(Disclaimer: This transcript is auto-generated and may contain mistakes.)

Amen. Psalm 51 is one of the most famous psalms of all time. There have probably been more sermons preached out of Psalm 51 than almost any other psalm. You know, there's Psalm 1, Psalm 23, Psalm 51 is right up there with the big ones because of the fact that it's a psalm about repentance. It's a psalm about getting right with God after you've done something terrible. And people can relate to that because we've all gone through something in our lives where we let God down or we committed a sin, we did something wrong, we feel bad about it, we need to repent of that. And so this psalm resonates with a lot of people because it's about repentance. It says in verse number 1, have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy loving kindness, according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies, blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. And this is one of the great themes of the Bible is that God not only forgives us of our sins, but he'll actually blot out our iniquities. I mean, they're just gone. They're just erased. And some people have even used this as a way to remember what justified means. They said, just as if I'd never sinned. Just as if I'd never sinned, right, justified. And it's true that when God forgives us of our sins, he forgives and forgets. And that's a pretty amazing thing. You know, and especially if you've done something really bad, you know, you'd love that promise that God would actually forget about your sins. And the Bible tells us as far as the east is from the west, so far has God separated us from our sins. And this is not just a New Testament doctrine all throughout the in fact, the quote I just gave you is from the Old Testament. And I could give you lots of quotes from the Old Testament where he says that he's cast all their sins behind his back and their sins and iniquities will I remember no more. Over and over again, God's forgiveness is in both Old and New Testament. And it's one of God's most glorious attributes. If we're going to be Christlike, then we need to practice forgiveness in our lives as well. If you're going to be like Jesus Christ, if you're going to follow in his footsteps, then you must be a forgiving person. And forgiveness is also forgetting. All right. So, you know, forgiveness isn't, well, I forgive you, but I'm going to keep bringing it up and hang it over your head and it's always going to be in my mind. You know, true forgiveness literally forgets about it. And that's what God's saying. He, I mean, he will blot out our transgressions and iniquities. God said his, their sins and iniquities will I remember no more. Okay. So the Bible here is recording David as he cries out to God. And he's talking about his blood guiltiness because he's, of course, committed murder. He's committed adultery. I mean, those are major sins. Hopefully we will never commit anything of that magnitude. But God gives us that extreme example. That way, even if we do something big like that, we have an example of God forgiving even that magnitude of sin, even murder, even adultery. You know, God forbid that we would actually murder someone or commit adultery. But you know what? Even if we do, David is here as an example that even the big sins can be forgiven by God because Jesus Christ didn't die on the cross just for the little sins. He died on the cross for all of our sins. And so he died on the cross for every person and for every sin that they've committed and whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely. So when it comes to forgiveness from God, we have to realize that there are kind of two aspects to this. When you get saved, you have forgiveness of your sins in the sense that you're not going to go to hell. You know, you're forgiven, the penalty is gone, and now you're on your way to heaven. Okay. So in that sense, the moment that I believed on Jesus Christ as my savior, all my sins were forgiven past, present, and future because Jesus died on the cross for me before I was even born. So everything was future when he died on the cross for me. So he already died on the cross for sins that I'm going to commit months from now, if I'm still alive months from now. And he died for everything. So in that sense, I don't have to keep getting forgiveness from God over and over again with respect to my salvation. With respect to my salvation, this is a done deal where I'm saved. And as far as God the Father is concerned, you know, God the Father, he just looks at me through that lens of the blood of Christ, and that's just a covering for my sin. And so I have a path into heaven, I'm saved, secure, all my sins are gone. So in that sense, my sins are already totally forgiven. So when we talk about a Christian's sins being forgiven on an ongoing basis, that's talking about the relationship between us and God. It's not talking about our standing in regard to salvation, it's talking about the relationship. So it's sort of like this, my children will always be my children, even if they disobey me. And let's say I punish them or rebuke them, and let's say they're totally unrepentant. And we've had this happen before, where you discipline a child, and they just don't show any remorse. And they just still think that they're right. And they're just stubborn about it. But here's the thing, it's like, well, I guess you're not my son anymore. You're no longer my daughter, because you just won't admit that what you've done is wrong here. No, obviously, that's still my child. And no matter what happens, my child will always be my child, because there's nothing that could remove the DNA from my child's body, where even if they said, you're not my dad, I'm still their dad. Even if I said, you're not my son, it's still my son. Nothing could change that. Okay, but here's the thing about that, though. Is there still a need for forgiveness sometimes, where I have to forgive my children? Sure. So it has nothing to do with remaining in the family, it just has to do with having a right relationship. Obviously, if my children are disobedient, and they never make things right, they never apologize, they never admit what they did wrong, they never receive correction, obviously, there's going to be a rift there. And there's going to be a broken relationship between a parent and a child. And then when the child comes and confesses what they've done, or apologizes, or makes things right, then the fellowship is going to be restored, the fellowship can be sweeter. And maybe you already had fellowship, but now the fellowship's better, because there isn't that separation there as a result of sin. Because the Bible talks about our sins separating us from God. And obviously, if there's strife between me and my wife, that could cause distance in our relationship, or strife between me and my children could create distance. And then when we clear the air, and make those things right, and say we're sorry, and fix things, or repent, and do it right, then the relationship's restored. And that's what we're reading about in this chapter, David wants the relationship restored. He wants God to forgive him for what he's done, and that the relationship would be restored. He's already saved, he's going to heaven, but you know what, there's more to life than just going to heaven. You know, we also want to be blessed while we're on this earth. I mean, I don't know about you, I'm glad I'm going to heaven, but I don't want to just live a miserable life until I get there. I don't want to spend the next, because some people will say, well if you're saved by grace or faith, why even do the right thing? Why does it even matter, you're going to heaven no matter