Today's Word Radio

Brett Meador: Because of God's grace and forgiveness, we have the absolute hope of heaven. Do you understand how huge that is? We can know that we're going to heaven by the grace of God if we repent of our sin and accept the work of the cross and are forgiven. It's not just a hope in heaven. It's we can rely on heaven as an absolute expectation, which is so glorious.

Guest (Male): Pastor Brett Meador reflecting on the joy of our salvation.

Brett Meador: We have the absolute hope of heaven. What a great and glorious truth.

Guest (Male): David in Psalm 32 points us to the only place where the guilt of sin is truly removed. As Pastor Brett Meador opens today's word, we'll discover the blessing of being justified before the Lord and the freedom that comes through his amazing grace. Revealed in our continuing study series of the Book of Acts, we'll find it's God's forgiveness that assures the hope of heaven.

Brett Meador: I love the Bible that it doesn't have just pristine stained glass Bible characters that are all perfect. The Bible calls David a man after God's own heart. Wow, you must have been really righteous to be called that. Yes, but how did David become righteous to be called a man after God's own heart? Forgiveness.

In Psalm chapter 32, David had several sins, of course, recorded in the Bible, but one of the biggest ones was, if you remember, adultery and murder. So David, during the time of war when the men were off at war, but for some reason this time David stayed home. So all the men are gone and he's just there chilling on his rooftop. And so David looked down there and he saw of the houses and he saw this woman taking a bath. Ironically, her name Bathsheba.

And it's there in Psalm 32 what we have is David's what's going on in his mind and his heart when this whole story goes down. David's looking at this woman, he lusts after her, sends a servant to bring her to his house, they sleep together, and then they have she gets pregnant. Her husband Uriah the Hittite, he's off fighting the battles, and now she's pregnant. So David gets into cover-up mode where he says, "Okay, we got to fix this." And so he says, "Okay, bring Uriah, let him come home for leave." And then he'll sleep with his wife tonight and then when she gets pregnant, we'll be able to cover it up.

So they bring Uriah, but Uriah does something that's kind of interesting. Instead of going into his house and giving his wife a kiss on the cheek and having a night of romance and reunion, he sleeps on the front porch and doesn't even go into his house. And David's saying, "Oh man, now there's no way we could sort of pass it off like he got her pregnant." So he sends Uriah back with a letter to Joab, the commanding officer of the Israeli army and it basically says this: "Put Uriah at the very front line of the battle and then give the charge to retreat, but just don't tell Uriah." And Uriah dies in battle, which is murder. David murdered Uriah by that action.

Mission accomplished. And what's really sad is before Uriah's even cold, David marries Bathsheba. But remember Numbers 32:23: "Be sure your sin will find you out." Not God, God finds you out. He already knows long before you even did it. But your sin will catch up to you and David's going to have to learn this.

So Nathan the prophet shows up at his house and says, "David, I got to talk to you." "Sure, whatever, talk to me." And Nathan says, "You know, there's a little family in Israel here, they've just got this one little lamb. The neighbor's got flocks and herds and all kinds of wealth, but this one family, poor, they have one little lamb. Well, the rich guy had a dude over to his house for dinner. And instead of going from his own flock, he snuck over to the neighbor's with the little sweet little lamb, slit its throat and cooked it up and gave his guest lamb chops from the poor family." Now you got to remember David's a shepherd originally. He has a heart for the sheep.

And so David hears this story, in fury he rages and says, "That man should surely die!" And then Nathan says to David, "You're that man." And David knew what he was talking about, that he took the wife of a poor little guy who's out fighting battles and David says to Nathan the prophet, "I have sinned against the Lord." He's not weeping, he's not sobbing. Was that real repentance? The answer is yes, and the reason we know is because Nathan says on the Lord's behalf, "Then your sin is forgiven."

One thing you should know, though, when you think, "Oh good, I'm so glad God forgives sin." He does, and he forgets our sin. But there is something on our side that you need to remember. There's often repercussions of our sin. David would live a brutal life from this point on. He'd end up losing the baby. They'd end up with a military coup from his son. Like David will die kind of a miserable little old man, which is really sad. He should have died a glorious King of Israel, but his sin caught up to him.

