Taking Out the Trash | Psalm 32

This message explores Psalm 32 and uses the picture of “taking out the trash” to illustrate the freedom that comes through confession. David knew firsthand the weight of carrying hidden sin, guilt, and shame, and he also knew the joy that came when he finally stopped hiding and brought everything honestly before God. The message reminds us that confession isn’t telling God something He doesn’t already know—it’s acknowledging the truth and allowing His grace to meet us there. Rather than responding with condemnation, God offers complete forgiveness, clearing away the guilt we were never meant to carry and inviting us to experience the freedom and joy of being forgiven.

This message also challenges us to stop running from God when we’ve made a mess and instead learn to run to Him. Guilt, shame, pride, and fear may convince us to hide, but Psalm 32 shows us that hiding is what keeps us trapped, while confession brings our sin into the light where God’s grace can work. God wants to be our hiding place—the One we find safety in rather than the One we hide from—and promises to forgive, restore, guide, and walk with us. Ultimately, this message reminds us to stop carrying what Jesus has already carried to the cross, trusting that God’s grace is greater than our guilt and His forgiveness opens the door to freedom and joy.

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Hey, if you've got your Bible with here, your Bible app this morning, we're going to be in Psalm 32. I stole that from Scott. I said, Hey, bro, I'm going to be in town. I'll tell you a little bit more about that later. And he goes, Good. Could you just give me a little break? And I said, I'd love to give you a break. I get to have the privilege of serving on the board here at Sunrise, even though we live up in North Idaho. And you're going, wait, are you the guy with the dogs? Yes, that's us. But there are no dog pictures. We got better pictures this week while I'm with you guys. But I want to share a story that took place as you're turning to Psalm 32. We flew in the other day, and I get on the little shuttle that takes you to the rental cars, right? So I'm on the shuttle and I'm looking straight across the bench at a guy who's blind. He's got his white cane, he's got his darkened glasses, and I could tell, you know, the way he kind of looks around a little bit. He's blind on a shuttle to get a rental car. Some of you are letting that sink in a little bit. All I knew is I wanted to be in the line in front of him to get my car before he got his car. Maybe he thought he was going to a hotel, I don't know. But it was kind of one of those weird things. And sometime, in fact, we were at the pottery game last night, and Annette, my wife, is over here. And Annette, she loves going to pottery games and taking the binoculars with her, not to watch the baseball game. Like there's an actual baseball game going on, but she's watching all the people, right? So some of you understand this because she likes watching people and like what they're doing and what they're saying. She's looking in the dugout and looking at those people over there, right? She loves conversation. She loves, and she makes up her own story. Oh, I know what they're talking about, right? It's just kind of a fun thing. And so we go through life observing things. Or maybe, like a week ago, we had this really cool event called a wedding take place for our daughter and her new husband sitting right over here, Jesse and Jesse. And so the family came into town and it was really cool. So, little granddaughter Hallie, who's two, she has this really weird habit of filling her diapers. I don't know. I said, You guys need to cut back on food. Something needs to change. She keeps messing her pants, and it's noticeable. And it's like, wow, and that does not go in the indoor trash can. No, no, no, no, no, no. That goes out in the outdoor trash can in the garage. But when you walk in the garage, what do you notice? Dirty. Yeah, woo. You learn a lot of that, right? And so it's like, man, it's like, would somebody tell this child like how to like take care of this? Like, this is not cool at all. And that's what we're going to talk about this morning. Because you and I, like little Hallie, who's two, have the same issue in our lives, whether we admit it or not. So this morning, as we spend some time in Psalm 32, you know, as I know, if you let the trash pile up, you're gonna notice. And you're gonna notice that there's a smell, you're gonna notice that it's like, whoo, that is ripe, like somebody's gotta take that out, somebody's gotta clean that up. This is not good. We can cover it up, we can excuse it, pretend it's not there, we can keep moving through life. But eventually, in our own lives, when we don't learn to take out our own trash, it affects us. And the atmosphere of our life changes dramatically. So, why Psalm 32? Uh why pick this psalm? It's kind of interesting because David, who