A Study in Psalms - Psalm 32

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. I acknowledged 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 iniquity of my sin 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. I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go. I will counsel you with my eye upon you Do not be like the horse or a mule without understanding, which must be curbed with bit and brittle, or it will not stay near you Many are the sorrows of the wicked, but the steadfast love surrounds the one who trusts in the Lord Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, O righteous, and shout for joy, all you upright in heart Let's pray

Father in heaven, we just come together and want to open up the perfect Word of God Open our eyes that we can see wonderful things in this psalm May we leave here today rejoicing with the blessedness that David has In Jesus' name, amen You all know about the Beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount, I hope, right? The Sermon on the Mount, undoubtedly the greatest sermon ever preached by our Lord Jesus Christ, found in Matthew chapters 5, 6, and 7 And you all know that it begins with what we call the Beatitudes You remember them? Blessed are the poor in spirit Blessed are those who mourn

Blessed are the meek Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness Blessed are the merciful Blessed are the pure in heart Blessed are the peacemakers Blessed are those who persecute for righteousness' sake And blessed are you when others revile you Nine Beatitudes But did you know when Jesus was preaching that sermon, and the people are sitting on the Sermon on the Mount, on the grass, they knew all about Beatitudes because, maybe you don't know, but Psalms has 25 Beatitudes

And I was going to run through them, so that's why I gave you an outline, because they're on the back of your outline The Psalms has 25 Beatitudes So Jesus' hearers would be familiar with the Beatitudes, although Jesus would radically change them with the Gospel But there are 25 of them in the Psalms, and I thought you might like to take them, some of you take them and go home with them And let's just run through them The very first word in the entire book of Psalms says, Blessed We have a Beatitude

Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor seats in the seat of scoffers The second one is Psalms 212, and it ends with, Blessed are all who take refuge in him And then we have tonight's Psalm We just read Psalm 32, and there's two of 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 whose spirit is no deceit Then you have Psalm 3312 Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, the people whom he has chosen as his inheritance Psalms 348

Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him That's the second time it said refuge in him Psalms 40 verse 4 Blessed is the man who makes the Lord his trust Psalms 411 Blessed is the one who considers the poor Psalm 654 Blessed is the one you choose to bring near to dwell in your courts And in Psalms 84, it has three Beatitudes in them, and we will look at that Psalm in a few weeks Blessed are those who dwell in your house, ever singing your praise Blessed are those whose strength is in you, in whose heart are the highways to Zion And in verse 12

Oh, Lord of hosts, blessed is the one who trusts in you Then Psalms 8915 Blessed are the people who know the festal shout, who walk, oh Lord, in the light of your face Psalms 9412, which we could apply to tonight's Psalm Blessed is the man whom you discipline Psalms 106 verse 3 Blessed are they who observe justice And in Psalms 112, 1 Praise the Lord Blessed is the man who fears the Lord, who greatly delights in his commandments Psalms 119, which has 176 verses, has two Beatitudes Verse 1 Blessed are those whose way is blameless, who walk in the law of the Lord Verse 2

Blessed are those who keep his testimonies, who seek him with all their heart Psalms 127, 5 Every time we have a baby dedication here at Christ Community Church, we read this one Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with him Speaking of children And in Psalms 128, 1 Blessed is everyone who fears the Lord So you have that Beatitude quite a few times And in the Psalms 137, we'll probably talk a little bit about this next week Probably the most, I've never heard a sermon. I doubt I ever will hear a sermon on Psalms 137 But it says, blessed be he who repays you with what you've done to us

And then you have probably the most controversial verse in the Psalms Psalms 137, 9 Blessed shall be he who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock That's an imprecatory prayer, asking that, that the Israelites are asking God to do to the enemies, like Babylon and Assyria, what they did to Israel So it's a very controversial and difficult Psalm, but we'll explain it more sometime Psalms 144 has two, and they're both in verse 15 Blessed are the people to whom such blessings fall And then it says, blessed are the people whose God is the Lord

And then the last Beatitude in the Psalms is Psalms 146, 5 Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord his God So I thought maybe you'd like to go through those and study those sometime, especially if you're, if you like to study and memorize the Beatitudes in Matthew 5 So tonight's Psalm, Psalm 32, is a very, very famous Psalm It's been called the Thanksgiving Psalm, but most people would call it a penitential Psalm And if you've heard of that word, penitential Psalm, there are six, seven of them actually

Psalms 6, Psalms 32, Psalms 38, Psalms 50, Psalms 102, Psalms 130, and Psalms 143 Now the Protestant Church will use these penitential Psalms, but traditionally the Catholic Church uses them more They will use them on the day of Lent as prayers of reflection But what's interesting is when you look at these seven penitential Psalms, it was a man, obviously a Catholic, that came up with it Cassidorus in the 6th century came up with this And he came up with these seven Psalms, and he called them penitential Psalms Psalms for repentance, Psalms about sin and forgiveness

