Psalm 32, verse 11, Be glad in
the Lord, and rejoice ye righteous, and shout for joy all ye that
are upright in heart. Whenever the Scriptures tell
us to rejoice, we ought to pay attention. We ought to look at
it very closely. The first reason is a very obvious
one. Rejoicing is good. I mean, we've
got reason for sorrow from time to time, but if I've got a choice,
I'm going to go the rejoicing side. This world, so much of it seems
to run on sorrow and fear. It's going to turn into a cause
for sorrow. I was thinking about this message. Came to my mind, you remember
back in 1986 when the space shuttle went up and blew up. And of course,
this was the first time with a citizen going up there and
that teacher was in there. And they were showing the faces
of the people as that thing's going up and they're all watching.
Everybody's so happy. A launch and then it exploded.
And the people didn't understand right away what that meant. They
thought that that was just a separation of the one stage from the others.
And it was a good thing, you know. And they clapped and they
were happy. And then you watch their face change when they realize
that that cause for joy was really a cause for great sorrow. And
you know, if a man wins the lottery, he'll go absolutely berserk with
joy. Go back and ask him in a year. More people got miserable by
that pile of money being dumped on them than been made happy
by it. Or men will spend their lives
pursuing that money. Because somebody tells you, if
you get it, you'll be happy. And every time it looks like
you're going to be successful in laying hold of some of it,
they get happier and happier. And when they get it, it just doesn't
measure up. Rejoice. Everything that this world offers
you as a cause to rejoice will, in time to come, be a cause for
you to sorrow because everything you get in this world you're
going to lose. Naked we came in, naked we're going out. And
it's awful fun collecting all the clothes, but then you're
going to lose them all. And that part's not any fun.
But when the Scriptures say rejoice, it gives you a foundation on
which to rejoice which shall not be moved. Because that which
the Scriptures lay out, that which the Gospel gives you as
a cause for rejoicing, is an eternal thing. That's why it
can be written, they that trust in Him will never be put to shame.
Their smile will never be turned to a frown. They're not going to get up there
full of joy saying, boy, I got my ticket to heaven, I got my
ticket to heaven, and get up there and get turned away. A lot of people, that's going to
happen to them. They think they got their ticket punched. They're
ready to go. Everything's in order. And they're going to show
up there expecting to get in. And they'll say, Lord, didn't
we? And didn't we? And didn't we? And you know,
the Lord never said, no, you didn't. No. He just said, depart
from me. You workers of iniquity. I never
knew you. And all the shame and the embarrassment and the disappointment
and the joy turned to sorrow. But the Scriptures have us look
on the eternal things of Christ, the eternal things of His gospel,
and to rejoice in those things. And when we rejoice in those
things, we have a cause for joy that shall not fail, not in eternity
and, friends, not even now. Do you remember? What I believe
it was Habakkuk said, and I can't quote it, but I can give you
the sense of it. He said, if there's no cattle in the stall,
if there's no figs on the vine, on the tree, no grapes on the
vine, there's no provender, nothing, yet I'll rejoice in the Lord.
I'll rejoice in God my salvation. There's going to be people clapping
their hands because the economy is going great. There's going
to be people trembling because they say the economy is going
to fall apart in the next year. And you know, whether it's great
or whether it falls apart, we can rejoice in Christ. We can. In fact, I'll say this, that's
the only safe place to rejoice. Because the economy may go good
for another year, but sooner or later the naysayers will be
right. It'll turn down and it'll come back just up and down. But
Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Rejoice,
be glad in the Lord, and rejoice ye righteous. Now, the Scriptures
say that there are some who should rejoice. Now, Scriptures are
written to somebody. You know, you can't read someone
else's mail and think it's to you. You know, it just isn't
going to work. And the Scriptures are to somebody. And what the Scripture says,
either by way of promise or even by way of command or exhortation,
it only applies to those to whom it is written. It doesn't say
everybody clap your hands and rejoice and be happy. It doesn't
say that. It directs that to a specific
people. Rejoice, you righteous. Well, you can count me out of
that one. Well, maybe you'll find out you're not counted out.
You might find out you're in that group. And what I want to
look at, I want to ask two questions in this message. Who are these
righteous? They're told to rejoice. And I don't want to rejoice unless
I qualify. I mean, you know, I don't want to get up there and
find out it wasn't for me. And then I want to ask a question.
