Speaker 1: 0:03

It's good to be back with you again this morning as we continue our sermon series on the Psalms. We are going through the different categories of Psalms and just doing one different Psalm from each category, and this week we're on a wisdom Psalm. Psalm 32 is what I've chosen, and we know this is a wisdom Psalm because in verse 8 it says I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go. I will counsel you with my eye upon you. Wisdom in the Bible is instruction. In some ways It's just similar to other types of wisdom. We all need wisdom. It seems like every movie character who goes on a quest needs wisdom, and they need a wise sage. Harry Potter needs Dumbledore and Frodo needs Gandalf, and Luke Skywalker needs Obi-Wan. We all need that person who can give us wisdom, and we go to God for that type of wisdom too godly wisdom. But it's not just that we go to God to get wisdom from him, it's that he actually is wisdom personified. Being with God is wisdom itself. This is what the Psalms and the Proverbs and all these different types of wisdom literature are trying to tell us is that to go and to be near and with God and walk with him. That is wisdom, and that's where it all begins. It's the right way to live. So what is, though? what is the wisdom that David wants to offer us in Psalm 32? What is it about being with the Lord that we need to learn here, and what it is ultimately, is that forgiveness is the ultimate blessing. This is the theme of what we'll talk about today Forgiveness is the ultimate blessing. Verses one and two 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. What is the greatest blessing you can ever imagine? What is the greatest blessing you've ever received?

Speaker 1: 2:09

For many of us, we tend to think of it as something that's material right A new house or a job or something like that. If you go look on Twitter and search hashtag blessed, you will find a number of different things that people say are blessings. You'll actually find a lot of people who talk about the blessing of knowing the Lord, which is kind of cool. You'll also have a bunch of people talking about how blessed they are to receive a scholarship offer from some college to play a sport. People talking about how blessed they are, because when everybody else on the weekends is out getting wasted, they're working, they're hustling, they're trying to learn more and more so they can invest more and make more money, and that's what makes them blessed. You have all these different types of blessings and, again, typically we think of them as very material.

Speaker 1: 2:58

But what the Bible is telling us overwhelmingly is that the greatest blessing we can experience is not material, is relational, it is spiritual and it is the blessing of knowing God, our Creator, and walking with Him, because this is what we were made for. We were made in God's image, to enjoy God and to glorify God. But here's the problem. We all know the problem. We talked about it last week. Some we can't. We can't be near God because of our sin. Our sin separates us from God, and so we cannot experience what the Bible calls the blessed life.

Speaker 1: 3:34

And so this is why Don Henley was right. He said I'm trying to get down to the heart of the matter, and I think it's about forgiveness. You guys really don't know that. that's so sad. You don't know that song? Where is your 80s music trivia right now? I'm sorry, i should have gone something more modern, i guess. But the heart of the matter. I joke, but the heart of the matter truly is forgiveness, because without forgiveness we can't know God, we can't be with God, we can't be right with Him, and the only way we can be forgiven is through a gift, the gift of grace. And so the second thing we see is that forgiveness is the ultimate blessing, because it is how we are made right with God.

Speaker 1: 4:18

Notice that's passive language. We don't make ourselves right with God. We don't choose to come back, to come into a right relationship with God by doing certain things. We don't earn this from God. We are made right, we are justified. We are 100% passive in that process. But the reason why we need to be justified again is because of the danger of our sin.

Speaker 1: 4:46

David doesn't seek to downplay it here. He doesn't seek to justify his sin. He actually talks about sin in three different ways. The first thing he says is he calls sin transgression. A transgression is a crime. It's breaking the law And in this case, of course, we've broken God's law. We've transgressed against his law.

Speaker 1: 5:05

Then he talks about iniquity. Iniquity in the Hebrew means to be bent or twisted. We all have a certain bent towards a certain way of being. I mean think about like being a. Whether you're an introvert or an extrovert, you're either bent towards one or the other, typically, but what this is saying, what iniquity is, is that we are all bent towards sin, away from God, and towards sin, because we have a sin nature that causes us to sin, and this is our iniquity. And then he also talks about sin as a general term, but sin, in the Hebrew, can mean missing the mark. It means falling short. We all fall short of the glory of God. We miss the mark of his standard, and so, because of the three headed dog of sin, iniquity and transgressions, we are sinners and can have no relationship with God and therefore can't experience the blessed life in God, and we also can't lift this curse from ourselves. Again, we have no ability to remove this curse, this lack of blessing, and the good news, though, is that there is forgiveness, and there is forgiveness that comes from outside ourselves. It must come from outside ourselves.

