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Okay, so we are uh we're continuing our um our Lenten series in the penitential Psalms. And today we're gonna do the second half of Psalm 32, so Psalm 32, 6 through 11. But to get context, we're gonna read uh the entire thing. So if you have a Bible, please open it to Psalm 32. If not, you can follow along on the screen. Hear the word of God. Amaschal of David. Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit. For when I kept silent my bones wasted away, through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me, my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity. I said, I will confess my transgressions to the Lord, and you forgave the iniquity of my sin. Therefore, let everyone who is godly offer prayer to you at a time when you may be found. Surely in the rush of great waters they shall not reach him. You are a hiding place for me. You preserve me from trouble, you surround me with shouts of deliverance. I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go. I will counsel you with my eye upon you. Be not like a horse or a mule without understanding, which must be curved with bitten bridle, or it will not stay near you. Many are the sorrows of the wicked, but steadfast love surrounds the one who trusts in the Lord. Be glad in the Lord, and rejoice, O righteous, and shout for joy, all you upright in heart. Please pray with me. God, as we look deeply at the words of this song, this inspired song that we are to offer to you, I pray that we could we could deeply take in its message, that we would be shaped by it. In Jesus' name. Amen. So in our um in our extended family, we have a Christmas tradition called sibling dinner. So my my wife grew up, uh, they're not all blood related, but about seven siblings. And so uh so every every Christmas when we're back in Nashville visiting, uh, all the siblings and you know, wives and husbands and all that get together for a jolly time. We go we go out somewhere, uh typically an overpriced burger place, something like that. And um there was one uh there was one sibling dinner where I I don't know why, I think I was like parking the car, but I was the last one in. And everybody was seated at a long table, the place was quite loud, and you know, I see that the only seat available. This could get delicate. It it was between two people I wasn't that excited to sit between. It was two new sisters-in-law, one of whom was a 9-11 truther, who I I've really grown on me with all that now, and the other and the other was kind of brand new, and um we'll call her uh we'll call her Karen because that's a safe name these days. Sorry if your name is Karen. Um it's not your fault. But this but Karen had a a special gift, a talent, let's say, to make everyone cringe uncomfortably. Right? Like that kind, you know, okay. And so I look down, I sit down between them, and I'm like, ugh. And I look down at the end of the table where all of my brothers-in-law are just yucking it up. I'm furious. Like this, oh, how did I get landed here? And so I said, well, let's make the most of this. And uh, you know, I hadn't really talked that much to Karen, and so I said, well, I'll I'll I'll make an attempt here, I'll mind my manners, so forth and so on. And so, you know, the the something else to know about Karen is she was very anti-Christian stuff, and then also very anti-marriage. And so they had reason she had recently married, you know, one of the siblings, and so I was asking about that. I was like, hey, uh heard you guys got married. I was I was kind of surprised, um, you know, because you you say that you're against all that. And and she said, she said, well, you know, his family is very like Christian, and and I was like, I know, and and they believe in marriage, and so so I did it. I was like, so is it just kind of just kind of for show and and you're not really like committed? She says, no, I'm committed. I'm committed until I don't want to be. I kept it to myself, guys. You should be really all proud of me. I just kept that because we all right get it. Like, I don't think you get what commitment actually is. That's not what a commitment is. And after they divorced, of course, I was talking to her erstwhile husband, and uh, and was like, yeah, that that arrangement you guys had kind of surprised me because, you know, and I told him about the conversation, he's like, what? Apparently, he was under the impression that it was like a commitment commitment, not a commitment until I don't feel like being committed anymore. Which, guys, like you get it, right? If you're only committed until you don't feel like being committed, you're not committed. We we get okay, all right. Just wanted to make sure. Um and so you had this situation where he was all