Recognizing Sin

Good afternoon again, brethren. It's wonderful to see all of you. It's a delight to be able to get together on the holy days and be able to worship God, but also to celebrate the incredible plan that God is working out on this earth. He happens to include us. He happens to invite us. He happens to bring us to a point in our lives where we are able to be shaped and molded and to be able to grow and develop. As we observe these festivals, in particular this day of Unleavened Bread, we're doing that as a part of His plan.

Even in connection with our special music, all of us have every reason to be incredibly thankful that we could acknowledge the Passover sacrifice of Jesus Christ as our Savior and our Redeemer. In essence, we were rededicating ourselves to the commitment that we made when we were baptized, but we get to do that every year.

We have to be reminded. And certainly, we recognize the connection between Jesus Christ and being the Lamb of God who has taken away our sins. And as we begin this celebration of the Days of Unleavened Bread, we want to recognize the emphasis that God puts on seeing sin.

Recognizing sin. Seeing sin in our lives. And I mention to you the incredibly wonderful symbol that God uses. Mr. Neu said it was rather innocuous. Whatever he said about it. It's a very common thing. All of us probably eat some kind of bread every day, most of the time.

Some type of cracker or some type of bread. And yet, instead of all the Easter bunnies or the Easter eggs or the things that are not what the Bible is prescribing, God gives us an incredibly useful and noble symbol. Because he tells us we seek the bread of life. We are not to just simply, as Jesus said, live by bread alone, but by every word of God.

And so, you have an incredible connection with the bread we eat. And of course, we know that we're eating something different. And there's a significance to that, too. That we eat during these seven days on live and bread. Of course, when we're at home, that's somewhat easier to do. We usually don't have anything around unless it's unknown to us. And so, we're not tempted to eat something that we shouldn't. And yet, if we're out, then we've got to be reminded. We need to be reminded. And I think all of you, many of you know what I'm referring to in that regard.

But, when we read in 1 Corinthians 5, and this is what Paul stated about the church there, and certainly, when you read the book of 1 Corinthians, you know that the church was not a completely purified church. They had a number of problems. They were divided in a number of ways. They were not really approaching each other correctly. They had a lot of things that Paul needed to address. Here in 1 Corinthians 5, he says, verse 7, your boasting is not a good thing, don't you know that a little yeast leavens a whole lump, the whole batch of dough?

What you should do is clean out the old yeast so that you can be a new batch, because you really are, as you really are, unleavened. For our Passover lamb, Christ has been sacrificed. Therefore, in verse 8, let us celebrate the festival not with the old yeast, the yeast of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. Now, I know for many of you, you've read those verses for 50 years, and so have I. We've read this many, many times, and we've observed the days of unleavened bread many times. And yet, it is significant that Paul mentions here that we need to be seeking the truth, and seeking the sincerity, the honesty, the integrity that comes with being the children of God.

He wants us to understand it like he does. He wants us to understand it like Christ did, because clearly Christ was focused in an incredible way on my job, my mission, my purpose.

It is not only to succeed, but to be a sacrifice for others who will follow, my brothers and sisters. He wants us to identify with him. And yet, as we see Paul reminding the Corinthians, they surely needed to be reminded.

And I'm going to have to say, perhaps we should say about all of us, we need to be reminded. I want us to tie this together with what we read in Hebrews chapter 3. Because here in Hebrews chapter 3, you see kind of what happened to the Israelites. Now, you would think that the Israelites who were brought out of Egypt, as you read about it in the book of Exodus, and of course, referring to the Exodus from Egypt, they saw incredible miracles happen.

They saw the plagues that they were actually a part of for a little while, and then later relieved of some of the suffering. They saw the devastation that occurred in Egypt. They saw the death of the firstborn of the Egyptian, and they saw that they had been passed over. They saw these marvelous things, and then as they were directed to come out of Egypt, they saw the parting of the Red Sea, and being able to go through and come out on the other side, and be able... you know, they saw all of that. They must have had bad memory. Now, that's the only thing I can say. They didn't recall well, because as they started to wander in the wilderness, they forgot some of that, and they began to complain about, well, how God was taking care of me.

