Today, I would like to focus
our attention especially on Psalm 25 and verse 11, which we just
read through. And I also want to look just
briefly at verse 7 and 8, because they struck, they captured my
attention as I was reading through this. But I want to entitle the
sermon today, Great Sin. And abundant pardon. Great sin. And abundant pardon. That's the
words that are used in verse 11. He says in verse 11, For
thy namesake, O Lord, pardon mine iniquity, for it is great. It's great. That's a strange
way to pray, isn't it? You wouldn't think normally If
I got caught at school and taken to the principal's office, I
would try to minimize my sin. You didn't want to suffer greater
punishment by admitting the greatness of your sin. But the psalmist
here wisely teaches us, and it's the Spirit of God who really
does teach us, that the only prayer that is acceptable to
God is a prayer that speaks the truth about the way we are and
argues on the only basis of how God forgives sin. Notice that the psalmist in this
chapter, if you read through this chapter, you will see, and
if you read through the rest of the Scriptures, you will see
that the psalmist here really knows God. And he knows God in
the Lord Jesus Christ. Although his name is not used
here as Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ the Lord, Yet that's who
he's speaking of, as we'll see here in a few moments in these
verses that we read. But this is this is true. The
psalmist knows the Lord Jesus Christ and he knows God in Christ. And notice in verse. Chapter
eight, I'm sorry, verse eight, he says, Good and upright is
the Lord. Therefore, will he teach sinners
in the way? Doesn't that strike you as amazing?
Doesn't that surprise you? You would not expect God to teach
sinners. You would expect Him to teach
the righteous, the good, those who can give something. This
is amazing. God teaches sinners in a way. Sinners. That's grace, isn't
it? That God, who is holy, would
visit and instruct sinners. This is grace abounding. In Romans
5.20 it says, where sin abounded, grace did much more abound. Wherever sin abounded, grace,
God's grace in Christ did much more abound. Now that is overcoming
grace. And so the Lord says He's going
to teach sinners in the way. The psalmist knows God. The psalmist
knows God in Christ. And God teaches us by this prayer,
this psalm, He teaches us the reason God forgives. He teaches
us how sinners are to pray, what they are to pray. And He gives
sinners hope in Christ alone. And not only that, but He glorifies
God in His salvation, the salvation of His people. Psalm 25 verse
11 is what I call the no sinner left behind law. You hear all
these little cute phrases that they make up in the media and
in politics, but here the Lord speaks about a sinner, a great
sinner, and he's not left because this is a law God has put here.
It's a law of God's grace. God will leave no sinner unsaved
who comes to him by Jesus Christ. This is his promise. He says
in Hebrews 7.25 that Christ is the surety of a better covenant.
He's able to save to the uttermost them that come to God by him. Uttermost. To the uttermost.
That means even a great sinner can be greatly saved because
of Christ who is the surety. Those that come to God by Christ
are saved to the uttermost. So no one will be unsaved who
comes to God by Christ. That's His promise. And He gives
that promise to sinners. That's what He says here. He
teaches sinners in the way. May God give us grace to come
to him as sinners today and that God would fulfill his covenant.
This is God's covenant promise that he would give covenant blessings
for Christ's sake, for his glory in Christ. And one of these one
of these covenant blessings is that forgiveness of sins. This
is the great one. Look at verse seven, I want to
just start here in verse seven, he says, Remember not the sins
of my youth, nor my transgressions. According to thy mercy, remember
me for thy goodness sake, O Lord." You see that? The psalmist remembers
his own sins. And he asks God not to remember
the sins of his youth. God remembers the sins of unbelievers. Long after they have forgotten
Him. But God does not remember the
sins of His people, even though they long remember them. You
see, God, when He forgives us of our sins, He doesn't hold
our sins against us anymore. He doesn't bring upon us the
punishment of our sins. He sets things right. He reconciles
us to Himself. He establishes peace between
Himself and us. God does that. That's what the
forgiveness of sins is. The forgiveness of sins has to
do with clearing the debt, forgiving the debt. And we'll get to some
of those places in a moment. But the psalmist here prays,
Lord, don't remember the sins of my youth. He can hear the
psalmist in his words, remembering himself, the shame and the sorrow
those sins bring back to his mind. And he prays that God would
not remember them. The sins of our youth are sins
of rebellion and are sins of hypocrisy, sins of unbelief and
unfaithfulness. Pride, lust, self-promotion,
denial of Christ. All kinds of sins. Sins of attitude
and sins of word and thought and motive and deed. And there's
the same sins that we commit even as we grow older. And so
he remembers these things and he says, Lord, don't remember
my sins of my youth nor my transgressions. And he says, don't remember them
according to thy mercy. Don't remember them. But according
to thy mercy, remember me for thy goodness sake. He pleads
to God not to remember his sins on the basis of God's mercy and
his goodness. That's the argument this prayer,
this psalmist brings. And so, you remember how David
also remembered sins, his own sins. In Psalm 51, he says, My
sin is ever before me. My sin is ever before me. It's
as if I can't get away from it. Every time I turn, I see the
reflection of myself in the water. I see a tree, it reminds me of
my sin. Everything reminds me of my sin.