wrote uh about half the Psalms, we have 150 Psalms in Psalms. If you crack open your Bible, Psalms are pretty much right in the middle of the Bible, which is kind of cool to put God's songbook in the middle of our Bible. So it's filled with poetry and all these songs and stuff like that. In fact, if I were to ask you, like, why did they even write all these songs? Well, you probably know, and if you don't, the reason they wrote all these songs is real simple. They didn't have a Bible, they didn't have scripture, they didn't have a way to go back and really check on who God was and to let the scriptures fill their lives. But what they did have were these songs. And it was a way for them to remember the stories about God and who God was and who his character is. And it reminds us about who we are. In the Psalms, when we look at the Psalm, they are incredibly honest. It's like they're not holding anything back, all the different psalm writers that we have. In fact, Jesus himself quotes the Psalms like 11 different times. Like he was a lover of the song. So if you've not gotten in the practice of reading these songs in God's songbook, man, I would encourage you to spend some time getting to know the Psalms. It is so, so rich. But the this idea of the Psalms is this: it gives us a language on how you and I can also worship God. Because we all hit those dry spots. We all hit those spots where we're kind of going, oh, it's just not happening right now. So we read the Psalms and we go, wow, we can kind of ride the coattails of somebody else like David, who's writing these psalms so we have a better understanding of how we can worship. He's viting us, God is inviting us through the Psalms to have an honest relationship with Him. Not a facade, not a pretend, not a fake. An honest relationship. So as we go into this, as we look at this psalm this morning, uh, this is kind of a it's kind of a gut check. And being honest with you this morning, I would say that what we're going to talk about this morning, this idea of taking out the trash, is not something typical in church world. Usually we like to talk about all the good stuff, all the fun stuff, all the yay stuff, all the celebration stuff, but we don't like to talk about this stuff, even though God, time after time after time says this stuff and learning to deal with this stuff will give us the freedom and the life that he wants for you and I to have. So we're gonna talk about this. You okay with that? You good? Thank you very much. Alright. So in the Psalms, and I'm gonna give you just a little pro tip when you're reading scripture. In the Psalms, and this Psalm in particular, you're gonna see in Psalm 32 that a couple times David uses this little word, depending on your translation, either selah or it'll say interlude. Now here's the pro tip. What that means is stop, pause, reflect, chew on, digest, consider what is God saying in this portion right here. I don't know about you, but I know for myself sometimes when I when I read the scriptures, and I try to read the Bible every single day. And when I read the scriptures, for me it's sometimes easy just to try to blow through it because I got so much on my plate. And all of a sudden the scriptures become words. Words that don't mean anything. And so God gives us this little uh hint. Stop reading and think about what I'm saying. Digest it. Pause and reflect. So every time we read God's word, I would suggest that you do the same thing. What did God just say to me in this passage, in this verse that I just read? Alright, so you ready? So, David, when he wrote, he wrote what? He wrote things that were important to him, things that matter to him, things about where he was living at that particular time. Oftentimes, if you're a journal, you write about those types of things. So this is, if you will, almost like a part of God's journal written through David. So here we go, beginning in verse 1 of Psalm 32. David writes, Oh, what joy for those whose disobedience is forgiven, whose sin is put out of sight. Yes, what joy for those whose record the Lord has cleared of guilt, whose lives are lived in complete honesty. When I refused to confess my sin, my body wasted away, and I groaned all day long. Day and night your hand of discipline was heavy on me. My strength evaporated like water in the summer heat. And then he writes, interlude, Selah, pause. So David begins with his idea of joy. And he says at the very beginning of the song, he says, Oh, what joy! And I love that because David gets something that you and I need to learn if we haven't learned it yet. Our joy is found in the Lord, not our circumstances. And so for David, he's able to get through a place that was a hard place, a place where there was a lot of trash in his life. He was doing a great job filling up his sin bucket. But he also knew, as we're going to find and discover in this psalm, he knew what to do with it. And so he says, real simply, oh, what joy. Why? Because forgiven people