Psalm 32

Okay, Psalm 32 of David, Amaskill. Blessed is the one whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered.! Blessed is the one whose sin the Lord does not count against them, and whose spirit is no deceit.

When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy on me. My strength was sapped as in the heat of summer.

Then I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover up my iniquity. I said I will confess my transgressions to the Lord, and you forgave the guilt of my sin. Therefore let all the faithful pray to you while you may be found.

Surely the rising of the mighty waters will not reach them. You are my hiding place. You will protect me from trouble and surround me with songs of deliverance. I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go.

I will counsel you with my loving eye on you. Do not be like the horse or the mule which have no understanding, but must be controlled by bit and bridle, or they will not come to you. Many are the woes of the wicked, but the Lord's unfailing love surrounds the one who trusts in him.

Rejoice in the Lord and be glad, you righteous. Sing all you who are upright in heart. Amen. Amazing. Thank you, Mike.

I know I put you on the spot for the impromptu reading. I really appreciate it. Great. Why don't I pray for us before we get into this. Lord, we thank you for bringing us here today.

We thank you that it is important that we sit under your word. And Lord, we pray that you would help me. Would you fill me with your spirit that I may speak? And what do you want to say to your church?

What you want to communicate through this psalm? Lord, we pray that you would be at work in our hearts. Change us, renew us, encourage us, and challenge us. Lord, I pray.

In Jesus' name I pray. Amen. Amen. Great. We're in Psalm 32. And this psalm has been, in some way, a part of my life for a long while.

Psalm 32, David goes on to confess something. So I'm going to confess something to you. My confession is that I was quite a bad and annoying teenager to raise. At least for my parents.

My sisters would definitely attest to that. My parents would as well. I became a Christian when I was like 12. As I grew up, I still wrestled, though, with the, how do I live this out?

And I'd argue back and forth with my parents. And I wasn't, like, wild outside of the house. But in my house, I was quite rude to them, probably. I argued back and forth. Challenged them on everything they believed about what I was meant to live my life as.

My mum would quote verse 9 to me over and over. Which says, Do not be like the horse or the mule, which have no understanding, but must be controlled by bit and brittle, or they will not come to you.

My mum quoted that to me, I think, when she was finally done with having that conversation with me. And went, I just wish you'd seek God's wisdom. I wish you wouldn't try and just go at your own way.

I wish you'd seek God's wisdom. Don't be like one with no understanding. Read your Bible. Get in your word. And it was a wise mother just going, I wish you would understand the glory of God's word. That is how this psalm has been a part of my life for a long while.

But I think there's more to this psalm than just that verse and just what you can tell at your teenager. When they're struggling with wisdom and understanding what it looks like to live out the gospel.

Here are my three points that I'm going to make today. And three points that I'm going to draw out from Psalm 32. Firstly is the cost of sin. Second is the comfort of confession.

And third is the commands of the Lord. The cost of sin, the comfort of confession, the commands of the Lord. Yes, they're all C's. Yes, I did work on that. I hope that somebody can appreciate it.

So first we'll start with the cost of sin. If we look down at verses three and four, it is plain to see David is describing a broken man.

He says, when I kept silent, my bones wasted away. I groaned all day long. Day and night, he felt God's hand heavy on him. His strength was zapped in the summer.

This is a broken man crumbling under the weight. And the weight of what? Well, the next few verses tell us that it's the guilt of his sin. The guilt of his sin is weighing heavy on him.

And it's not like a guilt that you get over once you sleep it off. No, this verse four says, it's for day and night, your hand was heavy on me. Day and night, when I went to sleep, when I woke up, it felt like this guilt of sin was heavy on me.

This guilt of sin was heavy on me. Maybe you've had something of that experience. Maybe the guilt of sin has been heavy on you at times. Maybe it's not the guilt of sin. Maybe it's other situations. Maybe you're deciding where university to go to, what your next job should be, where you should move, what you should do.

Maybe those sorts of decisions weigh heavy on you or have weighed heavy on you at times. All you can think about is that decision day and night. The experience I've had of this is when me and Daisy first started getting to know each other.

I texted her saying, why don't we meet at a coffee shop? And this is when I'm like, I'm going to ask her out. She said in the text back, are you going to ask me out? And I said, yes.

She said, I don't think it's the right time. I think we should go out. And that was like the rejection. And then we hung out in all the same spaces. We were in the same Christian union at university.