It's ever before me. And even in heaven, And the prayer
of the saints before the throne are thanking and praising and
worshiping the Lord Jesus Christ because of this, when they say,
to him who loved us and washed us from our sins in his own blood. It's all about the forgiveness
of sins, isn't it? From first to last. When we pray
and our sins resurface in our memory and conscience, then we
do with them what we did when we first believed. We pray, Lord,
don't remember the sins of my youth nor my transgressions,
but according to your mercy, remember me for your goodness
sake. And so I want to look now at verse number 11 here. And this is a verse that has
always struck me. There's several things I want
to Observe here in this verse. Let's look at this verse together
and let's read it carefully because notice the order in which the
words are even arranged in this verse. He says, for thy name's
sake, for thy name's sake. In other words, his prayer is
that God would do something for himself. You see that? For thy
name's sake. He doesn't pray in this verse,
he doesn't pray on the basis of what he's going to do. And
he doesn't pray that he might avoid shame of himself before
men, or regain some position he's lost because of his sins.
Frequently you'll hear a prominent politician or a religious leader
commits some heinous sin that publicly is disgraceful, and
they get up and they apologize, they'll get their wife beside
them and tell the world, I'm sorry, I apologize to you all,
and my wife's here to support me in this. They're doing it
in order to regain the favor and approval of men. Sadly, Even
though they feel the shame of doing that, that's the reason
they're doing it. Saul did that. He asked Samuel,
come back with me and worship the Lord with me so that the
men that are reporting to me as my soldiers see this. That was what he was concerned
about most. was that his men, his people,
didn't see the shame of God forsaking him for his wickedness. But the
true repentance that God gives starts with these words, For
thy name's sake, Lord, do it for what you get out of it. Do
it for something that gives you glory. Don't do it for something
I'm going to get someday, but do it for your name's sake. That's
the first thing he prays. Do it for your name's sake. And
then the next part is, he says, For thy name's sake, O Lord,
pardon mine iniquity. Pardon is the word that means
put it away. Pardon has to do with absolving
all record of the crime as having ever been committed. The person
who is pardoned, all record of their wrong, all punishment,
the record is expunged, the punishment is removed, and they're reinstated
to the former place they were as if they never sinned. Pardon. And pardon is a valuable thing.
Men will hope that they get pardoned by the president when he leaves
office, and he frequently pardons a lot of people who shouldn't
be pardoned, because he's paying them back for whatever favors
they gave him when he was trying to become president on the way
up, or however it works. But you know how it is. Men pat
each other on the back and repay each other in sinful ways. But
that's not the prayer here. He's asking God to do this for
his namesake. And we're going to be thinking
about how God pardons sin for His namesake. And then the last
part of this verse, and reading it just again in total, For thy
namesake, O Lord, pardon mine iniquity, for it is great. And that's the part I want to
start with as we consider this, that sin, iniquity, sin is evil. Sin is evil. And He says, My
sin is great. What a starting place. For thy
name's sake, pardon mine iniquity, for it is great." Sin is evil. Why is sin so evil? Well, because
sin is against God. And why does that make sin evil?
Because God is so good. And that still doesn't help us
too much, but if we take it to an analogy, picture yourself
as being married to someone who is always faithful, always true,
always loving, always serving, always doing things because of
their sincere, untainted love for you. And then think about
the Total disregard that someone married to someone like that
would have to go out and commit adultery, to be unfaithful, to
waste their family's money, to take everything that they have
and squander it away and waste their life. and bring that person,
that spouse, into shame and poverty and sorrow and over the course
of the entire life of that spouse so that they end their life in
suffering and affliction even though all they did was show
goodness and kindness to that other person. Would you call
that a great evil? That helps us to understand how
we have sinned against God. God has only done good to us. God has only been true. He's
always been faithful. He's only shown us good. He's
taken care of us at every point. He's saved our lives. when we
deserve nothing but punishment. He loved us when we deserved
nothing from Him. And that makes sin evil. Sin
is always great because God is great and God is good. And to
turn from God and to act in disregard for God and to accuse God of
being suspect in unbelief. You know how men do when they
aren't sure if someone's telling the truth? They hold them in
suspicion until they can prove and verify their words to be
true. They don't believe that person until they can affirm
their word through some kind of proof. That's what unbelief
is. Unbelief is holding God in suspicion. God says what He's going to do.
