Well, good evening, good to be here again with you tonight. And it's been a privilege to be with you this past yesterday, these past few days, and we look forward to this coming week. I'm going to ask you to turn your Bibles to Psalm thirty-two. And we've been thinking about doctrines, neglected or forgotten doctrines of the Scriptures. And we looked at the death of our Lord Jesus, our precious Savior, how he was brutally and terribly killed. sacrificed on Calvary's cross and how his wonderful death, how that wonderful payment price was paid, covers our debt, our debt of sin. But tonight, I want to look at a subject that I think is so important, and I think in some ways forgotten as well. And that is a whole subject of sin and sin in the life of the believer, but also sin in this world. You know, today, I think, is a day that we rarely talk about sin. We rarely think about it. We've had in the past a president who blatantly lied and many other things and never spoken about, covered up, called mistakes or called infractions or called just as how he was and many, many other things. And I think it's a day, a time that even in churches, we're not talking about sin. We're not talking about our need. We're not talking to young people about their sins. And it's just going on and on. And I think it's so important to get back and see what the scriptures say about sin and about sin in the life of a believer. In this passage, Psalm twenty, Psalm thirty two, tremendous passage of God's word about what sin is. I think it's even a doctrinal portion about the definition and the solution to sin. But I want to read something first of all. Maybe you've heard it before. It's a prayer. It was prayed a few years ago. It was prayed by a pastor. He was invited to the Kansas legislature. His name was Joe Wright. And in nineteen ninety six he was asked to pray and he prayed this short prayer. And later on this prayer was taken up and heard by Paul Harvey. And it was read and broadcast. And he had the most requests for this prayer or for this piece that he recited of anything he's ever put on his radio program. I just want to read to you what he says, and he speaks about the sin of our nation. He talks about the condition of what's going on in our country today. He begins, and he says, Heavenly Father, in his prayer he begins, Heavenly Father, we come before you today, and we ask for your forgiveness, and seek your direction and guidance. We know your word says, woe to those who call evil good, but that's exactly what we have done. We confess we've lost our spiritual equilibrium. We have inverted our values. We confess that we have ridiculed the absolute word of God and called it moral pluralism. We have worshipped other gods and called it multiculturalism. We have endorsed perversions. and called it alternative lifestyle. We have exploited the poor and called it the lottery. We have neglected the needy and called it self-preservation. We have rewarded laziness and we call it welfare. We kill our unborn and call it choice. We have shot abortionists and call it justifiable. We have neglected to discipline our children and we call it building self-esteem. We have abused power and we call it political savvy. We have coveted our neighbor's possessions, and we call it ambition. We have polluted the air with profanity and pornography, and we call it freedom of expression. We have ridiculed the time-honored values of our forefathers, and we call it enlightenment. Search us, O God, and know our hearts today. Try us and see if there be some wicked way in us. Cleanse us from every sin and set us free. Guide and bless these men and women who have been sent here by the people of Kansas, who have been ordained. You govern this great state, grant them your wisdom to rule and their decisions to direct us in the center of your will. Amen. You know, as he was praying that prayer, first time ever, Congressmen and congressmen walked out of the legislature, walked out of the room when he was praying that prayer. And simply what he was saying, he was talking about the sin, not only of Kansas, but the sin of our country. And so it's such an important thing to get back and think a little bit about what the Word of God says about what sin is. I could read five verses of Psalm thirty-two, the first five verses, and here's what it says. Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputes not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile. When I kept silent, my bones became old through my roaring all the day long. For day and night thy hand was heavy upon me. My moisture is turned into the drought of summer, Selah. I acknowledge my sin unto thee, and mine iniquity I have not hidden. I said I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord, and thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin, Selah. You know, a number of years ago, I was in college, almost twenty years ago, twenty-some years ago, and I studied psychology. And I went to one of my first classes and the teacher back in the early late seventies, middle to late seventies, she said, I want you all to sit on the floor. You knew you're in a psychology class now. Sit on the floor and cross your legs. And I'm going to pass around a hat. She had a beret on. And she was a bit of a hippie type teacher. And she passed around. She told us put a dollar in the hat and our name. and I had paid for the class already. I didn't think I should pay any more for the class, but I put my dollar in. I put my name in. She passed it around, about fifty students in the class, and she picked out a name, and she took all the