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Pastor David Mitchell
This message this morning is a continuation of our study on being in the way, and it's appropriate today because we started out talking about how the ark is a picture of being in the way, realizing that Jesus Christ is not the one who points the way, but he is the way.
And so when they were in the ark, it pictures us being in Christ, and they were safe from the judgment of God. We pictured it in the Old Testament with the cloud and the fire that led Israel, it showed them the way.
They were not to go anywhere without that cloud moving, or the pillar of fire moving by night. And we also saw it in the rock when Moses asked God, can I see you? And he said, no man hath seen me and lived.
He said, but I will put you in the cleft of a rock and cover you with my hand and pass by and you'll see my backside. That rock that he was on pictures the Lord Jesus Christ. And then we went down this line.
Since we realized that the Lord is the way, we talked about the importance of the word of God, the written word, the Bible, and being in the way. And then last time we talked about the importance of the living word, which is Jesus Christ and his present work in your life and being in the way.
So today that brings us to the sovereign father of our Lord Jesus Christ. The sovereign father of our Lord Jesus Christ and how he is our ultimate way. Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life.
No man comes to the father but by me. The world doesn't like that today. The world likes to think it can go through Buddha or, more popular now, Muhammad through Islam. But Jesus didn't agree with that.
The Islamists will say, well, Jesus was a good prophet. But I think Jesus would answer and say, why callest thou me good? There is none good but one, and that's God. And he would call into question their trying to call him just a good man by saying there is no such thing as just a good man.
Only God is good. Am I God? He would ask. And the fact is, he said, if you've seen me, you've seen the father. Muhammad never said that. Buddha couldn't say that. And above it all, the only one of the three just mentioned that the father and creator of the universe raised from the grave was Jesus Christ, proving that he was who he claimed to be.
So when Jesus said, I am the way, he didn't say a way, did he? When he said, I am the truth, he didn't say, I'm one of many truths, did he? And when he said, I am the life, he didn't say, well, I can give you life.
He said, I am your life. And so we can't say that God just points us the way and then just sits here and watches to see if we'll follow the way. Because the answer would be already given if that were what he did.
We wouldn't follow the way. And we see, as we study the scriptures, that both the word of God and the Lord Jesus Christ are of ultimate importance in us being in the way. But back of it all is the father of our Lord Jesus Christ, our God, our sovereign God.
He is sovereign. He's in control of everything. Nothing happens without him being a part of it. In fact, without him being a part of it, there would be nothing to happen. And so we want to look at some of these scriptures today and see how we can be in the way because he is our way.
Turn to Psalm 32 and kind of camp out there. I've got some other verses I want you to see this morning, though. So you may have to play Bible drill for a few minutes. See if you can find some of these places quickly because I have a lot of other scriptures that I want to put to parallel what we're going to see in Psalm 32 this morning.
Let's have a word of prayer and we'll begin. Father, we thank you so much for your word. We thank you that you've given us the written word and preserved it down through the ages. We know that some of your children have died for it, been burned at the stake for printing it.
We know that the enemy has tried to burn it out of existence to destroy the word and he cannot do it for it shall last forever. It is eternal. We thank you this morning that we have a preserved copy of your word in our laps, that as we read the ink on these pages, your Holy Spirit quickens the words and brings them to life and makes them spirit in our hearts and minds and souls.
We then can hear from you, from your heart and your mind. We thank you for the Holy Spirit who can give us the exact sense of what you want to tell us this morning from these scriptures and we ask you to accomplish that in our lives for your purposes.
We ask it in Jesus' name. Amen. I want to read you a few verses that surround this passage in Psalm. Psalm 1 Kings chapter 8 verse 36 says this. You don't have to feel that you have to turn to each of these.
If you can, stay up with me. Go ahead though. It's always better if you can see them. The 1 Kings 8 verse 36 says, Then hear thou in heaven and forgive the sin of thy servants and of thy people Israel.
Now to give you a little understanding of the context of this verse, this is when the temple had been built, Solomon's temple, and he's saying if your people sin and they come to you in prayer, then, and then we sort of start this verse, then hear thou in heaven, forgive the sin of thy servants and in thy people Israel, that thou teach them the good way.
So we're talking about being in the way, God's way, walking in God's way, being in God's way. And where the world gets it backwards and most religion today gets it backwards is they feel that the walk is what causes us to be.
God says it's the other way around. Being is what causes us to walk. The new man, when you are born again and God places his own nature within you and then you learn to count the old man as crucified with Christ on the cross so that you are dead to the old you.
And at the moment of your salvation, God creates the new man. Your spirit is quickened and brought alive and connected with the spirit of God who dwells in your life. Your body becomes his temple and he becomes one with you spiritually.
That's the new man. And so you have to be there before you can do the works of God. The whole world puts it backwards. The whole world thinks that by doing you can please God. By, as the old song says, creating a stairway to heaven.
That's not the right stairway. Man cannot build a stairway to approach God. The only way that man can ever approach God is just like the Lord Jesus said, I am the way. I am the only way. I am the truth and the life.
