The Joy of Forgiveness

Transcript

JR 38
02/16/2025
The Joy of Forgiveness
Psalm 32
Jesse Randolph

Having spent most of my life in southern California, there are still certain things I associate with the land of my birth. Things like the beach and “In ‘N’ Out Burger” and Disneyland. And of course, the high-speed chase. You know, I grew up in an era where on any given night you could be watching TV, and you could just about bank on the fact that whether you were watching a new story or a sporting event, or a show . . . that that event or that show would eventually be interrupted by live footage of a high speed chase on one of the Southland’s inter-connected web of highways. Every news station, you see, owned a helicopter. And attached to the underside of that helicopter was a spotlight. “The eye in the sky” they called it. And these news choppers would shine their spotlight on the concrete jungle beneath, to track the movements of the criminals who were trying to escape the long arm of the law. And it was always riveting entertainment to watch on TV, a person’s live attempt to escape the arm of justice. But the entertainment always had the same ending. Because those chases always ended up at the same point with the same conclusion. With the suspect either colliding with another vehicle or the suspect running over a spike strip. Or the suspect bailing on the vehicle, running into a neighborhood, where he would eventually be tackled or tased or taken down by a police dog. And whenever you watched one of these live chases on TV back in those days, you would always end up asking yourself the same two questions. Number one, why did I spend so much time watching this thing? And two, did the perp really think he was going to get away with it? See, no one ever got away. No one ever escaped. No one was able to remain in perpetual hiding. And that’s because that searching spotlight attached to the bottom of that helicopter, the eye in the sky, eventually found everyone out. Every suspect was eventually caught and found. Which brings to mind that principle from Numbers 32:23, that “your sin will find you out.”

Well, a man who knew that truth all too well, that “your sin will find you out,” was King David.
As one commentator has noted of King David: “Although David was one of the greatest saints of Scripture and one of the greatest sages of Scripture and one of the greatest sovereigns of Scripture, he was also one of the greatest sinners of Scriptures.”

And David, of course, was not merely a sinner, he was a forgiven sinner, and he knew it. He knew the joy of forgiveness, as we’re going to see in our text for this morning, Psalm 32. We’re taking a one-week break from our study in the Gospel of Luke, to study David here, as he recalls and he recounts the joys, the blessings, of having been forgiven by God, the God he had sinned against. Psalm 32. I’d invite you to turn there with me, if you’re not there already. Psalm 32, God’s word reads: “Of David. A Maskil. How blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered! How blessed is the man whose iniquity Yahweh will not take into account, and in whose spirit there is no deceit! When I kept silent about my sin, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night Your hand was heavy upon me; my vitality was drained away as with the heat of summer. Selah. I acknowledged my sin to You, and my iniquity I did not cover up; I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions to Yahweh;’ and You forgave the iniquity of my sin. Selah. Therefore, let every holy one pray to You at a time when You may be found; surely in a flood of great waters they will not reach him. You are my hiding place; You guard me from trouble; You surround me with songs of deliverance. Selah. I will give you insight and teach you in the way which you should go; I will counsel you with My eye upon you. Do not be as the horse or as the mule which have no understanding, whose harness are bit and bridle to control them, otherwise they will not come near you.
Many are the sorrows of the wicked, but he who trusts in Yahweh, lovingkindness shall surround him. Be glad in Yahweh and rejoice, you righteous ones; and shout for joy, all you who are upright in heart.”

Psalm 32 is a psalm written by a man who had been walking with God. But then he comes to this fork in the road. And at some point; after taking one of those forks, it dawns on him that he is going the wrong way. And then what he did was he acknowledged his wayward ways to God. He acknowledged his sin to God. He sought forgiveness from God. Then God indeed forgave him.

This is a beautiful psalm. I’m really excited to preach it this morning. But to do so, in full color, it’s important that we go through some of the history. And lay some of the groundwork for what we see happening in this psalm. For starters, going back to verse 1, we see that superscription, those words above verse 1, where it says: “of David.” This is a psalm of David. David was the king over Israel a thousand years before the birth of Jesus. David, humanly speaking, is the author of this psalm. And David, you recall, was the son of a shepherd named Jesse. He hailed from this town that we’ve all become familiar with in our study of Luke’s Gospel, Bethlehem. And David experienced this rather unexpected rise from obscurity as he toiled among the flocks of his father. To going to being anointed by Samuel the prophet. To becoming King Saul’s armor-bearer. To defeating Goliath. To having songs written in his honor. To being pursued by a now-jealous King Saul. To eventually succeeding Saul. To experiencing all of these different military victories. To having multiple wives and multiple children. And even having God cut a covenant with David in 2 Samuel 7. So, all was going well for David. All was going well for the King. He had the crown. He had success. He had relationships. He even had this promise from God.

But it all came to a screeching halt when David spotted from his rooftop a woman taking a bath.
Turn with me, if you would, to 2 Samuel 11. Hang a left in your Old Testaments to 2 Samuel 11. We won’t go through the entire account here, but we’ll hit some of the highlights. Looking just at verses 1 and 2 of 2 Samuel 11. It says: “Now it happened in the spring, at the time when kings go out to battle, that David sent Joab and his servants with him and all Israel, and they destroyed the sons of Ammon and besieged Rabbah. But David stayed at Jerusalem. Now when evening came David arose from his bed and walked around on the roof of the king’s house, and from the roof he saw a woman bathing; and the woman was very beautiful in appearance.”

