Forgiven

this morning we return to our study in the psalms and we are coming this morning to psalm 32 psalm 32 so we will consider the 11 verses of psalm 32 a mascal of david let's give our attention to the word of the lord psalm 32 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 or 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 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 the time when you may be found. Surely, in a 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. Do not be like a horse or a mule without understanding which must be curved with bit and brittle or 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 oh righteous and shout for joy all you upright in heart may the lord bless this morning the hearing of his work what do they say about history boys and girls you've probably heard you've probably heard your teachers tell you that that we should learn from those who gone who have gone before us so that we don't do and make the same mistakes right i mean that's one of the things we often hear uh in the study of of history that we would not repeat the same errors you know the same is true when it comes to the bible's history we have a long history of of saints who have gone before us who have lived the christian life and they have a lot to tell us don't they they have a lot to tell us about uh the christian life now one of the things that constantly comes out uh it's a remarkable verse something i want to point to your attention up front is verse six for this cause everyone who is godly shall pray to you in a time when you may be found that's a remarkable verse it's something the bible continues to maintain over and over that we should come to the lord in this time because he still may be found there's an urgency to that this is something the bible continues to say to us over and over we and here we have in psalm 32 uh the great king david telling us this telling us that this is what he learned about life telling us that plainly about many of the pains that he experienced in life when he refused to come to the lord when he stiffened his neck to the lord do you come to the lord do you come what does it look like we had a taste of that this morning maybe i should ask what um look at the opposite way what does it not look like fair question isn't it how many of you struggle this morning with feeling like maybe the lord you have no strength to go on and the lord has turned his face from you you struggle with the feelings maybe of depression and the question of why do i i feel at times as if God has abandoned me and there is absolutely no spiritual light within me? Why do I feel that? Do you struggle with forgiveness? What did you do last week? How do you feel about that? Does it prick you? What's going on in your life? Do you seem to experience the heavy hand of God pressing in on you at times seasons of this everyone here who has a sensitive conscience sensitive redeemed conscience knows this it's very real it's something we go through Christians will go through periods of this Christians have described this for us throughout history and everything that I've just sort of raised in question form is exactly what David is telling you he experienced and went through in the course of life. And you see, the Lord inspired this psalm of the great king, the great king David, that we would understand something about life, something that we are often so confused about. We're often confused about the Christian life. We're confused about the lack of progress. We're confused about where we're going and what we're doing. And is this it? Really? Isn't there more? What is set before us is David's description of the very real problem of ongoing sin in life. The very real problem. And you have two ways you can deal with this problem throughout the course of life. You can come to the Lord and really enjoy the freedom and the knowledge of His forgiveness. And through life, He will shield you from these struggles and help you in times of struggle or you can run you can run and then you can experience and receive all the misery that trying to run from the lord will bring and you see this psalm is telling us about god's wondrous desire to forgive us to help us along the way to be with us to strengthen us but he does desire something of us and psalm 32 this morning outlines that in fact it was saint augustine's favorite song did you know that of the great saint augustine this was it and saint augustine had lived quite a life if any of you know saint augustine's life he had lived in rebellion for a good portion of his life in sexual immorality and when he had been redeemed and come to a clear understanding of his sin, he would meditate often on Psalm 32. In fact, they would say he would put it by his bed every night and read it. And he would look at this psalm and he said this about Psalm 32. The beginning of knowledge is to know oneself to be a sinner. The beginning of all knowledge is to know oneself to be a sinner. Verse 1. 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. David is the author here and he begins by speaking of this beautiful beatitude of god we call them beatitudes the blessedness of god and you'll notice down in verse 10 that there's a an opposite reality that is described in this psalm in verse 10 that actually there are many sorrows that are being multiplied to the wicked so you have two paths set before us as the psalms often do especially the wisdom psalms and here is the path of the wicked and then there is the path of the blessed. And there's no doubt that this psalm is provoking us and it is challenging us to ask, which kind of path am I on? And how do I know? I'm going to come back to verses 1 and 2. I want you to see what he's doing in this psalm and I believe it opens up 1 and 2 very, very powerfully. In verses 3 through 5, if you're taking notes this morning, you'll notice he tells us how he had come to understand this blessedness of God, and he gives us his story. In other words, he goes back through life, if you will, and he looks over his life, and he provides his own life as a kind of case study to tell us how he came to this kind of confidence and joy in God's forgiveness. Let me tell you about it, says David. Let me open up a little bit about my story. Let me tell you my life and what I've learned about. What it was when I tried to walk in the path of the wicked. I want to tell you about that. I want you to understand this. When I