Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / April 27, 2025 | Getting Over It - Getting Over Guilt

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April 27, 2025 | Getting Over It - Getting Over Guilt · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

0:01
SPEAKER_00: So we are starting a new series here called Getting Over It.
0:05
SPEAKER_00: And uh I told you it's kind of a bad joke, but the idea is baggage, and so there's luggage up on the screen in the graphic there.
0:14
SPEAKER_00: But the the idea behind this is that every single one of us, right, we're carrying weight of some kind, okay?
0:23
SPEAKER_00: And um the weight can look like a lot of different things.
0:27
SPEAKER_00: It can be guilt, bitterness, anxiety, anger, a need for control, a whole host of different things.
0:35
SPEAKER_00: And the purpose behind this series is to really understand that uh God wants us to be able to take these things, acknowledge them, and set them down at the foot of the cross.
0:46
SPEAKER_00: That He has a plan and a hope for our healing, um, but that this isn't some kind of like divine self-help sort of thing, because that's never really been the purpose behind our faith anyway.
1:01
SPEAKER_00: Rather, it's that when we have a deeper understanding of who God is and who he made you and I to be, um, then we begin to understand how he wants us to work through these things, and in fact, the hope and the power that we have to overcome every single one of them.
1:18
SPEAKER_00: And so, what I don't want you to hear from me is that look, this is easy.
1:23
SPEAKER_00: If you trust in Jesus, all of your problems are fixed.
1:26
SPEAKER_00: That's not what I'm saying, okay?
1:28
SPEAKER_00: Barnes and Noble has a whole aisle that says that.
1:33
SPEAKER_00: But the gospel message transforms us and it gives us answers to problems that we have long wondered about, and ultimately gives us steps through Christ to tackle these things and work towards healing until such time as God takes away the problems altogether.
1:51
SPEAKER_00: So, this morning uh we're gonna kick off our series talking about guilt, talking about the weight and the burden of guilt, um, and ultimately what it looks like to carry that around for far too long.
2:06
SPEAKER_00: Uh the greatest king in Israel's history, his name was David, and David was a man uh, though after God's own heart, and was a very good king in many respects, made some really terrible choices in his life.
2:21
SPEAKER_00: Some really bad ones, hurt a lot of people.
2:24
SPEAKER_00: And one of the problems that David had was that uh he chose to wait a long time before going to the Lord and asking for forgiveness.
2:35
SPEAKER_00: And because of that, the weight of David's sin that he had upon his shoulders, even though knowing uh that God would forgive him for these things, he kept it inside.
2:46
SPEAKER_00: He sort of shoved it down.
2:48
SPEAKER_00: He didn't address it, he didn't think it was as important.
2:51
SPEAKER_00: He kind of sort of said that it wasn't a big deal, right?
2:54
SPEAKER_00: That he really wasn't sinning that much.
2:56
SPEAKER_00: There were a lot of problems going on.
2:58
SPEAKER_00: But we're going to be looking at Psalm 32, which is where King David is going to talk about, man, there were some real effects for me holding that sin down, not taking it to the Lord.
3:11
SPEAKER_00: There were some real problems that took place.
3:13
SPEAKER_00: And ultimately, as we'll see, he goes, there's joy to be found.
3:18
SPEAKER_00: Not in just understanding and knowing that God forgives us, but rather trusting that when we give those things, when we give our guilt up to the Lord, that he heals it and restores us in a way that we should all desire, that we should all seek after.
3:35
SPEAKER_00: So in Psalm 32, we're not just looking at what it means for God to forgive us, but what it means for us to go to him frequently, because holding these things back, it's carrying around a lot of, it means we're carrying around a lot of baggage.
3:49
SPEAKER_00: So, Psalm 32, verses 1 through 2, David begins, How joyful is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.
3:59
SPEAKER_00: How joyful is a person whom the Lord does not charge with iniquity, and in whose spirit is no deceit.
4:07
SPEAKER_00: Now, even just getting into this, right?
4:09
SPEAKER_00: We're talking about confessing sins to the Lord.
4:13
SPEAKER_00: And there are not many of us, when we're doing like some word association here, we'd be like, joy.
4:18
SPEAKER_00: First of all, joy, when I get to tell God all the things I've done wrong, joy, definitely top of the list.
4:24
SPEAKER_00: Not usually there, right?
4:26
SPEAKER_00: There's normally feelings of stress.
4:38
SPEAKER_00: And so when we fail to live up to those and intentionally go the other way, uh, we can sort of feel this sort of stress welling up within us, right?
4:49
SPEAKER_00: Because we're we're hesitant to go before God.
