Let's turn in our Bibles to Psalm
19. The 19th Psalm. This psalm is a psalm
that declares the greatness of God's Word. The greatness of
this book that we hold in our hands. It declares that God's
Word is the law of the Lord. It's the
testimony of the Lord. These are the statutes of the
Lord. This is the commandment of the
Lord. This is the fear of the Lord. These are the judgments of the
Lord. And it tells us what God does through this Word. He converts
the soul. He makes wise the simple. He
rejoices the heart. He enlightens the eye. He makes
us to endure forever. He makes us to desire His Word
more than gold and more than honey. He warms us by it. And He brings us to Christ who
is our great reward by this Word. And when God puts His Word in
the heart and begins to work these things by His Word, there
will be a sure and certain response. And we see here in David's prayer
This will be our text. David has a prayer at the end
of this psalm, and we're going to see here in this what this
response will be. Number one, the believer will
see something of the depths of his sins. Verse 12, he says,
Who can understand his errors? Number two, the believer will
flee to Christ to cleanse him from all his sins, including
his errors, his secret faults. He says there in the second part
of verse 12, cleanse thou me from secret faults. He flees
to another to do this for him. And then thirdly, when the word
is made effectual, the believer will look to Christ to be kept
from presumptuous sins. Verse 13, he says, keep back
thy servant also from presumptuous sins. Let them not have dominion
over me. Then shall I be upright, and
I shall be innocent from the great transgression. And then
fourthly, all of this will be affected in a believer because
he wants to be acceptable to God. Look at verse 14. Let the words of my mouth and
the meditation of my heart be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord,
my strength and my redeemer. And then for the last point,
we'll see one other thing when we get to the end. But when God
makes His Word effectual, these are the things He works in His
people. He makes Christ our all and He makes sin our enemy. He
makes Christ our only advocate and He makes sin the most abhorred
thing that we know. And these five things are the
certain fruit that He produces by His Word. First of all, God's
Word makes the believer begin to see something of the depths
of his sin. He says there in verse 12, who
can understand his errors? When the Holy Spirit gives grace
to see the law. We didn't see it before. We saw
the letter of the law and that's all we saw. Didn't you remember
looking to the Word of God and just seeing the letter of it?
And you thought, this book just tells me what to do and what
not to do. But you didn't see the spirituality of it. You didn't
hear what the law said. But when God speaks in the heart,
he makes you hear spiritually what this law says. And this
law is deep. And we can't, we can't enter
into it. In your private time sometime, I hope you do study
the word. I hope that, hope you do. And
if you do, you go and read Exodus 20. Starting there and read throughout
Exodus and throughout Leviticus. And then go to Deuteronomy and
read Deuteronomy. And read God's law. It's just. It's holy. It's good. It's perfect. It's pure. It's clean. It's true. It's righteous all together. It's everything me and you are
not. Everything about that law. And
then you look to Christ. Then look to Christ. And go and
read the Gospels. And read about Christ walking
this earth. And there you'll see the only
man, in the God man, you'll see the only man who was holy, just,
and good as the law. You'll see the only man who's
perfect, and pure, and upright, and clean, and true, and righteous
altogether as the law. And you know, the Pharisees and
the scribes, they thought they had the market cornered on being
righteous. And everybody that walked in
their day would look at them and think, these men are righteous.
And when Christ came, these men didn't have a cloak anymore for
their sin. Because here come a man that
made them look like nothing but out and out sinners. He was so
righteous and so holy. That's why they hated him. That's
why they hated him. Because he knew no sin. He did
no sin. Have you ever seen a picture
of yourself that somebody took and you didn't know they were
taking it? And one day you saw the picture, maybe it was years
later or something like that, and you looked at the picture
and you thought, man, I didn't know I looked like that. How
didn't I see myself like that? That's the exclamation that David
makes here after he speaks of the glory of the law and the
glory of God's word. And he says, who can know his
errors? Who can know and understand his
errors? Did you know there are sins that
we don't know about, that you don't know about? There are sins
you're guilty of that you don't know about. Sins I'm guilty of,
I don't know about. Most of our life is carried out
like a machine. We do everything habitually,
we do it mechanically, we have things we do, we've done them
so many times that we just go about doing them and we don't
pay attention to the tiniest details. We don't look at the
little, little details in our thoughts. Why are we doing this? Why am I doing it this way and
not this other way? We don't look at things like
that. And not only that, but the scripture says the heart
is deceitful. The old man, the old sin that's
in you who believe, and that old man's all a man is if he
doesn't believe, that heart is deceitful above all things and
desperately wicked. Who can know it, the scripture
says? Who can know the sins of the heart? And yet the law of
God has jurisdiction over all our thoughts and over all our
words and over all our deeds, over every aspect of our lives,
when we're awake, when we're asleep, when we know it, when
we don't know it. The law of God has a far-reaching
jurisdiction over us completely, thoroughly. So who's going to
understand his wanderings? Who's going to be able to understand
how often he goes astray? All his wrongs and his transgressions. Who among us could sit and try
to count up the times? Do you think you could do this?
