Song of the Forgiven Sinner (Psalm 32)

you know over the past number of years as christendom has been in a state of decline as a as technology has been on the rise the internet has started to take the place of the roman catholic confessional as the favorite place for many people to reveal their deepest and darkest secrets one website in particular has been active now for nearly two decades is a blog called post secret the concept of this blog post secret is that anonymous people can decorate a postcard and can publicly portray a secret they have never told to another human being these postcards are mailed anonymously to the blogger and they're they're scanned and then posted online and entries posted on this website range from admissions of sexual misconduct admissions of criminal activities to confessions of secret desires embarrassing habits and various hopes and dreams creator of this blog a man named frank warren claims that the entries posted online are inspirational for those who read them and that they have healing powers for those who write them as aemon creating the blog was to make an anonymous community of acceptance where people could openly confess their deepest secrets it's very interesting isn't it that every human being whether we're deeply religious or whether we are utterly secular feels the need to come clean about our secrets and our faults most of us have a terrible time keeping secrets we generally cannot keep things bottled up inside for long whether it's a sin that we've been secretly harboring whether it's something wonderful that's happened to us secrets that we attempt to keep under wraps usually wear on us until we break down and tell someone well this morning we're going to look at a psalm that deals with this very issue of secret sin a psalm that recounts the experience of a man who tried to keep his sin carefully hidden away from view it's a psalm that was written by king david it teaches us about the crucial importance of regularly confessing our sin before the lord so if you have a copy of god's word this morning i want to invite you to open it with me and turn to the book of psalms psalm 32. psalm 32 it's been great this morning to see the psalms front and cent center in our worship and at rosedale we also have been recapturing the the practice part of our reformed heritage of singing psalms and so it's wonderful to see a congregation uh singing psalms and singing the word of god we're commanded to sing psalms hymns and and spiritual songs and so let's read that from god's word psalm 32 i remind you as i read it that this is the inspired and the inerrant word of our god 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 acknowledge my sin to you i did not cover my iniquity i said i will confess my transgressions to the lord and you forgave the iniquity of my sin therefore let everyone who is godly i offer prayer to you at a time when you may be found surely in the rush of great waters they shall not reach him you are a hiding place for me you preserve me from trouble you surround me with shouts of deliverance i will instruct you and teach you in the way that 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 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 rejoice o righteous shout for joy all you upright in heart this is the word of the lord in the book of psalms we find a number of different literary genres and the psalm of david that we we just read together is what's known as a penitential psalm psalm 32 is classified as a penitential song because it is a song of confession and it reveals the heart of a deeply repentant or penitent sinner who has come clean one who has openly confessed his sin before the lord interestingly this psalm was one of martin luther's favorite passages in the bible and luther saw within the old testament within this particular psalm the the great doctrine of justification by faith alone the cornerstone of our faith the true center of the christian gospel and so these words of david are quoted by the apostle paul in romans chapter 4 as the apostle expounds that tremendous doctrine of justification by faith alone apart from the works of the law saint augustine another great man of god who follows followed paul's doctrines of grace loved the words of this psalm so much he had them inscribed on the wall above his sick bed so he could meditate on them as he was preparing to die and to meet the lord we have here before us in psalm 32 the song of a forgiven sinner notice this is not a this is not a sorrowful song this is not a a heavy-hearted psalm of lament this is a musical celebration it's a psalm of praise a man who has been cleansed a man who has been washed clean from his sin and he's rejoicing in the presence of the lord he's encouraging others through his testimony to do what he had done to confess sin and to experience the fullness of god's forgiveness in god's grace message this morning is going to focus in on a word play the inspired psalmist uses in this text to drive home the main message and this word play involves the hebrew verb translating our english bibles to cover the verb to cover you'll notice that this particular verb is repeated two times in the text with two different meanings the first time we encounter is in verse one where the lord is doing the covering then the second time we encounter the verb is in verses 4 and 5 where king david is renouncing his efforts to try and cover sin himself so in one instance it's the lord covering sin in another instance it's man trying to cover his own sin so we're going to dive right into the middle verses of this psalm we're going to look at what results whenever we try to cover our own sin when we in our own human wisdom try to look try to try to hide sin from the lord and perhaps