Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Hello everyone.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: This is Pastor Benjamin.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You're listening to Sermon Audio from New City, Orlando.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: At New City, we long to see our Father answer the Lord's Prayer.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: For more resources, visit our website at Newcity Orlando.com.
Hannah Corlew: Good morning.
Hannah Corlew: Please stand and pray aloud with me.
Hannah Corlew: Heavenly Father, may your word be a lamp to our feet and a light to our path through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Hannah Corlew: Amen.
Hannah Corlew: If you're able, please remain standing for today's scripture, which comes from Psalm 32.
Hannah Corlew: Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.
Hannah Corlew: Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit.
Hannah Corlew: For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long.
Hannah Corlew: For day and night your hand was heavy upon me, my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer.
Hannah Corlew: I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity.
Hannah Corlew: I said, I will confess my transgression to the Lord, and you forgave the iniquity of my sin.
Hannah Corlew: Therefore, let everyone who is godly offer prayer to you at a time when you may be found.
Hannah Corlew: Surely in the rush of great waters, they shall not reach him.
Hannah Corlew: You are a hiding place for me.
Hannah Corlew: You preserve me from trouble.
Hannah Corlew: You surround me with shouts of deliverance.
Hannah Corlew: I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go.
Hannah Corlew: I will counsel you with my eyes upon you.
Hannah Corlew: Be not like a horse or a mule without understanding, which must be curbed with brit and bit and bridle, or it will not stay near you.
Hannah Corlew: Many are the sorrows of the wicked, but the steadfast love surrounds the one who trusts in the Lord.
Hannah Corlew: Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, O righteous, and shout for joy, all you upright in heart.
Hannah Corlew: This is God's word.
Hannah Corlew: You may be seated.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Well, good morning.
Pastor Jason Dunn: We've all known what it's like to play hide and seek.
Pastor Jason Dunn: If we were a kid at one point in time, and some of us who have grown up, we still know what it's like to play hide and seek.
Pastor Jason Dunn: But here's the thing about that game the whole point of the game was to be found.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And that kind of hiding, it ends in delight.
Pastor Jason Dunn: But there's another kind of hiding, and it ends in destruction.
Pastor Jason Dunn: There's a researcher at Columbia named Michael Sipplin, and he has spent over a decade studying one thing secrets.
Pastor Jason Dunn: He analyzed more than 13,000 of them.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And here's what he found.
Pastor Jason Dunn: The average person, let's say some of us in this room, is carrying around 13 secrets right now.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And five of them, they have never told a single living soul.
Pastor Jason Dunn: But that's not even the most unsettling part.
Pastor Jason Dunn: The most unsettling part is that in a separate set of experiments, he found that secrets have a weight.
Pastor Jason Dunn: People who are preoccupied with a secret, they judge hills as steeper and distances as farther and longer.
Pastor Jason Dunn: It was as if they were physically heavier.
Pastor Jason Dunn: As he put it in the Atlantic, people acted as if they were burdened by physical weight.
Pastor Jason Dunn: So why do we hide?
Pastor Jason Dunn: I think sometimes we hide because we want to feel safe.
Pastor Jason Dunn: But if hiding makes us feel safe, why does it cost us so much?
Pastor Jason Dunn: And we've been doing this for a long time.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Our hiding ways, it started in an ancient place, right?
Pastor Jason Dunn: The very first thing a human being ever did with sin was hide.
Pastor Jason Dunn: In Genesis 3, Adam said, I was afraid and I hid.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And the fig leaves that they found, Adam and Eve, were the first cover-up.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And we've been selling those ever since.
Pastor Jason Dunn: But God wants to call us out of hiding and into the hiding place.
Pastor Jason Dunn: It's the difference between hiding from God and hiding in God.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And we're going to explore that through our text through these points.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Come out of hiding and into the hiding place.
Pastor Jason Dunn: If you have a Bible or a device or a bulletin, turn with me to Psalm 32, starting in verse 3.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Now we're going to come back to verses 1 and 2 in a little bit, but verse 3, 3 and 4.