No man comes to the Father except by, thea in the Greek, which means through or in Christ. So the only way that man can approach God is in Christ. One must receive the Lord Jesus as his personal Lord and Savior, Lord of his life.
And then the Lord Jesus will free you from every lower lord that has ruled your life such as sin, such as the devil, such as your flesh, such as the world system. He'll free you from all of those lower lords once he himself is your Lord.
And as you are born again in the moment that you receive Jesus into your heart as your Lord and Savior, a miracle takes place and the Bible says you are born again. There is a spiritual birth that's just as real, more real than your physical birth was.
In fact, Jesus said this, unless a man is born, which means the physical birth, and believeth in me, which means the spiritual birth, he says if that takes place, he shall never die. Believest thou this?
That's the good news, folks. What does the word gospel mean? We say we're going to share the gospel. The good news is that if a man is born and believeth in me, he shall never die. So we come to the place of being born again and then the Holy Spirit of God indwells our very being and fellowships with our spirit and becomes one with our spirit and lives within us and moves within us and we in him.
And then we can begin to understand, at least spiritually, how God himself is the way. It's not that we are to look at Jesus as an example, though we ought to, but it's not just that we look at him as an example and try to follow in his steps.
You would fail miserably. We talked about it in Sunday school, it was a wonderful lesson this morning in the adult class, you would fail so miserably you would be right where Apostle Paul was in Romans chapter 7 where he says, I find myself doing that which I don't want to do and that which I would do, I don't do.
So we cannot follow in his steps, we must literally be in Christ, we must literally be in the way, we must be baptized, if you will, surrounded by, engulfed by God, us in God and God in us, just as was pictured by the cloud and the fire with the children of Israel as they camped out at night, the pillar of fire would come and rest above them, above that tabernacle, even before they built the wilderness tabernacle, just the tent where Moses and Joshua went down to be with God.
It would dwell above that and then in the day it would be a cloud that they could see and God had told them, you don't move your tent unless that cloud moves, but if it moves you get your things together quickly and follow that cloud and when it stops then you pitch your tent and you stay there for however long it stays and then when it moves, whether it be at night and the pillar of fire moves or whether it be in the day and the cloud moves, you get your tent up and you move with it.
It pictured being in God, being in the way and being in exactly the right place at the right time because you are in the Lord. Well, in 1 Kings 8, verse 36, it says, teach thou that thou would teach them the good way.
In Ezra 8, verse 21, it says that we may afflict ourselves before our God to seek of him a right way for us and our little ones and all our substance, that means our economic well-being. You see, there's far too much teaching today from pulpits on prosperity, how to be rich.
God wants you to have everything, how to be rich. If you're in his will, you'll be rich and healthy, they teach. But what the Bible teaches is if you're in the way, then you don't have to worry about it.
If you are in the way, if you are in Christ, if you're walking and living your day in fellowship with the Lord Jesus Christ, the Bible says that he will show you a right way and he will show your little ones a right way and also that right way will be for your substance as well.
So walking in Christ is the answer. Psalm 18, verse 30, now we're moving closer to Psalm 32. Psalm 18, verse 30, as for God, his way is perfect. The word of the Lord is tried, he is a buckler to all those that trust in him.
For who is God save the Lord? Or who is a rock except our God? It is God that girdeth me with strength, the psalmist says, and make it my way perfect. You see, you can't make your way perfect. You can't follow any set of rules.
You can't look at the example of Jesus and say, I will follow that. All you can do is get up in the morning and by God's grace, his Holy Spirit flips a switch in your brain and you go from flesh and carnal thinking into spiritual and all of a sudden you're aware of God's presence in your life.
That hits you about the time you get in the shower. When does it hit you? When you're about to brush your teeth. It's a miracle. It's a miracle that your mind ever goes toward God. That your thoughts ever go toward God.
That is a miracle. The Holy Spirit takes you to the place where your thoughts are upon the Lord for that first time in the morning, wherever that is, wherever you are at that time. And then you have the ability, I said then, then you have the ability to respond.
God has made us responders. He initiates. Every day in your life the Lord initiates that love. You don't start it, he starts it. Every morning when you wake up, the Lord reminds you that you're saved and you know him.
And he says, I'm here and I love you. And you say, oh Lord, thank you for giving me life. Thank you for protecting my family while we slept. Thank you that you awakened my mind to your presence again today.
And I don't have to walk around like a blind, deaf, lost, crippled person in darkness. I can walk in you. As for God, his way is perfect. The word of the Lord is tried. He is a buckler to all those that trust in him.
For who is God but the Lord? It is God that girdeth me with strength and maketh my way perfect. He maketh my feet like hind's feet and setteth me upon my high places. He teacheth my hands to war so that the bow of steel is broken in my arms.
What kind of war is that for us? Spiritual warfare. Everything physical pictures the spiritual. In the Old Testament, the physical pictures the spiritual. All the battles that David fought, the physical, real battles, pictured very real spiritual battles in your life.
