. Selah. For this shall everyone that is godly pray unto thee at a time when thou mayest be found. Surely in the flood of great waters they shall not come near unto him.

Thou art mine hiding place. Thou shalt preserve me from trouble. Thou shalt compass me about with songs of deliverance. Selah. I will instruct thee and teach thee in the way which thou shalt go. I will guide thee with mine eye.

Be ye not like the horse or like the mule that have no understanding, whose mouth must be held in with bit and bridle, lest they come near unto thee. My many sorrows shall be to the wicked, but he that trusteth in the Lord, mercy shall compass him about.

Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, ye righteous, and shout for joy, all ye that are upright in heart. Now this psalm, if you'll notice at the top, if you have this in your Bible, it says this is a maskill.

Psalm 32 as Instruction and Its Connection to Psalm 51

This is the second of 12 psalms that are identified as maskills of David. And the word maskill has the sense to it that it is the giving of instruction. This is something that David has written specifically to instruct other people.

And this psalm goes along very much, it's very much connected to Psalm 51. And I think most of you are aware that the psalms were not necessarily written in the order in which they appear in the Bible.

So Psalm 51, if you recall, is the great psalm of confession, where David confesses after his adultery with Bathsheba and his murder of Uriah the Hittite. But he says in that psalm that after he has confessed and has been restored to fellowship with the Lord, he said, I am going to teach transgressors your ways and sinners will be converted unto you.

And this is perhaps a fulfillment of that. It's been suggested that David wrote this specific psalm in fulfillment of that promise, that this was written to instruct. And so we have this psalm written as instruction.

And it has a lot of impact. Paul quotes it. Paul uses this in Romans chapter 4, where he's starting to lay down the principles of salvation by grace through faith. He quotes the first two verses of this psalm.

And so let's take a look and see what he has to say here. First of all, he starts off that this is the definition of the one who is blessed. And Mike has been emphasizing, as he teaches on the Beatitudes, that it means favored of God.

You know, the person who is blessed is favored of God. And he lists four specific things here in the first two verses. First of all, his transgressions are forgiven. And secondly, his sins are covered.

And third, his sins are not counted against him. And fourth, there is no deceit. There's nothing hidden. And so we begin to look at this passage. And it's been said that the beginning of knowledge is to know yourself to be a sinner.

If you do not acknowledge that you are a sinner, if we do not acknowledge our sinfulness, if we do not acknowledge that we have a problem, we do not go and seek the solution for it, do we? The first step to salvation, if you will, is to acknowledge in our own minds that we are sinners, that we have offended a holy God.

We are not fit to stand in his presence. We have a very serious problem that we are incapable of dealing with. And so he starts off with this whole idea that I know I'm a sinner and something needs to happen.

And so he says, literally, he said, blessednesses. That's a mouthful. But blessednesses, the blessings of God are poured out upon a person that fits this characteristic. Now, compare this, if you will, with Psalm 1.

In Psalm 1, David is talking about blessed is the man who walks in the way of God. Blessed is the man who walks in the way of God. But the problem that we have there is that we don't walk in the way of God, do we?

In fact, that's sort of our problem is that we don't walk in the way of God. And so here in Psalm 32, the emphasis is blessed is he who has not walked in the way of God. Blessed is he who has not walked in God's way.

Blessed is the man who has repented of his sin and who has been forgiven. Now, there's a great joy that comes from walking in God's way and being blessed in that. And certainly, there's a real sense in which the one who walks with God on a daily basis, he has joy, he has the fellowship with God the Father.

And yet, there is a real sense in which there is a greater joy, which is the joy of restoration. The joy of restoration, the joy of knowing that we have been forgiven of our sins. Not that those sins were just glossed over, but that they have been removed and that we have been forgiven for that.

The Joy of Restoration and the Burden of Sin

When I was growing up, one of my father's most effective methods of discipline was to take me at my word. Now, what do I mean by that? I would say something to him and he knew I was lying. But rather than confronting me with that right then, he would say, okay.

And he would go on and appear to act on what I had said. And knowing that that would get to me much farther and much quicker than anything he could have possibly have said. Because I knew that he knew I was lying.

