"How to Get Right with God" | Pastor Mike Stone

well thank you thank you to pastor Steve and each of you for the honor that has been given to me to be the Lord's messenger today wasn't the music this morning a tremendous blessing I'm so thankful for these students as they have led us to worship Jesus in spirit and in truth I have a confession to make the music in most of the places where I preach is so bad that it digs a deeper hole in 25 minutes than a 40 minute sermon can crawl its way back out of it sort of reminds me of the story of the man that got up to sing one day and he sang through his song with an accompaniment CD and when he got through somebody up in the balcony yelled out do it again brother do it again and he nodded to the booth they started the track he sang the song a second time and when he got through seems like 8 or 10 people around the sanctuary were yelling out do it again brother do it again so with a false sense of humility he nodded to the boot they hit the track and he sang it a third time and when he got finished it seemed like every man woman boy or girl was crying out in unison do it again rather do it again he said oh I've already done it three times I cannot I really should not do it again the pastor down on the front row said you're going to keep trying til you get it right do it again brother do it again well as you take your Bible and open to the 32nd psalm psalm 32 we're going to be investigating verse five I want to ask a simple question today wouldn't it be nice to be able to go back and do it again I'm talking about going back to the other side of that foolish decision back to the other side of that fork in the road where now with the 20/20 vision of hindsight you see you took the wrong way or more specifically wouldn't it be nice to be able to go back to the other side of that sinful decision that devastated your life and created a desperate distance between your heart and the heart of God well while we cannot literally physically go back and do it again God in His great mercy is still in the business of forgiving any then and every sin of any person who will repent and believe the gospel in psalm 32 and verse 5 I want to speak to you for a few moments this morning about how to get right with God how to get right with God psalm 32 and verse 5 listen to the word of the Lord I acknowledged my sin to you and my iniquity I have not hidden I said I will confess my transgressions to the Lord and you forgave the iniquity of my sin Selah now Bible students don't need very much information to find the biblical context of psalm 32 in fact all you really need are three words David and Bathsheba the Bible records the story in 2nd Samuel chapters 11 and 12 but it was the time of year when Kings went out to battle but David the king of Israel tarried he stayed at Jerusalem and at evening time when respectable people were getting ready to go to bed David was just rustling up from the bed and he took a walk on the roof of the king's palace he looked down on the roof of a house near him but lower and the Bible says that he saw a woman bathing and the Holy Spirit doesn't pull any punches and tells us she was a looker behold the text says she was very beautiful David asks those standing by him who is this woman and I want you to listen Bellevue nestled in that descriptive statement about that woman was a word of caution a word of counsel a word of warning the unnamed servant which in the Old Testament is very frequently typical of the work of the Holy Spirit the unnamed servant said David that is Bathsheba the daughter of Eliam the wife of Uriah the Hittite in other words King that is not only another man's daughter that is another man's wife I see that look on your face I see that tweek in your eye I know the red blood that courses through your veins and I beg you by the mercies of God do not do this thing you are considering to do but David would not listen to counsel he would not yield to godly advice he sent for the woman brought her to his palace indeed into the King's Chamber and lay on the bed of adultery with her sent her home thinking all's well that ends well but you know the story all did not end well a few weeks pass and her body began to tell her that she was with child her husband Uriah was off at the front lines of battle she knew she had only been with the king there was no doubt in her mind as to the paternity of the child in the womb she sent word to the king I'm bearing your child David concocted a plan to bring her husband home from the frontlines thinking maybe with a weekend pass nature and marital love would run its course and Uriah would assume that he was indeed the father of his wife's baby when that plan did not work David conspired to have your aya killed at the front lines of the battle and after he died his wife Bathsheba mourned for a while with the black veil of morning and then she removed that veil and put on the veil of the bride and became David's wife scholars are nearly unanimous that about a year had passed the child conceived that adulterous little tryst had been born when all of a sudden seemingly out of nowhere there was a knock upon the door David goes to the door and who would it be but the preacher it was the Prophet Nathan who had been sent on a mission from heaven to confront the backslidden king about his sin and at the end of that encounter David simply began to cry out in confession over his sin and under the inspiration of the holy spirit David writes Psalm 51 and the thirty second Psalm of which we study today and when we come to verse 5 there are only 32 words in the New King James translation which I have studied but yet we find a nearly exhaustive description of what it means for anyone to get right with God did you catch it I acknowledge my sin to you and my iniquity I have not hidden I said I will confess my transgressions to the Lord and here's the good news Church and you forgave the iniquity of my sin Sayla now in this fifth verse I want to show you very quickly this morning three things we need to notice if we are to get right to be made right to be reconciled to God first as David pours out his heart in confession I want you to listen to what he explained listen to what he explained