Sermons
Summer In The Psalms Pt 2 - The Cry Of Repentance
(upbeat music) - My name is Michelle Moore. I have the privilege this morning of reading from the word of God. I invite you to stand as I reach Psalm 51 in its entirety. Be gracious to me, God, according to your faithful love, according to your abundant compassion, blot out my rebellion, completely wash away my guilt and cleanse me from my sin. For I am conscious of my rebellion and my sin is always before me. Against you, you alone, I have sinned and done this evil in your sight. So you are right when you pass sentence. You are blameless when you judge. Indeed, I was guilty when I was born. I was sinful when my mother conceived me. Surely you desire integrity in the inner self and you teach me wisdom deep within. Purify me with hyssop and I will be clean. Wash me and I will be whiter than snow. Let me hear joy and gladness. Let the bones you have crushed rejoice. Turn your face away from my sins and blot out all my guilt. God, create a clean heart for me and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not banish me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore the joy of your salvation to me and sustain me by giving me a willing spirit. Then I will teach the rebellious your ways and sinners will return to you. Save me from the guilt of bloodshed, God, God of my salvation and my tongue will sing of your righteousness. Lord, open my lips and my mouth will declare your praise. You do not want a sacrifice or I would give it. You are not pleased with a burnt offering. The sacrifice pleasing to God is a broken spirit. You will not despise a broken and humble heart, God. In your good pleasure, cause Zion to prosper, build the walls of Jerusalem. Then you will delight in righteous sacrifices, whole burnt offerings. Then bulls will be offered on your altar. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we're amazed by your faithful love and abundant compassion to us. May we approach the hearing of your word with a clean and humble heart. Help us to comprehend the impact of our rebellion and experience of fresh the joy of the salvation you've made possible through the sacrifice of your own precious son who paid the cost on our behalf. Speak to us now through Pastor Daniel as he shares a message your spirit has put on his heart this week. May our lives reflect our understanding and our mouths declare your eternal praise as we go. Amen. Amen. Thank you, Michelle. You may be seated. My name is Daniel. I'm one of the pastors here. I'm usually helping to lead worship, but Brad and the team did a great job this morning and that makes my heart glad. We're in the middle of a series called Summer in the Psalms. And what we're looking for is the gospel in the Psalms, in the songbook of Israel. And the sermon this morning is called the cry of repentance and it is Psalm 51. Last week we were presented with a problem from Psalm chapter two. If you haven't listened to that sermon, you should. But the problem is that there is a Lord and his anointed King who has been established forever. His kingship has been established forever and every square inch of the universe is his. All authority in heaven and on earth are his. Every nation is his inheritance. Every soul that has been or will be is obligated to obey him. Every person and family and tribe and nation owe their allegiance to this Lord and his anointed one. And humanity has been given a special role in this. We've been made his regal representatives, the authoritative representatives in the earth. We are ambassadors who have been sent out to reveal in our words and in our work the truth about God to all creation. But we have engaged in a rebellion. We have sought to cast off his rule over us. We have suppressed the knowledge of him in our own minds and hearts and we have encouraged others to suppress the knowledge of him and theirs. And though our attempts to throw off his authority are comical, the consequence of our rebellion is real and it is devastating both temporally and in eternity for what must any good King do to his ambassador who participates in a plot to overthrow him. Song two would say that that ambassador should be shattered like pottery with the rod of iron. But song two also presented a solution. We are invited to take refuge in the very King that we've rebelled against. We are invited to come and kiss the sun, to come to Christ and declare allegiance to him and to his kingdom and to serve him the rest of our days. But that presents another problem. If you are already a traitor, how can you be trusted? I am sure Benedict Arnold had come back to the Continental Army after handing over West Point and joining the British and said, hey guys, it's really too bad about that West Point debacle. Am I right? Anyway, I'm back and really, really, this time I promise I am with you all the way to the end. I'm sure there would have been more than a few skeptics about his claims of loyalty and we have a similar issue. You see, we don't need to just say that we have abandoned our rebellion. We need to be changed. We need to become something other than a rebel. We need to be transformed. One might even say we need to be converted from one who hates God and hates his rule into one who loves God and his kingdom. So how do we know when this process has genuinely happened, when we have actually been converted? Well, this is kind of the main idea that I'm pulling out of Psalm 51 here. Genuine repentance for sin is the mark of a genuine convert. Genuine repentance for sin is the mark of a genuine convert. And