chose to go down the path of sin and I went for it and I took on all that it had to offer me. Let me tell you about it. now this is a an immediate problem because if he speaks of the blessedness in verse 1 this is not really the man we meet in psalm 1 is it the psalm 1 said blessed is the man who does not do these things and david is saying i did it i walked in the counsel of the ungodly i stood in the path of sinners i was seated in the the the uh in the seat of the scornful i did it all so here we're immediately confronted with these two kinds of blessedness and um he's describing this in verse three of what it was like to run let me tell you my story for a minute i want to hear that story don't you boys and girls especially this morning don't you want to hear his story he's got a story to tell you i went through a season of rebellion i tested it out in verse five he uses all the words uh he could use to describe this path he he uses all three words of departure that the bible uses and he puts it all together in one comprehensive picture i committed transgression which means i i departed from god in the worst sort of way i sinned i missed the mark of his holiness and i committed iniquity everything i did was crooked and twisted and the question we kind of come to is well what's he talking about we know that psalm 51 was written after his awful uh departure with basheba it was an immediate response um with that sin with the basheba incident but what makes this psalm a little more interesting too many have noticed that it was it was written a little bit later but they take it in connection with psalm 51 it was written after he was able to look at the bigger picture of the whole incident and the course of life and his seasons of rebellion now if we can apply it to the basheba incident which i think we can most of you know this story don't you it was an awful moment of life he's up watching from the rooftop a woman bathing and he takes her husband and he throws him out on the same line remember what he said sword devours one as well as the other complete disregard for the life of her husband and then this king of israel who was to be a model of piety and godliness and representing the kingly office of our Lord. He did what? Well, he had a child with her. And I don't know how long that little run was, but I believe you can say at least nine months. And the question that we kind of come to with this is, didn't you see what you were doing, David? Come on. couldn't you see that how could the king of israel not see that and you see the bible will present to us over and over um how deceitful sin is you know hebrews will will tell us exhort one another every single day as long as it is called today the same principle you've got today that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. Sin is powerful. Way more powerful than us. And what we would say, even as Paul will describe in Romans 7, the things that I don't want to do, I keep doing. And sin has this very hardening effect on the heart and on the life. You remember Romans 1, That someone can go so much into the sin that there's a point at which God gives them over to it. Or as Ephesians 4 says, that there is a point at which the Gentiles are past feeling. They don't even feel it. Now what is David doing here? Well, why is he doing this? He's not rehearsing the gruesome details of his sin. Not like these guys who do that today. what his goal is is to have us think about what his life was like in that rebellion the deceitfulness of it the promise that sin is fun and he describes it for us in verse three when i kept silent when i didn't come clean when i didn't confess in other words my bones grew old for day and night your hand was heavy upon me all my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer i experienced this this heavy hand of the lord in other words god didn't let me rest in this god didn't let me rest in this he was miserable he was absolutely miserable in the choice that he had made and isn't it's true that sin that's why we do it it promises pleasure it promises enjoyment and we go after it but here's the problem the whole time we're running if we're a true believer God won't let us remain happy in it which is an ultimate act of his mercy David says what I actually experienced was this heavy hand of the Lord I don't know how much you have felt that or experienced that everyone here takes little periods of running from the lord and i can tell you you know every time i tried growing up and when i try to step away from the lord one of the things that he does for me is he makes me an absolutely miserable person miserable he inflicts on the conscience a real sense of divine displeasure what do i do with that calvin talks about that calvin was really interesting on psalm 32 he talks about all of the inward torments that begin to happen on the inside of the saint who is running from the lord and he even experiences a kind of mental a mental agony and departure a madness he says that people will inwardly devour the sorrow and they keep devouring the sorrow and devouring the sorrow so that at some point it bursts out in rage and madness and it has effect upon the body doesn't it it's interesting david seems to be saying here this and i understand it's poetry but i can't get away from very literal implications of this on the body he seems to be saying this hit my bones it's proven you know that unforgiveness and certain behaviors waste away the body. It's absolutely proven. David is saying, I experienced this. I experienced this chastening of the Lord. Hebrews will tell us about this a little bit. You've not resisted the bloodshed striving against sin and you've forgotten the exhortation which speaks to you as sons. Notice how this is all in the language of God's love for His people. Your sons, my son, don't despise the chastening of the Lord, nor be discouraged when you're rebuked by Him. For whom the Lord loves, He chastens. And scourges every son whom He receives. If you endure chastening, guess what? God deals with you as sons. David is telling us this. And you can't help but connect it with the whole story of the prodigal son. Remember, he takes the inheritance and he says, I'm leaving my father's house and I'm running to a far country. And by the time that whole little season of running had ended, the guy is down in the pig slop eating the pig food. And what does he say? There's one little phrase in that text that you