You battle against the flesh, the old man. You battle against the world system, philosophical system. All that you see out there, basically, is placed out there by the little g God of this world according to his system.
It's not God's system. And the devil himself. Those are the enemies. David said, My enemies hate me with cruel hatred. The same is true today. Our enemy hates us because we belong to the Lord. And that's who he really hates.
He hates the Lord Jesus Christ with his demons. And he attacks the Lord's children, you, every chance he gets, because he hates the Lord. But you know what? The Bible says that it is God who has taught your right hand to battle.
You go into Ephesians chapter 6 when you get home this evening and you'll read how the Lord teaches us to battle, spiritual warfare battle. Put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand in the evil day, the Bible says.
Because when the evil day comes, it's too late to run and try to put the armor on. You better have it on. But it's God that teaches our right hand to fight. It is God who makes our spiritual right arm able to bend a steel bow and break it as we prepare to fight in the battle that the Lord has placed us in.
We're soldiers, ladies and gentlemen. We're not on R &R on the planet Earth. We're soldiers. And so, the Lord has taught us to fight. Verse 35 says, Thou hast also given me the shield of thy salvation.
We need mostly defensive weapons, don't we? Because of all the fiery darts of the devil, Ephesians chapter 6 says, that he sends towards God's children. That shield stops them. And we have other armor that stops them.
We have a helmet. We have our loins girded about. We have our feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace and so on. But it says, The shield of thy salvation has been given to me by my Lord.
And thy right hand hath holden me up. So David talks about his own right hand and how God has given him the strength to fight the enemies that he concludes with verse 35 by saying it is God's hand after all that holds me up.
And this is such an amazing seeming contradiction to the way the world thinks at the end of verse 35. Thy gentleness hath made me great in the context of strong. God's gentleness in David's life is what made David strong in this earth.
Why was he saying this? Because David after all committed the great sin that the whole world knows about now. It was recorded. You know, that's a great picture, the fact that our sin will find us out as well.
David's great sin was recorded and yet he came and confessed to the Lord, humbled himself got right with his Lord and God was gentle to David. This made David great. Now, Psalm 2711 Teach me thy way, O Lord and lead me in the plain path because of mine enemies.
Again and again and again through the Psalms as you see the phrase thy way with reference to us being in God's way, it'll come right back and talk about because of my enemies. The important reason on this earth for us to be in the way is because of the enemies that are around us.
Remember, God has not removed them all. Just like the children when they went from the wilderness into the promised land, God said it didn't remove them all at once. It would not be good for you if I did.
You wouldn't grow. The ones that were left after Joshua died, God left them there for a long season and it tried the children of Israel. It showed the children of Israel how strong or how weak their own faith was and it caused them to grow.
God's done the same for us. Psalm 2711 Teach me thy way, O Lord, and lead me in the plain path because of mine enemies. We must be found in the way when the enemy attacks. If we are in the way, we win the victory.
Did you hear what I said? You cannot show me a time when Israel was walking in God and lost a battle. Not one. The only time they ever lost a battle was when they were in what pictured us being in the flesh.
It was when they tried to go out and fight without even consulting the Lord. They said, well, let's just go do this and they went out to do it on their own and they were defeated every time. And then what would they do?
Limp back to camp and say, O prophet of God, whichever one it happened to be, or O judge of God, or whoever God had put over them, pray for us. Pray that God would be kind and gentle to us. And now all of a sudden they're seeing their need not to go to battle without the Lord but to go in God.
And they never lost one of those. Neither will you. So it's so important that you be in the way because of the enemies that surround us. Verse 12 says, deliver me not over unto the will of mine enemies.
For false witnesses are risen up against me. Satan is called the accuser of the brethren. The word devil means slanderer. False witnesses are risen up against me. Did you know that Satan will accuse you to yourself and tell you how bad you are?
He works this one on brand new Christians all the time, or weaker Christians. They'll sin and then their conscience will burn them because of it, because they're saved and it hurts their heart that they sinned and that's good.
And then Satan will come and begin to accuse them and say, look at you, you're not even saved or you wouldn't be doing that. Anybody ever have that happen when you were first saved? The slanderer comes.
The accuser comes and accuses your own mind against yourself, against the new man. Do you know what the answer to that is? Be in the way. Be in the Lord Jesus Christ because he will teach your hand to battle that battle.
He will teach you what it means when the Bible says in Ephesians, resist the devil and he will flee from you. That implies if you do nothing, he does not have to flee. Doing nothing is not resisting. Resist is an active word.
You must learn to resist. You must study the entire word of God. These Old Testament passages that deal with battle and fighting, you think they're just historical stories about Israel. No, they're not.
They're filled with detail of how to battle a spiritual battle that is raging around you, a gentleman against your wife, against your little one, and against you. We must read all of the battles in the Old Testament in the context of spiritual warfare today and then God gives us the beautiful passages such as Ephesians 6 and many others in the New Testament.