now when the invitation is given at the end of this sermon ministers of the gospel will be standing forward up in the balcony at the banners they will be there to receive those who need the ministry of prayer and I know what would happen in this congregation it's the same thing that happens in the church I'm blessed a pastor prayer warriors and intercessors might come up and kneel beside or behind the person praying put their hand on their back simply to say I'm here with you I'm praying with you I'm praying for you but I think we would all agree it would not be very polite if they leaned their ear in just as far as they could to try to hear what the person at the altar was praying about in confession but when David confesses his sin to God the Holy Spirit says David write that down I want everyone for all human history to listen to what you're explaining about getting right with God now as we eavesdrop on this confessional prayer there are just two simple things that I want you to notice they are characteristic of every genuine sincere prayer of confession first notice the sinner of whom he prays the center of whom he prays I submit this morning that true genuine confession is one way we do better off to be a little more self focused to not spend our time trying to focus on or identify the sins of others but to turn the spotlight of the spirit upon ourselves may I quote the text in and emphasize a few words listen to what he said I acknowledge my sin to you and my iniquity I have not hidden I said I will confess my transgressions to the Lord and you forgave the iniquity of my sin are you liked today's preacher can you frequently notice other people's sins a hundred miles away but don't see your own at the end of your own nose sort of like the fella maybe you heard about he ate an onion sandwich and went all over town accusing everybody else of having Bo when the whole time the problem was literally right under his own nose notice who David does not blame David does not blame Bathsheba he does not blame your riah for leaving town with a needy wife he doesn't blame the servant who did not confine him and physically restrain him from committing this said David doesn't blame Nathan the prophet or the people at the local house of worship David turns the spotlight of Scripture upon himself and says in essence it's me it's me it's me o lord standing in the need of prayer not that long ago I had one of my members sitting in my office this church member had devastated their life with sexual immorality the marriage was ending the children were devastated friends and family were being touched by the shrapnel of this man's immorality and I'll not soon forget what he said as he wept in confession in my presence he said pastor it's not the life's fault it's not my children's fault it's not my friend's fault it's not the Sunday School classes fault pastor even the people that are not responding to me in a way that I think is right even those that are being hateful and mean and supercritical toward me pastor even in a sense their sins against me is my fault because I put a hot potato in their lap that they did not ask for pastor it's all my fault and I just don't know where to start putting the pieces back together again and I leaned forward and said that's a pretty good place to start right there the sinner of whom he prays notice also the sovereign to whom he prays David says I acknowledged my sin to you in the middle of the text he said I will confess my transgressions to the Lord now we'll see this more fully in just a moment but this is an acknowledgment that all sin is ultimately and pre-eminently against the Lord by the way Church this is a profound distinction between a mistake and a sin when I try to win souls for Christ I use the ABC method and admit believe and confess and earlier in my ministry when I would talk to people about admitting that they were a sinner people would say oh yes I know I'm not perfect I I make mistakes all the time preacher no one is perfect now we agree that that's true amen but there is a profound difference between a mistake and a sin a mistake is when you back out the driveway and run into the mailbox and your husband's new truck my wife did not do that by the way that's just an illustration a mistake is when you wear black socks with navy blue slacks because you didn't have the light on in the bedroom when you got dressed a mistake sir is when you accidentally call your wife by your old girlfriends name that's a mistake that's the fatal mistake you may not live long enough to repent over but none of those things are necessarily a sin against God when David says I will confess my transgressions to the Lord he is acknowledging that his adultery has lust his lies has cover up the murder he is acknowledging in that statement that his sin is against the God of heaven it's not just that he's violated the rule of his parents although if you're living at home you are commended by God to obey your parents it's not just that he has disappointed people in the workplace or ruined his testimony David is acknowledging God you have a righteous holy standard I have failed to meet it God you have righteous blameless laws and I have broken them God you have blameless and holy ordinances and I have violated them God I have sinned against you that's why in the parallel psalm numbered 51 david says against you and you only i have sinned and done what is evil in your sight now the good news is as we listen to what david explained in confession all that's really required for a sinner to get right with god listen church is a repentant sinner and a merciful forgiving God I acknowledged my sin to you let us not only number one listen to what he explained but I want us to take a moment to look at what he expressed psalm 32 has been described as an x-ray of a guilty conscience and as David lays on the MRI table of Scripture what I want us to do is just look at the chart for a moment and look at what he expressed about his confession there are two simple things I want you to consider first what I would call the recognition of his sin bottom line church David called his sin by its first name have you noticed that in our culture listen even in our churches we like to