what. Because I don't want to go through the next few decades of my life just getting beat up on and disappointed by God, because I'm stubborn and stupid. You know, I'd rather live right, be blessed by God, enjoy the blessings, and when I get to heaven, I want to get rewards too. And Jesus said, behold I come quickly and my reward is with me to give every man according as his work shall be. And so yeah, obviously the main thing is just that we're going to heaven, period. Because you'd rather be the lowest in heaven than in the coolest spot of hell, okay. You know, the coldest little pocket you can find in hell is still pretty hot. So you'd rather be in heaven, period. But you know what, we might as well love the Lord, serve him, do something that matters with our life, and we want to keep that right relationship with God so that God can bless us, and because we love him. I mean look, if you love your spouse, you want things to be right. If you love your children, you want things to be right. If you love your parents, you want things to be right. It's not just a matter of I don't want to get disciplined, it's also a matter of I want to have that right relationship with the one that I love. And so that's what we see in this psalm. And if we read it in that way, it's easy to understand. He says, Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness, according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies, blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. For I acknowledge my transgression, and my sin is ever before me. Now look, this is key, because you can't move forward in a relationship if you don't acknowledge your transgression. You know what I mean? If you just sin and hurt people and do wrong, and then you won't admit what you've done and you say, well, no, no, I didn't lie, or I didn't do that, I didn't hurt you, you know, it's hard to move forward. The best way to get forgiveness and mercy and to be cleansed of sin is to admit it. You just admit it. And that's why the Bible says if we confess our sins, he's faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. God wants us to confess our sins. He wants us to get on our knees and say, God, I sinned. I did it wrong. I made a mistake. And you know what? It's a good character trait to have to be able to do that on this earth with other people too, and to be able to confess your faults one to another. And it's an epidemic, and I'm not talking about coronavirus, there is an epidemic today of people refusing to admit that they're wrong. In all areas of life. I don't care what the, I'm not even just talking about biblically. I'm talking about just people will not admit that they're wrong. And it's just, it's unbelievable. You could literally just point someone's facts right in their face and there's like, nope. It's bizarre. It's, and look, I've seen it in all areas of life. Not just in church, even at work, even in the secular world. We have a generation today that just does not want to admit that they made a mistake or admit that they've done anything wrong. And you know, we need to be people who on the job or at church or in our families, if we're wrong about something, we need to just say, oh, I was wrong about that. I made a mistake. Sorry about that. Or oh, I shouldn't have done that. And you know what? Here's the thing. When you try to cover up what you've done, you end up doing more damage. And when you end up trying to explain to the boss how you didn't do anything wrong, you're going to make the boss more mad and you're like, well, I don't want the boss to think that I mess things up. But you know, the boss would rather that you took responsibility because it's one of the most irritating things in the world when people just will not admit what they've done. And it's just, it makes it hard to move forward in any relationship when someone won't admit what they've done. Okay. And here we see that David saying, look, wash me from my iniquity because I acknowledge my transgression. Four means because. So in verse three, he's saying because I acknowledge my transgression. So there's no reason not to forgive me, God. I'm not here trying to pretend I haven't done anything wrong. You know, the Bible says that if we confess and forsake our sins, we'll find mercy. And so if you want to move forward in your life with God, admit your sins to God. Compress them to God and look, we should not beat ourselves up for years and years about sins that we've done or even months and months. You know, here's what you do when you commit a sin. You go to God, you tell him you're sorry. You repent and you decide you're going to do it right going forward. And you know what? You just don't even need to think about it again. See once you've, once you've gone through this Psalm 51 process, move on, move on. Because you know what? God's faithful and just to forgive us our sins. So you're going to keep bringing it up to God. God's going to be like, I don't know what you're talking about. I already forgot about that. Remember you already confessed this and I already forgot about it. Why do you keep telling me about it? So he says, I acknowledge my transgression and my sin is ever before me. Now verse four is kind of an odd statement. He says against thee, thee only have I sinned and done this evil in thy sight that thou mightest be justified when thou speakest and be clear when thou judges. Now here's the thing. If you were to take that statement literally, that is not literally true. Because if it, you know, presumably, and that's what the little heading says there. This Psalm is about David, you know, after he had gone into Bathsheba and he has murdered Uriah the Hittite and he gets confronted by Nathan. That's the tradition surrounding this Psalm. That's probably what it's about. And so, you know, based on the context and everything. So here's the thing. If this Psalm is about the situation with Bathsheba and Uriah the Hittite, is it literally true that he only sinned against God and no one else? Well obviously if you want to get really literal about it, he sinned against Uriah. I mean he murdered Uriah. He sinned against Bathsheba because he committed adultery with her. I mean he put her in a weird situation and he murdered her husband. And so, and really he sinned against the whole nation because the whole nation ended up suffering because of David's actions. So why does he say this? Why does he say against thee, thee only have I sinned and done this evil in thy sight? What he's doing here, he's exaggerating, okay? And the Bible will sometimes do this. Because remember, this is David praying to God and what he's, he's just basically using a poetic device here to say to God that basically the thing that bothers him the most or the thing that hurts him the most or the biggest thing about what he did is that he sinned against God. He knows he hurt other people, but he hurt God and to him that is so much more painful to him than anything else that that's all he sees. I mean that's all that matters to him. And some people will get upset if I would get up and say something like that, that the Bible is exaggerating a little bit there or that the Bible is using hyperbole. You'll sometimes hear this called hyperbole, using kind of an extreme language. But you know what? We use this all the time. It's a figure of speech. And when you're reading poetic books in the Bible, you have to be careful not to take everything too literally, okay? Now obviously, many things in the Bible, lots of things in the Bible are literal. We don't want to go down the road where everything's figurative. Obviously most things in the Bible are literal, but when you're reading a poetic book and you see these kind of extreme