All that to say, you say Brett, why are we here in Psalm 32? Well, here's why. Because David tells us what went on in his brain at that time. And you're going to recognize this, I bet some of you. He starts out in Psalm 32:1, "Blessed," King James word for happy, "Happy or blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered." And the idea of if you try to cover up your sins, it's going to be revealed. God's going to reveal it. Be sure your sin will find you out.

But if you confess your sins to the Lord, you can be sure the Lord will cover your sins. And in the New Testament sense, it means cover and do away with completely, which is wonderful. So David's saying, "Man, you're going to be happy if your sins are forgiven and if your transgressions are covered." Blessed, verse two, is the man whom the Lord imputeth—that's a fancy word for sort of counting against or counting for or against—the Lord imputeth not iniquity and in whose spirit there is no guile.

Again, King James word guile is deceit, deception. So David's now he moves from you're happy for sins are forgiven and covered. The second thing is you're happy also if the Lord doesn't hold your sin against you, imputing not iniquity, but also when you give up on trying to trick everybody and cover it up, the deceit that is often linked to sin. Are you a person who's covering up your sin, hoping nobody finds out about your deepest, darkest secret? Can I just tell you, you're going to recognize the misery that goes along with that in David's because David tried to cover it up for a long time.

He thought he got away with it. Man, I got Uriah killed as if he was in battle and I married the wife and nobody's the wiser. We're all good to go. Mission accomplished. But David's going to show here that even though he got away with it, it seemed, he was miserable. Let's keep reading verse three. He said, "When I kept silence," that is covering it up, "my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long." And that sounds miserable. He's basically saying I covered it up, but I was miserable. My bones felt older, like health issues is kind of what he's talking about.

David's living in sin. If he would confess his sin and give it to the Lord, the Lord would lift that, but it's taking a toll on his physical body. Is it possible that sin can actually affect you physically? Well, the Bible says yes. Physical atrophy or sickness can be some of the side effects of sin. I'll show you more of that in a second. But David's saying, man, my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long when I was trying to stay silent. Verse four, "For day and night thy hand," speaking of the Lord, "was heavy on me. My moisture is turned into the drought of summer."

And then he says this interesting word, Selah. What does the word Selah mean? It means pause, stop, and think about what David just said. That's the poetic sort of tool. And so we're supposed to say what is he saying? Man, he said blessed, happy is when your sins are forgiven and the Lord's dealt with it, but when you try to cover it up, you're going to be unhealthy. You're going to think you got away with it, but you're miserable.

And then the Lord's hand—Brett, I thought the Lord was loving, why would he put a heavy hand on poor David? Well, the heavy hand of the Lord is because he loves you. It'd be like if after church you take your family, you're headed out to your car, but your little three-year-old darts to the road out here and there's cars zinging by. And so one of the Athey Creekers run at a really quick pace and barely reach your child right before the child's jumping in front of the car. And the car's whizzing and the child's and they with a heavy hand grab the shoulder of your child and with great force jerk them away from the road, just missing your child by a hair.

Would you say, "Hey, don't be so rough on my kid. Don't use a heavy hand." Now if you're in New York, that probably would happen. People would say that. But here as a parent, you'd be glad that your child was saved, even if it was a heavy hand that rescued and pulled out of the traffic. That's sort of the Lord. The Lord whom he loves he what? Chastens. Hebrews tells us that. Which is chasten is a fancy word for like spanks. There's a heavy hand. David said, "Oh, the hand of the Lord was heavy on me while I was trying to remain silent and not coming clean."

And normally when I felt healthy and moisture in my body, he said, "I've I'm dry. I'm going through a dry drought spiritually, soul-ically." Have you ever found yourself in spiritual dryness and you're wondering, "Oh, does God even exist? I don't even feel that I know God or God's nowhere near." You could sit there and say, "Well, what's wrong with God?" You might want to ask, "Is there sin that I've got unconfessed in my life that I've been covering up?" It's no wonder that your sin has separated you from God because that's what the Bible says is going to happen. Like David said, "Oh search my heart, see if there be any wicked way in me."

