Genesis 3, verse 1 through to verse number 13. Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’” But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?” And he said, “I heard the sound of You in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.” He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” The man said, “The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me the fruit of the tree, and I ate.” Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this that you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.” Let us pray. Father, we come to You. In light of the tragedy and great evil of sin, we come to You through the mercy of the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. There was a lamb slain from the foundation of the world for our redemption, who has risen above and ever intercedes for us who believe in His name. We believe this morning that He is able to save us to the uttermost that come unto God by Him, seeing that He ever lives to make intercession for us. And we thank You that this same Jesus is the one who has given us the Spirit. And we pray that You would send Him forth this morning in power, risen Lord, that we might know not only the depths of our sin, but know the mighty grace that is offered to us through the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. We ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen. There’s a classic novel by the name of *Crime and Punishment*. And in this novel, we encounter the story of a man who attempts to prove that he can live beyond ordinary morality, only though to discover that he cannot escape his own conscience. Fyodor Dostoevsky writes the novel, and the novel focuses on this main character, Rodion Raskolnikov. And Rodion Raskolnikov murders an old pawnbroker with an axe, a woman that he considers to be corrupt, and he seeks to justify his heinous crime by suggesting that it is better off that she ceases to exist because of how horrible she is. He takes the money or some of the belongings anyway from her apartment, and he hides them and doesn’t use them. He goes about living his life, seeking to do good and to live as an upright citizen, yet all the while he cannot escape his guilty conscience. He is troubled. And he attempts to justify himself internally so many times throughout the novel, but what continually keeps happening and keeps being revealed is that he becomes increasingly erratic, he becomes even physically ill, and he becomes mentally disturbed. The novel demonstrates that the real punishment for crime is not only external, but there is an internal punishment for crime: the relentless torment of a guilty conscience. The novel demonstrates that sin cannot simply be explained away through clever reasoning. The conscience bears witness against the soul, and inward punishment proves far more unbearable than any external sentence. It is this unbearable burden upon Raskolnikov that finally drives him to confess and to surrender himself into the police. What is interesting about examining this person in the novel, it shows and demonstrates that sin and guilt deeply affect us psychologically and even physiologically. The man is restless. He is confused. He is suspicious of people. He is erratic. One moment he is self-loathing, the next moment he is bold and aggressive. He experiences fever, weakness, exhaustion, delirium, his face is pale. A doctor often comes out to see him to make sure that he’s doing well. And to the outside eye, they see this man as a man that is, that is sick. And today’s consideration is to try and demonstrate how mental health can be self-caused affliction. That there is this aspect to it where the unchecked sinful patterns, behavior, thinking, and beliefs can impact our minds at a deeper level than we realize. The weight of guilt can crush a soul and bring that soul into utter despair. Now, admittedly, this category is very unpopular. And you could see why. But also, this category has probably been most abused. As I mentioned a couple of sermons ago, many people are quick to point out, “What have you sinned?” because you’re struggling with depression or mental health. And it’s been a problem for the church not to consider different categories of why people suffer and why people go through different mental torment. Yet, I do believe that we must also not fall into the trap where we think that abuse takes away proper use. And what that means is just because something like this has been abused by many, it does not mean that it is not applicable to us or untrue. And this is something I’d want to see that at least in some form or another, our internal struggles may be either directly related, indirectly related, or perhaps even unrelated at all, but to the guilt of the conscience. And in the case of our first parents, Adam and Eve, we have a great demonstration of this truth. Adam and Eve sin in rebellion against the commandment of the Lord, and what we see is their subsequent guilt that comes from their disobedience. And it’s important to notice the psychological effects that sin has on the mind. What happens with Adam and Eve is immediately, once they sin, their communion and fellowship with God is broken. And, you know, they do surely die. Physically, in the sense that the seeds of death now start germinating in their soul, and they will pass and they will die as all men, back to the dust of the