Chris McCurley: was nineteen sixty-six. The location was Vietnam. There was a soldier by the name of Marshall who had four other soldiers in his unit that were on a reconnaissance mission that would change their lives forever. While on patrol they came upon a hut and four of the soldiers took a young Vietnamese girl, kept her, made her walk All day in the hot sun without any food. They then sexually abused her and murdered her. And despite repeated attempts to get Marshall to participate in the debauchery, he refused. And even though he blew the whistle on the four other men and three of them did jail time, he still lived his life with regret from that day. And in an interview, some 20 years after leaving Vietnam, he made a statement that I think is profound and relatable. He said, I think God forgives, but God is more forgiving to us than we are to ourselves. Has there ever been a truer statement? Many people are shackled by guilt. They live with persistent personal indictment. They stand condemned in front of the one person jury in their own minds, and it's having a corrosive effect on their lives. Some refuse to seek forgiveness because they don't believe that God could ever pardon them from all that they've done. Others are Christians who have their confidence eroded and their gross stunted because they feel that there is no forgiveness for them. And if this describes you, then you're in good luck. Because David has dealt with the exact same thing, and he shows us how to pray through it. Psalm thirty-two is David praying through guilt and shame. And this recorded prayer serves as a template for all of us who have failed a holy God. We're not going to put it on the screen if you would read it with me. We will put it on the screen, but it'll be in segments, so let's just read it all together. Psalm thirty two, starting in verse one. Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit. For when I kept silent my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me, my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. Saleh, what does Salah mean? Pause, reflect, think about what you just read. I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity. I said, I will confess my transgressions to the Lord, and you forgave the iniquity of my sin. Sale. Therefore let everyone who is godly offer to you at a time when you may be found. Surely in the rush of great waters they shall not reach him. You are a hiding place for me. You preserve me from trouble. You surround me with shouts of deliverance. Sale. I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go, I will counsel you with my eye upon you. Be not like a horse or a mule without understanding, which must be curved with a bit and bridle, or it will not stay near you. Many are the sorrows of the wicked, but steadfast love surrounds the one who trusts in the Lord. Be glad in the Lord, and rejoice, O righteous, and shout for joy, all you upright in heart. ⁓ that decided to pull a little prank. He sent twenty famous people in London a letter. And the letter simply read, Everyone knows what you've done. If I were you I would leave town immediately. And all twenty left town. What would happen if you got a note like that? My guess is we some of us might be a little nervous because we all have skeletons in our closet. We all deal with regret and remorse. Whether it's one of those heat of the moment sins or a sin that was premeditated and we thought about it before we did it, during the time that we were doing it after we have done it. We knew it was wrong, yet we did it anyway. How do we approach God after the fact? How do we pray through regret and And remorse. Look at the first word in David's prayer. Blessed. What do you think of when you hear the word blessed? The ideal? The good life? Your needs have all been met? Maybe your wants have been met as well. It's about being in an enviable position, living in a desirable state. And what type of person is living in the most enviable state? What type of person is the most blessed? Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the person who knows they're flawed. Blessed is the person who knows they've done wrong and knows that God can forgive them. That's the blessed person. The one who has been forgiven. Blessed is the one who knows they need forgiveness and know that they have it. Imagine that kind of life. Imagine This blessed life, the good life is the forgiven life. The one who is writing these words and praying this prayer was one who went from hero to zero. Actually, he went from zero to hero and back to zero again. David committed sin with Bathsheba and then had her husband murdered. Yet he was a man after God's own heart. How does that happen? How does one overcome Both the personal and public ridicule after a sin like that, after falling from grace. How do you recover from that? Even if you pray to God, and even if He forgives you, how do you recover publicly and personally? What if confessing your sin and owning your failure could result in you being stronger than ever? What if? Not permanently wounded, but permanently forgiven. How can we confess in prayer so that the end result is rejoicing and celebration? Do you notice? Now Psalm 32 concludes. Notice what it says: Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, O righteous, and shout for joy, you upright in heart. So the blessed individual is the one who just pours it all out to God, the one who puts it all out on the table and says, This is me, God, this is my heart. You know every secret sin, you know, every nook and cranny of my heart and what it contains that's that shouldn't be there. I'm just gonna pour it all out on the table before you, God. I'm gonna vomit it out. That's what this psalm is speaking to. It's about confession and how confessing leads to blessedness. So it is to our great advantage that we learn the words of this prayer and we learn the sentiment of this prayer so that we can pray this prayer as well. What if our failures could lead us to the same place that David ends up in? No. There are some people who can't hear this prayer. The person who says, I know I've done wrong, but at least I haven't done as much