Immanuel Sermon Audio
Psalm 32
Grab a Bible this morning, find the book of Psalms, find Psalm 32. If you got a bulletin, there's an outline where you can follow along some of the ideas that we're going to talk about this morning. Also, last week I told you that we would make some more of these. These are available out in the lobby. I saw some on the youth table, saw some on the adult table, and all it is is a reading guide through the book of Psalms. It's not tracking with the actual Psalms that we're looking at week to week, but it does track all the way through our series in Psalms, and if you follow this, it'll get you all the way through the entire book of Psalms. So you can pick one of these up. If you don't have one yet and you want one, you're a little bit behind, but I'm sure you can catch up and get back on track with that schedule. Psalm 32. Right out of the gate, if you're looking in your Bible, notice that there's a note with Psalm 32. We talked about these notes last week, that they're not added later by translators, but they're original to the Psalm. And the note here in Psalm 32 says, "A maskal of David." And in your Bible translation, there may be a little note by the word maskal, a little sort of a footnote that you can go down and they give you some sort of explanation. I'm going to be really honest with you when it comes to the word maskal. Nobody has any idea what that word means. Bible scholars think it probably is some sort of musical term, some sort of description of the tune of the song or the cadence of the song or something like that, but we really don't know exactly what that word means. What we do know from this note is that David wrote Psalm 32. He's the author of it. And we also know that it's a penitential Psalm. We talked last week about penitential Psalms. We looked at Psalm 51, and I told you Psalm 51 was a penitential Psalm. There's seven of them in the book of Psalms, 6, 38, 51, 102, 130, 143, and then the passage we're looking at this morning, 32. And the idea of being penitent means that you're sorrowful. It means that you're remorseful. It means that you feel broken over your sin and you're coming to God in confession and in repentance. When you read these seven Psalms, they all communicate that idea, probably none better than 51 that we looked at last week and 32 that we're looking at this morning. I want you to understand that those two go together, and I mentioned this last week, if you want to know the back story for Psalm 32, then you need to go back and you need to check out 2 Samuel 11 to 12, and you need to check out Psalm 51. So when you go to 2 Samuel 11 and 12, you're going to read the story of David and his sin with Bathsheba and all the mess and all the fallout that went along with that. And at the end of it, the prophet Nathan comes to David and confronts him with the story about a lamb that we talked about last week, and he confronts David saying, "You're the man. You're guilty of this sin. You have done what has now made you so angry." And David repents. He confesses his sin to God, and Nathan assures him, "Your sin is forgiven." After his repentance, David sat down and he penned Psalm 51. And the note on Psalm 51 tells us this was written in connection with David's affair, with Bathsheba, and all of that nonsense, all of that mess, and it's a psalm of repentance. But in Psalm 51, we saw last week one of the things that David said to God is, "If you will forgive me, if you forgive me of this transgression, then I'm going to teach other people about your grace and about your mercy." You made a promise to God. If you do this for me, then I promise I'm going to do this, and God forgave him, and David kept the promise he made in Psalm 51 by turning around and writing Psalm 32. So the emphasis in 51 is more on our sin and repentance from sin. The emphasis on 32 is on what God does for us in forgiving us of our sin. And so you can put it this way, this is on your outline. Psalm 32 contains the words of a forgiven sinner teaching other sinners about God's forgiveness. He's not just talking about something that's theoretical, he's not just talking about something he's read in a book, he's talking about something very, very personal that he's experienced in his life, and he promised God, "If you do this for me, I'm going to teach other people about your grace and your mercy and your forgiveness," and he's doing that here in Psalm 32. So with all that said, look in your Bible, and we're going to read Psalm 32. It says, "A masculine of David, 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 cover 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 prayer to you at a time when you may be found. Surely in the rush of great waters they shall not reach him. You are a hiding place for me. You preserve me from trouble. You surround me with shouts of deliverance. I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go. I will counsel you with my eye on you. Be not like a horse or a mule without understanding which must be curbed with 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 up right in the heart. Father, as we come to Your Word this morning, we want to come humbly, and we want to come acknowledging our sin and our iniquity and our transgression, and we've talked about that last week. We've seen it in Psalm 51. We've seen and read this description of who we are, left to ourselves apart from Your grace. This morning, Father, we want to understand what it means to be blessed