Pastor Jason Dunn: For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long.
Pastor Jason Dunn: For day and night your hand was heavy upon me, and my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Now notice where does David fill his guilt in his hiding?
Pastor Jason Dunn: It's not in his head, but it's in his body.
Pastor Jason Dunn: His bones were wasted away, his strength was dried up, his voice groaning all day long, and even his sleep, feeling the heavy hand of the Lord upon him day and night.
Pastor Jason Dunn: This silence is not a peaceful quietness.
Pastor Jason Dunn: It's the refusal to acknowledge our sin.
Pastor Jason Dunn: So I was thinking through this text and I was trying to understand this a little bit more and looking at like how do bones waste away?
Pastor Jason Dunn: What's going on here underneath the text?
Pastor Jason Dunn: Well, this word in our text, it's the same thing that happens to your favorite old t-shirt.
Pastor Jason Dunn: It becomes thin, uh threadbare, falling apart at the seams.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And David is saying that's this is what's happening to his body.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Unconfessed guilt, unconfessed sin that we are hiding, it wears you out like an old coat.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And then the word heavy, your hand was heavy upon me.
Pastor Jason Dunn: That's that weighty, oppressive feeling.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Oppressively heavy.
Pastor Jason Dunn: It's the word for a load that you cannot lift.
Pastor Jason Dunn: It's not just like I'm putting one kid in one arm, one kid another, but this is a load that you cannot lift.
Pastor Jason Dunn: So David's guilt here is not just a mood, I'm feeling guilty, but it's a weight that he cannot lift.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And this is exactly what the research found that I just mentioned a little bit a little bit ago.
Pastor Jason Dunn: It's not, and it's not the hiding that wears us out the most.
Pastor Jason Dunn: It's the rehearsing.
Pastor Jason Dunn: It's the mind that keeps racing and wandering back to the secret when we are alone in the car at 2 a.m.
Pastor Jason Dunn: in the morning, in the middle of the night, or when you wake up in the morning.
Pastor Jason Dunn: We are silent on the outside, but we are wasting away on the inside.
Pastor Jason Dunn: The thing that you will not say out loud is the very thing that's eating you alive.
Pastor Jason Dunn: So here's the answer to our question: why do we hide?
Pastor Jason Dunn: We hide to feel safe.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And this is what is tragic.
Pastor Jason Dunn: We believe it's safer to be unseen than to be seen.
Pastor Jason Dunn: But hiding, keeping silent, it's never safety.
Pastor Jason Dunn: It's a slow, what we learn in our text, it's a slow crush.
Pastor Jason Dunn: It's a heavy hand, verse four, of our holy God.
Pastor Jason Dunn: The place that we often run to to feel protected is the very place that quietly destroys us from the inside.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Now keep your finger on verse five, but let's drop down to verse six, and that last half of there, verse six.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Surely in the rush of great waters, they shall not reach him.
Pastor Jason Dunn: What is this rush of great waters?
Pastor Jason Dunn: Well, I think this is just another word picture for the weight and the guilt of our weight of our own guilt.
Pastor Jason Dunn: It's these great waters, it's the Bible's way of talking about chaos, judgment, drowning, death.
Pastor Jason Dunn: It's the think of the flood or the Red Sea, it's the deep that swallows you whole.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And this is what it looks like to be silent in our sin.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Would have a heavy hand upon us.
Pastor Jason Dunn: It feels like rushing water, rapids all around us.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Now go back to verse five and let's look at this again.
Pastor Jason Dunn: It says, I acknowledge, David says, I acknowledge my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity.
Pastor Jason Dunn: So instead of coming out of hiding what he has done before, what did he do?
Pastor Jason Dunn: We he covered himself, and we cover ourselves.
Pastor Jason Dunn: This is the ancient practice, and we got really good and creative out of it.
Pastor Jason Dunn: There are generally, I think, maybe two fig leaves, two ways to hide, and this is influenced by my reading of Paul Miller's book, The J Curve.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Highly recommend that book.