also from other people and then secondly we're going to look at what results when we allow our sins to be covered by the lord when we allow his light his righteousness to expose our remaining darkness and wickedness so remember this verb this morning the words cover and covered and you'll remember the main message of this penitential psalm so saturated in the truths of the gospel let's look then first of all at what results whenever we attempt to cover our own sin and to hide it from view look with me again at the text verses three to five verse three david says when i kept silent my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long for day and night your hand was heavy upon me and my strength was dried up is by the heat of summer i acknowledge my sin to you i did not cover my iniquity i said i will confess my transgression to the lord and you forgave the iniquity of my sin to really come to grips with the main message of this psalm we need to understand that it is based on david's personal experience with sin as king david was writing these poetic lines he is looking back on the lowest time in his relationship with god a very deep valley in his life when david had fallen into serious sin these sins that david had committed had caused a breach of fellowship in his relationship with god historical backdrop for this psalm is found in second samuel chapters 11 and 12. i'd encourage you maybe later this afternoon you can open your old testament and read those that portion of 2nd samuel chapters 11 and 12. let me just quickly remind you about david's sin david is a king described in the bible as a man after god's own heart the bible also tells us that david was an adulterer and that david was a murderer he was guilty of having an affair with a woman named bathsheba the wife of uriah the story of david's adulterous affair is made all the more shocking all the more scandalous when we realized that uriah was one of his friends uriah was one of the loyal servants who who fought in his army was one of david's mighty warriors of renown so david's encounter with bathsheba was the ultimate act of betrayal even by the standards of our own very relaxed and relativistic morality i'm not sure if you've noticed this but you notice that people in the 21st century where we are willing to overlook many wrongs many sins and faults but cheating is one of the things that many people are not willing to overlook in our society and you can see this when you're checking out at the grocery store look at the the headlines of the tabloids or think about all the hype this past year the the story of charles and diana and this scandal that was rehashed when netflix released that popular series called the crown we live in a society that will not tolerate cheaters it's a reminder of the moral law that god has put and inscribed upon the human heart adultery in israel was a very serious sin in fact it was and it is a violation of the ten commandments the ten commandments enshrining in the word of god god's unchanging moral law but not only did david commit adultery by by sleeping with the wife of another man david went further down that broad road and he attempted to cover over that sin and made it much much worse he murdered his loyal friend his loyal servant uriah david the adulterer david the cheater graduates to the next level he becomes david the cold-blooded murderer if david were alive today he would be charged with premeditated murder probably sent to prison for the rest of his life that's canadian law under the law of moses david's crime was eligible for the death penalty and rightly so an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth but it seems because david was the king because of his status he got away with murder the death penalty was not enforced in his particular case these are very very serious sins that king david committed in fact if you were to place david's sins alongside the sins of saul his royal predecessor you might be tempted to think that david was an even worse sinner than saul of course we know that in one sense all sins are are equally heinous because of who we commit them against we we sin against a holy god that's why sin is is such a big deal it's not only about what we've done it's about who we've offended but there is a a sense here that david's crimes seem worse than saul even though it was saul and not david who had the kingdom taken away by the lord what we really need to notice from the historical backdrop in in ii samuel is that approximately one year had passed between david's act of adultery and the prophet nathan who showed up one day to confront david and to issue a rebuke we know from verse 14 second samuel 12 that there was about a year long period nathan's words to the king indicate that david and bathsheba's son had recently been born that of course indicates that at least nine months had passed in silence for nine whole months david remained silent about his sin he didn't talk to god about it he didn't talk to anyone else about it he pretended as though nothing had happened you can almost put yourself in in david's shoes through this here imagine every time he looked at bathsheba the baby growing inside of her the pregnancy becoming more and more visible to everyone in the palace every kick every every movement that he felt a reminder of the crime he had committed against uriah the city had committed against bathsheba and most seriously the sin that he had committed against the lord for a year david kept silent refusing to admit what he had done keeping a secret that was toxic to his spiritual and his physical health in this respect psalm 32 fills in a certain gap in the narrative in 2nd samuel 12. how was david feeling during that silent year of rebellion what was the state of david's