by You and what it means to be forgiven by You, and so we pray that You would open our eyes to the truths of the gospel that we read in this passage. Help us to understand what it means for us today in the year 2016. Father, when we're done looking at this psalm, help us to respond to You with rejoicing and shouts of joy praising You for who You are and all that You've done for us. We pray in Jesus' name, amen. I want to tell you about a guy named Augustine. Sometimes you hear his name pronounced Augustine, but I always heard of Augustine, and so I go with Augustine. He lived a long time ago. He lived about 300 years after Jesus was on the earth, and Jesus lived and died. About 300 years later Augustine came around. He lived most of his life in North Africa, which we think of as Muslim territory, but at this point in world history it was run by the Roman Empire. They controlled it, and it was the hotbed of Christianity, the best and the brightest, the most sharp bishops, the best authors, the greatest apologists. They were all from North Africa, and that's where Augustine was from. He grew up. He had a mom and a dad. His dad's name was Patricius, and he worshipped the Roman pantheon. He worshipped all the gods of Rome and thought that that was what he should do and what his son should do. His mom's name was Monica, and Augustine was blessed that after his mom and his dad got married, somehow someway his mom converted to faith in Jesus Christ. She left behind this idolatry in these little g-gods, and she worshipped the one true God, and she did everything that she could do to lead her son to the point of becoming a follower of Jesus Christ. She prayed for him constantly. Augustine talks about that in some of his writings. His mom just spent hours and hours praying for him. She took him to church. She tried to teach him the gospel, not just dragging him to church, but talking about the gospel with him at home. Story goes that as a child, Augustine thought about becoming a Christian. He got right up to the point of decision, and his mom thought he was going to make a profession of faith, and at the last minute he backed off, and he said, "No, I'm just not ready to do that." He went on as a young man in what we would call teenage years in early adulthood to live a life of very prolific, very immoral, wicked, just sin, just a life filled with sin. He spent about nine years in what we would call a cult. There was a false teacher named Manny, and he started this religion, and he followed him and did all of the things that took place in this sort of cultish-like sect group. For about 15 years he had a concubine that he never married, and so you can imagine all of the sin issues that go along with that, and he wasn't sorry about that, he wasn't repentant about that. Augustine himself says, "You can list all the things that I did, but the worst sin in my life was pride." He said, "When you get down to the bedrock, the real issue in my life is that I was a prideful person." He says, "Here's how my pride manifested itself. I wanted to be first in everything in life. I wanted to be the smartest, I wanted to have the most power and influence." And he said this, this is his own words, "When it comes or when it came to wickedness, I wanted to be first in wickedness. I don't want anybody to be more immoral than me. I want it to be the best in everything, including being a wild, immoral, wicked, sinful person." And so he did that. What he didn't realize is that all throughout that rebellion, God was sort of chasing him down, gaining on him, seeking him out. His mother continued to pray for him. She never stopped praying for him. He was befriended by the bishop of Milan, a man named Ambrose, and they had correspondence and discuss things together, and Ambrose began to try to work on Augustine and share the truth with him. And then by his own testimony, one day Augustine decided to read the Bible, and he's reading the Bible. He's reading God's word, and he says, "As I read it, the light bulb went off." That's not what he said, they didn't have light bulbs then, but he just said, "I got it. This stuff that had seemed so foolish to me, all of a sudden just, it made sense." And his favorite passage in all of the Bible was Psalm 32. Now think about this, Augustine, whether you're Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, or whatever, this guy is recognized as the most influential follower of Jesus Christ, not named Jesus or Paul, the most influential person for the cause of Christianity that has ever lived. And he says from the day that he was converted till his death, my favorite passage is Psalm 32. In fact, when he was dying, he was sick. He couldn't get up anymore. He was just laying on a bed in his room, and he just had trouble moving around. He had trouble picking up his books. So he had an artist come into his room and etch Psalm 32 onto the wall right next to his bed so he could read it. He knew it. He hadn't memorized, but he wanted to see it and he wanted to think about it and he wanted to be reminded of it. I think the reason that Augustine loves Psalm 32 so much is that he could relate to the man who wrote it. Like David, he had been guilty of what we would call very serious, gross, prolonged immorality, and like David, he came to the point in his life where he saw his own wickedness for what it was. He stopped making excuses for it. He stopped pretending it was not that bad or not that big a deal, and he just saw it for