[0:00] This message was recorded at Vision Baptist Church in Alpharetta, Georgia. It is our prayer that you will be challenged by this message from Pastor Trent Cornwell.
[0:14] If you have a handout to try to keep up, we won't get through all of it. I'm not even going to try to attempt to give what's on the back of it tonight. You can just use that later. Psalms 32 and 51, as you see there, there is a window.
[0:29] That is closed. And then play at your own risk as a son. Now I'm asking God, and I hope you are too, that in 2012 we can do more for his honor and his glory, whatever that may be, for 2012, whatever he gives us.
[0:43] But if we're going to see multiplication in our church when it comes to discipling men in our church and see families changed by the gospel, to see lives changed by the gospel as we continue to grow and through the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives bear fruit, for multiplication to take place, sometimes subtraction has to.
[1:01] Sometimes there's things in our heart that have to be removed so that God can have free course in our lives to do what he wants. That's what I want to talk to you about tonight. It's that lust inside of our hearts that happen.
[1:13] And it comes out in men in different ways. And one man that comes out in a desire to cheat his co-worker or to steal from the company. Another man that happens at night through looking at pornographic pictures.
[1:25] Another one that's in his thought life. Another one that is in his bitterness towards somebody else where he feels like he was done wrong because he wants a different life. But lust that comes in there. And so none of us are going to go home to a castle tonight.
[1:38] And none of us are going to go to the top of a roof or whatever in David's story. But every one of us could be exactly where David is at. And I hope that we can recognize it when what's going on.
[1:49] When we get to that place in our heart and where we're like Brother Ed just sang there. And we say, God, we need you to create a new heart inside of us. And you have these feelings in this distance. And you don't remember how it is you got there.
[2:01] And you definitely don't know how to get out. I want to help give some instruction for that tonight. Psalm 51, it was David's prayer of confession. And Psalms 32 is a song of forgiveness. We know the background of the story of 2 Samuel 11 and 12.
[2:16] David lusted after his neighbor's wife. So that's where sin starts. David lusted after his neighbor's wife. You insert whatever it is in your life. He committed adultery.
[2:27] He acted upon the lust that first started in his heart. You know, we don't know about David. We don't even know. We know he didn't go forth to battle. And we seem like he was overtaken. We said it wasn't his fault that he saw it once.
[2:40] But he chose to go and take another look. Are you really willing to risk it all for another look? So David saw it. But men, we know from experience in here, David might have placed himself in that situation.
[2:51] We don't know from the Bible what's going on there. But David might have put himself in a place there where he had an opportunity. And we know what that looks like in our lives. We know when that cycle of temptation comes around.
[3:02] And we know when we put ourselves back in it. And we're not surprised when we fall again. He made the husband get drunk. He had him killed. And then he covered the whole affair for at least a year.
[3:15] He was not a youth when he fell into these sins. He was a mature man ruling over a great kingdom. Now, tonight we're not going through the book of John. We'll continue that on Sunday. But I want to talk about what the men in here about this issue.
[3:28] When the young men are upstairs, fathers will talk to young men about this. We do this at other times. And the parents are there when we talk about sexual relationships. And we talk about pornography.
[3:40] But I was glad to have them out of the room tonight. Because I don't want any of the men in here to think for a second, this is for the young guys. This is for the unmarried guys. David here has a wife.
[3:51] And we know that he is a king. He is a grown man when he falls into this. Because this is every man's battle. And it's amazing. We could get people amen and hollering if we talked about the sin of homosexuality.
[4:04] That's fair game to talk about in church. We could talk about polygamy. You saw the one conservative candidate that was running for president. He compared the two. He said, well, if we allow homosexual marriage, we should allow polygamy.
[4:15] And that he got booed off the stage. Because that's how we would see it from the Bible. We would say, if it's outside of what God says, then it's sin. And there's no restriction. But when we talk about pornography, we talk about sex, we talk about lust.
[4:28] It gets awkward even in this group. And we should be tactful in the way we talk about it because of the way the Bible does. Somebody said that if you want to draw a crowd in church, you talk about sex. You can talk about end times.
[4:39] And you can talk about is there sex in the end times. And those are the three things that people want to talk about. But I don't know that that's necessarily true. And I know it's something that I don't want to talk about.
