7/28/19 - Psalm 32 - "Blessed are the Forgiven"

[0:00] Today we are going to be in Psalm 32. Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.

[0:17] 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.

[0:31] 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 I did not cover my iniquity.

[0:45] 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.

[1:02] Surely in the rust of great waters they shall not reach him. You are a hiding place for me. Preserve me from trouble. You surround me with souts of deliverance.

[1:16] I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go. I will counsel you with my eye upon you. Be not like the horse or a mule without understanding, which must be curved with bit and bridle, or it will not stay near you.

[1:35] Many are the sorrows of the wicked, but steadfast love surrounds the one who trusts in God. Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, O righteous.

[1:46] and shout for joy, all you upright in heart. Lord, this psalm, Psalm 32, deals with forgiveness.

[2:06] The forgiveness of sin, of our offenses to God. And there is so much of the gospel in this psalm. There is pardon in this psalm.

[2:18] There is the mercy of God in this psalm and His divine protection and in His divine guidance. And because we have such a merciful God, He has commanded us to live a certain way, to live differently, because we've been shown mercy.

[2:41] We are to confess our sin through prayer, to be governed by His grace, and finally, to rejoice in God with a pure love and joy for Him.

[3:00] This psalm was written by David. David was a great king of Israel, indeed, the greatest king of Israel. However, when David fell, he fell hard.

[3:15] He committed adultery with Bathsheba, who was the wife of Uriah. And Uriah was David's best friend, his most loyal general.

[3:31] Not only did David commit adultery, but David murdered. He murdered Uriah. And he continued to live in unrepentant wickedness for quite some time until the prophet Nathan came to him.

[3:48] And he pointed his finger at David and he said, Thou art the man. You, David, are the man guilty of grievous and great iniquity before God.

[4:01] And thus, David was convicted of his sin. And he cried out to God, O Lord, indeed I am guilty.

[4:15] And I come before You humble and laid low and begging and pleading for Your mercy to overcome the wicked man that I am.

[4:27] And God told him, You are forgiven. You see, David knew the depth of his depravity. He knew the vileness of his wickedness.

[4:40] He knew the sinfulness of his sin. Well, David for a time refused to acknowledge God. He did eventually come to Him for mercy. Likewise, the Christian can experience this also.

[4:58] That is, if he turns from his sin, if he comes to God and confesses his sin, he can be forgiven. If you believe that Jesus Christ died upon the cross for you, you can be forgiven.

[5:17] This is the gospel of Christ. This is His glory magnified on high. And this is for His glory. And it is in this psalm that the great magnitude of sin is met with an even greater measure of the mercy of God.

[5:42] David wrote this psalm in the aftermath of a battle. It wasn't a battle against any physical enemy. No, it was greater than that.

[5:53] It was a battle against His own wickedness. His own vileness. This was an enemy that didn't just have the power to kill the body, but also to kill the soul.

[6:10] And he fought against sin. He fought against his old nature and everything that was yearning in him to perform the desires of his heart.

[6:22] And he came before God. And God forgave him. God forgave David so that he would be an instrument of God and an example of His overwhelming mercy toward wicked man.

[6:40] Thus, in this psalm, God is not only merciful, but He is most merciful, most gracious, most exalted. And in this psalm, our glorious gospel is most magnified.

[6:57] God's gospel grace is scattered throughout this psalm. The journey of a man is from the depths of hell to the heights of heaven.

[7:11] And that is God's gospel grace in this psalm. It is His mighty grace that while we are weak, He is strong and yet stronger. His heart is soft and ready to restore.

[7:26] While ours is too often hard and stubborn against Him. Verses 1 and 2. Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.

[7:41] Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity. This word, blessed, it doesn't just mean that David had joy or happiness because he was forgiven.

[7:58] But it speaks to the state that David was restored to when he was forgiven. To be blessed is to be holy before God. To be forgiven of iniquity.

[8:13] You see, David's joy, it just doesn't come from power, riches, and fame, or popularity. It comes from God's working in his life to make him holy, to endow him with lavish helpings of divine favor and protection.