what it was as ugly, immoral, rebellion against God. But then he also saw the glory of God's grace and his mercy and his forgiveness, and he saw this spelled out. Not only in Psalm 51 were David repents, but especially in Psalm 32 where David writes about and sings about God's grace and his mercy and his forgiveness. And so this morning, here's my hope. I hope that we're going to talk about sin briefly. I hope you see it for what it is. And you may be sitting here this morning saying, "You know, I've never done anything like David did and all that adultery and the murder and the conspiracy and the lying and all that. I've never done anything that bad." Say, "Guston, he sounds like he was a real piece of work for many, many years. I've never done anything that bad. But listen, the Bible's clear that we're all sinners." And when you read what the Bible has to say about our hearts, this thing is beyond debate. It's beyond arguing. We're all a lot worse than we'd like to think we are. And so this morning, I hope you see your sin for what it is. But then I hope you also see God's grace and his mercy and his forgiveness as God describes it through David in Psalm 32. So one simple question, we're going to give some answers from the text. What does Psalm 32 teach us about forgiveness? First answer is this. The forgiven, those who are forgiven, are blessed by God. If you are a forgiven person, you have received God's blessing. And let's be honest, we all want to be blessed by God. We pray for it all the time. We pray for it for our food, bless this food. We pray for it when we pray for our missionaries, bless our missionaries. We pray it on days like Mother's Day where we say, "God, please bless our mom." The problem is a lot of the time we have no idea what we're actually asking God to do. What do you actually want him to do when you say, "Bless this food," or, "Bless my mom," or, "Bless our missionaries"? Well David sort of backs up here and he gives us a pretty good definition of what it means to be blessed by God. Look at verse 1 and 2. He says, "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." There's three words right there that we saw last week in Psalm 51. The exact same words David used in Psalm 51. The first one is transgression. He's talking about our need and he says we're transgressors, meaning God draws a line in the sand, we toe that line, and then we boldly and willfully and rebelliously cross it. That's a transgression, crossing a boundary. And then he talks about sin. We saw that last week. It's the idea that you've missed the target. God says, "This is what you need to shoot for, this is what you're aiming for, and we miss it." We don't hit the target in our lives. And then he talks about iniquity, which we mentioned last week. It's taking a good thing and twisting it until it becomes a bad thing. And David says, admitting, just like he did in Psalm 51, "I'm guilty of all these things. I've crossed the boundaries, I've fallen short of the standard, and I've taken good things in my life that you blessed me with, and I've twisted them until they became bad things." But then he counters it. In verse 1 he talks about forgiveness. Forgiveness, whose transgression is forgiven. It's the idea that you've released a debt. You let go of a debt. And he talks about a covering in verse 1, that's a simple idea. God has put something in my life to cover me, and to cover my sin. And he talks about counting, or maybe your translation says reckoning. It's an accounting term, bookkeeping term, that means to cancel a debt, to forgive a debt. And David acknowledges his sin for what it is, transgression, forgive sin and iniquity. And then he talks about forgiveness and covering and not having his sin counted against him, or reckoned against him. And this is what I want you to understand. This is the most basic fundamental idea of what it means to be blessed by God. For you as a sinner, guilty of iniquity and transgression, to have that forgiven in your debt canceled and to have your sin covered. And want to be blessed by God. I know that you do. I want to. This is the most basic idea of what it means for a person to receive God's blessing, is this idea of the forgiveness of our sins. So here's the second answer. This one is really important. Forgiveness is not automatic. What does the Psalm teach us about forgiveness? It's not automatic. Look at verse 3 and 4. David says, "I kept silent when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through groaning all day long, and day and night your hand was heavy upon me. My strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. There was a time in David's life where he was guilty of this wicked immorality, this sin, this rebellion, this transgression, all of it. And he kept silent about it. He shut it up inside like it really wasn't that big of a deal. He didn't want to talk to God about it. He just wanted to pretend like it wasn't an issue. I'm telling you, you need to understand that forgiveness is not automatic because David says, "In that time of my life, your hand of discipline was heavy on me. And I literally felt like I was wasting away under the weight of my own sin." It's not automatic. You don't get forgiven of your sin just because you're a human being. Listen, our culture and our society has forgotten this. We think today that God's job as God is to forgive. That's what he's there to do. Most people today are quick to admit, "I'm not a perfect person. I've made mistakes. I