How God says, He will take care of us. How He says, He will provide for us. They wanted water, they wanted bread, they wanted flesh. They complained about all of those things, and of course, what was Moses to do? All he could do was take it to God, ask God to provide what they needed, the water out of the rock, the manna that was sent as food, as bread, and then the quail that came, because they wanted flesh to eat. They wanted a little more of a diet like they had been at least partially used to in Egypt.

And yet here in Hebrews 12, you see that the reason why they failed was that they were disobedient, and they were unbelieving. And I'm not going to read through all of chapter 3 and 4. You're welcome to do that, because that's what it's talking about.

But in verse 12, again Paul, I believe, is writing this book, Paul says, take care. Chapter 3, verse 12, take care, brothers and sisters, that none of you have an evil and unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. You've been doing this for 50, 60 years.

It's become a pattern. I mean, it's the way we live. It's what we do. It's what we try to encourage each other to do, which is right, and that's what we should be doing. But here we're instructed to be careful that none of you have an evil, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God.

But what you should do is exhort one another every day, as long as it called today, so that none of you, and so here it tells us to help each other, not just to come to church, not just to be here, as I would hope we'd all try to be and want to be here each week. But here it says we should come together and we should exhort each other, as long as it's called today, so that none of you may be hardened.

So that none of you may be hardened.

By what?

Well, by the deceitfulness of sin.

See, we understand the symbols of unleavened bread, and leavened bread connected to sin.

But see, over a period of time, we can become hardened.

Now, of course, he goes on to say, well, this is what the Israelites, you know, they didn't believe, they didn't obey.

They became hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. And again, you would think they could have remembered.

You would have thought they could just think back, you know, not that long ago.

You know, what did God do for us?

And of course, as all of us know, if we had a week or a month or several months or a year go by, then it's not as clear as what it was a little earlier.

So I asked all of us in this sermon today, are we hardened by the deceitfulness of sin?

Is sin even deceitful? Well, one of the images that we have of leavening is that the little leaven leavens the whole lump.

It permeates the whole low-for lump that it may be causing to rise.

And so I think you could say, well, that doesn't look like that's going to happen. And I think if you've made bread, a lot of times you will have some type of yeast in that bread to cause it to rise. And sometimes it doesn't quite rise like you wanted it to, or you hoped it would.

But often it's going to rise exactly as it predicted.

And yet that's a symbol that God uses that makes sense. And then he tells us, don't be hardened by how deceitful sin is. Is sin deceitful to you? That's what I think all of us should think about for this next week.

Or is it something I already know I've already done with that? I've done this many times. I know what to do.

No. I will tell you there's perhaps more to it. More to it than that. I want to cover three things today, and some of them are very obvious. Others of them may not be as obvious to you, but we're in this together. We are celebrating these days to enjoy and to grow and develop divine nature. And we want to do that together. We want to understand it together. The first thing I want to cover is simply biblical definition of sin. Biblical definitions of sin. Now, you could write down whichever ones you recall.

There's more than one. There's actually a number that we need to be aware of.

And that's the first thing that I want to cover here in the sermon here this afternoon.

The second thing that I intend to point out is that hidden sins, things that we do, that you don't know about each other, hidden sins can rot, can corrupt our soul. We've got to be able to define sin from the Bible. We need to recognize that hidden sins can eat us from within.

And finally, I will cover the solution. The solution has three R's to it. And we'll learn what those are if I actually get to point number three.

But, let's go back to the first one. Biblical definitions of sin.

Now, Mr. New has already read the first one here. All of you can look that up easily. 1 John chapter 3, which we've already been studying. And this is a verse that we did earlier read. This is a definition of sin that, again, all of us, I think, are familiar with.

Whoever commits sin transgresses also the law. The New King James renders that whoever commits sin commits lawlessness. Because sin is the transgression of the law. It is lawlessness.