And the fact that he would accept that, that he would take me at my word, that worked much harder than any other thing he could have done. And so what I would wind up doing is going to him, dad, I didn't say the truth or I didn't say the whole truth and this, that and the other thing.

And of course, when I was really young, it was always amazing to me that he would say, yes, I know. You knew, yeah. I knew, you know. And of course, our heavenly father is like that. He knows. He knows.

And yet, how sweet is it when we go to our heavenly father and we confess our sins, the sins are forgiven and we know the joy of restoration, that fellowship restored. There's a very special thing there that to some, in some ways is an even greater joy.

One of the greatest joys you can have is the knowledge of sin forgiven. And so David goes into this and he uses a parallelism, which is very, which is a very common construction in Hebrew, the Hebrew writers.

He's going to set up three words. And then he's going to set up three words that compare to them. And so the first is, and we're still in verses one and two here. He said, blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven.

The transgression, transgression, the Hebrew word, the sense of the word is, this is a going away from, if you will, a turning away from or a rebellion. It is a rebellion against God and against his authority.

And that's what sin is. That's what sin is. Sin is a rebellion against God. Sin is an offense against God. Whenever we say, I'm going to go my own way, we are in fact, mimicking Lucifer. Lucifer, when he said the, the, I will five times.

Basically we are saying, I will be like God. I am not going to place myself under God's authority. I am not going to do what God wants me to do. I am not going to follow his instruction. I want to do what I want to do.

And I'll guarantee that every person here who has raised a child has seen that in action many, many times. It's often said that the first word a child learns is not mama, it's no. And if it isn't, it's one way, way right up there at the beginning, right?

That's the first thing the child learns. You know, I have a will, I'm going to exert it. I'm not going to do what mommy and daddy want me to do. And so we're just like that with our heavenly father. We have a will, we're going to exert it.

And, you know, we are going to place ourselves in God's place, if you will. We are going to rebel. And so that's the first thing, transgression. But he says, your transgression is forgiven. And then David focuses on this so much of the time.

The fact that when he sins, he sins against God. When we go to Psalm 51, what does he say there? He says, against thee and thee only have I sinned. And it wasn't that he hadn't sinned against Bathsheba because he certainly had.

It wasn't that he hadn't sinned against Uriah because he certainly had. It wasn't that he hadn't sinned against the whole nation of Israel because he had. But David is saying, I know what the essential element is here.

I have all of this other is secondary. I have sinned against a thrice holy God. I've sinned against a thrice holy God. And so the most trivial of sins, whatever it is, and we tend to categorize sin, don't we?

Is that, you know, these are really serious sins and these are less trivial. These are more trivial sins and so forth. The idea of the little white lie, you know, we know that one. So the most trivial of sins is not primarily against nature.

It's not primarily against law. It's not primarily against ourselves. It's not primarily against others. It is against a holy God. It is rebellion against God himself. And so that's what David is saying.

First, is that the rebellion against God, the rebellion that needs to be forgiven. And the next word that he uses is it's a word. It's the word in Greek. It's Hamartia in Hebrew. It's shut up. And it's the word that we translate sin in English.

And it's it means what is corrupt or twisted or crooked, you know, so much. I guess this is sort of disappearing, but used to be one of the one of the best things you could say about a man was that he was straight.

That he was straight. He dealt squarely with you. You know, we use the term straight. We use the term square in a good sense, meaning square as in right with the world. Or is it the way a carpenter would use it as square?

You know, the wall is square, those sorts of things. And this has that exact opposite connotation. It's something is crooked about it. It's twisted. It's not straight. And so and in relationship to God himself is what David's looking at.

We are coming short. The idea is that that an archer shoots at the target and the arrow falls short. He missed the mark. So that's the second word that he uses, the sins. And then he also mentions the iniquity.

Blessed is the man under whom the Lord imputed not iniquity. This is the same idea that corrupt the twisted, the crooked in relation to God's law. And if you will, the two terms, the first term is in crooked and twisted in relation to God himself.

This, the second one is crooked and twisted in relation to God's law, what he set down. But notice that he says it's not imputed to your account. So he also has three words here for what God has done with sin.

Three words for what God has done with sin. First of all, blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven. Now, the idea here is to have a burden lifted off. The sin is forgiven. The burden is lifted off.