Psalm 51 is a case study in repentance. It is written by one who is called a man after God's own heart, somebody who we would call a genuine convert and we'll examine some of the elements of genuine repentance and conversion found within this text. Specifically, we're gonna look at three elements. Guilt, God, and glory. Point one is guilt. David is writing this Psalm in the aftermath of God's confronting his sin with Bathsheba through Nathan the Prophet. Jeff and Ryan preached this whole saga a few months ago. Great sermons, go back and listen to them. But we do need a quick summary here. David's committed a tremendous evil by taking Bathsheba. Uriah's wife, Uriah was one of his best men by taking him and then he compounds this evil repeatedly in his attempt to cover it up even to the point of murdering Uriah. And when Nathan comes to him, he tells David a story about a rich man who has stolen and destroyed a weaker man's prized possession, this sweet little innocent lamb. And David becomes enraged and he orders that this injustice beset right, that the rich man, this rebel against all that is decent and holy deserves death. And Nathan's next words stop David cold. He says, you are that rich man. You're the one who has rebelled against and despised God and his word. And what did David do? Did he pull us all and start throwing out excuses about why he really needed to do this? No, he simply says, I have sinned against the Lord. And then he writes this song. He writes this song, which is to be sung publicly by a choir where he confesses. He pleads for mercy and he appeals for restoration. So what are some of the elements of David's confession? Well, first he demonstrates an understanding. He demonstrates an understanding of his sin. It is clear in the language that David uses that he understands as much as any human being can, the enormity of his sin, the heinousness of what he has done and the darkness of heart from which it proceeded. And that has plunged him into a legal state of guilt before God. Look what he says in verse two through five with me. He says, completely wash away my guilt. Cleanse me for my sin, for I am conscious of my rebellion. And my sin is always before me against you. And you alone, I have sinned and done this evil in your sight, so you are right when you pass sentence. You are blameless when you judge. Indeed, I was guilty when I was born and I was sinful when my mother conceived me. In the Hebrew here, David uses the entire scope of biblical language regarding violation of God's natural and revealed order. He uses every word for it. He doesn't shrink back from taking a full, orbed view of his multifaceted sin. He is both specific and general. He names it rebellion and sin and this perverse iniquity and evil and later calls it blood guilt. And he understands both the immorality of his actions and the immorality of his inner being. David understands that he has acted out of who he is. And Galatians 519 tells us what comes out of the inner being of those who are in rebellion to God. Says now the works of the flesh are obvious. Sexual immorality, moral impurity, promiscuity, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambitions, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing and anything similar. Genuine repentance comes with deeper understanding of the nature of our sin. And alongside understanding, he demonstrates ownership. He demonstrates ownership for his sin. 10 times in this passage. David explicitly connects all those words for sin and rebellion to himself. He owns his moral perversity. And this is costly, remember, he's the king. He is supposed to be the gold standard of a righteous Israelite. And here he is owning his sin publicly and thoroughly. Now, our culture hates this. Our culture hates this. It hates the idea that a person must own their own failings. Their own sin. Our culture is committed to others owning their sin and owning our sin. Other circumstances, other people, other systems, other politics. Those are the things that need to shape up. Those are the things that are causing me to eat gluttonously or to spend frivolously or hate my neighbor or gossip or revile the poor or revile the rich or involve myself with alcohol and drugs and pornography. But all that boils down to is this. Our culture is saying, if God would just make others own their sin, I wouldn't have to cope sinfully the way that I am. But James 1, verses 14 through 15, tells us, each person is tempted when he is drawn away and enticed by what? His own evil desires. His own evil desire. And then after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin. And when sin is fully grown, it gives birth to death. But let's look at David's case. Who knows, maybe Bathsheba was up on the roof knowingly flaunting herself before the king. Now, the text gives no indication of what her motives were. But even if it was that, even if she was trying to seduce the king, Psalm 51 shows us it's not, if Bathsheba had just not been naked on the roof, it's I have sinned against the Lord. Now, along with this ownership, this willingness to possess his own moral impurity, it's coupled with this blending of grief and fear. That's why it's grief/fear. I couldn't figure out, right? It's this fearful grief. It's this grieved terror in front of God. And Psalm 32, which I think was written after this Psalm, makes it clear that David was being crushed by the weight of this grief and fear over his actions. It was like a cancer that was ravaging his body and mind and soul. And there's almost this sense of relief when Nathan