fifty dollars, and she picked out my name. She gave me the fifty dollars, and she said, I want you to take this fifty dollars, and I want you to go and have one session, one counseling session, with a psychologist, a accomplished, renowned psychologist, in New York City. The college was in northern New Jersey. It's a state school there. And so I had the fifty dollars. And so I went down and I had a counseling hour with Dr. Albert Ellis. Now that name might not mean anything to you, but he was considered in that day a very renowned and very respected psychologist. And I went down and I talked to him. It didn't matter what problem you had, he just told you his philosophy. And basically here's what it was. There's no right. There's no wrong. There's no sin. There's no evil. There's no wrong. There's nothing. The problem with the world is the world's values. You have to change your thinking. What people say is wrong. You have to convince yourself it's not wrong. Whatever it is that you're doing, the reason you feel badly about whatever it is is you have guilt because other people have told you it's wrong. And you have to just change your way of thinking. And he called it the school of rational and emotive thinking. You've got to change your thinking, no matter how much guilt you have, how much you feel you've done wrong, whether it be a divorce or whether it be some other sin in your life, you have to change that. You know, when you come to Psalm thirty-two, it's totally different. David had committed a sin. If it's called here, the title of the Psalm, the inscription over the Psalm is, A Psalm of David, a maskell. The word maskell means instruction or doctrine or teaching. Do you know why David was writing this Psalm? He tells us, just flip over for a moment, he tells us why he was writing the Psalm in Psalm fifty-one. Just flip over to Psalm fifty-one just for a moment. He tells us exactly why he writes Psalm thirty-two. He writes it because of his experience. because of the guilt that he had of sin, because the plague of his heart, because of how he committed sin against his God. Verse ten, he says, praying to the Lord, create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from thy presence. Take not thy Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of thy salvation. and uphold me with a willing spirit. He had sinned grievously. He had committed adultery. He had been involved in a murder of a man. He lied about it, covered it up. Now he came before God and he confessed his sin. He got right with God and he says, creating me a clean heart. But then he says this, after he confesses his sin, He says this to the Lord. He says, then will I do something. Then will I teach transgressors their ways and sinners shall be converted unto you. You know, many, many good Bible commentators, Bible students believe that Psalm thirty two is the fulfillment of that promise. Then will I teach transgressors their ways and sinners shall be converted unto thee. It says a psalm, a masculine psalm, a psalm of teaching, a psalm of doctrine, a psalm of instruction. And he says, Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputes not iniquity. Three times in the first two verses, he uses a different word for sin. He says, Blessed is the man whose transgression, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man under whom the Lord imputes not iniquity. Three times he tells us, gives us different words for sin. We're going to look at that more closely. But also the first two verses, he gives us three different words for forgiveness or the experience of having that sin taken away. He says, Blessed is the man whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man to whom... The Lord, the word imputes not, means does not keep a record any more of sin. And in whose spirit there's no guile. You know, it's a tremendous thing. This psalm begins with the word blessed, which means happy or joyous. And the end of the psalm, the very last verse of the psalm, says this, Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, ye righteous. Shout for joy, all those that are upright in heart. begins with the word happy ends with the word shouting for joy but in between you have a you have a chapter all about sin what sin is the plague of sin the consequences of sin the solution for sin and how a man gets right how a woman gets right with the lord jesus christ verse five he says i acknowledged my sin unto thee and mine iniquity have i not hidden I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord, and thou forgave the iniquity of my sin. Selah. Three words for sin. I think a definition of what sin is. But it's very striking. This man, David, this King David who writes, he was a believer. The Bible tells us he was a man after God's own heart. We would consider him a saved man. we consider a man who knew the Lord Jesus Christ with all his heart and he fell into grievous sin and I think there are many people today I meet them from time to time you find them falling into into grievous sin horrible sin torn up by guilt torn up by by what they've done we have a brother in our assembly it's about sixty some years old sixty two or three years old just finished a bout of cancer. And I didn't, I knew he was divorced, but I didn't know much of the details. And I went to see him in his office. He's in a construction business, his own business. We start talking about different things. And out of the blue, he started talking about his first divorce. He's got children that are in their twenties now. And he spoke about his divorce like it was yesterday. And he said, you