Speaker 1: 6:25

David said God forgives our transgressions. The Hebrew word for forgives, did you know this? That it actually means to lift, or to carry or to bear, to lift something off of something else. God has forgiven us, in that he has lifted our transgressions off of us and placed them on Christ. This is what forgiveness is. First, peter 2.24 said he himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds, you have been healed.

Speaker 1: 7:02

Do you know that Jesus died a criminal's death on the cross? Not just any death, but a criminal's death. And not just any criminal, but a scandalous criminal. When the Romans wanted to execute somebody on a cross, it was usually because they were in some way some sort of a scandalous prisoner or criminal and they wanted to make a public display of their death. And this is what Jesus was. Why did he die this kind of death? Because he had our crimes placed on himself. He had our transgressions placed on himself when he was on the cross.

Speaker 1: 7:38

Next, david says that our sins are covered, that God covers them. He conceals them. Our record that we have accumulated of missing God's mark, of falling short of God's glory, it's disappeared. It doesn't just vanish out of thin air and God does nothing with it. No, god actually puts it on Jesus and that's why it's disappeared. But in terms of us, in terms of our having that record, it's no longer there. As far as the east is from the west. And lastly, he says God does not count our iniquity against us. He doesn't count our sin nature as essentially as being our fault. It's removed from our account. And he counts our iniquity against Jesus instead. And not only this, but then we are also credited. We have something credited to our account. What do we have? It's Jesus's perfect righteousness is given to us as though it were ours, and this is the amazing gift of justification that we experience. Again, it's totally passive. We don't do it, we don't earn it, it's given. It's given to us by Christ.

Speaker 1: 8:51

Transgression, as Charles Spurgeon says, transgression, sin and iniquity are the three headed dog at the gates of hell. My wife scolded me after the first service because she said how could you not talk about Fluffy from Harry Potter? I was like you're right, i should have. So I will now. Fluffy is the three headed dog, and Harry Potter and the sorcerer or stone who guards like a passage door, and he's got a sweet, cuddly name. But he's terribly vicious and sin is terribly vicious. It's the three headed dog at the gates of hell, but our glorious Lord has silenced its barkings forever against his own believing ones. The trinity of sin is overcome by the trinity of heaven. So our justification is that we are made right with God. How do we receive this gift? How do we get it?

Speaker 1: 9:48

Some of you might think I don't deserve it, and in fact I don't deserve it so much I'm beyond forgiveness. You don't know what I've done, you don't know the sins I've committed, you don't know how far from God I am. But if that's what you think, if you're here and that's what you feel, then I want you to understand. You don't understand sin and you don't understand Jesus. That's what you think, because, guess what? Your sin, as bad as it may be, it isn't any different than anybody else's sin in terms of how it separates us from God. It all separates us from God, the same. And guess what?

Speaker 1: 10:29

We also have a savior. There is no sin great enough for Jesus Christ that he can't cover it, that he can't eliminate it with his death on the cross. There is no sin that he cannot forgive, and so no one is beyond forgiveness. All are forgiven in Christ. If we come to him in faith. All will receive the unconditional love of Father, son and Holy Spirit. If we come to him in faith And maybe today is the first time you will do that. Maybe you've never done that before. Maybe you do not know Jesus' savior.

Speaker 1: 11:06

The first step is to tell the Lord. Lord, i am a sinner. Maybe you've never said that before. Maybe you've never admitted, even silently, to the Lord I am a sinner. What I have done, what I have thought, what I have said, what I have desired, is sin. It is a transgression against your law and it's offensive to you. Admit this to the Lord, repent of your sin, turn away from it and follow Jesus And see that he is a Savior, the one and only Savior. Follow him in faith and you will be forgiven and restored to the blessedness of being right with God.