God says what He's done. And we hold him in doubt. We can't accept it is true unless
we can bring something that gives us confidence in ourselves and
our goodness in order to trust that God would be so gracious
to save sinners. Undeserving, hellbound sinners,
that's what unbelief is, so all these things are great evil.
It says there's something else that's worse, though, than these,
what I would call, morally perverse kinds of sins. Morally perverse
sins. And that's the sin of self-righteousness. There's a sin greater, I think,
than the moral sin of perversity. And that's the sin of self-righteousness. Because self-righteousness is
evil because it tries to promote the goodness of a sinner. and
tries to get holy God to accept a vile, corrupt, filthy, stinking,
rotten sinner who has no sense and no regard for God's glory,
but seeks glory to himself, in the form of performing works
that he somehow thinks will barter and coerce and manipulate God
in order to get something from Him. Denying that God gives freely
of His own free will and favor and grace, but tries to earn
it instead. This is self-righteousness. And
self-righteousness always finds fault with others because it
sees in others' sins that it loathes in itself, but won't
admit. And so we always deny what we
are to ourselves and hide our sin from our own selves, especially
from others and from God. And we pretend to be righteous. And that's an evil. That's a
great evil. Jesus said this, and I'll read
it to you in John chapter 9. There was a blind man, a man
who couldn't see, and he had been blind from his birth. He
was born that way. His disciples asked Jesus why
he was born blind. Was it something that he did
or his parents did or why? And the Lord said, no, it's because
God would be glorified in his life. And that's what happened. The Lord Jesus healed him. But
at the end of this account in John 9, 39, The man comes to Jesus. He's
blind. He comes and he says that he
worships the Lord Jesus when he believed on Him. And then
Jesus said these words in verse 39. He said, For judgment I am
come into this world. For judgment I am come into this
world. This is one of the reasons He
came. For judgment. And this is the judgment, He
says, that they which see not might see. In other words, that
the blind might see. That's the judgment. And, he
says, that they which see, which think they see, might be made
blind. Some of the Pharisees which were
with him heard these words and they said to him, are we blind
also? Jesus said, if you were blind,
you should have no sin. But now, you say, we see, Therefore,
your sin remains. That's self-righteousness. They
said, we see, we don't need a physician. We have no sicknesses. We can understand God. We know what God is all about.
No, you don't. You don't understand His salvation.
You don't understand the Lord Jesus Christ, His only begotten
Son who came and gave Himself, poured out His soul to death
and took on our nature and lived His life in order to save His
people from their sins entirely for the glory. You know nothing
about that because you don't see yourself as being nothing
but sin and you think you can help God save yourself or that
you're all okay. In John 7, verse 7, the same
kind of attitude shows up. It says that Jesus' brethren
didn't believe on him. And Jesus says to them in verse
7, the world cannot hate you. Can't hate you. Why? Because
they're just like them. The world doesn't hate its own.
But me, it does hate because I testify of it that the works
thereof are evil. Why does the world hate Christ?
Because he tells them, your works, your good works are evil. Isaiah
64, 6 says, Our righteousnesses, all of the good things we do
are nothing but filthy rags, evil. Sin is evil and self-righteousness
is the greater of the two. Not only is sin evil, but great
quantities of sins are greater evil, too. And the other thing
I want to say about sin, I don't want to belabor the point here
because we all have a sense of sin, but I'd like to say this
about sin because I saw something that disturbed me. Sin is absolute. And I use those words not because
they're spoken like that in Scripture, but it's the way I think of expressing
the thought. Sin is absolute. What do I mean
by that? Well, I mean by that God doesn't
look at the population of sinners and make a standard for what
is right and wrong based on how the population of people does
in their life. God doesn't do that. Sin is transgression
of God's law, and the law of God is absolute. It's established
on God's moral principle, not on man's relative performance.