Now, again, I’m not going to go through the whole thing here, but the basic details are as follows: David sees this woman bathing. He asks who she was. He’s told that she’s Bathsheba. She’s the wife of Uriah the Hittite. A man who was serving in David’s army. David then sends for Bathsheba. He has sexual relations with her. She conceives with his child. That really puts David in a jam, because her husband, Uriah, is off to war at David’s behest. Meaning, if Uriah was to come home to a pregnant wife or to a newborn child there’d obviously be a problem. He would say, ‘What’s up with that?’ in Hebrew. But knowing that, David sends to have Uriah called back from battle. And he concocts this scheme whereby Uriah would come back prematurely, so that he could have sexual relations with his own wife. And essentially cover up David’s own sin of adultery. Well, things don’t go according to plan. Because Uriah does come home to Jerusalem but he doesn’t have sexual relations with his wife. And now David’s hand is forced, and he needs to come up with this new plan. Which is to have his commanders place Uriah on the front line of the fiercest battle to ensure that Uriah was killed.

And it works. Uriah is killed. And David is clear. Or so he thinks. Look at 2 Samuel 11:27, over the page, he says:
“Then the time of mourning passed by, and David sent and gathered her to his house,” speaking of Bathsheba, of course, “and she became his wife; then she bore him a son.” Then look at this sentence: “but the thing that David had done was evil in the sight of Yahweh.” And then eventually we know David’s confronted by Nathan, the prophet sent by God, over his sin with Bathsheba. Go over to chapter 12:13, David finally acknowledges his sin, saying to Nathan, “I have sinned against Yahweh.”

And it’s that acknowledgement, “I have sinned against Yahweh,” which then leads David to write the psalm we all know him best for, Psalm 51. Turn with me to Psalm 51, which though it appears numerically after our psalm, Psalm 32 in the psalter, in terms of history and chronology the events of Psalm 51 precede Psalm 32. Psalm 32 is really the sequel to Psalm 51. But Psalm 51, let’s go ahead and read that, where David says . . . I’ll read the superscription first, “For the choir director, a Psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet came to him after he had gone into Bathsheba.” We just considered that. And then verse 1, “Be gracious to me, O God, according to Your lovingkindness; according to the abundance of Your compassion blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Against You, You only, I have sinned and done what is evil in Your sight, so that You are justified when You speak and pure when You judge. Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me. Behold, You delight in truth in the innermost being, and in the hidden part You will make me know wisdom. Purify me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Make me to hear joy and gladness, let the bones which You have crushed rejoice. Hide Your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me away from Your presence and do not take Your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of Your salvation and sustain me with a willing spirit. Then I will teach transgressors Your ways, and sinners will be converted to You.” We’ll stop there.

The thought here though is after committing adultery with one of his soldier’s wives and as this child of his adultery is growing in Bathsheba’s womb… David, the idea here as he’s putting up this bold front up to this point as though he has it all together… But the reality is, he did it. The reality, he was haunted. And then, Nathan the prophet comes to him, and he publicly accuses him and condemns him. And after he’s confronted, David writes Psalm 51, where he admits that he has sinned against the Lord. Not only that, again verse 13, he commits to teaching “transgressors Your ways” so that sinners will be converted to the Lord. Meaning he was committed to teaching himself to those who would follow after him, to not go down the path that he had gone down. To not go down that foolish way that he had gone down.

And our psalm for this morning, Psalm 32, is really the outflow of Psalm 51:13. This is David now following through on his promise to teach transgressors God’s ways. Look back at Psalm 32 and note at the top of the psalm, before we even get to verse 1. It says, “of David,” and then it says, “a Maskil.” That means instruction. This is not only a psalm of penitence, where David is expressing his repentant heart, like he did in Psalm 51. It’s a psalm of instruction. David is saying here, let me instruct you, let me give you wisdom. And at the heart of his instruction is this profound truth, that sinners like you and sinners like me and sinners like David can be forgiven. That’s the title of the message this morning, “The Joy of Forgiveness”

We’ll start with our first point here. We’ll have six points, doubly alliterated today.
Verses 1and 2, point one is “The Enormous Blessing.” If you’re a note taker, that’s our first point, “The Enormous Blessing.” Look at verses 1 and 2, he says, “How blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered! How blessed is the man whose iniquity Yahweh will not take into account, and in whose spirit there is no deceit!”

Now, on one level, this psalm is about forgiveness. And specifically, the forgiveness that David received from the Lord. But on a much deeper level, this is a psalm about sin. And I know that is not a word, “sin,” that anyone likes to hear anymore. I know it’s a word that no one likes to talk about anymore. We have so scrubbed and so sanitized our vocabulary, that it is a virtually foreign concept and idea in the world in which we live. And that is a shame. Sin needs to be mentioned more in churches. Sin needs to be mentioned by pastors in churches. And sin needs to be mentioned by followers of Jesus Christ. Because sin is a universal disease. It’s a universal plague. It’s a global cancer. We talk all about plagues and pandemics. Why aren’t we talking about the universal “sin-demic”.