We've got to study that and study that. Do you think David went out and could slay all of those soldiers without practicing swordsmanship? Did someone teach him to fight? Some man probably did, but who did he ultimately say taught my hand to fight?
God. Did he get that without practice? Not at all. Not at all. He made sure he was ready to resist when he had to resist, and we have to do the same spiritually. This passage of Scripture says, deliver me not over to the will of mine enemies, for false witnesses are risen up against me and such as breathe out cruelty.
I would have fainted unless I had believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Now listen, the land of the living pictures time and space. We're there. We're on the planet Earth in time.
We like to teach about the Lord, the sovereign God, the one who is outside of time. We like to realize that spiritually we are in Christ, in the heavenlies this morning. We're outside of time, but guess where we, where our body actually sits?
We're sitting inside of time. We're walking in time. And the Bible says that it calls that the land of the living. While we're still in time, we're still on the planet Earth, we're still living a physical life with a physical family.
We still have real problems. We still have a real spiritual enemy, who can use physical things against us. He can bring the whole world system against us. He can bring other people against us. He has many ways that he can fight us.
And what the psalmist says, he says I would have fainted if it weren't that I could see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Right here and now. Right here and now today I need to be able to see the hand of God in my life, in the life of my family and the goodness of God all around me.
Because I am in the land of the living and I have enemies and they hate me with cruel hatred. Wait on the Lord, be of good courage and he shall strengthen your heart. Wait I say on the Lord, David emphasizes.
He'll say wait on the Lord, he knows that's not easy for us. There's a psalm we'll get to in a few moments that is very, very applicable to us today. As we go more into a time of trial and tribulation and this Islamic thing coming in and saying that they will not be satisfied until they've killed, how many million, was it six million people and one, five million people and one million of those being children.
That is their goal in this country. They won't be satisfied until that's accomplished, then they will consider the war to be over. They've stated that publicly and we live in such a day that we are going to have to know how to fight spiritual warfare or we won't even know how to act and react physically in this world.
But what David says, he tells us to wait and remember that in the physical wars the error of the children of Israel was always to have a tendency to run.
Out, take the sword and go attack. And then.
Consult God later. How many of those did they win? Zero. It does not work. It won't work for us in this day either. We have to have the attitude of patience and waiting on the Lord because His timing is different than ours.
And while we wait on the Lord, do you know what that requires? Courage. What do you think it was like when the children of Israel found themselves up against the Red Sea and they turned around that evening and they saw the strongest, the equivalent of the United States military, the strongest army in the world, the Egyptian army coming at them at full speed with all they could see was the dust coming.
And behind them the Red Sea, they were right up against it. No place to go. How did they feel? Now let me ask you this. Did God deliver them that moment in reality? No, I don't mean in reality. In the physical realm, in time did He deliver them at that moment when they first saw the Egyptians coming?
Do you remember the story? No, He didn't. It began to grow dark and they still were caught between the enemy and the Red Sea. And they spent that whole night that way. And all they had was faith and most of their faith was in Moses.
And they didn't have a lot. But you know what they had to do all night? They had to wait. Did that require courage? Do you know what courage is? Believing in a sovereign God. Believing that God's in control of everything.
And that you're His child. He loves you more than your physical parents could ever love you. More than you as a physical parent could ever love your children. And that He is different than you dads. Because He is omnipotent.
You want to be as strong as you can be to protect your family, don't you? But you know you can fail? Did you know you could fail and lose one of your little ones? Because you're not perfect. You're not all strong.
There can be a man stronger than you that can take one away from you. There can be a circumstance bigger than you that can take one away from you. But you know what? Your Heavenly Father, there is nothing like that.
There is nothing that can take any way from Him. Anything away from Him. There is nothing more powerful than He. And you are His child. And He is sovereign. And if that doesn't give you courage, you can't have any.
So the courage came from knowing there would be deliverance because God had promised it. That's faith. And faith in an omnipotent God brings courage. So He says, Be of good courage. He shall strengthen your heart.
While you're doing the waiting, God is doing the strengthening. Think about that. It's while you're waiting and the enemy is coming and your back is against the wall, that's when God does the strengthening in your life.
That's the day you call the evil day. You say, this is a bad day. Man, all these things happen to me. Nothing's going right. People are attacking me. And you say, that's the evil day. Well, that's a good day for you because you're being strengthened.
And you're waiting on God. And God will give you the deliverance. Now to Psalm 32, verse 1. I hope you've found it by now. Before we read verse 1, I want you to let your eye just go up the page to chapter 31, verse 19.
O how great is thy goodness, which thou hast laid up for them that fear thee, which thou hast wrought for them that trust in thee before the sons of men. Verse 23. O love the Lord all ye his saints, for the Lord preserveth the faithful.
Now, verse 1 of chapter 32. A Psalm of David. It says, 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 God.
What do these first two verses imply about this blessed man? Blessed is the man whose transgression is forgiven. What does that imply? Now, this whole passage we're looking for a teaching on being in the way.