We were in the same friend groups. We were in the same church. But for three months straight, she never talked to me at all. She just rejected me and went, I don't want to have anything to do with it. And I promise you, this is what I felt.

Day and night, all I could think was, why did she reject me? What did I do wrong? Did I dress the wrong way? Did I say something wrong? All of these things are like, I'm wasting away under the pressure of, why?

Why did it happen? And that's obviously relationships. And there are other things that weigh heavy on us. For David here, that is the weighing of heavy. This decision, this thought of sin, the fact that he has gone against God's will, the weight of that is weighing heavy on him.

He is burdened. He is a broken man wasting away. His strength is zapped. Then we come to verse five. And he says, then I acknowledge my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity.

I said, I will confess my transgressions to the Lord. And you forgave the guilt of my sin. Verses three to four are him crumbling under the pressure, falling under the weight of this sin.

Verse five reads like an amazing weight coming off his shoulders. The weight's been lifted. The guilt is gone. Forgiven is David. Transgressions that held that weight of sin are there no more.

David is the one who stands forgiven in front of God. Actually, verse one and two say that he is now a blessed one. Blessed is the one whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered.

Blessed is the one whose sin the Lord does not count against them. David stands. All he offers is a confession of his sin and the guilt of it. And God instead gives him forgiveness.

Forgiving the guilt and forgiving his transgressions. His great comfort in the fact that he has confessed his sin and been met with forgiveness.

The weight of his sin has been lifted as his confession meets God's grace. As the cost of his sin meets the payment for that sin. As David knew, and what this passage screams, our God is a forgiving God.

And he, much like us, looked in faith to a Messiah that would come, a Savior that would come, accomplishing for him the forgiveness. And we look back in faith in the same way to the same Jesus that accomplished that.

God is not just a forgiving God in word. He doesn't just forgive. He sent his own son to die on a cross for us, pay the penalty, and then rise again. Then he is a forgiving God.

David knew, we know it too, having seen that lived out and fulfilled in Jesus. Jesus came down that we might be one of the blessed as well.

We might be the ones whose transgressions are forgiven. Whose sin is covered over. Blessed is the one whose sin the Lord does not count against them and whose spirit is no deceit. Jesus accomplished that for us and for David too.

And so we've seen these two aspects. We've seen the aspect of a sin that is weighed down, the cost of sin. We've seen this aspect of the confession of sin and the comfort it brings and the forgiveness that that brings.

And now we're going to look at what God calls us to in the rest of this passage. Okay, so I believe he calls us to two different things.

Let me just find my spot. Yeah. He calls us to come to him while he may be found and to live under his commands. Those are the two things he calls us to do. To come to him while he may be found and live under his commands.

Look with me at verse 6. Therefore, let all the faithful pray to you while you may be found. Surely the rising of the mighty waters will not reach them. When you experience this forgiveness, he utters verse 6.

Just to bring some context into verse 6, you might be sitting there going, what do the mighty waters mean? I sat there saying the same thing. The mighty waters, see they hint to the idea of God's judgment.

Okay, so some theologians would say even that David might have Noah in mind here as he says that. Surely the rising of the mighty waters will not reach them. Could be said as well as in Noah's time, Noah was protected, yet the mighty waters were a judgment against sinners of the time.

In the same way, the mighty waters here are God's judgment. So you could translate that as saying, surely the judgment of God will not reach them. Yes, so therefore let all the faithful pray to you while you may be found.

Surely the judgment of God will not reach them. The mighty waters symbolize that judgment. So what does that mean for us? Well, it means that we need to come to him while he may be found.

For both Christian and non-Christian, this verse should sense some sense of urgency. So therefore let the faithful pray to you while you may be found. The implication is there is a time coming where that time will run out.

You won't be able to be found anymore. Whether that's by our own deaths, our mortality, or whether that is by Jesus coming back in judgment. Judgment is coming and time is short.

If you're a non-Christian, either listening back to this, or online, or whatever, the cost of that is that we need to consider God's claims.

We need to consider Jesus' claims. There is a time limit. Judgment is coming. And God offers us forgiveness. He offers us that forgiveness in this word. If we would just confess our sins, if we would just repent and accept Jesus' forgiveness, forgiveness, we need to consider that there is a time limit to this.

And for us as Christians, we should also consider what this means for what we do in our urgency, to tell people about this. To tell people that there is a God that is longing to forgive them if they would come to repentance and believe in Jesus Christ.