heart what was the status of his relationship with the lord well here's the answer in psalm 32 david during that year was a man utterly miserable he was a man in the throes of depression suffering suffering physical and mental anguish because of this terrible secret that he was keeping under wraps for when i kept silent he says my my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long that's that's physical affliction my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long for day and night your hand was heavy on me my strength was dried up is by the heat of summer you know friends there is a a kind of depression that is not necessarily caused by by sins that we have personally committed against god there is a depression that afflicts the righteous and the wicked alike i imagine in a church of this size that some of you have battled against depression perhaps you continue to do so but here in psalm 32 we're confronted with a very different kind of depression this sinister depression that's a direct consequence of human sin consequence of rebellion against god brothers and sisters david knew exactly why i was living in a state of physical and mental anguish this wasn't a secret to david verse 4 he actually attributes the symptoms to the chastening hand of god he says there day and night your hand was heavy on me my strength was dried up is by the heat of the summer and david goes to great lengths in these verses to underscore how how terrible that he knew his sin to be look back at verses one and two for a moment you'll notice david uses there three different words to describe his rebellion against the lord verse 1 blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven whose sin is covered blessed is the man against whom the lord counts no iniquity and in his spirit there is no deceit three words there transgression sin and iniquity these three words summarize the three primary concepts of sin in the hebrew language each word highlighting a different aspect of human rebellion against god word that's translated transgression in many of our english bibles means lawlessness as someone who has crossed over a boundary line someone who has broken god's law it is a reference to trespassing remember a few years ago when we moved back to well and my wife leslie was looking for the city dump and and somehow on the way to the dump she ended up making a wrong turn and she ended up on on someone's private property and the man angrily chased her off the property and said get out of here you're trespassing on my land that's what it means to to transgress it is to cross a boundary that must not be crossed the second word is translated sin in the text it finds its origin in archery so word that that means to miss the mark the arrow released by the archer flies past the target and misses the bullseye of course this is the same concept of sin the apostle paul expounds in romans he says all have sinned and fall short of the glory of god david recognizes he has fallen short of the mark he has fallen short of god's righteous and holy standard that he therefore stands condemned the third the final word here in verse two is the word iniquity derived from a hebrew verb meaning to pervert to bend or to twist or to distort this is the image of an iron rod a straight rod that is bent out of shape and so what david the psalmist is doing by means of these three verbs is he is giving the reader a 360 degree look at the ugliness of human sin he's allowing us to peer into his heart in so doing is providing us with a mirror so that we can look at our own hearts we can reflect on sin in our own lives david recognizes he has crossed a boundary marker he has ventured into forbidden territory has missed the mark of god's righteousness he has perverted and distorted and twisted god's moral law he has broken the commandments of the lord and his sin lies totally exposed all of its ugliness for everyone to see i mentioned a few moments ago that in one sense david was probably a worse sinner than his predecessor saul if he were simply to put their sins side by side to compare the nature of their crimes and so it's interesting to ask then why did god take the kingdom from saul but continue to bless david they called david a man after his own heart even after david committed these terrible crimes after all both kings were were guilty sinners they both violated god's moral law they were both subject and rightly so to divine justice and so why in the old testament does david's reputation david's legacy come off so much better than that of saul well friends i'm persuaded that one of the main reasons why david is described as a man after god's own heart is because of what we learn in this psalm david's immediate response of confession when he was confronted by his sin when nathan the prophet comes to david second samuel 12 and nathan issues that word of rebuke to the king after a year of silence and depression what does david do how does david respond to the prophet's rebuke well david confesses his sin immediately in fact the very first words that come out of david's mouth are words of confession and humility second samuel 12 13 david said to nathan i have sinned against the lord. i've sinned against the lord no anger here from david when the sin is exposed no attempt to throw god's prophet into jail or to take retribution for daring to confront him there's no self-defense here there's no self-justification here dave is not the exception to the rule all we have is a full honest admission of guilt i have sinned against the lord and friends that's that's what confession means the greek word confession homo lagao it means to say the same thing to speak the same words and that means in in this context to say the same thing as god says about our sin