comes to him and calls him out. And I've experienced this. From the time I was 18 to the time I was 23, I was a chronic and hopeless alcoholic. All of my money and time and energy was devoted to getting drunk or high and doing all the attendant immoral things that come with that life. And in December 2007, God orchestrated this perfect event. It was the perfect police officer. It was the perfect moment in my life. He orchestrated this perfect event where I got arrested for DUI. And I, as a 23-year-old man, had to call my parents. I had nobody else in the world to call. Had to call my parents and say, "Your son is standing on a street corner "in Oxnard, California, and he is under arrest "for drunk driving. "Can you come and pick me up and come and bring Dad "to pick up my vehicle?" So my parents show up, very graciously come do this. And on the way home, my dad looks at me and he just says, "What is going on with you?" And it was like a damn broke. I just started to confess all of this wickedness that I had involved myself in, that I'd given myself over to. I poured it out to him for like an hour. To the point that my mom was so afraid that she looked down the stairs as I was going to bed and she said, "If you kill yourself tonight, "I'm going to be so angry." But I did, I hated my life. I hated everything about who I was and where I was and I'd been struggling under this. You see, but I woke up the next morning. I woke up the next morning and I felt this overwhelming sense of relief that I didn't have to hide this anymore. I wasn't any different than I was the night before. I just wasn't hiding it. It was out in the open. Up to that point, I had not yet turned for my alcoholism, but I had come under the weight of grief and fear over what it was doing to me. What I was becoming, what an offense it was to God and the fact that I still kind of loved it, I chose it over every other good thing in my life, made me even more sorrowful and afraid. And here in verses eight and 11, David is working through a similar fear. Having confessed that God would be right to punish him severely, he admits this concern. He says, "Let me hear joy and gladness. "Free me from my grief and my fear. "Let the bones that you have crushed. "I'm afraid they're never going to be restored. "Let the bones that you have crushed rejoice. "Do not banish me from your presence "or take your Holy Spirit from me." He recognizes what the just consequences of his actions ought to be. He had told Nathan that the rich man deserved to die, to be cut off. We see in Romans 1.32, after this laundry list of iniquity, this massive text which just includes our willful sin and our inventions of evil, it says in verse 32, "Those who practice those evil things "know that they are deserving of death for them." There is an awareness that sin deserves to be crushed and cut off from God. And this combination of grief, over wrongdoing, and fear of God's wrath and rejection should be called shame. And this is another thing that our culture hates. In fact, society hates shame so much that there's a woman named Brene Brown. God bless her, she is closer to the kingdom than she realizes, but she has become a celebrity because of her take on shame. She thinks that no one should ever validate their feelings of shame. That feeling of I am bad and thus not worthy of connection with people and by implication, God, she thinks nobody should validate that. Sure, you may have done bad things, but that doesn't mean that you're a bad person. And in one way, she is absolutely correct. Shame is a horrible master. Shame is a horrible master. When we allow shame to issue our marching orders, we just do more and more shameful things. Ask anyone who is in persistent sin that they cannot seem to conquer. Shame, defining ourselves by our shame does precisely nothing to stop the cycle of shame. So she's right in that sense, but here's where she's wrong. God has wired us to experience shame when we do shameful things. He built that into us from the beginning. Adam and Eve did what was shameful in the garden and they felt it immediately. And their shameful actions resulted in exile from the garden, a true disconnection from God's fellowship. But here's the thing, their shame was supposed to be a servant, leading them to God for rescue. Like we see here with David. However, they embraced their shame, submitted to its mastery and it ordered them into hiding and into self-righteousness. When we have rebelled against God and committed adultery with the world, James 4 tells us to recognize our shameful state and then to run to God and find that he's running to you, to draw near to him and in that drawing near to be miserable and mourn and weep and let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy into gloom. Running to him in fearful grief, James says this, God himself will exalt you. God himself will exalt you. He will lift you up out of the mire of shame. Renee Brown rightly recognizes the problem. Shame itself cannot fix you, but her solution is to lift yourself out of your own shame or to just ignore your own shame. But God says to us this morning, "I with my powerful hand will lift you out "and I will make you something that is not shameful." And we see with David, along with his grief and his fear that he demonstrates a right longing for transformation. In his confession, he demonstrates a right longing for transformation. He longs not just to be forgiven of his sin, to be free of the consequences of his sin, but to be purified and to become something new. He doesn't want to be an adulterer