But when you study these seven penitential Psalms, it's interesting because Psalm 6, Psalms 102 and 143, they don't even mention sin They don't mention the word iniquity, and they don't have any confession of sin Yet, you go to other Psalms, like Psalms 25, verse 11 says, pardon my guilt, for it is great Verse 25, verse 18, forgive my sins And then Psalms 39, verse 7 says, deliver me from my transgressions So don't get caught up in that word penitential too much, because there are many other Psalms other than these seven that talk about sin, the need for pardon, and guilt, and forgiveness

But Psalms 32 shows us our sin and our need of repentance Originally, I was not going to teach this Psalm, because last year, if you Zoomed with us when we taught 11 Psalms, and we did it through Zoom class, Chris Cole taught Psalm 51 Anybody remember that one? And Psalms 32 and Psalms 51 are twin Psalms They're both written after David's sin with Bathsheba. I think most of you know that

So I thought, do I really want to teach this Psalm 32 when we already covered Psalm 51 last year? But it's such a beautiful poetic Psalm, probably one of the most beautiful poems of the 150 Psalms. I just knew I had to teach it And if you look at Psalms 51, verse 13, David says, then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will return to you David makes a promise that he's going to teach the Jews, his people, God's ways, and sinners are going to return to them So Psalms 51 was written first, even though it comes after Psalms 32

And Psalms 32 is the teaching that David promises to fulfill in Psalms 51, 13 This is the Psalm that the Jews read on the most holy day, the Day of Atonement This was St Augustine's favorite Psalm When St Augustine was near death, he was bedridden He had it carved into the wall next to his bed, so he could meditate upon it Augustine liked this Psalm, and he had it saying, the beginning of knowledge is to know oneself to be a sinner The beginning of knowledge is to... I'm sorry, I said it wrong The beginning of knowledge is to know oneself to be a sinner

So Psalms 32 is the place where this true knowledge begins You know, you look at our culture today Today, our culture celebrates what we used to call sin or abomination against the Holy God Our society, our culture, doesn't want to talk about sin, let alone confess it or admit it You probably heard the poem many times, and let me read it to you What is sin? Man calls it an accident God calls it an abomination Man calls it a blunder God calls it blindness Man calls it a defect God calls it a disease Man calls it a chance God calls it a choice Man calls it an error God calls it an enmity

Man calls it a fascination God calls it a fatality Man calls it an infirmity God calls it an iniquity Man calls it a luxury God calls it leprosy Man calls it liberty God calls it lawlessness Man calls it a trifle God calls it a tragedy Man calls it a mistake, God calls it madness Man calls it a weakness, God calls it willfulness So we have our culture today that doesn't want to talk about sin, that doesn't want to confess it, and what is sin is now celebrated in our society But then we have an opposite problem

We have people today that have a problem with David. I kind of mentioned this in a few songs ago When we mention David, what do people automatically think? They think of what? David and Bathsheba instead of David and Goliath, right? I mentioned a couple weeks ago, we're in a cancel culture, right? If somebody says something or somebody does something wrong, the mob goes after them and cancels them Well, that may say more about the people who are trying to cancel it But there's a story of Queen Victoria of England She died on January 22, 1901, after being on the throne for 64 years

And after her husband died, she was constantly in the mood of depression She had a cloud of grief and nobody could comfort her She had these aides and they often would read passages of the Bible to her And one of the ladies, her aides, tried to reason with the Queen And she said, Your Majesty, instead of feeling morbid, you should rejoice One day in heaven you will meet these great people from the Bible, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and David The Queen shouted, No, no, replied Queen Victoria, I will not meet David That says a lot about her But there are people like that

We say David and immediately think David and Bathsheba Like the older son in the prodigal son story, who refused to go into the feast There are people who don't understand God's forgiveness They don't understand His grace, His love for us Psalm 32 records the experience that David went through when he faced his sins, when he confessed his sins, and he received the free gift of forgiveness from God We have a superscription, so I usually begin with that It simply says, I'm a skill of David This is the first occurrence of this word, but it is used in 13 other Psalms

Psalms 32 is the first one. 42, 44, 45, 52, 53, 54, 78, 88, 89, 142 What does it mean? Well, commentators will argue about what it means There are many words in the Psalms in the superscriptions that we really don't know, but most people believe it means an artistically molded song, keeping with the principles of wisdom So this is a Psalm that David would write He'd hand off to Asap He'd hand off to the sons of Korah, and they would put it to music Psalms 47, 7 says, For God is the King of all the earth Sing praises with a psalm