know, if I was a Christian, if I was a Christian then, He said it never would have happened. He said, I lived for the moment. I lived for that day. I wanted what I wanted. We got a divorce. He said she was a good wife. She was a lovely person. Should never have happened. You know, it was like it was yesterday. He remembered as the grief, the guilt, the sorrow that he had for that still carries it with him. My sister raised in the same family I'm raised in. She talked to her on the telephone a while ago. Her husband left her, going through a divorce. Love other things. Tremendous pain. You know, these sins, we carry them with us. And here in this Psalm, he tells us, this is a saved man. He tells us about what sin is, how it destroys our lives, and why we sin even tells us. In verse one, he says, blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven. You know, the word for transgression there is a special Hebrew word. It's a word that not only means to transgress God's law, but it means to willingly rebel against God. It doesn't say that David just, as David speaks, doesn't just say, blessed is he who broke God's law, but he says, blessed is the man who willingly rebelled, knowing what God had stated, knowing God's law and God's desires and God's will and God's ways, and still yet knowing all those things consciously saying, I'm going to turn my back on that, I'm going to do what I want to do because I want to do it, no matter the consequences, willingly rebelled. You know, one of the reasons I think David says, blessed is he whose willing rebellion is forgiven. Because under the law, under the law of Moses, if anyone willingly rebelled, there was no turning to the law of the sacrifices. Anyone who willfully sinned, voluntarily sinned, there was no recourse. There was no animal that could be sacrificed. Presumptious sin, there was no forgiveness for it. And what David had to do here is cast himself on the grace and the mercy of God for forgiveness. He says, blessed is he. He says, blessed and happy is he, not because the law had any recourse for him, but because God's grace and God's mercy was so great. As he cast himself on God, God restored that joy of salvation. God restored him to himself. And so he says, blessed is he whose willing rebellion is forgiven, whose sin is covered. You know, the word here for sin means to miss the mark. and David missed wide of the mark committing adultery committing adultery with Bathsheba and taking and sending Bathsheba's husband Uriah the Hittite to the front of the battle where he knew he would die and Uriah was such a faithful soldier when he came back he said I won't even sleep in our house and he went out to that that front lines of the battle and there he was killed when he came back he took Bashiva as his wife. And Nathan the prophet came to him and told him a parable, told him a story. He said, there was a very strong, wealthy man. And he took a poor man's little you lamb. And David said, who is that man? He said, I'll punish him. I'll find him. He said, receive justice. And Nathan the prophet took his finger and pointed it at him. And he said, you are the man. You have done this thing. And because of that sin, he lost his child, lost his first child with Bathsheba. There's consequences to sin. There's consequences in our lives. Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin, whose missing of the mark is covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord imputes not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile. It gives us three words for sin, willful rebellion, Missing the mark. And then another word in verse two, iniquity. Iniquity means, and sometimes it's translated this way, perverseness. The root of the word is the word twisted. He says, blessed is the man to whom the Lord does not impute iniquity. Strongest word in the Old Testament for sin. Iniquity. And that's what David did. He committed a twisted, a perverse crime. A crime that wasn't heard in a lot of places in Israel. But he committed that crime. He says, Blessed is he whose sin is not imputed to him. There's no record kept of his sin. You know, one day when we get to heaven, the books will be opened. And to look for our record and be a clean slate. Won't be any sins there. Won't be any marks there. Says of the great white throne. that those that come before them great and small, the books will be opened and they be judged out of the things of the works that are found in those books. You know, we're not even in those books. Our names aren't recorded in those books. They look at our slate, look at my slate, David Dunlap or your slate. There's nothing there. Our sins are not imputed to us. They were imputed to the Lord Jesus Christ. It's a tremendous story that's told. It's attractive. It's called Tsar Nicholas. Maybe you heard the story. It was about a man, a bookkeeper in one of Tsar Nicholas's army camps. And he was an alcoholic and a gambler. And he kept all the books, kept all the money. But he began to take a little bit all the time, a little bit from the army, stealing, hoping to pay it back one day. But he took a little bit here and a little bit there. And pretty soon the amount was so huge and so high. And one day he totaled up all the accounts of the books, all that he had stolen and taken. It was too much he could never repay it again. And he wrote on that book ledger. He said, who can pay such an amount? You know, they're told that Tsar Nicholas, one of his habits, was addressed as an ordinary soldier. And at night, when everything was quiet, go and visit these army camps. And that same night, Tsar