statements that are obviously not literal, you have to use some common sense when you're reading the Bible. So here's a good rule of thumb. When you're reading the Bible, you should assume that things are literal unless it's obvious that they're not. And this is one of those situations where it's obviously not literal because to say that David had literally done no one wrong but God, that obviously defies common sense and defies the rest of the teachings of the Bible. And so we understand that when he's saying, against thee, thee only have I sinned, he's just saying that that's all he's thinking about. That's all that's on his mind. That's what's bothering him the most. It's sort of like when you're reading a Luke chapter 14 and it says that if you're going to be Jesus' disciple, you have to hate your father, hate your mother, hate your wife, hate your children. He's not actually saying, hey, just hate everybody in your life. If you took that literally, you get a weird interpretation. What he's actually saying there is that you love Christ so much that basically he's the only thing that matters and everything else seems like hate. It's basically just a poetic device or hyperbole, exaggeration. I mean, look, when the Bible talks about God rode on the back of a cherub and the mountains were smoking and the earth shook and everything. Some of that's literal but obviously when the Bible talks about the enemies of the Israelites being so scared that the ground was shaking because they were so scared that they were shaking and they were making the ground shake, some of that's obviously exaggerating. It's not that it isn't true, it's just that it's poetry. It's like if I say I'm dying of thirst. I'm not lying but am I literally dying? You lied, you said you were dying of thirst, you could have survived for three more days. You wouldn't have actually died for another 72 hours but wouldn't it be silly to take that literally if somebody said, hey, I'm dying of thirst? You know what they mean by that, it's just a figure of speech. You got to be careful not to take things like that too literally. Try to understand what is the author saying, what's he trying to get across? What's in his heart when he's crying out to God and saying, against thee, thee only have I sinned? He's just talking about that's what's on his mind. That's all that matters to him. He's just thinking about hurting God with what he's done. That's pretty interesting because if you think about it, we live in a day where the worst thing you could do is to hurt other people. In fact, we were just out soul winning and obviously it is terrible to hurt other people. We were out soul winning today and we talked to this lady and we asked her, do you know for sure if you died today, you'd go to heaven? And she said, oh yeah. And we said, you know, what do you, what do you believe you have to do to be saved? You know what? You just have to believe on Jesus. You just have to accept Jesus Christ as your savior. I mean, that sounds like a great answer. Amen. Just believe, just receive Christ as savior. Perfect answer. But then the fault, we asked the follow up question. Do you believe there's anything you'd ever do to lose yourself? Oh yeah, of course. I mean, if you, you know, and here's what she said. You know, if I went out and hurt somebody, if I hurt someone else, then I'm going to lose my salvation. You know, if I do anything to hurt other people, if I do anything to hurt someone else, but here's what's wrong with that. Number one, you just said it was all by believing in Christ. Now all of a sudden you got to live a good life and not hurt anybody. So that doesn't compute. Okay. But secondly, this shows the mentality of a lot of people. Well, as long as I'm not hurting anyone else, what I'm doing is fine. But what we don't understand is that every time we sin, we're also grieving the Holy Spirit. We're also hurting God. We're also grieving him and, and, and we are causing him pain. And that thought doesn't even enter people's mind. So they just, ah, it's my life. I'm not hurting anybody. But you know what? What about the fact that you sinned against God? You know, we need to get that concept back in our minds of sinning against God. You say, well, these sodomites, they're not hurting anybody. They're sinning against God. And by the way, they are hurting people. That's a whole nother sermon. They're super hurting people. But anyway, the point is though, even if you could make a case for some sin of, well, they're not hurting anybody. You know what? They're sinning against God. And that should be enough right there to where we don't want to do something. Hey, I don't want to sin against God. I mean, what did Joseph say to Potiphar's wife? Hey, he didn't want to sin against Potiphar, but he also didn't want to sin against God. And so, yeah, of course we don't want to hurt other people, but we need to also get this in our head. Don't sin against God either. We owe God everything. God loves us. He saved us and we owe him our obedience. And so this concept of sinning against God is lost today on a lot of people. Because this lady today, she could sin all day long and still think she's going to heaven, but as long as she doesn't hurt anybody else. Truth of the matter is the real reason she's not going to heaven is because she doesn't have all of her faith and trust in Christ. She's trusting in her own works that she has to be good to get to heaven. And she gave lip service to salvation by faith, but when the rubber meets the road, what's she actually trusting? The fact that she doesn't hurt anybody. You know, she's got to live a good life and because she's a good person, she's going to make it into heaven. But every time we sin, we're sinning against God. And we usually end up hurting more people than we think anyway. But the Bible says, against thee, thee only have I sinned and done this evil in thy sight, that thou mightest be justified when thou speakest and be clear when thou judge'st. Behold, I was shapen in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me. Now this is another interesting verse. I was shapen in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me. Now there's a couple ways to interpret this. I would say that what this means, I was shapen in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me, is the fact that we're all born with and created with a sin nature. We're all born and created with a sin nature. The Bible says, wherefore is by one man, Adam, sin entered into the world and death by sin, and so death passed upon all men for that all have sinned. So because of Adam's sin, we're all sinners. We all have a nature to sin, meaning that that's what comes naturally to us. We don't have to teach children to lie, we have to teach them to tell the truth. Naturally they'll lie. Naturally they'll do these things. But here's where this verse can be abused and this also goes back to what I said about people taking things hyper literally sometimes. Flip over to Psalm 58 and I'll show you another verse that people take hyper literally, overly literally and they end up with a false doctrine instead of understanding the fact that sometimes the Bible uses hyperbole or exaggeration just the way we do every single day in our lives. I mean every day we say these wild extreme things and people understand what we mean when we say, you know, oh man, you're going to wake the dead with that noise and I'm, you know, I'm so hungry I could eat a horse and all that, you know, we don't actually mean those things. Okay. That's just a way of communicating extreme feelings. But look what the Bible says in Psalm 58 verse three and some people literally take this verse, literally, uh, verse three, the