So it's an artistically molded song in keeping with the principles of wisdom You have an outline tonight, so you can turn it over from the Beatitudes side, and you see there are four main points Number one, David's cleansing from his sin, verses 1 and 2 David's concealment of his sin, 3 and 4 David's confession of his sin, verse 5 And then we get into really the application, David's counsel about sin, verses 6 to 11

So let's look at point one, David's cleansing from his sin. I already mentioned that the very first word in the entire book of Psalms is blessed, a beatitude. A beatitude, it means a statement of blessing That's all a beatitude means And in Psalms 1, 1, you have a blessing for the obedient It says, Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers So that beatitude is pronouncing a blessing for the obedient

But here in Psalms 32, 1, we have a beatitude pronouncing a blessing on the disobedient who have been forgiven The happiness of the man in Psalms 32 is perhaps greater than the happiness of the man in Psalms 1, because his sins have been forgiven His heart is white as snow, and he's full of joy He has peace that God has taken his sins away, true joy If you want to be blessed, you need to stay away from sin You need to avoid it at all costs You know, the New Testament has sayings like flee from sexual immorality, flee from idolatry, flee from youthful passions

But we know that David did not flee He kept watching Bathsheba He could have slept with any one of his wives He had Abigail, who was a beautiful wife He had many wives, but he didn't He let the lust in his heart go after Bathsheba, and he sinned So why is David blessed? Well, we have four reasons in the first two verses Number one, his defiance is forgiven Number two, his depravity is covered

Number three, his defilement is not imputed, and his deception is removed. I don't think I need to rehash the story of David and Bathsheba, because Lance has covered it many, many times here at Christ Community Church But number one, his defiance was forgiven It says, blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven There are four reasons, four words The first word is forgiven The second word is sin The third word is iniquity The fourth word is deceit So the first word is transgression This emphasizes man's rebellion against the law of God Man rebels

This is what makes sin so awful, and not that it's only a transgression against the people we hurt Often when we sin, we hurt our wife, we hurt our children, we hurt somebody But ultimately, we sin against a holy God The second word is sin And this word means to miss the mark, like an archer shooting You're going to have the Olympics in a week, and they'll have archery They're not going to miss They're pretty good But when we sin, we miss God's mark We're short of the mark And it wasn't archery

This word was used in archery in the ancient times, describing a person who shoots at a target, but whose arrow falls short The target is God's law And the sin described by this word is failure to live up to God's law Number three, we have iniquity Blessed is the man whom the Lord counts no iniquity This simply means corrupt, perverted, or twisted The fourth word, and whose spirit is no deceit, means the act of being dishonest or misleading It's the opposite of being sincere or true So the psalmist uses four-fold use of words for sin, just emphasizes the entire spectrum of sin and guilt

One time I took an exercise, you know, Galatians 5, you have the fruits of the Spirit Everybody knows that, right? Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness But before the fruits of the Spirit, there's the fruits of the sin, right? Well, there are about nine or ten of those in the New Testament. I won't take time tonight But one time I went through and wrote them all out, and I counted 65 words for sin You know, you have adultery, slander, gossip Sixty-five words for sin So these four words are simply describing an entire spectrum of sin and guilt Not specific sins, but just sin

It was a great Puritan Thomas Brooks who says, Satan promises the best but pays with the worst He promises honor but pays with disgrace He promises pleasure and pays with pain He promises profit and pays with loss He promises life and pays with death But God pays as He promises All His payments are made in pure gold Now we saw four words for sin, but you also noticed that in the first three words at least, they're followed by three corresponding terms on how God deals with that sin So the first word we had was transgressions, and it says they are forgiven

This means the burden of sin is removed or sin literally is taken off God is willing to separate the sinner's transgressions and the guilt from the sinner's Before confession it was a burden, but now God has lifted the sin off our shoulders When we confess our sins, Psalm 103.12 says God removes it as far as the east is from the west Just a metaphor that means unlimited And it also says in Isaiah 43.25 that God no longer remembers

There are people that, perhaps a woman who had an abortion or somebody who committed murder, they ask for forgiveness and they've genuinely repented and God has forgiven them, but they keep bringing up, they can't forget it Sometimes I tell them, God has forgotten those sins, you need to forget them Because He says He no longer remembers that The second word here, talking about what God does with our sin, is covered Now this term will take us back to the Old Testament and the Day of Atonement On the Day of Atonement the high priest would come into the holies of holies