Pastor Jason Dunn: But two ways to hide.
Pastor Jason Dunn: The first is self-protection.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Call it the victim story.
Pastor Jason Dunn: It's where we say, I'm the one who got hurt, and I'm not putting myself out there again like that.
Pastor Jason Dunn: We blame shift.
Pastor Jason Dunn: It's the woman who gave me the fruit, God.
Pastor Jason Dunn: I didn't take the fruit from the tree.
Pastor Jason Dunn: We criticize, we judge, and we run other people down.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Why?
Pastor Jason Dunn: It's so no one sees our own hearts of disorder, our own guilt and our own pain.
Pastor Jason Dunn: So we hide.
Pastor Jason Dunn: We hide behind our wounds.
Pastor Jason Dunn: The second fig leaf is self-promotion.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Call it the manager's story.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Our sin becomes just another example of how we just are poor, how we just poorly manage the things around us.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Therefore, we choose to medicate, we choose to achieve, we choose to give generously.
Pastor Jason Dunn: We quietly redefine our sin until it isn't sin anymore.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And we hide.
Pastor Jason Dunn: We hide behind our competence, our ability to cover our sin.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And we've gotten really creative at this two fig leaves or this hiding.
Pastor Jason Dunn: We built whole websites and economies for hiding.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Take one look at your social media account and just ask the question is that really you?
Pastor Jason Dunn: Or maybe you don't do that on social media, maybe you present the real you out there.
Pastor Jason Dunn: But we all, I think all of us suffer in subtle ways where we live on the outside as full of life, as completely happy, but we are dying on the inside from our guilt and our sin.
Pastor Jason Dunn: We actually believe that the hidden will reveal the horrible.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And so we manage our image to our friends, to our kids, and even to our spouses.
Pastor Jason Dunn: We manufacture the story you want everyone else to believe.
Pastor Jason Dunn: But here's the thing: both are fig leaves, self-protection and self-promotion are just two well-developed places to hide.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Neither one lets God cover you because neither one lets God truly see who you are.
Pastor Jason Dunn: A friend of mine puts it this way: Guilt is only, he says, guilt is only a gift to those who want to be well.
Pastor Jason Dunn: If you want to stay hidden, guilt is actually misery.
Pastor Jason Dunn: But if you actually want to be well, if you want to be free, then the heavy hand, the wearing out, that 2 a.m.
Pastor Jason Dunn: rehearsing, it is the most merciful gift that God can give us.
Pastor Jason Dunn: It is the very thing that's driving us out of hiding.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Look down again with me at verses five and six, and let's watch these verbs.
Pastor Jason Dunn: David says, I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity, and I said, I will confess my transgressions to the Lord, and you forgave the iniquity of my sin.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Therefore, let everyone who is godly offer prayer to you at the time when you may be found, surely in the rush of great waters.
Pastor Jason Dunn: So how do we come out of hiding?
Pastor Jason Dunn: David has the plan right here.
Pastor Jason Dunn: We do four things we acknowledge our sin to God, we do not cover our iniquity, we confess our transgressions to him, and we offer up prayer.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Confession, here, this word is the exact same word that means to give thanks or to praise.
Pastor Jason Dunn: So in Hebrew, confession of our sin and praise are the same word.
Pastor Jason Dunn: So biblically, confession is not this groveling because of the consequences of our sin, but actually, confession is a praise to God that starts with the truth about yourself in front of God.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Jesus says in Luke chapter 12, he says this nothing is covered up that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Therefore, whatever you have said in the dark shall be heard in the light, and whatever you have whispered in private rooms shall be proclaimed on the housetops.
Pastor Jason Dunn: God already knows all things.
Pastor Jason Dunn: So our confession is simply agreeing with what he already knows.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And what does God do?
Pastor Jason Dunn: What does God do once we confess?
Pastor Jason Dunn: Once we stop trying to cover our sins, verse 5, it says he forgives.
Pastor Jason Dunn: We confess and he forgives.