Why is it, should they rejoice? Who are the righteous? I said
many might look at this in despair and say, well, preacher, if you
knew me, you'd know that this has nothing to do with me. If
only the righteous may rejoice, then I may as well just get up
out of my pew and go home and eat, drink, and be merry, for
tomorrow we die. You know, the knowledge of sin
destroys joy. Don't you think about that? I
don't mean just the knowledge that we have sinned. You know,
the Bible says that by the law is the knowledge of sin. It doesn't
simply mean that the law makes us aware of the fact that we
have transgressed it. What it means is anybody who
is under the ministry of the law is made to feel the weight
of the condemnation that lays upon them. It is said of our
Lord Jesus, He knew no sin. Does that mean He didn't know
what it was? Does that mean He was not aware of what the law
said was right and what the law said was wrong? He knew what
sin was better than you and I did. He didn't know sin until ours
was put on Him. And He who knew no sin was made
to know it because He was born under the law and then put under
our sins and the law made Him know sin. And there's a lot of religious
people going around in misery because by one means or another,
they are under a ministry of law and the law makes them know
their sin. They're living under the constant
weight of it, the constant condemnation of it. No wonder they're miserable.
They read the law there as they were, and I forget whether it
was Nehemiah or Ezra, but they were reading the law to them
and they started to weep. And they said, wait a minute.
You're misunderstanding it. You're misunderstanding it. You're
coming under the ministry of the law instead of using the
law lawfully. And this law right now is making
you know sin and you're falling under the weight of it. He said,
no, the joy of the Lord will be your strength. The knowledge of the sin destroys
joy and the law makes Us knowledgeable of the sin, of our sin, personally
knowledgeable of it? And that is why with every fiber
of our being, we run away from the ministry of the law. I haven't
a word to say against the law, do you? The law sure has a word
to say against me. And I do not run from the law
because I think there's something wrong with it. I run from the
law because there's something wrong with me. And I run from
the law because there's something better. Just like our brother last night,
Brother Bruce, talked about why did God lay aside the seventh
day? Because a better day came along. There's a better covenant
established on better promises, and we don't run from the law
like rebels. We run from the law to run unto
Christ. We go outside the camp, not just
to be outside the camp. We go outside the camp unto Him. Who are these righteous? Well,
I can tell you one thing, they're not. They're not people who haven't
ever done anything wrong. That's who man thinks is righteous.
I thank you, God, I'm not like other men. And all the while,
He was worse than most of them. No, look over here at Romans
chapter 4, and I'll show you who the righteous are. We don't
have to speculate about it, because Paul refers to this very psalm in Romans chapter 4, verse 6,
even as David. also describes the blessedness
of the man under whom God imputes righteousness without works."
Now, I'm going to tell you something. If God's going to impute righteousness,
He's going to have to do it without works. He can't impute any righteousness
of my works to me. Let me clear up something about
this imputation thing. Imputation does not, in the essence
of its meaning, It does not mean a transfer of anything necessarily. That's not what the word means.
It means simply to say something about somebody or to reason something
about someone. It's to pronounce a judgment
about someone. And when it says he imputes righteousness,
it just means God says that's a righteous man. And we know from other scriptures
on what basis God does that. But the imputation of righteousness,
in fact, is the same thing, is the non-imputation of sin. Because
when David goes on to describe the imputation of righteousness,
he talks about iniquities forgiven, sins covered, and said, blessed
is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin. And that's all
a description of what it is to impute righteousness. It doesn't necessarily involve
the transfer of something. In fact, it says in 2 Corinthians
5.19 that God doesn't impute men's sins to them. Now, most
of us, with the understanding we have of imputation, we would
think, well, He wouldn't have to impute our sins to us. We
already got them. All it means is He's not going
to count them against us. He's not going to deal with us
according to our sins. That's what it means that He
doesn't impute them. They're already there. But He won't impute
them. He refuses to charge them to
us. Now, this righteousness we have,
which makes us blessed and which gives us a cause to rejoice,
is a righteousness that is, quite frankly, just assigned to us.
That's all. God just said, that's the way
it is. Brother Paul said, you can't
do that. I just did. The devil comes up and says,
you can't call him righteous. I just did. And if I call him
righteous, who's going to call him unrighteous? It's God that
justifies. It's God that declares righteous.
Who's going to come by and overturn that? You ready to rejoice about something? No wonder it says rejoice, you
righteous. I'm righteous without words. Oh, how miserable to try
to be righteous byworks. Everybody here has probably tried
some of that. In fact, I know everybody has tried some of it.