He would be carrying blood from an animal that had been sacrificed He would go into the most holy place and he would sprinkle that blood on the mercy seat of the Ark of Covenant The mercy seat was the lid covering the Ark of the Covenant And the blood was sprinkled there because it came between the presence of a holy God So you have holy God, you have the law in the Ark, and the blood covers the broken law So it literally means the blood covers So it's covered, the broken law shielding the sinner from God's judgment That signifies what happened on the Day of Atonement

The third word is in the negative Our iniquity is not counted It's an accounting term literally God does not count iniquity against you Some translations would say God does not impute it to us This word is used by Paul in Romans 4, 7 and 8 Why don't you turn there How great is Psalms 32 verses 1 and 2 This psalm is so great that Paul is going to take these first two verses and he's going to use them in Romans chapter 4 verses 7 and 8

And you can see the translation isn't exact because in the New Testament usually they would take the translation from the Septuagint, the Greek translation, not the Hebrew Old Testament translation But when you look at Romans 4, Paul is going to explain how God writes our sin into Christ's ledger And that God punishes Christ for our sin while at the same time writing forgiveness, righteousness of Christ into our ledger There's a transfusion And so it says there that Abraham in 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 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 So what Paul is doing here is saying that salvation is through grace alone, through faith alone You cannot work Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness That's what got Abraham to believe in God and that's why Abraham is in heaven, his faith, not his works

Then he goes on in verse 6 then, just as David also speaks of the blessing of the one to whom God counts righteousness apart from works And he quotes Psalms 32, 1 and 2, 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 So this is extremely important Paul is quoting Psalms 32 verses 1 and 2 to show that the divine gift of grace is on the basis of faith alone and not works It's incredible when you think about it because David was a murderer David was an adulterer He was a bad father

He did not finish well He actually had four children die after that One daughter raped by one of his sons and four of his sons would die But MacArthur says, in spite of the enormity of his sin and the utter absence of personal merit, David knew the blessing of imputed righteousness David knew that God had forgiven his sins and so do we David's sins were cleansed Is everybody here tonight are your sins cleansed? You know the Bible has bad news Let me give you the bad news

You all know I love the bad news, good news, right? The bad news, Romans 3.23, all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God There is no one righteous, the Bible says And Hebrews 6.23 says, for the wages of that sin that all of us do, God will pay us God, you sin, you're all sinners, God will pay you for your wages of sin And then Hebrews 9.27 tells us that after we die, we will face judgment So there are three absolute truths, three bad news in the Bible, sin, death, and judgment That's the bad news of the Bible

You have to tell people that first, not God loves you and has a plan for your life or something like that And once they understand the bad news, that they're a sinner separated from a holy God, that they cannot do anything in their own merit to make themselves worthy to get into heaven Their works will not get them into heaven Isaiah 64.6 says that our righteous acts are like filthy rags in the eyes of God But the good news is, Romans 5.8, you know, but God demonstrate His love toward us in this While we were sinners, not before we were sinners, while we were sinners, Christ died for us

And Christ died for us And then Romans 10.9 and 10 says that if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved That word justified there means you trust Jesus Christ, you make a decision to be a real born again Christian, and Christ declares you not guilty of all past sins, all present sins, and all future sins Because of what Jesus Christ did on the cross That's what Paul is teaching here

And in Romans 5.1 says that we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ Our sins can be forgiven because Christ has forgiven us and we're not at enmity, we're not enemies of God, we have peace with God Let's move on to point two David's concealment of sin Now we're going retro Now we're going back to the story of David and Bathsheba What happened before the blessing was that David was under the discipline, he was under the heavy hand of God And we have two points here One, he suppressed his sin and number two, he suffered for his sin

He simply says for when I kept silent You know the story David thought the sin was concealed They came and told David, Bathsheba's pregnant King David, no problem Got a bunch of wives, got a bunch of kids with those wives, just takes another wife, we'll have another kid, nobody will know And even if anybody knows, and I believe Antithophel, who I talked about in Psalms 3, Bathsheba's grandfather, I believe he knew But you don't go and challenge the king, right? You'll lose your head if you do that David is not in a good place here He's in sin

So I don't believe anybody's going to go, hey David, you're a sinner, right? So I don't think Antithophel would rebel with Absalom and try to kill David So nobody's going to go to the king It's a hush hush thing, right? So David remains silent, maybe nine months of the pregnancy, maybe up to a year Proverbs 28, 13 says, whoever conceals his transgressions will not prosper But he who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy Charles Spurgeon said, God does not permit his children to sin successfully Oh, sin may be pleasurable for a moment, but there are consequences for that sin

That sin will find you out and you will not prosper is what the Bible says So David suppressed his sin He kept silent He thought he got away with it, right? And then point two, he suffered for his sin. A very vivid description here He says in the last part of verse three, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long Day and night your hand, God's hand was heavy upon me And the example is his strength was dried up like the heat of summer You know, it's been 90 degrees up to a hundred degrees

