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August 6/7, 2016
Jason Meyer | Psalms 32:1-5
Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven,
whose sin is covered.
Blessed is the man against whom the LORD counts no iniquity,
and in whose spirit there is no deceit.
For when I kept 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. Selah
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. Selah
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. Selah
I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go;
I will counsel you with my eye upon you.
Be not like a horse or a mule, without understanding,
which must be curbed with bit and bridle,
or it will not stay near you.
Many are the sorrows of the wicked,
but steadfast love surrounds the one who trusts in the LORD.
Be glad in the LORD, and rejoice, O righteous,
and shout for joy, all you upright in heart!—Psalm 32
Introduction
Everyone that I know has some sense that they are looking for something. Sometimes that “something” is a little hard to describe. Some people call it “joy” or “meaning” or “fulfillment.” People may agree on what to look for, but they disagree in terms of where to look for it.
Tim Keller provides a list of common places people look when they try to fill their lives up with what is missing [The Gospel in Life (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2010), 43]. He gives twenty different options. I sometimes imagine these places to be like gas pumps where people try to fill up what is empty in their lives. I won’t talk about all twenty pumps, but here are five of the most frequent pumps people turn to.
What comes as a surprise to many people is when they spend a lot of time at the pump and get their fill of it, they find they still feel empty. It does not fill that void or complete that quest. It is not enough. The Bible actually tells us why those things are never enough. It goes back to the beginning to tell us what we lost and what we are missing. “You formed us for Yourself and our hearts are restless until they find rest in you” (St. Augustine, Confessions, Book 1). Only God can fill up the gaping hole.
Why was this relationship lost? What happened? Genesis 3 tells the story of how sin entered into the world and we were cut off from the bliss we had at the beginning. Our forebears rebelled against God and refused to trust his word. After they sinned, they tried to cover it up. They tried to cover their shame with fig leaves. In fact, their sense of shame even made them hide from God.
But the Bible is a story of a God who pursues people like that. He did it in Genesis 3 and it is striking to see the same story in Psalm 32. God’s solution stands out in such a simple and profound way. The restoration of this relationship can only happen through forgiveness. Sin caused the separation—forgiveness alone can restore the relationship.
That is what this Psalm is all about: the blessedness of forgiveness. The joy that flows from confessing our sins and receiving forgiveness is contrasted with the sorrows that flow from covering our sins through stubbornly refusing to confess them.
Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven,
whose sin is covered.
Blessed is the man against whom the LORD counts no iniquity,
and in whose spirit there is no deceit.For when I kept 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. SelahI 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.—Psalm 32:1–5
The first thing to note is that this is the second time that a Psalm begins with the word for “blessed” (Psalm 1). The happy blessing here is even greater. In Psalm 1, a man is described as blessed who unswervingly walks in God’s way—which none of us do. Psalm 32 pronounces a blessing on the person who has not walked in God’s way. He has been wayward, but he has come back with confession of sin and has been restored to fullness of joy through forgiveness.
The second thing to note in these verses is the contrast between blessedness and wretchedness. There is a blessedness that flows from humbly confessing our sins. And there is a wretchedness that comes from stubbornly refusing to confess our sins.
I don’t mind working out (too much), but I do not enjoy pushing myself. Some people do—and I look at them in a mixed way: you rock/you are out of your mind. We were doing some lunges and the trainer people said you can make it harder by taking these huge sandbags and putting them on your shoulders. There are two kinds of people in the world—those who find that appealing and those who don’t understand the people who find that appealing. Working out is already hard—why would I want to make it harder and be more miserable and risk absolutely falling on my face?
Unconfessed sin is like a spiritual sandbag. Not confessing your sin is like accepting the invitation to have God’s divine discipline weigh you down until you collapse under it. It is like standing under a blazing sun until all your energy is drained away. David did that. He is confessing how crazy and foolish it was and how miserable it made him.