Do you think you could do an inventory and count the times that you've
thought sinful or you've said sinful words or gave a sinful
look or did a sinful act? We don't even remember our sins. We forget them. We don't even
remember them. And then not to mention that,
what about the impure unholy thoughts? Who could number those? Who could tally those? You can't
even estimate that number. Spurgeon said, what we know is
as nothing when compared with what we know not. And that's
a true statement. What we know is as nothing when
it's compared with what we know not. You look at an iceberg and
you just see a little bit of it. There's a whole lot more
under the surface you don't see and that's our sin. We just know
a little bit of it and just think what we know of it is for you
to believe it's horrible and you think it's, you just would
love to be free from it and you think it's against your God and
you hate it, but just think there's a whole lot of sin, more sin
that we don't know than we do know. Any sinner that looks to
the law and rejoices in his own obedience Rather than totally
resting in the obedience of the Lord Jesus Christ, any sinner
that looks to the law and rejoices in his obedience and thinks he
can come to God by the law, that man is blind and proud and fooling
nobody but himself. The more the believer is given
light, what happens to us? The more you're given light to
see yourself in light of the law and in light of Christ, the
more you see your sin, and the more it humbles you, and the
more it brings you to the feet of Christ. You know, that thing
I said seven years ago when I came here, that we got all this baggage,
and all these things we think is important, and all these sins,
and all of this stuff, and what God's teaching us every day of
our life in this Word is we're coming closer and closer and
closer to Christ, and all of that baggage is being left behind. Tell me this. Seven years ago,
things that were important to you about what we're doing right
here, there are some things seven years ago that was important
to some of you that's not important to you now. And the more you
hear Christ, the more that will be the case. And it goes with
our sins. The more we see of our sins,
the more we're coming straight to Christ. And we're being taught
to do that. And when it's all said and done,
we're just going to be standing right in front of Christ. That's
where we're being brought to. And that's what every lesson,
every word, everything in this book is teaching us. He's the
one thing needful. He's the one thing needful. If
you have Christ, you have heaven, you have a reward, the reward,
you have glory, you have righteousness, you have everything. If you don't
have Christ, it don't matter what you have in this world,
you got nothing. Absolutely nothing. Someone might say, well, if I
don't know I'm breaking the law, how can it be sin? Secret faults, errors that are
unknown to us, they might not be as criminal as the sins we
know about, but they're still breaking God's law. They're still
sins. If we could see like God sees,
if we could see our sins the way God sees our sins, we'd know
the nature of our sins. There are some things in this
world that turns our stomach. There are some things in this
world that makes us want to wretch. That's what our sins are before
God. Our sins before God are an abomination whether we know
them or not. Our sins before God, whether we know them or
not, are heinous crimes before God. Our sins before God are
exactly opposite to the character of who God is. And unless we're
cleansed by Christ's blood, through faith in Him, unless we're brought
to depend entirely upon Him alone. You know what God's going to
do in the end? He's going to reveal all our
secret sins, every one of them, to everybody, to the whole world.
The Scripture says this, Moses warned Israel, you've sinned
against the Lord, be sure your sin will find you out. God warned
David, thou didst it secretly. But I'll do this thing before
all Israel, before the Son, before the whole world. Ecclesiastes
12.13 says, Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter. Fear God
and keep His commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.