That's what we're studying. What's the first thing it teaches us? You don't get in the way by being sinless. Walking in the way does not mean you have to be perfect, or that you are perfect, or that you have never sinned, or that you won't sin again.
In fact, it starts out by saying blessed is the one who has sinned, but his sin is forgiven. Whose sin is covered. Yes, he has sinned, but in the Old Testament, since their sin was atoned for, it was covered.
You know, we're better off than that, this side of the cross, because our sins are not covered. They are totally annihilated and done away with. If you are Christ's today, if you have received him as your personal Lord and Savior, and you are in Christ today, every sin that you ever did from your birth till now, and every sin you'll do today, and every sin you'll do from today until you die and meet the Lord, is gone.
You know how I know that? Because the Lord has raised his hand above the congregation, and taken the sins of the people, and then there was a day almost 2 ,000 years ago when his only begotten son was hanging on the cross, and the Lord took his hands and placed them on his head, and transferred your sins to him, and then slew him with your sins, and he paid the price for your sins.
The Bible, ever since the Garden of Eden, has said, the day that you eat the fruit, you shall surely die. The wages of sin is death. It goes through the pages of Holy Writ, all the way from Genesis through to Revelation, almost every book of the Bible, that law, you will find that sin brings forth death.
The wages, the law of God, is that sin. The penalty for that is death. Physical death, yes, but more importantly, and more horrible than that, is spiritual death, which means total separation from God for eternity, and being placed in a place where God is not, which we call Hell, for all eternity, and never experiencing the goodness and the love of God again.
Or at all, for that matter. Now that's what spiritual death means. And yet, if you are in Christ today, because you've had that day when you received Him as your personal Lord and Savior, God, as pictured in the Old Testament by what we call the scapegoat, Exodus Leviticus, places hands on your life, taking every sin you would ever do, every evil thought you would ever have against God, placing those upon the Lord Jesus, and making Him to be every sin who knew no sin.
He had your sins because He had no sin. Your sins and mine were in His body on the tree, 1 Peter says. And then He died. And He paid, both spiritually and physically, on that cross. Remember when He said, My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken Me?
At that moment He died spiritually. He was totally separated from the Father. Totally alone. Totally in the darkness of Hell. As if we would have had to experience ourselves. And then later He gave up the ghost and He died physically.
He paid the price for sin. Blessed is the man whose transgression is forgiven, as only by that death could it have been. Blessed is the man whose sin is covered, actually now we should say removed, by the precious blood of that sacrifice, and who is our sacrifice other than the Lord Jesus Christ.
The blood that He spilled, that He shed on that cross is our atonement. That's not really totally accurate. Atonement just means a covering. Remember, it totally removed our sin. Because our sins were placed upon the scapegoat.
And if you remember what happened to that little scapegoat in the Old Testament story. Remember it's a physical story to teach you spiritual truth. What happened? He was not killed. There were two goats.
One was killed, which pictures the death of Jesus and the atoning death. But the other one, the sins were taken from the congregation, placed on the head of the scapegoat, and He was sent off into the wilderness, never to return with the sins of the people on Him.
That is what Jesus experienced when He suffered spiritual death. He went into a wilderness where there was no water. He went into a wilderness where it was dry and thirsty land because God was nowhere to be found.
And He took your sins with Him. You know, ladies and gentlemen, that is the only way you can ever stand before God because that has nothing to do with what you do with your hands, your feet, your mouth, your brain, your body.
It has nothing to do with anything you did with anything. It has all to do with the finished work of Jesus, what He did on that cross. So much happened, we can never understand it all, but we have a little understanding.
We know that one thing that happened, it says here in Psalm 32, Blessed is the man whose transgression is forgiven. But look at verse 2, Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity. You know what impute means?
That's the very transferal that happened that day of the cross, is that God took your sins every, you were future, you were yet future, you hadn't done any sin, so it's all future sins, every sin you'll ever do your whole life.
He took every one of those and imputed, as the Bible says, or placed your sins in the body of Jesus as if He had done them. He imputed your sins to Him. It's an accounting term. He took them out of your account, put them in Jesus' account as if He had done them, and that's why He had to die.
But you know what proved when He was raised from the dead the third day? That proved that He is who He said He was, and what did He say He would do? He said He would give His righteousness to His own.
So not only did God impute your sins to Him while He was on the cross, but He took the preciousness and the beauty and the love and the true goodness of God and the righteousness, all that Jesus is, He took and imputed that to you.
That's the part that's hard for you to believe this morning, but you can't be saved without faith. You must believe that God has taken your sins and placed them in Christ and slain the Lord Jesus and paid the penalty of sin, and that He has now taken His righteousness and placed it within you and imputed it to you.
Blessed is the man unto whom His iniquity has not been imputed. He never says you didn't sin, does He? He says God doesn't impute your sin to you. He imputes it to Jesus on the cross, and it's been paid for once and for all, forever.