ground. Yet, also we see that they are spiritually alienated from God, because immediately after this sin, they are fleeing from the presence of God when they were once walking with God in the garden in the cool of the day. And so we see that their fellowship and communion was broken. But we also see that their sin struck not only their fellowship and affected their fellowship, but it struck their conscience in a very unique way. Notice what it says in verse number 7: “Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked, and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.” Notice the words here that appear in this text, that the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked. Moses who writes the book of Genesis obviously wants us to realize that what is happening here is that nakedness equals shame. And now they know that they are naked. And so he’s introducing this idea. They’re now they’re feeling a sense of guilt and a sense of shame, which prior to this point has never been felt by anyone in the human race, Adam and Eve, the first parents, the first man and woman. No sin has been in the created order. Here are people living upright in relationship to God. But sin disrupts not only their fellowship with God, but their conscience. It disrupts their sense of guilt and their sense of shame. And then we see that they begin to cover up, and their cover-up is absolutely futile. They cover up their nakedness with fig leaves to to basically cover their shame. But it is interesting that although they make themselves coverings, which obviously they feel is sufficient, they still hide themselves from the Lord. When when God comes to Adam and says, “Where are you?” and, “Why are you hiding?” he says, “Because I was naked.” Look what it says in verse number 10. He said, “I heard the sound of Your voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself.” But you have to ask yourself the question, why are you feeling naked when now you’re covered with fig leaves? Meaning, why do you still feel that sense of shame and that sense of guilt depicted in the term nakedness, when you’re actually covered with fig leaves? And so God probes a little bit deeper into the heart of Adam and tries to get to the root of the real issue as to why he feels his sense of shame and nakedness whether or not he has fig leaves on or not. And God says to him in verse number 11, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree which I commanded you not to eat?” Isn’t that interesting? God says here that the issue that you’re now having in the sense of your guilt and shame and nakedness is not necessarily the issue of, it’s issue, sorry, it is an issue of your relationship to the commandment, your relationship to Me. This is why you feel the way that you feel. This is why though you’ve covered yourself, you’re still hiding from My presence. This is why your conscience is dissatisfied even though you have fig leaves on. The guilt of nakedness and the fig leaf covering were symptomatic of a deeper issue that they had violated the commandment of the Lord, and it manifests in their lives by this guilt and shame and hiding and fleeing from the presence of God. This is the case of our first parents, but it is also the case of many other biblical character, particularly the case of David. I want you to turn with me to Psalm 51, and I want you to see how not only Adam and Eve are now in this state of fear and this sense of anxiety and fleeing and running and hiding and sensing guilt and shame, but also David in Psalm 51, which recounts his confession after committing adultery with Bathsheba and also killing Uriah, her husband. It recounts his experience. It’s interesting, when we read 2 Samuel, what we actually discover is what’s happening historically. You know, you see this David committing adultery, you see that he attempts cover-up by trying to get Uriah to sleep with Bathsheba so that the child would not appear to be his. Then you get him organizing him to go to the front of the battle so that he might die the death, so that he could cover up this this crime that he has committed. And then you see Nathan coming and the confrontation, and all you really get is a little glimpse of David confessing, on his face, and he’s crying out, but it appears to be that he is crying out, you know, because of his sin and all that’s happened, but it’s not emphasizing what’s happening with his internal struggle. It just kind of shows you how he feels about the fact that he has he has sinned against God, and then that his son dies and then he gets up and he moves on. God has forgiven him. But what’s interesting about Psalm 51, it kind of gets you into the psyche of David and kind of lets you see what was going on in his heart, especially around this confession. And it’s important to notice this. Look what it says in Psalm 51. In Psalm 51, I want to read verse number 8. I want to see how David is impacted here. He says, “Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones that You have broken rejoice.” Look at verse number 12, “Restore to me the joy of Your salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit.” And notice verse number 14, “Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God, O God of my salvation, and my tongue will sing aloud of Your righteousness.” David is basically showing and demonstrating that the guilt of his sin, this