Pastor Jason Dunn: We must uncover in order to be covered by God.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Well, here's the diagnostic question for you.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Which fig leaf is yours?
Pastor Jason Dunn: The self-protection or the self-promotion?
Pastor Jason Dunn: When you get caught, which story do you reach to?
Pastor Jason Dunn: Are you the one who is the wounded one?
Pastor Jason Dunn: Or are you the one who got who has it all handled?
Pastor Jason Dunn: Or maybe a different question: what is the secret that you've never said out loud?
Pastor Jason Dunn: Is there a closet in your soul with a door still shut?
Pastor Jason Dunn: You can be hidden or you can be known.
Pastor Jason Dunn: You can't be both.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Now coming out of hiding, I've experienced this in my own life, it sounds terrifying.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Who in their right mind uncovers the worst thing about themselves?
Pastor Jason Dunn: You would only do that if you knew where you were going.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And that is our second point.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Come out of hiding into the hiding place.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Look down with me at verse seven.
Pastor Jason Dunn: David says, You are a hiding place for me.
Pastor Jason Dunn: You preserve me from trouble.
Pastor Jason Dunn: You surround me with shouts of deliverance.
Pastor Jason Dunn: The word hiding place means a shelter.
Pastor Jason Dunn: It's a refuge.
Pastor Jason Dunn: It's also a type of concealing.
Pastor Jason Dunn: You're concealed.
Pastor Jason Dunn: So it's the same instinct that David has been wrestling against about wanting to cover his own sin.
Pastor Jason Dunn: It's been flipped.
Pastor Jason Dunn: So you stop hiding your sin and you start hiding yourself in God, the hiding place.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And what is that hiding place?
Pastor Jason Dunn: In the hiding place, you are preserved from trouble by your God.
Pastor Jason Dunn: You're surrounded by shouts of deliverance.
Pastor Jason Dunn: So as you confess, as you acknowledge, as you shout out your sin, God shouts out your deliverance.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Now skip down with me to verse 10.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Many are the sorrows of the wicked.
Pastor Jason Dunn: So we could just add that to the list that we were talking about earlier about our bones wasting away and our strength being sapped up.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Well, many are our sorrows of the wicked when we hide and conceal our sin.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Hiding impacts us in a lot of different ways.
Pastor Jason Dunn: But keep reading, but the steadfast love surrounds the one who trusts in the Lord.
Pastor Jason Dunn: This is that same word that we were just reading in verse 7.
Pastor Jason Dunn: We are not only surrounded by shouts of deliverance, we are surrounded by his steadfast love.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Now let's find out more about who God is and go back to those verses that I skipped at the beginning, verses 1 and 2.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Read with me.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Blessed is the man whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit.
Pastor Jason Dunn: God acts in a really steadfast, loving way here.
Pastor Jason Dunn: We are forgiven.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Our transgression is forgiven.
Pastor Jason Dunn: It literally means in the Hebrew to lift up, to carry away.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Remember that weight that David has been carrying?
Pastor Jason Dunn: Forgiveness is God reaching down and picking up that weight and hauling it off as far as the east is from through from the west.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And if we go back to verse four for a second, God's hand is not the hand that wants to crush us, it's the hand of a loving father, pressing us, leading us to repentance and forgiveness, leading us to the fruit that is keeping in with repentance.
Pastor Jason Dunn: The weight in the hand of God is not a punishment, it is a pressure in the direction of life.
Pastor Jason Dunn: It is the hand that leads us to a blessed life here, that David says, where your transgression is forgiven and where your sins are covered.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And what is it like when we stop covering ourselves and we uncover before God?
Pastor Jason Dunn: Does he have his finger out when he's looking at us?
Pastor Jason Dunn: No.
Pastor Jason Dunn: He's the coverer that we need.
Pastor Jason Dunn: God takes the fig leaves in our lives, he burns them with consuming fire, and he fits us with a new covering.
Pastor Jason Dunn: God also counts no iniquity.
Pastor Jason Dunn: This is an accounting word, it's a ledger.