to agree with god about our sin we admit what we've done and we admit as the bible says that the the wages the penalty of sin is death what a contrast in this respect between david and saul if you know your old testament you you may remember what happened under remarkably similar circumstances the prophet samuel who confronts saul with his sin in first samuel 15. this was that incident when when saul did not destroy the spoils of war as he was commanded to do and here's what samuel says to the first king of israel he says why then saul did you not obey the voice of the lord why did you pounce on the spoil and do what was evil in the sight of the lord and saul said to samuel i've obeyed the voice of the lord i've gone on the mission on which the lord sent me i brought ag the king of amalek i've devoted the amalekites to destruction but the people took the spoil on the sheep and the oxen the best things devoted to destruction to sacrifice to the lord your god at gilgal in other words saul has an excuse saul is not willing to confess his sin when he's confronted by the prophet david's impulse is to confess to come clean saul's impulse is to try and cover himself with a bunch of flimsy fig leaves he tries everything he can to justify himself when samuel puts his finger on his sin lord it wasn't me it was the people who who did this and who disobeyed lord you know sure we kept the animals but we did it for you we did it to worship you and i was going to sacrifice i'm sure we we did it but we did it for the right reason surely the the end justifies the means that's the difference between david and saul the difference between a man who confesses sin when confronted and a fool who tries to cover it up listen to the warnings in the book of proverbs the foolish example of saul proverbs 28 13 says whoever conceals his transgression will not prosper but he who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy do you want to obtain mercy from the lord if mercy is what you desire the starting point is confession you must confess those sins you must be honest with the lord and then you will receive mercy another proverb proverbs 9 verse 8 do not rebuke a scoffer he will hate you rebuke a wise man and he will love you give instruction to a wise man you will still be wiser teach a righteous man he will increase in learning friends let me ask you a question by way of personal examination application here on those times when you are confronted with a sin when your wife comes to you when your husband comes to you when another friend or believer comes to you and points out a fault in your life and your walk with the lord how do you respond you play the part of the fool or do you walk in the path of wisdom do you immediately defend yourself do you instinctively get your back up you try to justify yourself do you try to show how how you are the exception to the rule do you get angry how dare you judge me who do you think you are we've all been there because pride lurks in every human heart in fact the cover over sin is the natural impulse of a fallen sinner this is the default position this is the natural impulse of a person who has fallen who has a depraved heart remember adam in the garden of eden when he sinned when he disobeyed with god and god confronts him about his sin how does how does adam respond to the lord he says god it's not my fault it's the woman that you put here it's her fault and god it's not just the woman it's the woman that you put here it's actually your fault god if you didn't put here not put her here none of this would have happened adam tried to cover himself with the fig leaf saul tried to cover himself with a fig leaf all too often it's our response if we're really honest with ourselves when we're caught when we realize we're naked we're exposed to a fault the human impulse is to reach for the nearest fig leaf don't like to confess sin we we prefer to cover it up not so with david though look at verse five i acknowledge my sin to you and i did not cover my iniquity there's the word i did not cover my iniquity i said i will confess my transgressions to the lord and you forgave the iniquity of my sin what does the new testament say about this principle of confession first john 1 9 probably many of you have this verse memorized if you don't you should memorize this verse first john 1 9 if we confess our sins he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness here's another one from the apostle james james 5 16 confess your sins to one another and pray for one another that you may be healed two different verses on confession by two apostles notice james does not say in his epistle confess your sins to one another and pray for one another that you may be forgiven that's the error of the roman church the so-called sacrament of penance and confession james says confess your sins to one another that you may be healed confess your sins directly to the lord that you will receive his forgiveness full and free that's first john 1 9 confess your sins to another christian believer you'll experience healing james 5 16. you don't need to go to the roman priest in the roman confessional to be absolved of your sin but if you are struggling with sin if you struggle with sinful patterns there may indeed be benefiting going to a brother sister in the lord christian men coming alongside of other christian men christian women coming alongside of other women as we battle against our sin as we strive through the spirit power for holiness can you relate with david's experience today i imagine some of us here in this place have have secrets some of us have sins that we've been hiding that we've been careful carefully covering up for years maybe maybe for decades sin that is there but sin it has never been dealt with