Sin is inherited. Romans 5:12, “as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned.” Sin is ubiquitous, meaning it’s everywhere. Romans 3:23, “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Sin is willful. James 4:17, “to one who knows to do the right thing and does not do it, to him it is sin.” Sin is inexcusable. James 1:14, “But each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust. Then when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin.” Sin is lawless. 1 John 3:4, “Everyone who does sin also does lawlessness; and sin is lawlessness.” Sin is fleshly. Galatians 5:19, “Now the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions, envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these.” Sin is divisive. Isaiah 59:2, “your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God.” And if not repented of, sin is fatal. Romans 6:23, “For the wages of sin is death.”

In his old, not so subtlety titled work, “The Sinfulness of Sin,” the old Puritan Ralph Venning wrote this: he said, “Sin is the dare of God’s justice, the jeer of his patience, the slight of his power, [and] the contempt of his love.”
Indeed. Sin is foul. Sin is a stench. Sin is profane. And, wonder of wonders, because of the immense mercy and immeasurable grace of God, our sin can be forgiven.
And let me tell you . . . if you don’t understand how profound that truth is, that the sin committed by a sinner like you, and the sin committed by a sinner like me, can be forgiven by a God like that, then you don’t understand the sinfulness of your sin. You don’t understand the gravity of your sin, the truly heinous and offensive nature of your sin.

David knew how sinful he was. That’s what Psalm 32 is all about. David is this man who knew God. He was a man who walked with God. He was this man after God’s own heart. And yet he stumbled into this horrific sin. This tragic sin. This consequential sin. And yet God forgave him.
Verses 1 and 2 again, “How blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered! How blessed is the man whose iniquity Yahweh will not take into account, and in whose spirit there is no deceit!”

Now, right away, note the doubling of that phrase in verses 1 and 2. It’s: “How blessed is he” and “How blessed is the man.” That’s a way of underscoring, of emphasizing the point that David is trying to make in these two verses. The basic idea here is he is happy. That’s the meaning of the phrase “blessed” there. “Ash-ray,” it means happy. David is happy. And he’s not just happy, he is overjoyed, he’s elated, he’s jubilant. And why? Because of what God had done with his sin. God had taken his sin, to borrow Micah 7:19, and cast it “into the depths of the sea.”

Now note, there are several different words for “sin” that are used all over the Old Testament. I think there are like 15 different sin-related terms in the Hebrew Old Testament. We see a few of them right here in verses 1 and 2.

First, David mentions his transgression, “How blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven.”
Transgression means the willful breaking of God’s law, the willful rejection of the boundaries that God has laid down, the willful defiance of the will of God. The word “transgression” there describes that situation where you know what you were supposed to do, but you do it your way anyway. That word “transgression” describes rebellion, describes revolt. It’s what David did when, though he knew what God’s word said, he took another man’s wife for himself. It’s what David did when he willfully covered up the tracks of his sin by having Uriah killed. It’s what the young child does when she or he snaps back, “no!” to their parents’ command. And it’s what you and I do when we see the instructions given to us in God’s word, laid out for us plain as day. and we ignore them and do what we want to do anyway. It doesn’t matter if I speak to my husband in that harsh tone. It doesn’t matter if I speak to my wife that way. It doesn’t matter if I look at that website. It doesn’t matter if I linger on that page for just a few more minutes. It doesn’t matter if I entertain that thought, I’m not acting on it. Well, what it is, is transgression. What it is, is high-handed treason and rebellion against the Holy God of Heaven. It’s sin.

Speaking of which, that’s the next word David uses in verse 1, “sin.” “How blessed” is not only “he whose transgression is forgiven.” You see it there at the end of verse 1, it’s also, “how blessed is he whose sin is covered!” Now, that word “sin” is broader in meaning than the first word “transgression.” The word “sin” here, comes from the world of archery. It literally means to miss the mark. To be wide left, or wide right of the bullseye. But don’t think of this as, you know, as being some unskilled archer who’s just firing wildly in every direction. That’s how I’d do it at D-Guns. No, that’s not what he’s talking about. The implication here is that there is intent. In other words, when we sin, more often than not, we miss the mark on purpose. We’ve chosen not to hit the mark. And that’s exactly what we do when we sin. Right? Of course that’s true. We choose to think certain thoughts. Our legs don’t accidentally take us places, we choose to go there. We choose to use certain words. Those things don’t happen by accident. No. They’re intentional. We sin intentionally.

It's not just transgressions that we commit. It’s not just sin. It’s also iniquity. Look at verse 2,
“How blessed is the man whose iniquity Yahweh will not take into account.” Now, that word “iniquity” describes something that’s crooked or twisted or bent. The word encapsulates that continual pattern of sin that those who do not know God, engage in. We think of Paul’s words in Romans 3:10, where he says, “There is none righteous, not even one; there is none who understands, there is none who seeks for God,” and then these words, “all have turned aside.”

For the follower of Jesus Christ, we can find ourselves turning aside, going down a sinful path, a crooked path when we choose to sin, when we choose to engage in iniquity, to engage in transgressions . . . instead of going down that perfect, straight, true, righteous path that God has laid down for us in His word. We go down the crooked path, the bent path, the one with thorns and briars on either side. The one who commits iniquity is the one who is going down that crooked path.

