Psalm 32
Let’s turn to Psalm 32, and we’ll
read the 11 verses of it. This psalm is connected to Psalm
51 also. It’s one of the handful of penitential
psalms in the Bible, and I think we’ll find many rich things in
it. It says, Psalm 32 of Mascael
of David. Blessed is the one whose transgression
is forgiven, whose sin is covered, Blessed is the man against whom
the Lord counts no iniquity, in whose spirit there is no deceit.
For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away. Through my groaning
all day long, for day and night your hand was heavy upon me.
My strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. I acknowledge
my sin to you. I did not cover up my iniquity.
I said I will confess my transgressions to the Lord, and you forgave
the iniquity of my sin. Therefore, let everyone who is
godly offer prayer to you at a time when you may be found.
Surely in the rush of great waters, they shall not reach him. You
are a hiding place for me. You preserve me from trouble.
You surround me with shouts of deliverance. I will instruct
you and teach you in the way you should go. I will counsel
you with my eye upon you. Be not like a horse or a mule
without understanding, which must be curved with bit and bridle. or it will not stay near you.
Many are the sorrows of the wicked, but steadfast love surrounds
the one who trusts in the Lord. Be glad in the Lord and rejoice,
O righteous, and shout for joy, all you upright in heart. Amen. May God bless the reading
of his holy scripture to us. We have a little set of tapes or CDs in
our house by a Christian comedian named Dennis Swanberg. I believe
he’s a former Baptist minister. And he talks about being in church
as a kid and having attention deficit disorder. And after he
fills in all the Bs and the Ds and the zeros, he begins to mimic
the preacher. And during one sermon during
his childhood, the preacher kept asking the question, what should
we do with sin? And he said, after about the
seventh or eighth time, the man asked that question. He decided
he was just gonna shout out the answer. And he was gonna do it
in the voice of Barney Fife. And he was gonna say, next time
he heard, what should we do with sin, he was just gonna say, you
gotta nip it in the bud. And so he did. But that is exactly
what must happen to sin. What should we do with sin? That’s
a good answer. We should nip it in the bud.
It should be dealt with. have seen examples in the Bible
of sin not being dealt with. Remember Adam and Eve, they sinned
against God and they hid themselves. Or tonight as we read from 2
Samuel in the story of David, David sinned against God and
he tried to cover it up himself. And then we read wonderful stories
in the scripture where, even in this same story with David,
where sin is acknowledged, it’s confronted, it’s confessed, and
it’s dealt with and it is wiped away. And this psalm begins with
a beatitude. It begins with a great blessing. It begins with the words, blessed
is the one whose transgression is forgiven. Now the last time
we heard the word blessed was in Psalm 1. Blessed is the one
who does not sit, walk, or stand with sinners, but the light is
in the law of God, they meditate on it day and night, and they’re
not like the wicked, the chap that are blown away with the
wind. So this beatitude harkens us
back to Psalm 1, where if we live a righteous life, we are
blessed. But even more so here, how blessed are we when our sins
are forgiven? You ever been caught in your
sin? Some of you kids maybe think about this with your parents
living around you and over you. You wrestle with, I wonder if
anybody knows. I wonder if anybody has seen
me. I wonder if I’m gonna get away with it. Maybe I’ll do the
right thing and do my time. Or maybe I’ll just cover it up
and see what happens. Now, what’s taking place in this
story with King David that we read earlier? Did you notice
how that passage began as we read it? It says the spring is
the time when kings go out to war with their armies, but not
David. What was David doing? He was
not at war with his army. He had sent them out, and so
he had some idle time. He was in the wrong place. He saw something, he wanted it,
and he got it. And the rest of the story, until
Nathan the prophet enters, is David trying to do a cleanup
job. And plan A was to make the thing look like the child was
gonna be an army brat, right? A furloughed baby. But plan A didn’t work, so plan
B is just take Uriah out. And David just takes a bad situation,
makes it worse and worse and worse. And as you read on in
the story, David never lives down that sin. Though God forgave
him, the effects of it continued and continued on and on. But