And John Bunyan in Pilgrim's Progress uses this a great deal. When Pilgrim comes to the cross, he's carrying a burden. Bunyan was, it's an allegory, but he's allegorizing sin as this heavy load that Pilgrim has to carry.

And we use that a lot, but that's a very appropriate. It's a very appropriate thing, really. Because if you haven't had your conscience seared when you sin, it is like carrying a physical load. The way this impacts your life, it's not something that you can just toss off.

Excuse me. It's not something you can just toss off or, you know, kind of let it go by. In fact, that gets scary. When you run into people who can sin without having it affect them in the slightest, this is a scary individual.

And there are such people. Most people, even today, even as humanistic and materialistic as our society has gotten, most people still have something of a conscience left and it bothers them. And when you run into a person whose sin does not bother him anymore, that's a serious thing.

That's a scary thing because a person like that can do anything. And so this load David's talking about. And David talks about how the load later on, a little further down, when he talks about how his bones became old.

And it was like being out in the desert heat, he says, you know, in the heat of the day. And David knew what this was all about because of where he lived. He knew how debilitating trying to be out in the desert during the heat of the day could be and what that would be.

And he said, sin is like that. Sin wears me out. Sin sucks the life out of me. Sin makes it to where it's almost too difficult to move. I don't want to do anything. You know, somehow I can't do anything.

Uh, for myself, I can't move, you know. And he's talking about this great load that's placed upon him. But then he says that his sins are removed. He said his sins are removed. The load is lifted off just like Pilgrim at the cross.

The load was taken off of him and he watched it tumble away. And so David talks about that. And he says in other places in the Psalms, he talks about how your sin is removed. As far as the east is from the west.

As far as the east is from the west. And never let it be said that David didn't know anything about geography because this is, this is significant. Because you can go east. You can go east forever. There is no time in which you suddenly find yourself going west.

Why did he not say as far as the north is removed from the south? Well, if you go north, when you cross over the pole, you're going south. But if you go east, at no point do you ever start going west.

It's David is saying that this is removed as far away as it is conceivably possible to be. That it, God is never going to bring this back. God has gotten rid of this sin. He is not going to recall it to his mind.

He doesn't keep a list. He's not going to haul this out of some dusty, musty storage compartment someday and dust it off and confront you with it again. It's gone when God has removed it. It is not remembered.

Isaiah 43, 25, Isaiah speaks of the same thing where he said, says your sins are no longer remembered. And when God forgets something, it's forgotten. He does not bring it back. It does not bring it back.

And so what's the next thing that David says about this? He says, our sins are covered. He says, our sins are covered. Now, the imagery he has here is got to be the day of atonement. The day of atonement.

Because in the tabernacle, inside, you go through the holy place, you go into the holy of holies, the most holy place. And that's where the ark sat. And so the ark is back there. And you know the whole story.

Only the high priest can go in and he can only go in once a year. And he has to make sacrifices for his own sins first. And then he goes in and makes sacrifice for the sins of the people. But this ark sits in there, this box.

And in that box sits the manna, sits the tablets, sits Aaron's rod. These are all things that are symbolic of the sins of Israel. The tablets of the law are in there to prove that Israel couldn't keep them.

You know, the manna is in there, which is symbolic that God was faithful when Israel was not. Oh, there's no food out in the desert. God brought us out here in the desert. Boy, man, the leeks and the onions, you know, I really miss those leeks and onions.

And I wish I was back there in Egypt, you know, where we had the leeks and onions and rutabagas and what have you. You're thinking, what? You know, you're pining over leeks and onions. And so God is faithful.

God provides food. You know, I'm sure Moses felt like screaming at the people. Did you really think God was going to bring you out here so that you could starve? Is that what you really thought? You know, but so often we are like that.

So often we are like that. So often we go through life. And the more, the farther down life's road you get, the more and more and more opportunities there have been for God to be faithful to you, hasn't there?

You think back and you think, you know, God has always, always been faithful to me. In the times when I have not been faithful to him, he has been faithful. He has supplied. He has supplied in such abundance that I couldn't deal with it all.