and it robs you of peace and joy and maybe over the years your conscience has been seared you've learned how to suppress the spirit's conviction on a daily basis but every now and then the sin comes to the surface in the memory of it maybe when we come to the lord's table you know friends i was preparing to preach this message i was reminded once again how how futile it is how how stupid really it is to try and cover our sins to pretend that we have it all together when when we are in actual fact a group of recovering sinners saved by grace alone saved through faith alone in the finished work of christ alone because one day brothers and sisters everything that you and i have carefully hid away and refuse to bring in the light everything that we have covered over from public view all of the skeletons in the closet are going to come out for all to see we've seen this haven't we even in recent months high-profile evangelical leaders who have had secret sins hidden away and the sins have been exposed we stand before the lord there will be no secrets there will be no hiding there will be no fig leaves luke 8 17 for nothing is hidden that will not be made manifest nor is anything secret that will not be known and come to light first corinthians 4 verse 5 he will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart so here's my pastoral counsel this morning in the light of this teaching from god's word as christians we might as well get a head start we might as well get a head start we might as well begin being honest with the lord and with one another the christian church contrary to popular belief is not a social club for the saints this is not the social club for people who have it all together the church is a hospital for sinners striving together for for holiness through the the strength of the indwelling holy spirit to attempt to cover over sin to pretend that sin is not there is futile and it's foolish hiding sin covering sin yourself will only accomplish one thing it will help to bring the discipline of the lord upon your head it was the great puritan theologian john owen who said be killing sin or sin will be killing you christians we we can never make peace with our sin we we struggle with sin but we can never make peace with it we must go to war against our sin be killing sin or sin will be killing you well if the attempt to cover our own sin leads to the kind of misery that david testifies to in this psalm the psalm also pronounced a wonderful word of blessing upon the one who comes clean before god the one who confesses their sin the one who agrees with god concerning sin allows the sin to be covered by the blood of christ let's back up and look again with me at verses 1 and 2. it says blessed is the one whose transgression is 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 the book of psalms and other places in the bible we find a number of benedictions beatitudes pronouncement a blessing perhaps the the most famous one in the psalters found the very first psalm blessed is the man that walketh not in the counts of the ungodly nor standeth in the way of sinners nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful but his delight is in the law of the lord the word is is blessed it can also be translated as happy 1 we learned that a holy man a holy woman is a happy man or woman psalm 32 we learn that a forgiven man is a happy man if you want to be truly happy and blessed in life if you want to experience the abundant life that jesus has promised to those who follow him you must know in your daily experience the cleansing power of christ's blood it must not remain for you an intellectual truth in your head but a truth that doesn't penetrate your heart it must become in your life more and more of an experiential reality this this blessing of forgiveness full and free it should resonate in your heart and it should it should move your affection so that you you worship the lord and you praise him and you you cry out to him with thanksgiving the way that that will happen is is through the ongoing discipline of confession of sin you know friends when we first come to the lord with with empty hands and we cast ourselves upon his grace and we sang about that earlier i love that that hymn that we sang earlier in one of the lines nothing in my hands i bring it's not a wonderful line in that psalm nothing in my hands i bring simply to thy cross i cling and so we come to the lord with these empty hands and we cast ourselves upon his grace and we say lord have mercy on me a sinner and what does he do he saves us and he cleanses us and he forgives us of all of our sin he forgives the past sin he forgives the present sin he forgives the future sin you know friends i stand before you this morning as as a sinner but as a forgiven sinner totally forgiven saved by the grace of god through faith in our lord jesus christ no sin that i ever have committed no sin that i ever will commit will be held against me why well it's not because of me it's because god has declared me to be blameless in his sight on account of the spotless righteousness of his son the righteousness of christ imputed to me credited to me theology we call this positional righteousness if you are born again if you are converted and the holy spirit lives within you you are positionally blameless in the eyes of god because god looks at you and he sees the righteousness of his son imputed to you you're positionally righteous in the eyes of god you've been justified and declared innocent friends the fact that i stand before god this morning in a state of positional righteousness or blamelessness does not at all mean that i should not or that i do not have to confess my sins to him on an ongoing basis i'm not sure what the christian radio station is in