Now, David doesn’t leave, praise God, his thoughts there. He doesn’t just park it in transgression and sin and iniquity and then close the psalm. No. Note there’s a verb attached to every single one of those terms here. “How blessed is he whose transgression is…” What? “Forgiven.” “How blessed is he… whose sin is…” What? “Covered.” “How blessed is the man whose iniquity Yahweh…” What? “Will not take into account.”

Let’s work through those one by one. For starters, let’s note that we worship and serve a God who forgives. He forgives our transgressions. In fact, the only reason we can call Him our God and we can call ourselves His people is that we’ve been forgiven. He’s forgiven us! That’s the act by which we were moved into His family. Here in verse 1 David uses that term “forgiven” to describe the idea of a burden lifted, carried away, removed. I can’t help but think of “The Pilgrim’s Progress” by John Bunyan, where the figure Christian there, throughout the early part of the book, carrying that enormous burden on his back. It’s representing his sin. Christian in that story knew what that felt like, to have that burden of sin on his back. But also then to have that relief of having that burden roll off his back. So did David. He knew what it was like to carry around his sin. And here in Psalm 32, he’s expressing his joy in having that burden roll off his back.

Well, not only do we worship a God who forgives our sin though. We also worship a God, into verse 1, who covers our sin, blessed is the one “whose sin is covered.” That word “covered” in verse 1 is judicial. The idea is that we are approaching the bar of God’s justice in the high courts of heaven. And God, the judge, instead of bringing down His divine gavel on our head, He puts our sin out of His sight. It’s not that the sin was never committed . . . it was. But in God’s sight, it’s covered. It’s been put out of the way. So, “blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered!”

And then next, in verse 2, he says, “How blessed is the man whose iniquity Yahweh will not take into account.” Now, those words “will not take into account,” come from an ancient Greek word. You might have the word “imputed” in your NASB translation. But it comes from an ancient Greek word that comes from the world of accounting. The idea here is that the debt is owed, but the debt is not going to be collected. That spiritual bankruptcy that is acknowledged is done, it’s wiped out, it’s taken care of, it’s been discharged.

So, taking into account all of what we’ve seen in verses 1 and 2 so far, what David is expressing here is joy. He’s expressing happiness. And David’s joy is rooted in the fact that God has carried away his sin, He’s covered his sin, He’s cancelled out his sin. And if you’re a follower of Jesus Christ this morning, there’s a sense in which you ought to be saying the heartiest of ‘amens’ to His words here in verses 1 and 2. Because this side of the cross, we take Psalm 32, and we can’t help but think of it in the context of what Paul says in Romans 4. In fact, turn with me over to Romans 4. And here we have the Apostle Paul appropriating the words of David in Psalm 32 and now applying them to the follower of Jesus Christ as he lays out his case first with the example of Abraham, and then with the example of David, that salvation is all of grace.
Look at Romans 4, and we’ll start in verse 1. He says: “What then shall we say that Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh, has found? For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about – but not before God!”
So, Paul is saying here that if we were justified by, if we were saved by what we did, our boast would be in us, not in God.

Verse 3: “For what does the Scripture say? ‘Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness.’ Now to the one who works, his wage is not counted according to grace, but according to what is due. But to the one who does not work, but believes upon Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.” And then here’s Paul now drawing from our passage, Psalm 32, in verse 6, he says: “just as David also speaks of the blessing on the man to whom God counts righteousness apart from works: ‘Blessed are those whose lawless deeds have been forgiven, and whose sins have been covered. Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord will not take into account.’”
So, biblical theology review. In Psalm 32 David is describing his own experience of having been forgiven of his sin as a believer. And then what Paul does in Romans 4, as he expands the idea to describe the blessing that comes to those who are forgiven in the ultimate sense, when we repent of our sin and put our faith in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord.

And we, sitting this side of the cross, praise God for both of those truths, do we not? We do. We praise God for removing the shackles of sin which once bound us, when we were still dead in our sin. That’s what leads us to sing things like: “My sin, oh the bliss of this glorious thought, my sin, not in part but the whole. Is nailed to the cross and I bear it no more, praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!” But we also praise God for forgiving, covering, not taking into account the sin that we commit even after we come to Him in saving faith. We praise Him for offering forgiveness for the total package of sin. Past, present, future, all of it has been paid for at the cross of Jesus Christ. All of it has been paid for at the unimaginably steep price of the shed blood of God the Son.

We’re still parked in verse 1, I’m back to Psalm 32, we’re still parked in verse 1. And let’s wrap up this section by noting these words, where David says that the man who is blessed is not only the one in “whose iniquity Yahweh will not take into account.” But then look at the end of verse 2, where he says, “and in whose spirit there is no deceit.” Now, this is fascinating. Because that word “deceit” means insincerity, cunning, duplicity. It is the very thing which makes forgiveness from God impossible. In other words, what’s being said here is that when we’re being sincere in our request before God for forgiveness -- meaning when there is no deceit in our hearts, when we’re not foolishly thinking that we can hide our true motives from God behind our backs, we will be forgiven, we will be blessed.