Pastor Jason Dunn: The Lord looks up the books, and next to your name and next to the call of iniquity, he writes, nothing.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Paul actually quotes this, and we read this earlier in our call to worship in Romans 4.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And Paul sees the beauty and the character and the one who is our hiding place.
Pastor Jason Dunn: He quotes it to explain how a sinner gets right with God, righteousness, not by our works, not by our shrewdness, not by our ability to hide, but by faith as counted as righteousness.
Pastor Jason Dunn: So hear what this beatitude actually means.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Blessedness is not found in having nothing to confess, it is found in having nothing left to hide.
Pastor Jason Dunn: The blessed one is not the person who has never sinned.
Pastor Jason Dunn: It is the one who stopped hiding and found themselves in the hiding place.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Look at verses eight and nine.
Pastor Jason Dunn: God says, this is God is the one who's saying, I, he's the subject here, I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go.
Pastor Jason Dunn: I will counsel you with my eye upon you.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Be not like a horse or a mule without understanding, which must be curved with a bit and bridle, or it will not stay with you.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Do you see the contrast?
Pastor Jason Dunn: In verse 4, God's hand was heavy, but God would rather not lead you by heavy hand that presses, or by the bit in the bridle here in verse 9.
Pastor Jason Dunn: He doesn't want you to be a mule.
Pastor Jason Dunn: God says, I and instead, God is contrasting that and says, I will counsel you with my eye upon you.
Pastor Jason Dunn: God would rather guide you with a look than drag you with a bridle.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Because there really are two ways to arrive at repentance.
Pastor Jason Dunn: You can either be dragged there by the consequences of your sin, by bit and bridle, or you can be led there by the kindness of our God, by his instruction, by his teaching, by his counsel.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Do we come to confession because our sin has finally caught up with us?
Pastor Jason Dunn: Or is it the consequences that forced us there?
Pastor Jason Dunn: Or are we being led gently by instruction, by teaching, for the one who is our hiding place?
Pastor Jason Dunn: The reality is that we need this psalmic spirituality of coming out of hiding and into the hiding place, not just for when we began our faith journey, but on every step along the way.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Even after we're forgiven, justified before God, we find ways to still hide, even though they might be more religious.
Pastor Jason Dunn: J.I.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Packer named our battle with sin and hiding in one of two ways.
Pastor Jason Dunn: He says we either run to despair and we say, I must not have surrendered enough.
Pastor Jason Dunn: This is why I keep sinning, and we hide behind self-condemnation.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Or he says we run to passivity and we say, I'll just get out of the way, hiding behind doing nothing.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Both of those are also still fig leaves.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And the blessings of verses one and two remove their power.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Because you don't fight sin in your life to get God's love.
Pastor Jason Dunn: You fight it because you have already won God's forgiveness and love.
Pastor Jason Dunn: This is God's instruction.
Pastor Jason Dunn: This is God's teaching.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Gavin Orland says it like this Sanctification is total.
Pastor Jason Dunn: No one enters heaven with clenched knuckles.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Infinite joy means no closets in the soul hidden from God.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And this act of acknowledgement, this act of confession before our Lord, it's something that we cannot do alone.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Almost 40 years ago, John Stott said this.
Pastor Jason Dunn: He said this about his time then, but it's so true now.
Pastor Jason Dunn: He says he wrote one day screens and technology would make personal contact ever less necessary.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And that in such a world, the fellowship of the local church would become even more necessary, not less.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And we would need to be a people that would meet with one another and talk and listen to one another.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And I would say to come out of hiding with one another.
Pastor Jason Dunn: He was right.
Pastor Jason Dunn: We have never been more connected with technology, but more hidden in our hearts from one another.
Pastor Jason Dunn: So, church, this is the antidote to the hiding economy, a community where you can be fully known and fully loved at the same time.
Pastor Jason Dunn: That's what we are here for.
Pastor Jason Dunn: You weren't meant to come out of hiding alone.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Now, I say this.