rename redefine recategorize we classify sin I mean it used to be called abortion now it's called choice it used to be called immorality now it is called an alternative lifestyle it used to be called a lie and now it's just simply called twisting the truth it used to be called adultery but now it's called a man indiscretion down in South Georgia where I'm from when a man and a woman would live together and have sexual intimacy without marriage we used to call it living in sin now we call it cohabitation and in either case it sounds a lot nicer than the biblical word fornication but David nearly empties a theological thesaurus describing what he had done against God elsewhere in this chapter and in the 51st Psalm David says what he did was evil guile deceit he calls it blood guiltiness and here he uses three very powerful words that are precise terms we must have to recognize our sin he uses the word sin iniquity and the word transgression let's just study those words for just a moment when David said I acknowledge my sin to you when he says you forgave the iniquity of my sin he's using a word that literally means to fail to meet a standard to fail to hit the mark this Hebrew word as well as it's Greek word in the New Testament both speak of an archer missing the bull's eye and David simply pours out his heart to God and says God you have a standard I did not meet you have a requirement but I have not met God I have sinned by the way a few moments ago in this service we all raised our hands that even salvation we have all sinned you're just agreeing with the Bible for the scripture says that all have sinned and come short of the glory of God the Bible says all we like sheep have gone astray Romans 5 says sin entered the world and death came by way of sin and now death has spread to all men for all have sinned and did you realize that did not stop the day that you got saved in fact on this side of our salvation the Bible says in first John chapter 1 that if we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in Stephen says I God I have sinned but then he uses a word iniquity that word iniquity speaks of so something that is perverted it describes something that has twisted and crooked one respected lexicon says the word describes something that is so twisted that it has become compacted and hardened and one commentator notes that this word perhaps speaks of david now acknowledging the hardness of heart that he had when he committed the sin it has often been said that when David sinned with Bathsheba it was a hot-blooded sin but when he took the life of Uriah the Hittite it was a cold blooded sin David is now looking back on the fact that he had sinned with a hard heart that had no concern whatsoever for the consequences David says God what I did was sinful what I did was characteristic of iniquity and then he says God what I did was a transgression I said I will confess my transgressions to the Lord now I can't speak for Memphis but down in South Georgia where I live we don't use the word transgressions a lot but we use a word that is really first cousin to this word it has the same meaning it's the word trespass this is the word that has often borrowed from the model prayer of Jesus forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who have trespassed against us this word transgression or trespass speaks of crossing a boundary line listen of being somewhere you did not have permission to be and doing something you had no permission to do I wonder what boundary line had David perhaps trespassed when he says I've trespassed I've committed a transgression perhaps he had in his mind that when you riah and Bathsheba stood at the altar of God Bathsheba said I do Uriah said I do too and the minister said if you do and you do it is now done in the sight of God and what God has joined together let no man seek to come in and and separate drive a wedge between but David now at an altar of confession says God you drew a boundary line around the marriage bed of Uriah and Bathsheba said no man with her but Uriah no no woman with him except Bathsheba but God when it furthered my agenda and scratched my itch I stepped across that boundary line and took another man's wife I committed a transgression maybe he's thinking about Uriah's parents when you ride him self was conceived within the womb of his mother the Bible describes that precious child knit together in the womb by the marvelous sovereign hand of God perhaps David is saying God when you when you place that baby in the womb of your eyes mother you drew a boundary line around his life and said thou shalt not kill the Lord when it helped me protect my reputation I crossed that boundary line god I have sinned God I've committed iniquity god I've committed a transgression I said I will confess my transgressions to the Lord David recognizes his sin but as we look at what he expressed think not only about the recognition of his sin but the revelation of his sin I said I will confess my transgression to the Lord now I speak of the revelation of his sin I'm not talking about the fact that it was revealed to others I listen I'm talking about the fact that David finally revealed his sin to God earlier in this very chapter he describes the great burden of trying to keep his sin from God he says what I kept silent about my sin my body wasted away and my moisture that is the very vitality of life was being dried up and drained away as with the feverish heat of summer look right here Bellevue he says God when I would not come clean with you about my sin I felt your hand the text says heavy upon me now in our vernacular when we talk about the hand of God being on someone we mean that as a compliment we may say boy I love to hear him teach Sunday School he's got the hand of God on him oh I love to hear her sing she has the hand of God upon oh I love to hear that choir or that preacher they've got the hand of heaven upon them but when David says God when I would not come clean about my sin I felt your hand upon me he's not describing a hand of blessing but a hand of discipline he says in essence God for the better part of you here I felt your hand on me some of you are experiencing that this morning this is why you can't rest is why