this area down in niagara region there's a popular teacher who answers questions every sunday afternoon and he often teaches this very error and i've heard him say it many times on the radio it is not necessary for a christian believer to confess their sins before the lord very very serious error this man promotes but someone might ask well why do we need to confess our sins to god if we're positionally righteous if we are totally forgiven and accepted to him then why should we confess our sins to the lord on an ongoing basis well let me tell you why we need to confess our sins on the basis of this psalm that if if we do not confess our sins that we will lose that sense of intimacy with god there will be a blockage in our fellowship with the lord and not only a blockage in our fellowship with the lord but also with other believers around you that's what happened in the life of king david that's what caused him to plunge into that terrible year of of depression that effect afflicted his health his his mental health his physical health david i believe was a regenerate man before he committed those sins i believe that david truly knew the lord that he had already entered into the covenant of grace the sins that david committed did not cause him to lose his salvation but they did cause him to lose his experience of intimate fellowship with god until he dealt with them until he confessed them until he he turned away from them in repentance christian believer i want to assure you this morning your relationship with god is absolutely secure once he accomplishes the second birth once you are are born again by the spirit of god no one can pluck you from his hand no one can take you from his hand you are secure in the hand of our sovereign god but hear me carefully on this your experience of fellowship your intimacy with the lord will be impaired if you allow unconfessed sin to build up in your heart and hear me again on this if you commit sin and if there is no conviction there from the holy spirit if if you if you can commit sin and there is no desire in your heart to forsake that sin and to turn away from it it may indeed be the case that you are never truly born again to begin with that you you are are not regenerate because a true christian can never live contentedly in his or her sin it is not possible for a true believer to lose salvation we affirm the perseverance of the saints it certainly is possible for a person to be deceived about his salvation a few moments ago i pointed out david uses three hebrew words to underscore the totality of his rebellion against the lord and in closing this morning i i want you to notice not just the totality of david's sin but the totality of god's forgiveness god's grace look at the way that god responds to each of those three sins or types of of sins observe first of all verse one our transgressions have been forgiven the verb there in the hebrew means to lift up our transgressions have been lifted a wonderful image for the christian believer to contemplate the transgressions the sins that once hung around our neck and felt like a thousand pound weight they had been lifted from our shoulder two thousand years ago when when jesus was lifted on the cross of calvary all of our transgressions every lawless thought every lawless deed was lifted there with him it was nailed to the cross so that we were saved by his righteous life and his substitutionary death do not bear those sins anymore remember the words of the hymn my sin oh the bliss of this glorious thought my sin not in part but the whole was nailed to the cross and i bear it no more secondly scripture tells us verse 1 our sins have been covered our transgressions lifted our sins covered there are two ways really that we can deal with sin in our lives we can either try to cover it ourselves we can we can try our best to stuff the skeletons deep into the closet where we think that nobody will ever be able to find them or on the other hand our sins can be covered by the blood of christ thirdly finally david tells us in verse 2 our iniquities are not counted against us this is an accounting term a term that bookkeepers will know well god is omniscient you know god knows everything about you he knows you better than you know yourself and he knows every thought that you that has ever come into your mind he knows every deed that you have ever done he he could rightly count every iniquity that we've ever committed in their lives and and justly hold them against us and we'd be perfectly right and just to do so on the day of judgment he could show a record of every single sin that we've ever committed in this life punish us for every single one of them but that is not what the lord does for those who know him and who have cast themselves upon the grace of jesus christ psalm 103 one of my my favorite lines in the in the whole bible says he does not treat our sins as they deserve why is that because is it because sin is not a big deal to god no it's because christ bore them on our behalf that he he lived the perfect life that you and i cannot live he perfectly kept god's moral law that we have broken he he died the death that we should have paid the apostles creed says that he he descended into hell it that on the cross he endured the hell that you and i deserve to pay for our own sins so that we wouldn't have to descend there eternally so that john can even say that he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins how is it how is it that god can be just because justice was paid at calvary jesus satisfied the demands of divine justice how blessed how happy is the man how how blessed how happy the woman who knows the full and the free forgiveness of our loving gracious and merciful god i wonder can you testify to that happiness