[8:33] His pleasure is no more found in the arms of Bathsheba, but it is found and completed and made whole in the arms of God. I'm going to jump around a little bit in the text, but we're going to move on to verse 7 now.

[8:49] We'll go back to verses 2-6 at a later time. David says, you are a hiding place for me.

[9:00] You preserve me from trouble. You surround me with sacks of deliverance. In this, we have the divine protection of God.

[9:11] Though David was king over Israel, he was weak. He was quick to run away from God. He was slow to return. Yet he found God to be a hiding place for him.

[9:24] And when David finally surrendered, when he finally laid down his arms against God, he found God to be a protector for him. You see, the God, the King of Heaven, who had been David's enemy, became his fortress and his stronghold against the wiles of the devil and the schemes of hell.

[9:46] God does not just leave his forgiven children. He doesn't abandon them in the dark forest of this world. He doesn't leave them to fend for themselves.

[9:58] He provides a staff to fend off danger. A lantern to light your way and a clear path for you to walk on. You see, those who are forgiven are preserved from trouble.

[10:11] It doesn't mean that you'll never have trouble in your Christian life. Indeed, you'll have very much trouble. But it means that this evil, this wickedness that wars against you will not overcome you.

[10:25] You see, even if all the powers of hell were to come before you and try to overcome you, because you have been forgiven by God, you will not be overcome. You will not be left in despair.

[10:38] And David says in verse 7, you surround me with shouts of deliverance. You see, God continually reminds the forgiven that they have indeed been forgiven. He will not allow them to have to continually listen to the devil who keeps telling them, no, you're guilty, you're guilty, your sin is too great, you can never be forgiven.

[11:03] No. God does not allow that. He tells them and He tells them repeatedly. You have been bought with a price. You see, if you are a Christian, you were once a slave to the devil and a servant of hell.

[11:23] But Christ, when He died, He purchased you with His blood. And now you are free to serve Him. You have been delivered from the stigma of being an enemy of God.

[11:36] Now you can claim God as your Father, Christ as your Redeemer, and the Holy Spirit as your Comforter. In verse 8, we also see God's Gospel grace and His divine guidance.

[11:55] In verse 8, it says, I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go. I will counsel you with my eye upon you. I will instruct you and teach you in the way that you should go.

[12:08] God desires and yearns to be our teacher. He wants us to walk in His ways. So He does not leave us to try to figure this life out on our own.

[12:23] How we are supposed to please Him and obey Him and love Him. You see, He has given us His Word so that we may be instructed and He has given us His Holy Spirit so that we may walk in His way.

[12:37] Not only is God a teacher, but He desires to teach intimately. He says, I will counsel you with my eye upon you. He looks over your life every step of the way.

[12:52] There is no point where He abandons you. He is always with you. The second part of this is man's response to God's gospel grace.

[13:05] See, the Christian is obligated to respond to God in a particular way if He has been forgiven. And He does that with joy and gratitude.

[13:17] But how does He know that He has been forgiven? Scripture tells us that He will bear the authentic marks, the fruit of the Spirit. He will have love for God.

[13:28] He will have repentance from sin, genuine humility, devotion to God's glory, continual prayer, separation from the world, spiritual growth, obedient living, hunger for God.

[13:41] He will have a transformed life. He will live differently. When you understand the gospel of Jesus Christ, when you understand what He did, what it cost God to purchase salvation for us, you will live differently.

[14:04] He is the motivation. He is the catalyst for our living differently. We don't live differently out of fear of hell necessarily.

[14:18] We don't live differently just to be forgiven so that we don't have to be punished. That is idolatry to do that.

[14:31] No, we live for Christ. We live for His glory. We see that man's response to gospel grace is through confession of sin through prayer.

[14:45] In verses 3-6, for when I was silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night Your hand was heavy upon me.

[14:57] My strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. I acknowledged my sin to You and I did not cover my iniquity. I said I will confess my transgression to God.

[15:09] 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 will not reach Him.