Speaker 1: 11:50

At the end of verse 2, it says that the one who is forgiven it says in his spirit there is no deceit. And that doesn't mean that a forgiven person never sins again, or even that a forgiven person won't be deceitful again. What it means is that a forgiven person is one who is constantly coming back to God, honest about his sin, honest about her sin Again. A Christian constantly sins. We don't want to, but we still do, and so we constantly need to confess our sin. So, in one sense, we have a time at some point in our lives when we go to God and we ask for forgiveness for the very first time and we are forgiven, we receive what we call his justification, that we are justified and made right with God.

Speaker 1: 12:41

But then we still need to confess our sin. Like what were we doing when Paul led us in prayer and we confessed our sins to the Lord? What were we doing? Were we having to go back to God again and be like God? I sinned again. I guess I just lost my salvation. Now I need to get it back. Is that what we're doing? Absolutely not. You cannot lose your salvation. Why? Because it doesn't depend on you. If it depended on you, if you had to save yourself, you would lose it every day, and so would I. But because it depends on Christ, you cannot lose it. But what we must do is still go back and confess our sin. Why? Because our sin creates relational distance between us and God. It puts junk in between us and God, and so forgiveness is the ultimate blessing, because it's how we keep coming back to God. Verses 3 and 3 through 5, david says 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 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.

Speaker 1: 14:05

David had multiple times in his life where he committed terrible sin, but the one he's probably talking about here, and the one that is probably most well known, is his adultery with Bathsheba and his murder of Uriah. You see, david, at some point in his life, when he was king and he had achieved great status and wealth and power, he saw a woman who was not his wife and he said I assume. He thought to himself well, i'm the king, i can do whatever I want. And so he called for her to be brought to him and Bathsheba came and they slept together and she ended up pregnant. She was married to a man named Uriah who was away fighting in a war, and so David called for Uriah to come back home and he brought him into his palace and he gave him some wine and had him feeling real good And he was like hey, Uriah, why don't you go home and see your wife? Uriah was like no, my Lord, i can't, I can't do it. Well, my buddies are all fighting in a war. I can't go enjoy these pleasures while they're all fighting. I can't do it, i would feel terrible. And so he doesn't go home to see his wife, and David tries it again, but it doesn't work. And so finally he's like all right, uriah, go back. He sends him with a letter that says put Uriah in the fiercest part of the battle and then remove yourselves from him, so he will be killed. And he is.

Speaker 1: 15:35

David has Uriah murdered to cover up his sin. It is a horrible mess. There is no coming back from this, at least not in our worldly perspective. Right, and we don't have to imagine how David felt, because we read it right here His bones were wasting away. He felt a deep spiritual anguish. He was so hurt by it, he was so grieved by it that it was like he was crying out to God all day and all night long. And the worst thing he felt was that he felt the Lord's heavy hand upon him, pressing into him. Which is the Lord trying to tell him you need to confess your sin, you need to come back to me.

Speaker 1: 16:29

And he said when he felt that he felt this spiritual kind of distress and angst. He said it sapped his strength, like when, like when you're doing yard work in Florida in July. It saps your strength, it absolutely wears you out. This is what happens when we try to hide our sin from God. Why do we do it? We do we really think that God doesn't know what we're doing? Do we really think God doesn't know our sin better than we do? Me? but we're still. We're like Jonah.

Speaker 1: 17:00

We, jonah, thought he could go To Tarshish. He thought he could go far enough away That God wouldn't be able to find him. Or we're like David. David thought that he could cover up his sin with more sin and just hide it from God And maybe God won't find out. Why are we like that?

Speaker 1: 17:20

I Think often it's because of our pride, and in our pride we forget About our justification, which we just talked about. We forget That we are only justified, we are only made right with God because of Christ's righteousness. There is never a point in our lives. Where is it where it's about our righteousness that's making us right with God? It's only because of Christ's righteousness. But we forget that and then we start to think I've got to Prove myself to God. I've got to Be the righteous one. It's got to be my righteousness as I appear before God And I got to prove to him that I can do it, that I can be right on my own.