Now, we can refer that to the Ten Commandments. And we can, if you want to, you could enumerate the Ten Commands. That give us a solid basis for understanding. You know, we could think through them, and we could think, well, okay, I understand sin is the transgression of the law. And if I'm going to get away from sin, I'd better be able to identify the law. And I'd better be able to identify, you know, whether or not I'm putting God before everything else in my life. Or whether I allow anything to be more important or an idol in my life. Or regarding the Third Command. Do we ever take God's name in vain?

See, those are things we have to think about. And not just directly the name of God or the name of Jesus, but even euphemisms for God, the name of God. You know, it's taken in a profane way, often in this society. It makes it very, very difficult to even listen to a lot of people talk, because they can't keep from talking about God in a profane way.

They can use all kinds. You know, the name of Jesus, the name of Jesus Christ is corrupted in many different ways. There are other biblical statements even that are put into slang and then utilized, and often becomes just, I don't even think about whether or not that is properly keeping the Third Commandment, or whether or not I am sinning.

Certainly the Fourth Commandment is one that we want to observe, and we know when the Seventh-Day Sabbath is. We're told to keep it holy, and so we have to evaluate that. We have to think about, do we honor our Father and Mother? Do we honor our Heavenly Father and our spiritual Mother, the Church of God? Jesus made points about the next couple of commandments. He said in Matthew 5, verse 21, you've heard that it was said of old that you should not murder, but whoever murders will be in libel of judgment. But I say to you, in verse 22 of Matthew 5, I say to you if you're angry with a brother or sister.

So he added a much greater dimension to this. If you're angry with a brother or sister, then you're reliable to judgment. And he said in verse 27, you've heard that it's been said you should not commit adultery. But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

Obviously, Jesus was adding a dimension to an understanding of transgressing the law that was far more than just physical murder or physical adultery. And of course, the same thing applies to the law regarding theft. Whether we are honestly dealing with the things that we are dealing with in our lives, the ninth command deals with honesty and lying or telling the truth.

Again, we can think about how well are we doing? Do we covet whatever others have? Is that a corruption? Are we hardened? It's not that we don't know. We do know. We know what the law is. We even know how it applies. But are we, in a sense, lulled to sleep and then hardened to the deceitfulness of sin? Now, I think this instruction in 1 John 3-4 is one surely all of us would write down, but I want to cover several others. Now, what about 1 John? 1 John 5.

1 John 5, verse 17. Now, John has already talked a lot about obedience. He's already talked a lot about being focused on Jesus Christ as having come in the flesh and having been and is the head of the church. But here in 1 John, right toward the end, chapter 5, verse 17, he says, All unrighteousness, all wrong-doing is sin. Again, that's pretty wide-ranging. Now, he again talks about mortal sin and sin that is repented of. And I'm not wishing to go into that, but I'm just pointing out that's another definition of sin. All wrong-doing, all unrighteousness is sin.

What about James 4? James 4, verse 17, He says, Therefore, to him who knows to do good and doesn't do it, to him it is sin. And so that would seem to be directed to somebody who does know. And that should be most of us. We should know what God requires, what he asks, what he commands, what he directs. We should know what the right thing to do is, because we are growing in the nature of God. Actually, here John 4, 17, he's talking about not just what we do or don't do, it's talking about not doing something that we should do, not showing the type of love for others that we should.

And so it's an incredibly important concept as well. I find it interesting that in looking at what Samuel said, and this would be going back into the Old Testament, Samuel was the last of the judges prior to Saul and later David and Solomon being the kings in Israel. Samuel felt a responsibility toward the people. He felt a responsibility toward the Israelites that he served. Actually, in 1 Samuel 12, you see him going through, in a sense, through this whole chapter, giving some advice.

Because his life was waning, he was not going to be serving in that role forever. But he said, here in 1 Samuel 12, verse 22, "'For the Lord will not forsake his people.' He will not forsake his people for his great name's sake, because it is pleased the Lord to make you his people." So he understood who he was talking to. He understood who he was serving.