Most everybody here, if not all of you here, have failed miserably
at it and know it. And oh, what a burdensome thing
it is. No wonder the Lord said to them, Come to Me, all ye that
are weary and heavily laden. Oh, what a burden. And what a
cause for misery. to be under the lash of the whip,
to be chafed by the harness as you try to carry a weight you
can't, to pull a load you're not equipped for. But oh, what
a cause for rejoicing when we discover that the God of creation,
the God who spoken it was, the God who calls things that are
not as though they were, and He looks at us who are not righteous
and says we are. It's without our works, this
righteousness. In fact, our works are opposed
to it. They're opposed to it not only because they're evil
works. They're opposed to it because any time we interject
our works into it, we're overthrowing the whole foundation of it, which
is grace. It's by grace and divine will,
divine favor, divine will. And that means it's unchanging.
Shall God speak a thing and then later unspeak it? Shall God declare
me righteous today and unrighteous tomorrow? My conscience does.
You ever go through that some day? I tell you, it's okay. And
the next day you follow some pet sin, oh, I'm a miserable
sinner. Well, you were right the second day. You're a miserable
sinner both days. But God has declared you otherwise
if you're in Christ. Let's look at some of the details
of this. Going back to verse 1 of Psalm 32. Who are these
righteous? Well, they're described this
way. Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven. Now, here's an interesting
thing. We're talking about the righteous.
And what is the first thing it says about them? Transgression. That doesn't seem to go together
at all. Well, we're talking about the
gospel here, and things that normally wouldn't go together
do. And one thing is about these righteous people, they've got
transgressions. And they're all too aware of
them. Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven. The righteous are
not those who have never sinned. It's those whose sins have been
forgiven. Now, I love words. I like to
examine words, find out where they came from and how they got
to mean what they mean. And this word translated forgiven
is actually the word meaning to bear. It says that when the
floodwaters came there in Noah's day, it bore up the ark. Same word. It says that when
Abraham and Lot tried to occupy the same territory, and their
The flocks got too big. It said the land couldn't bear
them. Same word. So it means to uphold
or hold up. It means to endure. Look over here at Isaiah 53. And when I saw this, it made
me rejoice. Isaiah 53, verse 4, Surely he
hath borne, same word, he hath borne our griefs, and carried
our sorrows. Blessed is he whose transgressions
have been borne. You see, God doesn't forgive
willy-nilly. He doesn't just say, forget about it. We can
do that. You can offend me, you can sin
against me, and I'll just forget about it. I'll let her go. God
can't do that. And I don't mean He can't because
there's some restraint put on Him from outside of Himself.
He can't do it because He won't. Because as opposed to His nature
is anything else. For sin to be forgiven, it must
be born. And so the forgiveness of sins
does not mean that our sins are not born, it just means somebody
else bore them. And I want you to look at something
here and pay attention real close. This prophecy was written 600
years before our Lord walked on the face of the earth, and
it says, Surely he hath. It didn't say surely, he shall.
In fact, any time you get into the gospel, you be real careful.
The gospel is going to turn time on its ear. It's going to do
it. Because you look through this
prophecy, It says verse 2, for he shall grow up before him.
That's the future. I can understand a prophecy that
talks about the future. That's what prophecy is about. He shall
grow up before him as a tender plant and as a root out of dry
ground. And it says he hath no form nor comingness. Now wait
a minute. I thought we were talking future. Now he's talking present.
He hath no form or comeliness, and when we shall see Him, there
is no beauty that we should desire in Him. He is despised and rejected. How could Christ be despised
and rejected of men? Six hundred years before He ever
showed up. A man of sorrows and acquainted
with grief, and He hadn't yet been born. And look at this,
and we hid. Now where are we? We're in the
past. I just want to point this out
to you. When you're talking about the
gospel and the works of God, times won't get all messed up. And God, as I said, He calls
things that are not as though they were. And if He wanted to call Abraham
a righteous man and impute righteousness to him that had not yet been
wrought, He can do it. The same way that He laid upon
the Lord Jesus Christ sins that had not yet been committed, so
can He lay upon His people in times past a righteousness that
had not yet been brought in. Blessed is the man whose sins
have been borne, whose transgressions have been forgiven. And God's
elect from every age, whether before the Lord Jesus Christ
appeared, or while He was here, or afterward, their sins were
borne by Christ. And then back now here at Psalm
32, Blessed is the man whose transgression
is forgiven, whose sin is covered. I once read someone who was trying
to distinguish between sins being covered under the Old Covenant
as opposed to actually put away in the New Covenant, or Old Covenant
time, shall I say. And I thought it was one of those
things, a distinction without a difference. And I looked this
up again. I said, I like looking up words.
