Well, if you have your Bibles, turn with me to Psalm 32. We'll be looking at all verses of Psalm 32, 1 through 11. This is Psalm 32, a moscow of David. I'll begin reading in verse 1. Hear now the word of the Lord. 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. For when I kept silence, 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 acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover 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 curbed with bits 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. So far the reading of God's holy and inspired word. Well, there are certain things as believers that all of us, I think, can experience. things that all of us have felt in our lives, have wondered perhaps and doubted during the course of our lives here on earth, trusting in Christ, things that cross the spectrum, young and old, male and female, one part of the world or another, one era of church history or another. And one question that keeps coming up in Christians that I've talked to and myself, I'm sure, and all of us is, will God truly forgive us? as we reckon with our sin, as we reckon with what we've done against him and against his law, how we've transgressed his law, is there forgiveness, is there grace enough for us now, again? And Psalm 32 can help us with this. I don't know if you've ever had the opportunity to work a third shift and to come home late at night or early in the morning and to turn on TV as you're trying to go to bed and figure out what on earth you're seeing. I remember working at UPS and coming home about 4 in the morning, and on TV there was a Japanese game show that was a race. And there would be seven or eight contestants, all running as fast as they can through these walls with doors on them, blue doors, except one or two of the doors would not be an actual door. It would just be the wall painted to look like a door. And so you'd see people running, thinking they're going to go right through, thinking the door is going to open for them. they'd smack against the wall and fall back. And this happened time and time and time again. And as we think about forgiveness, as we perhaps come to this church every Lord's Day and confess our sins after we hear God's law read to us, perhaps we could think, we can tend to think, is that what God's forgiveness looks like? Does it work most of the time? We've forgiven most of the time, but one day are we going to confess our sins to God and run right into a wall that we think is a door? Are there grace and forgiveness enough for us? Well, Psalm 32 helps us with this question. Psalm 32 is a penitential psalm or a psalm of repentance. And as I'm sure you've heard many times, when looking at the psalms, it's helpful to know what kind of psalm it is in order to know how to interpret the psalm. The psalm has some wisdom elements to it, telling us the way we should go. It has some thanksgiving elements to it, rejoicing and thanking God for the deliverance he has worked for the psalmist. But on the whole is a psalm of repentance. And as with many or even most of the psalms, we don't know what the exact situation is. We don't know the exact setting of this psalm. We know it's a psalm of David, but we don't know when he wrote it. We can guess, perhaps, that it had something to do with the time after his sin with Uriah and Bashi. but we don't really know for certain. We aren't given much detail here, but the things that are expounded in this psalm are true no matter the original situation. We'll see three things this evening. First of all, the blessing of forgiveness. Secondly, the hurtfulness of sin. And finally, the haven of God. The blessing of forgiveness, the hurtfulness of sin, and the haven of God. So as we begin, we see the blessing of forgiveness in verses 1 and 2. Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven. And we see as the psalmist begins here, he uses three words or three sets of words related to sin on the one hand and forgiveness on the other that are connected to each other. We see that a transgression is forgiven. That sin is covered and an iniquity is not counted against the psalmist. and some have tried to perhaps say that these are different kinds of sins and to identify them exactly but it seems that what the psalmist is really trying to say what david is really trying to say here is that he's pointing to all kinds of sins or better yet to all sin and showing that god can forgive it all israel at this time in her life was in what was what we now know as a theocracy where they're basically ruled directly by god and they had a human king on the throne, but God was their great king, and even their human king answered directly to him. And the word transgression, perhaps, can help us to think of what sin really is. As is translated here in the ESV, transgression is a word that carries the idea of breaking the law of your king, breaking the law of the great king. Perhaps we could translate it in this situation as crime, a breaking of the law. And this helps us to realize that when we sin, although we may be sinning against each other, we are ultimately and foremost sinning against God himself. And this