And there are two fallacious arguments that are common among
men, and among the world of religion especially. Two false arguments. One of them goes something like
this, which I've already touched on. We see someone who suffers
the ravages of sin in their life. It's their fault. We see them
maybe wasting away, and like I said earlier, disregarding
the kindness and the patience and the love of those close to
them, and wasting. what they should have been, their
responsibilities, and should have been giving to them. They
waste it. And then we hear others wanting to drag this person into
judgment and bring punishment on them. Bring an eye for an
eye and a tooth for a tooth. And is that true? Is that the way that God would
have us deal with men as sinners? True or false? It's false. But it's a common attitude. You
hear that especially among those who are religious. We see someone
and we say, this person is a sinner. And the Pharisee who invited
Jesus to his house for dinner, and the woman who came in who
was an adulteress and bent down and wiped his feet with her tears
and dried his feet with her hair and poured ointment on his head,
He said in his heart, if he were a prophet, he would know who
this woman is that touches him. And Jesus said, Simon, I have
something to say to you. He says there were two debtors,
one owed. This is in Luke chapter seven,
and I probably won't get the quantities right. That's not
the important point, I don't think, of this account. But in Luke chapter seven, he
says, One of them, he says, and this is in verse 41, one of them
owed 500 pence and the other only 50, 10 times the amount.
And when they had When they had nothing to pay,
both of them, both the one who owed 500 and the one who owed
50, Jesus said about these two men, he's speaking to the Pharisee,
who accused Jesus of not being a prophet because he didn't know
who was touching him. He said, When neither one had
anything to pay, he frankly forgave them both. And he says, tell
me therefore, which of them will love him the most? You see, this
is the attitude of the religious man, our religious heart. When
we see someone who is filthy and obviously shameful because
of sin, our first reaction is, they should have done better.
I didn't have that problem. What's wrong with them? I did
it. I got myself out of that. They
shouldn't be also too. And then they'll sit there, those
who have recovered themselves, they'll say, you just need to
stop. You just need to get up, pull yourself up by your bootstraps.
Dude, you're such a slime ball, a scumbag, a nobody, a nothing. No hope for you because you can't
help yourself. That's an error. That's false
judgment. And then there's another attitude
that men take when they judge others. And they say this. No man can judge others. They
take the other extreme. Men are born with certain proclivities,
something that they do habitually, that they're inclined to do.
And Jesus never judged men because of what they are. So we can't
either. That's what they are by nature.
So everybody's equal. We just have to accept one another.
Is that the way? Is that the way? Is that the
truth? That's not the truth either.
Either dragging men into judgment to bring punishment on them as
a man bringing judgment on another man, or assuming that because I'm a sinner,
Then everyone else is a sinner out there. I can't judge any
sinner, so we're just going to accept everybody, and I don't
care what you are. You can be this, that, or the
other thing. We're all equal in God's eyes, and Jesus never
judged anybody like that. That's false, too. The missing
truth in all of this is what the psalmist is praying here
in Psalm 25 11. He says, For thy name's sake,
O Lord, pardon mine iniquity, for it is great He himself admits,
I am a sinner and it's great sin. And there's only one answer
for it. Pardon. For Christ's sake, that's
the only answer. That's the truth. It's true that
men are sinners, but should we drag them into judgment? Should
we not rather point them to Christ and exhort them to glorify God
in that God himself is known. His name is known for what he
does for sinners. That's his glory. And shouldn't
we also condemn sin? Should we not excuse it because
God must look at the population of sinners and assume that because
there are people who do that sort of thing, it's just the
way they were born. We can't we can't help that.
That's not true either. Sin is sin, and it's God's law
that's absolute. So those things I wanted to mention
about sin. It's evil. It's great because
it's against God. It's absolute. We have to answer
to God for it. And here's the next thing I'd
like to say is that great sin requires a great Savior. Great sin requires a great Savior. That's the point, isn't it? Lord,
my iniquity is great. What is He saying? Well, then
if God could pardon it, what does that make God? Great, because
only a great Savior can pardon a great sinner. Look at Proverbs,
a few verses to underscore this. I think this, it's not that I
think this, God himself says this about himself in his word. Look at these words in Proverbs.
In chapter 14 of Proverbs, chapter 14 and verse 29, I'm just going
to give you a few verses here. He says, think about this. Here's
a man. He has absolute power, absolute
sovereign authority. His law is perfect in every way. And he understands the motives
and intents of the heart. And he says this in Proverbs
14, 29, he that is slow to wrath, is of great understanding, but
he that is hasty of spirit exalts folly. You see that? God is saying
this in general, because if men are like God, then that's praiseworthy. And so he tells them the truth.