what a great mercy it is for somebody like Nathan to come
to David and to say, you have sinned against God, you have
rebelled against God, and he’s gonna be merciful to you. But
you’re gonna have to pay for your sins, you’re gonna have
to pay for what you have done, yet there will be mercy. So let’s
pick apart this Psalm just briefly if we can. Psalm 32 begins first
with a beatitude, we see it in verse one. And two, blessed is
the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered,
and then blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity,
and in whose spirit there is no deceit. We sing a lot of songs
from time to time in church about the release that we have from
sin. My chains fell off, my heart was free. Or earlier tonight
when we sang, It is well with my soul, my sin not in part,
but the whole is nailed to the cross and I bear it no more. There’s a little saying that
we, it’s a good thing to remember that saved people sing. Saved people sing because they
realize they’re safe. Remember when Israel came up
out of the Dead Sea or the Red Sea, they crossed on dry land,
what did they do? They sang. I will sing unto the Lord for
he has triumphed gloriously. The horse and the rider have
been thrown into the sea. And for centuries, for millennia
now, Christian people have been a singing people, singing of
their salvation from sin and from the judgment of Almighty
God. And so the first two verses of
Psalm 32 are explosive. They’re great relief, great joy
to be restored. Now I want you to notice in verses
one and two how it speaks of sin in three ways. Blessed is
the one whose transgression whose sin and whose iniquity God has
forgiven. Those are the three sin words,
transgression, sin, and iniquity. And then in a moment, we’ll see
how he gives three different words for forgiveness. We live
in a time where sin is no more. Even the church in modern day
speaks of sin not as sin, but just minor infractions, little
human errors, little slips. But how much do we see sin? We
must see it not as the modern-day people put it, but as God himself
puts it. And so we have these three sin
words. There’s transgression, which is rebellion against God.
Think about it as a child. If your parents said, don’t go
out of the house, and you sneak out your window, that’s a transgression
of your parents’ law. In the same way, we transgress
God’s law. He says, don’t eat of the fruit
of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for in the day you
eat of it, surely die, and so what did Adam and Eve do? They
transgressed his law, they crossed a line, and they did what he
said not to do. It was rebellion against Almighty God. Then there’s
another sin word, and it’s just simply the word sin, which is
a word that simply means to fall short. In Romans 3.23, we remember
all have sinned and have fallen short of the glory of God. It’s
an old archer’s term, the arrow didn’t make its mark, it didn’t
hit the target of God’s law. So sin is transgression, it’s
rebellion against God, it’s falling short of His glory. And then
there’s a third word, iniquity, which simply means corruption,
or we are crooked, we are bent, we are depraved. And so those
are the three sin words. Now, R.C. Sproul in our day,
I’m not sure if it’s original to him, but he says over and
over and over that we need to see sin as a cosmic act of treason. It is sin against the Holy God.
Even the least little bitty sin that we commit is a sin against
Almighty God. If you look at the back of your
bulletin, one of the prayers we have, the third one down,
is that we would have a deeper intimacy with Christ through
continued consciousness of our sin before a Holy God and an
acute awareness of our need for a Savior and a desire to worship
and serve Him to the best of our abilities that we would glorify
God. Now, some may say, oh, that’s a little introspective, that’s
a little too puritanical to be aware of your sin. But how else
will you live before God’s holy face if you don’t over and over
recognize his holiness, your sinfulness, his grace? Remember
our catechism we use from time to time, the Heidelberg, what
is my only comfort in life and death? That I belong to my faithful
savior, Jesus Christ, who’s bought me with his precious blood. And
then it says, what are the three things that I need to know in
order to have that comfort? And it speaks of guilt, grace,
and gratitude. And that ought to be a constant
cycle in our life. We feel the guilt of our sin.
Yes, that’s a good thing. We feel the guilt of our sin.
Some will say that’s something Christians don’t need to bear.
But we need to understand that when we sin, we have sinned.
