Sin and Forgiveness

1st John chapter 1 verse 5 to chapter 2 verse 2 it's page 1225

John 1:5

this is the message we have heard from him and declare to you god is light in him there is no

darkness at all if we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness we lie and do

not live by the truth but if we walk in light as he is in the light we have fellowship with one

another and the blood of jesus his son purifies us from all sin if we claim to be without sin

we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us if we confess our sins he is faithful and just

and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness if we claim we have not sinned

we make him out to be a liar and his word has no place in our lives my dear children i write this

to you so that you will not sin but if anybody does sin we have one who speaks to the father in our

defense jesus christ the righteous one he is the atoning sacrifice for our sins and not only for

ours but also for the sins of the whole world okay so next reading from um sam 32 i don't have a page number

so i'll be called it

560

560

okay

sam 32 blessed is he whose transgressions are forgiven whose sins are covered blessed is the man

whose sin the lord does not count against him and in whose spirit is no is in no deceit

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 soft as in the heat of summer then i acknowledged my sin to you

and did not cover up my iniquity i said i will confess my turned transgressions to the lord

and you forgave the guilt of my sin therefore let everyone who is godly pray to you while you may be

found surely when the mighty waters rise they will not reach him you are my hiding place you will

protect me from trouble and surround me with songs of deliverance i will instruct you and teach you in

the way you should go i will counsel you and watch over you do not be like the horse or the mule which

have no understanding but must be controlled by bit and bridle or they will not come to you

many are the woes of the wicked but the lord's unfailing love surrounds the man who trusts in him

rejoice in the lord and be glad you righteous sing all you who are upright in heart

thanksgiving peter's going to come and speak to us now and apparently johnny thinks that the only

things worth noting about peter are that he's originally from tipperary he now lives in cork

um as a monster staff worker with ice and he's married to maive and i'd like to add that peter's so

much more than all of those things he's also um a tipperary man but he's probably quite nervous about

today's match against waterford where's it in the bag and i'm gonna keep on you in the bag as well

thanks for thanks for having me sharing it

good morning everybody

yep um as rightly noted my name is peter originally from feathered

in county tipperary which is a very important point uh married to the beautiful maive for

uh a year and a month and a bit um yeah so we're looking at sam 32 this morning i was thinking as we

were standing up and sitting down earlier on it's interesting how our body language can uh just

display something of what we're thinking or what we're feeling in our hearts um and i think for this

um probably initially the body language is certainly one of kneeling um and then it goes on to one of

standing or rejoicing i'm not going to ask you to kneel i know some of you have babies in your

hands and things like that so uh that wouldn't be appropriate um yeah i'd just like to ask as well

does does everybody know who tiger woods is vaguely yeah okay cool well in 1996 earl woods who is tiger

woods and his dad said of his 21 year old son listen to this now tiger will do more than any other

man in history to change the course of humanity when i found that quote i was just like wow

this is gold for sermon material it didn't take so it takes so long to read actually though through

all of tiger's uh achievements on and off the golf course um that i had to cut it out it'd take just

too long to read through it all so you begin to wonder if his dad's prophecy is coming through to a

certain extent and he is an amazing god for probably the best of all time and through the likes of his

tiger woods foundation uh he raises a huge amount of money for charity he's married to ellen who's a

former swedish model with whom he has two children however in recent times you may have heard that tiger

has admitted to having a string of extramarital affairs uh offering the following reasoning i convinced

myself that normal rules didn't apply i thought only about myself i thought i could get away with

whatever i wanted to i felt i was entitled i suppose it's easy um to look at tiger and to look at others

and judge them but the truth of the matter is that we've all been there haven't we we may not be the

most successful sportsmen in history even though sometimes a thursday night soccer as i rack up goal

after goal i just wonder uh we may not be all um part of multi-million pound sponsorship deals

um we may not have had uh affairs outside of marriage but we've all been there we've either done

things that would have shocked us in clear conscience or we've not done things that we should have done

and then even when we do things right we get all proud about ourselves and think that we're great

like tiger we've covered our sins in the hope they wouldn't be uncovered we've kept silent

and not confessed our transgressions like tiger we all know what it's like when we've had

a spirit of deceit when we've been trying to fool ourselves and others what tiger has done is

extremely serious many of the companies sponsoring tiger have either suspended or cancelled their support

of them all together resulting in the value of the companies falling and one economics professor

estimates that the loss caused to companies because of what tiger has done is between five and twelve

billion u.s dollars when you consider that the the outfall or the fallout of the islandic

um ash cloud was i think something between one and three billion dollars it kind of puts it in

perspective um but far more serious than the the financial cost is the emotional mental and spiritual

cost that has been accumulated and will continue which someone will have to pay for so he's called

this huge um cost to be put on his family on his wife imagine if he came home one day and his wife

ellen said to him tiger i know exactly what you've done but never again will i bring up your transgressions

to hurt you or make you feel guilty or remind you it's at huge cost to myself but i forgive you

wouldn't that be amazing wouldn't that be incredible

if tiger were to read the opening verses of sam 32 he would come across a mouth-watering prospect