The one who is slow to wrath is of great understanding, but
he that is hasty of spirit exalts folly. Is God slow to wrath?
You better know he is. God is slow to wrath. He's slow
to look at Proverbs chapter 19. These verses, I hear these verses
and I admire God's greatness. Look at verse chapter 19, verse
11, he says this. The discretion of a man deferred
his anger. I'm going to put it off for a
while. Just think about this. The discretion of a man defers
his anger. And it is his glory to pass over a transgression. My dog doesn't like to eat his
food. I get mad at the little bugger. I want to take the food
away. Don't feed him. But that shows
a smallness of heart on my part. He's just a stupid dog. Yeah,
he's got his quirks. But you can be patient with him
because that reflects actually something about the man, doesn't
it? And here God says if a man defers
his anger, the first thing we're prone to do is when someone does
something wrong and especially when it's done in righteousness,
we have an obligation to punish the wrong. The first thing we
want to do is immediately cut them off. Right. Bring the judgment
now. Why wait? And he says, no, no. He says, the discretion of a
man defers his anger and it is his glory to pass over a transgression. It is a man's glory to pass over
a transgression. What does that mean about God
passing over a transgression? Well, look at Exodus chapter
33 and 34. I know that you know this, but
I have to go back to these things and remind myself, because if
you are a sinner, And it's God's glory to pass over a transgression. Then how are you going to come
to God? Aren't you going to come as a
sinner and ask God to glorify himself in doing what glorifies
great men? A great God? Remember, great
sin requires a great Savior. Here in Exodus 33, in verse 18,
Moses prays and he says, I beseech thee, show me thy glory."
He wanted to know God as He truly is. He didn't want to be like
the hypocrite. Just have some laws and go around cutting people
off. Or like the heathen, not having
laws, being lawless. He said, show me your glory. And God says in verse 19, I will
make all My goodness, pass before Thee, and I will proclaim the
name of the Lord." To proclaim God's name is to proclaim what
demands our awe and attention and glorifies Him. To proclaim His name is to proclaim
the goodness and greatness of God, is to proclaim who He is
in His glory. He says, I'm going to proclaim
the name of the Lord before Thee, and I And he says, And I will
be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and I will show mercy
on whom I will show mercy. God's glory is in his grace and
his glory is in the fact that he gives grace at his pleasure. Now, what does that do to men?
humbles us. It humbles us to know that God
is gracious and His grace makes His greatness appear even greater
to us because we're sinners, but also His glory humbles us
because we know that His grace is not something we can manipulate
and coerce and earn, that God has to give it for His own sake. for what gives glory to himself.
Then look at chapter 34. The same thing is expanded there.
He says in verse 6, And the Lord passed by before Moses and proclaimed,
The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering. Remember, it's the glory of a
man to pass by a transgression and to defer his anger, to be
slow to wrath, longsuffering and abundant in goodness and
truth. keeping mercy for thousands,
forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no
means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon
the children and upon the children's children unto the third and to
the fourth generation. And Moses made haste and bowed
his head towards the earth and worshipped God." That was his
glory, to proclaim his goodness His mercy, His grace, His long-suffering,
and how abundant He is. Doesn't that make you love God? Reverence, if you awe at God's
greatness, you will especially reverence and stand in awe at
the fact that He could but withholds His judgment on you because He
finds it His greater glory to magnify His mercy and to forgive
us for Christ's sake. I said that great sin requires
a great Savior. How is it that God forgives sin? Now, we know that for men, if
you sin against me and I forgive you, that might seem great to
you if your sin is against me. But ultimately, all sin is against
God, isn't it? Because Jesus said, remember
the account where they brought a man who was paralyzed to Jesus,
and He speaks to him. They thought He was going to
heal him. And He tells him, instead of, get up, He says, son, your
sins are forgiven you. And everyone said, oh boy, who
can forgive sins but God only? And they were right. Why? Why could only God forgive sins?
Because sin ultimately is only against God. It's God's law,
right? It's God's law and therefore
sin is against God. But how does God forgive sin?
We know how we do. Even if you owed me 500 pence,
And I forgave you or five hundred talents, whatever it was. And
I forgave you. The worst it could do to me is
I'd have to expend some energy to either recoup my investment
or I lost the money or something like that. But when but when
God forgives, he forgives in a way that is unlike us. Look
at Hebrews chapter nine, verse twenty two. He says, almost all
things are by the law purged with blood. That means that they're
cleansed. They were foul and unclean, but
the law made provision to clean them with blood. That's what
it says. Almost all things are by the law purged with blood.