He comprehended the depth of what it was his responsibility was toward those people. And he says in verse 23, moreover, "'As for me,' and so again he was directing this at him, "'For be it from me that I should sin against the Lord in ceasing to pray for you.

But I will teach you the good in the right way.'" See there, he notes that, you know, I have a responsibility to pray for others. And see, do we have a responsibility to pray for others? Is that sin if we ignore or neglect that? Or if we're even hardened? I'd rather do something else with my time instead of pray for others. That isn't the way Saimin looked at it. Let's go on to Proverbs 24. Proverbs chapter 24. In verse 9, actually in verse 8, it talks about devising evil. And I hope that we don't do that, but, you know, this is clearly something that has been and can be done in the Church of God. People devising evil against others. But here in verse 9 of chapter 24, it says, "...the thought or the devising of foolishness is sin, and the scoffer is an abomination to men." The devising of folly or foolishness. Now, that's not saying we should not be happy and joyful because clearly that's what God wants. This is talking about something He defines as evil, as sin, the whole thoughts of foolishness and folly. And finally, in Romans 14, Romans 14 goes through an elaborate discussion of, you know, how we can be caring and concerned about others. And again, Paul, in this statement, defines sin in a way that's far more extensive than just looking at the law. Because he says in verse 23, "...he who doubts is condemned if he eats, because if he doesn't eat, he does not eat from faith, for whatsoever is not from faith is sin." So that would have to do with our beliefs based on the Word of God, our conscience toward God. If we don't believe something is the right thing to do, then we probably shouldn't do it. "...Whosoever is not of faith is sin." Again, those are, at least some of, maybe not every one of them, but at least the direct statements from the Word of God about sin. And so, you know, we certainly want to think about that during these days of Unleavened Bread. And we want to consider, as we've asked God to forgive us of our sins, and as He is now allowing us to celebrate a wonderful festival that is focused on the sins that so easily beset us. The sin, actually, that can deceive us. We have to be alert to that. So that's the first point I wanted to cover. The second one was that hidden sins, sins that you don't know about me, sins that I don't know about you, I don't know about most of your sins. Thankfully, you don't know about most of mine. But see, those hidden sins rot us from the inside. Now, we might use, and we have a good example with King David. He's a notorious sinner, as you know. Of course, he's notoriously going to be the king over all of Israel in the world to come. Maybe not notoriously, but meritoriously he is, and will be. But God worked in his life, and we're familiar with what you read in 2 Samuel 11, about how it was that this incident with Bathsheba came about, and how it was that Uriah happened to die. Now, you can describe it like that. You can say, well, that's what happened. But, see, what was going on in David's head? There were plenty of hidden sins going on. And again, I'm not going to read through that whole chapter, 2 Samuel 11. You can see the first few verses. It talks about how Israel was at war, but David wasn't at work. He wasn't with them. He was at home.

Sinning. He was at home, thinking about whatever. Well, he happened to see Bathsheba, and so his errant thoughts became more and more of an obsession, and he then ultimately commits adultery. And subsequently, then, Bathsheba is pregnant.

What's he going to do then? The whole nation is going to know what I've been up to!