Now, can a thing that's merely covered be hidden forever? That altogether depends on what
it is that covered it. Go back to Noah's Ark again.
It says that the waters, which were the token of judgment, covered
the face of the earth. And a year later they receded.
And you know what you could not find when it receded? One of
those sinners. They were all gone. Wiped away? They were all swept
away. Divine judgment covered our Lord
Jesus Christ. And when it did, our sins were
on Him. And when that judgment receded,
there was nothing. You see, when judgment covers
a sin, it's gone. It's gone. Look over here at
Jeremiah 50, 20. I can't remember the exact time
when I first, that is, I can't remember exactly when it was
the first time I heard it. I do remember the occasion, though,
and what it did for me. You know, I went to Bible school,
what they call Bible school, but it was under fundamentalism. And it amazed me when I learned
the gospel, as I now know it, and heard preachers, the scriptures
that were never mentioned. The most glorious things the
Scriptures have to say, they didn't bother to notice at all.
Do you realize I never heard 2 Corinthians 5.21 until I was
listening to a Sovereign Grace preacher? And here's another
one. I never heard any of them mentioned.
I guess they're too busy trying to figure out if Israel was going
to come back to mention this text of Scripture. Isaiah 50,
verse 20. In those days, And in that time,
saith the Lord, the iniquity of Israel shall be sought, and
there shall be none. And the sins of Judah, and they
shall not be found." Why? Because they've been covered
by the judgment of God. That's why. Not because they
didn't happen. Not because Judah and Israel
don't know about it. Not because our adversary the
devil doesn't know about them, the accuser of the brethren.
Not because the angels don't know about it. Not because God
isn't even aware they happened. But because judgment came and
covered them. And when judgment covers a sin,
it's gone. When judgment covers a sin, they're
atoned. Blessed is the man whose transgressions
are forgiven, whose sins are covered, and it says, whose sins,
back here in Psalm 32, blessed is the man unto whom the Lord
imputeth not iniquity. Our Lord Jesus knew that Peter
denied him. He predicted it. He knew it was
going to happen. He was there when it happened.
And there's no way to avoid that that's exactly what the Lord
was dealing with Peter about when he said, Do you love me?
But here's the interesting thing. While he dealt with that, asking
Peter three times, Do you love me? And it said it hurt Peter
because the Lord asked him three times. And I think that's because
Peter knew why he asked him three times. The Lord never brought
up the sin. And in asking him that way, he
said, I'm not holding it against you. I'm not imputing it to you. I know it happened, but I'm not
going to charge you with it. And of course, he didn't impute
it to Peter. He doesn't impute sin to us,
because he imputed it to Christ. He charged our Lord with it.
The whole role of your transgression, if you're in Him, it was laid
on Christ, laid to His charge. He was made guilty of it. One of the rules of physics is
a thing cannot be in two places at once. And my sin cannot be
on Christ and on me. I don't say that, you know, just
as some flippant remark. Man, that's just the truth of
it. And that's why the old songwriter wrote, payment justice cannot
twice the man, first at my bleeding shirt, and then again at mine.
Why? Because the sin can't move around
like that, you know. He charged it to Christ, so he's
not going to charge it to me. Blessed is the man. Oh, how good
it is when you've appended someone you love. And your heart's broken
and you think, man, I've made a mess of everything. This friendship's
over. This relationship's gone. But you think, I've got to go
ask. I'm so sorry. I can't believe I did that. And
I know it hurt you. And it was wrong. They say, oh,
forget it. I ain't holding it against you.