bloodguiltiness that he has, it basically stops him from singing and from praising God. He says, “Deliver me from my bloodguiltiness, and my tongue will sing aloud of Your righteousness.” He talks about the fact that he says to God, “Let me hear joy and gladness.” What does that mean? Let me hear joy and gladness. Could it possibly be that David himself cannot experience joy and gladness? I’m sure he sees good things around him. The created order is a beautiful thing around him. But he cannot experience the joy and gladness because of the guilt of his sin. And also what you find in this passage is that his bones are described as being broken, and he is one who has the joy of his salvation diminished from him. The absence of being able to hear and experience joy and gladness, broken bones figurative of weakness or a crushed spirit, joy of salvation as it were, sapped from his experience of God, which he delights and desires for it to be restored. And he knows it is until God delivers him from his bloodguiltiness that he will find it very hard to praise and to rejoice and to sing with a heart of rejoicing. Turn back to Psalm 38. Here is another case of David, not in relationship to Bathsheba. He may have been recounting some things like that, but this is basically around an offering, a memorial offering. And in Psalm 38, look at verse 1. It says, “O Lord, rebuke me not in Your anger, nor discipline me in Your wrath. For Your arrows have sunk into me, and Your hand has come down on me. There is no soundness in my flesh because of Your indignation.” Listen to these words, “There is no health in my bones because of my sin. For my iniquities have gone over my head; like a heavy burden, they are too heavy for me. My wounds stink and fester because of my foolishness. I am utterly bowed down and prostrate; all the day I go about mourning. All the day I go about mourning. For my sides are filled with burning, and there is no soundness in my flesh. I am feeble and crushed; I groan because of the tumult of my heart.” Listen to that, “I groan because of the tumult of my heart.” My heart is so troubled that it causes me to groan, and that groaning is day, and that groaning is day and night. Look what it says here in verse number 9, “O Lord,” or verse 8, sorry, “I am feeble and crushed; I groan because of the tumult of my heart. O Lord, all my longing is before You; my sighing is not hidden from You. My heart throbs, my strength fails me, and the light of my eyes, it also has gone from me.” The psalmist is describing that sin has absolutely impacted him both psychologically and even physically. Whether the physical effects are the direct chastisement of God due to his sin, it is quite possible. But chastisement is not always presented to us in the physical. God often chastises us by allowing our conscience to experience the full weight of the guilt of sin because we have chosen to go against Him. And in the case of David, here is a man because of his sin, very clearly in this text, it is because of his sin that he is all day moaning. It is because of his sin that he is feeble and crushed. It is because of his sin that his heart is tumultuous. It’s like a raging sea. It is because of his sin that his heart is throbbing. What is that referring to, a throbbing heart? Is he anxious? Perhaps. He’s saying, “My strength fails me.” There’s utter weakness about him. The light of my eyes have gone from me. I’m losing sense of the, of reality, and I’m not seeing life clearly. Why, David? Why? Well, David is saying, “Because I’ve sinned, and my sin has gone over my head.” I doubt many psychologists have that category for helping their patients. As I said, not popular. Psalm 32, verse 1-5. Let’s turn back a page. David says, “Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit.” Now listen to verse number 3, “For when I kept silence,” that is, when I did not confess, and you’ll see that it’s referring to confession in just a moment. “When I hid my sin, when I did not confess it, when I did not come clean before it, as it were, before the Lord, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night Your hand was heavy upon me, and my strength was dried up as the summer heat. I acknowledged my sin to You, and I did not cover my iniquity. I said, ‘I will confess my transgression to the Lord,’ and You forgave the iniquity of my sin.” But you see the effects of sinning? David has sinned. He goes, when I keep silence, my bones are wasting away, I am in tumult, I am in torment as it were, but when I confess, when I release this to the Lord and I’m and I’m forgiven and I am cleansed and I know the covering and mercy of God, then I am relieved. It’s amazing if you look at what are the most central signs of depression, here are the key signs: low mood, loss of interest and pleasure, along with feelings of guilt, tiredness, low energy, and abnormal sleep. I’m sorry, but if you put David up to that, he would definitely be diagnosed with depression. But David says why I experience what I experience is because I’ve sinned. And as I said, that is not the case in every scenario, but it is a category we must consider. It’s a category that David operated in. It’s a category for biblical Christians to acknowledge. Now we understand that correlation doesn’t mean causation. Just because you’ve got things similar, it doesn’t mean that it is caused by sin, meaning that you