Now, what kind of plotting, what kind of hidden sins were going on in David's thinking? Well, he had allowed his lapse from God, I guess you would have to say. He wasn't focused on the work of God, on helping and leading Israel. He wasn't focused. He was allowing his lust to rule his life. He created an intricate cover-up scheme. We'll get Uriah to come back. Maybe we can hide the fact that this child is going to be born by having the husband to come back. And he actually came back, but then he wouldn't even stay with his wife. He was ready to go back to work, ready to go back to the front line. So David ultimately had to devise a plan and actually include the entire army of God to send Uriah to the front. See, David sent a message, sent it to Joab and said, well, put Uriah up in the front, let him get to be mixed in the battle and then back away, he'll die. That's what happened. He murdered Uriah in that way. Now, did that affect David? Well, he tried to cover it up. He tried to ignore. He tried to dismiss that this crazy confusion that I have been deceived into doing is just going to go away, but God was clearly aware. See, the fact is our hidden sins are not really hidden. They are well known to God and probably often to our mates. That's what we can say. But see, this would ultimately corrupt David's way of thinking, and God would have to send a messenger to tell David, you're the one who is sinning here and you need to repent. That's what David was told. But again, I bring that up only to have us think about ourselves. Do we have any hidden sins that we could actually do better on and really identify? During the days when God wants us to be focused on sin, He wants us to be recognizing sin in our lives. Amazingly, Job, in Job 31, Job was obviously a very upright man, a blameless man. God held him in a very high regard. He knew he was an obedient servant. He knew he did many, many, many, many right things. He also knew he needed to be forgiven. And that wasn't something that Job was really focused on. But in Job 31, you find an entire chapter of Job defending his righteousness. This is before Elijah steps in, and I think it's in chapter 32, verse 1 or 2. It just says, Job was so self-righteous, he couldn't see it at all.

I wonder if that could be a hidden sin for any of us. See, actually in chapter 31, Job is saying, Well, if I'd done this, then I could be blamed. But if I'd done this, I could be blamed. If I'd done that, I could be blamed. Of course, he claimed that he didn't do any of those things. But in verse 33, as he's lamenting about how unfair God is, he said in verse 33, Job 31, verse 33, says, If I have concealed my sins, if I have concealed my transgressions, as others do, as all mankind does, by hiding my iniquity in my bosom, verse 34, because I stood in great fear of the multitude, and the contempt of families terrified me, so I keep silent, and I don't even go outside.

This was one of the things that he was saying that he wasn't doing, but he clearly knew that this is the nature of man, and this is what we see revealed here, that it is way too often, that hidden sins corrupt us. If you go back to David, in Psalm 32, you have a really good chapter. Psalm 32, a really good chapter that describes the hollowness of the hidden sins that David came to see in his life, and recognizing these sins that he had not repented of, that he had not even, you know, maybe he had not thought much about, about how bad this is in the sight of God.

But here in Psalm 32, verse 3, he describes this. He says, when I kept silence, when I kept my sins hidden, when I didn't confess them, when I kept silence, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long. That's not comfortable feeling. Whenever we know that we know that we know that we were wrong, that's what hidden sin does. Hidden sin corrupts and rots us on the inside.

That's what verse 3 says, my body wasted away through my groaning. For day and night, in verse 4, your hand was heavily upon me. Now, did God know what David had done? Sure, he knew. He was clearly aware, and David was hoping he would forget, but God forgives. But he doesn't just ignore or forget.

In this case, for day and night, your hand was heavy upon me. My strength was dried up and the heat of summer. He was just melting inside. But in verse 5, he says, then I finally woke up. I finally woke up and I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not hide my iniquity. I said, I'm going to confess my transgressions to the Lord, and of course you forgave the guilt of my sin. God removed that guilt whenever David recognized, I'm wrong, I need to repent, I'm broken, I'm crushed. He's going to say this as well in other places. But that's what he understood.

That's what he wrote down for us to understand. As we think about hidden sins wrought us from inside, you see in verse 1 and 2 how that blessed or happy are those who are forgiven. That's how we can be blessed. That's how we can be happy is by recognizing that we need to repent of sin and that we can, if God does not impute iniquity to us, that's a good state to be in. That makes you feel really, really good. Psalm 32 is a good description about hidden sin. What about presumptuous sins? Now, presumptuous sins, in a sense, kind of seems to refer to doing something that we shouldn't do, that we don't have authorization to do, or that we are taking too much upon ourselves.

Perhaps many of you would have better definitions for presumption than me. But he says in Psalm 19, I think this is Esip, I believe. Now, this is David again. Psalm 19 verse 12. Psalm 19 verse 12. Who can detect their errors? He says, clear me from my hidden sins, my hidden faults, my secret faults. Keep back in verse 13, your servant also from presumptuous sins. Don't let them have dominion over me.