4:52
SPEAKER_00: If we don't have a relationship with God, then there could be a whole number of reasons why this is a heavy weight on our shoulders, right?
5:00
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's just who we've heard God to be is this sort of like vicious ruler, this mean king who just wants to crush everybody and lash out.
5:10
SPEAKER_00: And so we're like, well, I don't want to go to him with my problems.
5:14
SPEAKER_00: I don't want to go to him with my struggles.
5:17
SPEAKER_00: But yet, David's perspective here, which we'll get more into, is that it is joyful when we're able to lift these things up to the Lord and know that he forgives us.
5:28
SPEAKER_00: And there's two different words that David uses for sin here in Hebrew.
5:33
SPEAKER_00: And uh basically the first kind is a very specific sort of sin.
5:38
SPEAKER_00: It would be like deliberate rebellion.
5:40
SPEAKER_00: It'd be like, you know the standard, and you're like, I see that, and I'm gonna choose not to do it.
5:45
SPEAKER_00: That's one kind that he's talking about.
5:47
SPEAKER_00: And the other kind is sort of just this general catch-all word for sin, rebellion in God's kingdom.
5:53
SPEAKER_00: It's he's kind of casting this really wide net, and he's like, look, sin of all kinds, okay?
5:58
SPEAKER_00: And the Bible tells us there are different kinds of sins.
6:02
SPEAKER_00: There's sins of commission, the things we do intentionally, there are sings of omit, there are sins of omission.
6:08
SPEAKER_00: Those are the things we know we should do and we choose not to do them.
6:13
SPEAKER_00: Like we know a good thing and we choose not to do that good thing.
6:16
SPEAKER_00: That would be a sin of omission.
6:18
SPEAKER_00: And then there are even sins that we can commit, and this is one of those wild parts, where we might not know it's a sin.
6:26
SPEAKER_00: We could unintentionally walk into rebellion against God, and that's in part on us because we don't understand and have not sought to understand the standard that God has for our life.
6:40
SPEAKER_00: Point being though, David's like, this covers all of it, okay?
6:43
SPEAKER_00: All of us, Romans 3.23, would say, all have fallen short of God's kingdom, right?
6:48
SPEAKER_00: We've all fallen short of his standard.
6:51
SPEAKER_00: True, some people a little bit more than others, right?
6:54
SPEAKER_00: But at the same time, every single one of us has failed to live up to him.
6:58
SPEAKER_00: And so the point is, first John would say the same thing, like all of us are in the same boat when it comes to needing to go before God and confess our sin to him.
7:10
SPEAKER_00: Ultimately, David said, This is a joyful thing, but we can see that there's a kind of a pathway that we follow, right?
7:18
SPEAKER_00: Over here, we're going, man, I've just messed up.
7:20
SPEAKER_00: And I feel that weight.
7:22
SPEAKER_00: Maybe I've hurt somebody else, maybe I've gone against God, maybe I've done things I know I shouldn't be doing.
7:27
SPEAKER_00: I have a secret that I'm living with right now.
7:30
SPEAKER_00: And it feels like there's a bit of a gap here before David is talking about joy.
7:35
SPEAKER_00: We'll get to that at the very end of the Psalm, why really he's saying he can be joyful.
7:42
SPEAKER_00: But as it goes on in the passage, he says, When I kept silent, my bones became brittle from my groaning all day long.
7:51
SPEAKER_00: For day and night your hand was heavy on me, my strength was drained as in the summer's heat.
7:56
SPEAKER_00: Selah is kind of like a refrain, because right, these are songs, and so this is sort of something for the person who's playing it as music.
8:04
SPEAKER_00: Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not conceal my iniquity or my sin.
8:09
SPEAKER_00: I said, I confess, I will confess my transgressions to the Lord, and you forgive the guilt of my sin.
8:17
SPEAKER_00: See, David recognized that our sins place us against God.
8:22
SPEAKER_00: It breaks our relationship with Him, and it stops us from becoming the person that God intends for us to be, right?
8:30
SPEAKER_00: Being more like Jesus, what is the opposite of that?
8:33
SPEAKER_00: It's sinning against the Lord.
8:35
SPEAKER_00: It's going against him, it's doing the things we know we shouldn't do.
8:38
SPEAKER_00: And this runs so much deeper than like, you know, God just doesn't want us to have a good time or something like that.
8:46
SPEAKER_00: You have to get down to this foundational idea that if you were made by God in the image of God, then he not only understands you and knows you better than you know yourself, but he also understands and knows better than you do what it takes to find fulfillment and joy and peace in this world.
9:07
SPEAKER_00: And that there is a purpose behind your life that God has individually given every single one of us, but that discovering that purpose is not found when we go our own way.