But you know here in Psalm 32, verse five, he says, "I acknowledged my sin unto thee." This is the good part. Finally, he says, "I acknowledged my sin unto thee and mine iniquity have I not hid. I said I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord and thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin. Selah." Again, pause and ponder. What are we supposed to pause and ponder? That David's saying all you got to do is acknowledge your sin before God and confess your sin and he, the Lord is faithful, here he says, "Thou the Lord forgavest the iniquity of my sin." Stop and think about that.

So David went through a season trying to cover it up and he was miserable. And then finally when he acknowledges his sin before God, what a beautiful thing. The Lord forgives him. And then David kind of goes into this sort of heady, beautiful worship in verse six. He says in verse six, "For this shall everyone that is godly pray unto thee in a time when thou mayest be found. Surely in the floods of great waters they shall not come nigh unto him. Thou," the Lord, "thou art my hiding place. Thou shalt preserve me from trouble. Thou shalt compass me about with songs of deliverance. Selah."

The Lord delivered David from the heavy hand and the drought and the just his aching bones. The Lord says, "I've forgiven you." And so he goes with a spring in his step, with joy in his heart, and a song of deliverance he writes. This is what he's talking about. By the way, don't you love the only time you see God in the Bible in a hurry, pictured as being in a hurry is to forgive sin. It's the only time. God's just sitting upon the throne, no urgency, he's got it all in control. But the only time you see—the greatest picture of that is God's pictured by the Father in the Prodigal Son story.

You and I are like the prodigal. We go off in the pig slop and sin, but when we decide to repent and when we come back and acknowledge our sin to the Father, what do we see the Father do? He sees the son coming from afar off and he runs. The Father runs out and gives the guy a kiss and forgives him. Like this is the God that we serve, that's a picture of God. He's in a hurry when it comes to forgiving sinners like you and like me.

Now this is one of the things I think that we don't fully appreciate, especially if you're an old-timer Christian. "Oh yeah, yeah the Lord forgives my sins, that's really great, I'm really happy about that." But oh, we got to peel back the calluses and say, "Give us sensitivity and restore unto me the joy of thy salvation." Like we need that from time to time. And I hope to do that. Why should you be rejoicing at the forgiveness of sin? Back to our text here in Acts because you know the ultimate thing here is through Jesus Christ you have forgiveness of sin and all of the things you've ever done, you'll be justified from all those things.

This is because of Jesus and his forgiveness and it comes from the work of the cross. The perfect one, Jesus, died on the cross for your sins, paid your penalty. It's not God just winking at you and saying, "Okay, I'm going to erase your sins, I'm just in a good mood today." No, God says, "I'm going to forgive your sins because my son Jesus died on the cross." So if you think about it, you and I should be deliriously joyful about the idea of forgiveness. But I think often we're not. Well, Brett, why should we be deliriously joyful? Well, let me give you four reasons.

Number one, forgiveness offers peace of conscience. Like when David had the heavy hand and he felt the conviction of his own sin, that's not a fun place to live. And if you have unconfessed sin in your life, not only will you feel guilty, but Satan will be whispering in your ear. What is he called? The accuser and he accuses you day and night. I've been around churches for a long time. I've been around tens of thousands of Christians my whole life. One of the things I see is that Satan is really good at making people feel this guilty conscience. That's his specialty.

And there's no better place to do that than with other Christians, the church. How does he do that? You come in and think, "Oh, look at all these Christians, they're all so goody two-shoes." And then you think, "I think they're all judgmental. I'm not going to go to this church because I think these people are judgmental." But what you're actually feeling is condemnation from Satan. You know you're a sinner and you're coming in here and saying, "Oh look at all these goody two-shoes Christians," but you know there's unconfessed, undealt-with sin in your life and so you try to superimpose that on everybody else.

That's what happens. That's just the human nature kind of thing. You probably know people like this, hopefully you're not one of them. But it's funny when you're guilty, you go around and you feel guilty all the time. Have you ever had a thing like on your car that you knew was illegal? Like for example your tags were expired and you're driving around with your tags expired and you're like feeling just kind of and you think about it once in a while, "Oh man, I hope there's no police officers around here." And if you see a policeman, you turn down another road. It's like, "Hopefully he doesn't see my tags are expired."