that david sets before us this morning a person there in verse one whose transgressions are forgiven

whose sins are covered whose sin the lord does not count against them in verse two and in whose

spirit there is no deceit these two verses they're like a headline over the psalm and a headline that's

far more interesting than anything written in recent times in the tabloids or the broadsheet about tiger

how extraordinary it would be if ellen forgives tiger how much more so if god who is perfectly holy

forgives us how could this be

well as we've mentioned david writes verse one and two as a kind of a headline which grabs our attention

but in verses three to five he brings us back in time to understand how verses one and two came about

we shall see something of how david got to this point and how if at all we can share in the same

experience of forgiveness i don't know if like me you enjoy watching wildlife documentaries on tv

um as mabel tell you and sometimes what they'll do especially in the good quality bbc ones is that

they'll have uh an image of a desert for example and they'll have it speeded up so the video will be

taken over months uh of time and they'll have this picture of this dead dull dry desert and just as

the rain starts to come in the desert uh bursts into life so it becomes full of life full of water

rich green grass um and the whole scene is amazing really it's just a total transformation

well it's like the total opposite here in verse four david's strength was sapped as if in the heat of

the hottest summer and we're left wondering has he taken a vow of silence in verse three when i kept

silent my bones wasted away but it seems there's something much more sinister going on as we look

at the results of his silence it's as if the spiritual air pressure is high while david was silent

you can see there in verse four god's hand was heavy upon him resulting in the groaning of verse

three his bones wasting away and his vitality or his strength being sapped as it says in verse four

well if verses three and four um describe the drought of summer verse five is surely the first sign

of much needed rain we'd already seen how blessed is the man in whom spirit is no deceit

and here in verse five david is explaining what it looks like when he stops trying to fool

or to deceive god because self-deception i suppose by its very nature is difficult to see in our lives

it obviously means that we're deceiving ourselves i think it'd be good to spend just a little bit of

time thinking about david's way out of the trap of self-deception and there are four things briefly

worth noticing firstly you'll see that david owns up to his sin in verse five i acknowledged i did not

cover i said i will confess so the onus was on david he doesn't blame other people he doesn't blame his

circumstances he doesn't blame god even though he had great opportunity as king to pawn off

responsibility to others he doesn't do that here and he also doesn't pretend that it isn't that big

a deal so secondly he doesn't water down the seriousness of what he has done it's thought that

this psalm is part of david's reflection on the sins of his scandalous affair with bathsheba

but he doesn't dilute it he doesn't pretend that it isn't that bad he calls it like it is he calls

sin sin thirdly he realizes that that it's primarily against god that he has sinned so

this this whole verse here david is talking to god he's communicating with god with the lord

and fourthly there's a serious intentionality to what david does in verse five he can see it in the

language i said i will confess so he makes up his mind to do this and i think i really think those

four things are a good pattern for us to learn to get out of this trap that we so often fall into

of self-deception firstly to own up to our sin secondly to not water down how serious it is

thirdly to realize that that it's against god who is holy that we've primarily sinned

and fourthly to be intentional to make a decision and follow through on the confession no matter what

so in very stark contrast to the hiding and the cover-ups of verse three and four david here

acknowledges his sin to god he doesn't hide his iniquity and he says i will confess my transgressions

to the lord now the tiger has confessed and his wife ellen to put it mildly can withdraw her love from him

she can pour out her anger on him she can take his fortune and his children and she can sell her story

to the media if she likes or she can forgive him she can bear the cost of that forgiveness herself

you see the person we have offended the person to whom we confess our sins has the right and the

ability to become our savior or our destroyer so they can accept or reject our confession it's a bit

unnerving when you think about it not that i'm taking pity on politicians but it's no wonder in the

doll when politicians have to be before the opposition parties and they're sometimes so reluctant

to admit that they were wrong it's no wonder as children before our parents how we always blamed

our siblings and didn't admit our own wrongdoing it's no wonder breaths i'm sure were held as tiger

finally admitted to his transgressions how will the offended party react what will they say what will

they do in the case of hand in this psalm here with david and god it's even more tense because we know god to be holy and totally opposed to sin

it's god's hand which is heavy upon david back in verse four god is already showing his holy opposition to sin

by sapping david's strength by david's bones wasting away etc and so we wonder if david confesses sin

excuse me if david confesses sin surely god will destroy him altogether will withdraw his love

will pour out his anger destroy david altogether

what's been going on up to this point is that david has been trying to bear the cost of the particular

sins in view

it is by those same means so what we see back in verses three and four it's by those means that god

has been pressing david to confess to come clean with god so that he would be forgiven

or in other words so that god himself might bear the cost of david's sin rather than david being destroyed

by trying to bear the cost himself

well how does god bear the cost of david's sin we might ask

and the simple answer is that god bears the cost of david's sin in the cross of christ

god the son becomes man so that we might so that he might associate with mankind with david

he willingly lays down his life for david on the cross as god the father pours out the wrath that

david deserved on god the son jesus bones wasted away because of david's sin jesus groaned because of

david's sin god's hand was heavy upon jesus and his strength was sapped to the point of death