Nicholas, as an ordinary soldier, walking through that army camp, he saw a light that was on, the only light that was on in the whole camp. And he came to the paymaster's barracks and looked through the window. He saw a revolver there on the table. He saw the book ledger opened. He saw a bottle there of liquor. This man had drunk himself into a drunken stupor. It's a revolver there. He was going to take that revolver and take his life. But before he could do that, he collapsed. He passed out. And the Tsar came in and looked at the books. Look at what he had told it up. Look at all that was imputed to this man, all that he had stolen. He saw the huge amount. And he saw that phrase that he wrote on that ledger, who can pay such an amount? And you know what the Tsar did? He had compassion on that man. And he wrote under that phrase, who can pay such an amount? He wrote his name, Tsar Nicholas. And later that morning that man awoke and he looked at the ledger and he saw what he wrote. He saw the amount and then he saw the name underneath it, Tsar Nicholas. And he thought to himself, was the Tsar here? Did he know all that I had taken, how I had taken it and why I had taken it? And yet he'll still repay it. Is he still willing to pay that price for what I've done? Larred that morning, money came and payment was made for all that he had stolen. You know, it's a wonderful story about what the Lord Jesus has done for us. We had a tremendous debt we could never repay, imputed to us, kept on our record book. And the Lord Jesus said, put it on my account. Put it all on my account. Nail it to my cross. And let us go free. He says, Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord... It does not keep a record of our perverse, of our twisted, of our wicked works. And in whose spirit there is no guile. Three words for sin, but three wonderful words for forgiveness. He says, blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered, and blessed is the man who doesn't have his iniquity imputed unto himself. But then he tells us a little further down, He tells us how our sins are forgiven. He says, I acknowledge my sin unto thee. And my iniquity have I not hidden. I said, I will confess my transgression unto the Lord and thou forgave us the iniquity of my sin. You know, you look at that phrase or you look at that verse. There's five words that are repeated over and over again in verse five. He says, I acknowledged my sin unto thee and mine iniquity have I not hidden I said I will confess my transgression unto the Lord and thou forgave us the iniquity of my sin five times that word my or mine is used in verse five personal responsibility you know over and over again today in our society people are saying it's not my fault the reason I'm where I am it's not because of me it's because of my parents It's because of my wife. It's because of my father. It's because of my employer. It's because of someone else. For years, I used to live in Pennsylvania, and every month, we'd go down to the mission. And we would talk to some of the men in the mission. And over and over again, they would tell us their story, how they found themselves in the mission. They at one time were wealthy. They had their businesses. They had their jobs. They had their families. They had their wives. They had their homes. They had their good lives. And then everything unraveled because someone else did something. Whether it was their wives or their employer or someone else in business. And things fell apart. It was never their fault. It was someone else. Remember going to the prisons also. And talking to prisoners there. They'd always say the reason they were there was somebody else's fault. It wasn't their fault. And I remember when I was saved. I don't know how you were saved, but the way I was saved was I think in a kind of an unusual way. I was raised in a Christian home. Twenty-three years I heard the gospel. I went to Sunday school. My mother led me through vacation through correspondence courses for children and later on youth groups. I wasn't saved till I was twenty-three years old. And I went away to college. I was a junior. I went two years to junior college. I went away to college. I was away from home. began to drink, I began to get away from things. And one day I was with a friend and he had a, I think a nineteen sixty-three or sixty-four Volkswagen bug. We were driving and he was drinking. There was an animal that ran out in the road and he swerved to miss it. And that little Volkswagen flipped over three or four times, hit an embankment. He was cut and bleeding. And my door popped open and I walked out unhurt. The police came and we went to the hospital. I went to the police station. He was cut and he was in the hospital. I thought to myself, why did the Lord have him so badly hurt? And I went free. Later on I began to look on the bulletin boards in the college and I saw a little Bible study. And I decided to go to this Bible study. So a young man there just saved, just newly saved from Roman Catholic background. His name is Joe. And he was so zealous for the Lord. As I went to this group, they didn't know anything about the Scriptures. They didn't know who John the Baptist was or John the Apostle. They didn't know the most basic of things in Scripture. And I was raised in a Christian home. I knew a little bit about these things. And so they thought that I was a mature Christian. And so we would pair up in groups and twos and go out to witness. And Joe would always take me with him. I wasn't saved. He was the saved one. And we would go out and we would witness. And I would