We want people to acknowledge their sin, to confess their transgressions, that God may forgive. He is a forgiving God. And he has made a way that he needs people like us that might tell others about it, that might ask people, say, this is who Jesus is.

He's come to save you. Why don't you come to know who he is? So that the rising waters, the rising mighty waters of judgment will not happen to you. We all have friends and family that we dearly love.

Many will have painful experiences of seeing them not come closer, or what feels like not come closer to Jesus. We need to continue to pray for them and urge them in moments that God provides to come to know who he is.

The time is short. Therefore, let us come to him while he may be found. And I think that also applies to us as Christians, that we should continue to come to him.

We often, I don't know if you do this, I'm definitely like this. When I've just sinned and feel that sort of weight, the acknowledgement of my sin, I often subconsciously think, God's this perfect God.

Surely I can't go back to him right now. I need to fix something, make recompense for what I've done before I can kind of come back to him, before I can start praying again and reading my Bible again. And we often draw away as we sin.

And actually God is saying, come to me. Don't believe the lie that the devil was trying to push, which is that somehow you had everything to do with it and you could earn your salvation or earn your right to be with me.

Jesus purchased that for us. We have every right to come to him. All he asks us to say is simply come to me, confess your sin, accept the forgiveness, and know the unfailing love of the Lord that surrounds you.

That is a great promise of God. And the hymn, what a friend we have in Jesus, I think encapsulates this quite well. In lyrics it says, oh, what peace we often forfeit.

Oh, what needless pain we bear, all because we do not carry everything to God in prayer. That seems David's revelation, doesn't it? We carry needless burdens.

We carry the burden of the guilt of our sin, all because we don't come faithfully in prayer to our God. So if you're a Christian sitting here, feel the weight of your sin. Come to him in prayer.

He asks for it. He longs for it. He longs to forgive you. And then lastly, he longs for us to live under his command. He longs for us to live under his command.

Why don't we look at verse eight with me. After David has said, you are my hiding place, you will protect me from trouble and surround me with songs of deliverance. This is then God speaking.

And God says this, I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go. I will counsel you with my loving eye on you. Think of these two verses.

You see the loving part of a father that cares for you deeply. It's evident. He longs to instruct you and teach you to live under his commands, to counsel you as you go.

A good God gives good instructions for your good. And he doesn't do this with like an eye on a judgmentalism. He's not looking down at you going, oh, I'm just waiting for them to trip up and then I'll tell them that they've done it wrong.

Or it's not with an ambivalence there of a God that just sits back and watches as your life falls apart and instructs you where you've gone wrong. And he says, I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go.

I will counsel you with what? With my loving eye on you. God that longs to forgive us and longs to instruct us in the way that we should go.

Not with an eye that doesn't care. That is not the God we serve. We serve a God who instructs us, teaches us and counsels us with his loving eye on us. His unfailing love surrounds everybody that trusts in him.

So what do we do? We've come to the end of this. We've seen God's great providence in God's great love for us, even as we're sinners. The comfort as we bring our confessions to him.

We've seen that he commands us to live in his ways and does so as a loving father. And verse 11 says, what do we do? We rejoice in the Lord and be glad, you righteous.

Sing all who are upright in heart. We rejoice in a God who forgives us as we bring our sins to him. We rejoice in a God that makes us righteous because of Christ.

It says, you righteous, that is not our own work. You who are upright in heart, that is not our own work. Jesus does that for us. And we rejoice in that work. We simply accept the great gift of grace. And we rejoice in a God that longs to instruct, teach and counsel us in the way we should go.

All for his glory and our good. Amen. Amen. Let me pray for us. Lord, we thank you for the time that you've given us to look at this psalm.

We thank you that you're a good God that longs to forgive us. That longs that we would come to you, that we would know you and love you. But we pray that you would give our hearts an urgency when it comes to showing this good news to other people.

That they may see how loving you are and how you've sent your son to die for them. And that they would see that the time is coming where the mighty waters of judgment will come.

And Lord, would you save them from that? The friends and the family of the people in this room, would you save them from those mighty waters? And Lord, we pray with a desire that we would live as you've instructed us to.

As a loving Father has called us to live, may we desire to live in your ways, for we know that it's for our good and your glory. We rejoice in your truth, Lord. In Jesus' name I pray.

Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.