you can't sleep it's why you can't think straight it's why you stay buried in your iPad or your phone because if you shut everything off and shut everything down and it's just you and God you are a most miserable person that's what David is describing in this text but he's discovered not only was hiding his sin from God futile it was also a tremendous burden his son would later ride in proverbs 28:13 he who conceals his sin will not prosper so now rather than hiding his sin from God he says I will confess my transgressions do you see the parallelism my iniquity I will not hide the word confess that David uses under the spirit's inspiration it's a very picturesque word it literally speaks of coming with an open hand in fact the word confess right in the middle of this verse is translated elsewhere as praise it speaks of the lifting of hands many of you did that during the time of worship through music this morning and that's a one for biblical expression as we just come and exalt the Lord with the lifting of our heart our life and even our hands but the question I want to pose is this how is it that a word that could be translated as worship with an uplifted hand a word that means this how's it translated here as confession perhaps the best way to explain that is to tell you about a story that happened with the youngest of our four children our Matthew who is now four was about two and a half years old at this time I came out of our kitchen into the pantry area of our house just in time to see him quickly retrieve his hand from the cookie jar I walked over to speak to him and his mouth was covered with dark brown almost black cookie crumbs he was an Oreo bandit son what do you have nothing acting just like his mama's side of the family with his hands behind his back I said what's in your hand nothing your other hand nothing you know why you laugh that's silly isn't it how much more silly is it to think that we can hide our sin from an everywhere present everything seeing God and in the same way that my son needed to hold out both hands at the same time David says Lord I'm so tired of covering up my sin god I have been living like this month after month after month and I just can't do it anymore god I've been hiding you from everyone else but I cannot hide it any longer from you there it is God this hand has the scent of another man's wife this hand is dripping with his innocent blood and god I just don't know what to do except bring it to you in confession and ask you Oh spirit of God can you do something with that and the good news of the gospel is oh yes our God can there is still a fountain filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel's veins and sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains as we look at the good news of this text I want us to listen to what he explained and look at what he expressed but lastly I would have us to learn from what he experienced you know these days we do a lot of shopping online my wife and I we buy a lot of things on eBay and amazon.com even Walmart com that way you can beat the lines where they've got 37 registers and two of them open you know if you buy things online right before you finalize that purchase if you may notice that they're often reviews that are written about that product I mean 500 others have purchased this product and they've all left reviews about their experience and here's the question I want to ask as we close David you committed adultery murder you lied you schemed David you were as wicked as wicked could be but under the proclamation of the word of God you came to a place of prayer and confess your sin to a righteous holy blameless God David here's my question I'm thinking about doing that this morning at Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis I want to ask you David how'd it go for you David what would your review be and he simply sums it up in the last phrase and you forgave the iniquity of my sin Sayla now in that we notice two things as we close first David found that there is mercy for confessed sin and you forgave the iniquity of my sin we've what we've all heard about the unattractive lady who had her picture made and when the proofs came in she told a photographer these pictures don't do me justice he said ma'am you don't need justice you need mercy the truth is so do you and so do I proverbs 28:13 I quoted half of it a moment ago the balance says that he who conceals his sin will not prosper but he who confesses his sin shall obtain mercy David sums it up with that little word forgive and you forgave the iniquity of my sin that word forgive literally means to lift a burden now look right here Church and watch this carefully when the burden of sin was lifted off of David the burden itself did not go away when the burden of sin was lifted off of David the burden itself did not just vanish and go away somebody had to take and lift and carry that burden this is what God did for us at the blessed cross of the Lord Jesus Christ the hymn writer said he took my sin and my sorrow he made them his very own he bore the burden to Calvary and suffered and died alone and now David finds at an altar of confession that where sin did abound grace did much more about and that God was in the business of providing and pouring out mercy perhaps you're here this morning you would say I'm not sure God can forgive me after all I've done everywhere I've been and who I was with and what we did while we were there I'll remind you of a story that was told by the great black preacher dr. EB Hill he's now with the Lord but he was a prominent african-american pastor out in the Los Angeles area he tells the story of how his Church's outreach ministries were organized he would organize the visitation and the evangelism of the church based on the primary sin from which a person had been saved for example someone might come in from visitation from weekly outreach and say pastor we were down on Skid Row last night and we we witness to a drunkard he said he'd shot too much whiskey he dropped too many beers he'd had too many hangovers he said he was too much of an alcoholic God could not forgive him and dr. hill would say I tell my secretary get the chairman of my former drunkard committee