Are you the Christian that walks around, "Oh I know I'm doing something wrong and I know I'm sinning" and you got this sort of guilt thing? And man, Satan's going to use that till the cows come home. He's going to try to make you feel guilty, he's going to make you feel like you're being judged by other Christians and that everybody's snooty, but that's not what's happening. You need to be learning from David. You can have the peace of conscience. He said, "Oh, when I finally acknowledged my sin before God and broke off the sin, then I had just this morning that I had turned into dancing," one of the Psalms said.

Like what an amazing thing. So when you're a Christian walking around with unconfessed, undealt-with sin, it's misery. You're and you're even separated from God. We'll get to that in a second. That's one of the huge benefits of becoming a Christian is just to have the forgiveness of sin that God tells about over and over in his word. So forgiveness offers, number one, peace of conscience.

But number two, forgiveness offers access to God. For if you have unconfessed, undealt-with sin in your life, what does the Bible say? Isaiah chapter 59, verse two, "But your iniquities," that's another word for sin, "have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you that he will not hear." He won't even hear your prayers. So even as a Christian, I think if you're not careful, you can just have unconfessed sin and it's like you saying, "Lord, I really don't want you in my life. I want you to stay away. I'm going to do my sinful things."

And man, we have this merciful, kindhearted God. He said, "If you want to do that, I guess you can, but man, be sure of this, your sin's going to find you out." And the way of the transgressor is hard. We forget that part. "And why is my life so hard?" The Lord's saying, "Man, I want to be with you. I want to have a relationship with you, but your sin separates you from your God." Hebrews chapter 10, verse 17 says, "And their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more. Now where remission of these is," when there's forgiveness of sin, "there is no more offering for sin."

In other words, there's no more need for bulls, rams, and goats like in the Old Testament. Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest. How do we enter into the presence of God? By the blood of Jesus and by a new and living way, which he hath consecrated for us through the veil, that is to say his flesh. That's why when we take communion, when you break the bread and you eat the bread, it's sort of a reminder of that veil that covered the Holy of Holies, which was God's presence.

But because Jesus died on the cross, he gave us access to the presence of God through the work of the cross and through his forgiving. So through his flesh, verse 21, having a high priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart, not a heart full of guile. Remember that word? David was trying to draw near with sin, unconfessed. He was playing games with God. And so the Hebrew author here rightly says, "When you draw near to the Lord, draw near with a true, open, repentant, confessing heart, having your heart sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water."

This is how we have a restored relationship with God. If you're a big huge sinner, which y'all are and so am I, man we need forgiveness of sin. And good news, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. And then we have access to the presence of God in such a beautiful way. That's what Hebrews chapter 10, verse 17 through 22 says. Even the idea of Jesus washing the disciples' feet, remember? It says Peter said unto him, "Thou shalt never wash my feet." But Jesus answered him, said, "If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me."

Sin separates us from Christ. Sin separates us even from the Father. And so when you become a Christian, you're accepting the work of the cross and the forgiveness that comes from that. When you're a Christian and you sin and you 1 John 1:9 confess your sin, he is faithful and just to forgive you and cleanse you from all unrighteousness. This is what we need desperately. So we have a need to confess and then we get to have a clear conscience. So we have, number one, forgiveness offers a peace of conscience. Forgiveness number two offers access to God.

And then number three, forgiveness offers this might seem like a no-brainer, but think about it for a second, no fear of hell. You and I should have the fear of hell. When I talk about hell, I have people say, "Brett are you trying to scare us?" and I say absolutely yes. Because hell is real. Read your Bibles. The Bible talks more about hell than it talks about heaven. And sadly there's whole churches and denominations that won't even talk about hell because they think it's controversial.

If you're not talking about what the Bible says about hell, you're dropping the ball. Jesus even talked about hell a lot. It's something that people should know about because guess what? Everybody's—that's the natural way gravity flows. Everybody goes to hell unless they repent of their sin and accept the work of Jesus. Then, man, well that gives us the next point, the fourth point, forgiveness offers not only the taking away the possibility of hell, no fear of hell, but forgiveness offers expectation of heaven.

And I'm going to say absolute expectation because it's not based on you measuring up. It's not based on you being good enough. You going to heaven is based on his grace. You're saved by grace through faith, not of yourselves, it's a gift from God. Do you understand how huge that is? We can know that we're going to heaven by the grace of God if we repent of our sin and accept the work of the cross and are forgiven.