For God shall bring every work into judgment with every secret
thing, with every secret thing, whether it be good or whether
it be evil. You might have this good work
that's a great work, and boy, you put some kind of hope and
dependence in that work. And you come before God, and
He's going to bring that work out. And not only is He going
to bring the good aspect of that work out, He's going to bring
all the sin that was mixed with it. And the sin that was mixed
with it is going to be a lot greater than the good of the
work. I guarantee it. I guarantee it. If we're standing
outside of Christ, that's going to be the case. You think about
this on Judgment Day. There's going to be men standing
on judgment day, some who claim to believe Christ, some who didn't.
Some who claim to be trusting in their works, some who claim
to be trusting in Christ. And God's going to make known
to men in that day sins that they didn't even know they were
guilty of. They had no idea they were guilty of. Therefore brethren,
when a sinner is made to know this by the Word, you know what
that Word will do? It will make him flee to Christ. He'll go to Christ for cleansing.
That's the second thing. Look at verse 12. He said, Cleanse
thou me from secret faults. I can't even know my errors.
Lord, cleanse thou me from secret thoughts. You see, he went to
another. Turn to 1 John just a minute. I made a statement
to you just the other day when I was preaching and I said, you
know, a man can say, oh, I know I'm a sinner. I know I'm a sinner.
But if he don't come to Christ, he's lying. He don't know he's
a sinner. The only way you know you're
a sinner is by the Word of God. That's the only way you know
you're a sinner. Now the lesson in all of this, in the fact that
we don't even know our sins, the lesson in it is you can't
come to God by your works. I can't come to God trusting
in my obedience to the law. I don't even know the half of
my sin and where I failed to obey the law. So I can't come
to God. James said if a man's broken
in one point, he's guilty of the whole law. Now, all I hope
we have is to flee to Christ for mercy, to flee to Him for
cleansing. Now, look at this. I said to
you, if a man says, oh, I know I'm a sinner, but he has not
cast his care on Christ, that man does not know, because you
only know this by the Word of God. Look at 1 John 1.8. If we
say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves. And here's why we
say that. The truth is not in us. The truth
is not in us. If we say that we have not sinned,
we make Him a liar, and His Word is not in us. You see what He's
saying there? The only way you can confess
your sin to God, to Christ, and come to Him, is if His Word is
in you, if the truth is in you. That's the only way. That's the
only way. And when He puts this Word in
us, He reveals this about us, that we're sinful, and there's
sins we don't even know, and it makes us willing to flee to
Christ. And here's the good news. By
the blood of Christ, God's faithful and just to forgive and to cleanse
every believer that comes casting their care on Christ and crying
for mercy. Look at verse 9. If we confess our sins, He's
faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us
from all unrighteousness. That's what David prayed for.
Lord, cleanse thou me from my secret faults. You see what a,
you know, a true confession of sins, it's not going to a preacher
or a priest with a little list and saying this is what I've
done, this is what I'm guilty of. Think of the arrogancy in
that. Think of the arrogancy in that. Here's my little list. Okay, here's three or four things.
This is where I sinned this week. This is what I'm guilty of. And
God said, you don't even know. You don't even know. You don't
even have a clue of what you're guilty of. No, confession is
coming to Christ and confessing that all I am is sin. All I am
is sin. I need to be cleansed from all
my sins, even the sins I don't know about. We're tore up from
the floor up. Listen to the Scripture. From
the sole of the foot, even to the head. There's no soundness
in it. David put it this way, I was shapen in iniquity. In
sin did my mother conceive me. That doesn't mean she was up
to no good when she conceived me. That meant I was conceived
in sin. That meant my whole being when
I was conceived was sin. Behold, thou desirest truth in
the inward part. In the hidden part thou shalt
make me to know wisdom. Purge me with hyssop and I shall
be clean. Wash me and I'll be whiter than
snow. And that's the only way we're going to be clean. That's
the only way we're going to be washed. This word washed and
cleansed and clean That means to be complete before God. It
means to be forgiven. It means to be made righteous
before God. Once we come to Christ, believers
don't ever stop coming to Him because we have sin mixed with
everything we do. David's a believer when he's
writing this Psalm. That's why he says here in 1
John 2.1, My little children, these things write unto you that
you sin not. This don't give you license to
sin. This don't make you want to sin.
I'm writing these things to you and I'm preaching these things
to you that you don't sin. But when, and that's what the
word is, when any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father.
Jesus Christ the righteous, He's the propitiation for our sins.
