My Hiding Place (Part 2 of 2)

After he committed both adultery and David suffered from a guilty conscience, he may been able to hide his sin from others, but he could not hide it from himself and he certainly couldn't hide it from God, and neither can we. Today on Truth for Life. Alistair Begged teachers the benefits of a guilty conscience were in Psalm 32 verses five through seven. There are only two kinds of conscience that will feel the burden of sin one is tender conscience, tender conscience. The other conscience that will bear and respond to the burden of sin is a wounded conscience. A wounded conscience.

If you have a fracture somewhere in your body.

Let's say in your knee added weight to your body will become apparent because you wounded in your knee. The very weakness there will bear testimony to the weight that is been placed upon you, and in the same way. It is a wonderful thing, albeit a hard and difficult thing when God comes as he comes to his servant David and he brings his willful disobedience before him, and he confronts them with a systematic attempts at cover-up and he points out to them to him that his very conscience is in danger of being seen.

And he lays his hand of heaviness upon him, and that becomes absolutely on bearable Psalm 38 and verse for another Psalm of David in this series. He says my guilt has overwhelmed me like a burden to heavy to bear my guilt is overwhelming, like a burden to heavy to bear. Is this a dreadful thing.

Is this a terrible thing. Well it is in one sense dreadful but it is at the same time. Wonderful.

You see when you are I have a guilty conscience because we know where in the wrong. Having offended against God and defended against one another.

All of the external influences upon us will tend to say cover it up smooth it over. Just don't address it because it is too ugly to face. It is too difficult to pursue is too demanding to climb down from where we are and yet what the Bible says is that the benefits far outweigh the costs.

That's why David, upon reflection, is able to say no when I was overwhelmed by these things. When your hand was heavy upon than in actual fact, it tended to my good you see the Bible constantly ask questions which we just don't ask and ask. For example, in 476. A cartilage of question and it is this who can stand in the presence of the Lord.

This holy God and state their case, this question Ashley comes in for Samuel 7:06. The individuals are pulled the nose into something that had nothing to do with them at all and they all die and the people observing it looked at it and said God is that kind of God who then can stand before this holy God, which advises able just to go in and stand before God a thing about Moses he takes his shoes off his feet in the presence of the burning bush.

A symbol of the eternal God because he realizes that the ground in which he stands is holy ground. Clearly this is not a reference to some cosmic principle or to some personal creation whereby God G OD spells whatever we wanted to spell.

This is something very different.

I wonder you may never even ask yourself the question, I wonder who can stand before this holy God. Psalms 7 is not the most politically correct son in the Bible even joked about it earlier on the sinuses. My shield is God most high, saves the upright in heart that's fine is that on a T-shirt or I dictate got on a little card putting your talk, talk, and bring it out to people tomorrow morning and it is a worthy statement of the truth of God and what about verse 11.

God is a righteous judge God who expresses his righteous indignation or his wrath every day, but I'm pretty sure I will have for little card to slip your waitress at the end of the meal with a decent to God is a righteous judge of God and expresses his Roth every day he is yes to neither the King James version translates it, perhaps even more accurately than the dynamic equivalence of the NIV. God is angry with the wicked every day. If you are wicked. God is angry with you every day every day so I never heard that before. It's in the Bible you need to read you see the tumor introduced in the Bible is not a figment of our imagination in our creation of our own design and desire a kind of you know, tailor-made guard to fit the 21st century to fit the pluralistic perceptions of our culture to allowed us to absorb an end and that application every notion that presents itself. No, God stands above and outside of all of that calling men and women to account and he is the God who, in his mercy and his goodness, lays his heavy hand upon the neck of David and wonderfully so because David was in a mess. David was an adulterer. David was a sinner. David was a liar. David was a denier.

David was at least nine months into his deceit and when he looked at Santa himself in the mirror. He said I am finished I am wasting my bones clinging to me.

My skin clings to my bones.

I'm like an owl in the ruins I like a desert out all my friends disabuse me I am fevered in the day. I'm an insomniac in the Knights why because God's hand of heaviness rested on see what we seek to disallow in seeking somehow or another to make more palatable to our friends this amazing story of forgiveness is actually what robs our sensible friends from being able to put together the story were trying to tell unless we have a dilemma, then the story of what Jesus has done makes no sense. It is because God's hand rests in heaviness on the psalmist that he needs to acknowledge his sin until it dead. What was he doing lying about covering it up justifying saying he's dead now he'll never be back that that guy me to worry about him anymore just bats even me and the baby. No absolutely no note, can I step out of the sun for just a moment what would you think with me and see whether there is logic and in what I'm saying is this statement here. For example in Psalms 7 about the righteous indignation of God is impossible for us to say.