The third thing to note is that the opposite of covering your sin (v. 5) is confessing your sin (v. 5) so that God can cover it (v. 1). This helps reveal the foolishness of unconfessed sin even further. You can’t cover your sin so that God can’t see it. What does covering your sin really accomplish? You may be able to hide it from others so that you escape some of the earthly consequences, but you will still have to face the Judge of all who knows all of it. The other option is far better. Confess it. Agree with God that it is sin and that it needs to be forgiven. The only way sin is forgiven in the Bible is by a sacrifice for sin.
The fourth thing to notice is that there are three words for sin (transgression, sin, and iniquity) and three words for what God does with sin (forgiven, covered, not counted). The first word, “transgression” (v. 1), means “an open rebellion.” This is not an accidental sin—it was willful sin. Sinning when you know full well it is wrong.
The second word, “sin,” means missing the mark. In the ancient world the term was used in archery to describe a person who shot an arrow and missed the mark. The target would be God’s divine standard—all have sinned and missed the mark and fallen short.
The third word for sin is “iniquity” (v. 2). It means something that is twisted or crooked.
Three words now appear to show what God does with sin: (1) “forgiven,” (2) “covered,” and (3) “not counted.” The first means to be “carried or lifted away.” The root of this word is used in the scapegoat ceremony on the Day of Atonement when the High Priest “puts” Israel’s iniquities, rebellions, and sins on the head of a goat and it then bore them away (never to be seen again). He removes our sins as far as the east is from the west (Psalm 103:12).
The second word, “covered,” also comes from the Day of Atonement where the high priest took the blood from a sacrificial animal and carried it into the Most Holy Place and sprinkled it on the mercy seat of the Ark of the Covenant. The mercy seat was the covering or the lid of the ark. The blood was sprinkled there because it came between the presence of God and the broken law of God that was in the ark itself.
The third word, “not counted,” is a bookkeeping term as the word “count” suggests. The sin is not recorded in the record books in heaven. There is no record of the sin—it is gone forever.
Fifth, all three words for sin show up in verse 5 (full and thorough confession—he did not hold anything back). But look at the hope. David confessed it all and God forgave it all.
Now having seen the blessedness of confessed and forgiven sin versus the wretchedness of unconfessed and unforgiven sin, David now drives the point home with a warning that has the added element of urgency.
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. Selah—Psalm 32:6–7
This second section yells: “Danger—don’t delay!” It has an urgent force. There is no wait-and-see, passive approach. This is a forceful, pleading, raised voice, wave-your-arms-frantically-to-get-your-attention kind of warning.
What is the danger? The phrase “rush of great waters” is a powerful image when you consider the dangers of flash floods in Israel. Riverbeds in the land of Israel are dry most of the year, but in the rainy season they can quickly turn into dangerous, fast-moving waters of terror that bring death. People can be lulled into thinking that sin is not dangerous—because it looks like a dry riverbed most of the time. But suddenly and without warning, you can get swept away to your own destruction.
Therefore, verse 6 is saying, “If conviction of sin comes and pricks your heart, don’t delay. Pray! When the prayer prompt comes, obey it. Do it while he ‘may be found’ (v. 6).”
This text has the same ominous warning as Isaiah 55:6–7:
Seek the Lord while he may be found;
call upon him while he is near;
let the wicked forsake his way,
and the unrighteous man his thoughts;
let him return to the Lord, that he may have compassion on him,
and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.
Do you hear the time-sensitive nature of this appeal? The Lord can be found for a short time. Why delay? Why miss the cutoff? Confess your sins. Find mercy, abundant pardon, profound relief and the joy of forgiveness.
Verse 6 gave the danger (negatively stated) and verse 7 gives the blessing (positively stated). When others have ignored the warnings of danger and are swept away by the dread undercurrent of sin, how happy you will be to have listened to his voice and experience the flip side of this stanza. Rather than getting swept away in the destruction of sin, you will find that God our Savior is a hiding place, a guardian, a place of protection, a warrior who comes suddenly into the battle with a war cry and routs all of your enemies to save you and deliver you from danger. Do you see the beauty of this reversal? He began by trying to hide from God (verses 3–4), but in verse 7 he is hidden in God.