And not for just His elect in Israel, but for His elect all
over this world, He's the propitiation. For everyone that comes to Christ
for mercy, truly drawn because of His Word, He's their propitiation.
And you know what this cleansing fountain is? This cleansing fountain
is free to us because it cost our Savior dearly. And this cleansing
fountain is His blood. That song we sing, there is a
fountain filled with blood. Just think about this. There
is a fountain filled with blood, drawn from Emmanuel's veins. And sinners plunge beneath that
flood, lose all their guilty stains. I read about a story
about a little boy whose sister was real sick and there was nobody
that had the blood type that she had but her brother. And
the doctors came and it was a little fellow. And they came to him
and they said, son, your sister's really sick and she's going to
die. And you're the only one that
has the blood type, the type of blood she needs. We need your
blood to give to her. And the little boy And he thought
about it and he thought about it and a tear rolled down his
cheek and he said, okay, alright. And they took him in and they
put the needle in him and he watched his blood flow out of
his veins and flow through that too. And a little while later
they came back to him and they said, well we gave the blood
to your sister and she's doing a whole lot better. She's going
to live now because you gave her your blood. And the little
boy sat there and they said that he was had something bothering
him and they couldn't tell what was wrong with him. And the doctor
said, son, what's the matter? And he said, well, if you don't
mind me asking, I'm so glad my sister's going to live. And he
said, but when am I going to die? And the doctor said, what,
son? He said, well, you told me I
had to give her my blood. And he thought he was going to
die. He gave her his blood so she could live. That's what Christ
did for his people. Christ really did give His life.
He gave His blood so that God could be just and faithful to
His own character, in His own glory, in His own justice, first
and foremost. Because He put the sin of His
people on His Son so that His Son, when He bore the justice
of God, God was being just and faithful to Himself. God was
declaring Himself just and the justifier. So now God's just
and faithful to have mercy on His people, when by His grace
He draws them to His Son. And you think about this too.
God is faithful and just to cover our secret sins. You know, I
just said to you, you are going to stand in the Judgment Day,
and if you are not under the blood of Christ, all your sins
are going to be revealed. They are going to all be made
known to the world, even secret sins. And you just think about
the shame and the reproach that that would be to have everybody
know all your sins, all your secret sins. Just think about
it. Well, imagine if you stood naked
having all your sins revealed. You know Christ was stripped
naked on the cross. He was stripped completely naked
on the cross. And that physical nakedness of His on the cross
is to give us some understanding of the shame and the reproach
that He bore when He made our sins His own. When He made our
sins His own, the shame and the reproach He bore to stand there
naked before God with our sins upon Him. But because He did
that, brethren, Every believer that puts all their hope in Him,
they'll never have to stand in the judgment day and be stripped
naked and have all their secret sins revealed. Because His love,
His justice, His mercy, His righteousness, His sanctification covers us,
brethren. It covers our sins. Oh, if the
blood of bulls and goats and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling
the unclean sanctifies to the purifying of the flesh, how much
more shall the blood of Christ Shouldn't this purge our conscience
from dead works? Shouldn't it cleanse our conscience
from dead works to serve the living God? Are we just doing
our duty? We just come to hear one more
sermon this week so we can go home and support NBC and ABC
and CBS and HBO the rest of the time. It does cleanse us. It cleanses
His people. When the Word of God is in the
heart, it cleanses His people. And this is what it does thirdly.
It makes us to go to Christ and depend upon Him to keep us from
presumptuous sins. Look back at Psalm 19 and verse
13. Keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins. Let them not have dominion over
me, then shall I be upright, and I shall be innocent from
the great transgression. Presumptuous sin is to sin when
we know God's Word forbids it, and yet we do it anyway. I don't
really know of a sin that don't fit under that category. except
for secret sins. So I believe we can just about
categorize all our sins right here. They're either secret sins
and we don't know about them, or they're presumptuous sins.
One of the two. One of the two. And for the believer,
it's presumptuous sin to presume upon God's grace. To have this
thought in our mind, well, my sins are forgiven, God remembers
them no more, so I'm going to go on with this. I'm going to
go on and do this even though my Redeemer forbids it. I'm going
to do it anyway. Presumptuous sin proceeds from
the choice of the perverted will against the protest of the regenerated
mind. You know that warfare. We have
it every day. If you're a believer, we have
it every day. You have the perverted will that said, I want to do
this. And you have the regenerated, the new conscience, the new heart
saying, no, we're not doing that. Which one is going to win out?