And then he says, and without shedding of blood is no remission. That means forgiveness. What
you have to have in order to pardon. There's no pardon, there's
no forgiveness, there's no remission of sins without the shedding
of blood. Now, we said that great sin requires
a great Savior, and we know that it's God's glory that He forgives
sin. It doesn't appear at first to
us why this is such great glory on God's part. We think in terms,
and this is true, that God would naturally be just in punishing
sin, but He defers His wrath and doesn't punish sin because
He chooses to show mercy instead. But it's even greater than that. Because God's mercy comes to
us at the price of personal cost to God Himself. And that cost
is the shedding of blood. And the blood that He had to
shed in order to remit and forgive our sins is the blood of His
own dear Son. So the Lord Jesus Christ had
to be given by God. God gave His only begotten Son. And Christ offered himself, and
in that offering, he was laying down his life for those who were
sinners. And God gave his son to be punished
by those who hated him, who wanted to dethrone and de-God God. And God forgave their sin, and
he did it at the highest cost. Doesn't that make God's greatness
appear even greater glory to us? Doesn't God's glory seem
even greater that He would not only forgive sin as God sovereignly,
but that He would do it in a way that's according to His justice
and His mercy? Look at Isaiah chapter 45. Isaiah
45. I love these verses, I refer
to them often, many people do, but they are worth referring
to often because they're so important. He says, Isaiah 45 verse 20, Assemble
yourselves, and come, draw near together, you that are escaped
of the nations, that have no knowledge, that set up the wood
of their graven image, and pray unto a God that cannot save,
I want you to come. You that pray to a God that cannot
save, tell ye and bring them near. Yea, let them take counsel
together. Who has declared this from ancient
time? And who has told it from that
time? Have not I the Lord? And there
is no God else beside me. And this is what God has been
proclaiming and declaring from ancient time. a just God and
a Savior. There is none beside me." And
then he uses these words which draw our memories back to last
week when we saw the serpent in the wilderness lifted on the
pole, people bitten, dying. Many of them had died already.
No remedy on earth. God sent serpents with a bite
that couldn't be healed in any other way. But by the way He
chose, and He lifted that serpent up on the pole, and He says these
words, Look unto Me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth,
for I am God, and there is none else. That's why it's God's glory,
because only God can forgive sin, because only God can truly
remit sin by the purging of it through the blood of the Lord
Jesus Christ. Now, back to Psalm chapter 25
and verse 11. I want to look at this a little
further with you. And notice this, that when the
psalmist cries in verse 11, For thy namesake, O Lord, for your
glory, pardon mine iniquity, for it is great. Notice his earnestness
in this. It's great. It's great. You know that the greater the
sin, The greater the sin, the greater and more earnest your
cry will be. Remember the publican? He only
had a few words to pray. And he stood afar off. But he
made those words count. He said, God, be propitious,
be merciful to me, the sinner. That was it. It's very simple.
But it was What Jesus said, He went down to His house justified,
because He looked to what God had provided, a mercy seat, and
He looked to the blood sprinkled there of the animal, the goat
that was killed and brought in by the high priest and sprinkled
there, and He saw that God had to Himself satisfy His own justice,
appease His wrath, And on that basis, forgive sin. And he says,
God, be merciful, be propitious to me. I'm the sinner. And so the man here in Psalm
25.11 prays in the same way. My iniquity is great. His great
sin made him earnest and cry even more earnestly. And so did
David when he cried in Psalm 51. When his sin was discovered
to him by God Himself. And this is always the way it
is. We can't even know our sin. We can't even know we're sinners.
This is the foul thing about us. Until God, in mercy by His
Spirit, convinces us of sin. He has to convince us of our
sin. And it's a mercy of God when
He brings us low and convinces us, before God, I have sinned
and done evil in thy sight. I want you to turn with me to
Daniel chapter 9. This is one of the, if not the
greatest confession of sin in all the Word of God. And it's
like the psalm in 25.11, but it expands it, it makes it much
more... the lines in the picture are
much more in contrast here in Daniel chapter 9 in verse 3.