in, and she on the other side of this covenant was half in. When one person is all in, the covenant doesn't, it isn't really like, like there's two sides to every covenant, you know what I mean? If if you're going to make something together, if this relationship, at this committed deep relationship is going to work, what do you need? You need both all in, right? Yes, that is how it works. I hope this isn't news to anybody. Um, but you know, the the thing is that God is all in on covenant with us. That's one thing. When we open the Bible, when we look at what the scriptures say, if we look at the story of scripture, that is incredibly blatant. Okay, not only is God our creator, not only did he make us for relationship, but after our first parents rebel against God, what does he then do? Does he just do what any sane person would do and say, well, ta-ta, you know, I'll I'll find, I'll do something else? No, what does he do? He goes after the very creatures who rejected him. He pursues them in covenant relationship for thousands of years until the culmination of which is God himself becoming human and going to a cross to heal the relationship. Would you call that all in? I would call that very, very 100% all in. Do you ever notice how half-hearted we are, how half-hearted I am and you are on the other side of that covenant? Have you ever thought to yourself, you know, I know that worldly success and pleasure and material, it's not really what life's about, but I for sure want some. I just want to balance that out with the kingdom stuff. I don't want to say no to the kingdom stuff because I definitely want Jesus and I definitely want eternal life. But can I have both? Can I balance and compromise here? Right? That's that's half-hearted, isn't it? That's not all in. Or when we're like, oh, um, you know, God's word, that's a good suggestion. I vibe with that. I vibe with that word. That resonates. That's what people say. It makes it sounds more spiritual. I resonate with that word. I don't like that one, though. That's not resonating. There must be a reason I don't have to listen to that. Oprah says Paul's wrong on this. Too bad for Paul. Or, and this is a very frequent one, especially in I think in American Christianity, where it's much more um part of the culture than a lot of other places, is that Jesus gets relegated. Jesus becomes like a nice addition. You know, it's almost as if you have a nice house but you had a garage and you pop the top on the garage and you put your little Jesus apartment up there. Good addition. As opposed to being the foundation. Right? There are a number of ways in which our side of the covenant, we are half in. We are half-hearted. The thing about being half-hearted is that just like that marriage, if you're only partway in, if you're not all in in covenant relationship, you aren't really going to experience all the blessings of that relationship, right? That is how it works. And so when we look at Psalm 32, it begins with all of God's grace, how God is all in, how God extends free forgiveness, and then verse 6 becomes a call. There's a turn, and that's what we're picking up this week. We notice the turn. It says, therefore. Right? So it's pointing back to everything that just happened. It's talking about confessing and being forgiven and how God, like whatever his sin was, God freely forgives and restores. Right? God didn't go anywhere in the covenant relationship while David was living in unrepentant sin. God was still all in. And so the therefore, it's a response. It's saying, because God is all in on the covenant, what? Let everyone who is godly. Now I want you to just put your finger on that word godly. And uh I don't know, could you guys guess what the Hebrew word is there for godly? It's come up every single sermon in this penitential psalm. Anyone guess? If you guessed, chesed, you're right. Okay? It says, let everyone who is chesed. What is chesed? This is so important. Hesed refers to the love that belongs to a covenant. Okay? We've heard a lot about how God has chesed for us, but this is saying, let everyone who is responding respond like this. Like Hasid is so much more than just feelings. It's an unbreakable, committed, deep love. If you want to, a couple of word pictures here. Alright, a mom with her baby. Is there a legal dimension to that? Is she bound? Yeah. But if there were no laws, would she be equally bound? Yeah. Is there deep love there? Yeah, it's like this, it's more than just a feeling, right? It's a commitment. There's a relationship there that can't be broken. Or, if you were to go to Mile High Stadium, like the Raiders are in town or the Chiefs are in town and the entire stadium is wearing orange and just hating the Chiefs, right? Um, and and loving the Broncos, like, like and