don’t look at the symptoms and say it always then relates to sin, because sin does cause those same symptoms that an actual physical illness might or other things might. But the reason why we cannot dismiss this out of hand is because so much of diagnosis today is a matter of questions and observations of a patient, not not the matter of of scans and blood tests. And what that simply means is that what is being examined by psychologists is symptoms. They’re being presented with the same thing that David presents us with in the Psalm, essentially. And they work through that information in a very thorough way, no doubt, and I’m not dismissing the professionalism of the industry. I’m just simply saying that if there’s no category here and there’s no scans, it could potentially be that this is an internal tumult caused by sin, which happened in the case of David. And the hope of deliverance for those that are particularly afflicted in this way is confession and covering. Confession and covering. And confession all it means is to say the same thing as God, to agree with God. It’s basically to say, “God, You’re right. I did eat of the tree which You commanded me not to eat. I know You know that already about me, but instead of me hiding and wearing fig leaves and running away to the corner of the garden where I want to hide from You, I’m better off just coming to You and saying, God, I agree with You. I know You already know this, and what You know of me is true, and I confess. I I I raise my hand. I I say I’m responsible. I did what I did out of the corruptions of my own heart, and I bear the guilt and responsibility due to my sin.” David takes to himself no fig leaves, but he runs to the Lamb. Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven. Blessed is a man to whom the Lord does not impute iniquity. Blessed is the man whose sin is covered, David says. And so David says, “When I’m silent, I sense guilt. But I’m not going to be silent. I said I will confess my transgression to the Lord. And He forgave the guilt of my sin.” He he he takes away my nakedness and my shame, and He clothes me, as He clothed Adam and Eve in the garden with animal skins. Depiction of the blood of Jesus, of the cross of Christ, of the lamb slain before the foundation of the world. This is my God, says David, and I will run to Him. I will not have insufficient coverings. I will confess my sin to the Lord. In Psalm 51, I against You only have I sinned, O God, and done what is evil in Your sight. And David goes on to say, “Wash me, cleanse me, purge me, and I shall be clean. I shall be whiter than snow.” He says to the Lord, “Hide Your face from my sins, blot out all my iniquities.” And he says, “A broken and a contrite heart, O God, You will not despise.” You know, there’s an amazing sense of boldness to Psalm 51 that we often don’t realize. And this is the boldness. The boldness is this: David believes that God is a God of mercy. Wash me and I shall be clean. You see what he how he’s saying it? This shall be true if God, You forgive me. If if if if if I come to You by faith, believing that Your blood cleanses me from all unrighteousness, I know I will be forgiven. The boldness, the confidence. A broken and a contrite heart, God, You don’t despise. He knows who his God is. God forgives. God has mercy. God is kind to the broken and the contrite, but to those who do not confess, who flee from the presence of the Lord and cover themselves with fig leaves, God is not so kind. They feel the guilt of their sin. God fills, they feel the weight of their transgression. And God, yes, still in kindness and mercy says, “Come to me.” He cries out as He did to Adam, “Adam, where are you? Adam, where are you?” That’s His mercy. That’s His mercy through the gospel. “Where are you? Where are you? Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” Tumult of soul? Guilty? Fig leaves not covering you? Anxiety, stress caused by sin? You know you’ve done something wrong in your life that you have not confessed to the Lord and have not forsaken or you’re living in habitual sin, and you find yourself descending into more turmoil of soul, God says, “Where are you? Come.” Where are you, Adam? I made you for My glory. Where are you? Forget the fig leaves. They’re not going to help you. They’re going to make you still feel the sense of guilt and shame because it’s not about fig leaves. It’s about your heart, Adam. Come to me. Let me give you a covering. Come see a lamb slain and wear His righteousness. Come see one who lived the life you couldn’t live and died the death that you deserve to die, who lays all our iniquities upon Himself so that we might go free. Come to Him. You see God’s pursuit of Adam and Eve in the garden was a pursuit of mercy. He didn’t have to say, “Where are you?” He could have just said, “There’s the door. Get out of here. No skins for you.” But God pursued them. You know, this is not a “gotcha” moment for God. Hiding seek, and I got you. No, it’s not like that. It’s not even God saying, “I told you so.” This is a surgical operation. And God sees a patient that needs to get on the operating table who’s running from him because he doesn’t know that he needs the surgery and how good the surgery is for him. And he takes all this quack meds to sort out himself, but he can’t get sorted out. God says, “Come to me. Where are you, Adam?” And he pursues him down