The Believer's Confession of Sin (Psalm 51) John MacArthur

Psalm 51, I read to you earlier, this is the Psalm that I want to look at with you for just a few minutes to prepare our hearts for our time around the Lord's table.

There's something about the life of the church that is joyous. We all understand that. We've expressed that joy, we've laughed already this morning. We laugh rather easily around here because we have so much joy in our hearts. It just bubbles on the surface and easily comes out. And the reason we have so much joy is that our eternity is settled, that we have no fear of death, we have no fear of the future. We don't live in terror about Satan doing something to us, overpowering God in some way. We know that can never happen. We know that our lives are secure in the purposes of God in the salvation of God granted to us in Christ. He takes care of us, He meets our needs, He provides for us everything that we will need in time and eternity and promises to bring us to glory and His Word is true. So we live in this trust, we live in this hope and this confidence that produces joy.

And so you're going to find if you come to an experience of true Christians there will be a joy, a joy that's not necessarily connected to contemporary circumstances because we have people dying all around us in our congregation from older people to little ones, and the aches in the hearts of people are deep and great and everybody understands what it is to live in a fallen, suffering world. Every time the elders meet on a Sunday morning, it seems as though the list of prayer requests of people who are suffering from cancer from one kind or another to one degree or another grows and grows and grows. We all understand that. We all understand the great pain and difficulty of life. But there's still something overwhelmingly joyous about having confidence that God is in charge of absolutely everything and our eternity is settled in the promise of heaven.