Now, again, we can all analyze whether or not this applies to us. But I will say, as far as the definitions of sin, it's good for us to be aware. It's pretty wide-ranging, far more than even just the specific lining of the law, but the spirit of the law, and in this case, many, many things that should be considered to be taken to God. And certainly, I hope in pointing this out that this helps me and you to recognize any hidden sins that we know are actually, and maybe we don't know, because, like I said, sin is deceitful.

It's deceitful, and we can become hardened to the effect of sin in our lives. So that's my second point. The third one I said was a solution, and there are three R's to it.

The solution that we all want to pursue is recognition, repentance, and resistance.

Recognition, repentance, and resistance.

See, that's really what we're doing during the days of Unleavened Bread. We're learning not only to be mindful of the fact that we want to be alert to sin in our lives, and eating unleavened bread, focusing on sincerity and truth, but the solution involves recognition, repentance, and resistance. Here in Proverbs 28, Proverbs chapter 28, and this is in a section where you have a number of sayings from Solomon. And of course Solomon had a lot to say, and some of that is written down for us. And yet here in Proverbs 28 in verse 9, he says in verse 9, when one does not listen to the law, even that person's prayers are in abomination.

When one does not listen to the law, even one's prayers are in abomination.

And then in verse 13, he says, no one who conceals sin or transgressions will prosper.

But he says, one who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy.

That pretty much capsulates my third point here. Recognition, repentance, and then resistance.

Now Psalm 51 is a familiar psalm to all of us.

A psalm that David wrote, a psalm that is connected to his enlightenment regarding his sins with Bathsheba and with Uriah, and with Joab and with everybody else in Israel, because he really had made a mess of things.

And yet Psalm 51 is an incredibly wonderful pattern for us to not only read occasionally and sing about like we do here in church, because we do sing the psalm that involves Psalm 51, you know, in your loving kindness, Lord, be merciful to me. We're familiar with that psalm, but see, there's so much more here in Psalm 51 that we need to realize.

Psalm 51 is an incredibly instructed psalm because it tells us how it is, you know, that David approached God.

What it was that after Nathan came and showed him, you know, you're the one who's wrong here, and David acknowledged that.

It wasn't just a simple, okay, I'm wrong, and goes on.

This probably crushed David.

He talks about that here in Psalm 51. He says, I am not only crushed, I am broken.

And yet, again, we can use this psalm as a pattern in solving any hidden sin, or any unintentional sins that we might identify in our lives, even here during the days of Unleavened Bread.

He says here in Psalm 51, Have mercy on me, O God, according to your loving-kindness.

According to your abundant mercy, blot out my transgressions, wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sins.

First two verses, in essence, incorporate many different descriptions of sin.

Sin, iniquity, transgression, you know, I'm just messed up. I'm wrong.

And yet David is acknowledging that. He's in a sense, as we read in Psalm 32, he's confessing his sin to God, and it says in chapter 32, about verse 5, God forgave him.

He removed the feeling of guilt that David wanted to get away from.

But here he goes on in verse 3. I not only need to recognize my sin in many different forms, but in verse 2, wash me, I guess at first verse 2, wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, cleanse me from my sin. In verse 3, for I know, see, I now recognize my sins.

I recognize what got me into trouble. I recognize what I wasn't doing that could have helped me.

I know my transgressions and my sin is ever before me, and then he acknowledged something that we always have to acknowledge regarding sin.

See, David's sin wasn't just toward basketball or toward Uriah or Joab or any of the other people, although it did affect them adversely. His sin did.

But he says, against you, against you, Father, against you and you alone, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight?

And so he was reminded of the fact. I think he knew that earlier and surely at other times in his life. He remembered that. He knew that.

He knew that sin was against God because God is the lawgiver. He's the author. He's the one who defines sin. He tells us what sin is.

And David is admitting that to God. I realize that my sin is against the law of God. It's against the authority of God.

It's against the way that God wants me to live.

And he goes ahead in verse 4 to say, I've done this that is evil in your sight and you are perfectly justified in your sentence and you are blameless when you pass judgment.