have my issues." But we really believe God exists just to forgive. That's what he does. It's just sort of an automatic thing. I give you one example of this. I could give you thousands. You could give me a thousand. I'll give you one example. A few years ago, I was watching the Grammys. I don't usually watch the Grammys, but I'm watching the Grammys and there's this performance about halfway through the show, and a couple of guys, they come out and they're singing this song about love. It's a love song and these two guys are singing it. And then in the middle of the song, sort of the stage kind of like opened up and these people come out, and there's all these couples. There was 33 different couples that came out on the stage, and I'm just going to be vague and say there was all sorts of couples that came out. All sorts of couples come out. And there's a person sort of standing there, and in the middle of this song, they sort of go to a musical interlude or whatever your musicians would call that, and this person in front of all these couples, they do a live wedding in the middle of the song, right in the middle of the Grammys for all these different various couples that are standing out there, and they have this whole wedding thing, and it was interesting. And up to that point, not any of it surprised me, okay? Up to that point, I thought, I mean, this is where we're at, this is where we live. I wouldn't expect anything less or anything different. Here's what really surprised me, maybe it shouldn't have, but it did. What surprised me is that they tried to make the whole thing feel like church. So the person standing up there officiating over the service was dressed like you would see a pastor dressed in a movie, it was obvious, that's what the look they were going for. And they had a choir behind the pastor, they had a choir of people, it was not just background singers, it was very intentionally supposed to be a choir, and when you see a choir, you think, "Oh, that's church," and the decorations that they brought out when that stage sort of opened up, it was clear, stained glass windows, different things, they want this to feel like a church, and then this is the part that really shocked me. Somewhere in there, the choir starts singing the words from 1 Corinthians 13, starts singing the Bible in the middle of the celebration, and it surprised me because I sat there and I watched it and I thought, you know, there's not a person on that stage that goes to church. None of them, not a person on that stage that's an active part of a local church, no one. And there's not a person on that stage that believes what the Bible has to say about marriage, no one. Why go to all the trouble to play pretend church if you don't want to go to church and believe what the Bible says? Why sing about the Bible if you think it's just an antiquated, outdated, old, silly book? So I'm chewing on that and I'm thinking about it, why do that? And there's an answer, maybe you're smarter than me, maybe you know it immediately and you didn't have to think about it, but here's the answer. In our society and our culture where we're at today, people believe that there is a God up there, the vast majority of Americans believe in a higher power. However, in our day and age, people believe that higher power is good with you being whoever you want to be and doing whatever you want to do. He wants to affirm you in whatever choices you may make and as long as you fit this vague definition of being a nice person, it's all good. Look, we've moved one step past the point where we think forgiveness is automatic. That's one step in the wrong direction, to get to the point where you say God just exists and He forgives me, He just, that's what He does, He's God. We've moved past that to the point where we say we're not even really in need of forgiveness. It's just sort of, you know, He affirms us, He's for us. You don't have to just back up to the point where you say it's not automatic, but you got to back up another step to Psalm 32 and to say, "Listen, the God of Psalm 32, you don't have to like Him, you don't have to believe in Him, you don't have to be a part of His church." But the God of Psalm 32 is willing to forgive you just as you are. He did that to David, He did it to Augustine, He'll do it for you. He also wants to change you into the kind of person that He wants you to be and that He created you to be. And David just reminds us of something that we've sort of lost in our culture. Forgiveness is not automatic, and you see that when David says, "I kept silent about my sin and it was as if I was being crushed under the weight of my own iniquity." It's not automatic. Number three, here's some hope, confession leads to forgiveness. Verse five is a really neat verse. David says, "I acknowledge my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity. I said, 'I will confess my transgressions to the Lord, and you forgave the iniquity of my sin.'" This is a funny thing. David says, "There was a time where I tried to cover it. I tried to hide it. I didn't want to talk about it. I didn't want to pretend that it was an issue. But when I got to the point where I didn't try to hide it anymore and I confessed it to God, you covered it for me. You forgave it. You dealt with it. Once I quit trying to stuff it down in the corner and pretend it wasn't there, you took care of it. And that happened when he confessed his sin. Verse five, "I will confess my transgressions to