can you testify to that blessedness that david is speaking about are you here this morning as a forgiven sinner are you here this morning as a sinner who is still under divine wrath divine condemnation friend if you have never committed your life to christ if you are here this morning and you are uncertain deep down in your heart of hearts whether your sins have been covered through the blood of christ whether your your sin has been lifted with christ on the cross i invite you i implore you this morning come before him in repentance confess your sin to him say say to him and cry out lord have mercy on me a sinner have mercy lord i believe that you you died on the cross to save sinners i confessed to you this morning i am a sinner i'm one of them lord i i need your salvation and grace receive me into your kingdom change my heart give me a new heart take the heart of stone and give me a heart of flesh forgive me wash me clean give me the righteousness of christ i turn away from my sin i embrace you as my savior my lord there is no sin that our god is unable to forgive there is no sin that our god is unwilling to forgive except for the sin of of unbelief and rejecting him which is a sin that will will send you to an eternal hell god receives sinful men god forgives sinners he will cleanse you from your sin he will cover you by his grace so that no accusation will ever be brought against you successfully in his courtroom you will be declared innocent blameless in his eyes and he invites you this morning he he commands you to look upon his son to see him dying there in the place of of sinners and bearing the wrath of god in their place the forgiven sinner is a truly happy man the primary application of this particular psalm is twofold verse six david urges the godly to pray to the lord to cry out to him in confession in a time when he may be found and david's testimony here becomes for us the reader and admonishment cry out to the lord today he may be found today break the silence of your sin you know friends there are some sins that that need to be brought out into the open if they're ever to be made right if you will experience healing confess your sins to one another pray for one another that you may be healed another verse in first john if we walk in the light as he is in the light we have fellowship with one another and the blood of jesus christ his son cleanses us from all sin walking in the light being honest with the lord allowing his light to expose your darkness and my darkness and so if the spirit convicts you this morning of a hidden sin that you have been covering and and hiding and your conscience is seared i urge you i appeal to you as your brother in christ i appeal to you as a pastor in the wider body of the church confess it to the lord go to god first and foremost experience his forgiveness and if you are mired in habitual sin if you are struggling with sin perhaps confess it to a trusted brother or sister who can pray for you and who can counsel you with the word of god who can keep you accountable to a biblical standard of holiness if you're a woman approach a trusted and godly christian sister if you're a man seek help from a trusted and godly christian brother let's not struggle alone in our sin let's bear one another's burden and so fulfill the law of christ that's the first application of the psalm the second application of this psalm is found in the very last verse how we ought to respond to the lord the response of one who knows the grace and the forgiveness of god is to cry out to the lord with with a heart that's filled with thanksgiving and praise this is not a heavy sorrowful psalm of lament this is a joyful jubilant song of praise look at the last verse be glad in the lord rejoice o righteous shout for joy all you uprighted heart i want to close our time in god's word this morning with with an old puritan prayer of confession and this prayer you can find in an excellent resource called the valley of vision and so i'd encourage you as we close in prayer listen carefully to these words pray them with me in your own heart let's pray holy lord i have sinned times without number and been guilty of pride and unbelief a failure to find thy mind and thy word of neglect to seek thee in my daily life my transgressions and shortcomings present me with a list of accusations but i bless thee that they will not stand against me for all have been laid on christ go on to subdue my corruptions grant me grace to live above them let not the passions of the flesh nor the lustings of the mind bring my spirit into subjection but do thou rule over me in liberty and in power i thank thee that many of my prayers have been refused i have asked the mist and do not have i have prayed from lust and been rejected i have longed for egypt and been given a wilderness go on with thy patient work answering no to my wrongful prayers fitting me to accept it purge me from every false desire every base aspiration everything that is contrary to thy rule i thank thee for thy wisdom and thy love for all the acts of discipline to which i am subject for sometimes putting me into the furnace to refine my gold and to remove my dross no trial is so hard to bear as a sense of sin if thou should give me a choice to live in pleasure and to keep my sins or to have them burned away through trial give me sanctified affliction deliver me from every evil habit every increase of former sins everything that dims the brightness of thy grace in me everything that prevents me from taking delight in thee then i shall bless thee god of grace for helping me to be upright amen

Channel: Trinity Bible Chapel

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Length: 52min 28sec (3148 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 12 2021