Whichever one we give in to. That's the one that's going to
win out. Brethren, we can't plead ignorance. We can't plead ignorance
on it. All we try to justify ourselves.
What is it he said? How do you define sexual relations? You just look at what God says.
That's all. Just look at what God says. That's what our president,
our former president said. Remember that? How do you define
sexual relations? We can't justify things. Just
look at God's Word. The harlot can get up and wipe
her mouth and say, I didn't do any sin, just like Scripture
says. The drunkard can get up and wipe
his mouth and say, I didn't do any sin. It's sin. And our conscience bears witness
it's sin. Who's ever sinned? Who in here
who sinned willingly? and your conscience didn't bear
witness. This is wrong. You know it does. It always does.
It always does. The Word of God is so clear on
what He'd have us to do and not do. We can't plead ignorance.
And since we're all gifted of presumptuous sin, Whenever God
makes this word clear in our hearts to show you, you're guilty
of presumptuous sins, of high-handed sins, of willing sin. You know
what we do? We flee to Christ and say, Lord,
keep me from presumptuous sins and don't let them have dominion
over me. He says there in verse 13, keep back thy servant also
from presumptuous sin. Let them not have dominion over
me. He say, keep me back from them. I don't even want to do
them. I don't even want to have the
inclination to them. Because if I have the inclination to
them and I do them, they're going to have dominion over me. And
I need Christ to keep me from them and to keep them from having
dominion over me. Then shall I be upright and I
shall be innocent from the great transgression. Now by Christ's
blood, when He draws us to Him, to come to Him and to cast our
care upon Him like David did right here and keeps us coming
and keeps us casting our care upon Him. You know what He's
done in our heart? He's given us faith. He's given
us faith to trust Christ, to know that Christ is the only
one that can deliver us from the dominion of presumptuous
sin. To know Christ is the only one who can make us upright and
innocent. He's the only one that can do
that. And He's done it by His blood so that sin will not have
dominion over us to curse us or condemn us. That's what He's
done for you He's drawn to Christ. In that He died. He died unto
sin one time. Sin and the curse and condemnation
of it had dominion over Christ. He let it have dominion over
Him one time. But in that He liveth, He liveth
unto God. Likewise reckon ye also yourselves
to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus
Christ our Lord. And you know what? This is why
we're exhorted to yield our members to Christ rather than to presumptuous
sin. It's because We're dead to sins
before God, before the law, and sin won't have dominion over
us to curse and condemn us anymore. And He promises also that He's
going to hold us back from presumptuous sin so that they don't have dominion
over us. Listen to this. Let not sin therefore... This is Romans 6 if you want
to look there. He just said you died to sin once in Christ. This
is true of every elect child of God. We died to sin when Christ
died to it. And we rose with Christ when
He arose. And now here's the conclusion. You're dead indeed
to sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ. Let not sin, therefore,
reign in your mortal body. Let it have dominion in your
mortal body, that you should obey it in the lust thereof.
You know, we're going to yield to one of two things. to God
are the lusts of our flesh, one of the two. You know what yield
is. You come to a yield sign and
somebody's coming along, you're going to either yield to them,
slow down, let them go, and you're going to follow them. That's
what you yield to either the lusts of the flesh or we yield
to God. And He says, neither yield ye your members as instruments
of unrighteousness unto sin, but yield yourselves unto God
as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as
instruments of righteousness unto God. For, because sin shall
not have dominion over you, for you are not under the law, but
under grace. What then? What then? He says, shall we
sin because we are not under the law? Men will hear that and
say, well, He died for me, He redeemed me, I am not under the
law, I am under grace, so I am going to sin. That man don't
know God. He hadn't heard this Word. He
hadn't been instructed in this Word. When God makes you to know
His Word, He delivers you from that. And He delivers you from
it. It may not be when you thought you were saved. It may be a long
time later. But He's going to deliver His
people from it. And He's going to make you to see that sin is
not going to have dominion over you. It's Christ through the
Holy Spirit that keeps us. Look at Galatians 5. Galatians
5. And look at verse 6. Paul was
speaking to the church at Galatia, and they were trying to use the
law to make sin not have dominion over one another. And you know
what that is? That's sin having dominion over us. When you take
the law, I could right now, I could just call out some sin of yours
right here in public and get all over you about it and it'd
be right in the Word of God. And you know what you're going
to do? You're going to sin against me right there in your heart when
I do it. Well, that's what Paul said. That's not going to keep
you from sinning and sin reigning over you. Here's what will. He
says, Galatians 5, 6. Walk in the Spirit and you shall
not fulfill the lust of the flesh. How so? For the flesh lusts against
the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh, and these are contrary
the one to the other, so that you cannot do the things that
you would. Now right here, in the context,
Paul is saying, you can't do the wicked things you would.