are free people. David experienced that firsthand. He knew for him to carry around the stuff, the junk, the trash, the guilt, the shame, all the stuff that comes with it, that's not living in freedom. And so David begins the psalm by saying, Oh, what joy. He understands. There's joy when the record has been cleared. There is joy when we no longer live two different lives. A public life where everybody knows who we are, but not really. And then a private life, a life where we're kind of hiding all of this stuff and we're saying, no, no, no, no, don't look there. Uh-uh, there's nothing to see here. In this public life and this private life, this tension that's created in our lives is not optimal. It's not the way God wants you and I to live. So I wrote this down. He says, when David wrote this, and it was kind of a cool thing, when David wrote this, he knew what life was like before confession. He lived it. He knew what it was like to live a life that was so filled, his sin bucket was so filled with all the stuff, the regrets, the bad decisions that he had made, all the stuff that he kept putting in there as far as attitudes, the way he was treating people, including his own family and friends, the relationships that had been broken because of that, David was fully aware that this bucket was filled. But he also knows he's writing that, and that's why he's able to say what great joy there is, because when you confess, and listen to what he says, when I can when I refuse to confess my sin, my body wasted away. Because we almost think of unconfessed sin as a spiritual category. Like I'm just gonna kind of put that, that goes in this category over here. But what it really is, is an emotional weight that you and I are trying to carry around through life. It's kind of like, yeah, I'm fine. Yeah, don't worry about this. I'm good. And we think we're living in freedom when we're really living in what? Bondage. It's like having a shackle around our ankle and this weight that we're trying to carry around through life as if it doesn't exist. We try to ignore it. So this sin bucket that we carry around, there's a point for all of us, there's a reckoning for all of us. I know in my life that has happened so many times. Sometimes it happens through my wife netters. Sometimes it happens just in my time that I'm spending with God. Sometimes it happens as I'm reading through the scripture. But the moment is this, it's a reckoning. I have a reckoning before God where I go, hmm, things are not as they should be. There's a smell, there's a stench, there's an odor in my life right now. There's stuff in that sin bucket, like Hallie's dirty diapers, where I go, woo! This is not good. And so David asked the same question. Why am I still carrying that around? Why am I trying to go through life and pretend as if nothing is wrong when I have a sin bucket filled with garbage. My garbage. So here's what he says in verse 5. This is really awesome. This is where he gets honest before God. This is where he's going to trust who God is. He's going to trust God's character. And in verse 5, he says this. He says, Finally, I confessed all my sins to you and stopped trying to hide my guilt. I said to myself, I will confess my rebellion to the Lord. And you forgave me, and all my guilt is gone. And then there's that little word again: interlude. David's saying, Stop. Let this soak in. Absorb what is being said in this part of the scripture. This idea that he begins with in verse 5, where he says, finally. And man, there are so many times in my life and maybe in your life as well, where you go, finally, I'm coming to my senses. It's the story of the prodigal son who's eating pig slop because of his rebellion against his father. Finally, I'm going to acknowledge. Finally, I'm going to recognize. Finally, I'm going to admit that that's what's really going on in my life right now. But because we're human, we often don't. And because we're human, we often don't even want to talk about this stuff. Not to others. And especially not to our God. We'd rather try to hide it. So David goes on and he says this after finally says, I confessed all my sins to you, my Father in heaven. And I stopped trying to hide my guilt. You see, confession, if I can be honest with us for a moment, confession is not informing God of something he does not know. Confession isn't pretending like, well, God, there's this thing that I need to talk to you about. And, well, I don't know how to even bring this up. And God's going, yeah, I know. Like you're not hiding anything from me. But we we think we can, and he says, but finally, right? And what does God do when we stop pretending? What does God do when we come to that moment and we stop editing the story and make it something different or something that it's not or try to soften it or gloss it over just a little bit. But when we become honest, and when we say to God, to our Heavenly Father, Lord, you're right. This is sin. This is not who you've made me