everyone is like all your heart is on the field with that team, you know? Yeah, amen to that. Or if you if you were to take like a platoon of soldiers who I'm hell of man, right? Like the bonds that form in that sort of situation, that is Hesed. Make sense? It's much more than just a feeling, it's much more than just a formal commitment. It is it is covenant love. And so when you look in your Bibles, whatever translation you've got in front of you, they struggle to really convey the entirety of this. In the ESV here, uh Hesed is usually translated as steadfast love. Uh in the NIV, it's usually unfailing love. But just know it's saying there's two sides to a covenant. God is all in with Hesed on his side. We are called to be all in as well. Now, what does that life look like? Well, the first thing it looks like is repentance. Right? We are in a penitential psalm, and that is the big picture uh movement of this psalm is repentance. Now, what is what is included here? First of all, repentance is turning from sin. So in verse 6 it says, Therefore let everyone who is chesed offer prayer to you at a time when you may be found. Now, what kind of prayer do you suppose that is? It's a prayer, of course, of repentance, because that is the whole topic of this psalm. So it's to turn from sin, but also, and this is equally important, it's to receive forgiveness. In verse 7, it says, You are a hiding place for me. You preserve me from trouble, you surround me with shouts of deliverance. So when he repents, he then is, right, God is this hiding place, he's this preservation from trouble. And we see also earlier in the psalm that that hand in glove with repentance is that receiving of God's forgiveness. This is really, really important. If we want to say, what is what does being all in look like? Being morally perfect, isn't it? If if he's like, oh yeah, well, I screw up, so therefore that's not all in. Look, it is a it's a common misconception that in the New Testament it's about forgiveness, and in the Old Testament you had to be perfect. Not there. Okay? In the Old Testament, always God assumes he's in relationship with sinners. He's in relationship with people who can't live up to moral standards. Right? And so the the important part, the most one of the most important parts of being all in is not that we are perfect, but that we are repentant. We turn from sin and receive forgiveness. Now, this receiving forgiveness is is equally important as turning from sin. Because sometimes we can just say, I sure do feel bad. I sure am sorry for my sin, and you sit there beating yourself up about it forever. Right? That is only halfway. Because that that that you end up with a very bad news, religious brow beating kind of version of the faith, and that's not what it is. The good news version is we repent and then we receive forgiveness. We move on. We say, yes, Jesus paid for that, and I don't need to bear it anymore. I don't need to be guilt-ridden about this. Like God wants us to turn from self-destruction, yes? He has no interest in us bearing our own guilt. But that's what he did on the cross. Jesus died to remove that. And so when we're sitting there saying, well, I I still I need to I need to continue to beat myself up over this, like, we're denying what Jesus did for us. Not to make you feel guilty about that. But like uh like Martin Luther. Not Martin Luther King. Martin, did you guys know that Martin Luther King, his name was Michael King. He changed his name to Martin Luther King after Martin Luther the reformer. So Martin Luther was a monk, and he felt so guilty for his sin. He was so, he was so aware of how he had morally fallen short. He would sit in his his like little monk cell and whip himself. And then he would go to confession and he would confess breathlessly for like six hours. No joke. Like the other monk had to be like, oh my gosh, this dude. He's back. Like, hang on, let me hit the bathroom first and I'll be back, Martin. Right? And it wasn't until Martin Luther he started reading the New Testament and seeing, oh, I don't have to whip my guilt out of myself. Jesus died for this. He bore the curse for me. He wants me to be free. Right? That was the whole, that was his whole thing. And so being all in, it's not being morally perfect, it is being repentant. And that is not only turning from sin, but it's also receiving forgiveness. When we repent, and then we're like, yeah, but I can't go to prayer right now because what I did, like there's a there's a cooling off period. It was too recent for me to go to worship. Nonsense. God wants you to receive forgiveness. That's receiving forgiveness is part of being all in on our side. But also we need to relearn faithfulness. We need to relearn faithfulness. Look where it goes next. In verse 