9:18
SPEAKER_00: In fact, that ultimately brings us a lot of pain and suffering.
9:22
SPEAKER_00: Having said that, we typically blame God when we find this kind of difficulty in our life.
9:29
SPEAKER_00: You can think of it like a kid who has had their laundry pile up, right?
9:35
SPEAKER_00: Mom's not doing it for them any longer.
9:38
SPEAKER_00: And so they have this huge pile of laundry, and uh then one morning they're getting ready for school and they can't find their favorite t-shirt, and they're searching and searching and searching, and finally they get to it, but now they're late for school, they get in trouble and they come home fuming, right?
9:56
SPEAKER_00: So angry at uh mom or whomever it is who was, they think, supposed to be doing the laundry.
10:04
SPEAKER_00: And really the question is, well, who's to blame here, right?
10:07
SPEAKER_00: It was your responsibility to the child.
10:09
SPEAKER_00: Like it was you were the one who was supposed to be doing this, and yet, as you get begin to experience some of the effects of the decisions, now you're blaming one who really isn't to blame.
10:22
SPEAKER_00: And David's point when he gets to verse 3 is he says, When I kept silent, my bones became brittle from my groaning all day long.
10:30
SPEAKER_00: What David is talking about is like there is a pressure that the Lord applies to his children because he does not want us to endure the pain and the difficulty of unconfessed sin.
10:43
SPEAKER_00: And so what God will do is he'll just like turn up the heat a little bit.
10:48
SPEAKER_00: He'll crank it up just a little bit, and the the guilt that we have in our hearts, God will sort of turn our heads to pay attention to that.
10:58
SPEAKER_00: And it can manifest itself in so many different ways, right?
11:02
SPEAKER_00: It can be the pressure that we feel of living a double life, can be exhaustion from carrying around a secret, anxiety as you're bracing for things to fall apart and other people to discover what you have as a secret.
11:18
SPEAKER_00: But a lot of times it can become very physical.
11:21
SPEAKER_00: This is what David was talking about, too.
11:23
SPEAKER_00: It could be a lack of sleep, increased irritability, broken relationships, lack of motivation, a weakened immune system.
11:32
SPEAKER_00: We don't know what exactly it was that David was struggling with.
11:36
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't tell us.
11:37
SPEAKER_00: And in fact, in the fact that he gives a general description, it is helpful because we can put ourselves into his shoes.
11:45
SPEAKER_00: There's something that was going on with David that was making him feel like stuff was just building up.
11:51
SPEAKER_00: But he understood, ah, I am the one that ultimately is to blame for this, right?
11:57
SPEAKER_00: I am the one who's been holding on.
11:59
SPEAKER_00: If you're familiar with the story of David in Bathsheba, one of the great sins in David's life that hurt a lot of people, it was over a year before God confronted him with the prophet Nathan.
12:13
SPEAKER_00: And so David is just holding this thing back.
12:17
SPEAKER_00: David said it causes problems, it causes difficulties, and ultimately it's painful.
12:25
SPEAKER_00: This isn't just a Bible concept, though.
12:28
SPEAKER_00: Research has shown, same thing, in 2020, there was a study published in the Journal of Behavioral and Cognitive Therapy, which found that unresolved guilt often leads to what researchers call intrusive rumination, replaying the past over and over and increased symptoms, can increase symptoms of anxiety and depression.
12:51
SPEAKER_00: I'm telling you things that you already know, right?
12:53
SPEAKER_00: When we hold things back, when we keep them secret, when we keep them pressed down, when we don't address them, it just ratchets up the difficulty inside and the turmoil that we feel.
13:04
SPEAKER_00: So what should we do, right?
13:07
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, let everyone who is faithful pray to you immediately.
13:11
SPEAKER_00: When great flood waters come, they will not reach him.
13:14
SPEAKER_00: Lord, you are my hiding place.
13:16
SPEAKER_00: You protect me from trouble, you surround me with joyful shouts of deliverance.
13:23
SPEAKER_00: So this is one of those times where I go, okay, in the original language, right?
13:29
SPEAKER_00: What's happened here is the people who translated Hebrew into English did us a bit of a favor.
13:36
SPEAKER_00: They use the word immediately for something that is literally translated like at a fit time or at the time of finding.
13:47
SPEAKER_00: And what is what David is trying to communicate is the fact that there are moments in our life where God reaches into our heart, turns our head so that we recognize the guilt and shame in our life, allows us the opportunity to witness it so that we could act on it and address it, right?
14:10
SPEAKER_00: And that the reaction that we should have is that we go to the Lord immediately, confess that sin to him, and become restored.
14:18
SPEAKER_00: And so what they've done is they've just kind of shortened all of that process and they just say, go to the Lord immediately, which is ultimately like what we should be doing, right?