to be, and I need your mercy and grace because of the mess that I've made. And this is so cool because the next part of this passage in verse 5, he says this. This is God's response, right? He says, Shame on you, David. That's not what he says. Dude, how can you do such a thing? How many times do you expect me to forgive you? No, he doesn't say that. He says, bro, there's stuff in there like, ooh, I don't know about that. Like that's going over the line. Nope, that's not what he says. God's response is this. And you forgave me. All my guilt is gone. David doesn't describe a reluctant God. He doesn't describe a God whose arms are crossed. He doesn't describe a God who says, Well, I wondered how long it would take you to confess up. He describes forgiveness, immediate forgiveness. Complete, immediate, and freeing. The heavy bucket is gone. The trash is emptied. And what I love in other places of scripture, it's like, oh God, you remember that sin? You remember that thing? You remember that attitude? You remember that those words that came out of my mouth. You remember how I broke that relationship. You remember those thoughts. You remember all that, and God goes, No, I don't. I just see an empty bucket. Oh, you're talking about that trash I took out for you? Nah, it's it's over. I already dealt with that. And I love at camp when I would share a message similar to this, or I love at a conference, like when we host Weekend to Remember up in Court d'Alene. We do two weekends in the fall. And we watch uh lines of couples come, and we've got trashes on both sides, and and they just write down the stuff. The stuff that's been affecting their marriage, their families. I watch kids at camp for years write down the stuff that's affecting their relationship with God and with their friends. And they come and they throw it in that trash can. And they camp, it is so cool because the last night of camp at Victory Circle, we get a big fire going. We got a thousand kids sitting around this campfire. And we bring this bucket out with all the stuff that these kids, all the trash that they have thrown into that bucket, and we take it and we dump the whole bucket into the fire. And we let God deal with it as it burns up all of these papers, symbolizing what? God's dealt with it. When we bring it to Him, He takes care of it. He forgives it. He He empties the trash, He wipes the slate clean. He doesn't hold it over our head. So why does it take so long? Well, as I was thinking about this, I thought, you know, guilt and shame, man, they are terrible liars. They want us to hold on to all that stuff. They say, no, no, no, no, no. I want you to feel comfortable going through life carrying this with you. I want you to feel like this is a normal part of how you should live your life. Like it's not really a big deal. Like just minimize it, gloss over it. It's okay. It's part of your identity. That's the human condition. But because they're terrible liars, we have to realize that shame, shame says nobody will love you if they knew. Guilt says God cannot forgive that. That's way over the line. Pride says, oh, I can take care of that on my own. I can fix that. I can deal with that. It's alright. Fear says if you confess, everything's going to fall apart. But Psalm 32, what David is writing, Psalm 32 tells us a very different story. It tells us the truth. That the thing that is destroying us is not confession. The thing that is destroying us is hiding. And thinking that we can play hide and go seek with God. And we do that. And I've done that. And it's a horrible, horrible thesis. It doesn't work. God's going, really? You think you can hide from me? Okay, great. Where are you going to hide this time? Well, I see you. I got you. Remember when he walked through the garden with Adam and Eve? Hey, Adam and Eve, where are you? As if he didn't know. He just wanted them to know that he knew. And finally went, We're over here, we're hiding behind all these plants. It's like, not gonna go any further. Anyway. Healthy confession. Not unhealthy. Healthy confession is not self hatred. It's not wallowing. It's not rehearsing our shame over and over and over again. Healthy confession is simply bringing the truth into the light of where God's grace can work. That's healthy confession. God. There it is. Not proud of it. I'm gonna rin at you. There's nothing I can do about that. But I'm gonna trust that you can. That you can deal with it. It's taking the lid off the bucket and saying, Lord, I am done carrying this. I'm gonna let it go. Then he goes on in verse 6 and 7. This is really awesome. I love this part of the psalm. He says, Therefore, let all the godly pray to you while there is still time, that you may not drown in the floodwaters of judgment. For you are my hiding place. You protect me from trouble. You surround me with songs of victory. There's that word again. Pause. Selah. Interlude. Think about it. And David turns outward to us. This is his part where he's saying to