[4:51] But I want to look here at the heart of David because I don't want that heart. I know what that's like. Somebody will be honest with you. You know what that distance feels like. You know what it's like when your heart isn't palatable and it's getting cold and it's getting hard towards the things of the Lord.
[5:05] I don't want to be there. And it says here, place your own risk. You think about the life of David and you think about all the effects of his sin. But what you see in Psalms 32 and Psalms 51 is you see the effect upon his B level, on his personal life, and on his heart.
[5:20] Because the idea is you can play with fire until you get burnt. But that's not true. We can't play around with these thoughts of lust because we're already hurt. We're not hurt when people find out.
[5:31] We're not hurt when something bad happens. We're not hurt even when we act upon it. We are hurt by simply playing the game. As the sign there says, play at your own risk.
[5:42] Just playing the game is going to hurt you. Even if you feel like you're winning. You know, if you have a gambling addiction, it's hurting you even if you're winning. Because it's eventually going to come back and get you.
[5:53] And then that preoccupy, being not trusting the Lord and being involved in that, hurts you. And the same with lust. The effects of sin in his life. David paid for his sins physically and became ill.
[6:04] Psalms 32, 3, and 4. When I kept silence, my bones waxed old through my roaring all day long. For day and night thy hand was heavy upon me. My moistures turned into the drought of summer.
[6:16] So we know his bones waxed old through the roaring all day long. What happened in his body because of his sin through that time of conviction in his life and not giving in to the Lord. And we're not going to stay on the physical effects very long.
[6:27] But we will cover it because it mentions it in the Bible here. But his body paid for the sin that he was involved in. Sin has a built-in consequence.
[6:38] And when God forgives you, you still have that penalty here on earth. You're not going to be paying for it in heaven because it's already paid for on the cross. But it has a built-in consequence in your life. You know, how many of you had a 6A class in public school growing up?
[6:52] Anybody in here? You know, as a Christian, as they would talk to me and they would talk about the physical dangers of premarital sex, it had no effect on me. Because I thought if I was willing to disobey the God of heaven, then there's nothing else that you could really say that's going to deter me.
[7:07] You know? And if you get to a point and the only thing that's going to slow you down is the consequences, you're not going to be stopped. Because you can justify your way out of any consequence because you don't care. But when you get to a part when you say, I have sinned against the God of heaven, which is where David gets, that is the type of spiritual accountability that you need to have in your lives.
[7:28] So here are the effects of the sin on the B level. In chapter 51, if you want to flip over there, chapter 51, here with me. He lost his purity of heart is what it says here.
[7:40] He lost that joy of his salvation that we sing about. Psalm 51, have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy loving kindness, according to the multitude of thy tender mercies. Blot out my transgressions.
[7:52] He's admitting that he transgressed there. Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. Verse 7, purge me with high soap and I shall be clean. Wash me and I shall be whiter.
[8:04] And so he lost that purity of heart. He lost the pure conscience that he has. All he could see is verse number 3 is sin. For I acknowledge my transgression and my sin is ever before me.
[8:15] Titus 1.5 tells us about the wicked man. He has a filter in life and all he can see is sin. The unbeliever, no matter what miracle Jesus does, he doesn't believe it. And when we have sin in our lives, that's all we see.
[8:26] It's always before us. It's that thing when you say you ought to go out with your buddy and give out gospel tracts on Saturday. You say, well, I feel guilty and so I shouldn't be involved in the Lord's work.
[8:36] Or that thing that when you feel like when you're reading your Bible and you forgot to read it yesterday, you don't want to read it again today. Because you're like, man, I've already messed up for the year. And so we have that guilt.
[8:49] And he wants conviction in our lives and he wants repentance. He doesn't want us walking around guilty. He wants us walking around repented with clean hearts. Oh, and he made his mind was effective.
[8:59] Verse 6, behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts and the hidden part. Thou shalt make me to know wisdom. In the timeline of David's life, if we were to look at his mind and his heart, something changed with his sin with Bathsheba.
[9:13] The inner person, heart, spirit were out of fellowship with God and there was no joy. Create in me a clean heart, O God. Renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from thy presence and take not that Holy Spirit from me.
[9:27] That's how you feel. You feel like your sin has separated you. That's what sin does. It separates us. And so you say, God, I feel so far away from you. Please don't cast me away. Is he going to cast you away?