And if you're out there in that heat, you're going to just feel wiped out, right? So maybe up to nine months to one year after the murder of Uriah, David kept silent, but he paid the penalty He paid the price He suffered for it His, uh, there were threefold consequences of his unconfessed sin One physical suffering He was a physical wreck He describes his body as, as the hand of God has his bones being wasted away He was not physically Well, I'm pretty sure that he did not write any of his 73 Psalms while this was going on He wasn't close to God

So I'm, I'm pretty sure I'm taking Liberty on that Number two, not just physical suffering He had emotional suffering Can you imagine David walking around the kingdom? Will I be found out? Do they know about it? I imagine antithefell looking at him, knowing maybe he didn't say anything to him David would be worried Will I, will I be found out the looks? That's what happens when you're in sin and you won't confess it You worry that someone will find out about your sin and number three and most important spiritual suffering He had a defiled conscience His conscience was guilty

Uh, he was not close to God He wasn't worshiping He wasn't writing Psalms David said his bones were be wasting away His strength was gone like the heat of summer He reasons of course that it was the hand of God upon him The discipline of God You know, um, it says in second Samuel 11 27, uh, when the morning was over, this is after the, he found out that that Bathsheba was pregnant David sent and brought her to his house and she became his wife and bore him a son And the very next line says, but the thing that David had done displeased the Lord Anytime we sin, it displeases the Lord

When we sin, we wish that God would ignore our transgressions, but God cannot do that He's a Holy God today Uh, a criminal, even a murderer could get away with murder with a good, a good lawyer Um, trip up the jury, bribe the jury You can get away with it, but not a Holy God in heaven His court of law, he will find out the guilty and he will sentence them God wants us though to confess before we do that

But don't we often do the same as David does by not coming clean? Don't we often try to cover up our sin, conceal our sins or justify our sins? Francis Schaeffer, that great Christian philosopher said, I have come to the conclusion that none of us in our generation feels as guilty about sin as we should or as our forefathers did Our culture is changing, right? Today we have excuses about sin It's just a small sin, right? Little lie Not a, it's not a sin like David's adultery or murder. I'm not a murder like David or, and then we say everybody is doing it anyway

Premarital sex, living together, everybody's doing it anyway And then we have the husband who wants to leave the wife Well, I deserve to be happy, right? We have that And then we have people that will blaspheme God and they'll say, God's going to forgive me anyway So why not do it? You know, James 4.16 says that we are to confess our sins to one another We are to pray for one another that we may be healed So in James 4, there are people that are sick because they're, they're, they're in sin and they're not confessing that sin

First Peter 3.7, if a husband is abusive to a wife, it says that God will not hear his prayers And there are a lot of husbands in this world whose God is not answering their prayers because they are not treating their wife the way God wants them We're going to get to Hebrews 12, I don't know when, maybe next year, uh, in, on Sunday And that has a whole section about the discipline. I think discipline is used five or six times If, and it's pretty simple If you are a child of God, you will face discipline if you sin Okay Uh, Proverbs 3.11 and 12

Interesting is a Psalm that David's son would write Solomon says, my son do not despise the Lord's discipline or be wary of his reproof for the Lord reproves him whom he loves as a father in a son whom he likes If you are a Christian today, but you sin or you won't confess that sin, or you try to hide that sin, or you try to conceal that sin that David did, there will be discipline from the Lord Your sin might be pleasurable for a moment, for a short time, but there are consequences If you conceal your sin, there will be suffering Let's move on to verse five And this is the heart of the gospel

This is one of the most beautiful verses in the Bible David did something here that often we are reluctant to do And that is to confess our sins publicly He's writing this publicly, publishing it as a hymn to the sons of Korah or Asap, that this will be sung in the temple So generations to come will know about David's sin, but they'll also know the blessings of forgiveness So he's, he's instructing his congregation here He says four things here Remember though, before he says, number one, he acknowledged his sin He says, I acknowledge my sin to you No excuses Finally, no concealment

He admitted he was guilty And then number two, he says he, he uncovered his iniquity and I, and I did not cover up my iniquity You remember the story, what happened? Nathan comes to David This is right before the baby is going to be born David has been suffering for nine months or maybe more And you remember the beautiful story Imagine being the guy that has to go to King David and say, uh, uh, no, you can't do this God sent me, you know, David could have their head taken off And that's why I don't think anybody was willing to challenge David, but God sends Nathan and Nathan is a very wise man