He said, this will do for you what the law could never do for
you. This is God working. This is the living God working
in His people. That's going to do for you what
you and a dead letter law can't do. That's what He's saying.
He's going to keep you from doing the things you would. And so,
if you see David and he's praying to God, to Christ, and he's saying,
keep thou me from presumptuous sins and don't let them have
dominion over me and then I'll be Then I'll be free and I'll
be... What did he say? Let me look
back there. He said, then I'll be upright and I'll be innocent
from the great transgression. I'm upright, innocent in Christ.
And not only that, but He keeps me from doing that which I would
do. There's a whole lot worse that
I would do. And He keeps me from doing that that I would do. Now,
if we don't sin presumptuously, If He keeps it from having dominion
over us, who gets the glory? God does. And if we sin presumptuously,
is that God's fault? No. That is our fault. You see,
if we sin, we get all the glory for that. But if God keeps us
from it, He gets all the glory for that. That's just how it
works, brethren. Because walking in the Spirit,
what is that? Walking in the Spirit is to be
at the feet of Christ. That's what He said. It's to
set your affections on things above where Christ sits, at the
right hand of God, because you know your life is hid with Christ
at God's right hand. That's what it is to walk in
the Spirit. It's to hear the Word of God
and to rejoice in what Christ has done for you and to walk
in faith, and walk in love, and walk in the hope of being made
perfectly righteous in Him one day. And therein, brethren, we'll
be kept by God. Sin won't have dominion over
us. It just won't have dominion over us. Keep back thy servant. That's what we pray. Here's what
he prayed in another place. He said, Order my steps in thy
word, and let not any iniquity have dominion over me. What I'm
saying to you, there's a twofold part to this. There's him making
us righteousness before the bar of God, before the justice of
God, and there is him sanctifying us and keeping sin from reigning
over us in our mortal body. It's the Holy Spirit that does
it. And this is so vitally important because he tells us in our text
that presumptuous sin will lead to the great transgression. Look
here at verse 13. Turn over to Hebrews 10. What's
the great transgression? Hebrews 10. The great transgression is apostasy
from Christ. It's to willfully forsake the
assembling of the saints where the gospel is preached in truth.
It's to willfully deny the Son of God. It's to do despite the
Spirit of grace. It's to totally deny the truth
of the gospel. Look here, Hebrews 10, and he
says in verse 23. Now verse 22, he tells us what
we just saw in our text. Let us draw near with a true
heart and full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from
an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. That's
what he's done to us through the Word, through the Holy Spirit,
through his blood. And he says now, let us hold
fast the profession of faith without wavering, for he is faithful
that promised. Who's the profession of our faith?
It's Christ. It's Christ. Let us hold fast
to Him because He's faithful. He promised to keep us and He's
faithful. And let us consider one another to provoke unto love
and to good works. How do you do that? That's what
I'm doing right now. And that's what y'all are doing
to each other right now by being here. That's what you're doing.
How do I know that? Look at the next word. Not forsaking
the assembling of ourselves together as the manner of some is. but
exhorting so much the more as you see the day approaching. For if we sin willfully... Now,
did you hear what I said it was? If we sin willfully, it's to
willfully forsake the assembling of ourselves unto the gospel,
in truth. It's to willfully deny the Son
of God. It's to willfully do despite
the Spirit of grace. It's to willfully deny the truth
of the gospel. He says, if we sin willfully,
After that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there
remaineth no more sacrifice for sin. You see, after you've received
the truth, if you apostatize from Christ, we forsake the only
remedy for sin and thus there remains no more remedy. You understand
that? If there's just one remedy that's
going to cure you from your disease, and the doctor gives you a teaspoon
of that and puts it in your mouth, and you spit it out and say,
I don't want to have any of that, then the only thing we can say
is, there remains no more remedy for you. You've rejected the
one remedy there is. Well, that's what he's saying
here. We reject Christ willfully. You see, presumptuous sins are
willful sins. And this is where they lead to.