should make us cry out with the psalmist in Psalm 51, against you and you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight. And so we see that these three sets of words drive home the point to us. They together point to the totality of sin, and sin here is breaking God's law. And so no matter the sin, whether private or public, whether it seems large or small in your own eyes, no matter whom it is against, it is ultimately against God, but the good news in the psalm is that it can be forgiven by him. As we now come to the threefold expression for forgiveness. First, we see the word forgiven in verse 1, followed by covered and essentially not counted against. And this is the main point here. The sin is atoned for. It is covered. It is removed. God no longer counts it against this blessed person in Psalm 32. If we were to go back to the beginning of the Psalter and see really the introduction to it in Psalm 1 and Psalm 2, we would see this word blessed used several times. Psalm 1 opens with blessed is the man, essentially blessed is the obedient man, the man who is not a sinner or a scoffer or a mocker. And that ultimately points us to the only man who was this perfectly, to Christ. And then we see that Psalm 2 closes with blessed are all who take refuge in him, him being the king whom God has set up, also Christ. well as we look at verses one and two we see 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 and so we can say that we can add things to this idea of the blessed man the blessed man is the one who is in christ the blessed man is the one who has christ as his king, and the blessed man here is the one who has his sins covered. The blessed person has his or her sins covered. He no longer has his iniquities counted against him. She has been forgiven of all of her transgressions. And this in the psalm is the greatest news imaginable. The psalmist is dealing with his own sin. He's repenting of his own sin. He knows he's broken God's law, yet here he has the idea of forgiveness. The forgiveness is for the one who repents and believes, as we see at the very last line of verse 2. We see that forgiveness is not some sort of fire insurance, as we could say. Something that's nice to have in case something goes horribly wrong, in case we really mess up. The story of the Bible, the story of all of our lives, is that we have sinned against our God continually almost. We have broken his law. We have sinned against him. We have sinned against each other. But Psalm 32 proclaims to us the blessing, the blessedness of the forgiven ones. Those who are forgiven are those who realize the awfulness of their own sin and throw themselves upon God and his mercy for forgiveness. In their spirit, there is no deceit, as the psalmist will make clear in the following verses. This is the blessing of forgiveness. But we move on in the psalm, and we see our second point this evening, the hurtfulness of sin in verses 3 through 5. Notice again verse 3. 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. The psalmist here, David, had learned about the hurtfulness of sin from his own experience, as he makes clear. His bones wasted away, as he says, and his strength left him when he failed to confess his sins against God. This is the picture of someone in a hopeless situation, someone whose strength was dried up in the heat of summer, as it says in verse 4. And this does not necessarily mean that the psalmist was experiencing physical symptoms of an actual illness or an actual wasting away. But rather it seems that he's using poetic language to drive home his points to the audience. When he was wallowing in his unconfessed sin, it's as if he were slowly succumbing to a deadly illness or he was wasting away in the desert. As we read, it's something that he felt all day long and day and night. This unconfessed sin, whatever it was, we don't know, but this unconfessed sin was very hurtful to him. And this helps us to think about something that perhaps we may not think about quite enough. This man is crying out because from his own experience, he's come face to face with the seriousness of his sin, and sin is serious. And perhaps this is not how we always think of sin. The culture around us especially likes to take sin and sweep it under the rug, if at all possible. They say, oh, you lied. Who hasn't? Oh, you coveted. Well, we all have. It's really no big deal, and so on it goes. Perhaps we can begin to think this way. This thinking has crept into our own minds. But when we sin, as Psalm 32 makes clear, We have sinned primarily against God. We have transgressed the law of our creator and king. And we ask, do we have a correct understanding of the consequences of sin? As the psalmist now seems to, the psalmist came to realize the seriousness of his sin. And in verse 3, we read, I kept silent. And the result is this malady that we read about in the next several verses. But we see there's a great shift in his thinking in verse 5. I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity. I said, I will confess my transgressions to the Lord, and you forgave the iniquity of my sin. So his mind changes. There's a shift here in