But the opposite is true as well. When we try to cover up our sin. When we try to ignore our sin. When we trivialize our sin. When we’re insincere about our supposed repentance of sin. When we’ve merely mouthed some words about being sorry. Or mouthed some words about being repentant. Or mouthed some words about wanting forgiveness. The words we’ve mouthed when they don’t match up with what is actually happening in our heart -- the truth is, we haven’t been forgiven at all.
What does this text tell us? It’s the one “in whose spirit there is no deceit” who enjoys the blessing and forgiveness of God. Not the one who is playing a game with their sin. Fooling others, but certainly not fooling the Lord. That’s what David was attempting to do after his sin with Bathsheba -- hiding his sin, attempting to fool the Lord. But no longer as we’ll see in verse 5.

We can’t get to verse 5 yet though. We have to get to verse 3 and 4 first, where we see these words: “When I kept silent about my sin, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night Your hand was heavy upon me; my vitality was drained away as with the heat of summer. Selah.”

Our second point if you’re taking notes, is “The Extensive Burden.” Now, we need to put this back in context. In verses 1 and 2 which we’ve just studied, David is having this mountaintop moment, where he’s basking joyfully in the forgiveness of sin that he’s experienced. Now in verses 3 and 4, he’s now looking retrospectively, he’s looking back down in the valley from which he came. Starting with his sin with Bathsheba. And then the sin he carried on his back before Nathan confronted him and before he confessed his sin. Before all of that happened, when he was still in that valley, before the confrontation and the confession, verse 3 says he kept silent about his sin. When I “kept silent about my sin.”
David’s sense of guilt over his sin was smoldering within him. But rather than use that as a prompt to confess that sin to the Lord, he attempted to smother it. He attempted to douse that sense of guilt. He attempted to ignore the goading and the pricking of his conscience. And it left him miserable. Look what happened. He says, “my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long.” And now I don’t necessarily think he’s talking about arthritis or osteoporosis here. I think he’s referring to the fact more generically that he was in anguish extensively, comprehensibly. It was impacting his body and his soul. As long as he kept silent. As long as he refused to confess his sin to the Lord. As long as he refused to humble himself before God, his conscience continued to accuse him. His sin continued to torment him. He had no rest, he had no relief, he had no comfort. The old English poet John Donne once said, “Sin is a serpent, and he that covers sin does but keep it warm, that it may sting the more fiercely.” That’s what was happening with David. As his sin weighed him, what he was really doing was warming this serpent, as it were, to eventually bite him.

And not only that, his miserable state weighed on him so heavily, that he found himself here, verse 3, “groaning all day long,” he was sobbing. The literal word here is he was “roaring.”
Have you ever groaned over your sin? Have you ever been in tears over your sin? Have you ever roared over your sin? Have you ever been in that experience where somebody here at church says, “Hey, how are things going?” And you give the standard pat answer, “Oh, things are great, things are fine.” But in reality, you’re wasting away on the inside. That’s what David is describing here. He was in agony. He couldn’t hide it. And that’s how sin works, doesn’t it? Unless it’s confessed to God, unless it’s repented of, that weight of sin compounds. Leading us to live these lives of regular unease, with this burdened conscience. It is truly miserable to be unrepentant.

And sometimes, verse 4, God allows us to stay in that condition. There, David here, he’s reflecting back on the times where he was concealing his sin. And he says, “For day and night Your hand was heavy upon me.” Now, God doesn’t have literal hands. That’s an anthropomorphism it’s called. “God is spirit,” John 4:24. But the idea here is that God is pressing in on him. The very reason that David felt so miserable during this time was his awareness that God was thoroughly displeased with him. David knew that his acts with Bathsheba were sinful. He knew that what he had done to Uriah was sin. He knew that the holy God that he worshiped couldn’t tolerate sin. And despised sin. He knew that God was displeased with him. He was feeling, to use our modern term, convicted, as God was hunting him down and cornering him. And it says here, “day and night Your hand was heavy upon me.”

And he gives this insightful word picture, he says, verse 4, “My vitality was drained as with the heat of summer. Selah.” Now, getting personal here, I have to just explain that I don’t think I properly understood the meaning of that verse until I moved here to Nebraska. See, we don’t have humidity in Southern California. And I remember mowing our lawn, I think it was in June of 2022 soon after we got here, and doing like three rows up and down the lawn. And like needing to lay down, having a soaked shirt, needing a nap, needing two Gatorades to rehydrate. Because physically, in that moment, my vitality was drained away as with the heat of summer. I think, when my boys start detasseling they’ll get the idea.

But David here, he’s not talking about overheating physically. He’s describing how under God’s heavy hand of displeasure he was withering away spiritually. He not only committed sin, but he tried to conceal his sin and keep silent about his sin. And at this point in the story, remember, he’s still looking retrospectively here, he’s not humbled enough to confess his sin. So, he’s humbled instead by the heavy weight of God’s hand. And he pays the price for it, his vitality is sapped, he’s totally spent. So, in verses 3 and 4, we learn what happens when David was concealing his sin.