Oh well, you know that's the Old Testament stuff. We understand that, but that's how God was in the Old Testament when we get out of that Malachi business and get into the New Testament. Then of course we get free from all of the rafters on our Bibles. We did this last week. Then we would talk about cumulative truth. We said how is it that David could acknowledge such forgiveness, and so on.

After all, Jesus had never come. We talked about the nature of cumulative truth, the whole idea. Forgiveness of the scapegoat and so on, finding its fulfillment in Jesus, but nevertheless is an historic insignificant in its time. While in the same way if we push forward what we find we find the apostles stepping out onto the streets of Jerusalem and Athens and so on and proclaiming a completely different message. For example saying I know some of you may have read the Old Testament, but of course that was the Old Testament. Let me tell you what the story is in the new foolishness. Some people that's exactly what they suggest us because they don't know the Bible I just think Paul would issues Paul give you an illustration from Paul and then close with Luther, Paul, ghost parlors, the intelligentsia and Athens right and he's very gracious and wise in his introduction, I can see you're a very religious group of people. I looked around your place. I been listening to some of your points and there's a direct correlation between a lot of their searching and a lot of what I have to tell you I'm surprised you have shrine here or a statue here to the unknown God. I guess you just covering your bases in case you've missed someone and he says I like to start this from there and tell you that this God that you don't know, I know, and I he's the creator of the ends of the earth the sovereign over geography and history and I he established all the nations of man. He put them where he wanted them is the Lord of language and so on. Then what is he do, he gets to the point where he says and he has set a day is Saturday all the people said Saturday for what he said he has set a date for judgment since he is the creator and since we are his creation, and since he is told us how he wants his creation to be, and since we are not as he asked us to be were all moving towards our final examination is given out the papers. Everyone will complete the test and everyone will go under the scrutiny of his case. He has set a day when he will judge the world by the man he has appointed, namely Jesus asked chapter 10 reference to that, and he is given proof of this, by the resurrection of Jesus from the dead response. Some people said we are out of here. Another group said quite good. Maybe we can listen again in a small group believed and became followers of Jesus and actually followers of Paul. What was he doing essentially doing what is in concurrence with Psalm 32 happiness is our great quest happiness is to know God are great dilemma is sin, and God has established a mechanism for dealing with this you say what I was in a big crowd. I'm sure he wasn't like that when he was one-on-one with people really don't set yourselves up now asked chapter 24 is in custody with Felix and Priscilla Felix and Drusilla have a night off from Monopoly or Scrabble or whatever it is that they're usually doing and they said to one another what you want to do and Drusilla. So why do we get Saul up here and that I haven't have them do a talk for us so they bring them in and remember what is talk once said, I have three points I want to talk to about tonight.

Thanks for inviting me up. I want to talk about righteousness and self-control and the judgment to come. What they were sitting in an adulterous relationship Felix by the mechanisms of a Cypriot magician had stolen away his his brother's wife and was now sleeping with her when he doing Paul sure this is the sermon you want to preach right now. Why would you preach a sermon, righteousness, self-control, the wrong righteous than the right of control. Yeah, and there's a coming judgment why you doing that so that if there is any tenderness left in their conscience.

They may cry out to God for forgiveness so that perhaps by the words that I speak their conscience may be wound and as a result brought to wholeness. You see, it was in the area of conscience and will finish here for now. But it was in the areas of conscience that that Luther was tyrannized wasn't. If you know anything of history. You know how zealous Luther wise how good a fellow he was. How committed he was to the very notions of doing the right thing before God and how paralyzed he was by his inability to do so and when he finally puts it all together. He realizes number one, the law that I'm trying to keep cannot put me in a right standing before God by doing this stuff I can't make myself acceptable to God, he discovered that not just in the thin air actually discover that by reading his Bible. He never really seen it when he read it.

No one will be declared righteous in God's sight by observing the law rather through the law we become conscious of sin.

I get many who come routinely to Parkside are still operating on the basis of the law, God's law, your own will and you are still trying to patch up your resume, you're still convinced that although the Bible says what it says I know you've heard this 100 times, you still are going to manage this one because you really are unlike the people around you and the people in your office and the people around you really got a pretty good citizen if you live a thousand lifetimes. You could never make yourself acceptable to God. When Luther got that.