wicked are estranged from the womb. They go astray as soon as they be born speaking lies. Now do you really think that a baby literally comes out of the womb and he's just like in the hospital, it's like, hey kid, you know, he's just lying, he's lying to the baby next to him or something. You know, so you know, that, that's ridiculous. Obviously that's not what the Bible is saying. The Bible here, it's a poem. You know, when you write poetry, you use these kind of poetic devices and you say these things and sometimes you might exaggerate or use hyperbole as a way of expressing the fact that these people are just rotten and they grew up rotten and whatever, but it's not like literally just right when they were born, but people will latch onto these couple of verses and they'll teach a doctrine called original sin. Now you might think, well, what's, I thought we all believe in original sin. No, we don't know. Original sin is a false doctrine and I don't care what people say, I've heard all the arguments for it. It's garbage and, and here's what it is. It's a justification for baptizing babies is what it is. The original sin doctrine. It originated with a theologian called Augustine, who is basically the favorite theologian of Catholics and Protestants alike. And this theologian, Augustine is the one who he, instead of just saying that we're born with a sin nature, instead of just saying that, well, because Adam sinned, he corrupted the human race and passes on that sinful nature to us. The original sin doctrine teaches that we are considered guilty of what Adam did and we are held accountable and punished for Adam's sin so that even a newborn baby is guilty before God, according to this original sin doctrine. So a brand new baby comes out of the womb. According to the original sin doctrine, that baby is already guilty of sin in the eyes of God. And the reason for this is it was created as a justification for baptizing babies. It's not a biblical doctrine. I'll prove it to you that it's not biblical. Let's look at the scripture. Go to Deuteronomy 24. You see, the true story is that a baby in its mother's womb has not sinned, is not sinning, cannot sin. Name one sin that a baby can commit in its mother's womb. Is it in there taking God's name in vain? Think about it. So you expect me to believe that a baby's in its mother's womb worshiping idols, lusting, lying, blasphemy, stealing. How could it steal? It's ridiculous. Even a newborn baby. I mean, do you think that my little baby, Eva, has been stealing, lying, just blaspheming God, committing adultery, committing murder, bearing false witness against her neighbor? Sin is the transgression of the law, okay? And a baby has not done any of those things. That's crazy. And not only that, it's unbiblical, okay? And I'll prove to you from the Bible that that's a wrong doctrine because the Bible says in Deuteronomy 24 verse 16, the fathers shall not be put to death for the children, neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers. Every man shall be put to death for his own sin. This is what the Bible teaches. The Bible teaches that we are only punished for our own sins. We're not punished for our parents' sins. Our children should not be punished for our sins. The person who sins gets punished. That's God's perfect law. Go to Ezekiel chapter 18, and there's even more clear scripture on this. Ezekiel chapter number 18. See a lot of people think when they hear original sin, they just think, oh yeah, Adam sinned. That was the original sin. And so, you know, death passed upon all men for that all sin. That's not what original sin teaches, folks. Original sin teaches that a newborn baby is guilty before God, even if it didn't do anything wrong because of what Adam did. That's why there are many Calvinists that will tell you that if a baby dies, it goes to hell. Now think about what a crazy doctrine that is. They think if a baby dies, now first of all, there's a lot of, I don't have time to go to all the scriptures. I've done it in many other sermons. All the scriptures that prove that babies go to heaven when they die, whether it's an aborted baby or whether it's a miscarriage or whether it's a one year old or a two year old, they go to heaven when they die, period. There's a lot of biblical evidence for that. That's a whole sermon of itself and I've preached it multiple times. But why would they believe that? Why would God send a baby to hell that doesn't even know what's going on? It doesn't even know its right hand from its left. It doesn't know right or wrong. It doesn't know good or evil. It's in a state of innocence. Why would God do that? Well, they say, well, yeah, because you know what? In Adam's fall, we sinned all. And they say, you know, it's all through Adam. You know, it's got to be punished for Adam's sin, folks. It's a false doctrine. Look at Ezekiel chapter 18 and let's see if that's what God believes. Verse 19, yet say ye, why doth not the son bear the iniquity of the father? I mean, don't we, don't we deserve to die just because of what Adam did? No. Well, doesn't the son bear the iniquity of the father? When the son had done that which is lawful and right and had kept all my statutes and had done them, he shall surely live. The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him. Isn't that a pretty clear scripture saying, look, no, the iniquity of the father is not resting on the child at all. So how can you teach this doctrine that supposedly we're all guilty because of Adam? No, you want to know why I'm guilty tonight? Because I sinned. And that's what the Bible actually says, okay? Go if you would to Romans chapter 5, Romans chapter 5. And while you're turning there, let me remind you that in Romans chapter 7, Paul said, I was alive without the law once. He said there was a time in his life, but then he said, then the commandment came and sin revived and I died. That's what the apostle Paul said. He said that without the law, he was alive once and then the commandment came, sin revived and he died. That's what he said. What did he mean by that? Because the fact that when he's a baby, when he's a toddler, when he's a little child who doesn't know the difference between good and evil, he was not dead spiritually. He was not dead in his trespasses and sins and on his way to hell, okay? But once he got to an age where he realized and understood the difference between right and wrong and he understood the commandment to do right and then he chose to do wrong, now he's sinning at that point. Now he's condemned, that's when he died spiritually. Just like Adam and Eve were told in the day that you eat of that fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, in the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die, right? Now before they ate of that fruit, what did they wear? Nothing. They were naked, right? The Bible says the man and his wife were naked and they were not ashamed. So Adam and Eve, before they ate of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, were naked and they didn't even care. They didn't even know that that was even a thing. They were not ashamed. Why? Because they were in a state of innocence. Well, guess what? That's the same way every child is. Every two, three, four year old, maybe sometimes even five or six year old, you know, they'll run around naked and they don't even care. You have to tell them, hey, go put some clothes on. They'll run out the front door naked if they're young enough. Anybody who has kids knows that that's true. They will just run out in the living room naked, run out the front door naked, and in the driveway and you're like, whoa, you know, and you're telling them to get dressed. And here's the thing. They don't