and chases him down, and he does this beautiful as it were surgery on him, so that you see Adam and Eve now walking with God again. Yes, outside the garden, but walking with God, offering sacrifices, living for His praise. They’re renewed. They’ve had the covering. Their sins have been blotted out. Guilt is an inbuilt mechanism designed by God for our good to help us see our sin and to keep us living a life from running from God and having more and more pain and sorrow. Guilt is good when it produces a sense of trouble in your soul that drives you to confession and to Christ. Guilt is good when it acts as that referee, like the conscience, sending you to the sin bin saying, “Consider your ways.” But guilt is bad if it’s unaddressed, because the longer you leave guilt unaddressed, the more it will cripple you, the more your guilt will begin to shape your identity, and the more your guilt will begin to drive you to despair. Guilt is bad when it’s suppressed because when you suppress guilt and ignore guilt, your heart becomes hardened. It impacts your emotional life in other areas. Your conscience begins to see, be seared. You lose feeling. Guilt is bad when it is misunderstood, meaning that if you hear guilt telling you, “Make it up to God if you want to be forgiven.” If we want to have covering and mercy from God, you’ve got to jump yay high, rather than humble yourself under God and receive His mercy freely, then it is bad. If guilt drives you to seek to satisfy God by your own good works and sends you to make fig leaves, it can lead you on a long journey away into further guilt and shame. For many, they feel guilty and they become immediately legalistic. I’ve sinned. I’ve got to make it up to God five times this week for God to accept me. You know what you’ve done? You’ve just entered into a system in your own mind that is going to compound guilt upon guilt, because you’re going to fail again. And that five times is going to be 10 times, and you’re not going to be able to keep up with the compounding guilt that comes because it is not being addressed properly. Guilt is bad when it is false guilt, that is guilt for sins not committed. And it is possible to have a kind of guilt that you receive for not living up to the expectations of someone else, rather than the expectations of God. When you perhaps have been accused falsely, or you’re being investigated or things like this, it is very common to experience deep feelings of guilt that are actually untrue, knowing that you haven’t committed this thing, but you can nonetheless be so impacted by that psychologically. In the *Crime and Punishment* novel, there’s a guy by the name of Nikolai, he’s the painter in the apartment where the murder happened a couple of levels down. And they can’t find the murderer, and so they start interviewing everyone that was around to see, and they still can’t find out who it is, so they interview him. And they’re having a couple of interviews with this painter who did not commit the crime. But it is an amazing scene because the man who commits the crime is in the office with the police, while the painter comes into the office saying, “I did it. I did it. I I I committed the crime.” False guilt. The psychological pressure that was mounted upon this man caused him to confess something he never even did. And so be careful of false guilt. You can be taught that this is what God expects from you when it is not what God expects from you, and confess sins that are not sins, and end up being in this turmoil of soul for something that is not even true regarding the commandment of the Lord. It’s interesting that God says to Adam, “Did you not eat of the tree which I commanded you not to eat of?” He’s basically saying, “This is the standard Adam, My commandments. This is what you live by.” And in toxic relationships, this is very common where people feel a false sense of guilt when they shouldn’t be guilty for things that perhaps their partners make them feel guilty of. The point of what I wanted to say this morning in closing and in application is that we must take pains to have a clear conscience before God, and yes, before man. It is impossible for us to live a life of perfection this side of eternity, but we must be careful not to violate conscience. There’s a vast difference. Not violating conscience means that you do not ignore what your heart is telling you regarding your sin and your guilt if it is aligned with the truth of God’s Word. You flee to Christ immediately. Paul says that I always take pains to have a clear conscience toward both God and man. And what that looks like is regular confession, regular short, keeping short accounts with God, confessing daily. You daily sin, you daily confess. Don’t let that activity that you have committed linger in your mind seeking to justify your behavior and to make coverings for the sin that you have committed. Just go to God and say, “God, I know you know what happened right there. Although no one else saw it, I know you saw it. And I’m not going to pretend that you didn’t see it, O God. Here I am, with my sin. Forgive me, cover me.” Because I don’t want to go around in turmoil all my life. I’m going to share a little personal testimony. I didn’t intend to do this, but I it comes to my mind now. When I was 17 to 21, I I struggled in my life as a professing Christian and fell into different kinds of sin, particularly