who doesn't have to deal with the fallout of adultery. He doesn't want to be a murderer who just doesn't receive the punishment for murder. He says in verse 10, "God, create in me a clean heart "and renew a steadfast spirit within me." He doesn't just want to not be in rebellion. He petitions God to make him something fundamentally different than a rebel. To take Jesus' words, he doesn't simply want to be a whitewashed tomb. He wants to be a holy temple. And when confronted by his sin, he has run to the only one who can make him something new. And his song demonstrates for us some level of understanding, ownership, grief, fear, and a longing for transformation that are all elements of genuine repentance. These are all elements of genuine repentance. And though uncomfortable, those feelings are not pleasant, these things all served as part of God's kindness, leading David back to him, which brings us to our second point, God. If you are a traitor, and you are being dragged back before the ruler that you have overthrown, what should your number one concern be? Should it be the severity of what you've done? Should it be the devastation that you may have caused? I would argue that your primary concern should be the disposition of the one that you've betrayed. His nature, his character, his attitude towards you. And this has been the most overwhelming thought to me from the start of my study of this passage. David approaches God with his plea for mercy because of who God is. He does not approach the mercy seat, holding his years of faithful service up as evidence of his worthiness to be pardoned. He doesn't trumpet his defeat of Goliath or his restraint with Saul or his faithfulness to Jonathan or the vast content of worship songs that he's produced. His approach and his appeal is rooted in God himself. So let's look at that together. Let's look at the attributes of God revealed in David's plea for mercy. First, his sovereignty and his authority. As Pastor Jeff presented last week, our problem is not that we haven't done what is best for us or haven't done what is best for other people. We have defied the commands of our creator king, a rightful king who has the authority to issue edicts which should be obeyed. I'm not gonna re-preach his sermon, but this cannot be overlooked. Look what it says here in verse four. He says against you, you alone, I have sinned and done this evil in your sight. So you are right when you pass sentence. You are blameless when you judge. It should be shocking that David can make that claim against you only have I sinned. Bathsheba and Uriah and the other soldiers in this general have all been treated horribly. How can he say that he hasn't sinned against anyone but God when all of these humans have been treated with such content? The answer to that question is in the answer to this one. Whose image are all those precious people created in? God's, all rebellion. The violation of God's command and moral order is an assault upon God, but because we cannot rise up to the heavens and spit in the face of God, we instead do it to the ones who bear his image. David is revealing here that we harm others and ourselves in our rebellion precisely because God in his sovereignty and authority is unassailable. So we go for what we can assail his image in the earth. Now, some would argue that this is only true for those who have been explicitly told about God and his law, right? But Romans one and two explode that myth, that people are not aware of God's sovereignty and authority. And so does this song. Look here in verse six. It says, surely you desire integrity in the inner self and you teach me wisdom deep within. David has not just transgressed some external and unknowable moral law. He has gone against the internal light that all people have been given as the image bears of God. That thing that we call conscience. And David's song affirms that God's sovereignty and authority are all pervasive and undeniable. And God's righteous standard is not just arbitrary. It is rooted in his moral perfection, which leads us to the next attribute, the song reveals holiness. God is unyieldingly in his holiness. He is unyieldingly righteous and pure, not just in what he does, but in who he is. He is entirely set apart in moral perfection. And because of that, he hates sin. He hates it and he will not allow it to corrupt his creation. He'll drive it out and ultimately destroy it. And David recognizes this when he says in verses nine and 11, he says, "Turn your face away from my sins "and blot out all my guilt. "Do not banish me from your presence "or take your Holy Spirit from me." David knows that his moral impurity is something that God will not abide. He knew the law revealed to Moses was a revelation about God's holiness. And the consequences in that law for degrading that holiness is that God's face would be turned away from the people and that they would be driven out of the land. His presence would depart from them. He, God cannot be an unbroken fellowship with that which is unholy. Yet here is David asking God not to turn his face away from him, but to turn his face away from his sin. And when he says blot out all my guilt, the term he is using is one of war. It's one of extermination. It is the term that God uses before flooding the earth or when speaking to Moses and threatening to destroy the rebellious Israelites. David is calling back to that. But here he's saying, "Do that to my sin. "Not me, smash it, exterminate it "so that I may not be separated from you. "That I may not be abandoned by your Holy Spirit "so that the benefits of the blessing of obedience "might still wash over me." But how can David dare to make that request? Because just as David's words reveal the holiness of God, it also reveals God's beneficence. It's a big $10 word and I could probably not define it super well for you. But it fit when I looked it up on mine. It's this good and gracious and generous disposition towards something. And this is the part that has been so profound to me. God, David knows that God is sovereign. David knows that God is holy. But David begins his appeal in verse one with, be gracious to me, be gracious to me, God, according to your faithful love, according to your abundant compassion, bought out my rebellion. David approaches God because of God's faithful love and compassion. He knows that God is filled with mercy and love and kindness and compassion and grace. He knows that God is good and that his goodness is a goodness that is inclined towards his creation, especially towards those who fear him. So David comes and says, "God, because of who you are, forgive me." Brothers and sisters, this should cause our hearts to soar. The disposition of the king that we have committed treason against is better and more generous and more kind than we could hope for. We can approach him with our appeal for mercy, rooted not in our sincerity, rooted not in our ability to change, but rooted in the king himself. And the news gets better. David reveals that not only is God beneficent, he reveals that God can transform us, that he is powerful and able to do so, which is our next attribute. It's the attribute of God's capacity. David approaches God because it is God who has the power, the omnipotence and the means, his plan of salvation to purify and make new. I've combined some verses here which shows David's confidence in God's ability. It's verses two, seven, and the first part of 14. It says, "Completely wash away my guilt, "and cleanse me from my sin. "Purify me with his help, and I will be clean. "Wash me, and I will be wider than snow. "Save me from the guilt of bloodshed, God. "Save me, God of my salvation." David's language here is calling back to Exodus and Leviticus. Hiss-up was used for a variety of things in those books, specifically salvation. It was Hiss-up that was used to smear the blood of the lamb over the door and the doorposts in the lentil to save the people of Israel from the avenging angel of God. And it was used for cleansing. It was Hiss-up that was used to smatter blood and water on the person and the home in the cleansing of leprosy. It was Hiss-up that was used to smatter blood and water on the person who had defiled themselves by contact with a dead body. And David needs both salvation and cleansing from the leprosy of sin and his defiled hands in the murder of Uriah. And he comes to God calling upon God as a high priest to do in reality, that which was represented symbolically in the holiness codes. It's not just a legal innocence that he thinks God can accomplish here. He's calling out to God as the omnipotent creator to recreate him and sustain him in innocence. Look what it says here in verse 10, at 10 and 12. It says, "God, create a clean heart for me "and renew a steadfast spirit within me. "Restore the joy of your salvation to me "and sustain me by giving me a willing spirit." David isn't speaking in half-hearted terms here. He is revealing the truth that finds its glorious completion in the work of Christ. God can actually forgive sin and rescue from punishment. God can actually convert someone from an object of his wrath destined for destruction into a holy vessel set apart for preservation, from a traitor to a submitted citizen of the kingdom, laboring for the exaltation of the true king and working to subdue everything that isn't rebellion to him. God can do this. And this brings us to our final point. Point three is glory. As we have looked at David's repentance, we see that he has sought forgiveness for his own guilt. It's been made all the blacker by the holy light of the creator God that he has looked to for rescue. But in his appeal for restoration, we can see something else. Here is the issue revealed in David's appeal for restoration. The whole tragic saga of David and Bathsheba and this song of repentance reveals something fundamental about the nature of sin. This foundational element was whispered in the words of the serpent. It was warned against time and time again in the law and it cost Saul his throne and his legacy. You see, sin is not just a problem of personal holiness or legal violation. It's a worship disorder. It is an issue of broken worship. In our fallenness, brothers and sisters, we have become glory thieves. We want to steal God's glory and give it to ourselves or give it to something else that is not God. This is why the very first commandment in Exodus is about the singular worthiness of God. This is why in Deuteronomy, when the commandments are reissued, they're immediately summarized with this catch-all phrase, love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your strength to be devoted to God and his purposes in the earth. With every fiber, every aspect of your being, this holistic devotion to God and his kingdom rule is what a life of glorifying God looks like. And Eve's temptation to become equal with God was to appropriate his glory for herself and to seek her own purposes. And David's sin with Bathsheba was no less an issue of disordered worship. Rather than thinking that God was worthy of his holistic worship, David thought that he was worthy of the offering