this psalm, as there often is in a psalm. And now he confesses his sin to God. He repents and throws himself on God's mercy. He realizes now that this is his only hope, and there is no deceit in his heart. he has perhaps what Paul describes in 2 Corinthians 7 as godly grief, which produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret. And as we notice verse 5, we see that the three synonyms for sin are used again, but in a different order this time. And now instead of all these words being paired together with a word for forgiveness, they are there now with a threefold way of seeing confession of sin. We see that he acknowledged his sin. He did not cover his iniquity, and he confessed his transgressions. The psalmist confessed his sin to God, and God forgave it. The psalmist no longer tried on his own to cover his own sin, and instead God truly covered it. The psalmist acknowledged his sin to God, but God did not count it against him. His debt was gone, and because of this, he was one of the blessed ones. He had seen the hurtfulness of sin. And led him to our third point, the haven of God in verses 6 through 11. Let's read these again, starting in verse 6. 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 curbed with bits 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. Now we come to the part of the psalm that's much like a Thanksgiving psalm where the psalmist exhorts those around him, the congregation surrounding him, to praise God for his forgiveness, to praise God for his deliverance. They're called to trust in God as their refuge, which we would see all the way back in Psalm 2 if we were to go back that far. God is a refuge for his people throughout the Psalter. And in verse 6, we see him as a refuge from the flood. And as we think about this, we think about the hurtfulness of sin and the blessing of forgiveness. As we think about the entire scope of the scriptures and we think about how the New Testament uses this psalm, we can begin to paint a picture of how it is that God is a haven for his people who confess to him because of Christ. We see in verse 6 that God here is presented as a refuge from the flood. Perhaps we can think, those of us who are old enough to remember, the 2004 earthquake and tsunami that hit Indonesia, that hit Southeast Asia, and the images on TV of the devastation of everything being swept away. Or for a less horrible example, we can think of going out to the Pacific and wading in and feeling pretty quickly the power of the waves coming against you. If you go out far enough and the wave breaks over you, it's going to shoot you back towards shore. You hear the sounds and you feel the power and you understand how strong this wave is, how strong this flood could be. Without a refuge, you would be swept away. Without sure footing, there's nothing you could do. And this poetic imagery is meant to paint a picture on the canvas of our minds. Rising water, especially in the ancient Near East, the audience that would have heard this psalm for the first time would have probably meant a flash flood. The water was rising quickly, and if there was no refuge, then you would be swept away to your death. And we see God here in Psalm 32, presented as a refuge from the rising troubles and from the afflictions of life. And in this psalm in particular, The issue is especially the issue of sin. That's what the trouble is. And without God as a refuge for forgiveness, we sinners would all be swept away in his wrath. But blessed is the one whose transgression has been forgiven. We begin to see that this psalm is a psalm about grace. We often hear that grace is unmerited favor as we hear it, But this is probably not strong enough of a definition. We could say that grace is favor given to those who don't deserve it. But it would be better if we go a little farther and say that grace is favor given to the one who deserves the exact opposite. That's what David deserved here. That's what the psalmist deserved in Psalm 32. He deserved to be swept away. He had transgressed the law of his creator and king. And as we come each and every Lord's Day and hear the law of God read to us again, and we confess our sins again, by our own deserts, strictly speaking, we deserve to be swept away by the flood. The psalmist sinned against God, and so do we. He was a sinner ungodly and deserving of the opposite of blessing, and so are we. If we use the imagery of Psalm 1, he deserved to be blown away like the chaff, and so do we. yet we see that God forgives him God shows grace to him we begin to ask perhaps how can this be how is this the case as you may have noticed as we are reading through psalm 32 in the epistles of the romans chapter 4 the apostle paul quotes the first two verses in psalm 32 to show the blessings of justification by faith alone, as he's arguing here. Those who flee to Christ for salvation from the penalty of their sin can quote these verses as true of themselves. In Christ, God has given us a refuge from the rising waters of judgment, even as Noah and his family were given a refuge from the flood. And he is our hiding place. He will protect us from trouble. He will surround us with