Speaker 1: 18:07

And Then, when we have that, we we think, oh, but then I sinned, i, i've ruined it, i've messed up. So I Guess I need to try to hide this from God. Maybe he won't find out, maybe I can hold it back from him. But but then you see what we're doing. We're detaching ourselves from Godly wisdom and we're starting to Go back into the way the world thinks. The world thinks I've got to appear my as though I've got it all together. I've got to, you know, go out there and look like I know what I'm doing. If I make a mistake, i'm not gonna tell anybody about it. If I screw up, i'm just gonna do the best I can to hide it, especially from someone who might, might be an authority figure. And we do that same thing with God.

Speaker 1: 19:00

And what this does is unconfessed sin. Hiding our sin from God is. It creates Relational distance from him. If you feel far from God, it may very well be because you have unconfessed sin, because you're not going to him and telling him what you've done. And So what God is telling us to do, what David is telling us that we ought to do, he's saying learn from my mistakes, go to God with Openness and with honesty about your sin, because, no matter what you think, it is the only way we can go to him. We only go to him dirty, as it were, but go willingly. Don't wait for God to to press that weight on you. Don't wait for God to do something catastrophic, to allow something catastrophic to happen in your life To make you then have to go back to him. This is kind of what he did with with with date with David. He said David was I guess I don't know how much time passed really between events here, but at some point God sent the prophet Nathan to go and Kind of pull David back right.

Speaker 1: 20:19

Nathan goes to David and shares this parable with him. He Tells David you, uh, you know, there was a poor man who had a Little lamb, was like his pet. He loved this little lamb, he cared for the lamb and he nursed it and he fed it. It was his prized possession. And then he says then a rich man had had a bunch of guests coming into town. He wanted to entertain them and so, you know, he probably had his own lambs, his own whole herd of them, but instead he went and got this one lamb from the poor man and he took it and he killed it and he fed it to the guests. And and David, here's this and he is just absolutely Outraged and he's like that, that rich man, he needs to be put to death.

Speaker 1: 21:13

And Nathan, i always imagined Nathan pointing his finger, looking at David, saying You are the man, not not like hey, you're the man. No, you Are the one who has done this. This is what you have done With all your stuff, with your rae and Bathsheba. You are that man. You have offended the Lord, and David experienced terrible earthly consequences because of this. The text tells us that the child that Bathsheba had died a few days after childbirth and Then years later, because God said that the sword will never leave your family. Years later, absalom, david's son, tries to take the kingdom from David and he ends up dying because of it.

Speaker 1: 22:06

So when we sin, oftentimes we don't escape earthly consequences of our sin, but if we are Believers in Jesus Christ, when we confess our sin. God forgives us because there is always forgiveness, and this is what David experienced. Look at 2nd Samuel, 12, 13. It says David said to Nathan I have sinned against the Lord. And Nathan said to David the Lord also has put away your sin. You shall not die. As verse 5 said, david acknowledges his sin to the Lord. He says, lord I, what I have done Has missed the mark And that's putting it mildly. I have offended you with what I have done. Again, david was already a man of God. He was already forgiven, same as we are, as those who follow Jesus Christ. Our sin was forgiven 2,000 years ago when Jesus went to the cross. So our sin is already forgiven.

Speaker 1: 23:07

We're not going to Jesus, we're not going to God to be re-saved or re-forgiven or anything like that, but we must go to him to confess our sins so that we can be drawn back to right relationship with God. Our unconfessed sin will hinder the progress of our growth in Christ. We will not grow in maturity if we're not confessing our sin. We will stay stuck or even become more immature. So we confess our sins to God, make this a daily practice.

Speaker 1: 23:41

And what are we really doing? What we're doing is. We're agreeing with God that what we have done, what we have said, what we have thought, what we have desired, we are agreeing with God that these things are sin and that they're offensive to him and that we need his mercy. We don't go to God looking like we've got it all together, pretending like we have it all together, hiding our sin from him. No, we go honest. We come dirty so that we can be washed clean. This is what 1 John 1-9 says He is faithful and just to forgive us of our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Every time we go back, we experience his love, we experience his forgiveness, we experience the blessing of being with him. And again, verse 9 gives us a warning 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. Do not wait for God to do something forcefully to bring you back. Go to him, go to him daily and experience the blessing of being back with God. The last thing I'll say, just about forgiveness and why it's an ultimate blessing, is because it makes us eye witnesses to the blessing of being with God.