you guys, to myself, listen. These words are for you. Therefore, let all the godly pray to you while there is still time. In other words, don't wait as long as I waited. David's using himself as a warning. He said, Don't do what I did. It was horrible. Go quickly. Don't keep caring what God is ready to forgive. Pray that the invitation is open. Run to him now. Go quickly and confess. And then the most probably beautiful line in all of the Psalms, it's probably why Scott wanted to do this psalm, and I kind of stole it from him. Sorry, bro. Then David writes these words You are my hiding place. How different from you are the one that I want to hide from, or you are the one that I want to pretend with. He says, no, no, no, no. God, you. You're my hiding place. Before confession, David was hiding from God. After confession, David is hiding in God. What a better place to live. Because that's what grace does. God is our safe place. And that next part, too, where he says he sings victory over his people, why God's going, I'm going to surround you with my goodness. I'm going to surround your life with who I am. Man, when you come clean before me, when you deal with the stuff, the junk, the garbage in your life, I'm going to surround you and sing songs of victory over you. You imagine a God who would do that? That's who our God is. Who roots for us, who cheers us on, who's in our corner. Then he closes with these words, beginning in verse 8. He says, the Lord says, now these are God's words. He says, The Lord says, I will guide you along the best pathway for your life. I will advise you and watch over you. Do not be like a senseless horse or mule, thank you, who needs a bit and bridle to keep under control. Many sorrows come to the wicked, but unfailing love surrounds those who trust the Lord. And then listen to verse 11, the last verse. So rejoice in the Lord and be glad. All you who obey him, shout for joy, all those whose hearts are pure. And God speaks. And David confesses. And God speaks back to David and to you and I. He says, I'm going to guide you. I'm going to be there for you. I'm going to show you the best pathway for life. I will advise you and watch over you. And I know there are those moments in our life where we really don't trust God with that part of our life. So we're always coming up with our plans. We're always coming up with our ideas, and we're always coming up with the things that we think are the right things to do. And we neglect the promise that God gives us. He says, no, no, no. I will guide you and I will advise you. Because I can see what you can't see. I can look over the fence a week from now, a month from now, a year from now. And I already know. So why don't you lean in this way, the Lord says, instead of keep leaning in to your own understanding. So he pushes a little bit further. He says, Yeah, if you want to do it your way. Good luck. But the God who forgives and restores and guides and advises and watches over us also warns us. He says, Don't be a senseless horse or mule. When's the last time you were called a senseless horse or mule in church? I just did. God just did. So, in other words, God's saying, look, don't make me drag you into freedom, kicking and scratching. Saying, come on, I know what's best for you, and you're gonna like this and you. Sounds like we're little kids, doesn't it? Like, I don't want it. It's like, no, God's saying, don't make me do that. Don't resist the very mercy that is trying to save you. God wants a relationship with you, not just compliance. Okay, God, I did it your way. Goes, I want you and I to be close, to be connected, to be tight, to have a relationship that's living and vibrant and means something to you. And you know you can trust me to guide you and advise you and lead you through life versus trying to do it on your own. So the stubborn life only moves, God is saying, when life gets painful. But he says, I don't want it to be that way. Like, come quickly. So what David begins with joy, he ends with joy. Forgiveness opens that door of joy again. And this last year I've been spending a lot of time doing some research in this area of joy and what joy looks like and what it means and where it comes from. And did you know, and maybe you do, maybe you're already light years ahead of me in this, but do you know that joy, when we live in joy, that it's good for us? Like the science shows that it's good for us. Like what God gave us, the joy that He brings to us, is actually healthy for us. It's healthy for us in the little neurotransmitters in our brain. The dopamine, the oxytocin that's flooding around when we're living in a place of joy. And it affects our mood, our vitality, our outlook on life. It affects us physically and emotionally. It enhances, it brings life when we live in joy. It also reduces as stress brings into our life this hormone called cortisol. It reduces our cortisol level. It brings it down. What does cortisol do to us? It rips our heart apart. Creates