The theologians have a phrase, they say that the blood of Jesus is sufficient. I don't like that phrase very much. I mean sufficient just is somehow not exactly the right word, although it is sufficient.
And what they mean by it, it is powerful enough and sufficient to keep you saved for all eternity, if it's applied to your life. I mean sufficient is not a big enough word. The blood of Jesus Christ for those who apply that blood by faith is everything.
It is the removal of all sin. It is the addition of the very righteousness of God to your life. That's what the born again experience is all about. And it goes on, and so He starts off by proving that being in the way doesn't have to do with being sinless.
It doesn't have anything to do with you climbing a stairway to heaven by doing good deeds or religious acts. None of that can save you. None of that can cause you to be in the way. What it has to do with is a man whose transgressions have been forgiven because another died for you, and a man whose transgressions have more than been covered, but totally removed because Jesus was your scapegoat.
Blessed is that man and blessed is the man unto whom yes, he has sinned, but God does not impute that sin. He does not count you as if you have sinned. That's what the word justification means in the Bible.
Just as if I'd never sinned. Good way to remember it. God removes the sin as if you never did one sin, but only if you're in Christ today. You cannot have it your way and be in the way. You can't say, well, I'll live a life, you know, like I want to live, and then I'll go to church all of a sudden, and I'll be walking and walking and walking.
The rich man tried that one and he came to Jesus and said, what must I do to inherit eternal life? Jesus said, well, keep the law. Oh, I've done that. I walked in the church house every time I'm supposed to be there.
I tithed every time I'm supposed to tithe. I've done all the things the law says. I've done that. Jesus said, well, you still lack. You know, isn't it amazing that salvation is simple and yet it's difficult?
You know why it's difficult, if not impossible? It's one thing for a human to be religious. It's another thing for him to say, I give everything in my life up and I let my life die. I want to walk with Jesus.
I want a relationship with a living God. I want to be with God. I want to be in God. I want to have a living, vital relationship with a living God because you know what that means? He'll mess with your life because you lose your life and your life becomes his life and his life becomes yours.
Just think about marriage. Those of you who are married, it's a better example for you. If you haven't been married yet, you're probably not thinking exactly how marriage is really going to be. You're imagining.
But those who have been married, wouldn't you agree that when you get married, even though it's a beautiful, marvelous thing you never want to not have, it changes things and you are not the sovereign of your own life anymore, are you?
You don't get to always choose where you go and what you do and what you want to do for fun and how you're going to live your life once you have a spouse because guess what? You gave your life to them and they gave their life to you and now they have a say in your life.
They have a say in where you go on Saturday night. They have a say in who you spend your time with. They have a say in how you spend your money. In fact, it's not your money. It's our money. It's the way it used to be.
It's supposed to be that way in marriage. A lot of modern... I just offended a friend of mine. But anyway, it's really our money. You know why? Because you lost your life. You know when you get saved?
A religious thing would be perfect. You could just walk in the church and then walk out and go do what you want to do. That would be great to the natural man. But what if you were attached to God and you had to go the places He wanted to go and the things He was interested in, the longer you're attached and one with Him, you become more interested.
Have you ever heard the old saying that married people start to look alike after a few years? I hope that's not true, for Charlotte's sake. I really wouldn't want to look like her either, you know. But anyway.
Anyway. Did you know that when you get born again and you begin to walk with the Lord, that the longer in time that walk takes place, the more like Him you are? That doesn't work for a person who wants to have his own life, does it?
So salvation is totally different than what the world thinks and what most churches today, unfortunately, teach. It's not a thing you can do. It's a relationship. The living, good, all-powerful, all-loving God.
It starts there in Psalm 32. We need less scripture and more time, don't we, for these sermons? We don't need less scripture. Let me race through verse 3 and following. We'll stop at verse 11, but I just want you to see how this ties in with being in the way.
You can't even get in the way without salvation, without the born-again experience, without the experience of the relationship coming alive in your life, where God is in you and you are in Him. And your life begins to become less and less yours and more and more His, because you're one.
I mean, that's from your viewpoint. From His, your whole life is His, from day one. Verse 3 says, When I kept silence, my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long. That means after David had sinned with Bathsheba.
He tried to hide it for a while. He even went so far as to murder her husband to hide this sin, thinking perhaps he could not only hide it from man, but from God. But there was a man named Nathan that was a man of God that walked up to David and looked at him and said, What would you do if you had a man in your kingdom and he was a poor man and he only had one little sheep.
That's all he had in his whole life. And there was a rich man and the rich man got hungry so he went and took that one sheep from that little poor man and slew it and ate that sheep. David's anger went from his toes to his head.
He said, I would kill that man. Nathan said, You're that man. He said, Uriah only had one thing in his life because he was a soldier. He didn't have things. He didn't have money. He had a wife that he loved with all of his heart.
He took her. David ran from that. His eyes were open to his sin. Before that, he kept silent about it. He didn't confess it to anybody. He wanted to hide it. And his bones waxed old in his body. It was like a roaring all the day long.