know that they're naked. They don't realize it. They're just like Adam and Eve before the fall because they're in a state of innocence. Then as they get a little bit older, they start to realize that they're naked and they're self-conscious about that and they want to shut the door and they want to hide that and they're always dressed and you're never going to see them naked again. But when they're little toddlers, they run around naked. That's the way it works. Well guess what? That right there shows us approximately when that age of accountability hits. Because when they start actually realizing that they're naked and wanting to be dressed and wanting to be clothed, that's a good sign that, hey, they're at that age of accountability now. And before that, you know, and I always jokingly say in my house, whenever one of our toddlers runs by naked, I always just say, well, he's not to the age of accountability yet. Well, we can take it to the bank that that one's not to the age of accountability when they're just streaking, you know, woo. So the point is that that is more evidence where the apostle Paul said in Romans 7, I was alive without the law once, but then the commandment came and sin revived and I died. He's talking about reaching that age of accountability when he understood right from wrong. And here's the thing. If they're mentally disabled, they may never get to that point. You know, I guess Calvinism just thinks they're doomed. But you know, a lot of people that are mentally disabled, they may never get to that point. They may just go through their whole life like an innocence, just as a little, like a little child that doesn't know the difference. And you know what? They're going to heaven period because of the fact that they don't even know what they're doing. They don't even understand the concepts of sin and righteousness and salvation. They're too young. So this age is not the same for everybody. It's not like a number because, you know, some kids could hit this age when they're four years old. Other kids, they might not hit this till they're six or seven or something. You know what I mean? It's because every kid is going to develop at a different pace. And like I said, if someone's mentally disabled, they could even hit this much later. You know, if someone has down syndrome or something, I mean, they might hit this way later or if at all, depending on the severity of their disability. OK, so the Bible says in Romans chapter five, if we if we look at what the scripture actually says in verse 12, it says, wherefore is by one man sin entered into the world and death by sin and so death passed upon all men. But don't miss the last phrase for that all have sinned. You know what that means? Because all have sinned. So why did death pass upon all men? Because all sinned. It's not like, well, it's by one man sinned into the world and death by sin and so we're all doomed. No, it's because of the fact that now we've all sinned. That's the key component. We've all sinned now. That's why we are going to. Now, look, I don't want you to misunderstand what I'm saying. I do not believe it is humanly possible for anyone to live sinlessly because some people will reject the original sin doctrine and then they'll go overboard into another heresy of sinless perfection where they think that it's possible for us to live a sinless life. And whenever you preach against this phony baby baptizing original sin doctrine, that's what they'll accuse you of believing. Oh, you're a Pelagian, you know, and they'll try to say that you believe that we can somehow live sinlessly by the act of the will or something like that. Hey, I don't believe that. I don't believe that it's humanly possible to be sinless. I think that we all sin because we inherited that sin nature and that you know what, what it means to have a sin nature. It means that's what we default to. We default to, hey, we get in a bad situation. What's the default? Lie your way out of it. You know, the beautiful babe walks by. What's the default for men, right? They're going to lust. What's the default when they can get away with, uh, you know, shirking on the job or when they can get away with, you know, stealing something and what, you know, the default is as a human being to do that. I mean, look, look at the default of people whose parents don't raise them right where they just throw trash on the ground. What's up with that? But you know, and I used to wonder who does that? I hate littering. I hate it. And I used to wonder who does that? Then I had kids and I realized that when you have kids, that's the default for them. You hand them a popsicle, they take the wrapper off the popsicle, you hand them a, it's just the wrapper just goes, that's the default. So I realized, oh, these are people whose parents never taught them because we see our kids that we say, no, no, no, no, no. Pick that up. Put that in the trash. And we teach them, you know, we have a picnic or something. All right, let's go around. Let's gather all our trash. You know, we go hiking, you pack it in, you pack it out, but guess what the default is? Throw it on the ground. And the derelicts who don't raise their kids, that's what their kids do. They just throw their trash on the ground and they trash the whole place. Don't care about anybody else, don't care about what they're doing, they just trash everything. Okay. That's the default. So what does it mean to have a sin nature? Is that we naturally tend to sin. We naturally tend to default toward the wrong things. And so what we have to do is we have to make an effort to do right or we have to walk in the spirit to do right or put on the new man, but we're going to have to do something to change. If we just kind of just do whatever comes naturally, we're going to live a really sinful life. And we have to train up a child in the way he should go, because if we just say, you know, I'm just going to kind of just raise my children naturally and just kind of just, you know, I'm not going to tell them what to do. I'm just going to let them choose everything. They're going to grow up and be monsters. They're going to be criminals if you just let them do whatever they want. A child left to himself will bring his mother shame, the Bible says. They must be guided and taught. We must die daily, deny self, take up the cross, follow Jesus. It's hard work to live a good life because the default is not to. So I'm not saying that we don't have a sin nature. I'm not saying that Adam's sin didn't affect all of us, but what I am saying is that I'm only held accountable for the stuff that I did and I'm not held accountable for what my dad did or my granddad or Noah or Adam or anyone else. I'm only responsible for what I've done. And you know, I have enough sins to damn me anyway, but thank God they're all forgiven and forgotten because I believed on the Lord Jesus Christ. So you don't want to take these verses, go back to Psalm 51 if you would. We don't want to take these verses and, and, and just run with them. And this is where false doctrine comes from. You take one verse, especially something in a poem, something that's a little bit hyperbole exaggerates and just run with it. But here's the bottom line. This doctrine of original sin, here's where it came from. Augustine said, this is what Augustine said, I'm paraphrasing, but his logic was basically, well, we know infant baptism is right because we do it. I mean, we're all doing it. Here we are. We're Christians. We're Christianity. We're the official church, right? The official church, man. And we're doing it. So it must be right. Cause otherwise why would we be doing it? Where'd this even come from? So it has to be a thing. And so then he