And we need to go to God and confess it. So there’s guilt,
but there’s also grace. And we want to understand grace
more than our guilt, and then also be people who are grateful,
who are full of gratitude to God for our sin. But there’s
these three sin words. Now notice also the forgiveness
words. It says, blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven,
whose sin is covered, and blessed is the man against whom the Lord
counts no iniquity. What does it mean to be forgiven? It’s to have a burden lifted
off of you. Maybe you’ve paid off your mortgage,
or I think this church in, what was it, maybe 1985 or so had
a mortgage note burning ceremony. It’s something to celebrate,
a burden lifted. If you’ve read Pilgrim’s Progress,
the heavy pack was removed off of Christian, it was a burden
lifted off of his back. And so one way to look at forgiveness
is that a burden has been removed, it’s been lifted from us. The
second thing it says, blessed, not only is the one whose transgression
is forgiven or lifted, but whose sin is covered. Now contrast
that for just a moment with what David was trying to do with his
sin. There’s a big difference between covering up your sin
yourself and then having God cover your sin. Remember Martin
Luther, the great German theologian, the great Reformation hero, had
this terrible anxiety in him. How can an unrighteous man have
a standing before a righteous God? And he finally figured out
that our justification, our forgiveness, is by grace alone. And so the
second sin word, or forgiveness word, is covered. It harkens
back to the mercy seat on the Holy of Holies, where the blood
from the sacrifice was sprinkled on the mercy seat. Our sins were
covered by the blood of an animal. Why is it that something must
die for sin? Why is it that the life must
be taken from something? That was the only way that sin
could be covered. And so it’s a propitiation word. Our sin is not just wiped away, it is paid for, it
is covered by the mercy of Almighty God. It’s a shield, we’re protected
from the wrath of God by the covering we have from sin. Then
there’s the third in verse two. Blessed is the man against whom
the Lord counts no iniquity. Now when we speak of justification
by faith, we often are speaking of God not counting our iniquity
against us. It’s an accounting word, so to
speak. There’s this fancy word, imputation. We believe that The
sin of Adam, when he committed the sin against God in the garden,
that sin, that original sin was imputed to us. It was credited
to us. Any of us born naturally to parents
or born in the line of Adam, we’re born with original sin.
His original sin is imputed to us. And then at the cross of
Christ, all the sins of the elect were imputed to Jesus and he
paid for them. But the great exchange is not just that Jesus
takes our sin, but he gives us. His obedience and His righteousness. And so one of the great forgiveness
words is that God does not count our sins against us, for He has
counted them against Jesus Christ. What a great blessing that is.
And so we have blessedness in the wonderful fact that our sins
are forgiven. Now David’s gonna tell a little
story here in the next couple verses, verse three to five.
He’s gonna tell you what it was like when he did not confess
his sins. What was it like when he tried
to hide his sin with Bathsheba, or with the murder of Uriah the
Hittite, it says, when I kept silent, my bones wasted away. Through my groaning all day long,
it was a sense of hopelessness. Day and night, your handle, God,
was heavy upon me. My strength was dried up, as
by the heat of summer. And notice in your Bibles, you
have that little word selah, it’s there a couple more times.
That’s a word we think that means stop and think about it. So stop
and think about it for a moment. When you don’t confess your sins,
it’s like your body is wasting away. There’s an effect of sin
on your body. Now we have this notion, this
business in our modern culture that sin is not all that bad,
but we have to understand sin is far worse than we believe.
It’s a cosmic act of treason, but it affects our lives. You think about David. and the
heartache that came to his house and to his family, but also to
the house of Israel. Eventually Solomon, the son that
he would have, sinned against God as well. The kingdom was
split and God’s kingdom of Israel was never the same again. It
rose to great power under David and Solomon, but because of their
personal sin, it affected many others. But David here is speaking
of the physical effects of sin. And maybe you’ve been there before,
maybe you’ve been sick, maybe you’ve been hopeless and you
simply needed to repent and have God be gracious to you. We don’t
think about it very often, but you know, one of the things I
have learned as a pastor to ask somebody when they have a problem
is, are you living in sin? And they look at you like you’re
nuts. And you look back at them like,
no, you’re the one who is nuts. Sin has incredible effects on our lives,
our relationships, but even our physical bodies. And so David’s
telling the story of what it was like. It was not a good place
to be. But notice the movement in verse
five. He says, then I acknowledged
my sin to you. Notice the three sin words. I
acknowledged my sin to you. I did not cover my iniquity.
And I said, I will confess my transgression to the Lord, and
you forgave the iniquity of my sin. And there’s that Selah word
again. Take a break. Think on that.
Let that sink in. The proper way to handle sin
is to confess it. The proper way to deal with sin
is to go to God. Remember in 1 John, it says,
if anyone has sinned, my little children, if anyone has sinned,
we have an advocate. with the Father, even Jesus Christ
the righteous. And so there is not a thing in
our lives that Jesus can’t fix or forgive, no ruin or whatever
that he can’t fix. Now think about David’s problem
for a minute. He got himself in a real fine fix, didn’t he?