These verses provide the lesson or the doctrine by laying out the way of the wise or the path of the fool.
I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go;
I will counsel you with my eye upon you.
Be not like a horse or a mule, without understanding,
which must be curbed with bit and bridle,
or it will not stay near you.Many are the sorrows of the wicked,
but steadfast love surrounds the one who trusts in the LORD.
Be glad in the LORD, and rejoice, O righteous,
and shout for joy, all you upright in heart!—Psalm 32:8–11
Psalm 32 is called a “Maskil,” which probably means “teaching.” So here it is: the teaching, the summation, stating the doctrine, giving the moral of the story, so to speak. David says, “Look, the real danger here is stubborn pride that refuses to confess sin.” When you are actually travelling on a path that displeases God, when you start wandering on the path of the wicked, don’t make God bring you back. Don’t be like a stubborn horse or mule that has to be forcefully led with a bit or bridle on the right path. God will do that to his people if he has to, but what pleases him more is a willing heart that wants to follow and quickly listens.
Verse 10 connects back to verse 6. “Many” sorrows link back to “many” waters. You will be so surrounded by the waters of destruction that you are drowned or you will be surrounded by God’s loyal love. Drowned by the rivers of destruction or drenched in the oceans of his love.
Application: The Spiritual Suicide of Pride
Pride foolishly underestimates the devastating danger of sin. Pride foolishly overestimates the importance of maintaining a good appearance in the sight of others. We care more about justifying ourselves in the sight of others than in the sight of God. Confessing your sin means everyone will know that you are not as good as you want everyone to believe. You may be able to pull off the deception and get away with it, but at what cost?
One of our elders at the Downtown Campus, David Crabb, used an excellent word picture for how the church is like a hospital visit, not a job interview. People are more likely to put their best foot forward at a job interview and want to avoid talking about things that would make them look bad (and be less likely to get the job). At a doctor visit, you are motivated to tell them everything that is wrong with you because you want to get well. You don’t want to hold back because you don’t want the sickness anymore.
The same is true in human relationships—a refusal to confess to our wrongs and seek forgiveness leaves wounds and tensions and ice in the air that depresses the spirit and weighs the relationship down in a crushing way. Our relationship with God is a real relationship. It is not mechanical. And here what is amazing—what stands out so starkly—is the long time that it took David to confess and the short time it took God to forgive. It was gloriously immediate! “The vilest offender who truly believes, that moment from Jesus a pardon receives!” (Fanny Crosby).
We talk about joy in the Lord at Bethlehem. Are we really going to go all out in our quest for joy? Do you have unconfessed sin? Unconfessed sin is a joy assassin. This Psalm gives a parallel look at Psalm 51 and how sin caused David to lose the joy of salvation so that he was forced to pray “restore to me the joy of my salvation” (Psalm 51:12). You may not lose your salvation, but you will lose the joy of your salvation.
Psalm 32 was St. Augustine’s favorite psalm—so much so that he had it inscribed on the wall next to his bed before he died so he could meditate on it better. Why? He said: “The beginning of knowledge is to know oneself to be a sinner.”
Psalm 32 testifies to the glorious joy of justification. The joy of Psalm 32 is a justified joy—the joy that flows from justification. Paul makes the same point by quoting Psalm 32 in Romans 4. Paul showed that his doctrine of justification comes from the Old Testament: (1) Abraham (the Law), and (2) David (the Psalms). Let us pick up the argument in verse 4.
Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness….—Romans 4:4–5
What is counted or credited to us is not what is due to us—like a wage or a debt. What we have is what God hates—sin. What we need is what we don’t have and don’t deserve—righteousness.