As we get to verse 5 now, we’re going to see what happens when his sin was confessed.
Verse 5, he says, “I acknowledged my sin to You, and my iniquity I did not cover up; I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions to Yahweh.’ And You forgave the iniquity of my sin. Selah.”

Our third point, if you’re taking notes, is “The Evident Bond.” This verse, verse 5, is the hinge on which this psalm turns. In verse 3, remember, David admitted that he had kept silent about his sin. But now in verse 5, he’s gone through this experience of having bones waste away. He’s gone through this experience of groaning and experiencing God’s heavy hand. And his vitality draining as though it’s in the fever heat of summer. And then he confessed his sin. And look at the three expressions he uses to essentially say the same thing. “I acknowledged my sin to You,” “my iniquity I did not cover up,” and “I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions to Yahweh.’”
Those are the same three words that we saw back in verses 1 and 2, transgression, sin, iniquity. So there’s some poetic parallelism happening here.

And then here’s the whole heart of this psalm. This is “The Evident Bond” between confession and forgiveness. Look at the end of verse 5 where he says, “And You forgave the iniquity of my sin.” That is stunningly beautiful. How many of you here this morning can resonate with that statement from David? I was enslaved by the sin of pride but You forgave the iniquity of my sins. I was tangled in the sin of greed but You forgave the iniquity of my sin. I was caught up in the sin of gossip but You forgave the iniquity of my sin. I was enticed by the sin of lust but You forgave the iniquity of my sin. He expressed, David did, his joy back in verse 1 because of the forgiveness he received. And reports on here in verse 5 that he was forgiven the iniquity of his sin.

And note that his forgiveness was immediate. He acknowledged his sin. He refused to cover up his iniquities any longer. He confessed his transgressions. And then, that last line of verse 5, you’ll note that word “and.” I confessed “my transgressions to Yahweh and You forgave the iniquity of my sin.” The sense here is that David is saying, “As soon as I confessed, you forgave.” See, David didn’t have to go through some sort of waiting period to receive forgiveness. There was no probationary period attached to forgiveness. No. As soon as he confessed his sin to Yahweh he was forgiven.

If you’re a follower of Christ here this morning. Meaning, you have put your faith in what Jesus Christ accomplished on your behalf on the cross, dying for sin. If you’ve believed in your heart that Jesus is Lord and God raised Him from the dead. If you’re committed to now living for Him. The reality is you still will sin. You don’t have to sin, you don’t have to go down that path. But you will. 1 John 1:8 says: “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.”
Now, that’s not to say that we are to give in to sin. Or give ourselves over to sin. Or commit to living a life of sin. But the reality is, sin is presented to us at various times. And when it’s presented to us, we have a decision to make. We’ve got that proverbial fork in the road, and we have to decide, am I going to go this way? The righteous way? Or am I going to go the sinful way?

Now, some of you here this morning have already taken that wrong path. You’ve already taken the fork that you know you should not have taken. And you know it. You’ve made that profession of faith in Jesus. You’d call yourself a Christian. But you are walking down a wicked path. You’re walking on a path of sin and darkness, rather than of a path of righteousness and holiness and light and truth. I don’t know what that sin is but you do. And certainly the God who sees all, from whom nothing is hidden from His sight, He sees it. And though you’re in church here this morning and though you shook hands and waved to people on your way in this morning, the reality is you are paying the price right now for your hidden sin. No one else knows it, that’s why it’s hidden. But your conscience is bothering you. And sleep is fleeting from you. And you are not experiencing the peace and the joy that you know comes from those who truly know the Lord. In your heart you know that you are not living out your profession. In your heart you know that you’re not living faithfully.

But as of right now, you’re not doing anything about it. You’re stuck. Maybe it’s because you’ve received some unwise, unbiblical counsel. Maybe it’s because you’ve got the wrong idea that’s developed -- that your sin, your specific sin, is unforgiveable. Maybe it’s because you do have a hardened and embittered heart. Whatever the reason is, remember the words of Proverbs 28:13, “He who conceals his transgressions will not prosper, but he who confesses and forsakes them will receive compassion.” Realize that this is your opportunity to say in your heart, before the Lord, “I repent of my sin, God. I confess to You God my sin right now.” You don’t need to go to a priest in the long vestments. You don’t’ need to come to me as a pastor. You can take it straight to the Lord, knowing that Jesus is your Advocate, and the Holy Spirit is your Helper.

So, what’s the lesson so far from Psalm 32? It’s this: our compassionate God will show compassion upon you, as His child. That divine hand which has been weighing so heavily upon you, as it did for David, will show you mercy. He will forgive you if you approach Him and confess your sin to Him and seek forgiveness from Him. That’s 1 John 1:9, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” The one who does so can experience the joy of forgiveness.

We need to move on, verses 6 and 7. David continues here by saying: “Therefore, let every holy one pray to You at a time when You may be found; surely in a flood of great waters they will not reach him. You are my hiding place; You guard me from trouble; You surround me with songs of deliverance. Selah.” Here’s our fourth point, if you’re taking notes, “The Everlasting Bulwark.”