They lead to willfully denying Christ altogether. And when we
do that, there's no hope. But a certain, verse 27, but
a certain fearful looking for judgment and fiery indignation
which shall devour the adversaries. He that despised Moses' law died
without mercy under two or three witnesses. Of how much sorer
punishment, how worse do you think the punishment will be
for he that has trodden underfoot the
Son of God? and hath countered the blood
of the covenant wherewith he was sanctified, an unholy thing,
and hath done despite unto the Spirit of grace. For we know
him that hath said, Vengeance belongs to me." Who said that?
Christ did. He said, Vengeance belongs to
me. I will recompense, saith the Lord. And again, the Lord
shall judge his people. It's a fearful thing to fall
into the hands of the living God. This is what David said. I don't want to even be inclined
to presumptuous sins because then they'll have dominion over
me. And if they have dominion over
me, then I'm going to be guilty of the great transgression eventually.
I'm just going to say goodbye. Now, can that happen to a believer?
I mean a true believer. It can't happen, can it? That
can't happen to... Because why? Because God the
Father chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world.
Because Christ purchased us with His own blood. Justice is satisfied. Eternal redemption is accomplished.
And because by the Holy Spirit, by the Word of God, by this incorruptible
seed by which the Word is preached unto us, we have been sealed
unto the day of our final redemption in the glory. We've been sealed
unto that day. Sealed. Noah was guilty of presumptuous
sin. You remember that? What did he
do? As soon as he came out of the ark. I'll tell you, it gets
us when we don't expect it. He'd come out of the ark to a
new world, just saw what God did for him, in him only. And
he walks out of that ark and grows him some wine and distills
him some wine and he got drunk. David was guilty of presumptuous
sin. The one writing this song, he was speaking from experience.
He saw Bathsheba, said I want her, he went and got her. And
then he tried to cover it all up. How? He killed her husband.
That is all presumptuous sin. If God keeps us from presumptuous
sin, there is my question. Why does Christ let us do it? I've been struggling with that
question. Why does He let it happen? This
is the chief reason I've come up with, and I've learned this
by experience, is to make me fall at His feet
and say, Lord, You're my only strength. You're my only hope. That's the only reason I can
figure. That's what it did for Noah. That's what it did for
David. That's what it's done for you. That's what it's done
for me. Fourthly, the Word makes believers
desire to be acceptable to God. That's why all this is. That's
why. this words work and all that.
He makes you want to be acceptable to God. Look at this. He said
that, verse 14, let the words of my mouth and the meditation
of my heart be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord. Isn't that
a different way of speaking than you hear men speak in our day?
They're going around talking about how they accepted the Lord.
What did the Lord do wrong for you to need, for Him to need
you to accept Him? It's we that need to be accepted
by Him. Now, you've heard me say this repeatedly lately, motive
is everything. The heart's motive is everything
before God. If our words are not from a new
heart that's been created by the Word of God, by the Spirit
of God, so that we desire, truly desire in our heart to be acceptable
to God, then our words, our actions, Nothing is acceptable to God
because our heart's not acceptable to God. Out of the mouth, out
of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. Our heart's
desire and our heart's motive must be this, to be found in
the Lord Jesus Christ, not having our own righteousness which is
of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ himself,
that righteousness which is by God, by faith. that righteousness
that God Himself has provided, that righteousness God has provided
in His Son, that righteousness His Son is, that righteousness
His Son has worked out for His people, that righteousness that
is given freely to His people through the Holy Spirit of God
bringing us to faith in Christ. We must have that one desire
to be found only in the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ. or
God won't even receive us. He won't accept us. We're not
acceptable any other way but in Him. That's the only way,
brethren. And when that's our motive, when
that's our motive in everything we're doing, in everything we're
saying, God will accept us. Now listen to what David's saying
here. He's saying, Lord, I pray that the meditation of my heart
and of my words will be acceptable in Your sight. Now, the admiration,
what's his words, what's the meditation of his heart and his
words been throughout this song? The admiration and praise of
God's glory in creation. He'd been meditating, the whole
first part of it, he meditated on God's glory in creation and
wrote these words about the glory of God in creation. And then
he moved on to the Word of God. And he began to meditate about
the Word of God. He gave us six names of the Word
of God, six descriptions of it, and six effects that it works
out. That's what he's been talking
about, the admiration and praise of the Word of God. Then he started
speaking about the admiration and praise of Christ Jesus who
cleanses us and keeps us. He began to be the admiration
and praise of His sin-cleansing blood and His keeping power to
keep us from presumptuous sins. And now he says, my chief desire
in all these meditations, in all these words, All these words
of praise and all these words of dependency upon you, Lord,
my desire is that they'd be acceptable in your sight. Now that's the
spirit God puts in His child by the Word. That's the spirit
He puts in His child by the Word. It's a humble and contrite spirit. I mean, everything here has been
glorifying to God. Everything here has been honoring
to Christ. Everything he said has given
God all the glory and man none. And yet he comes and says, Lord,
I pray now these words would be acceptable in your sight.