Realize what happened here in Daniel. Daniel was taken with
all of the inhabitants of Jerusalem and Judah out of their land. Their land was burned. Everything
was destroyed. They were taken to Babylon and
they were there for 70 years. Daniel himself was made a eunuch
and he had to serve in the wicked kings and several of them in
their service. And so, at this time, God revealed
to Daniel that it was the time that God promised He was going
to save His people out of Babylon had come. And so it says in verse
3, Daniel 9, listen to his words, I set my face to the Lord God,
to the Lord God, to seek my prayer and supplications with fasting
and sackcloth and ashes, and I prayed unto the Lord my God,
and I made confession, and I said, O Lord, the great and dreadful
God, keeping the covenant and mercy to them that love Him and
to them that keep His commandments. It doesn't sound good for sinners
at that point, but listen to this, verse 5. We have sinned
and have committed iniquity. and have done wickedly, and have
rebelled even by departing from Thy precepts and from Thy judgments,
neither have we hearkened unto Thy servants the prophets which
spake in Thy name to our kings, our princes, our fathers, and
to all the people of the land. O Lord, righteousness belongs
to Thee But unto us, confusion of faces. That's what sin does. It confuses us. We don't know
which way is up. We can't understand the right
truth from error until God turns the lights on. Confusion of faces
as at this day to the men of Judah and to the inhabitants
of Jerusalem, to all Israel that are near and that are far off,
through all the countries, whether thou hast driven them because
of their trespass, that they have trespassed against thee.
O Lord, to us belongs confusion of face to our kings and princes
and our fathers, because we have sinned against Thee. To the Lord
our God belong mercies and forgivenesses, though we have rebelled against
Him. Do you see that? What belongs to us? Sin? Rebellion,
transgression, iniquity, we've departed. But to God, what belongs
to Him? Mercies and forgivenesses. Verse
10. Neither have we obeyed the voice
of the Lord our God, what an admission, to walk in His laws,
which He set before us by His servants, the prophets. Yea,
all Israel have transgressed thy law. even by departing, that
they might not obey thy voice. Therefore the curse is poured
upon us, and the oath that is written in the law of Moses the
servant of God, because we have sinned against him. And he has
confirmed his words, which he spake against us and against
our judges." He's saying here, all the trouble that came upon
us is all our fault and in fulfillment of God's word. And yet, he reaches
in beyond that to who God is in his essential being, And he
reaches into the heart of God, into His mercies and His forgivenesses,
and he prays according to God's glory in them. And he says, he
says, For unto the whole heaven hath not been done as hath been
done upon Jerusalem, as it is written in the law of Moses.
All this evil has come upon us, yet we made not our prayer before
the Lord our God, that we might turn from our iniquities and
understand thy truth. Therefore hath the Lord watched
upon the evil and brought it upon us, for the Lord our God
is righteous in all His works which He doeth, for we obeyed
not His voice." And now listen to what he says in this next
verse, in these next two verses. This is amazing. And now, O Lord
our God, that has brought Thy people forth out of the land
of Egypt with a mighty hand and has gotten Thee renowned as at
this day, we The ones that God saved out of Egypt. We have sinned. We have done wickedly. O Lord, according... You know
what you do when you say that? You're exposing yourself to the
justice of God. You're justifying God in condemning
you, aren't you? And then he says, O Lord. And
this next phrase is one of the most amazing phrases in all the
Bible. He says, O Lord, According to
all thy righteousness, I beseech thee, let thine anger and thy
fury be turned away from the city Jerusalem." He's saying,
according to your righteousness? According to your righteousness?
I wouldn't have prayed that. I would have said, according
to your mercy. But he says, no, no, do it according
to your righteousness, because Our great sin requires a great
Savior. God's glory is seen in the fact
that He not only forgives sin, but He does it according to His
righteousness. His wisdom found a way to be
just and the justifier of him which believeth on Jesus. He's
wise enough to be able to do the impossible, to forgive the
sinner. and to magnify his law and his
justice and his truth in doing so. Righteousness and peace have
met together. Justice and mercy. How's it go? Truth have met together.
Righteousness and peace have kissed each other. Psalm 85,
10. But going back now to Psalm 25 and verse 11, I want to point
out just a couple more things here because our time is running
out. And I suppose that I could go
on and on, but let me just mention this, and I shouldn't mention
it in passing because it's so fundamental to this, and that
is that the gift of the forgiveness of sins, the reason that he could
pray this and that we can pray this is because God has made
this part of his covenant, God has promised in his covenant,
to forgive sins. This is part of the blessing
of God's covenant. Therefore, it's God's word that
tells us that we can pray this way. He says in his covenant,
and their sins and their iniquities I will remember no more. That's the covenant. And Jesus
said, this is my blood. And he took the cup and gave
it to his disciples in the New Testament, which is shed for
the remission of sins. For the forgiveness of sins.
