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[no audio] [Music] (gentle music) (gentle music)

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(gentle music) (upbeat jazz music) [Music] [Music]

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♪ (soft music) [music] ♪ Venus, I love you ♪ ♪ Oh, look in the sky ♪

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♪ Venus, I love you ♪ [music] I love you, oh Lord, in every way. ♪ Jesus ♪

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♪ I love you ♪ ♪ Oh ♪ ♪ You must be true ♪ ♪ Jesus ♪

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♪ I love you ♪ ♪ Oh yeah ♪ ♪ I do ♪ ♪ Jesus ♪

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♪ I love you ♪ ♪ I will abide ♪ ♪ Jesus ♪ ♪ I love you ♪

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♪ Safe in your arms ♪ ♪ My heart ♪ ♪ Jesus ♪ ♪ I love you ♪

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♪ Your love ♪ ♪ Is so sweet and true ♪ ♪ Jesus, I love you ♪ ♪ Oh, yes, I do ♪

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♪ Jesus, I love you ♪ I love you because your name is so sweet. Jesus, I love you. You've made my life complete.

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Jesus, I love you. You, you're true. Oh, Prince of Peace. ♪ He's on

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♪ I love you ♪ Oh, yes ♪ I do ♪ He's off

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I love you. Oh, your tender hand. Ooh, Jesus. I love you.

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I'll own you Anywhere Jesus I love you

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♪ God, you brought me through ♪ ♪ Jesus, I love you ♪ ♪ Oh, yes I do ♪ Yes, I do.

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Amen. Amen. Hear this word in Psalm 32, verses 1 and 2. Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputed not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is

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no guile. Now the translation of this is, "What happiness for those whose guilt has been forgiven! What joy is when sins are covered over! What relief for those who have confessed their sins and God has cleared their record!"

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subject the blessing of forgiveness. The blessing of forgiveness. This psalm is called a fearful psalm. It is considered a didactic reflective poem. It bears the inscription "A Psalm of David." What a wonderful experience it is to look back and know that wrongs that have been committed are forgiven. It is an

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experience that thrills us because redemption and release come to us when our sins are forgiven. Let us consider these verses as they are interpreted in the Amplified Bible. Blessed, happy, fortunate, and to be envied is he who has forgiveness of his transgressions continually exercised upon him, whose sin

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is covered a blessing that presses for entrance like the air he breathes and he invigorates his spirit with a sense of divine power. Blessed, happy, fortunate, and to be envied is the man to whom the Lord imputes no iniquity and in whose spirit there is no deceit. First let us consider the curse of sin. Some time ago

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Carl Menninger wrote a book entitled "What has become of sin?" We don't like to really call sin, sin. We have many words now that seek to sort of push it under the rug to get rid of it. We have many sophisticated ways of talking about that which in a real sense should be called sin. We do not like to create in the

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minds and lives of people a sense of sin. But one of the things that we need to consider when we look at ourselves and particularly when we read the Bible and And when we consider our relationship to the eternal is the reality of sin. There is gloom and doom connected with sin.

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When we do wrong, we are sad. Now wrong is that which is consciously done when we think of sin. In other words, we know we are doing wrong and we do it anyhow. We are aware of the fact that we are not doing what we should do.

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And so we have a bad feeling. We do not feel good about ourselves. is missing. This is the situation of the person that is a sinner, meaning that the individual is not rightly related to himself, not rightly related to others, not rightly related to

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the eternal. But the word "sinner" does not just refer to those that are outside the church. people just think of those who are outside the church as being the congregation of sinners, but it also refers to those who are within the church. We are all sinners, all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. We

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We are all sinners saved by grace. To sin is to engage in rebellious acts. It is to disobey God. It is to do what the snake says rather than to obey the Word of God our Eternal Father.

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So to sin is to go up against God's steadfast love. Sin is manifested in so many ways. It's a kind of human sickness. It is a disease.

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In this word, disease means dis-ease. We are not at ease. We are uncomfortable. We are divided against ourselves.

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We are at war with ourselves when we sin. And so the psalmist in this particular song uses three words for sin in a portrayal of the dimensions of human evil. The first is transgression.

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When we sin, we are guilty of transgression. We are guilty of trespassing, going where we ought not go, doing what we ought not do. It is rebellion against God. The child is told by the father what to do and what not to do, and the child says to

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the father, "I will not obey." And we see no trespassing signs. Sometimes you see a sign, "Posted, keep out." It means that you're not to go on that property.