be quiet and he would do all the talking. But you know, as he was talking, he never realized it, but he was talking to me. He thought I was saved the whole time. And when we would go out, Joe was the kind of person who wanted a good fight, a good spiritual fight. So he would pick the foreign students or the drug addicts or someone else, you know, that he thought would give up a good argument about spiritual things. We had some tremendous conversations on the college campus. And the whole time that he was talking, all the questions they would bring up, all the answers that he would give, I would go back and I would read my Bible. And over six months, every night, I would go back and I would read through the scriptures. And I came to the book of Romans and I read through Romans a couple of times. And I saw so clearly that the Lord would come back, I was lost. I didn't know the Lord Jesus. I was responsible for my sins. My parents were saved. My sister was saved. I had every opportunity to be saved. I had Bibles. I had been to camp. I had been, I received teaching. The kids on the college campus who didn't have any of that, they might have an excuse, but I had no excuse. I had been in church so many times. I knew so much. I had no excuse. I was responsible. If I went before the Lord and I stood before him and he said, why didn't you receive my message, I would have no excuse. I couldn't say I didn't hear or I didn't understand from a different religion. I was Jewish or a Muslim or a Hindu or Buddhist. I couldn't say any of those things. I had to take responsibility. I knew I was guilty. I remember one morning laying in bed before class and just getting on my knees, feeling tremendous conviction for sin, needing to get right with the Lord Jesus Christ and asking the Lord to come into my life and to be my Savior. and trust in him as my Savior. Verse five says, I acknowledge my sin unto thee. Mine iniquity have I not hidden. I will confess my transgression unto the Lord, and thou forgavest. The end of this verse is so beautiful. And thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin. The Lord grants to us full forgiveness when we take responsibility for our sins. But you know there's something else here for the believer. What happens when we don't confess our sins? Verse three and four talks about that. What happens as a believer? What happened to David for those weeks and months? Was he enjoying the pleasures of sin for a season? Maybe. But there's a real truth that in his life he was being torn up by sin. Sin has tremendous consequences. The Puritans used to say, that sin promises like God, but pays like the devil. You know, it says that you can enjoy, it says that Moses enjoyed the pleasures of sin for a season. You know, a lot of us think we can get by, sometimes Christians, we think we can get by and slip by enjoying the pleasures of sin and never receive the bad parts. Never receive the payment from the devil. You know, I remember talking to a brother. He's a Christian today. He's an elder in assembly today. And he said, how far he got away from the Lord. Drinking, gambling, you name it. You know, you would never believe it. But he said, it almost cost him his marriage. And now it's costing his children. Because he just got back to the Lord recently and his kids are teenagers. It's now costing him his kids, his teenagers. He said, there's consequences to sin. Here in verse three and verse four, he says, when I kept silence, My bones became old through my roaring all the day long. For day and night thy hand was heavy upon me. He says, my moisture is turned into the drought of summer. I think there's two consequences in these verses for sin. The first one is a spiritual consequence. The second one is a physical consequence. The second one, he says, my bones, my physical body. He said, the strength of my life, my moisture is turned into the drought. of summer. Now there's consequences to sin. I want to read you something. This comes from the life of Ernest Hemingway. And I don't know if you've realized but Ernest Hemingway came from a very strong Christian family. His mother and father were co-workers of D.L. Moody. They were involved in the YMCA movement in the early to mid- eighteen hundredths. They lived in Wheaton, Illinois, involved in evangelical churches, strong Bible-believing parents. He taught Sunday school at fourteen years old. He was involved in the church. He turned his back on it all. He led his own life, did what he wanted to do. He lived a destitute life, lived a life far, far from God. The end of his life, here's what he wrote to his mother. He says, I live in a vacuum. that is so lonely as a radio tube when the batteries are dead and there's no electrical current to plug into. An empty life, a lonely life. Sin had taken its toll on his life, the ravages of sin. A man had wealth, he had prestige, he had power, he had everything at the end of his life. He says, my life is so barren, so empty, so fruitless, so useless. He took a revolver and put it into his mouth and pulled the trigger. That's what ended his life. A man had everything. Why was that? I think the consequences of sin. He says here in verse three, when I kept silence, when I knew I had sinned, when I knew I was out of fellowship with God, when I knew that my life was not right with God, I just kept silent. I didn't confess, I didn't repent, I didn't turn to the Lord. I continued on in silence. I turned my back on the Lord. I went my own way. And I remember when I was eight years old. I don't know if you can remember the first time that you felt the real