at a time I started to smoke marijuana for, you know, a fairly regular period of time. And the first time that I ever touched this drug, I was so anxious, not only the the time because of the experience, but even following that. I was 17 years old. I didn’t want anyone to know about it. My cousin knew about it because that’s where I had access to it, but I didn’t want dad or no one to know about it. I was on my L-plates. I was told that for three months, they can pick it up in your system, whatever, you know. And I am anxious. Dad’s like, “Let’s go for an L’s test. We need to get you L’s up.” And I was up, and I’m like, “Oh man, I can’t go.” What happens if I get pulled over, something happens? This is well and truly after it. I’m stressing, I’m panicking. What if so-and-so saw me? You know, all this stuff. You know what was so interesting? On exactly three months from the day that I did that, I wasn’t sick. When I say sick, I wasn’t like physically sick. But you know what happened? I began to vomit. Vomit my food, water, even like blood. It was red, black, and I’m thinking, “What on earth is going on here?” I’m freaking out. My mom’s like, “We should call the doctor.” I’m like, “No, no, no, don’t call the doctor. This is the last day.” Like I’m thinking in my head. You know, for years after that, I’ve always wondered to myself, why what happened that day? Because I wasn’t sick. I got up the next morning, everything was fine. I was not sick at all. What happened that day? I can only think that something like this happened to me. That the amount of stress and anxiety caused by my sin and hiding my sin, and having fig leaves and coverings and manipulating to try and work things out, I I I I was absolutely in torment of soul. It would have been better for me to confess my sin, to forsake my sin, and to have the mercy and covering of God. I’d love to say that was the end of it for me. It wasn’t. But I tell you for those years where I did not live in submission to God, I slept the worst that I’ve ever slept. I was more anxious than I’d ever been, and I was so dissatisfied with my life. And my sin increased and increased and increased until God got a hold of me and said, and I said, “It’s enough. I can’t live like this anymore. I’m going crazy. I’m so dissatisfied. I’m not happy. I’m not content.” And I submit to you this is exactly what it’s like to not live according to a clear conscience before God. And it’s God’s mercy that He allowed that guilt to stay and didn’t let me sear my conscience and get to the point where I was past feeling and let me go in my sin. But He continued to let me struggle and feel the weight of my guilt until He brought me to repentance. Brothers and sisters, we sin daily. We live lives where we don’t live up to what God expects from us, sins of omission. You don’t live according to how God wants you to live, and you know it. And also we commit sin against God’s law. And what I’m submitting to you today is we are sinning machines because we are born in sin, and we are guilty before God. Thank God for His mercy that changes us and gives us power over sin to live a life of holiness, but we are in the flesh, brothers and sisters. And if regular confession is not a part of our Christian experience, we will get ourselves into trouble that we should not get ourselves into. All of our cover-ups are futile, the excuses, the legalism, the manipulation, they leave us with further trouble. They leave us dissatisfied. They are fig leaves. But there is nothing like coming clean before God. If you don’t know how to, take Psalm 51 and make it your own. Pour out your heart to God. There’s nothing like getting alone with God and shutting the door and crying out or going out to a national park somewhere or wherever it is and just getting alone with God and say, “God, I’m going to wrestle this out with You. I got stuff on my heart I need to talk about.” And the reason why we can do this boldly and confidently is because of the blood of Jesus Christ. You understand that? Because of what Tom shared with us around the Lord’s table. That Jesus is the one that stands as our high priest, as our sin-bearing sacrifice, that gives us a boldness and confidence into the holiest of all, that cleanses our conscience from sin. Hebrews 10:19-23, “Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter into the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that He opened for us through the curtain, that is, through His flesh, and since we have a great high priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful.” You know, you can come to Jesus because He’s faithful. Anytime you can come into the holy place with His blood and say, “God, here I am. Yeah, with my sin, but with Your grace.” Isaac Watts, who wrote this hymn, it goes like this: “Not all the blood of beasts on Jewish altars slain could give the guilty conscience peace or wash away its stain. But Christ, the heavenly Lamb, takes all our sins away; a sacrifice of nobler name and richer blood than they. My faith will lay her hand on that dear head of Thine, while like the penitent, or the repentant, I stand and there confess my sin. My soul looks back to see the burdens Thou didst bear, when hanging on the cursed tree for all my guilt was there. Believing, we rejoice to see the curse removed. We bless the Lamb with cheerful voice and sing His bleeding love.” Let us pray.