inflammation as we get older. Anyone have the inflammation bug biting? Horrible. But joy reduces that. Physical health, it builds a stronger immune system. Longer lifespans are linked to joy. Positive emotional outcomes are linked to joy. Like it's good. Like joy is a good place. David knows that. Science tells us how joy affects our bodies. But Scripture tells us that joy is rooted in fellowship with God. And fellowship with God is not carrying around our sin bucket. Fellowship with God is when we confess and empty our sin bucket to Him. And He forgives it and empties it on our behalf. That's what brings joy, and that's what David knew. So we stop minimizing, we acknowledge, we confess, we tell the truth to ourselves, to God, to others. We stop hiding. We stop carrying that bucket around. We bring our sin into God's light of mercy. Say, God, I can't, but you can. There's a story I came across years ago I shared at camp for many, many years, about a young boy who's also too like Hallie. His name's Josiah. And Josiah and his dad were kind of having this really cool moment, and he noticed Josiah was over in the corner, kind of grunting, red faced, kind of like, whoa, he's taking care of some business over there. And afterwards, Josiah kind of turns back around and his dad looks at him and he says, Josiah, Shawampe? That was their code word, right? For I got poop in my drawers. And he said it was the strangest thing because when he asked Josiah that question, do you have poop in your drawers? Shawampee, he said, Josiah, all of a sudden turn and he ran down the hallway. As if to escape some dire consequence or something like that. Like, do you have poop in yours? I'm out of here! And off he runs. And his dad's thinking to himself, like, that's weird. Like, if I had poop in my drawers, like I wanted to get taken care of. Not running around with stinky bottom. Like, woo. And then dad wrote these words. He said, You know what? We're like Josiah. In so many ways. When God comes to us through his son Jesus and says, Got poop in your drawers? Got sin in your life? You filling up your bucket? And maybe like Josiah, we turn and we run and we go, oh no, there is nothing to see here, God. And he goes, Okay. Good luck with that. Friend of Jesus named John wrote this in 1 John. He says, if we claim to have no sin, we are only fooling ourselves. We're not living in the truth. Verse 9. But if we confess, that word confess is a Greek word lego. Think of let go. If we confess, it means to acknowledge, to tell the truth, to let go. If we confess our sins to Him, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. But if we claim we have not sinned, if we have not filled our bucket, we are calling God a liar and showing that His word has no place in our hearts and in our lives. You see, what John is writing is a promise from God. He didn't say if we confess our sin, maybe. God would think about it. Flip a coin. Consider it. Look at our track record. So John said, if we confess our sin, God, God, not God, is faithful and he's just. And he's going to take care of that. If we confess. Otherwise, we're just pretending. There's a picture up on the screen that's huge. Ho! It's a big picture. So they're sitting over here, and I did tell them about this. So uh this just everybody say hi, Jess and Jess. So when Jesse told us about her boyfriend's name being Jesse, it's like, oh, okay, this is gonna get weird real fast. Jesse and Jesse. Okay. I don't know. Anyway, we're trying to figure it out still. So they got married last week. Kind of cool. So the day before the ceremony, we're kind of setting up and stuff like that. And the night before that, it was about one in the morning, and Netters and I are going through all the like all these things and all the plans and blah, blah, blah. And I said, God gave me this really weird idea to talk to Jess and Jess about. She goes, What's that? She goes, Jess has always talked about getting baptized. And like all the family's gonna be in town. Like our family, his family. Like, like, what if I brought it up and it's like, that would be so cool. And so that morning we're setting up, and I said, You guys, come here. They walked over and I said, I got an idea. Two things. Just number one, the dinner. Number two, I said, what about after dinner? Because family's gonna be here. I said, What if you got baptized? And he goes, at the river? I want, let's go to the river. And so to see God's fingerprints in their relationship has been awesome. And to see this moment where they're like, let's go. And we got to baptize Jesse the day before his wedding. Like, how cool is that? And it was like, man, and you got to know, Jesse's dad's like, her, you know, he's like, he's a dude. And man, he's a dude that had tears leaking out of his eyes. It was like, this is like so cool, right? This God moment. And to see, like, like in baptism, right, what it what it stands for. It's kind of kind of this idea of we go down into the water. That's