And he comes up, I think through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit with probably the greatest parable in the Bible Do you remember the parable? There were two men One was rich One was poor The rich man had a lot of sheep and flocks The poor man had one, you lamb, one baby lamb and the baby lamb lived in the house The kids played with it They loved that lamb So one day a traveler comes to the rich man's house and unbelievably the rich man, instead of taking one of his hundreds or thousands of sheep goes and takes the poor man's lamb, kills it to feed the traveler

So imagine David listening to this and imagine Nathan trembling, trying to tell King David, King David almost goes ballistic, right? His, it says his anger was greatly kindled and he says he deserves to die You remember that? And then what does Nathan do? You are the man And I think right then David just felt, bam, no more concealment, no more lying, no more covering up It's out God knows So, so it says, then David says, number three, he, I will confess my transgressions to the Lord And David did David said to Nathan, I have sinned against the Lord

And Nathan would tell, Nathan would give a long speech, um, and telling him that, you know, your house is, is messed up But he, he would tell him that the Lord has put away your sin And so number, so you notice the three, I, I, I, you know, it says, what does it say? It says, I acknowledge my sin to you. I did not cover up my iniquity. I will confess my transgressions to the Lord Three I, I, I's And then finally he says, you, talking about God, you forgave the iniquity of my sin God forgave him immediately and completely That doesn't mean that there aren't consequences

You know, the baby would die You know that David's life was never the same He wasn't a good father, but he was cleansed from his sins Notice here in this verse five, that the same three words for, that we saw in verses one and two, sin, iniquity and transgressions are used David confessed his sins and all his sins were forgiven The slate was white clean And like I mentioned before, some people have a problem with forgiveness, like the Queen Victoria, obviously Some people keep confessing their sins over and over They, they don't have the assurance of God's forgiveness

They need to memorize Psalm 31 verse five You need to memorize that Psalm 31, five If there's some sin in your life, maybe, you know, you have Jesus Christ in your heart today, but you're dealing with some past sin Uh, Psalm 31 five says that God has forgiven that sin If you will go to him and confess it Uh, remember the story of the prodigal son in Luke 15 to kind of mentioned it before. I think Lance calls it the, the parable of the loving father Remember the son goes to the father and he gives the speech Father, I don't deserve to be called your son

The son cannot even finish the speech before the father saying, bring the ring, bring the robe, kill the fatted calf That just shows you the heart of God, the love of God, the compassion of God yearning to forgive before the prodigal son can even finish his speech that says, father, I'm not worthy to be your son This is David David had blessedness because he's forgiven Paul Washer has said the mark of a true believer is not sinless perfection, but a new repugnance of sin

That means hatred of sin, a greater sensitivity to sin, a more veminous zeal to fight against sin, a humble contrition, a humble contrition because of sin and a willingness to confess sin So we have looked at David's cleansing from sin, David's concealment of sin, and David's confession of sin Now let's look at number four, David's counsel about sin You notice verse six begins with therefore So when you see a therefore in the Bible, you have to ask what is that therefore therefore, well, it's verses one to five

So now he says therefore, and here is where in Psalms 51 13, David says, I will teach transgressors your way Here's the teaching in verses six to 11 And I have one point there David promised to teach us what he learned from this sinful fare with Bathsheba He is begging sinners to confess their sins and return to follow the Lord David learned the hard way from nine months to a year He learned the hard way He does not want the Jews he's talking to, or he does not want us to learn the hard way

So David's counsel is in verse six to 11. I used to work in the business world and we had a saying, the five P's of the business world, and they were proper planning prevents poor performance Okay We had a, we had a banner Well, here you have the six P's of David's counsel Now they don't really go together, but number one, verse six prayer He says, therefore, let everyone who is godly offer prayer to you at a time when you may be found David wants everyone to experience the joy he's found as a result of his confession He says, it's a day of opportunity, a day when God may be found

Uh, first John one nine. I hope you all have that verse memorized, right? You all have that verse memorized What does it say? If we can, if it's emphasis on if, if we confess our sins, he, God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness So that verse there, and in Jude one 20 says, but you beloved building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy spirit, David wants them to pray, especially about the forgiveness of sins, not to hide sin, not to conceal sin, but to confess our sins

He says the next sentence, surely in a rush of great waters, they shall not reach him Last week we talked about Psalm 29 There was a reference to Noah's great flood here You have a another reference to the great flood of Noah here, and it deals with judgment Um, one translator, one commentator said that David is exhorting sinners to call on Yahweh in a time of finding in a time of acceptance One who finds forgiveness will have nothing to fear When the flood of divine judgment is poured out in that day, the forgiven will find Yahweh to be a rock of refuge, but God's grace will not last forever