14:27
SPEAKER_00: We go to the Lord immediately when you have these things.
14:30
SPEAKER_00: Like, don't let them fester and grow like a cancer.
14:33
SPEAKER_00: Go to him and ask for forgiveness because he delivers it freely because of Christ.
14:39
SPEAKER_00: But then the question becomes: if we do look at the original language, okay, so what does this mean, though?
14:44
SPEAKER_00: There are just seasons and times where this stuff happens.
14:48
SPEAKER_00: What does it mean to go to the Lord when it is fitting?
14:53
SPEAKER_00: Can God not be found at all times?
14:55
SPEAKER_00: Yes, he can be found at all times.
14:58
SPEAKER_00: At any point in your life, you can go to the Lord, ask him to lift this weight up off of your shoulders, and he will do it.
15:07
SPEAKER_00: But, but, there are seasons of life where it becomes so apparently clear that he is trying to talk to us that David says, Oh, don't ignore those moments.
15:21
SPEAKER_00: You can think of it like, you know, if you, it'd be hard to do it if just in your backyard here in central Topeka, but if you go maybe out to western Kansas where there's a bit less light, and you look up into the sky, at any given night, if you stare long enough, you're gonna see a meteor.
15:36
SPEAKER_00: You're gonna see some shooting star.
15:39
SPEAKER_00: Might take a little bit, but you'll find one eventually.
15:42
SPEAKER_00: But then there are those times in the calendar, right?
15:44
SPEAKER_00: And they'll talk about them on the news where they're like, hey, if you want to catch a great show from this date to this date, look up into the sky and you're gonna see dozens of them in an hour.
15:55
SPEAKER_00: It's gonna be a meteor shower.
15:57
SPEAKER_00: And David is saying, sometimes in our life, there are like meteor showers where God is trying to communicate to us.
16:06
SPEAKER_00: And what this often feels like is a sense of internal conviction as we recognize the difference between us and God's standard for our life and the need to be restored.
16:18
SPEAKER_00: It can come in a host of different ways.
16:20
SPEAKER_00: It could be uh a friend comes to us and goes, hey, I gotta be honest with you, I don't, you haven't been acting like yourself.
16:32
SPEAKER_00: Is there something going on?
16:34
SPEAKER_00: The way that you just handled that person in that meeting, that wasn't like you.
16:41
SPEAKER_00: I I know that you've had some struggles lately, some really difficult things.
16:46
SPEAKER_00: Do you want to talk about that?
16:48
SPEAKER_00: It could be a worship song that you might hear on the radio that uh oddly just seems to have the kind of words that speak exactly to the thing that you're going through in your life.
17:01
SPEAKER_00: It could be a passage that we read in the Bible that does the same thing.
17:06
SPEAKER_00: I don't recommend that like just flip open the Bible to a random page as the way to do your quiet time every single day, but we've all done it.
17:15
SPEAKER_00: Most of us have at least.
17:17
SPEAKER_00: And there is always that moment when you go, huh, I'm dealing with this exact issue that I just read about.
17:24
SPEAKER_00: Maybe that you heard a message about on Sunday, and there's just this sort of tweak that you feel in your side where you go, man, this feels a bit different than normal.
17:36
SPEAKER_00: David says, grab hold of those moments, don't let them go and respond because God is trying to speak to you in this place.
17:46
SPEAKER_00: Take advantage of them while they last.
17:49
SPEAKER_00: But David casts this image of a God, I mean, you are my hiding place, you protect me from trouble, you surround me with joyful shouts.
17:57
SPEAKER_00: There's that word again, right?
18:00
SPEAKER_00: David understands the weight of his sin.
18:03
SPEAKER_00: He knows he's messed up, he recognizes that God is righteous, that God is a powerful judge, he gets all of these things.
18:10
SPEAKER_00: And yet, even being the person who's going before God saying, I've really messed up here, right?
18:17
SPEAKER_00: Even then, he says these things about God.
18:21
SPEAKER_00: He is his protector, he is helpful, right?
18:25
SPEAKER_00: He fights for him, he is a sanctuary.
18:28
SPEAKER_00: I mean, this is the language of the Psalms, which many of them David wrote, that like God is one not just who can be trusted and relied upon, but one where when we go to him, we feel comforted.
18:40
SPEAKER_00: That's not often the image that the world presents of God.
18:44
SPEAKER_00: They like to have him sort of as this one throwing, you know, smiting people from heaven.
18:50
SPEAKER_00: That's not the picture that the Bible presents.
18:52
SPEAKER_00: There are these two ideas that we have to hold in concert with each other.