like the old us, right? That's like the sin-saturated us. And we go down into the water, right? We go under the water, and it's like we're burying in Jesus, that old person, washed in the water, washed in the blood. And when we come up out of that water, it's like we come up as a brand new creation in Christ through the Holy Spirit before God. It's a decision that He made. It's a decision that many of you made. It's a decision that if you haven't, you have the opportunity coming in a couple weeks to get baptized to just, if you will, to just say, man, I want to go. And I want everybody to know, man, I'm following Jesus. Getting baptized doesn't save us. It just lets people know I'm following Jesus. I'm with him. Listen to God's motivation for this. This is like so cool because baptism is saying, look, I know that I'm not perfect, but look what Jesus is doing in my life. It's public. Paul writes this in Romans chapter 5. We're going to close it. He says, this says, but God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners. That is good news. That is the gospel. That is the promise of God to say, look, I know you can't, but Jesus can. I know you can't, but he's the one who will. And he will do it willingly. It's a reminder of God's love for us and how he demonstrates that love for us by Jesus hanging on a cross, that powerful reminder of like, whoa, I am imperfect, but he was perfect. He gave his life for my life. So I could have a relationship with God, so I can confess to him, so that I can have my sin bucket emptied before him. Couple years ago, I had the opportunity to go to a place that I'd never been to before. It was in Pennsylvania. It's a theater. It's called Sight and Sound. I didn't know what we were getting into. All I knew is there was a play showing. It was a play about the life of David, King David. It was amazing. Like any Broadway play, it was like tenfold. It was the stage itself is probably, gosh, 100, 150 feet of state. I mean, it's just this incredible, incredible performance. And it's about the life of David. And there were parts where you're laughing in the show, and there's parts where we're just absolutely weeping in the show where you're just like, oh. There's the part where he's writing Psalm 51, the brokenness that he experienced after his sin, the adultery that he had committed with Bathsheba, Uriah, his friend. Then he murdered Uriah. And you see the snow start to come down in the theater. The cleansing. As white as snow. As we confess. At the very end of the show, David is old, he's feeble, he's laying on a bed, his family, including Solomon, are surrounding the bed, and there's just a singular light shining on the stage. And David looks up at his family and he says, Bring me my songs. They run over and they bring a basket, a wicker basket, and it's filled with all these scrolls. And one of his sons reaches in and hands him one of the scrolls, one of the songs that he had written. And he begins to read it to those that are surrounded by it. And he talks about the joy that you and I can experience as we confess. We stop pretending. Where we learn to run to God and not away from God. And he finishes reading the song. And just like in this audience now, you could have heard a pin drop. And then the light goes down to black. Father, today we have dealt with a topic that is not a feel-good topic. To admit to you that we have stuff in our life, it's not comfortable. But you remind us this morning that when we confess, we can also rejoice. And we rejoice not because sin is small, it's not, but because your grace is greater. Not because our guilt was imaginary, but because forgiveness is real. Not because we are strong enough to save ourselves, but because Jesus is strong enough to cleanse us completely. So Father, thank you that you are not afraid of the truth about us. The trash in our lives that fill our sin buckets. Thank you that your mercy is greater than our hiding. Your grace is greater than our guilt. Your love is greater than our shame. Give us courage to confess, faith to receive forgiveness, and joy to walk in freedom. Your freedom. Teach us to stop carrying what Jesus already carried to the cross. And it's in his name that we pray. And everybody said, Amen.

SPEAKER_00 44:32

Thank you so much for joining us today at Sunrise Church. We hope this message encouraged you and blessed you. If one of the ways that you choose to worship with us here at Sunrise is by giving online, there's a link right here that you can follow and it'll take you to that payment portal. Everything that you donate helps not only go towards reaching people in the greater San Diego area, but also all around the world for our ministry partner. If you want to get further connected, whether in person or online, you can email this email right here, and either myself or one of our team members will be there to answer it and help you get connected in any way. Thank you so much for joining us. I will see you next time.