sought a theological backing for what he's already doing, for what the church is already doing. And you know what? That's the wrong way to approach the Bible is, you know, it's like, well, I know what I believe about this. I just can't find a Bible verse to back it up. Well, here's the thing about the Bible. Because there are over 31,000 verses in the Bible and the Bible covers such a range of subjects, any, you, you can come up with any false doctrine you want. You will find a Bible verse to back it up. You'll be able to find something to twist, something to take out of context. Look, every weirdo doctrine of the Mormons, every weird doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church, they all have a Bible verse to back it up. And it's something that they're taken out of context, twisting and misusing. So look, yeah, if you approach the Bible that way, like, well, I, I want to make the Bible say what I want to say, then you could pretty much make the Bible say what you want by taking things out of context. Or you can approach the Bible wanting to be taught from the Word of God what the truth is. Going in with an open mind and saying, okay, God, show me what's the right thing here. And if you go into the Bible with an open mind, you're going to see all these verses about babies going to heaven. You're going to see all these verses about people only suffering for their own sins in the eyes of God. Now you say, well, the sins of the fathers are visited upon, yeah, they're visited upon the children. All that saying is that they're going to suffer the repercussions of them, but they're not held personally accountable for them. There's a big difference. I mean, look, if my dad's a drunk, which he's not, but if my dad's a drunk, hey, guess what? That's going to harm me as I'm growing up. Think about that. I mean, what if, what if I grow up in a home where my dad's dealing drugs? You think that's going to affect me? What if I grow up in a home where my mom is a prostitute? Do you think that's going to affect my childhood? You think I'm going to have a good start in life? But is God going to be like, well, I'm punishing you Steven, because you are the son of a prostitute and so you're in trouble. Do you see the difference? So yeah, the sin, look, if I commit sin, it's going to affect my descendants to the third and fourth generation. If I do right, it's going to affect my descendants to the third and fourth generation. But God's not going to punish my descendants for something that I did and be like, I'm mad at you because of what your dad did. That is not just. And God has explained in Deuteronomy and Ezekiel that that is not just. Now, the Calvinist might have a way of saying, well, it's actually just for God to do that. But guess what? The Bible says not just to punish the child for their parents' actions. So I don't think God is going to make that commandment and then turn around and do the opposite, especially since the Bible teaches that we were once alive. And so basically this thing of Adam and Eve, they took up the fruit and the day that they ate thereof, they died. When I committed my first sin in my life, I died that day spiritually, just like Adam and Eve died spiritually when they ate that fruit. There was a date in my life and a date in your life, the day that you died, right? And maybe, I don't know if it was when you were four or five, six, seven, the date when you first knowingly, you understood right and wrong and you chose to sin, whatever that first sin was, you died that day. And then later you had to get saved, which was a spiritual resurrection. The moment you got saved, your spirit was resurrected, but you can't resurrect something unless it used to be alive. If something's just always been dead, think about, just think about this because you know, the Calvinists love to use all this logic to prove their doctrine. Well, you know what? I can use logic too. Okay. Why would, if I'm just created with a dead spirit, how, you know, how is that a picture of the resurrection? It makes a lot more sense and I don't just believe it because it's logical. I believe it because it's what the Bible teaches, but even just logically speaking, it makes a lot more sense that my spirit was alive and then it died and then when I believed on Jesus Christ, I had to be resurrected. That makes sense and that's what the Bible actually teaches. And that jives with all the verses about babies going to heaven when they die. And so that just makes way more sense, it's more biblical. So don't, don't get caught up in this original sin doctrine. It's just a, well, how do we justify baptizing a baby if we're teaching that baptism is washing away your sins and these babies don't have any sin, what are we doing? And so that's where they came up with that. So Psalm 51, he says, behold, I was shapen in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me. I would say that this is simply saying that he was born with a sinful nature. He's shapen in iniquity. He's born as a person who's prone to commit sin. You could look at it that way or you could just look at it as hyperbole or exaggeration once again like Psalm 58 three because of the fact that in this verse, if you were to take this hyper literally, it's like the moment that the sperm hit the egg, he started sinning. What kind of a sin can a blastocyst commit? Like what kind of sins can you commit when you're a fetus? It's crazy stuff, okay. So yeah, he was just, he was already sinning. Just he was like four cells multiplying into eight, already sinning, 16, 32, 64 sinning, sinning, sinning, okay. That's a dumb way to read the Bible if you take things that hyper literally. I think what he's trying to say here is just, hey, you know what? I was created as a sinful person because I come from Adam. I was born a sinner. I have the tendency to sin. I was prone to sin, but we don't actually get held accountable for any sins until we're old enough to be held accountable for our sins. Once we're beyond that state of innocence and I, you know, I spent a lot of time on that, but I think it's very important that we understand that, but the Bible says in verse number six, behold, that desire is truth in the inward parts and in the hidden part, thou shalt make me to know wisdom, purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean. Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow. Make me to hear joy and gladness that the bones which thou has broken may rejoice. Hide thy face from my sins and blot out all mine iniquities. And here's a very famous part of the Psalm. Created me a clean heart, oh God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from my presence and take not thy Holy Spirit from me. Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation and uphold me with thy free spirit. Now notice he did not say there, restore my salvation to me. He didn't lose his salvation. You know what he lost? The joy. He said, restore to me the joy of thy salvation. And you know what? You cannot lose your salvation no matter what you do because you're sealed by the Holy Spirit on the day of redemption. As far as the east is from the west, God has separated you from your sins. The Bible says nothing can separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus, our Lord. I will never leave you nor forsake you. And we can go on and on with all the proof that we can't lose our salvation, but you know what? You can lose the joy of your salvation. You can live a miserable life. You can hate life and you can lose the joy of going to church, the joy of reading your Bible, the joy of being a Christian, the joy of your salvation because you are living in sin. And you know, if you think sin is going to make you happy, it doesn't. People go out and they drink and they party and they do drugs and it leads them to misery and pain and suffering. So if you think that that is going to make you happy, you're wrong. Joy is found in the house of the Lord. It's found in reading the word of God and it's found in living a righteous life and raising a godly family. It's found with the Lord. There is no joy at the gentleman's club. There's no joy down at the bar. The Bible says that that even in the, even in the laughter, the heart is sorrowful. Even in laughter, the heart is sorrowful. Even if you went and saw the bar, that person goes home and cries and pukes and gets in the fetal position and sucks their thumb and wishes they were dead. It's true. I'm serious. Even in laughter, the heart is sorrowful. Those people, they're pretending to have a good time. They're looking for something and they can't find it and they'll try that for a while. They'll try this. They'll try that. And you know what? The life of sin is vanity. It's empty. It's worthless and it leads to misery and sorrow. And you can either take my word for that or you can go find out for yourself except you're going to do irreparable damage to your life, permanent damage to your life, trying to prove me wrong on that. Hey, the joy of our salvation is what we lose when we sin. We don't lose our salvation but we lose the joy of our salvation. That's why he said in verse 8, make me to hear joy and gladness. You know what? I'm sure that he had a good time with Bathsheba. I'm sure that there was pleasure in that. I'm sure that he enjoyed that. I'm sure it was great. But you know what? Those few moments of pleasure were not worth four of his children dying, years of misery. I mean, it was not worth it. You know, pleasure for a moment, pain for a lifetime. Not worth it. The Bible says that there are pleasures of sin for a season. If it weren't pleasurable, nobody would be doing it but it is not worth it. It is never worth it. And so the Bible says here, make me to hear joy and gladness. He said, cast me not away from my presence. Take not thy Holy Spirit from me. You say, well, what's that about? You know, I thought we can't lose our salvation. In the Old Testament, the Holy Spirit had nothing to do with salvation. You remember in John chapter seven, Jesus talks about how people who believe on him are going to receive the Holy Spirit. And it says the Holy Ghost was not yet given because that Jesus was not yet glorified. So in John chapter seven, the Holy Ghost was not yet given. So in the Old Testament, saved people did not have the Holy Spirit like we have the Holy Spirit. That is a New Testament phenomenon. So you got to rightly divide the word of truth here. This is before the Holy Spirit indwelled believers. So what's he talking about when he says, take not the Holy Spirit from me? This is when he, if you read the story of David's life, when he was anointed King, the Holy Spirit came upon him the moment he was anointed King, not when he got saved. When he was anointed King of Israel, the Holy Ghost came upon him. And the Bible talked about how the Holy Ghost departed from Saul. Saul sinned and rebelled against the Lord. The Holy Ghost departed from him. So David doesn't want to end up like Saul. He's saying, look, I don't take not your Holy Spirit from me because this is not the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. This is the Holy Ghost upon him that was basically anointing him to have the power to be a great ruler, to be a prophet, to write Psalms, to preach, to lead the armies into battle and so forth. So this is a different, a different aspect of the Holy Spirit's ministry in the Old Testament versus the New Testament. Now in the New Testament, we still have this aspect as well where the Spirit of Lord will come upon you, allowing you to preach a sermon or win a soul to Christ or something like that. But that phenomenon of the Old Testament is still here. But in addition, we also have the permanent indwelling of the Holy Spirit. That was not the case in the Old Testament. So that's why he says, take not thy Holy Spirit from me. So you could actually, you could pray this prayer in the New Testament and it would still be accurate. You could say, cast me not away from thy presence and take not thy Holy Spirit from me because in the New Testament, what you would mean by that is you would mean I want to have the Spirit of God resting upon me. You know, it's sort of like if I'm a preacher and I'm preaching sermons and, and people are getting saved and lives are being changed. And I said, take not thy Holy Spirit from me. What am I saying? You know, I still want to be filled with the Spirit. I still, because the Bible says be filled with the Spirit. Everybody who's saved isn't dwelled by the Holy Spirit, but is every saved person filled with the Holy Spirit? No. Paul talked about having to endure suffering and hardship and trials and tribulations that the power of Christ might rest upon him. You know, we, we have to work at that. You know, that's not just automatic. It's not like you just get saved and you're just filled with the Spirit. No, you get saved, you're indwelled by the Holy Spirit. But as far as having the power of God upon you, as far as having the Holy Ghost upon you, like the Old Testament style power, the Holy Ghost upon you, that's something that can come and go temporary, just like it was in the Old Testament. And I know that's kind of a big subject and I'm just touching on it for sake of time, but I've done whole sermons about that. You can look up sermons on the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament and the New Testament. And I did, I've done a sermon called, you know, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, the power of the Holy Spirit, where I really developed that more. So basically he says, restore unto me the joy of thy salvation and uphold me with thy free spirit. And then look at verse 13. This is a key verse. Then will I teach transgressors thy ways and sinners shall be converted unto thee. So this right here shows us that if we're going to have success at winning people to Christ, we want to have a clean life. If we're living a really sinful life, if we're living a really ungodly life, we're not going to have the same success winning people to Christ because he said, look, I need to confess my sin, forsake my sin, find mercy with God and restore the joy of salvation, restore the relationship. And then I'll teach transgressors thy ways. Then sinners will be converted unto you is what he's saying, right? People are going to get saved. If we're right with God, if we're living for God, if we're, uh, you know, cleansed of our sin, then we're going to be able to get people saved effectively. So if you want to be a good soul winner, you got to clean up your life. And here's the thing. That's why our church, we preach hard against sin and we do a lot of soul winning. But have you noticed that the churches that don't preach hard on sin also don't win a lot of souls? Have you noticed that? Look at the great soul winning churches. Look at the great soul winning movements of the 20th century and you know what you'll find hard preaching against sin because the same people who want to live a clean life and, and, and that rip on sin and, and preach hard against sin, they're the same ones who God uses to convert sinners and get people saved. Whereas people who are living in sin are going to be ineffective. And that's where the neo evangelical movement has failed. You know, you have these big fun center churches with the rock band and it's just like a big party and they say, Hey, we're going to reach more people because we're going to appeal to the