for david's sin

as paul tells us in second corinthians god made jesus who had no sin to be sin

or in this case god made jesus who had no sin to be sin for david

so that in jesus david might become the righteousness of god

so rather than withdrawing his love for david and pouring out his anger on him

god father son and spirit shows his love for david by diverting his anger to jesus on the cross

who laid down his life for david god bears the cost as the father gives up his only son

as the son becomes man and dies the death of a criminal

as the son bears the outpouring of the father's wrath

and the love of the father is withdrawn from him

it's for that reason and that reason alone that the beautiful words

at the end of verse five are true

god forgave the guilt of david's sin

as augustine said the word is scarcely in his mouth

before the wound is healed

you see david has realized how unnecessary it is

for him to be experiencing the things of verse three and four

because jesus has already experienced those things fully

to their limit and in their most awful sense on the cross

and so david and us and we are brought back

to the happy man of verses one and two

when david stopped trying to cover up his sin

god really covers it up

through christ

oh what joy for those whose disobedience is forgiven

whose sin is put out of sight

yes what joy for those whose record

the lord has cleared of guilt

whose lives are lived in complete honesty

oh is that embarrassing moment when the priest takes his stuff of water

as we've been reading this morning the question naturally arises

how much do we relate to david here

how much or how much should we relate to it

well david gives us an amazing answer in verse six

he says therefore

or in other words because of the reasons i've just outlined

let everyone who is godly pray to you

or pray to god

while he may be found

did david have saving faith prior to the experience of this psalm

i would say he did

what he's reminded of in this psalm though

as we need to be reminded

is that this honest confession of sin

is something that's an ongoing part and parcel

of life as a christian

as we heard already

if we say we have no sin

we deceive ourselves

while we're in this fallen world

the battle rages on

sin still wields its power

the battle rages on

there's a warning from david in verse six

god is truly patient with us

but we shouldn't take this for granted

perhaps this morning there's something in our lives

in our minds even

that's eating us up

that's wasting our bones

and we're avoiding god

sometimes it's easy to be in the midst

of sunday morning worship

and to be totally avoiding god

i've been there myself

this psalm warns us that in a flood of great waters

we shall not come near him

in other words there will come a time

when it will be too late

when we have covered it up too often

and for too long

we should realize that not only

will this prayer be often on our lips

as christians

but with great urgency as well

in a time when god may be found

but also be encouraged

we should be encouraged

by our merciful god

that presses us

to be honest with him

and not cover this matter

for the christian the cross of christ

plunges deeper

than the depths of our sins

and surely the delight that we will see

in the following verses

should inspire us

to come clean with god

and not to cover our sins

the joy we see in verse 7

it's a most delicious

a most immediate thing for the christian

who has like david said

i will confess my transgressions to the lord

god who before was pressing down on us

becomes our hiding place

becomes the one who will preserve us from trouble

the one who will surround us

with songs of deliverance

we're told in the book of revelation

it's a most important thing for the christian the people will hide themselves in the caves and in the rocks of the mountains and will say to the mountains and rocks fall on us and hide us from the face of him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the lamb

it is true that we need a hiding place from god's wrath

but the question is

are we hiding in the chlorine and this morning

are we desperately trying to preserve ourselves

are we desperately trying to preserve ourselves

are we like david saying that the author of life will preserve us

are we surrounding ourselves with deception and defence and denial

defence and denial, or are we allowing the almighty Lord of creation to surround us with

songs of deliverance?

As Tiger made his apology in front of the world media, one very astute journalist made

the observation that we felt Tiger wouldn't have been there if he hadn't been caught,

but a tiger doesn't change his stripes. We shouldn't be like the horse or the mule of

verse 9 or the tiger which have no understanding, which must be harnessed with bit and bridle

else they will not come near God. God out of his love for us will be heavy handed with

us if needs be, if we are like David or like the horse or the mule of verse 9, but that

is not his preferred way of relating to us. Even as we dwell on the example of David this

morning, God, as he promises in verse 8, is instructing us and teaching us in the way we

should go. He is counselling us and watching over us. What sweet truth this psalm contains.

Verse 10 and 11 say, Many are the woes of the wicked, but the Lord's unfailing love surrounds

the man who trusts in him. Rejoice in the Lord and be glad you righteous. Sing all you who

are upright in heart. Father God, we thank you so much for your plan of salvation. We thank you for

the cross of Christ. We thank you, Father, Son and Spirit, for how wonderful, how perfect and how amazing

what you have done is. And Lord, we pray that, like David, we would realise quickly, or even more

quickly, Lord, when we are not coming clean with you. And Lord, that we would know that the cross of

Christ, what Jesus has done, is not just, Lord, for our conversion experience, Lord, but that we should

live in the shadow of the cross, day by day, Lord. We thank you for these wonderful truths, and we pray,

Lord, that they would be sinking deep into our minds, into our hearts, into our actions. Lord, that

throughout the week, we may live out of the truth of your word, rather than out of the deception of our

hearts. In Jesus' name, Amen.

Our final, uh, choading in number 793, and where are my choading faces?