That's what it means. He said, I'm not imputing it
to you. And the Lord doesn't hold it against us. The Lord
opens His heart of love toward us and says, don't worry about
it. I'll take care of it. He said,
don't worry about your sin. All sin grieves us. We hate that
we ever wound the Lord. I hate that I did anything that
had to be imputed to Him for my sake. But I don't find anywhere
in the Scripture that it says that there's something godly
about going around moaning and groaning about our sins all the
time. We rejoice that they've been
put away in Christ. Rejoice, you righteous. Be glad
in the Lord. Oh, but I'm a sinner. I know,
but Lord, I'm going to hold it against you. They're forgiven. They've been covered up in judgment. We have sinned, and our best
efforts prove that we cannot stop sinning or put away the
sins that we've already done. But sin has no power unless God
imputes it. And it says, blessed is the man
to whom the Lord will not impute sin. And it says, blessed is
the man, this is a description of the righteous. Blessed is
the one in whose spirit there is no guile." Our Lord was talking
to the few disciples He had already gathered, and they brought to
Him one named Nathanael. And our Lord said, Behold, a
true Israelite in whom there is no guile. Now, the Bible doesn't
tell us a lot about Nathanael, but I kind of got an impression
of what kind of fellow he was. I don't think he was a terribly
ambitious man. They found him sitting under a fig tree, you
know, a daydreamer. But you know, an honest guy,
what you see is what you get. One reason he's so honest is
he's got no particular ambition, so he doesn't care if you know
what he is. And he'd come walking up, and he'd say, we found a
Messiah. Well, let's go see. And he'd come walking up there,
and the Lord said, well, he doesn't know everything, but I'll tell
you what, there's no guile in him. He was a believer. He didn't know it all, but what
he knew he believed. But here's the thing, when it says, the
man in whose spirit there is no God, it means that man who
in the inward man, the new man, that spiritual nature which is
created at regeneration, that man knows what the truth is about
himself and about Christ. He's not living that religious
lie that everybody's born living. We're all, to one degree or another,
by nature, just like that Pharisee going around saying, God, I thank
You I'm not like other men. You say, well, I've never prayed
anything like that. Yeah, but you went around trying
to be not like other men, expecting God to see that you weren't like
other men, and bless you on that account. And it was a big lie
because you were just like other men. Because everybody's going
around saying, I thank You I'm not like other men. But there was one on that day
when the Pharisees said, I thank you God, I'm not like other men.
There was one in whose heart there was no God. As he smote
upon his breast and he said, God be merciful to me, the sinner. Oh, we go on trying to deceive
each other. We probably will. It might even be necessary for
the sake of civilization. I'm not going to tell you what's
going on in here. You couldn't handle it. God's the only one
that can deal with what's in our hearts. the things that we
do. David said, forgive my sin. He
didn't say, though it is great. He said, because it's great.
God's the only one who can forgive great sins. The gods of men just
forgive little piddling sins. No deceit. The righteous confess that they're
sinners. And they don't take any particular
sense of superiority. in the fact that they know they're
sinners. I heard a fellow say one time
that he was trying to condemn the self-righteous. He said,
well, at least I know I'm a sinner. No, he didn't. Evidently. Or
he'd have never made a boast about knowing that he was a sinner.
But believers, the righteous, they do know that they're sinners.
You look down here in verse 5. Well, let's go to verse 4. Psalm 32. For day and night.
Now we got back up to verse 3. When I kept silence. My bones
waxed old through my roaring all the day long." When he said,
I kept silent, it doesn't mean I didn't say anything. He's talking about
when I kept silent about my sin. Because he was roaring. He was
fussing and complaining about how miserable he was. But he
wouldn't confess that sin. He said, for day and night, thy
hand was heavy upon me. My moisture is tearing into the
drought of summer. Think about it. I acknowledge
my sin unto thee, and mine iniquity have I not hid. Now stop right
there. That word here, covered. Now
here is one of the, what seems like to human nature, the contradictions
of the gospel. If you cover your sin, God's
going to uncover it. If He covers it, it'll never
be uncovered again. Now we don't go around telling
one another what we've done, but I'll tell you this, you uncover
your heart to God. Just lay it open. And He'll cover your sins so
they'll never be seen again. But if you cover it, and that's
what religious people do, they go through their life like this.
And when you get in the judgment of God, He'll pry your hands
from your heart, and He and everybody else are going to see what you
covered. He said, My sin I've not hid. I didn't cover it. I said, I
will confess my transgressions unto the Lord, and thou forgavest
the iniquity of my sin. Oh, blessed be the name of God. He forgave. He let it go. No deceit. What else is true
of them? They're taught of God. I will instruct thee and teach
thee in the way which thou shalt go. I will guide thee with mine
eye." One of the great glories of the gospel promises is this,
they shall all be taught of God. God help you if I'm your teacher. My voice may be the voice you
hear, but I pray that I'm not the one that's been sent to teach
you. God needs to teach you these things. Scriptures say knowledge
puffs up, and that's the problem about getting a head full of
knowledge. Even the truth, it'll just puff a man up. And all of
us are a bit puffy. But when God teaches man the
truth, He does so in such a way that the man is not puffed up
by what he knows. He said, I'll teach you, I'll
instruct you, I'll guide you. Have you been taught of God?