He says, there's no excuse for me. There's no excuse for my sin. There's really no blaming everybody else. Oh, Bathsheba shouldn't have been up there on the roof. You know, Uriah wouldn't cooperate.

He says, it's all me. You have the prerogative to blame me and you are fully justified in doing so.

He says in verse 5, I've been a sinner all my life.

Indeed, I was born guilty a sinner when my mother conceived me. You know, that I think conveys the thought that David realizes I've been a sinner all my life. I maybe didn't want to acknowledge that much of the time, but that's surely the case.

It's not saying things bad, I think, against his mother at all, but it's explaining the human nature that David was coming to see.

And he says in verse 6, you want, you desire truth in the inward parts. Therefore, teach me wisdom in my secret heart. I want this deep down in my heart and in my mind.

Purge me with hyssop in verse 7, and I will be clean, wash me, and I'll be whiter than snow. Let me hear the joy and gladness. Let the bones that you have crushed.

Was David down? Was he recognizing his sin? Had he felt the weight of that guilt?

I think you have to say that he did.

Let me hear joy and gladness again. Remove this crushed feeling. Hide your face from my sins. Blot out my iniquity. Verse 10, created me a clean heart, O God. And renew a new and right spirit within me. Please don't cast me away from your presence. David has experienced something that most of us would not. He had watched what happened to Saul. He was there much of the time. He knew Saul's terrible flaws, and he knew that God had removed from Saul the spirit that he had given him to help him. He knew that. And he says, please, please don't take your Holy Spirit away from me. He knew that. He knew what God had done with Saul. And God does not do that. He's not threatening us with taking a Holy Spirit away from us. But we certainly don't want to neglect it, or we don't want to quench it by our own wrong action.

He says, restore to me in verse 12, the joy of your salvation. The joy of the salvation of God is what is an indescribable joy. An incredible delight to be able to approach God, to receive His love and mercy and forgiveness, His encouragement, His uplifting, and to know that we have hope beyond bounds. That's what David was saying. He says, as you are able to help me this way, I will teach in verse 13. I'll teach transgressors your ways. I'll do the job. I will teach others. I'll teach transgressors your ways. I'll teach sinners. Sinners will return to you. Deliver me from my blood shed, O God. O God of my salvation, my tongue will sing aloud of your deliverance. Open my lips, O Lord, and my mouth will declare your praise. How could David be excited about what was going to happen in Israel and how it was that God would continue to bless him and be with him?

Well, it was because of a relationship with God that's cultivated here in this chapter of repentance. And clearly, he is acknowledging, I recognize my sin, and I hope to get away from that. And you find he made great strides toward the latter part of his life, but even toward the latter part of his life, he did some things that turned out to be wrong. I'm sure he had this same attitude about it. He said, that's terrible. I have more to learn.

And so, he says in verse 16, I have no delight in sacrifice, otherwise I'd give you burnt offerings. But you don't want that. That's not what you want. The system that they had at the time was a system to remind them of sin and help them to understand the need for forgiveness. And he said, you're not wanting me to slaughter hundreds of lambs and bulls.

You don't want that. That doesn't help you as far as my father. But he says in verse 17, the sacrifice that's acceptable to God is a broken spirit, broken in a contrite heart. O God, you will never despise. Brethren, if we seek to relate to God in a way where we come to recognize our sins, we certainly don't want to hide them.

We want to confess them to God. We want to recognize them. We want to repent, as you see David doing here in Psalm 51. And we want to then resist. See, that's what I started with whenever I mentioned being hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. See, if we see ourselves, if we see our sins, if we ask God to show us our sins, if we beseech Him for that, if our heart is in that with a broken spirit and a contrite heart, well then God will help us.

And He will help us. What we find as we come closer to the conclusion here of the sermon, and certainly as we look at the last part of the Bible, you find in the book of Revelation that God gives and directed to the seven churches. One of them is called Laodicea. They're in need of help. And I want us to read this verse and then one other verse here in Revelation 3. Revelation 3 verse 20. See, now, clearly the church at Laodicea was lukewarm. They were hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.