So now, in this section of the psalm, David is going from providing his own personal testimony of the forgiveness he was shown by God to encouraging others now to seek the Lord who deals so graciously with sinners. It begins, verse 6, by saying, “Therefore, let every holy one pray to You.”
That term “holy one” means faithful one, godly one. In other words, a ‘God-fearer,’ one who would call themselves and identify as a worshiper of Yahweh. He encourages such faithful ones to pray to God, “let every holy one pray to You,” make your requests known to God, plead with God, intercede before God. And then David charges them to do so “at a time when You may be found.” Which, of course, is all the time. God can be found all the time. He leaves the light on for us. Right? Psalm 121:4 says our God neither slumbers nor sleeps.

And look what will happen in response to such a prayer, end of verse 6, he says, “Surely in a flood of waters they will not reach him.” What David is saying here, is that when we are tempted, when we are being led astray, even when we’ve sinned and the consequences of those sins are starting to pile up, like a “flood of great waters” that go from our feet to our ankles, to our knees, to our thighs, to our waist, to our chest, to our necks -- when we cry out to the Lord in prayer, in those moments when we ask Him for help, when we beg Him to deliver us from evil -- what is going to happen? Those floodwaters, it says, will not reach us, they will not overtake us, they will not overwhelm us. Think of the first few lines of that classic hymn we were singing this morning, “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.” “What a Friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and griefs to bear! What a privilege to carry everything to God in prayer! O what peace we often forfeit, O what needless pain we bear, all because we do not carry everything to God in prayer!”
That is David’s exhortation in verse 6, to take everything to the Lord in prayer.

Verse 7, he gets personal again, he says, “You are my hiding place; You guard me from trouble; You surround me with songs of deliverance. Selah.” I can’t help but read those words and think of a passage like Psalm 27:5, it says, “For in the day of calamity He will conceal me in His shelter.” Or Psalm 91:1, “He who abides in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty.” Or Psalm 119:114 says, “You are my hiding place and my shield.” And those are such comforting truths all the time for the believer. To know that the Lord is our shelter. That He is our hiding place. That He is our shield. But keeping in mind the context here of our psalm, Psalm 32, what David is referring to here specifically is the fact that when we are even stuck in sin -- and I might even say especially when we are stuck in sin -- the Lord is our hiding place. The Lord is the One we are to run to. The Lord is the One that guards us from trouble, Who protects us from further spiritual calamity. Which is exactly what He did for David. David was trying to hide from God earlier in the psalm. Remember, God’s hand was heavy upon him. But now he’s able to hide in God. And we are, too, if we put our faith in Jesus Christ. Remember the words of Colossians 3:3, that “your life has been hidden with Christ in God.”

And this final line in verse 7, he says: “You surround me with songs of deliverance.” What David is describing there is being encircled with song as lyrics which commend the character and nature, and the promise of God apparently were filling his mind. I like to think about this as David living out the Old Testament version of Colossians 3:16 as he’s in his mind, in his heart, singing “psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with gratefulness to God.” Remember, this is a man who just a few lines earlier, was describing his groaning, literally his roaring, because of the depths of the anguish he was experiencing. But now here he is describing himself as being surrounded with songs of deliverance. He’s been through it. He had sinned against the Lord. He had tried to hide from the Lord. But now he’s hiding himself in the Lord. And there are these songs of praise to the Lord that are encircling him.

And the big idea though, verses 6 and 7, as he’s taking on more of this teacher role, the lesson for us, the message for us, is that we not delay when we find ourselves falling into sin or even when we’re (using a Titanic reference here) approaching that massive iceberg of sin. Instead, the lesson here is to deal with our sin by taking that sin to the Lord. And going quickly to Him, running to Him in prayer. Seeking His help. Seeking His forgiveness. And seeking His strength.

Verses 8 and 9, the teaching portion of this psalm continues -- remember this is a psalm of instruction and a maskil -- where it says: “I will give you insight and teach you in the way which you should go; I will counsel you with My eye upon you. Do not be as the horse or as the mule which have no understanding, whose harness are bit and bridle to control them, otherwise they will not come near you.” Our fifth point, for you note takers, “The Excruciating Bind.”

Now, a very quick note on verse 8. You’ll note that the “My” there, at the end of verse 8, “I will counsel you with My eye upon you,” that it’s capitalized. Which would suggest that the speaker here is God Himself, as opposed to David speaking for God. And I’ve got to say I don’t see that in my reading of the Hebrew text. I don’t think God here, as it were, grabs the microphone from David and says, ‘Ok, I got this one.” I mean, of course, all of scripture is God speaking. But I don’t think it’s God directly addressing here, when it’s been David addressing us the whole time. Rather, I think it’s still David here in verse 8 saying: “I will give you insight and teach you in the way which you should go; I will counsel you with,” lower case m, “my eye upon you.”
This is right in line with what David said he was going to do in Psalm 51:13, right? Where he says: “Then I will teach transgressors Your ways, and sinners will be converted to You.”
In other words, verse 8 is David here saying, “I’ve figured out at least a few things from experience. And having now learned the hard way, I’m going to instruct you, all who read this psalm. I will counsel you.”