Speaker 1: 25:19

David says something very simple but true in verse 10. He says many are the sorrows of the wicked. He's observed this. He sees the sorrows of the wicked. We could point to any number of things in our world right now that are sorrowful, that unbelievers deal with, and one of them is that unbelievers have no idea what to do with guilt. What do you do with guilt if you don't know the Lord? That's why we have cancel culture. That's why there are certain things that if you say it, especially if you say it on social media you are done. There's no forgiveness, there's no grace. You are just done Like you are annihilated socially. Maybe you can't get a job, maybe you can't interact in the same circles anymore. It's like you have to be exiled.

Speaker 1: 26:10

David DeYoung, a pastor of North Carolina, says that this is actually why a lot of people seem to gravitate towards having a victim mentality. He says victimhood is the world's way of experiencing moral release. If you're a victim, it's like the weight of guilt is removed from you. There's no longer a need for you to justify yourself because you've really been through it, and so you get a pass. And that's why it seems like some people actually want to posture themselves as victims. It's the only way they can think of to get a pass, to get this kind of moral release.

Speaker 1: 26:54

But the problem is nobody's actually dealing with their guilt. The best they can think to do is just take it and move it somewhere else. It's kind of like trying to dispose of radioactive waste. Did you know that there are 90,000 metric tons of radioactive waste just in America? I did not know this, i had to look this up. Most of it is stored by nuclear power plants and nuclear weapons manufacturing facilities. It just sits there in these barrels. I don't know what the barrels are made of, probably something really strong, but there's nowhere to put it. Just sits there And the best thing that people can think of to do is move it somewhere else. The government I will shock you with this statement, but the government can't agree on what to do with it. There's thought of maybe trying to take it and put it under a mountain in Nevada. But even then, do you know that radioactive waste is radioactive for thousands of years? You're taking radioactive waste, you're putting it under a mountain in Nevada. It's still radioactive. You're not eliminating it. That's the point.

Speaker 1: 28:02

Our world, our unbelieving world, has no idea how to eliminate sin, because they can't. They have no idea how to eliminate guilt, because they can't. All they can do is move it around from person to person, do they Do? you see how much our world needs the hope of the gospel? How hopeful would it be for a person to hear the good news that you know what Jesus can eliminate your sin. Jesus can eliminate your guilt. All you have to do is go to him and ask. He already did it. He already took your sin on himself and it died with him. It's paid for. That's the hope the world needs to hear, and they also need to hear that this makes God our refuge in times of trouble.

Speaker 1: 29:01

Verses 6 and 7. David says 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. If we are justified and forgiven in Christ, then this makes God our ultimate refuge in times of trouble. In any time, but especially in times of trouble, we no longer have to hide from God. We have nothing to fear in his presence. We go to him with our sin. We go to him as a refuge with our sin.

Speaker 1: 29:45

But again, the sorrows of the wicked, the sorrows of the unbelievers. One of those sorrows is hopelessness. There are so many people who live this life as though it's the only thing there is, as though they're going to die and that's it. They're just going to cease to exist And they put all the pressure is on this life right now having to be fantastic. But if you have one bag diagnosis, you have one particularly harsh economic downturn, you lose a child. God forbid, i mean that would wreck your whole identity and your whole existence because you believe this is all there is.

Speaker 1: 30:34

But that kind of pain and that kind of trouble for a Christian, it is still grievous, it is still painful, we still experience disappointment, we still experience anger and outrage. But do you know what trouble does for a Christian? Trouble does not fill us with bitterness and hopelessness. Trouble drives us to our refuge. It drives us back to God, it reminds us. you know what? I do have a safe hiding place from this. It's God And I go back to him and I can experience the blessing of being with him, even in the worst trouble. And trouble also sharpens us. God uses it. God uses suffering to sharpen us, to make us more Christ-like, to give us more courage to grow our faith so that we're able to live for Christ and His kingdom.

Speaker 1: 31:26

The world needs to hear this too. The world needs to hear that, yes, you right now are going through some kind of trouble, but there is a refuge, there is a rock solid foundation. His name is Jesus Christ. Let our lives be the kind of lives that make this type of truth known. If we were able to rejoice both through joy and sorrow, then I think people will notice And people will ask questions. That's what we want And we can say to them what verses 10 and 11 say. 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. Let that be our constant refrain. Let's pray together.