I can tell you there's one way to know. It's pretty easy. He
that hath heard and hath learned of the Father cometh unto me,
says the Lord Jesus Christ. It's not a big essay. It's not
a whole lot of questions, tests. It's simple as this. If you've
come to Christ, have you been taught of God? It's that easy. Well, but do you know this, that,
or the other? I came to Christ. I know that. And that nobody
but God could teach me to do that. Well, they willingly come
to Christ, these righteous people. Verse 9, Be not as the horse
or as the mule, which have no understanding, whose mouth must
be held in with bit and bridle, lest they come near unto thee.
I read that that would be better translated, whose mouth must
be held in with bit and bridle, or they will not come near thee."
You don't use bit and bridle to keep a horse away from you.
That's how you lead them around. And he's saying, don't be like
that. And again, I'll tell you, religion, they might as well
just call themselves Worship and Bridle Baptist Church. That's
what they are. Because they are using things that force men to
do what they don't want to do. But the righteous, They never
quite do what they want to do. But they're not being forced
to do what is good. That's what they want to do. They want to
come to Christ. They want to worship God. Their
grief doesn't come over the fact that they had to go to church
on Sunday, but that they couldn't go Monday through Saturday. Because life goes on, you've
got to take care of everything along the way. The world loves Sabbath laws
and tithing laws, and I'll tell you why. Because even though
they don't like observing one day out of seven, at least that
leaves them six to use on themselves. And they come to a limit of what
they've got to do. And they don't really like giving
the ten percent, but at least that leaves them ninety percent
for themselves, and they can go on with good conscience and
not worry about what they're doing. That's not the way the
believer is. He isn't ruled by those things. One day out of
seven, that's not enough for worshiping God. No, you don't have to lead them
around bit and bridle. You don't have to tell them,
if they don't do this, God's going to take away that. You don't have to
tell them, if you don't do this, you're going to go to hell and
burn in brimstone forever. You sat before that One who was
ordained unto righteousness. You sat before Him, Christ. And
He's going to fall in love with what He says. And you're not
going to have to sing one, two, or a dozen verses of Just As
I Am. You're not going to have to tell
him to come down the aisle or give him a prayer to pray. You know, when I first saw my
wife, the first time I ever saw her, she's now my wife, she wasn't
me, nobody had to tell me what I needed to do. Nobody sang an invitation to
invite me to Bonnie. I saw her, and to this day I
don't know why, but I was smitten. And with my whole heart and soul,
I pursued her all over that campus and was not given much encouragement. If a man ever sees Christ, you
won't have to prod him. You won't be able to stop him.
You better not get between a sinner and Christ. Tell me, how is your beloved
better than mine? They said to that woman in Song
of Solomon, she said, sit down. I've got some talking to do.
Oh, his hair. His face, his teeth. I get kind
of tickled reading some of those. Not one of them's missing. You
know, back then I guess it was something to get to adulthood
with all your teeth, you know. But they're all there. Oh, and
he smiles. It's just beautiful. And his
arms are strong. His legs that hold me up like
marble. How's my beloved? Oh, everything
about him's good. He's all together lovely. Every
part is delightful. And you put them all together
and it's more delightful? Yeah. You go on with all your lives
if you want to. But I'll go nowhere else but
this one. Why do they rejoice? Because this is true of them.
Because their transgressions have been borne away. Because
their sins have been covered. Because God's not holding their
sins against them. Because He's taught them the
truth in the inward parts and they're not lying and live in
a life of deceit. Because they've been taught of
God. Because God has surrounded them with songs of deliverance. Because they are no longer mules
and horses. They're children. And because they have been given
grace to trust the Lord, therefore, mercy encompasses them about. I think in pictures. And there's
two times I've talked about surrounding with songs of deliverance and
encompassed with mercy. Here I've listened to four messages
of grace. I've listened to songs of deliverance.
God has surrounded me in this conference with songs of deliverance. Oh, my soul is blessed and I'm
rejoicing. He has encompassed me with His mercy. And though
I'm full aware of a multitude of sins, by His grace I've been
made aware that they're born away, that they're covered up,
and He won't hold them against me. Rejoice, you righteous. You've got reason. Nobody else
does.