You know, he's always done that. And he's been doing that for decades. You know, Dallas and I have been married almost 40 years. And we can tell you that God has been faithful for those 40 years. And yet, what happens when trouble starts to appear on the horizon?

Where do we go? Well, you know, I don't know. God's been faithful for the last 40 years, but I don't know about this time. Yeah, maybe he's going to miss. God is not like that. God is not like that. And yet, I'm digressing here a little bit, but back to the mercy seat.

This whole thing, everything that's in the ark, symbolized God's faithfulness and Israel's lack of faithfulness, God's provision and Israel's sin. And it's all symbolized by what's in this ark. And then sitting on top of the ark, there's this lid.

And that is referred to as the mercy seat. Because remember, in the days of Israel, the tabernacle and specifically the space between the cherubim, there were these two cherubim on top of the lid of the ark.

And God physically manifested his presence by a glory cloud that was there. Now, we know God's everywhere in the universe. He is omnipresent. But he chose to physically manifest his presence on earth by this cloud.

It was a cloud in the daytime and it shone at night. And so once a year, the high priest first sacrifices for himself, then he sacrifices for the people, and he goes in to the holy of holies and he sprinkles blood on the mercy seat.

So that this blood stands between God, who is up here, and everything that's in the ark, which is the symbolic, the symbols of Israel's sins and Israel's disbelief. And so for another year, the sins are covered.

And this is what David has got in mind, that God has been satisfied. It's the same in the New Testament, we come up with the word propitiation. It means to satisfy God's justice and we turn aside God's wrath.

And so the sacrifice of Jesus Christ for our sins, we were talking this morning a little bit during the prayer time, that this is a doctrine which offends a lot of people. The doctrine of substitutionary atonement.

Because as soon as we start there, I am confessing that I need someone to die in my place. That I have done something for which I rightly deserve to be punished. And so someone has to die, either I have to die or someone has to die in my place.

And so Jesus Christ comes and he dies in my place. So that God's wrath is propitiated, God's wrath is satisfied and it is turned aside. And now the third thing that David says here, and we're still in the first two verses.

The first thing that he says is that the sins are not imputed to our account. He doesn't count the sins to our account, as it were. It's this whole doctrine, this whole idea of imputation, that's an accounting term, it's a banking term.

And it means to impute something, means to put something to your account. And so what God does in our case, and what David is saying that God has done in his case, is that God did not count, put to his account, the sins which were rightfully his.

Those sins belong to him, he committed them. They belong on his balance sheet, if you will. Or if you want to get modern, they belong on his spreadsheet, you know. And so that's where they go. And yet, the same thing applies to us, you know, we sin and those sins belong to us.

We did it, we deserve those sins, they go on our accounting sheet. But what God does with his children is he does not assign those sins to our account. Rather, he assigns those to his son's account. He puts those on Jesus' account.

It says, Jesus became sin for us, who knew no sin. He had no sin of his own. And yet, God takes our sins and puts them to his account. But it gets even better. Because he takes his righteousness and he puts that on our account.

Imputed righteousness. You want to find imputed righteousness in the Old Testament? Here it is, Psalm 32. He didn't impute the sins, but he did impute righteousness. So that, and that is also a legal term.

We are not at that point, we are not at that point made righteous. We are counted as righteous because of Jesus Christ's righteousness. It's going to take the rest of our lives plus glorification and glory before we are righteous.

But he deals with this. He assigns to Christ's account what does not belong to him. He gives to us and assigns to our account what does not belong to us. But this means that he can forgive our sins. Because God cannot gloss over sin.

God cannot wink at sin. God can't say, that's okay, don't worry about it. The wages of sin is death. Somebody has to die. And so David is already looking forward at this point. Now we can debate what exactly did David know about the coming Messiah and so forth and so on and scholars debate that.

But it's clear that David had a clear view in his mind that his sin was being dealt with on the divine level. And so we are counted righteous in him. And this is the greatest blessing that there is to know one's sins are forgiven.

It's the greatest of all joys is to have peace with God. And when Dr. White was here, he made the point. He said, one of the very effective things you can use if you were dealing specifically, if you happen to be dealing with Roman Catholic is to ask the question, do you have peace with God?

Do you have peace with God? We have peace with God. Okay, moving along here because we've still been in verses one and two. Look at verse three. When I kept silence, my bones became old through my roaring all the day long.