The day of judgment is coming on that day It will be too late to repent and find forgiveness So that's what the rush of great waters means There's going to be a, a, a great judgment, not a flood like Noah's flood In fact, it will be fire when the world is destroyed So prayer, we need to keep close accounts with God We need to talk to God throughout the day Let me give you an illustration Um, I'm almost ashamed to tell this one, but I will. I have a camera in my car now It's a dash cam Um, and so we all, we all have these in Thailand, Thailand

If you get an accident, you have to have a dash cam to prove your case You don't really hear, but there's, there's, um, fraud here And I was in an accident recently on, in my Nissan So I put a dash cam in my good car So one Sunday I'm coming to church It's a Sunday morning. I put my tie on, put my suit on. I get in the car and I turn on Chris Tolman and he's singing Christ alone And I'm driving up via Verde going to church to worship God like you would all come And as I'm coming up via Verde, there's a bike lane and there are four bicyclists, but they're not, they're not one, two, three, four

They're one, two, three, four And it's a 50 mile an hour road And I was forced out of my lane, crossed the double solid lane And luckily I was able to get over a car came over. I wasn't too happy And I, I said something I shouldn't have said And so I got to church and while I'm in the parking lot, I replayed the cam And so imagine hearing in Christ alone music and then hearing me use, I didn't cuss, but I didn't say something, but I'm thinking I can't even get to church without sinning The dash cam exposed my sin because I forgotten I had said something

Well, we all have a dash cam in us, don't we? If you have Jesus Christ in your heart, that dash cam is called the Holy Spirit And one reason you know you're born again and know you're saved is because when you sin, the Holy Spirit will convict you of that sin If you say something to your wife or you get mad at your wife, I know I need to say, I'm sorry, honey, I had a bad day. I lost my temper Please forgive me You have a dash cam in you called the Holy Spirit and we need to pray for forgiveness Number two, verse seven protection

This is the beautiful verse that, uh, I think, man, I used to listen to Amy Grant like 40 years ago Uh, but she, she wrote a song called you are my hiding place Do you remember that song? I think Selah and different groups have taken that song now, but this is where they got that wonderful hymn Uh, you are my hiding place But notice he says, uh, you are a hiding place You preserve me from trouble You surround me with shouts of deliverance Uh, notice that in verses three and four, David was hiding from God Now in verse seven, David is hiding in God He is eternally secure with God He knows this

He knows what he did was horrible and he not ashamed to try to teach us about it, but he knows his sins are forgiven He knows he will see God someday in heaven And this beautiful verse, as I said, is where we got that song Uh, Psalms 27, uh, verse four, we often quote, when we come to church, it says, one thing I've asked of the Lord, this is what I seek that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire his temple And then it says in verse five, for he will hide me in the shelter in the day of trouble

He will conceal me under the cover of his tent He will lift me high upon the rock David is telling us that there's protection in God, but you won't have that protection if you're living in sin, if you won't confess that sin, if you try to conceal or hide that sin But when you confess it, you have protection from God Number three, verse eight, prudence, wisdom, or intelligence He says, I will instruct you Now, most commentators believe this is as if God is speaking here, not David. I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go. I will counsel you with my eye upon you

So this verse is written as if God is speaking directly to the forgiven individuals, promising to instruct them, promising to teach them, promising to counsel him because he keeps his eye on you You know, we're in the book of Psalms, but I also like to read one proverb a day And so it's pretty easy to read one proverb a day because most months have 31 days, right? At least eight of them But in the book of Proverbs, we have four kinds of people, okay? Four kinds of men We have the simple, simple, and the old translations used to use the word naive Naive means empty head, literally empty head

So you have the man who's simple And then you have the word fools And that word's used, I think, 68 times in Proverbs. I think simple is used 15 And then you have after fools, you have the word scoffer That uses at least 13 times And then, of course, you have the goal of what mothers and fathers are to teach their children what wisdom or wise And the word wise is used 59 times in Proverbs and wisdom 45 So do you get what the Proverbs is teaching? You have a naive, empty head, a baby The baby is empty Their head is empty of knowledge

As they start to grow up, it is the parent's responsibility to fill that head with wisdom, with knowledge, with godly knowledge Not necessarily the youth pastor, not necessarily the Sunday school teacher, certainly not the school district, but the parents But if the parents do not fill that empty head, that simple head with knowledge, there's a great chance that child, that simple child, will become a fool Now there's hope for fools, right? But if that fool doesn't turn, they will become a scoffer And a scoffer probably will never come to the Lord So Proverbs is a book of wisdom