[9:38] Oh, he's your loving father. He isn't going to change that. But that's how you feel, isn't it? The prodigal son says, my dad would have no use of me. I'll be a servant because he felt so far away from him. Could not sing praises.
[9:50] Then I will teach transgressions as a way and sinners shall be converted unto thee. O Lord, open thy lips and my mouth shall show forth thy praise. Not just standing in a group of men, not being able to open your mouth and sing a hymn or a song.
[10:02] Is that when you're talking about him, wherever you go, that we're, Psalms 96, 8, we're supposed to be singing a new song unto the Lord. That everywhere we're going, we're supposed to be singing his praises. Our mouth is shut now.
[10:13] Because we feel guilty or convicted when we sing praises unto the Lord because we know we have transgressed his law. And heart became hard, verse 17.
[10:24] The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit and a broken, contrite heart. O God, wilt thou not despise. So our heart becomes hard. But then we look at the conviction back in 32 here that comes in.
[10:36] And this is what I'm saying here that we should feel conviction and we should repent and not walk around just feeling guilty. Psalms 32, 5 tells us, I acknowledge my sin unto thee and mine iniquity have I not hid.
[10:49] I said I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord and thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin. You saw that he had a broken and contrite heart. He understood no amount of works will atone for his sin.
[11:02] There in Psalms 52, we're looking at that. It says in verse 16 and 17, or in Psalm 51, I have the wrong passage there, I'm sorry. Thou desirest no sacrifice, else would I give it.
[11:14] Thou delightest not in burnt offerings. Every one of you in here, men, would say that we are saved by grace. That our works did nothing to earn our salvation. We understand that when it comes to salvation in the gospel.
[11:27] And if one of us was going around trying to earn our salvation, you would show us from the Bible where that was off. That was not biblical. But some reason when we fall into sin, if it be of the nature of David or some other sin, and we go around guilty, what do we try to do to make up for our sin?
[11:43] We try to do good. So we've done wrong on one day, and now we try to do enough good for so many days later to make up for it. I didn't read my three chapters yesterday, so I will read ten chapters today.
[11:57] But is there any amount of good works that you can do to make up for sin? Is there? No, there's not at all. And so that's true for salvation. It's also true for the sin in your life.
[12:07] There's no amount of perfect church attendance. There's nothing that you can continue doing after you've messed up, as David did, on any scale. You looked at it. You saw it. You thought it.
[12:18] You imagined it. It's there. There's no amount of good works. There's not enough counseling with your wife, and there's not enough good things you can do for your wife to make up for that. Well, that sounds horrible, doesn't it?
[12:30] I can't do anything. Well, you can't because he already did. You need to repent of that sin, ask him for forgiveness, and then we look at how he feels about it. So most of us are going around with something weighing us down.
[12:41] We feel this distance from God, and we feel like pilgrim, pilgrim's progress. We feel like we're on this journey with this heavy load on us, and we shouldn't be carrying that load. He has already offered to take that load from us.
[12:53] Confession. David immediately confessed that he had sinned when Nathan spoke to him. Thou art the man. Remember the parable that he told him there? He said, man has a sheep, and you've taken. He said, who's that man?
[13:03] And he said, David, you're that man. And at that time, his heart recognized the sin. He saw sin as God saw it, and that's when repentance happens, is when you see sin as God sees it.
[13:14] But then privately, he allowed the Spirit of God to uncover sins one by one. So there's a public timeline. There's a story. But then there's that time where David goes to the prayer closet.
[13:25] He goes, and he says, God, before you, I know Samuel knows, and I know other people know. But more importantly than all of that, I know you know, and I want to confess.
[13:36] I want to repent. He takes ownership of his sin. No more is he defending. No more is he faking. No more is he hiding. No more is he exaggerating or blaming or downplaying.
[13:47] We look at all those things that we do with our sin. And he decided that day. He said in verse number four there, he said, against thee and thee only have I sinned and done this evil.
[14:02] So as I said in 1 John 1, it says the same thing about sin that God does. It tells us that we must acknowledge our sin is sin as he would see it. And so I want us to look here in closing in Psalms chapter number 32.
[14:16] Men in here, if you're going through something, you have this in your heart, in this mind, you've went through a time, you've sinned. I didn't desire from the word of God to beat you up tonight, but I did desire to remind you of something.