He then understood that the perfection of God demanded that his holiness deal with our disobedience that God is offended and insulted and made angry by our human disobedience. That's what really messed them up here he is saying his prayers, doing his parents going through the routine. Then he realizes this doesn't work. This will work. Then he realizes this holy God, before whom I cannot stand my steel with disobedience. Then he said, unless this holy God has on account of his own mercy and grace made a way for people in the condition of myself to be brought into our relationship with, then there's no hope at all. And then he went back to reading his Bible again. And suddenly, as happens in people's lives something that he had read 100 times before came alive but now but now a righteousness from God, not for God from God, apart from laws be made known to which the law and the prophets testify, and then he goes on in reason he says this righteousness comes from God through Jesus Christ to all who believe strongly believe not to all who do but to all who believe. He'd been doing like a crazy man. He wasn't resting and what God had provided. Later on he wrote these amazing words with this.

I close it is the sweetest mercy of God that it is not imaginary sinners. He saves, but real centers. He doesn't save imaginary sinners, we escape says Luther, his condemnation because of his mercy, not because of our righteousness. Grace is given to heal the sick, not to decorate spiritual heroes. Grace is given to heal the sake not to decorate spiritual heroes.

It is given to those who say your hand is heavy upon I am a disaster and I am broken and I am wasted, the ever said that to God. I'm not asking to have somebody sign you up for purpose in your life or when you decided that a little religion would be a help to you.

After all, to add it to your resume might be nice or whether you thought it would be a nice idea. Just as an insurance policy. Somehow or another to include Jesus in the trunk of your existence, not I'm asking you what the Bible asks you. Have you ever laying down before God and said God I am a dead woman without you I am a dead man lost without you, unless you come and do for me what I cannot do for myself that I remain absolutely hopeless and absolutely helpless.

I'm not going to do that to do that. I am working as hard as I worked and brought up my family and did what I did to go where I don't what you want me to do this but I am not going to do that or please God, he will put his heavy hand on you one more time and not the heaviness that snuffs you into eternity and to your final examination for which this morning again you Herod. There is necessarily an which apparently you have determined you of all people can do without the heavy hand of God is meant to rescue us not to crush us your listing to a message titled my hiding place.

This is Truth for Life with Alistair Begg and we hope you'll keep listening. Alister's can be right back in just a minute to close with prayer.

Today's message is a part of a series called encore 2021 were presenting some of Alister's most popular messages from the past year or so in the midst of a worldwide pandemic and times of chaos God and his word have remained steadfast and true and were reminded that even when our circumstances feel out of control. God is still in control.

This is a theme you will pick up as you listen to many of the messages included in encore 2021.

If you been encouraged by the messages you're hearing this month. You may be interested in owning a collection of some of Alister's most requested teaching from the past 10 years, the collection is called 10 years of favorites. It includes 123 messages on a variety of topics from many different books of the Bible. 10 years of favorites comes on a USB drive and it's available for purchase today for only five dollars in our online store. Visit us the Truth for Life.org/store now before we wrap up we have a book offer.

We want you to know about. It's on the subject that you may have thought about once or twice heaven book is titled heaven on earth. What the Bible teaches about life to come. The author is Gary Thomas in the book is the result of his search through the Scriptures to answer some of the questions. All of us have about what happens to us when we die.

While we can't know everything I think will be surprised at how much the Bible actually tells us about eternity. This is a book you can find remarkably insightful because it uses some of the uncertainty we have about life after death. If you're a follower of Jesus heaven on earth will provide you with much comfort in the joyful sense of hope request your copy when you donate today. Simply tap the image on the mobile app or visit our website@truthforlife.org/donate now, here's Alister with the closing prayer father your word wings as you take your ball is aware, and you fire the arrows into our hearts were harmed by an order that we might be healed by the provisions of your grace.

We look at told David there sick and wounded and disappointed enough flat out disgrace to himself and all of his friends and loved ones when I kept silent when I covered up when I hit then I was wasted.

But then I acknowledged my sin. I confessed my transgressions. What a wonderful change in our life's is then worked.

Please Lord bring us to the place by whatever means that we might cry out to you for your mercy and for your grace, then will sing your songs in a strange land then will be surrounded by these songs of deliverance, then will know that you are hiding place, but will never hiding you as long as were trying to hide from you. Bring us out into the open know God.

We pray and welcome us in the embrace of your son, and may your grace and your mercy and your peace be the portion of all who believe. Now and forevermore about the pain never celebrated Christmas in August tomorrow to find out how the Christmas story is about more than a baby in a manger is our encore series continues with one of our most popular messages from last year Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life with Learning is for Living