I mean, what a big mess. And try as he might, he couldn’t
fix it. He just made it worse. and worse and worse, but thanks
be to God for Christ who can take our messes and fix them. Now think for a moment about
the scope of sin. In our confession of sin this
morning, we mentioned that we have sinned against God and thought
word and deed. That covers the bases, doesn’t it? Or in heart,
speech, and behavior, that covers it as well. Or in things we’ve
done and the things that we have not done. And if we confess them,
there’s immediate forgiveness. I confess, God forgives. That’s
what Jesus teaches. Think about the prodigal son
for a moment. What did he finally come to his senses and say? I’m
gonna go home, and I’m gonna say to my father, against you
have I sinned, and I know that my father will receive me. And
that’s how we need to approach God as we confess our sins. He
will hear us, he will receive us, and he will take us in his
arms. What a wonderful truth that is.
Well, the next little section, starting at verse six, speaks
of learning something or teaching others about sin. And first it’s David saying a
little something, and then when you get to verse eight, it speaks
of God teaching us something. David, though, says in verse
six, therefore, let everyone who is godly offer a prayer to
you at a time when you may be found. Reminds us of the verses
of scripture from Isaiah. Seek the Lord while he may be
found. while he is near. We ought to be eager to run to
the Lord while mercy is so freely offered to us. You know, it’s
the tradition now at Thanksgiving to, used to be to get up at the
crack of dawn on Friday morning and go to the sales while they
were on, but now we go on Thursday. And think about all the opportunities
we avail ourselves to, because something is on sale, something
is available, something is readily available to us for purchase.
Are we that quick to repent? Are we that quick to confess
sins? Are we that quick to go, not only to God, but to one another
and say, you know, I’ve sinned against you and I’d like for
us to be reconciled one to another. What do we typically do, though?
Not just towards God, but towards one another when we sin. We do
like Adam and Eve, we just hide, we run, we change churches, we
avoid the problem by walking away from it. But what great
relief there is What great relief there is when we confess our
sins, not only to God, but to one another, and there’s restoration
and grace and goodness. Well, when you’ve gotten through
something, you feel like David, you want to teach others about
how to avoid the mess you got yourself into. Just a few moments
before evening service started, we were chit-chatting about the
morning Sunday school lesson, was taught from a little bit
of a congregational point of view, but it was saying that
if somebody is living in sin or in sin, it eventually is gonna
come before the whole church. And we were talking about how
in the Presbyterian system, it goes before the elders. But I
was remembering how a couple cases of church discipline came
up in my childhood. And I remember one man in particular,
after a little while, it didn’t happen immediately, but he stood
up in front of the church and he particularly said to the young
people, don’t do what I did. And it was quite a thing for
us to hear this man say that. He says, you know, my sin was
destructive. And I enjoyed it, I loved it,
I harbored it, I nurtured it, but it was the wrong thing to
do. But eventually he said, wrong thing, don’t do what I did. Now notice, as you get to verse
eight, it’s God speaking to us. I will instruct you and I will
teach you in the way you should go. I will counsel with you with
my eye upon you. Be not like a horse or a mule
without understanding, which must be curved with bit and bridle,
or it will not stay near you. What is God saying to us? He’s
saying, be teachable. God gives us a lot of freedom
in the Christian life. He gives us a lot of freedom
to love him and serve him as we read and interpret the Bible.
Now we can’t read and interpret it in a wrong way, but you know,
we have freedom to live a Christian life. Every one of our families
is different. Every one of us has different traditions, that’s
why there are many denominations. But God gives a lot of freedom
for us to live and serve Him as we understand the scriptures. And He’s not wanting to put us
in a straitjacket. He’s not wanting to put a bridle
on us and treat us like a wild animal. No, He wants to teach
us and show us and instruct us in the way we should go. and
have a life of freedom. Sometimes we straitjacket ourselves
or we think God’s rules are meant to punish us, but they’re meant
to give us parameters like lanes on the road or guardrails on
the highway to keep us in the right way. And so he wants us
to learn from our mistakes, but also to learn from him. And then there’s a promise at
the very end. It says, many are the sorrows of the wicked, We
understand that from Psalm 1. You don’t want to live a wicked
life. Many are the sorrows of the wicked, but steadfast love
surrounds the one who trusts in the Lord. Be glad in the Lord
and rejoice, O righteous, and shout for joy all you who are
upright in heart. And again, it’s that same principle,
saved people sing. Let’s pray together. Our great
God, we thank you for the Psalm how it teaches us about ourselves
and teaches us most especially about your great grace. We pray
that we would be convicted by your Holy Spirit of our sin,
that we would run from it and run towards your grace, and that
we would learn from you so that we could live life well for your
glory and for our good. This we pray in Christ, amen.