[14:26] That that's not the way we're supposed to live as Christians with distance. We're supposed to repent of our sins, ask for forgiveness, and then allow him to forgive us and to reckon it to be true in our lives.
[14:37] Verse 8 through 11 in Psalms 32. I will stroke thee and teach thee in the way which thou shalt go. I will guide thee with mine eyes. This is God speaking to David after he confesses and repents.
[14:49] But ye are not as the horse or as the mule which have no understanding, whose mouth must be held with the bit and bridle, lest they come near unto thee. Many sorrows shall be to the wicked, but thou trustest in the Lord, and mercy shall compass him about.
[15:03] Be glad in the Lord, and rejoice, ye righteous, and shout for joy, all ye that are upright in heart. That desire to have an upright heart has to be the thing that compels us to stay away from sin.
[15:16] We shouldn't be like the horse with the bit in the mouth where God just has to jerk us around from discipline to discipline, where our calendars and everything about us have to discipline, where we constantly tell ourselves, don't sin, don't sin, don't sin.
[15:28] We just make no provision. We make no provision for ourselves. And that's all we have, our heart is the greatest way of telling that we don't want to lose that relationship. I don't want to lose that relationship with the Lord.
[15:39] I would rather do anything. You know, I was looking at John chapter number 9, and the blind man, if you can't say that knowing God is infinitely greater than having sight, then you'll never understand suffering in this world.
[15:50] It doesn't make any sense to you. But if you can say in here, God, I'm not as worried about the consequences of sin, which I am worried about. I just don't want to be away from you. I don't want to have that heart that's drawn away from you.
[16:01] And it's for that reason that I don't want to get involved in sin. And it's for that reason that when I sin, regardless if there's no consequences and nobody knows about it, I can't stand to live like that.
[16:12] My confession to you in here is that growing up, I lived like that too long. I would lie week after week to go by, and I don't want to waste another day like that. I know as a human I will sin, but I also know as a child of God that has a loving, forgiving Father, there's no excuse that I'm not right there at the throne asking for forgiveness with a real heart.
[16:31] Not asking him just to take away the penalty from it, just saying, whatever it takes, Lord, I will do it. He said that. He says, I know you don't enjoy me doing sacrifices, but he says, if that's what you want, I'll do it.
[16:43] Because that's a contrite heart. He says, if you want me to do something, I'll do it. If you want me to sacrifice animals, that's what I will do. But he says, I know you want repentance. So stop fighting the bad things you've done with good and repent.
[16:55] Ask him to forgive you and ask God to create in your heart a new life. In 2012, we're going to start in February, a Dave Ramsey course upstairs about financial freedom.
[17:06] On the back of this is a place signed up for Covenant Eyes. I mean, could I ask you, it may be multiplication in your life when it comes to discipleship, and inside of our church needs to start the night with some subtraction, the desire to have things that aren't supposed to be given to you, and you're going to ask God and say, God, will you take that from my heart so that it can be used of you in a greater way?
[17:25] Let's pray. Heavenly Father, Lord, we pray with David, the king and the psalmist, Lord, when we ask for a new heart inside of us, Lord. Lord, you know as your children that you've told us that you'll be faithful and long-suffering to forgive us if we would come to you with a contrite heart.
[17:41] Lord, I pray if one of my brothers in here are at that place in their heart and they've grown cold and against you, Lord, and they feel like there's a great distance at the night, Lord, they will repent. They'll stop believing the lie of that time will solve things and enough good works will fix it, but they will come to you broken and say, Lord, forgive me, and then they will be reminded of what you tell us in the book of Psalms here, Lord, how you will instruct us with your eye and that you will show us your will and that you will take our lives, Lord, and redeem it and salvage it and continue to use it for your way and for your will.
[18:14] In Jesus' name I pray. Amen. You have been listening to Trent Cornwell, pastor at Vision Baptist Church in Alpharetta, Georgia.
[18:25] For more information, log on to www.visionbaptist.com. Thank you.
[18:38] Amen. Amen. Next place I have been listening to Peterrite, Katie, and am seeing you commented about how you canisé your power and where you can see your power that you can & meet your power on the wheel also in your innocence and there will be a function even though in that century, and so you will notice how you are with Mountdown U했던, as a witness said.
[18:53] In Jesus' name we're with 빠d Culmah, in my heart, of course in the power and меч Rick Silina.