And verse four, for day and night, thy hand was heavy upon me. My moisture is turned into the drought of summer. And then Sela stop and reflect on this is what that term means. When you see it in the Psalms.

And so he's giving you his experience with unconfessed sin. With unconfessed sin, he likens it to walking out in the desert. Unprotected at the heat of the day in the summer. And that is not somewhere you want to be.

Believe me. The desert temperatures in that part of the world reach sometimes as high as 135 to 140 degrees. And it's this dehydrating, debilitating effect. And so he talks about the results of trying to ignore his sin.

And so he's speaking of it in physical terms, but it's an emotional thing. The emotional cost of sin. Do not think that sin has no cost. It does. And it has a temporal cost. Yes, it has an ultimate cost.

We all know about that. It has very real and very strong temporal costs as well. The price is high. The price is too high. But these things, this guilt, this lack of joy, this lack of peace. Uh, it is a debilitating, draining experience when you have to deal with it.

And God's hand is heavy upon you at that time. And you can count on that because like any good father, God disciplines his children. When they get out of line, like any good shepherd, when a sheep strays from the fold, the shepherd goes after him.

The shepherd will go after him. And when the shepherd finds the sheep, he is going to bring it back. And he's going to do what it needs to keep it near the shepherd. Now, people who are shepherds have related that sometimes you will run across a sheep that just keeps straying, keep straying, keep straying.

And what the shepherd will do for a sheep like that. Usually it's a little one, little lamb. What the shepherd will do for a sheep like that is break its legs. It will take that staff and it will break that leg so that now that little lamb can't stray.

But what happens at that point? The little lamb can't keep up with the flock either. So what happens? The shepherd carries that lamb until it heals. And then I am told that once that has happened, that sheep will stay closer to the shepherd than any of the others.

It will stay right there. And God works with that. You know, it's been suggested that God created domestic sheep, you know, to use as an example to believers. And, you know, you can't be dogmatic about something like that.

But we certainly do act like sheep a lot. And if you've ever been around sheep, you realize how much of an object lesson they are for us. Because sheep are probably one of the two dumbest animals on the face of the earth, at least in the domestic realm.

I mean, literally, you can take a sheep and you can put it on the other side of a rise in the pasture and that sheep is lost. It has no sense of direction whatsoever. It cannot find its way back. Which is why the shepherd, you know, modern shepherds keep a dog because the dog will go out and find the sheep.

Well, you know, if we get away from our heavenly father, we are lost. We have no sense of direction. He has to come after us. And he will do that, David says. He will come after you. And so what is the result?

Confession, Forgiveness, and the Prodigal Son

When David finally confesses. What is the result? Verse five, I acknowledged my sin. That's confession. And mine iniquity have I not hidden. I took personal responsibility. I sinned. I took personal responsibility.

You know, it's not because, you know, mother didn't take me to the zoo when I was young or anything like that. You know, I took responsibility for my sin. I will confess my transgression, I said unto the Lord and thou forgave us the iniquity of my sin.

Stop and think about that. Now, what happens? There is, first of all, complete forgiveness. It's not a partial thing. It is complete forgiveness. It is immediate forgiveness. It is immediate forgiveness.

It is not brought up again. We are prone to mentally bring up and chew over past sins. That's a sin, by the way. Because God has forgiven that sin. He does not bring it up. Now, there will be consequences to sin that may continue past the point of confession.

If, for example, the nature of your sin is such that we call it a crime. And you have to pay a penalty to the state. And you have been put in jail. When you confess your sins to God, they are immediately forgiven.

You're still in jail. Because the consequences of that sin are going to go forward. But God may, he can do one of several things. First of all, he can remove the consequences of the sin. That can happen.

He can leave the consequences there in full force. Except now, you are being given grace to deal with these consequences. Or he can reduce the consequences. He will do whatever it is best for you. And he knows what that is.

Or best for me. And he knows what that is. Back to David. When David confessed his sin, and he talks about this complete and immediate and total forgiveness. Don't forget that the first child that he and Bathsheba had died.

Consequences are still there. But he's still, David is talking about, I was forgiven immediately. And I was forgiven totally. And God doesn't bring this up again. And this is the heart of the psalm. This is the heart of this psalm.