shouts of deliverance because he is our haven. In verses 8 and 9, we switch from the psalmist talking, from David talking, to God himself speaking in this psalm. And he has promised three things to his people, that he will instruct them, that he will teach them, and that he will watch over them. And this is meant to be an encouragement for us to flee to him as our refuge, to flee to him as our haven. He is encouraging us to live wisely, which in this particular psalm, wisely means confessing sin and praying for God's grace and mercy. These are the blessings for those who throw themselves on God's mercy and God's mercy alone. These are the ones who flee to Christ and Christ alone as the only refuge from the rising waters of God's wrath. And so when you sin, Christian, and you will, all of us will, this side of death, and you wonder if there is grace, mercy, and forgiveness enough for you, remember psalm 32 remember that the one who is your loving heavenly father is a forgiving god in christ confess your sin to him and repent and flee to his mercy and grace in christ as if you are fleeing to a refuge from a flash flood with the waters rising around you in verse 9 god uses the examples of horses and mules to drive home the point that he's making. These large animals cannot be reasoned with. They can't be persuaded. They must be guided by more forceful, more painful things. And God is urging us to not be like the horse or the mule. Instead, seek the way of wisdom. Confess our sins to him. Repent and flee to him in Christ. God's children, those who are in Christ, should seek to confess and pray because they know that God is a forgiving God. They know the blessings he has promised to his own, and that these blessings are so much greater than the hurtfulness of sin. And he begins to close this psalm in verse 10. Many are the sorrows of the wicked, but steadfast love surrounds the one who trusts in the Lord. Once again, here we see the division between the righteous and the wicked that we see so often in the Psalter. The wicked deal with many sorrows. They are those who are not the forgiven ones, not the blessed ones, and so they experience God's well-deserved wrath coming down upon their sin. But it's helpful to remember here that God always judges sin, but he only judges it once. And for those outside of Christ, they will experience the wrath of God for eternity in hell as they deserve, but for those in Christ, the wrath of God fell on their mediator while he hung on the cross, and God will not judge that sin twice, and so those of us who are in Christ, as we confess our sins, as we repent to our God, we can have confidence that we're not on probation. We're not wondering, are we going to hit that wall one of these days that we think is a door. The righteous, those who trust in the Lord, are not under his wrath, but instead are surrounded by his steadfast love, as we read. This is his covenant love, the love which he has promised to his people, and it is a sure thing. There is nothing more sure. And the result of all of this is what we read in verse 11. Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, O righteous, and shout for The psalmist exhorts those around him. He exhorts the congregation of God to respond to this in praise to the greatest news imaginable. The news that blessed is the one whose sins are forgiven. They're told to be glad in God and to rejoice, to shout for joy, because what better news is there? What better news could we possibly hope for? And so if you are in Christ this evening, then you have these blessings assured to you. Forgiveness, shelter and protection, instruction and love. And if you're here this evening and you are not in Christ, you are not trusting in him and him alone, then you realize that these blessings are not yours. You are under wrath for your sin, iniquity and transgressions against your creator and king. And they call this psalm as a simple one, to walk the path of wisdom, to confess your sins, to repent, and to flee to God in Christ for refuge, to throw yourself on his mercy and grace. And we know that because God has forgiven his people, that they can have confidence that he will be their refuge and help, not just now, not just this Sunday and the next Sunday, not just now and then when they confess their sins, But always, we who have confessed and repented of our sins and trusted in Christ for our salvation are the community of the forgiven. And each one of us here tonight resting in Christ can say this as true of themselves. 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. Amen. Let's pray. father we thank you for your word and for psalm 32 that we have heard tonight we praise you for your mercy and your grace we thank you that because of what christ has done for us that we who are his people are forgiven and blessed ones we thank you for your specific blessings to your people for your love shelter and instruction we pray that we would that you would keep this assurance in our minds as we go out from this place into our homes and schools and workplaces this week. And we pray all of this in the name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.