His conscience was killing him. He was not walking with God. He had turned his back on God because you can't do both. You can't have it both ways. And sin is in the heart after all. It wasn't the act so much as it was.
His heart was for that. And even after the act, his heart was still in line with that act saying, Well, that's what I wanted to do. Yet, it was like a roaring going on in his heart all the day long. For a day and night, thy hand was heavy upon me.
You see, if you're God's, you can't any longer be a sinner which means you don't have the sin nature. Your nature is not such that you want to just go out and sin. But you know what? Sometimes you can fail.
And you can somehow get in that flesh and believe alive Satan and that that flesh is your boss again and alive and you can pay attention to it. And you can sin, can't you? And you know, when it comes to that place where you sin, day and night, God's hand will be heavy on you because He's your Father.
He is your Father and He loves you. That sin does not stop Him from being your Father and you from being His child once you're in. Once you're in the family. You know what God never does when you sin?
He never kicks you across the street and says, Well, I'll let Him raise you. You're not mine anymore. That's what people believe who think you can lose your salvation. It's insane. It's scripturally insane.
Not mine anymore. Kick him across the street. Let that other guy, let Satan raise him for a while. That'll help him. Yeah. That's not what God does. What God does is shown here in verse 4. Day and night, thy hand was heavy upon me, the one who had done the sin.
You mean God was still with David? God's hand was still on His child? His hand was on Him, yes. But in a chastening form, in a heavy form, my moisture, my water, water pictures the life that God gives.
He says, My water has turned into drought. It's almost like I was before I was saved. I don't have water. I'm in a dry and thirsty land. It wasn't true because God was right there. His hand is on Him right now.
He doesn't sense it because He's walking in His sin and refusing to face it. And God sends Nathan. God did that as well. That was no accident that Nathan was born and reared in that part of the world and that Nathan gave his whole heart and life to God and became a man of God and that Nathan just happened by David's place that day.
No, that was all the sovereign hand of God for David's benefit, which was really for God's benefit because David is God's beloved child. Who would you rather have hurt, yourself or your child? God feels that way toward us.
That's the cross. So the Lord, as He sees this going on in David's heart and life, His heart's hurting. The Lord's heart is hurting and His hand is upon David and He is sending help. He sends Nathan. David's eyes are open.
The light is turned on. It's as if God said, My presence is still with you. But you're walking in sin. All of a sudden He came from a place where His water was turned into drought, where His heart and conscience was roaring all day and all night.
And in verse 5 He says, I acknowledge my sin. 1 John 1 -9 says, If we, that means God's children, confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. It's as if you've never sinned.
But before that, it's like a roaring inside your life. You're walking in sin. You're acting as if it's okay. You're acting as if I'm hiding this from everyone. No one knows I'm doing it because I still want to keep doing it.
It won't work. Not if you're God's child. God's hand will be heavy and all of a sudden He will bring you through His own means to the place of acknowledging to Him your sin. And that's exactly what David did.
I acknowledge my sin unto thee. My sin have I not hid. I said I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord and thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin. That's for another study some way. How can that be?
What does that mean? Forgave the iniquity of my sin. We think iniquity and sin mean the same thing. So it would be like he said, I forgave the sin of my sin. We'll talk about that some other time. But look at verse 6.
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. Do you know that that's a wonderful, gracious, blessed warning to all of mankind?
You see the gospel is for all of mankind. It's God in his love does in fact warn every man, woman, boy, and girl. And here's a place in the Old Testament where you see this warning it says, look, when the flood waters hit, it's too late.
If you're not in the ark, when the flood hits, you're not going to be saved. You're going to be annihilated by the wrath of God because you have not received his one, his only son, who he sent to death for your sin.
And you say, I don't need him. I'll make it on my own. Try swimming. See how long you can swim in the flood when every rock, every tree, every hill, every mountain is covered with water. How long will you last?
That's what it's like to save yourself. You know what? If during the day of salvation you had gone into the ark, had that been possible and you desired to do it, could you have been saved? Swimming doesn't.
It's God's way. God is the way. And what David is saying right here, he says, realize this, that when you come to the place where the floods of great waters have occurred, God will not be near to you.
He says that to the whole world, God does, but he also says it to his children by way of confession. If you've sinned as a child of God and you come to the place where you're just refusing to acknowledge it, you're hiding it, you're wanting to live in it, God just gives this warning, he says, you need to come to the Lord right now while you can.
Come to the Lord right now. Because for the Christian, you cannot lose your salvation. The Bible says there is a sin in the dead. And from the human viewpoint, we would view that as if you were taken out early.
You were taken out of this life early. You refused to be right and walked right with the Lord. God's viewpoint, it would be right on time, of course. So he says, for this shall everyone that is godly pray unto thee in a time when you can be found.
Listen, don't walk in your sin too long. Don't think, don't think for a minute that because you looked around and you didn't see God coming, closing in right behind you that you got away with the sin.