the Lord." I really think what David's describing here in Psalm 32.5 goes all the way back to the Day of Atonement. You can go back and read about that in the book of Leviticus. Right in the middle of the book, there's this interesting chapter. All these laws before it and all these laws after it. But right in the middle is the heart of Leviticus, and it's the Day of Atonement, and it's the one day of the year where the high priest of Israel would get to enter the most holy part of the tabernacle. And he had to do several things before he could go in there and represent the people. The first thing they had to do is offer a sacrifice for his own sins, because he was a sinful man. So he offered this sacrifice to pay the price, to pay the penalty for his sins, and he confessed his sins personally over this animal, and they slaughtered it. After that was done, it was time for the high priest to represent the people, and he took two goats. It's one of the strangest things in the Bible. It's the only day that they did this. They took two animals, and they cast lots for them. And they said, "One of these animals is going to be the substitute, and one of them is going to be the scapegoat. One of them is going to die, and one of them is going to live." So they took the first goat, wherever the lot fell, and the high priest would lay his hands on the head of this animal and confess, not his sins, because he's already done that, confess the sins of the people. And when he was done doing that, they killed the goat. They took the blood of that animal, and he went into the holiest part of the tabernacle, and he sprinkled it on the ark of the covenant as a covering. The blood was a covering on the ark. You say, "Well, what's so important about the ark? What's the significance?" Inside the ark, there was three things. First thing that was in the ark were the tin commandments that God gave His people. The tin commandments, they had broken. Also in the ark was Aaron's staff that butted, a dead piece of wood that butted out with the live shoot. That happened when God's people rebelled against God in His chosen leader. Also in the ark was a jar of manna, the bread that God gave His people to eat when they wandered around in the wilderness, that He gave them right after they grumbled and complained that God had rescued them from slavery. You understand, everything in the ark reminded the people, "We're bad folks. We are sinners all the way through and through. We have been sinning against this God from the beginning." And this blood of this first animal is brought in once a year for the sins of the people and it's sprinkled on the ark to cover the sins, to cover the reminders of their sin. It's a covering. David talks about that in this song. Then they take the second goat, the priest takes his hands and he puts his hands on this goat and he confesses the sins of the people and they drive this goat away out into the wilderness. And it's a visual picture, a visual reminder that God has not only covered your sins but He's removed them from you, He's taken them away. And all of it hinged on the idea of confession. All the way through, you read about the high priest, he's laying his hands on the head of this animal, he's confessing the sins. When they acknowledge their sin, God deals with it. But if you want to pretend like sin's not a problem for you, you're going to bear the weight of it. And just like David says, it's going to crush you. You do need to understand that when you read about this day of atonement in the book of Leviticus, it was never about goats at all. It was always pointing the people forward to their true need that would be met in Jesus Christ. Look at these verses from the book of Hebrews, put the first one up for me. Hebrews 922 says, "Without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins." That's a general principle. Sin leads to death. And if there's going to be a payment for your sin, there has to be death. There has to be the shedding of blood. Look at the next verse from Hebrews, 10, 4. It's impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. Now that's a head scratcher, because you've read all these sacrifices in the Old Testament where they're killing all these animals and the author of Hebrews says, "They weren't really taking away sins." It really didn't work like magical, like a goat could die for a human. It doesn't work that way. And the last verse in Hebrews to see is this, 9-1. When Christ appeared as a high priest, He entered once for all into the holy place. Not by means of blood, of goats and calves, but by means of His own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. All those sacrifices pointing the people forward, and you and I live on the other side of the cross and we look backward and we understand blood has to be spilled and Christ spilled it. And if my sins are going to be forgiven, if I'm going to confess my sins to God, it's not only acknowledging to God that you're a sinner, but it's also saying, I need Jesus. I'm confessing my inability to save myself and I'm also confessing I need you to do for me what I can't do for myself. And I'm confessing that Jesus died for me. So confession leads to forgiveness. Number four, and we'll go through these last three quickly, confession is an urgent matter. It's urgent. Verse six and verse seven, let everyone who is godly offer a prayer to you at a time when you may be found, at a time when you may be found. You need to understand that