should always circle. And it's a little phrase, when he came to himself. What am I doing? I'm living like this and look how this is. I've got to go back. I've got to go back. You notice David is saying in this psalm, day and night your hand was heavy on me. Day and night. You didn't let me go. Well, isn't this just the most comforting passage if you have a son or a daughter who's running right now? The only way they're going to be brought home is God coming after them. And the beautiful thing is with His children, He's coming. Day and night, there was no relief from this burden of my sin. And you know how it all ended, right? If this is the Bathsheba incident, God sends Nathan to him and Nathan tells a nice little parable of a man who had everything, and he took a little lamb from a man who had nothing. And David says, I'm going to get that man. And Nathan says, You are that man. And the first words of David, I have sinned against the Lord. I've sinned. For months, no remorse, though I'm pretty sure he went through all the motions of worship. You ever stopped and said that to the Lord? I've sinned against you. Do you? Do you stop and bow the knee and say that to the Lord? It's our story. I wish I could present a much more victorious life right now for the Christian. but you know this is the struggle the glory is coming and we could go for months we could go for years like this is this you how do you get out I mean that's the question how do I how do I get out from this powerful sin that can dominate the life David says you know what let me tell you about another thing that i tried i went to the lord i went to the lord why is that so hard you know the intention of this song that's what makes this song so beautiful for you today the intention of this song is god saying i desire to help i desire to forgive that's why it's here and the spirit is encouraging you greatly today in your struggles the spirit is helping you and your struggles. Notice verse 5. I acknowledged my sin to you and I did not cover it. I said, I will confess my transgressions to the Lord and you forgave the iniquity of my sin. I was in misery trying to run and so I tried this other thing. I stopped and I said, I'm going to confess it. Do we know what confession is? Confession is not going to a priest or a pope, by the way. Confession is going to the Lord. And that's the beauty of what the Lord is inviting you to in this psalm. And he's saying confession is observing the path that you're on and observing it and coming to yourself, saying, what have I been doing? I'm going back to God. And I'm going to tell him that the path that I've chosen that has broken his law is wrong. I'm going to be open with him. I'm going to lay it out before him. I'm going to speak to him that he wants to hear that from me. I'm not going to hide it. I'm going to tell him. You know, when you've come to this real place of repentance, when it's hit the heart and in such a way you come to Psalm 51 and when David says, you know, you're just when you judge blameless when you judge this sense of if you were to judge me i know it's right lord because that's the place of complete openness before him you know how hard it is for us to come to that place we have a society we live in today that trains us not to think like that you realize that you're all victims of your circumstances you know you've all been exposed to bad upbringings you all have faced many perils as a child your parents were stuck in some bad sins and therefore hey you do it and so our courts are filled today with people who will come up and what is the plea they give we're spending millions in this country because we hear the plea every day of not guilty and so our society trains us to say hey we didn't do it you know and and so countless hours and monies and energy is spent to defend a claim of innocence when a person may be well deserving of the death penalty what would be the greatest rarity today to get a murderer stand up and say you know what i did it and whatever consequence of breaking the law you're going a level upon me i deserve it the judge is going to sit there and go what i don't need a lawyer do you realize that as believers this is what pleases the lord not when we run around oh we're good we need to build up our self-esteem and no when we come to him and we're honest like this with our lives if we're going to be really honest we're all a mess we're all a deep mess about life and what we do and i'm a master cover you're a master cover and the most difficult thing is to hear the statement you are that man that's why you know when someone comes up and says to me you know you preach that sermon at me and i always say well yeah i did shoe fits wear it you know um but we're also prone to look at the neighbor next to us and think that they should be hearing that sermon right did you notice how verse five reads i acknowledge 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 i would expect a sila which means stop ponder reflect i would expect a sila after i acknowledge my sin to you and i did not cover my iniquity i said i will confess my transgressions to the lord i would expect the sila right there but isn't it remarkable that there's no break it's almost as if before he could even get it out what did the lord do forgave he wants to forgive son your sins are forgiven you mark 2 it's a swift answer it's a quick answer it's an action on god's part there is nothing that moves him sooner to act nothing that moves him sooner to deliver and to save and to help to declare a sinner not guilty than when a naked broken heart comes to him and says i've sinned lord help me out of this mess shortest prayer in the bible is the publican at the back beating his chest saying god be merciful to me a sinner see now you understand verse one blessed is the man there's joy that has filled david this is not a a life of dragging our face through the dirt and saying woe is me all the time that's not what this is promoting this this understanding and coming has immediately brought joy and and so he is describing the blessedness of god's forgiveness blessed is the man whose transgression is forgiven whose sin is covered blessed is the man to whom the lord does not impute iniquity so in other words the blessedness of god his beatitude his grace in your life is seen in this his amazing commitment to bring us to a place of seeing that we are sinners and not fighting against that seeing that our lives