18:56
SPEAKER_00: One is, yes, God is this righteous judge, okay?
19:00
SPEAKER_00: He is good, he must punish evil.
19:02
SPEAKER_00: You want a God who is a righteous judge, you don't want a God that neglects to punish evil.
19:07
SPEAKER_00: So we have this God who will not overlook sin, both in the world but in our own lives as well.
19:14
SPEAKER_00: Both the things we knowingly do and even the stuff that we stumble into.
19:18
SPEAKER_00: God says it has fallen short, and because he is good, he handles that and he will.
19:25
SPEAKER_00: But on the other side, though, right, we understand that this break in our relationship that has been created because of our sin against God, like this distance that we feel with him, that God has bridged that gap through the blood of Christ.
19:42
SPEAKER_00: And that what he did on the cross was he died and bore the weight of our sin and took the penalty so that we might be able to have access, have that restored relationship, and ultimately experience joy in our fellowship with God.
20:00
SPEAKER_00: And so David says, Lord, you surround me with joyful shouts of deliverance.
20:06
SPEAKER_00: There are some of you who have not gone to God with your struggles and with your pains and with your worries because you are scared of how he will respond to you.
20:17
SPEAKER_00: Can I say he already knows you're not revealing anything to him when you go to him?
20:24
SPEAKER_00: There's really no secret that you have for him.
20:26
SPEAKER_00: He's the one who searches our hearts.
20:29
SPEAKER_00: But that simple act of going before him and saying, I've messed up, I need help, I think you will be surprised by how gracious his response is.
20:41
SPEAKER_00: When I was in high school, I dated a girl who lived a couple hours away, and um I did not understand um how much long-distance phone calls cost.
20:55
SPEAKER_00: And I remember the first bill that our house got, which is a bit over a hundred dollars in charges, because I was talking on the phone a lot, and I remember seeing that and going, oh no, oh no, what's you know, what are my parents gonna say?
21:14
SPEAKER_00: And I I still remember going to my mom and just going, like, hey.
21:19
SPEAKER_00: I didn't even have to get it out all the way.
21:21
SPEAKER_00: I was just like, hey, and she was like, I know, I saw it, I know you messed up.
21:28
SPEAKER_00: Do you understand what happened?
21:31
SPEAKER_00: Long distance phone calls cost a lot.
21:33
SPEAKER_00: Don't do it again.
21:35
SPEAKER_00: And I remember walking away from that moment, being like, was that was that it?
21:40
SPEAKER_00: Was that because like I didn't even have to repay my mom?
21:45
SPEAKER_00: You know, I mean, there were all of these things I'd had going on in my head.
21:48
SPEAKER_00: Like, I had created such a situation, and I lovely you know, lovely mother, but I had created this situation in my head about what was going to happen and the punishment, and all of those things, how embarrassing it would be.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: And it was just, it's okay.
22:01
SPEAKER_00: I understand.
22:02
SPEAKER_00: You made a mistake.
22:03
SPEAKER_00: Don't do it again.
22:05
SPEAKER_00: And that's the way that the Lord ultimately communicates to us is this grace that we have in our life that He has given to us because of Christ.
22:13
SPEAKER_00: He goes, we come to Him and He says, I have already paid the penalty for your sin.
22:20
SPEAKER_00: Somebody has taken the blame for you.
22:23
SPEAKER_00: They have, I mean, the whole punishment and deserving, all that kind of stuff, somebody took it away.
22:29
SPEAKER_00: You don't have to deal with that any longer.
22:31
SPEAKER_00: In fact, you are a part of my kingdom.
22:33
SPEAKER_00: You are a son or a daughter in my kingdom.
22:36
SPEAKER_00: And I want you to know that you are healed.
22:39
SPEAKER_00: You are innocent.
22:41
SPEAKER_00: I don't hold it against you in this life or in the next life, right?
22:46
SPEAKER_00: I am not going to hold your sin against you because of Jesus.
22:51
SPEAKER_00: And I think that for many of us, that's not part of our situation that we replay in our head.
23:00
SPEAKER_00: We don't often think about how Christ changes this joyful experience that we can have with God.
23:08
SPEAKER_00: So, why don't we do it all the time, right?
23:13
SPEAKER_00: That's a good question that we can ask ourselves.
23:16
SPEAKER_00: So David is going to switch into a different gear here.
23:20
SPEAKER_00: And he's going to move from just telling you his experience into a little bit of life advice.
23:26
SPEAKER_00: He's going to share, and in fact, uh it sounds a little interesting.
23:30
SPEAKER_00: What we think is happening is that David is quoting to you and me something that God said to him.
23:36
SPEAKER_00: I think you'll see what I mean in a moment.