on the telephone I've got a visit that he needs to make when the ladies would come back and say we were down in the red-light district we witness to a prostitute and she said old she'd been with too many people she'd sold her body she had given herself away too many times and with the needle marks in her arm and the powder around her nose she said God cannot forgive me he would say get get the chairlady of the harlot committee on the telephone I've got a visit that she needs to make David would have a seat today that you are not a better sinner than our Jesus is a savior and the vilest offender who truly believed that moment from Jesus a pardon receives there's the mercy for confessed sin the Marvel now of cleansed sin it's all wrapped up in that last little word and you forgave the iniquity of my sin Selah that word Selah is a musical term it really means that we're supposed to pause and stop and think about what has just been said I can't read this chapter I can't reminisce about this story without thinking about my own story sit very still and look right here listen to me for most of my life I was that good church kid I was raised in church like many of you nine months before I was born some of you went to church every time the doors were open I went to a little church that ran about 25 or 30 my daddy had a key sometimes we went he'd open up just so we could go in when nobody else was there just to say we went I was that good church kid the kind that you might want your daughter to date never got in very much trouble but right after I graduated from college because of a number of circumstances in my life I went into a brief but very intense season away from God I wondered could God really forgive me after all that I've done and friend I'll just cut to the end of the chase and say when I look back and realized that God forgave me not on the basis of what I had done but on the basis of what he had done at the cross God forgave me not because I deserved forgiveness but because he is a forgiving God not that I deserved mercy but because he's merciful not that I merited grace but because he is gracious I like to him rider stand amazed in the presence of Jesus the Nazarene and I wonder how he could love me a sinner condemned unclean if your heart and mind has ever been filled with that level of amazement that this righteous God would forgive you of your sin and receive you unto himself that wonderful amazement is the best description of this little word Selah David says I acknowledge my sin to you and my iniquity I have not hidden I said I will confess my transgressions to the Lord and you forgave the iniquity of my sin and that amazes me I love the story of two people sitting in a service just like this one two men sitting almost all the way to the back they'd been drinking buddies they've been running together for many many months one of them when the invitation was given he was the first one made a beeline down to a place of Prayer and knelt in confession to God and though he felt the cleansing that first John 1:9 promises he went back to his seat he could tell his buddy was under deep conviction kind of white-knuckling the back of the seat he said I'll go forward with you don't you want to pray don't you want to go forward and get right with God his friend said no my my mom and dad are sitting right over there they'll think what will they think what will they believe can't I just get right with God back here he said no you can't get right with God back here you've got to go to the front to get right with God they sang a little while longer his friend said I tell you I'll go with you don't you want to go to the front and get right with God he says no everybody will think I've been away from the Lord what will they think what will they believe can't I just get right with God back here he said no you can't get right with God at the back you got to go to the front to get right with God they sang another verse and finally that old backslidden boy elbowed his buddy he said let me out in the aisle I've got to go forward I don't care what anybody else thinks I'm concerned about what God knows let me get to the front I must get right with God and his friend said now now you can get right with God back here I say that to say this you can get right with God right there at your seat but there is something special about coming in public prayer to God if this church is like my congregation some of you have been members here for decades and you've never made your way to a place a public prayer to just simply say God I want to get things right with you in about 30 seconds we're standing to our feet and we're beginning to see if you're here today and you need to be saved you've never trusted in Jesus as Lord and Savior I'm going to ask you when we stand in just a moment to leave your seat all these aisles lead right down here to the front ministers from this church will be here to receive you why don't you come take one of these men by the hand and simply say I need to be saved from your seat to the front I need to be saved I believe there are Christians all over this building there's just something between you and the Lord why don't you come and confess that sin to God get right with your Savior perhaps you've been visiting here and you know that God would have you to come and join at Bellevue Baptist these ministers will be here to receive you the last several weeks with Vacation Bible School and children's camp maybe some of you little boys and girls or some of you teenagers you've receive Jesus as your Savior you need to come today make that public tell one of the ministers you want to schedule your appointment to be baptized to obey Jesus if you're in the balcony you'll notice there are banners all the way at the far corners of the balcony ministers will be there to receive you whatever God is leading you to do I'm simply going to ask you to respond as we all stand to our feet and begin to sing we lift our voice in song we lift our voice in prayer I invite you to come today to get right with God [Music]

Channel: Bellevue Baptist Church

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Length: 38min 58sec (2338 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 23 2017