My blood is shed for that. That's why it's shed. So that's
one thing I wanted to point out to you. And we saw this in Luke
chapter 7. The greater the forgiveness that
is given by God, the greater the love we have towards God.
You want to see someone who really loves God? Then you're looking
at someone who has been forgiven much. There's only one way to
love God as a sinner. There's only one way. Men don't
rise up and love God out of the goodness that's in them. If someone
truly loves God, truly loves God, in God's estimation, in
God's assessment, not in ours, because we can make false judgments.
We look at somebody, man, that person must really love God.
Maybe they do. It's not my responsibility to
figure that out. But I know this, if someone truly
loves God, and I want to truly love God, if someone truly loves
God, then they will only love Him because He has forgiven them
much." And isn't that an encouragement? To openly confess like Daniel
did, and like the psalmist did, and like everyone, Job, I'm vile. Peter, depart from me. Lord,
I'm a wicked man. And then I want to say the last
two things here. This prayer is recorded for us
by the Spirit of God. This prayer in the Psalm 25,
11 is recorded for us by the Spirit of God. It's for our comfort.
If this teaches sinners, that's such a... Is oxymoron the right... No, it just seems like a contradiction
of terms that God would teach sinners. What a mercy, what a
stoop that God would teach sinners. And yet he does teach sinners
in the way. And this is why he teaches them, because he's good
and upright. And the Lord teaches us. Listen
to these words, and you don't have to turn there, but in Hosea
14, 1 through 4, again, some of my favorite scriptures, he
says, O Israel, God pleads with him, return unto the Lord. You've left him like sheep, found
the hedge. Shot out of the green pasture,
the land that was provided for you, gone the way of the wilderness,
and you're lost. You can't find your way back.
No capacity to love the one who cares for you. That's what we
are, a strange sheep. But he says, O Israel, return
unto the Lord thy God, for thou hast fallen by thine iniquity. You've destroyed yourself. Take
with you words. and turn to the Lord and say
unto him, take away all iniquity and receive us graciously. So
will we render the calves of our lips. We'll offer the thanksgiving
of our lips to you because you've forgiven us our sin. Greatly
forgiven sinners forgive great sins. If you've been forgiven
much, the Lord says, God has forgiven us for Christ's sake.
Jesus said, this is what the kingdom of heaven is like. A
man had two debtors. This man who owed the king 10,000
talents. And the man comes in and he pleads
before him. He says, be patient with me and
I will pay you all. And the king just forgave the
whole debt. 10,000 talents. An insurmountable
amount of money. Couldn't pay it. Not in a lifetime. Probably not in ten lifetimes.
And he just completely forgave him the debt. Jesus says, that's
what the kingdom of heaven is like. But then he also contrasts. He says, but the same man went
out and found somebody that owed him a few pence. He says, pay
me everything you owe me. And he says, I can't. But if
you'll be patient with me. No, no. He grabs him by the neck.
He chokes him. He calls for the magistrates. He has him cast into prison. He didn't understand, did he?
He didn't have the understanding. That's what he told the Pharisees. If you were blind, then you could
see. But because you say, I see, your
sin remains. Here's a man who thought he could
see. He was in debt an insurmountable amount. And he goes out and he
chokes his... That's not someone who's been
forgiven. Not someone who knows he's been
forgiven. And only those that God teaches
they've been forgiven have actually been forgiven. And He tells us
that we are to forgive one another for Christ's sake. In 1 Corinthians
13, verse 5, He says, Love, charity, thinketh no evil. And it means
doesn't regard, doesn't account, doesn't consider evil done to
itself. Because it forgives it. Why? Because someone who loves has
been forgiven much. Let's pray. Father, thank You
that for Christ's sake and for His sake alone, to Your great
glory, You have forgiven us at the highest cost, not only in
humbling Yourself to allow Your enemies to approach unto You,
to receive them graciously, which we are in our hearts, but to
do it at the expense of the blood of Your own Son, Lord, help us
to come like the psalmist and take these words which you've
given to us in our mouth and our heart. For thy name's sake,
O Lord, pardon our iniquity, for it is great. And because
it's great, we know it requires a great Savior. Because it's
great, We know we have nothing that we can bring. We can't plead
a future righteousness. You must do it for Your namesake,
Lord, so save us for Jesus' sake. In His name we pray, Amen.