And God is saying, I will instruct you. I will teach you. I will give you counsel You're here tonight on a Wednesday This is the core of the church here, where maybe a lot of people can't come, or maybe they're home watching sports or something But you want to learn So you come to church to learn But you also got to be reading, not just hearing what the pastor says We need to be reading our Bible daily That's why I challenge you to read one psalm a day But we also need to be studying it, okay? Take those beatitudes home and study them

But we also need to memorize scripture. I'm really shocked at, I guess I'm old now, but I'm shocked at the current generation at the lack of scripture memorization There's so many kids these days, so many people these days that don't hardly know a verse There are kids today that don't even know John 3.16 They don't know the Romans Road Could you have four verses to share? Could you know Romans 3.23, Romans 6.23, Romans 5.8, Romans 10.9 and 10? Could you memorize four verses to tell somebody about Jesus you meet? You know, when somebody comes into your life, but they don't even know four verses

So we need to take this instruction We need to be taught We need to take this counsel and memorize scripture And then later, and we'll have a session in one of the psalms about meditation, okay? Five principles Hearing the Word of God, reading the Word of God, studying the Word of God, memorizing the Word of God, and meditating upon the Word of God Because what happens when you don't grow, Hebrews 5, we study this on Sunday, is you're like a baby drinking milk when you should be eating the meat of the Word of God We got to move on Number four, piety

Now this word here, this interesting verse, piety means a devoutness, a natural obligation to our master Who's our master? The Lord Himself, right? So here's a verse that basically says, do not be a donkey Now it doesn't say donkey there, but to get a mule, you have to have a horse and a donkey, right? So it says, do not be like the horse or the mule without understanding, which must be curbed with a bit or brittle or they will not stay to you So what's David saying here? He's saying, don't be like an animal David was an animal when he was lusting after Bathsheba He lost all control

He had a bunch of wives, beautiful wives Wasn't enough He lusted after Bathsheba He acted like a filthy animal But if we ignore the instruction, if we ignore the teaching, if we ignore the counsel of God, we can be like animals that have no understanding Horses by nature want to run away, right? Mules have a nature that is hard to get them to move, right? God doesn't want to handle you and me like a dumb animal He wants our commitment He wants our submission He wants us to be a servant-like attitude that obeys Him

You remember in Luke, Luke 11, this woman shouted out to Jesus, blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts at which you nursed And Jesus, He didn't say no, but He said, blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it Okay Don't be like a dumb animal David's saying, don't be like a donkey God's word has authority Today, a lot of people are, they say, Oh, God's word has authority, but they stand above God's word They judge God's word They pick the parts of God's word that they want This is the word of God And it judges me It stands above me. I will obey it. I will follow it

And if you are in sin, if you won't confess that sin, you will face the discipline of the Lord Number five, peace, peace with God He says, the steadfast love surrounds the one who trusts in the Lord When David refused to confess his sin, he did not feel the love of God He felt the heavy hand of God upon his life There was no peace during those nine to 12 months when he had that unconfessed sin But once he confessed that sin, he had peace with God He felt the love of God and he could go back into the kingdom And now he could teach sinners their way and not to do what he did

He also says though, that many of the sorrows to the wicked, this word means calamities If you don't confess that sin, if you don't get right with God, if you want to conceal or hide your sin, you will face calamities You will face the discipline of God But when you confess it, you get the mercy of God This, this word steadfast love is used 123 times in the Psalms, including 26 times in the 26 verses of Psalms 136 And let's look at the last number six, pleased

Notice how the Psalms, all the Psalms that we've looked at so far, they all end with just a wonderful verse, don't they? He says, be glad in the Lord and rejoice so righteous and shout for joy, all you upright in heart So he ends with three wonderful words, glad, rejoice, and joy Why? Because his sins have been forgiven This is a murderer This is an adulterer But even the gross sins, God has forgiven him God has wiped the slate clean Our God is a forgiving God He's a compassionate God He's a loving God

You know, more I think of it, forgiveness of sins is the greatest gift that God could give us, isn't it? I don't deserve it We don't deserve it, but he gives it to us David has a clean heart and he knows joy again He didn't have joy for those nine months, but now he has joy and now he's rejoicing Now he's shouting out Now maybe he's singing this song in the temple when they put this song to music as they would with the 150 psalms Once we were called sinners, but now we're called blessed if you have Jesus Christ in your heart tonight So don't leave tonight without seeing me or seeing Roger

If you have any questions about your security, about unconfessed sins and to next week, we're going to look at a different type of psalm, one that's not popular, often misdrewed and imprecatory psalm, Psalm 40 And we will answer the question I brought up when we studied the first psalm How do we pray for President Biden? How do we pray for Kamala Harris, Vice President? Can we pray the imprecatory prayers that the psalmist prayers? I'll answer that question next week.