As a Christian, I'm saying. Don't think that for a moment that because several days and weeks have gone by and things have gone just great that you're hiding that from God and from people. It won't be so.
In fact, David says, race back to the Lord. David says, now Nathan did this for me. David says, let me do this for you. I'm telling you, you're the man. You're the man who has stole the land. You're the woman who has sinned.
You're the little child that's gone against God. Don't wait. Come to God right now and make it right. Confess your sin to the Lord. Now look, once that takes place, once the confession has taken place, look at verse 7.
Now art my hiding place. The very one whose hand was heavy upon you is now hiding your sin because you're in Christ and Christ is perfect and has never sinned. You have the full righteousness of God on your life because you're hidden in Christ.
Thou art my hiding place. Thou shalt preserve me from trouble. Thou shalt compass me about with songs of deliverance. If we have deliverance, what does that imply we have? If you'll answer it, I'll stop and go eat.
I look so sleepy. If we have deliverance, what does that imply we have? No. The deliverance is the salvation. We have deliverance from something. Bondage. Slavery. The enemy. All that. So he says, but now, even though you sinned, you've come back to me.
You've confessed your sins to me. You've agreed with me how exceedingly sinful it was. You've recognized by faith that I am not imputing your sin to you because you're in Christ and He was slain for your sin.
I've given you His righteousness. So now, we're compassed about with songs of deliverance. We can sing songs of deliverance. Now let me say this. We have to recognize the enemy exists, but we don't have to walk around worrying about it.
We can sing songs of deliverance, but that's only if you're in Christ walking in the Lord because from time to time we get back in the flesh. Now hopefully, maturing means that happens less often and less often and less often and more and more of the time we're walking just like this in the Lord.
But when we do get in the flesh, we have got to recognize that the enemy took advantage. And we will be in fear and we will have our back against the Red Sea and the enemy in our face at that moment. But you know what?
All you have to do is by faith recognize that your deliverer has already delivered you and come to him and confess the sin of your sin to God and say, Lord, I can't see how I even could do that as your child.
I'm sorry. I didn't mean to do it. My heart is contrite. David did this. My life is unto you. And I reject that. It's of the enemy. It's not even of me. It's certainly not of you. I don't want it in my life.
I want the life of Christ. And all of a sudden you can immediately sing the songs of deliverance. To the extent you walk that way day by day, you can keep singing those songs. I will instruct thee and teach thee in the way.
When? While you're singing the songs of deliverance. If you're not singing those songs, they picture something. I'm not saying literally you've got to go around singing all day. Although it helps. Ann tells me that's what she does at work.
She'll sing some of these songs with you as a tough day and start singing them. But this is a picture. Singing these songs is a picture of actually being in the way. Walking with the Lord hand in hand.
Having been delivered and being joyous about it. Doesn't mean your day's going all that great in the physical realm. It just means you're rejoicing because you have been delivered. That's when he says I will instruct you and teach you in the way which you shall go and I will guide you with my eyes.
So it leads you to further growth. It leads you to further understanding the way and the ways of God. It's like a wonderful cycle. That as you sin, that's the bad part, you get off the track. The Holy Spirit brings you back to recognition.
This is Nathan did. A beautiful type of the Holy Spirit. Brings you back to recognizing whose you are and who you are and you acknowledge that. You acknowledge the sin, yes, but you acknowledge who you are and that you are delivered.
Then you sing these songs of deliverance and all of a sudden he then instructs you once more of what it is. Even greater. You go deeper into the way. Keep growing and keep growing. Even more in this little passage, but I think we'll stop at that note.
Be glad in the Lord and rejoice ye righteous and shout for joy all ye that are upright in one heart. How much do we have to be thankful for that we have a Father, a Heavenly Father who is not only all love and all good, He's all powerful.
He not only wants to protect us and deliver us, He has the wherewithal to do it with no exception and He always will. I had some wonderful passages a little bit beyond this in the message about human fathers and Proverbs.
We'll get to them next time. Let's stand. We'll have to extend Father's Day for one more week at least. It means you get more presents I guess, more cards. Dear Father, we thank you so much for your word.
We thank you that we don't have to be our own deliverers because we would fail. We would lose the battle. We would be slaughtered by the enemy, annihilated. But you don't bring that to pass because you have proclaimed that you in fact are our deliverer.
You are our hiding place. Even when we sin we can confess to you and get right with you in our hearts and come back and you will hide us from that sin and you will take that sin away and remove it as far as the east is from the west.
We couldn't stay here another three hours and thank you enough for what we just read this morning. We do thank you. We thank you for the Lord Jesus Christ that he is the way the life and the truth and that he is the way to come to you.
We thank you those of us who have that relationship already. We thank you that we do. Father, if there's anyone here today who doesn't, would you please work in their hearts. If they're even concerned about it, it's such a wonderful sign that you're working in their life.
May you bring them to the Lord Jesus. May you bless our time of fellowship and the meal we're about to have together and our afternoon services and we ask it in Jesus name. Amen.