wrong as someone else, that person can't hear this prayer. It's kind of like the person who says, Well, I know I've done wrong, but at least I'm not a hypocrite, I'm just honest about it. They can't hear this prayer. The other person who can't hear this prayer is the one who says, I know God forgives me, but He, I'm the exception to the rule. He could never forgive me for all the wrong that I've done. Neither of these parties can hear this prayer. Those who need forgiveness and know they have it, those are the ones that can hear this prayer. They are the ones who will truly benefit from this prayer. And the benefit is the type of confession that empowers one to move past beating oneself up and lifting up. You move from beating up yourself to God being the lifter of your head. How many of you have been on the hamster wheel? You know what I'm talking about? You just run and run and run, but you get nowhere. You're like Paul in Romans chapter 7, who said, I know the wrong that I shouldn't do, and yet I do it anyway. I know the good that I should do, but I do not do it. You ever been there? You're on the hamster wheel and you fail, you've done something that is against God's will, and you think, well. I've blown it today. I might as well just keep doing wrong. I mean, what's it matter now? Or you ask him for forgiveness and you turn right around and do the very same thing again and you just keep running on the hamster wheel. How do you how do you get off the hamster wheel? How do you handle the hamster wheel? Imagine having a real handle on what is wrong with you and knowing that there is someone to heal and transform you. In fact, he has already made a commitment to you. And that commitment doesn't change just because you sinned. Imagine having that kind of attitude and mindset, confident rather than self loathing. So let's keep walking through this Psalm together. Verses one and two. Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit. Now understand the devil doesn't want you to have the blessed life. And that's why he weaponizes things like guilt and shame and continually bludgeons you over the head with them. Guilt and shame are twins, born in the Garden of Eden, conceived in rebellion. They look like their parents, they have their father's eyes and their mother's smile. But while they are twins, they're fraternal, they're not identical. There is a slight difference between the two. Guilt is a verdict. It's an awareness of failure against a standard. Shame is a feeling. It's a sense of exposed failure against someone else. So when you violate God's law, you feel guilty. And oftentimes, along with that guilt, comes shame. This feeling that I have done something wrong. Now, not everybody experiences shame. Not everybody experiences guilt that accompanies shame. Some people do wrong and they don't care. It doesn't cause them to confess because they rather like their sin. And so they don't feel the shame that goes along with it. But by and large, if you do something against God's will, you feel guilty about it, and shame almost always comes along with the guilt. Shame is connected to the person, and he or she thinks I'm bad. They've done bad, and then they think I am bad. Guilt is the wound, shame is the scar. Here's something else. Guilt is lonely, shame is not. Guilt is completely personal. No one else can share your guilt, but they can share your shame. You know, the the husband that we leaves his wife and kids, you know, he may not feel much shame associated with that, but the family does. And they they feel the hurt that goes along with that sin. So these twins are very, very similar. But guilt is isolated, sin ⁓ shame is contagious. While they are similar, there is some distinctive marks that set them apart. Let's go back to the birth of these twins. It's found in Genesis chapter three. Genesis chapter three, starting in verse six. When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate, and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sowed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings. They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. So guilt is the event, right? Adam and Eve ate from the tree that they were forbidden to eat from. That was the event. And what happened after the event? Well, they felt shame. And so they tried to cover themselves. They ran and hid. From God. The event was eating that forbidden fruit. Shame came along with it and said, You're no good, you've done wrong, you better go and hide yourself. Now consider all that in light of what David prays. Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Notice that phrase: whose sin is covered. Forgiveness is relational. You hurt someone or they hurt you. And there should be reconciliation. But to have your sins covered, that's a very different concept, isn't it? Adam and Eve sewed fig leaves together to cover themselves. All of a sudden they had recognized their shame. But fig leaves, while big, were not big enough. At least not by God's standard. And so what does he do? He covers them in animal skin. Let me say that again. He covers them. In animal skins. An animal hadn't died before. Not up to that point. And so an animal dies to cover sinful people. Does that sound like another story that matches up in the New Testament? Let me ask you this morning, what is your covering? What is your fig leaf? What are you using to hide? And I hope you understand, you don't have to hide. You know that, right? You don't have to hide yourself. Let God do that. That's David's message in Psalm 32. That's how he starts his poem. Imagine not having to live life in secret, not having to cover up. The one who loves me most knows me best. And I don't have to hide from him. I can come clean and have full confidence that he won't turn away in disgust, and in fact, will embrace me in love. Look at verses three and four. For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me. My strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. Every one of us has lived these verses. We've all been there. You've had major sin in your life, and you stuffed it, you buried it, you suppressed it, you You kept it way down inside of you, and