sometimes in life, there comes a point where you cross a line and there's no crossing back. The Bible describes that this happened with Pharaoh. God hardened his heart, Pharaoh hardened his own heart, and he got to the point where there was no turning back. The Bible describes this same thing happening with Judas, a man who spent three years stealing from Jesus in secret, hardening his heart, and he crossed a line and there was no coming back. So maybe that happens in your life or somebody you know, you just harden your heart, you think it's a game, you think you can wait, you think you'll do it later, and then later you're not interested, you maybe you've crossed that line. It's an urgent matter. Maybe it's an urgent matter for you because of a sudden or an untimely or an unexpected death. I don't ever want to scare anybody into accepting Jesus, but let's just be honest, you're not promised tomorrow any more than I am. It's urgent. Don't put off for tomorrow what you can do today when it comes to your relationship with Christ. Number five, sin makes us beastly and destructive, verse eight, nine and ten. It's a strange thing that we really believe sin is going to make us happy. We really think doing what we want to do the way we want to do it will bring us joy or happiness or peace or contentment. It can't. It won't. If it says in here, in these verses, that sin actually makes you like a horse or a mule, like an animal, right? The original lie, we read this in my house, Family Devotions last night, the original lie that Satan told Adam and Eve is, if you do this, it will make you like who, like God. It will make you greater than what you are right now, and it's a lie. It doesn't make you like God, it makes you like a farm animal, it makes you foolish, it makes you stubborn, it makes you less than human. It's not going to make you happy, it's going to make you beastly, and it's destructive. David says, "Many are the sorrows of the wicked. Many are the sorrows of the wicked. Sin will destroy you, and it will destroy the people around you." I know that in your life and in your mind when you think about the things that you struggle with, I know that you really think, "I can keep this contained." I can keep it small, I can put it in this little box in the corner of my life, and nobody's going to know about it, it's not affecting anyone else, it's victimless, it's harmless, it's not, it's not, it will destroy you, and it will destroy the people closest to you if you leave it alone. It will grow like a cancer, it will spread to every corner of your life, and it will affect everyone that you care about. It's destructive, and it makes you beastly. Lastly, forgiveness demands worship. Verse 11, "Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, O righteous, shout for joy, all you upright in heart." Everything in verse 11 is a command. It's not a suggestion, it's not a recommendation, it's David saying, "If you have experienced God's forgiveness, this is what you need to do. You need to praise God, you need to worship God, you need to be glad in God. Don't wallow in fake guilt over your wickedness, be glad in the forgiveness that God is offering you. Shout for joy, all you upright in heart. All of those commands in verse 11 are plural commands, they're corporate commands. David's not talking to you as the individual, he's talking to us as the people of God, and he's saying, "If you have experienced the grace and the mercy and the forgiveness of God, the only fitting response is worship." That's important, listen. He doesn't say, "If you experience the forgiveness and the grace and the mercy of God, you need to now pay God back." That's not what we're talking about. He's not saying, "Now God's got you on the hook, and you owe Him." That's not what he's talking about. He's talking about responding to God, saying, "You have done for me what I could never do for myself. You've done everything that needed to be done to save me, to forgive me, to provide the substitute who shed its blood for me, and we're praising you as God for who you are, and for all that you've done to forgive sinners like us." So that's Psalm 32. I want to pray for you, and then we're going to worship together. Father, we're grateful for this Psalm that teaches us about your forgiveness and your grace and your mercy. Father, I pray for the folks in the room who are covering their sin, and they're hiding it, and they're trying to pretend like it's no big deal. They think it won't spread. They think it won't affect other people. They think it can stay small and contained, and Father, I pray that you would open their eyes to the truth. I pray that your Word would cut them to the heart and help them to understand reality. Father, I pray that we would see our sin this morning for what it is, is crossing the boundaries that you've set, is missing the target that you've put before us, and is taking your good gifts and twisting them into idols, into stumbling stones, into occasions for sin. Father, we thank you that when we confess our sin to you and our need for a Savior that you forgive us, that you are gracious, that you're merciful, that you're slow to anger, you're abounding in steadfast love. Father, we want to respond to you as our Creator and as our Savior through worship. We want to sing to you. We want to sing about you. We want to sing your praises. And Father, as we sing together, we pray that you would receive our worship. We pray in Jesus' name, amen. [BLANK_AUDIO]