23:39
SPEAKER_00: He says, I will instruct you and show you the way to go.
23:43
SPEAKER_00: With my eye on you, I will give counsel.
23:45
SPEAKER_00: Do not be like a horse or mule without understanding, that must be controlled with bit and bridle, or else it will not come near you.
23:53
SPEAKER_00: It seems like David is sharing that God said this to him, which would be fitting for his life.
23:58
SPEAKER_00: But it's also fitting for our lives as well.
24:02
SPEAKER_00: God goes, This is what it's like to deal with you sometimes.
24:07
SPEAKER_00: This is what it is like.
24:09
SPEAKER_00: You can be prideful, arrogant, selfish, deceitful, sometimes, all of them at once.
24:18
SPEAKER_00: And God is capable of putting the bit into your mouth and turning your head.
24:24
SPEAKER_00: In fact, that's kind of what he did with David.
24:26
SPEAKER_00: He goes, David, I'm going to crank up the heat just a little bit so that you recognize what's going on here.
24:32
SPEAKER_00: God can turn your head where he wants it to go.
24:37
SPEAKER_00: But also, there's this great plea from heaven above where he goes, but would it not be easier if I didn't have to do that?
24:45
SPEAKER_00: Like, wouldn't it just be easier if you went with the grain?
24:48
SPEAKER_00: If I said, do this and you did that?
24:53
SPEAKER_00: If you understood that when I say you can have peace and joy and satisfaction, you can find purpose by following my plan, that you just went, okay, that sounds really nice.
25:05
SPEAKER_00: I would like all of those things.
25:06
SPEAKER_00: Yes, please.
25:08
SPEAKER_00: God says, but instead, why is it that you're often like a difficult animal that must be cajoled and pushed and pulled?
25:16
SPEAKER_00: And ultimately, David says, Learn from my mistakes.
25:23
SPEAKER_00: I was the donkey here in more ways than one.
25:27
SPEAKER_00: I was the one who needed God to turn my head.
25:30
SPEAKER_00: And he says, But it is the mark of a wise person who will hear the instruction of God and move appropriately.
25:37
SPEAKER_00: So David finishes his Psalm here in 32 with some encouragement.
25:44
SPEAKER_00: Many pains come to the wicked, but the one who trusts in the Lord will have faithful love surrounding him.
25:51
SPEAKER_00: Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, ye righteous ones.
25:54
SPEAKER_00: Shout for joy, all you upright in heart.
25:58
SPEAKER_00: We go, why was it that David is able to say he had joy?
26:03
SPEAKER_00: Well, this is why.
26:05
SPEAKER_00: Because he was able to trust in the Lord.
26:08
SPEAKER_00: Trusting in the Lord is more than just believing that what he says is true.
26:13
SPEAKER_00: It's also having hope in his plans for the future and knowing that they are going to come.
26:26
SPEAKER_00: David had his own sins to ask about and to confess.
26:31
SPEAKER_00: But in fact, there is an entire world that was in rebellion against God, many of whom don't trust in Christ, many of whom will not be forgiven of their sins.
26:41
SPEAKER_00: And actually, one of the odd themes that we find in the Psalms that is maybe a little weird for us today is the joy that David took in knowing that the wicked in this world would be punished.
26:56
SPEAKER_00: And that's one attitude that we can sometimes lean into as a matter of our joy.
27:02
SPEAKER_00: When we see things in this world and we go, this isn't right.
27:06
SPEAKER_00: When children are harmed, right?
27:09
SPEAKER_00: When there's war and famine and disease, when there are people, when there are so many people causing pain and destruction in this world, and we just are able to look at those things and go, there's an end to that coming.
27:22
SPEAKER_00: And if there are people behind it, man, like there's an end for them coming as well.
27:29
SPEAKER_00: All of their sins that they have built up against God, there's judgment coming for them.
27:35
SPEAKER_00: And David understood that, and that is part of the reason why he was able to say, but praise God that I am not somebody who is going to experience that wrath.
27:45
SPEAKER_00: He goes, I have joy because I know that God loves me so much and desires to have a relationship with me so much that he gave his one and only son that whoever believes in him won't perish, but instead have eternal life.
28:01
SPEAKER_00: David goes, Man, my God loves me a whole lot.
28:04
SPEAKER_00: My God loves me more than I could ever imagine.
28:08
SPEAKER_00: And that is an attitude that some of us need to think about a bit more.
28:12
SPEAKER_00: You have baggage that you are carrying because of unconfessed guilt.
28:16
SPEAKER_00: Part of it is I don't think you understand how much that is weighing on your shoulders.
28:21
SPEAKER_00: I don't think you understand the depth of God's love for you and how much He desires for you to confess it.