You see, the man who's least guilty of presumptuous sins is
the man who's most worried about them. That's the case with this
man right here writing this psalm, isn't it? Oh Lord, this is what
he said in Psalm 51, Oh Lord, open thou my lips, and my mouth
shall show forth thy praise. Lord, if you open them, if you
open my lips, my mouth shall show your praise. For thou desirest
not sacrifice, else I give it. Thou delightest not in burnt
offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit. A broken
and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise. Just logically,
just reasoning, which is it you like better? A punk teenager
who thinks he's so big for his britches and you're just so ignorant?
Or a little child that just walks up to you and wants to just sit
in your lap and have you just hold them and teach them and
clothe them? Which one would you rather have
near to you? Well, God says, I don't want no punk teenagers.
I want a little baby. I want a little humble child
coming to me. That's what He said. And here's
the last thing. I said there was one thing with
Sethian. You know why the Word of God makes you want all of
this? Because the Word of God makes you want a glory only in
the Lord. It makes you glory only in the Lord. Look at verse
14. He ends it by saying, O Lord, my strength and my redeemer. Now let me ask you a question.
Is Christ your strength? You know what it means if He
is? It means you have none. It can't be both. It can't be I got a little and
He's making up the difference. If Christ is my strength, I have
none. And I have no other. Now that's
the case. If He's my strength, we glory
only in the strength which Christ is unto us. The word means rock.
The Scripture says He's the rock of righteousness. That means
I don't have any. I have no righteousness but Christ.
It's the rock of salvation. I don't have any salvation but
Christ. The rock of refuge. I have no refuge but Christ.
The rock of security. And I have no security but Christ.
And He says He only is my rock and my salvation. And if He's
my Redeemer, that means I need to be redeemed from sin, from
the law, from death, from hell, And it means I can't do it. He's
my only Redeemer. Is that true? If it's so, He's
the only one. He's my only Redeemer. That's
what He's saying. Christ, You're my only strength.
You're my only Redeemer. You know why He says that? Because
the Word that He just praised, the Word of God He just gave
all that praise to. He tells us in 1 Corinthians
1, the reason He saved through the preaching of this Word is
number one, that no flesh glory in His presence. And number two,
that he that glories, glories only in the Lord. And that's
what happens when God blesses the Word to our heart. Amen. Let's stand together, brethren, Father, thank you for Christ
Jesus. Thank you that in him we have
cleansing from sins we don't even know about. We have cleansing
from presumptuous sins and we have a hand to hold us and keep
us back from presumptuous sins so that they won't have dominion
over us. Lord, make us upright, make us innocent only in the
Lord Jesus Christ. Make us to flee from that which
is against you and against your law, and make us come to Christ
and bow to Him, trusting Him for everything. Lord, we pray,
we do pray that this worship, that these meditations of our
heart, that these words that have gone forth in prayer and
singing and preaching, and now in our fellowship with one another,
we pray, Lord, that these will be acceptable in your sight,
because you, God our Savior, Jehovah Jesus, are our only strength
and our only Redeemer. Thank you for your word, Lord.
Amen.