of Bathsheba's body, mind and soul for his own pleasures and his own purposes. David believed that he was entitled to Uriah's life as a fitting sacrifice to preserve his own glory. David considered that his own twisted edicts were worthy of obedience and embrace. And how do we know this from Psalm 51? Because his forgiveness and his restoration would produce two things, he says. It would produce praise and missions. Exaltation and evangelism. First we look at praise. Read what it says here in verses 14 through 17. It says, "Save me from the guilt of bloodshed, God, "of my salvation and what? "My tongue will sing of your righteousness. "Lord, open my lips and my mouth will declare your praise. "You do not want sacrifice or I would give it." If you are not pleased with burnt offerings, the sacrifice pleasing to God is a broken spirit. You will not despise a broken and a humbled heart. This is David recognizing that he has been swept up in disordered worship. And here in his prayer for restoration, he's realigning himself to the true worship of God. Not self-righteousness, not cultic sacrifice. It is to surrender, to end, adore God. From the one who is truly surrendered, praise will progressively pour forth from their lips and worship will pour forth from their whole lives. And the second thing that would come from his forgiveness and restoration, he says, is missions. We're going to jump between 12 and 13 and then, sorry, 12 for 13 and then 18 and 19. It says, "Restore the joy of your salvation to me "and sustain me by giving me a willing spirit. "What will he do then? "Then I will teach the rebellious your ways "and sinners will return to you." Jumping to 18, "In your good pleasure, "cause Zion to prosper, build the walls of Jerusalem, "and then you will delight in righteous sacrifices, "whole burnt offerings. "Then bulls will be offered on your altar." Consider this, my friends. When you have spent time contemplating your state of rebellion, when you have spent time gazing upon the holiness and perfection of the one you have rebelled against, when you have recognized his graciousness and loving kindness and have called upon him for rescue, when you have experienced the wondrous joy of forgiveness and acceptance and salvation, when you have tasted and seen that the Lord is good, you cannot, you will not keep his wonders to yourself. You'll be thrilled at the opportunity to teach the rebellious his ways, to help bring into joyful submission those who have been at enmity with him. You'll rejoice when sinners return to him. You'll desire to see Zion prosper. You'll long to see his church, his holy city, edified and expanded. You'll invest yourself to those ends. And you'll yearn to see worship, that is true. True, pleasing and acceptable to God rise from your own life and from the lives of those around you. Genuine repentance carries with it a revival of passion for praise and evangelism. So genuine repentance carries all of these hallmarks. And as the worship, I'm gonna invite the worship team to come back up. I wanna give you two encouragements here. If God is working these things in you today, an understanding and an ownership over sin that is attended by a longing to be rid of it, a heightened awareness of God's lordship and holiness and a trust in his benevolent transforming power, a realignment of allegiance that seeks to exalt the Lord and his anointive one above everybody else. If you are experiencing those things today, if those things are working into you, do not shrink back from it. Lean into it, give yourself over to it. Whether it is an initial experience of repentance that we might call conversion or whether we are already a Christ follower and we've been caught in sin and come under the loving conviction of the spirit, lean into it. Make your appeal for forgiveness and reconciliation to the one who has died to secure it for you. But also, let me leave you with two warnings. First, do not use the kindness and the patience of God as an excuse to keep sinning. If you are his, he won't allow you to remain in secrets in. And if you are not his, you have not put your faith in him for salvation, you must know judgment is coming. And the second warning, don't turn repentance into a work of self-righteousness. Don't see if you can beat your chest harder or cry more pitifully, be merciful to me as sinner than you did the last time. Confess your sins to him. Confess them to one another and then trust the work of Christ. Don't give yourself over to Shane's mastery and crushing burden. Let it push you into the arms of a loving savior. As we close, be encouraged by the words of a man named William or not. The difference between a converted person and an unconverted person is not that one sins and the other does not. But that one takes part in his cherished sins against a dreaded God and the other takes part with a reconciled God against his hated sins. You pray with me. Lord, we thank you for the gifts of repentance. We know that it is your kindness that draws us to it. We confess that we have all fallen short of your glorious standard. But we confess that our hope is not in our sincerity of sorrow or grief or the sincerity of our words. Our hope is solely in the work that Christ has accomplished. We trust that He has given us a robe of righteousness, that we walk into your presence wearing so that we can confess our sins and find help in our hour of need. Lord, we praise You and we thank You that we can confidently say all of this. We pray in Your name. Amen. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music)