28:28
SPEAKER_00: But also I don't think you understand the joy that is on the other side of confession.
28:34
SPEAKER_00: Knowing that all of those, that your slate is wiped clean, and that you do not have to confess those sins any longer because God says, I didn't even write them down.
28:45
SPEAKER_00: That's the kind of joy that David is talking about here.
28:48
SPEAKER_00: What does it feel like to think about God taking away the sin of the world?
28:53
SPEAKER_00: Well, it looks a whole lot like joy.
28:56
SPEAKER_00: But as a final thought here, right, David is not just acting like this is some, I don't know, great moment at church camp.
29:05
SPEAKER_00: You think about this once, you confess to God, everything's hunky-dory forever, right?
29:10
SPEAKER_00: He goes, no, this is a lifestyle, right?
29:13
SPEAKER_00: This is a constant communication.
29:16
SPEAKER_00: This is a rhythm that we develop with our Lord and King, that we go before Him and we confess and we get rid of our guilt and we lift it up to Him, and then we live in the joy and peace of contentment.
29:30
SPEAKER_00: And so, in view of maybe trying to develop some of these rhythms, exchanging guilt for joy, which I feel like is a trade we should always take.
29:39
SPEAKER_00: In view of that, a couple things that are a few things I want to share with you.
29:44
SPEAKER_00: First is that we need to talk to God honestly every day.
29:48
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna I said this before, I'm gonna say it again.
29:50
SPEAKER_00: God already knows what's going on in your life.
29:53
SPEAKER_00: Not a single thing you can tell him that's gonna shock him.
29:56
SPEAKER_00: There are a lot of us that have hidden things, secret things, not secrets to God, not hidden to God.
30:04
SPEAKER_00: And so what this looks like is confession, really, before God takes the form of prayer, and prayer is simply talking to God.
30:11
SPEAKER_00: But if you haven't done that in a while, or if you've never done that before, it might seem weird at first.
30:17
SPEAKER_00: It does, right?
30:19
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't work like a normal conversation, but it is still a conversation.
30:24
SPEAKER_00: And ultimately what you're doing is you are sharing and diving deeper into this relationship that God wants to have with you.
30:32
SPEAKER_00: God desires to know you, to hear the burdens of your heart, and to work with you through them ultimately by the power of Christ.
30:41
SPEAKER_00: God wants that.
30:43
SPEAKER_00: And so here's what you do is you go and you just dump.
30:49
SPEAKER_00: You just share everything with him.
30:51
SPEAKER_00: There's no form.
30:53
SPEAKER_00: You can use forms, right?
30:54
SPEAKER_00: Like Jesus said, here's the Lord's Prayer.
30:56
SPEAKER_00: Here's a great example of how you can pray, but you don't have to use that.
31:00
SPEAKER_00: You just start talking to him, communicating with him.
31:04
SPEAKER_00: Share with him your burdens, share with him your joys, your thanksgiving, right?
31:10
SPEAKER_00: But also confession.
31:13
SPEAKER_00: Share everything with him.
31:15
SPEAKER_00: And then allow periods of silence to sort of take hold there, which will, again, will feel a little bit odd at first.
31:24
SPEAKER_00: But just imagine, like in any normal conversation, that's where you're taking a break to let the other person talk.
31:30
SPEAKER_00: See what God might be saying to you in those moments.
31:35
SPEAKER_00: I'll be honest with you, too, right?
31:38
SPEAKER_00: In view of this, the prescription is easy, but there's a reason why the doctor says, you know, don't pick up 20 pounds for two weeks after your surgery, and everybody does it anyway.
31:51
SPEAKER_00: It's because sometimes the easiest prescriptions are the ones that we care the least to enact.
31:56
SPEAKER_00: They seem so easy that ironically they just go by the wayside.
32:00
SPEAKER_00: One of the easiest, fastest ways for you to draw deeper in your relationship with God is to take time every day to just talk to Him honestly.
32:10
SPEAKER_00: Now, a quick word for those of you who grew up in the Catholic faith.
32:15
SPEAKER_00: This feels extra weird because we're saying that you can communicate directly with God, that you don't need to talk to a priest, you don't need to confess to another person in order to be forgiven of your sins, in order for God to hear them well.
32:31
SPEAKER_00: 1 John tells us, excuse me, 1 Timothy 2 says that there is one mediator between God and man, and that is Jesus Christ.
32:40
SPEAKER_00: And so you can pray and you can know, even if you haven't told anybody else, God hears you and is responding.
32:47
SPEAKER_00: Number two, you bring someone else into the mess.
32:51
SPEAKER_00: There are a couple places in the Bible where it talks about how the process of forgiveness and the process of removing guilt from our shoulders involves communicating with somebody else and working with them through our difficulty, right?