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And we see the sign. We understand quite well what it says. we decide that we're going to take the risk of walking on this property anyhow. We decide that we're going on. Here is the sign and the word is clear. It's distinct. It's well understood.

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The Father advises the children in the Garden of Eden, "Here, here you are in this beautiful garden. You are free to eat of all of the trees in this garden but one, and that is the tree in the midst of the garden, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, that tree you are not to eat of, the fruit of that tree, neither are you to touch it.

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But they say we will not obey. We know you said it, we know you are the creator, we know you have put us in the garden, we know that the garden is yours and we have heard your word but the snake says it's all right so we will not obey and they not only touch the tree but they

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eat of the fruit they trespass and so when one trespasses one sins again as word for sin which means that it is an offense. It's a turning away. In other words, one is turned toward God, one is turned toward righteousness, one is turned toward the Son, but in sinning one turns away from the light toward the darkness.

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A turning away from the path. The individual has walked in the straight and narrow way, but something happens and he drifts in the wrong way, he sins. And there's the word iniquity, which means distortion.

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Has to do with criminality, the absence of respect for the divine will, no respect for God. We distort the very purpose for which we are made

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And we are more concerned about our own selfish will than following the will of the eternal. And wherever there is sin, there is guilt. There is a feeling of condemnation.

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Because of this awareness that I have trespassed, because of this awareness that I have rebelled, Because of this awareness that I have disobeyed, I know that I have committed a criminal offense, and I am no more worthy to be called thy son.

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Father, forgive me! I'm not worthy! I have sinned against heaven and against you! Forgive me. There is a burden of guilt, a burden of guilt.

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And you see, sin has a way of affecting the bones. It affects the bones. It affects the inner life. It affects one's strength, one's spiritual strength. Now, as you grow older, no one has to tell you what affects your bones.

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It you can look all right on the outside but the bone the bone the inner life the inner strength that framework on which the flesh is placed no matter how rosy and how pleasant may be your complexion. It's pretty bad when something is wrong with the bones. Bones. I went to the doctor once and he looked and he said, "Well, Reverend," he said, "this

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is in your bones." I said, "What can we do about it, doctor?" He said, "There's nothing you can do about this, Reverend. It's in the bones."

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So and so and so, it has affected the sinner's bones. It has affected his spiritual life. He's weak. It's in the bones that it's affecting.

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So and so and so, this has affected the son of bones. It has affected his spiritual life. He's weak. It's in the bones and when you sin and you don't do anything about it, take action against it. There is a bottling up of evil in the soul. It just builds up. It just keeps building up. It's like the water in a dam. It just keeps building up like flood water. Building up, bottling up.

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And it's a miserable feeling. You, you, you, you, you, you have all of this weight and all of the guilt that weighs down upon you and it just keeps building up, building up. You don't want to tell anybody? It just keeps building up. It keeps building up. It keeps on building up and this is the situation that the psalmist has experienced the bottling

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up of evil within his soul and he knows what it is to just go on time and time again remaining silent. People ask him how you getting along he says fine when he knows everything isn't fine. He knows that he's troubled and stalled and he knows that somehow it just keeps building

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up and up and up and the burden gets heavy. He knows that. You see wherever there's sin there is a need for confession. Need, need, need, need.

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There has to be some way in order for this burden to be relieved. It needs to be some way. That's why the experience of sin and the burdens of this world somehow come out in the song, "I must tell Jesus."

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Jesus. I must tell Jesus. I must tell Jesus. I cannot bear these burdens alone. Committed. We've had recently in the news a man who confessed to many crimes. Some of them maybe he committed, some of them maybe he didn't commit. Some people just have a need to go around confessing. But we're talking about here of a person who has

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committed sin, he's under the stress, and it's always considerable stress whenever you are carrying unrepentant sins because the very nature of things the person needs to turn to God in prayer and in repentance. So you see if we're really gonna be happy. We can't go around carrying a great deal of guilt. If you're

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really gonna be happy. Some of the trouble with some people is that they're carrying guilt. They have done something wrong and they have not confessed. You know sometimes we do something wrong to somebody and we know we did wrong and we get we get a get away and after it's over we look back on it and we say, "Well, I know I should not have done that."

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But we're just too proud to go back and tell the person, "Look, I was wrong. I should have..." We feel that that somehow takes away from us something and we just go on. And every time we see the person we still have that guilt. Instead of walking down the aisle and meeting the person, we go this way.