Pastor Jason Dunn: I say, get into community whenever I do a membership class or a premarital session or my closest relationships.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Let's say it's going to be very difficult for me to come around you and care for you unless you plug yourself deeply into community.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Our community is the one that fulfills the law of Christ in Galatians by helping us carry our hidden guilt and our burdens and helping us carry them to where?
Pastor Jason Dunn: To the foot of the cross.
Pastor Jason Dunn: So, yes, you're not meant to come out of hiding alone.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Our community is meant to carry the weight with us.
Pastor Jason Dunn: They can walk us, though, to the foot of the cross, but they cannot take off the weight.
Pastor Jason Dunn: There's only one person who can do that.
Pastor Jason Dunn: There's only one person who can actually lift off the weight from you.
Pastor Jason Dunn: There's only one person who can cover your sin.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And he is looking for you in the darkness.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And that is where this whole psalm has been pointing us all along.
Pastor Jason Dunn: So let me start where I began.
Pastor Jason Dunn: When we are kids, we would play hide and seek, and you would find the perfect spot.
Pastor Jason Dunn: I'm sure you know those perfect spots in your houses.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Maybe it's behind the couch, maybe it's under some blankets, maybe it's it's in the closet.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And at first it's a thrill because nobody can find you.
Pastor Jason Dunn: But then as the minutes go by, it gets quiet, it gets dark, and that thrill it turns into a small cold fear.
Pastor Jason Dunn: What?
Pastor Jason Dunn: And we ask, what if nobody comes for me?
Pastor Jason Dunn: What if they stop looking for me?
Pastor Jason Dunn: And every kid hiding in the dark really is hoping for one thing to be found.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Winnicott, a British pediatrician and psychologist, said it perfectly this way: it is a joy to be hidden, but it's a disaster not to be found.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And that's the whole Bible in one sentence.
Pastor Jason Dunn: In the garden, the man hides and God comes looking.
Pastor Jason Dunn: He says, Where are you, Adam and Eve?
Pastor Jason Dunn: Where are you?
Pastor Jason Dunn: God is the seeker who comes after the sinner.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Jesus was that seeker.
Pastor Jason Dunn: He lives as we should live.
Pastor Jason Dunn: We hide to avoid being exposed.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Instead, Jesus was exposed.
Pastor Jason Dunn: He was stripped, shamed, uncovered on the cross.
Pastor Jason Dunn: We cannot lift our own weight, our own sins.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Instead, Jesus bore them on himself.
Pastor Jason Dunn: The heavy hand of judgment was on him.
Pastor Jason Dunn: We are terrified of the flood of the rushing waters that come.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Instead, Jesus went under those rushing waters, and the great waters closed over his head, so that we would never have those waters go over our own heads.
Pastor Jason Dunn: On the cross, the Father turned his face away, and Jesus became the one who was not found.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And he cries out, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Pastor Jason Dunn: He was the unfound one, so that you would never be unfound again.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Jesus left his hiding place at the side of the Father in heaven itself and came down into the dark where we are hiding to seek and to save the lost.
Pastor Jason Dunn: He was uncovered so that you could be covered.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And when we are found, we are blessed, the Psalm says in verses 1 and 2.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Because the blessed life is not found by hiding our sin, but being hidden in God.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And we respond.
Pastor Jason Dunn: How do we respond?
Pastor Jason Dunn: Verse 11 captures it so well.
Pastor Jason Dunn: It says, look with me, he says, Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, O righteous, and shout for joy.
Pastor Jason Dunn: All you upright in heart.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Beloved, my plea with you is to come out of hiding and into the hiding place of God.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Let us pray.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Father, we are so grateful for your steadfast love for us in this, that you have given your son to ransom a people by forgiving our transgressions and covering our sins by his blood.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Jesus, you are the one who left your home to come and find us in our sin and our darkness and to deliver us.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Spirit, fill us with gladness.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Give us a shouting joy, and help us to trust in the steadfast love of our God.
Pastor Jason Dunn: We give you the glory.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Amen.