33:09
SPEAKER_00: There is not a secret that you have or a struggle that you have or an addiction that you have or a mistake that you've made that somebody else has not already struggled with before or is struggling with right now.
33:21
SPEAKER_00: You might feel alone in what you're going through.
33:24
SPEAKER_00: It's just because those things are hidden in secret.
33:27
SPEAKER_00: Every single person has done the same things that you have done, which is kind of comforting in its own way, right?
33:33
SPEAKER_00: There's no sin that's new under the sun, right?
33:36
SPEAKER_00: We're all stealing from people who've gone before us.
33:39
SPEAKER_00: But in that, there's actually a bit of comfort because we understand that God knows all of them and has walked with millions, billions of people through those exact same sins throughout the centuries.
33:51
SPEAKER_00: And you can be the same kind of person.
33:53
SPEAKER_00: But you should bring somebody else in to go on that journey with you because doing it by yourself can be really lonely.
34:00
SPEAKER_00: Bring somebody else into the mess.
34:01
SPEAKER_00: We might call this an accountability partner, it could be an individual, it could be a group of people, but it's somebody who knows and loves Jesus that is going to walk with you through your difficulty.
34:10
SPEAKER_00: You can be honest with them, they can be honest with you, and they can lift you up and support you.
34:16
SPEAKER_00: I had a friend text me uh just a day or two ago.
34:20
SPEAKER_00: I had been sharing with him a little bit before Easter, I was just feeling a lot of stress and anxiety.
34:26
SPEAKER_00: And he just texted me the other day and goes, Hey, I just want to check in on you.
34:30
SPEAKER_00: How are you doing?
34:30
SPEAKER_00: How are you feeling about those things?
34:32
SPEAKER_00: That relationship doesn't exist, and that encouragement doesn't exist if I'm not vulnerable, and I'm not lifting myself up in that regard, but rather that having these relationships is just a part of us being encouraged in our journey towards Christ.
34:48
SPEAKER_00: Bring somebody else into the mess, even though it requires you to be vulnerable and courageous.
34:55
SPEAKER_00: Third and finally, is that you would respond when God knocks.
35:00
SPEAKER_00: He's knocking, he is, he enjoys doing that.
35:04
SPEAKER_00: In fact, he does it frequently.
35:05
SPEAKER_00: He's not going to knock forever, though, and that is kind of an important thing to keep in mind, is that God wants you to have this relationship.
35:15
SPEAKER_00: God wants you to know forgiveness.
35:17
SPEAKER_00: God wants you to have joy through Christ.
35:21
SPEAKER_00: God died so that you could have joy and forgiveness through Christ.
35:25
SPEAKER_00: And so you might imagine when somebody dies for you, they want you to take advantage of what they died for.
35:32
SPEAKER_00: For people to just be sitting in guilt and shame and struggling with those things, to just be burdened all the time by this stuff that they're keeping secret.
35:40
SPEAKER_00: God's like, I died so you didn't have to do that.
35:43
SPEAKER_00: I died so that you didn't have to struggle in that way.
35:46
SPEAKER_00: This world is filled with struggles.
35:48
SPEAKER_00: Let's not struggle in the ways that there is actually a fix for.
35:52
SPEAKER_00: Like you don't have to live that way.
35:56
SPEAKER_00: You don't have to live with that burden.
35:58
SPEAKER_00: God wants you to respond when He knocks.
36:02
SPEAKER_00: And I think there are many of us this morning.
36:05
SPEAKER_00: I think that the Spirit is moving, and there's probably some of us that have this sort of little twinge.
36:10
SPEAKER_00: I think God is knocking right now.
36:12
SPEAKER_00: And so what I'd like to do is we're going to close in prayer together as a church.
36:17
SPEAKER_00: And what I'm going to do, giving you a heads up so you don't freak out, I'm going to be silent for a moment.
36:23
SPEAKER_00: We're going to go ahead and bow our heads in prayer, and I'm going to be silent for just a little bit.
36:26
SPEAKER_00: And I want you to use that opportunity.
36:30
SPEAKER_00: Unload.
36:31
SPEAKER_00: Confess.
36:32
SPEAKER_00: Do the thing that you know is good to do.
36:36
SPEAKER_00: We've all fallen short of God's kingdom, every single one of us.
36:39
SPEAKER_00: And it is a part of our healthy relationship with God that we go woof, right?
36:46
SPEAKER_00: Really messed up here.
36:48
SPEAKER_00: Forgive me, Lord.
36:50
SPEAKER_00: I know you will.
36:52
SPEAKER_00: Let's bow our heads.