And then the substance of his counsel, the substance of his instruction comes in verse 9, where he says: “Do not be as the horse or as the mule which have no understanding, whose harness are bit and bridle to control them, otherwise they will not come near you.” So, this is now David, a student of his own experience, seasoned by his own experiences, now saying, “Don’t reject my counsel. Don’t be like that hard-charging horse who’s now galloping into sin. Don’t be like that hard-headed mule who stubbornly refuses to do what’s best for him. Don’t forget the words of Proverbs 26:3, ‘A whip is for the horse, a bridle for the donkey, and a rod for the back of fools.’” These are David’s words, or David’s way of saying, “Don’t be like me. I was that horse. I did run headlong into sin. I was that stubborn mule dragging my heels and refusing to go to the Lord for forgiveness. Don’t be the fool that I was, instead learn from me, heed my counsel.
Otherwise,” middle of verse 9, “God will put the bit and bridle of discipline in your mouth.”

Now, of course, one of the blessings of knowing God is that He does discipline us when we’re in sin. He does make life difficult for us when we’re in sin. And He does so as an expression of His love for us. Hebrews 12:6 says, “whom the Lord loves He disciplines.”

But David here, verse 9 is saying, “Make no mistake. If you refuse to go to the Lord when you’re in sin, if you refuse to confess your sin to God, if you refuse to seek forgiveness from Him, it is going to be painful. As your bones waste away, as you groan all day long, as God’s hand is heavy upon you, as your vitality is drained away with the heat of summer.” And David here is saying instead, “Don’t make the Lord, don’t tempt the Lord, don’t push the Lord to putting that figurative bit and bridle over you, the bit in your mouth and the bridle over your head. Have more sense than that. Instead come willingly to God in repentance. Come willingly to confess your sin to Him. And come willingly to seek forgiveness from Him.”

That leads to our final two verses, 10 and 11, which read this way: “Many are the sorrows of the wicked, but he who trusts in Yahweh, lovingkindness shall surround him. Be glad in Yahweh and rejoice, you righteous ones; and shout for joy, all you who are upright in heart.” Here’s point 6, if you’re taking notes, “The Encompassing Bliss.”

Verse10 begins with this simple contrast, “Many are the sorrows of the wicked, but he who trusts in Yahweh, lovingkindness shall surround him.” David here again is speaking from personal experience. In his state of sin and his season of sin he had walked down that path of wickedness. He was behaving like one of the wicked ones, those who do not fear the Lord. He had experienced those many sorrows he now speaks of in verse 10. He had felt that burdened sense of guilt, that produced in him even a sense of insecurity. Perhaps leading him to question whether he truly knew the Lord. But when he confessed his sin to the Lord, when he was forgiven of that sin, that changed everything. That forgiveness brought with it the sense of settled confidence in his standing before the Lord. Note the contrast there, verse 10, “but he who trusts in Yahweh, lovingkindness shall surround him,” shall envelope him, shall swarm him.

In other words, for those who are in a right relationship with God, when they seek the Lord, when they draw near to Him, when they call upon Him in their times of difficulty, even in – especially – in those seasons of sin, what they will experience is not sorrow, but instead a sense of the Lord’s lovingkindness toward them. “But he who trusts in Yahweh, lovingkindness shall surround him.”

Well, then the psalm ends exactly where it began on this note of thankful joy. Look at verse 11, he says: “Be glad in Yahweh and rejoice, you righteous ones,” righteous ones meaning those who have been forgiven, “and shout for joy, all you who are upright in heart.” So, the psalm began on this joyful note, how blessed, how happy, is the man whose sins have been forgiven. And now, it closes with this exhortation to be joyful and to be so because of the experience that forgiveness of our sins brings.

In the days before he died, in the year 230 A.D., it is said that the early church father, Augustine had our text, Psalm 32, scrawled on the wall right next to his deathbed. He wanted to see those words and meditate on those words before he breathed his last, “How blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered! How blessed is the man whose iniquity Yahweh will not take into account, and in whose spirit there is no deceit!” “I acknowledged my sin to You, and my iniquity I did not cover up; I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions to Yahweh;’ and You forgave the iniquity of my sin.” Powerful words to live by. Powerful words to take to the grave.

Let’s pray. Lord, we thank You for this time in Your word, this time to study what You revealed to David in Psalm 32 experientially, as the Spirit moved him to write these words. We thank You for the fact that You are a God who forgives. You forgive Your children when we commit sins against You. We need to come to You and draw near to You, and confess our sin to You, when we know that You will forgive on the basis of the blood of Your Son. But God, I wouldn’t want anybody to get the wrong impression here, that if they don’t know You, they have forgiveness. Forgiveness only comes, in the ultimate sense, a right standing before You, comes only in the ultimate sense, the hope of heaven comes only in the ultimate sense, if they have put their faith in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. So, God, if there is someone here this morning who has not bowed their knee to Jesus Christ as Savior, as Lord -- if they’ve not believed upon His death and resurrection, as the only means by which they might be justified, saved before You -- if they have not yet been willing to realize that there are no works they can do, no deeds they can perform, no sacraments they can store up, there is nothing they can do, but put their faith in Jesus Christ as the means by which they are saved -- pray that today would be the day that You would bring that realization. And many here within earshot of me would come to saving faith. We love You, God. We thank You for Your forgiving heart. We thank You for Your sure promises. We thank You for the clarity of Your word. May You be glorified in our midst this week. In Christ’s name, amen.