8. It says, I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go. I will counsel you with my eye upon you. Now, there's a couple of ambiguities in this verse about, first of all, who's speaking? Is this God saying I'll instruct you? Or is it David saying I will instruct you? And what does he mean by with my eye on you? Is it like I'm keeping an eye on you? I think it's more of like we are on a we're in an eye-to-eye relationship, right? It's a personal thing as opposed to a distant thing. But whether it's God, whether it's David, it's still the word of God, same difference, right? So we relearn faithfulness from God, and we relearn it until it's instinct. Look at verse 9. It says, be not like a horse or a mule without understanding, which must be curved with bit and bridle, or it will not stay near you. This is uh, I doubt many of us have dealt with pack animals on many occasions. I don't know about your life, maybe you have. Um, but you know, they don't have an inner understanding of the way to go necessarily. And when they get onry, they have to be pulled back into the path by bit or bright, right? And this is saying don't be like a beast with no understanding. Don't don't uh don't only respond to external steering, but have God's way built into your instincts, that you know the way to go. Without needing a major crisis to redirect you or something like that. Right? It's kind of like um we've all seen karate kid, right? Okay, everyone's seen, we've all seen karate kid. Okay, you at least know about karate kid or cobra Kai. Anyone seen it's a good show, I'm not gonna lie, I can't stop. Um so in Karate Kid, Daniel LaRusso, he's like teaching himself karate out of a book, and it's just sad, it's all wrong. And he meets Mr. Miyagi, who's like a high-level expert in karate. Now, Mr. Miyagi can't just pick up, when he starts teaching him karate, he can't just pick up where where Daniel was because he's he's he's got it all wrong. He has to break him down, he has to relearn everything. There's this great scene where they go fishing, and uh and Mr. Miyagi's in the boat, he's fishing, and he's like, hey, you stand up on the bow. And he's like, really? And he's like, yeah, stand there. He's like, but this this is hard. He's like, yeah, you have to learn balance. If you can't, if you can't balance, then then you can't do karate. Right? He he had to start him from the ground, from the very just from balancing. And I love it because he's like, when do I get to learn to punch? He's like, you get to learn to punch when you learn to stay dry. And he rocks the boat and he sends him into the drink and he cracks up, it's awesome. He couldn't just add to what Daniel knew. He had to relearn it. He had to retrain him until it became his instincts. Part of us being all in, if we want to respond to God's all in, is that we commit to relearning faithfulness from God's word. Right? That we we allow ourselves to be instructed. Now, what does this look like in real life? Well, it's to do a lot of what we do here at Grace and Peace. You're all we're all engaging with God's word right now. Or if you meet together with others to discuss the word, or to to study the word more deeply, or listen to whatever it is, right? Just the the um, I love this. One of the reasons I love this psalm is it's it's what's called part of wisdom literature, and it's kind of designed for you to ponder it. You know, sitting there and asking questions and wondering is part of being trained by God's word. And we we we relearn faithfulness. Until it becomes instinct. Like, do you guys know what I mean by your instincts? By especially your moral instincts? Have you ever asked yourself the question, why is what I believe to be right and wrong right and wrong? I hope I'm not upsetting anybody. That's a fair question, isn't it? And your answer is going to be something like, well, kind of everybody thinks it. Right? That's the most frequent one. You know? Well, I mean, I don't have to, I don't have to go. Yeah, murder's wrong. Everybody knows murder's wrong. Everyone thinks murder's wrong. No, they don't. That's not true. Go ask Joseph Stalin. Not that you can right now, but I hope you never can, if you know what I'm saying. But you know, kind of the, oh, well, everyone agrees. It's just a given, right? No, it's an instinct. Where did it come from? Why is that right? Why is that, why is that right? Why is that wrong? If everyone agrees, there ought to be a great reason for it. Go ahead. What's the reason? You see, like a lot of the time, most of us go through life without ever examining the things that we think, the instincts that we have. And part of going all in on our side of the covenant is being willing, like Daniel, to unlearn some of our instincts and relearn instincts. Does that make sense? Okay. And then lastly, it's to make a practice of praise, to make a practice of praise. When we look at verses 10 and 11, it says, Many are the sorrows of the wicked, but steadfast love, that is our friend has said, surrounds the one who trusts in the Lord. Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, O righteous, and shout for joy, all you upright in heart. Now, those uh term, those words righteous and upright in heart, that's not saying the people who are perfect. Those are called status terms. Those are like um citizen. Right? You might not be a good citizen, but you're still a citizen. It's a status, get it? Alright, so these, so being righteous or upright in heart, that is someone who embraces the covenant. It's not talking about their moral perfection. But what we see is that this love of God, this hesed of God, surrounds these folks, the people who he's in covenant with. And as a result, we're to make a practice of praise. It says, uh, rejoice, shout for joy. This is important. Because there's two essential parts that practicing praise inculcates in us. First of all, it's gratitude. And second, it's wonder. Gratitude and wonder, and we actually need these. You know, sometimes I'll hear people say, well, I'll even feel like this. Well, should we sing these songs that are like joyful to the Lord? The world isn't, the world is going bad. You know, like like there's some tragedy in the news, or or man, the people's hearts are heavy. Shouldn't we, shouldn't we avoid singing like the, as it says here, gladness, songs of rejoicing and gladness? You know, like the people who were the recipients of this text, they had problems like anybody else. You know? And David knew it very well. They were facing sickness. I mean, back then, if you got an infection of some kind, it's like ta-ta, right? Like they did not have the medical tech that we have, so sickness was a way bigger deal for them to deal with. They were dealing with poverty. Most of these folks were subsistence farmers. They were dealing with sadness and tragedy and heartache and their bodies failing and all that. And yet they're called to praise. Why? Praise leads us to have hearts of gratitude and wonder. This is why this is important. You know, um having gratitude and wonder in us and making a practice of it changes the entire way we experience our lives. I don't know how many Dolly Parton fans we have in here. At least one. That's right. So Dolly Parton wrote a song I can't quite get through with dry eyes, called Coat of Many Colors. It was about her own childhood. Everybody know this song? Anyone ever heard this? I'm not gonna sing it for you, I'm just gonna explain it to you. In the song, and this is again a true story from her own life, she didn't have a coat. And it was getting colder outside, and they didn't have money for a coat. Her mom was given a box of rags, just spare cloth. And her mom sewed together a coat for her, right, and told her the story of Joseph and the colorful coat that he had, and she said, Look, I've made you a coat just like Joseph. And little Dolly thought this was the best thing she had ever seen, and she was so pumped to wear it to school. And uh, and of course, predictably, she wore it to school and got made fun of because it was clear that you know that this was not a store-bought coat, this was something that her mom made. And the lyric is I know we had no money, but I was rich as I could be in the coat of many colors my mama made. Okay, I'm getting a little okay. No. Look, talk amongst yourselves. Okay. Right? And and this is the and she still has it. It's in a museum. You can go see it. That is practicing praise. She looked at a box of rags that her mom put together into a coat for her with gratitude and wonder. She was dirt poor. And she's thankful for it. She's grateful for this coat, and she thinks it's awesome. And even when the other kids make fun of it, she's like, y'all don't get it. I am awesome in this thing. You know, and I think about how like I'm unhappy with something that's two years old from Banana Republic. Right? Like, that's not good enough. Need something better than that. And she's like, yeah, coat of rags. That's all I need. I love it. The difference isn't stuff, right? How we understand our lives, how we see the world, and what we see the world full of, it all depends on gratitude and wonder. Like, notice when it says that for the for God's people, his steadfast love, his chesed surrounds them. Our world is full of wonder. If we bother to see it, how do we see it? You practice praise. You practice praise. We practice gratitude. When we come in here with heavy hearts and we sing praise to God, when we wake up in the morning and we're worried about our finances, or we're like, man, my house