worldly. And so, you know, by having all the bells and whistles and the Starbucks in the lobby and the, and the party atmosphere and the rock and roll and the backup singers, we're going to reach more people. But you know what you find is that they, that movement has been a complete failure because here's the thing. That movement exploded in what the sixties, seventies, eighties, nineties. I mean that movement has been growing and growing and growing and it's gotten way bigger than fundamental Baptists. I mean, it used to be that the biggest churches in America were fundamentalist Baptist churches. You looked at the top 10 largest Baptist churches in America. There was a time when they were all independent Baptists. Is that the way it is now? Now what are the biggest churches now? The biggest churches now are called like the river, the grove cross point, the journey sandals. Those are the right. I mean those are the big churches now and I mean they're not ripping on saying the pastors up there. He's like 50 and skinny jeans and a graphic tee that's too small for him. He's talking about being a Jesus follower, you know, and he's trying to appeal to the trendy and up to the minute and his styles and here's the thing about that. You'd think if that's the way to reach people and look, he's not going to get up, you think he's going to get up and preach against alcohol and rip on marijuana and rip on fornication and tell ladies that they need to dress like ladies and men that they need to dress like men and preach against the sodomites. He's not going to do that. He's not going to touch those kind of subjects with a 10 foot pole even though the Bible's filled with information that he could preach on that, right? I mean there's all kinds of hard preaching on sin that he could turn to. He's not going to do that but here's what's going on is that we actually go door to door and every single week we talk to the members of those churches and you know what? They don't know if they're going to heaven. They don't know what the gospel is and today we have less people getting saved in these kind of churches that have watered down like that. Why? Because when you get right with God, that's when you convert people unto Christ. That's when you teach transgressors the Lord's ways. That's when many sinners are converted unto him when you're right with God. So you can't just have this den of iniquity where there's, and make no mistake, if there's a church where there's no preaching against sin, it's a den of iniquity. If you go to a church where the pastor never rebukes sin, you know what you'll find? The members are going to be drinking and fornicating and taking drugs and you got to have that preaching against sin. We need that. I need that. You need that. And so that experiment has been a miserable failure and it always cracks me up when people will literally leave a comment on my YouTube channel like, you're the reason why people are turning away from Christianity. You're the reason why people don't go to church anymore. And I'm thinking to myself, that's funny because I'm not really that big of a name, you know, nationally speaking. Like I'm the reason, really? So even though 90 some percent of the preaching that's out there is all this watered down trash, I'm the reason? That's funny, if I'm the reason why people are leaving church, then how come our church keeps growing? How come our church is growing? How come other churches like ours are growing? Because no, we're not turning people away. You know why people are leaving church is because of the fun centers. Because here's the thing, the fun center has not taught people any doctrine or given people any reason to be in church that's a spiritual reason. They brought them there for the fun and you know, people are eventually going to find out that something else is more fun. If it's just like, hey, we're going to go to church, it's fun. You know what? Eventually they're going to find that the movie theater is fun. They're going to find that, you know, the water park is fun. They're going to find the rock concerts fun, you know, and they're just going to be like, why am I going here again? What you reach them with is what you've reached them unto. You reach them with the word of God and they come for the word of God. You reach them with a party, they come for the party and then they'll just go, eventually they're just going to find a different party and you know, you want to know why people are forsaking church today. It's because of the fact that the church has become so much like the world. There's no difference and it's like, what's the point? You know, what's the point of going to church if it's almost exactly like the world? I might as well just do the real thing. Might as well just go all the way. I mean, if church is going to be like a rock concert, why don't I just go to the band that I really want to hear? You know, why don't I go to some second rate band? You know, I might as well go to the big name, might as well go all the way and go to a party at that point. But you know what? People at our church, they're not interested in coming to church to have fun or have a party. They come to church because they love the Lord and they want to learn the Bible. They want to be edified. They want to walk away, number one, having learned more about the Bible. And number two, they want to walk away inspired to serve God. They want to walk away motivated to do something for God. And they want to walk away motivated to clean up their life. That's not why they're going to the Fun Center. It's been a failure. And they claim, hey man, you got to get rid of all the do's and the don'ts and get rid of all the legalism. Man, you just got to get free and then you're going to reach more people, man. Wasn't that funny? All the churches that get accused of being legalists and get accused of preaching too many do's and don'ts are the ones that are reaching the most people? Isn't that interesting? Well it's right here in scripture. You know, you get right with God, you clean up the sin out of your life. Then will I teach transgressors, thy ways and sinners shall be converted unto thee. Let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer. Father, we thank you so much for this great chapter, Lord, and I know I wasn't able to do it justice, Lord, but I just pray that something in the message tonight would sink down into the ears of those that are here, Lord. And I just pray that we would be great repenters, Lord, that when we do wrong, we would repent daily, Lord. When we mess up, Lord, help us to admit it to you and get right with you. But also, Lord, just help us to make things right with other people. If we do wrong, help us to admit it and not try to cover our transgressions, Lord. Help us to repent and get things right and clean up our lives so that many people could be converted unto you, Lord. And in Jesus' name we pray, amen. Okay, we're going to sing one more song before we leave this evening. Go ahead and open your songbooks to song number 406, Who is on the Lord's Side? Who will serve the king? Song number 406. Song 406. Who is on the Lord's side? Who will serve the king? Who will be his helpers, other lives to bring? Who is on the Lord's side? Savior, we are thine, not for weight of glory, not for crown and crown. We are on the Lord's side, Savior, we are thine, not for weight of glory, not for crown and crown, not for weight of glory, not for weight of glory. We are on the Lord's side, Savior, we are thine, not for weight of glory, not for crown. We are on the Lord's side, Savior, we are thine. We are on the Lord's side, Savior, we are thine, not for weight of glory, not for crown. We are on the Lord's side, Savior.