It's not just a hope in heaven. It's that we know we can rely on heaven as an absolute expectation, which is so glorious. And because of God's grace and forgiveness of our sin, because of forgiveness, we have the absolute hope of heaven. What a great and glorious truth. If you've been a long-time Christian, can I just ask you like the scripture say, "Oh Lord restore unto me the joy of thy salvation." I think we all need to remember what a glorious—just the simple word forgiveness. I hope you kind of have a refreshed, "Oh I'm so thankful for that."

You know you can walk out of this building no matter how bad you've been, no matter what you've done, and you can walk out knowing that I'm forgiven. The Lord not only forgives me, but he justified me, just as if I'd never sinned at all. There's nothing in the world that's as good as that. That's the best thing you'll ever know if you ever do know it. And the way you know it is you have to become a Christian. Even Christians though sometimes I think we start playing with sin and dabble with sin and we're saved, we're forgiven positionally in Christ, but you're wondering why your life's miserable.

Why you're depressed, why you're feeling the heavy hand of the Lord like David on your soul? It's because there's unconfessed, undealt-with sin. So man, the worst-case scenario though is if you've never felt the forgiveness of sin or known what it is the mathematics of it. It's not even a feeling as much I would say as it's just the math of God. If you confess your sin and repent of your sin like David acknowledging your sin before God and saying, "Lord forgive me," God will forgive you. And it's the most glorious thing of all. If you're not a Christian, can I just say, please consider this because you may not even know what you're missing until you're really saved and forgiven.

Guest (Male): Pastor Brett Meador concluding our study of Acts 13, noting four important blessings associated with the forgiveness of sin bringing joy to the heart of those receiving God's gracious gift of salvation. And I hope you'll stay right there as Pastor Brett will join me here in a moment. Today's Word Radio is the radio ministry of Athey Creek Church in the Portland, Oregon area where Pastor Brett Meador is the senior pastor. We invite you to find out more by going to todayswordradio.com. If you've missed any portion of this study, you'll find all of Pastor Brett's messages online at todayswordradio.com.

Well, I have Pastor Brett here. You know, we've been looking in the Book of Acts, which features a lot of the biblical model for the church. And I would imagine that there is at least one person that might be looking for a good church to attend where they live. Brett, what kind of church is important to look for?

Brett Meador: Well, Kurt, I'm really glad you asked that question and it's an important question. The first thing I'd say if you're looking for a church is that it actually teaches the Bible. Now I'm a big fan of verse by verse, chapter by chapter. There's a lot of good churches that don't necessarily go verse by verse, but I would say make sure they open up the Bible, that they're actually walking through good sections of scripture, not just tacking on a verse here or there.

When you read the story of the early church in the Book of Acts, in Acts 2:42, it says they continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine. And I think that should be the model that you look for, that the word of God needs to be central. Apostles' doctrine is just the teaching of the word. Second, I'd look for a church that keeps Jesus right at the center. It shouldn't be centered on a pastor or even the programs or the outreach. Those are all good things, the outreaches and stuff, but it really needs to be Jesus centered, I think.

And then also looking at the health of the church body. 1 Corinthians 13, Paul reminds us that even if we have the gifts of knowledge and word of prophecy, but if we don't have love, we've got nothing. So you want to see love in a church body. And then finally, I'd look for a church with a good humble leadership that's accountable, servant-hearted, leaders who are teachable but also who handle the word faithfully. And I think if you just pray and ask the Lord to lead you to that church and give you wisdom. Now it's been said if you find the perfect church, don't join it, you'll ruin it. And that's true, so you won't find the perfect church, but I would say generally those things and you'll be in good shape.

Guest (Male): That's such great advice. Thank you, Pastor Brett. And if you happen to be in the Portland, Oregon area, we'd like to invite you to the main Athey Creek campus in West Linn or our two other locations in Hillsboro and McMinnville, Oregon. Just go to todayswordradio.com and click on the link "Locations". Again, todayswordradio.com and click the link "Locations".

Well, next time Pastor Brett will explore Paul's first missionary journey as he and the early church leaders followed the leading of the Holy Spirit. Today's Word with Pastor Brett Meador is an outreach of Athey Creek Church in West Linn, Oregon.