is raggedy, or whatever, and we instead say, I'm gonna be grateful for all that God has given me. I'm gonna be grateful for God's covenant love that is mine this morning. It transforms your life. No longer are you looking at the lack, no longer are you looking at the not good enough, you're saying, my life is filled with blessings. There's wonder everywhere I look. And practicing wonder, this is also really important because, you know, there is so much pressure on us to accept a non-wonderful understanding of the world. I'm gonna tell you what I mean. All of us who have gone through schooling of some kind, there is there is an explanation of everything wonderful that makes it, that reduces it to non-wonderful. I'll give you an example. Love is just a chemical reaction in your brain. Anyone ever heard that? Yeah, what we think of as this magical thing, love, right? It's it's just your brain reacting with some chemicals. So you take love between two people who are into each other or children, whatever, and it's just chemicals. We hear this all over the place. And it takes something wondrous and makes it, and it just kind of drains the wonder out. And, you know, like I'm sure a lot of us have encountered that. Some of our some of our young folks going to college and the sciences, you're gonna be bombarded with this. So I w I want to address it real quick. So, first off, it's completely self-defeating to say that something is insignificant, it has no significance if it's a chemical reaction, because, according to them, the statement or the thought, love is a chemical reaction, is also just a chemical reaction and therefore meaningless. So, LaDe da. It's also it's stupidly reductive. It's stupidly reductive. It's the same as saying, oh, you love Hamilton? Well, you know what? Hamilton is just it's just sound waves vibrating uh through the air, and then your ear vibrates with it, and then some light comes and you know, light waves make your cones and rods react, or don't correct me on that, but that's what happens with your eyes. You know, just reducing it to its sort of physical, only physical components. If you've ever seen Hamilton, is that what it is? You're like, my rods are reacting. Also, my cones. My retina's contracting. Not at all, right? It's what? It's an experience. Now we are physical creatures with chemicals, with rods, cones, and eardrums and all that, and we need a body to experience, but these things are not reducible to their physical components. Love is an experience which chemicals allow me to have. Love isn't the chemical, right? Anyone who's ever felt love, you know it isn't just like, oh, there's the there's love. Right, the chemicals are part of it, but that's how we experience it. Also, you'll hear a lot, faith, you know, belief in God is just an evolutionary adaptation. That's the other big one. Uh, if you believe in evolution, whatever, that's fine. I'm not saying anti-that. But sort of explaining all things, right? Like, as it's part of, it's an evolutionary adaptation. You see this in the in in in whatever, National Geographic. They try and uh they try and explain all phenomena based on how it helps you survive or reproduce. Here's the problem with that there is no observed evidence. Right? Like, no one no one was writing down, we today we had a new idea to help us survive. Faith. You know, like there is nothing like that. In fact, it's just sort of a pre-commitment. All things must be explained by evolution, therefore, right? And here's the other thing, is you'll you'll hear you'll hear it explain the opposite. You know, it's like, well, it makes sense that you're interested in your health. After all, you want to survive. That's part of evolution. It's like, well, what about all the people trying to destroy themselves? Also evolution. Like, you know what I mean? I'm not saying it's not useful to explain some things, but it can't explain all things. It like, and the reason I go into that is because there is that pressure. There's all these forces trying to just suck the wonder out of the world and leave us in a world with no wonder in it. But the world that we see, when we practice praise, it is saying yes, things might be hard. It's saying yes, things might be hopeless at times, but it's a defiance. It's saying, regardless of what's happening out there, the steadfast love, the chesed of God is with me, it is all around me, it surrounds me, and I'm gonna practice praise regardless of how I feel, regardless of what they say. We need to meet God's all in with all in. Repent, relearn faithfulness, and practice praise. I want to invite up Kristen to lead us in a confession right now. As we're in the penitential psalms, we are going to uh we are going to pray this psalm together in penitence before uh communion.