pull, the real burden and weight of sin in your life. I can remember a clear time. I was about eight years old. And it was about four o'clock in the afternoon. And a lot of times when the ice cream truck would come around. So it comes around here probably. I hear the bell sometimes. It would come around back in those days. It was a quarter for an ice cream. Price has gone up a little bit. I think it's around a dollar, maybe even more. But I went to my mother and said, can I have a quarter? She said, no, it's too close to dinner time. You can't have a quarter. But you know, I wanted the quarter. I wanted the ice cream. Nothing was more important to me at that time of my life than having that ice cream at that moment. So you know what I did? I went upstairs. My father would get home from work about five o'clock. Went upstairs, snuck into their bedroom, and there on the dresser was, to my eight-year-old eyes, a mountain of change. A huge, huge pile of change. It might not have been that big in reality, but all kinds of dimes and quarters and nickels, and I took a quarter. I ran out the back door. The icing truck was still there. I bought my ice cream. I ate my ice cream. And I came back. My father had just come home from work and he was coming down the stairs. And almost the first words out of his mouth were this. He says, I want all the children to come into the living room and sit on the couch. I knew there's trouble afoot. And he said these words, somebody took a quarter from my dresser. And he said, and I knew he said it before, he said, there's two things we don't permit in this house. or stealing. If you need something, you ask us for it, but one should lie. My father is six foot four. He's much heavier than I am. He's a big man. And to me, he was a giant looking down at us. And he went to my little sister, who was at that time about three or four years old, and said, Becky, did you take the quarter? And she burst into tears. And he knew it wasn't her. He looked at me, and I looked up at him. And he said, David, did you take that quarter? And I looked up to him and I said, no, daddy, I didn't take that quarter. He went to my sister, who was ten, ten and a half or eleven. He said, Beth, did you take that quarter? And she said, no, daddy, didn't take it. He took a deep breath and he said, Beth, I want you to come upstairs. And he took her upstairs. I took her to the bedroom and I was sitting right in a chair, stuffed chair, right at the base of that hallway. He took out his belt and he beat her. She thanked her. And I could hear her crying and I sat there down below, keeping silent, not seeing anything. She knew, I knew, God knew. And for the first time in my life, the little boy, I knew what sin was. I knew what guilt was. I knew what separation from God was. It wasn't even a Christian. But I knew what it meant to have the burden of sin. I think I knew what it meant to what verse three says. When I kept silence, my bones became old through my roaring all the day long. And you know, there are people that live with that kind of guilt for years, for years. Never get right. Hide their sin, whatever it is. Hide it and hide it and hide it. Never get right with the Lord Jesus. Sin has tremendous consequences. And there are believers like that. Believers who go on takes a long time sometimes till you get right with the Lord Jesus. And my challenge tonight to you is, how is your life? When we're at a fellowship with the Lord, it affects our worship. It affects our assemblies. It affects our vitality. It affects our personal testimony. It affects our service and our witness. It affects our whole lives. And I think one of the problems probably in the churches in this country is too many believers, good believers, are living secret lives and not getting right with the Lord. And that's stunting the power of the Holy Spirit and assemblies and churches and ministries and gospel outreach. We hear it all the time, embezzlement of funds and infidelity and all of those kind of things with pastors and ministries and the heads of ministries all the time. It's so important to get right with the Lord. Not be like David who said when I kept silence, but to be with him like in verse five, where he says, I acknowledged my sin unto thee. I'm going to close in prayer and ask our brother to come up and close with a hand. Our Heavenly Father, we thank you for our time tonight. May we be like David, Father, not when he kept silence, but be like David when he enjoyed the joy of the Lord Jesus Christ, the joy of the Lord. He enjoyed having a clean heart and a right relationship with thee. And may we be those kind of people, Father, who know a right relationship, no living for the Lord Jesus Christ, no power for living in our lives, because we have confessed sin, we've gotten right with the Lord, we keep short accounts with Him. May I be that kind of person, Father, and my wife and my children, and may we be those kind of people in this assembly and other assemblies like it throughout North Carolina, throughout this country. And Father, may we please you and honor you and may you use our lives fruitfully in thy service. We pray this and ask this in Jesus' name. Our closing hymn will be two hundred and eighty-seven. The light of the world is Jesus. And what I'd like to ask you to do is we'll just sing the refrain one time, but that will be after we have sung verse one, verse one, just a little pause. We'll go right into verse two, another little pause, verse three, and then the refrain on the last verse. Shall we stand and sing two eighty-seven, the light of the world is Jesus.