it was eating you alive. So you know what it's like to live with guilt and shame and regret, and you can't tell anyone. Can't you relate to David? We all know something about what he was feeling here, don't we? You've had sin that you've tried to bury, and it's eaten you alive. Verse five. I acknowledge my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity. I said, I will confess my transgressions to the Lord, and you forgave the iniquity of my sin. So what do you do? What do you do when sin is eating you up? You shouldn't bury it, you shouldn't suppress it, but what if you have? What do you do? And David says, Acknowledge. God's hand is heavy upon you. Your bones are wasting away because you tried to lock it away and it's not working. And so what do you do? David says, Acknowledge your sin. Name it. Claim it. Yeah, this is on me, God. This is all me. Too many try to blame shift, like Eve in the garden, trying to blame, you know, the devil. He made me do it. Adam blames who? Well, Eve, but he blames God. The woman you gave me. You hadn't given her to me. This wouldn't have happened. Don't blame Shift. Don't play the victim here. Acknowledge it. Name it. What did you do? Speak it out loud. Secondly, he says stop covering it up. Don't suppress it. Don't bury it. Don't stuff it. Own it. And then finally tell the truth. Get it out on the table. Come clean before God. Be completely honest with who you are and what you have done. Verse five is the epicenter of this prayer, and it is one of the most beautiful prayers of confession that you'll find in. In the entire Bible. In ancient Hebrew, there are three different words that are used for sin. The first is chata'a. And chata'a simply means failure, specifically moral failure. And the idea behind chataa is that humans are here for a purpose. I can live for my purpose or I can deny my purpose and live for myself. I can live for God or I can live in some sort of autonomy. And chata'a says. I'm living for something other than God, someone other than God. So when I confess, I'm saying out loud, I'm a failure. I am naming it and claiming it. The second word that is used for sin is a bone. And it means iniquity. Life is a journey. And throughout this journey, you're presented with two paths: the path that leads to righteousness, the path that leads to God, and the path that leads to destruction. And when you become wayward, you have committed a bone. You've committed iniquity. You've gotten off the path. You've you've drifted away from God by going down a path that leads away from righteousness. That is the concept of a vont. It's going astray. And so when you overcome a vont, you stop covering up, you stop perpetually choosing the wrong path, you name your failure, and you get back on the right path. The last word is pesha, and it simply means transgression. Pesha means transgression, and transgression here simply means that there's a line. And I see that line, and if I cross that line, I've committed Pesha. I've committed a transgression. If I stay behind the line, then I am in God's good graces. Notice what David is doing here. He uses all three words in this prayer for sin. And I think the reason he does is to show the totality of what he has done wrong. He's including every word for sin to show. That in the entire vocabulary of the Hebrew, I've done all of this. I've done it all wrong. No more suppressing it, no more burying it, no more stuffing it. I'm going to get it all out on the table. There's no more acting like it's not a problem or not an issue. He's ready to absolve himself or have God absolve himself of the chatah, the avon, and the pesha, and to live a good life. And notice how God responds. I said, I will confess my transgressions to the Lord, and you forgave the iniquity of my sin. That's it. I confess God forgives. You mean it's that easy? It can't be that easy, right? Well, what if it is? What if it is that easy? You confess your sin and God forgives. What if the ones who make it difficult are the ones who suppress it, who bury it, who stuff it, who lock it away and have it eat at them? What what if We are giving Satan the upper hand instead of God by the way we respond. What if we are overcomplicating things? Because the Psalms are about raw emotion before God. It's about getting the mess all out on the table. Imagine the confidence and the freedom of knowing that God sees you as you truly are, yet he still loves you and he still wants you in heaven. To me, that's one of the greatest truths that I gain from scripture is that God wants Chris McCurley in heaven. Sometimes that's unfathomable to me. But this is a relational thing. And it's freeing and empowering to know that God's grace is bigger than my mess, right? Keep reading. Verses six through eight. Therefore, let everyone who is godly offer prayer to you at a time when you may be found. Surely in the rush of great waters, they shall not reach him. You are a hiding place for me. You preserve me from trouble. You surround me with shouts of deliverance. Say lah. I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go. I will counsel you with my eye. Upon you. Notice David's confidence on display here. Notice his confidence. Where does that come from? He's not confident in himself. We talked about that in week one. He realized that he was not his own Kvod. Remember, Kvod means status, importance, significance. He always believed that he was his own Kvod, going from a small shepherd boy to a hero. He believed that he was his own Kvod. The throne, the kingship. And he realized when all that was stripped away that the only reason he was anything is because of God. God was his own covod. God was his glory. And so now he finds his confidence in God. Notice what he says in verse 7 You, God, are my hiding place. You are my Kvode. God was his covering. He didn't need to cover up his sin. He needed to do the opposite. He needed to expose it. And we're the same way. Don't cover it up. He knows it anyway. Lay it all out on the table, pour it all out before him. Verses 9 through 11. Be not like a horse or a mule without understanding, which must be curved with bit and bridle, or it will not stay near you. Many are the sorrows of the wicked, but steadfast love surrounds the one who trusts in the Lord. Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, O righteous, and shout for joy, you upright in heart. So David tells us there's two modes of confession here. There's the confession that leads to the blessed life, and there's a form of confession that does not. And he tells us about these two modes of confession. Through the parable of a donkey and a horse. And if you know anything about donkeys or horses, you know that I mean they have a lot of great qualities, perhaps, but they are stubborn. When I was in Cassville, Missouri, we had two veterinarians in the church there, and one of them refused to work with horses. I know we have some here that love horses, and I don't know anything about horses. I'm just telling you what he said, so don't shoot the messenger. He said, Horses aren't good for anything but dog food. And I was like, wow, that's a pretty harsh stance. But he wouldn't go and work with horses. They were just stubborn. He'd like them. But one thing that we know about horses and donkeys, they're stubborn. And how do you get them to go where you want them to go? You put a bridle or a bit in their mouth and you inflict a little bit of pain to get them to go where you want them to go. And that's what David is referring to here. Don't be a donkey. Don't be a dummy. Listen to God's word. God wants you to go where he wants you to go. He wants to lead you. Confess your sin. Even if it hurts to do so, confess it. Just don't be a dumb donkey. And you can't be superficial here either. You can't just feel bad that you got caught. There's there's godly sorrow, and then there's sorrow that ⁓ you just got caught. And Paul talks about the difference between these two in 2 Corinthians chapter 7. Godly sorrow is good because it leads to repentance, it leads one to confessing. Godly sorrow is hurt and sadness that you feel because you offended a holy God. And you value your relationship with the Lord so much that you're willing to. To do the deep work of understanding your motives, understanding why you got caught up in this any in the first place, and how true transformation can happen. And all of this is a signpost pointing forward, isn't it? All of the Old Testament points forward to what is going to happen in the new and when this new and better perfect human comes. Second Corinthians 5:21, for our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin. So that in him we might become the righteousness of God. This passage is called the great exchange because Jesus took our place. He paid the tab. Somebody had to, we couldn't. And the basis of Christian confession is not just how sorry I am. It's not about throwing a pity party. The basis for Christian confession is what Jesus has done for me. He did for me what I could not do for myself. He covers me, he gets me off. The hamster wheel. It doesn't matter how sorry I am, or what really matters is the cross. And me understanding that, me understanding myself and me pouring it out before God, raw honesty coupled with confidence that God forgives me, so that I can get to the point where I say, Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, O righteous, and shout for joy, all you upright in heart. Some of you may be familiar with Ernest Hemingway. You know, he wrote a ⁓ story of forgiveness entitled The Capital of the World, and it's set in Spain, and it's about a father and a son, and the son really wanted to be a matador. That was his dream. But his father was very controlling and overbearing. And so the son runs away from home to get out from under the thumb of his father. He ends up in Madrid, and the father feels guilty. He feels remorse, he feels sadness, and so he goes seeking out his son. And he reaches Madrid, unable to find his son, he puts an ad in the local newspaper and it reads like this Dear Paco, meet me in front of the Madrid newspaper office tomorrow at noon. All is forgiven. I love you. And the next day, 800 Pacos showed up. All seeking reconciliation with their father. You know, the world is full of people seeking the peace that comes from letting go of the guilt and feeling like we're forgiven. And David shows us what this looks like from a spiritual standpoint. Psalm 32 is the prescription for praying through shame and guilt. And the right pathway is laid out for us by this man who is after God's own heart. You want the blessed life? You want forgiveness? You want to get off the hamster wheel? Then lay it all out there before God. Pour out your heart before Him. Don't stuff it. Don't bury it. Don't suppress it. Be confident that God can forgive you. It really is that easy. I lay it all out before God. I confess my sin with the confidence that He forgives. Let's pray. Most kind and gracious Heavenly Father, thank you for this day. Thank you for this church family. Thank you for our fathers. And God, thank you for your love and grace and mercy. Thank you for the cross. Thank you for the fact that you want us in heaven with you, that you want a relationship with us. And may we seek to follow the path that you've laid out for us. May we live at the center of your will, because that is the best place to be. God help us when we fall. To confess, to repent. To have the confidence that you forgive us. It's in your son's precious name we pray. Do you need forgiveness this morning? Have you been suppressing, burying, stuffing your transgression? It's time to lay it all out there before God and maybe maybe you'd like to to confess this morning and and Have us pray for you, or maybe you've been living a life of a vone. You've chosen the wrong path and you're ready to get on the right path. Certainly, there's no better time to take care of that than this morning. The Bible lays out for us a a beautiful plan of response to the gospel, and that is faith, confessing Jesus, repenting of your sins, and being baptized for the remission of those sins. We can take care of that this morning as well. I say it every week, but there's no good reason to leave here this morning without being right with God. So if we can help you, why don't you come if we stand as we sing?