In verse 20, this message says, listen, I'm standing at the door knocking. If you hear my voice and open the door, I will come into you and eat with you and you with me. And in verse 21, to the one who overcomes, to the one who overcomes, overcome what? Sin. Overcome sin. Overcome the effect of sin in our lives. To the one who overcomes or conquers. I will grant to sit with me on my throne as I also overcame and sat down with my father on his throne.

See, Jesus knows what it is to be victorious. He wants us to be victorious, too. He wants us to be recognizing, repenting, and then resisting the sins that can so easily be deceptive in our lives. And so, he makes that plea here in Revelation 3. And then finally, the last verse or chapter we'll go to is in Romans 7.

See, interestingly, Romans 7, Paul is talking about the law. He's talking about how it is the law had affected him. Really, chapter 7 is, if you think of the pattern of what's in Romans, chapter 6 is about being baptized, about having been enslaved to sin, and yet becoming then enslaved to righteousness. In chapter 8, those sides of chapter 7, it's about the Holy Spirit and about how it is that the Spirit of God has been given to us to succeed. And yet, in chapter 7, Paul talks about the law, and he talks about how I just find myself struggling all the time.

Here in chapter 7, verse 15, he says, I don't understand my own actions. If I do not do what I do, not what I want to do and what I do, that's the very thing that I hate. See, now, was that a struggle that was going on in Paul's mind? I think you could say it is. That's what you see described there. And he describes it more so. He says in verse 22, I delight in the law of God.

I love the law, but I don't keep it all the time, or I struggle. And see, it's not wrong to struggle. It's actually right to struggle and resist and overcome to be a part of the family of God. And I do want to point out to you, as he is describing the law here, that he says in verse 11. And this had to do with his understanding of sin, his recognition of sin. Paul was a Pharisee. He was fully aware of the law. He was fully a preacher of the law. He was a teacher of the law. But when it finally made an impact on his mind, he says in verse 11, sin seizing an opportunity in the commandment.

Meaning that starting to make an impression on my mind, sin deceived me. And through it killed me. See, obviously the penalty of sin is death. And yet here it talks about the deceiving and the deceitfulness of sin. And that's what I talked about earlier in Hebrews. Don't be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. And certainly in this world Satan promotes the idea that, well, if you're not perfect, then you, you know, doesn't really make too much of an impact on you.

You need to just not really worry about it so much. You need to feel better about yourself for all the different psychological explanations that people might give instead of recognize, repent, and then resist the deceitfulness of sin. And so as Paul concludes this chapter here of Romans 7, you know, you see as he's discussed the struggle that's going on in his mind, in his life, he says in verse 22, I delight in the law of God, but I see a war, verse 23, going on in my mind, in my members. And he says in verse 24, wretched man that I am, who can deliver me from this body of death?

He answers that, of course, by saying thanks be to God that I can be delivered from this body of death through Jesus Christ, my Lord. See, Paul had come to understand, even though I am fighting against sin, I am wanting to learn more about it, I'm wanting to recognize it, I'm wanting to see it, I'm not going to quit hiding it, but it's still a struggle, it's still a fight, and yet the more I rely on the help that Jesus Christ provides, the help of the Holy Spirit. See, we know that the Spirit's been given to us so that we can learn to live like Christ.

So, I hope that during these next seven days, and we will, of course, have our final Holy Day services, Holy Convocations of 1030 and 230 on next Friday, I hope we can think about the topic of sin, maybe in a little different way.

A little different way because, you know, there may be more to it. More to it than we would have thought. And certainly, if we ask God to show us our sins, and then show us the victory that we can have over sin through asking that Christ would empower us, and that He would actually live in us, well, then we can, as He said, He is an overcomer.

He is at the right hand of God, and we can be seated at the right hand of God at Christ's disposal. We are going to be His servants forever, and so we look forward to that time, and we thank God, you know, that He is mercifully willing to deal with us and help us toward His divine family. Thank you.