Notice that there are at least three pointers in Romans 4 that this saving righteousness does not include any of our works: (1) does not work, (2) justifies the ungodly [not someone who has produced enough good works to be godly], and (3) faith is counted as righteousness.
Paul has been pulling out all the stops to make the point that God’s declaration of our right standing in the courtroom of the universe is completely separated from our works. There is not a drop, not an ounce of self-righteousness in saving righteousness. None. Now Paul is going to quote Psalm 32 to make the same point.
…just as David also speaks of the blessing of the one to whom God counts righteousness apart from works:
“Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven,
and whose sins are covered;
blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin.”—Romans 4:6–8
Paul sees that this blessing did not come when David did more good works than bad works. The blessing came when David confessed his sin (the opposite of good works) and God forgave him. The blessing came because the Lord did not count or credit his sin.
In Pastor John’s masterful exposition of Romans 4, he noted the same thing—the good news of the gospel in Psalm 32 is that sin is not credited. Justification has two parts: the positive crediting of the righteousness of another, and the non-crediting of our sin because it is forgiven or covered.
“One thing is sure from this surprising connection: Paul does not see justification as the imputation of righteousness alone or as the forgiveness of sin alone. For him forgiveness of sin must include the positive imputation of God’s righteousness. And the imputation of God’s righteousness must include the forgiveness of sin. And the blessedness of both conditions is that each is ‘apart from works’” (John Piper, sermon on Romans 4).
I also agree that verse 10 highlights the polarities of the wicked and the righteous—the difference is that the righteous “trust in the Lord.” In other words, the righteous are righteous by faith, not by works.
Conclusion: Call to Action
If you try to cover up your sin, you will suffer the pain of divine chastening and oppressive guilt (foolish).
If you confess your sins, God will cover your sin and bring relief from guilt and joyful bliss with God (wise).
“What a choice! One can be stubborn like a mule and refuse to acknowledge sin, and so endure divine discipline that will increase guilty fears and spiritual depression. Or, one can confess sin and immediately find relief and joy in divine forgiveness through the loyal love of God” (Allen P. Ross, Psalms 1-41, 718).
But the danger may be even darker than that. Delaying your confession of sin may mean you are not deceiving God, but deceiving yourself.
1 John 1 states the warning in chilling terms.
If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.—1 John 1:6–10
Which side of justice are you on? Is justice speaking for you or against you? If you do not confess your sin, justice is against your sin—it testifies against you. When you confess your sins because of faith in Jesus, justice changes sides. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins. He has promised forgiveness to those who call upon his name and confess their sins and cry out for forgiveness.
In some ways, your spiritual health can be seen in how seriously you take those warnings. If you can look at sin in your life, and say “big deal” in a flippant, cavalier way, then I fear for your soul. Do you want to be forgiven from sin so you can sin more? Or do you want forgiveness so you can have your relationship with God in Christ restored—do you want to get as close as possible to Christ and not have any sin get in the way of the communion with God that Christ purchased for us. How much weight do you give the warnings? Sin is like a deadly sleeping pill that knocks out your senses so that you can no longer smell the sweet aroma of Christ. The warnings of Scripture do not have a sweet aroma—they are like smelling salts designed to wake you up so you can smell the sweet aroma of Christ. How loud do the warnings ring in your ears? Are they like a cap gun or like cannon fire?
We come back to Isaiah 55:6-7.
Seek the Lord while he may be found;
call upon him while he is near;
let the wicked forsake his way,
and the unrighteous man his thoughts;
let him return to the Lord, that he may have compassion on him,
and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.
Sermon Discussion Questions
Main Point: The main point of the Psalm is: the blessedness of forgiveness. The joy that flows from confessing our sins and receiving forgiveness is contrasted with the sorrows that flow from covering our sins through stubbornly refusing to confess them.
Outline
General Questions
Discussion Questions
Application Questions
Prayer Focus
Pray for a grace to walk in the light and experience the cleansing power of the gospel.