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Still carrying the guilt. Still carrying it. But remember that saying unconfessed is not forgiven. Saying unconfessed is unforgiven. Well, Adam is driven out of the garden of Eden.

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You know, he did wrong and the Lord called him and said, "Adam, Adam." First of all, he'd hidden. And he'd been walking with God.

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He'd hidden among the trees of the garden. And when he said, "Now, have you eaten of the tree?" after some questioning he died, he said, "I've eaten of the tree" and he confessed that he had eaten of the fruit but he did not really accept the blame

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he wanted to put the blame on the woman the woman wants to put it on the serpent and really he wants to put the blame on God Now Lord you know she says I wouldn't have done this I was doing all right in the garden but this woman you gave me.

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She's really the cause of all of this. Now when he gave him the woman he was singing a song of joy but now that he has sinned he's pointing the finger at God. This woman you gave me.

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In other words God if you hadn't given her to me I wouldn't have done that. You are really the cause. He points the blame at God and so he is driven out of the garden because he doesn't confess his sin. Sin unconfessed is unforgiven.

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And it continues to be a weight. Now my brothers and sisters this is what you call a penitential psalm. There are some seven of them in the book of Psalms. number 6, number 32 which we're considering today, number 38, 102, Psalm 130, Psalm 143.

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These are the seven that are used in Christian services. You need to confess, need to have forgiveness. And the psalmist is talking about the blessing of forgiveness, the blessing, the blessing, the blessing of having your sins forgiven that somehow in the weight of all of this guilt is upon me and I cry out to God for forgiveness, for forgiveness, forgiveness. Oh that's a wonderful thing, forgiveness. Forgive us our debts as we

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forgive our debtors, forgive. Oh there are a whole lot of marriages that would be much better if there was a spirit of forgiveness within the family circle. A whole lot of divorces that wouldn't occur if that was forgiveness. There are a whole lot of broken relationships because people don't want to forgive. I'm not talking about forgiving and forgetting, I'm talking

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about forgiving. You don't, you know, because what forgiveness really means is to cover it up. It doesn't mean that you can't remember it, that's what it means. It means it's covered up that that that that that that I have put this aside even though you've done it and I was hurt by it I'm covering it up so that every time

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something happens I'm not throwing that up just cover it up it's covered up I put it away I've cast it in the sea of forgetfulness as the old people used to saying where it will never rise again to testify against me in the judgment. That's what we want God to do to our sins. And one of the wonderful things on the

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cover of Time magazine some time ago, the Pope's picture, and it had on the word forgiveness, forgiveness. On the front cover of a popular secular magazine, it He called attention to the fact that even though this would-be assassin, he'd done everything he could to destroy the life of the Pope, almost succeeded, and the Pope lives, and

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the Pope makes a trip to his prison and forgives him. Oh, the psalmist says there's a blessing in that. has a blessing in having this redemption and relief and this blessing is made possible through Jesus Christ who's on Calvary without

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fist hands and he cries out, "Father forgive them for they know not what they do." That thief, that man who was guilty, who had committed sin, he cries out, "Lord when you come into your kingdom remember me and Jesus said I'm gonna take you up to the Father myself and so the gate is open you forgiven forgiven the burden is

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relieved forgiven the prison door is open forgiven the joy in the heart the joy bells that ring forgiven there is relief there is peace with God There's a blessing and forgiveness. Your record is clear. You can see the Father in peace because there is forgiveness. As we come to the singing of our invitation hymn, this hymn

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is a prayer. It's only through God's forgiveness that we are privileged. We enter into a revelation, [INAUDIBLE] [Music] [Music]

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[MUSIC] ♪ If I have no one to go away ♪ ♪ If I have no one to go away ♪ ♪ If I have no one to go away ♪

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[Music] [Music] [Music] If I had a little word of grace, if I had turned a blind eye to a false appraise,

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♪ Let my love be the one who gives the praise ♪ ♪ Give glory for me ♪ ♪ Give glory and praise and praise for my God ♪ ♪ With the power of our souls ♪

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♪ Divine as the blue ♪ ♪ And the green ♪ ♪ Of gold ♪ ♪ With arms that never ♪

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♪ Seem to force to hold ♪ ♪ Lord, holy ♪ ♪ For He is the King ♪ ♪ The heaven and the earth ♪

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♪ For He is the King ♪ ♪ This is our new country ♪ ♪ Oh, my beloved ♪ ♪ And my dear country ♪

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♪ Dear Lord ♪ ♪ Amen ♪ [Music] [ Silence ]