have been giant departures from him that we are not the blessed man of psalm one in and of ourselves that's christ and that we have walked in the counsel of the ungodly and the blessedness is the different kind of blessedness that he has given us is bringing us to a place of understanding and believing that we are forgiven and that he loves us there's a reason paul would root this in romans 4 in god's act of justifying a sinner this is the blessedness that flows from a justified life and if sin is departing from god you notice here god does everything possible the three parts of sin if you will the three departing iniquity transgression the lord responds in every single way doesn't he he forgives he covers he does not impute why because of the savior because he loved us so much that he gave his son he made him who knew no sin to be sin that in him we might become the righteousness of god and you see that means the whole of the christian life is every time we sin when we go through these struggles you're justified once and for all and every time we continue because it's an up and down christian life that's sanctification it's hard it's not easy and he's telling us here you know what you should do come to me right away what's the thing we do when we sin we think oh i'm so filthy i can't come and we stay away and the lord says come to me right away and you know what i'm going to do lay it before me don't hide come today and i'll forgive i'll help you you don't have to hide your life what's the first thing adam did in the garden of eden after he sinned he went and sewed together little fig leaves didn't he you don't have to put on fig leaves i've got a much more beautiful robe for you says the Lord now this is the most encouraging message today why especially for a profession of faith the Lord gave us this example of David and he put this down in the scriptures for us that we might learn that this is his desire that he would give us mercy and that if this kind of mercy was for David he wants you to know the same kind of mercy is for you i don't know what you've done i know all of us have skeletons in the closet and we're good at covering but here's the reality the lord is telling you today don't doubt my intention to forgive and you should realize that until you're in glory you're going to continue to struggle you're going to continue to be up and down there's a reason the heidelberg says we only to make a small advancement in sanctification in this life and so here's the things i want you to think about in closing he says when you sin come today verse 6 david it's almost as if he says here don't do what i did learn from my own departure you want to say that to people you have you have a million people who've gone before you who've told you look this path is death this path is misery you say to the young people don't do it millions of believers who have this message for us who've come before us who've lived and the lord is telling us you should listen verse six instead come and everyone who is godly offer prayer to you oh lord at the time when you may be found and you know what's going to happen in a rush of great waters they're not going to reach him what does that mean it's a beautiful verse telling you there is a day coming when he won't be found but today he may be found and the wonderful blessing is when you come these flood of waters won't touch you that means he's not going to have to come after you he's not going to have to chastise you that's why um thomas watson used to say when we judge ourselves satan's put out of office you know come come today and what does he say here you know and the lord says you can hide in me i'm your hiding place isn't that amazing of all the places we would want to go hide and dip into somewhere else to hide from the lord the lord is inviting you to come and hide in him and who is that you think of moses in the rock and hiding in the cleft of the rock you can hide in my son what a wonderful thing david says i've tried it i don't want you to experience god's heavy hand don't run don't be stubborn don't be like a mule you know you know how mules are i'm not a cattle guy but i get a good idea of what a mule is like to put bits in them and then you have to whip them to get them to do anything don't don't be like that don't make me come tame you augustine used to say about this we need not wonder if after the bit has been inserted the whip is also used the sinner who wants to be like an unbroken animal must be subdued with bit and whip let us hope that she he or she can be broken in the fear is that such persons may resist so obstinately that they deserve to be left forever in that unbroken state and allowed to go their own sweet way. May such people, when the whip catches them, be corrected and subdued, as the psalmist tells us, he was too tamed. And the psalm wants you to know the Lord is so merciful and forgiving. He desires for you the life of peace and joy in the freedom of the gospel that he has announced to the life, death, resurrection of his son. And so he reminds us at the very end of this, my steadfast love surrounds every single one of you who trusts me. I want you to know that, says the Lord. My steadfast love surrounds every single one of you who trusts me and comes to my son. Aren't you overwhelmed that God is telling you at the end of this psalm that the Christian life and that the Christian should be happy. That the Christian should be joyful. That we are to live a life rejoicing, knowing his love. That we should shout for joy all of his people because of what he's done. This is your God. It could be different, but it's not. This is what he's declared to you today. I just ask the question then, is there any deep-rooted sin you need to confess today? Come to Him. He calls you to come. And you're going to experience a release and a freedom and a joy that the powerful blood of Jesus Christ gives. Come to me, says the Lord. Come. My yoke is easy and my burden is light and you will find rest for your souls. Amen. Lord our God, we are so grateful that You have announced this to us. We know we don't deserve it. We know that we provoke You each and every day and that Your desire is that we would come. We would confess our sins and that we as Your people would live in the joy of Your forgiveness. Blessed be the Lord our God was lavished down upon us so rich a gift. Thank you, O Lord, for your forgiveness. Today, we come. In Jesus' name we pray.