And it should be the heart of the believer's walk. And the believer's spiritual experience. We should be able to say with David, I acknowledged my sin and my iniquity have I not hidden. And I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord.

You know, I don't know about you, but for myself, the constant confession of sin. We have some problems there. With constantly doing this. But that's what God wants. That's what God wants. And he repeats his, you notice he repeats the three words from verses one and two.

The transgression and the iniquity and the sin is all dealt with. And the slate is wiped clean. Slate is wiped clean. And then he says, pause and reflect about that. Think about that for a while. So now notice this.

God has forgiven his sin. Even before David confesses, he says, you know, I will confess. In verse five, I will confess my transgression. He has determined that he's going to do this. And even before he gets through with his confession, God is forgiving.

God is forgiving. It's very similar, if you will, to the prodigal son. The parable of the prodigal son in the New Testament. Because what happens? The prodigal son decides I'm going to go home. And I'm going to cast myself upon my father's mercy.

And, you know, because his servants are better off than I am. You know, they at least have something to eat. So I'm going to go home and I'm going to do this. And so there he goes. And when he's coming down the road, where's father?

Father's on the roof. Looking for him. And you get the impression that father has been on the roof habitually every day. Spending time up there looking for his son to come back. And when he comes, father takes off running.

Father is rushing to the son to forgive him. And the son doesn't get but the first two or three words out of his mouth before dad is already saying, you know, get the fatted calf, get the robe, get the ring, get the whole thing, put shoes on his feet, do the whole thing.

And so the son is coming back with he's made the intent. And David is saying, you know, as soon as I made the intent. As soon as I made the intent, God was forgiving because it is in God's nature to forgive.

God is ready to forgive. And he puts this in as an admonition to others. And this is the instruction part. You know, he says for everyone that is godly. Pray unto thee in a time when thou mayest be found.

Surely in the flood of great waters, they shall not come near unto him. Thou art my hiding place. Thou shall preserve me from trouble. Thou shall compass me about with songs of deliverance. Think about that.

And so David is saying, first of all, he's giving his experience to others. He's he's saying, this is what happened to me. You know, I sinned. It bore me down. I confessed my sin. God forgave me. And you should do the same thing, he's saying.

And he's also saying, do it now. Keep short accounts with God. Do it now. And God warns about this, too, doesn't he? God sends warnings periodically in the scripture saying, you know, do it now. Do it now.

Because he says, seek the Lord while he may be found. Isaiah 55 verses six and seven say, seek the Lord while he is near. The implication being that God won't always be near. And that God won't always be found.

He says, seek me where I may be found. Proverbs chapter two. There's a warning there. God says, you're going to call on me. And I'm not going to answer because when I called you, you didn't answer. The implication is you come when I call you.

Or you don't come at all. It's not your choice, folks. It's mine. God says, you come when I call and you can apply that to the life of the believer. You can also apply it to the unbeliever as well, where he says, behold, now is the accepted time.

When God calls, you answer. We live in a day of grace right now. The day of grace will not last forever. A time of judgment is coming. And so verse seven, he says, God will hide and protect the one that is penitent.

The Lord's Instruction and Protection for the Restored Sinner

In verses three and four, David hid from God. In verse seven, David hides in God. And that is what we are to do. And then in verses eight to 10, that's the promise where God speaks to the restored center.

God, suddenly it's not David talking anymore. It's God talking to the center where he promises he's going to instruct. He's going to teach. He's going to counsel. He's going to watch over. Us said is the King James says, I'm going to guide you with my eye.

And the thought here is the the guidance of a father who watches his child. You know, he's letting the child go because children have to they have to go. They have to make their mistakes. They have to skin their knees.

They have to do all those things as part of growing up. But father watches. To make sure. That he's going to snatch that child out of danger when he gets too close to the cliff edge. And God is promising that he's going to do that.

He is going to instruct us. He is going to teach us. He's going to counsel us. Give us good advice. He is going to watch over us and lead us in the ways that we should go. Let's pray. Our heavenly father, we do thank you this morning that we are your sheep, that you have chosen us, that you have drawn us to yourself, that you have put us into your flock.