[15:21] Therefore, let everyone who is godly offer prayer to You at a time when He may be found. You need to come to God and come to Him quickly.

[15:34] You need to deal with sin in your life. Not tomorrow, but today. Now. You see, the Christian cannot live peaceably with sin.

[15:45] A man at peace with sin is an enemy to God and a man at peace with God is an enemy to sin. So wage war on sin.

[15:58] Cut down sin by the sword of the Spirit and the power of prayer in the name of Christ. Be so disgusted, so revolted, so reviled by sin that you can no longer stomach it.

[16:12] You can no longer allow it to reign in your soul. Be consumed with a holy fervor to wage war against it in fervent and desperate prayer.

[16:28] In fervent and desperate prayer. Because that is the only kind of prayer that is ever going to drive back the devil.

[16:41] That is the only kind of prayer that is ever going to draw you near to God. Oftentimes, we just come before God and deliver up a five minute prayer that is quite weak and doesn't involve tears.

[17:04] Holy grief stricken tears over sin. We need to come before Him and we need to resolve with ourselves that we are going to stay down on our knees before Him no matter how long it takes until we have conquered sin.

[17:27] Where can anyone get the power to take up the sword and purge this hell from your life? how can anyone do that? Well, it comes from God's drawing of the sinner to Himself through a profound and overwhelming need for Him.

[17:48] A need that He must be had no matter what the cost. That you must have Him and have more of Him continually poured out upon your life. You need Him.

[18:01] I need Him. So again, make war on us and so fervently that the least hint of it is gone.

[18:15] David said in verse 3, David speaks of his bones wasting away through his groaning all day long.

[18:41] It is as if his bones were rotting away from within him. It was that painful, that unbearable, that discomforting to him.

[18:53] And his suffering was such that all he could do was make an audible utterances of speech. He couldn't even speak. His suffering, as terrible as it was, however, was the suffering of a man after God's own heart.

[19:09] A man after God's forgiveness. A man who knew God and who was loved by God. So if you are a child of God, he will use chastisements just as a father disciplines his children so that they may recognize the error of their ways and come to him for mercy.

[19:35] His heavy hand day and night upon his rebellious children and his drawing away of a man's strength so that he might fully realize the need and utter dependence he has for God.

[19:51] God will do that. God will do that for his child. And therefore, the godly man will say to David, I will confess my transgressions to the Lord.

[20:04] I will confess to God my wickedness and I will repent because you forgave the iniquity of my sin and continue to forgive the iniquity of my sin.

[20:15] Therefore, I admonish you and I urge you that if you are godly, if you belong to him, if you feel conviction of sin, pray for forgiveness and mercy.

[20:28] If you pray to God for humility with true brokenness and sorrow in your heart for sin, if you turn away from all your wickedness, you will find mercy.

[20:40] Do not wait. Do not wait until the dam which is holding back his judgment breaks. Don't wait until that point.

[20:51] Don't wait until you're condemned for sins unforgiven because at that time, mercy will be cut off forever. drink of the sweet water of Christ and be washed in his mercy.

[21:10] Have his grace pour over you like a flood. Fly to him. Come quickly to him. Come with urgency to him. Come to him while there is still time.

[21:23] He will not withhold his grace from you. He will have mercy upon you. Verses 9 and 10.

[21:36] Be not like a horse or a mule without understanding which must be curved with a bit and bridle or it will not stay near you. In response to God's grace and his mercy, we are to be governed by him, by his grace.

[21:58] So do not be like a horse or a mule. Do not be like a wild untamed animal that needs to have a bit and bridle so that it can be restrained and so that it will go the path that it is told to go.

[22:20] And therefore, do not let your sin go unrestrained unless God deal harshly with you. Don't let it get to that point. You see, his mercy is sweet and his wrath is bitter.

[22:34] Allow him to be sweet to you. It is his desire that he be good and merciful to you. Verse 10 says that many are the sorrows of the wicked, but steadfast love surrounds the one who trusts in God.

[22:58] There is no man more miserable than he who walks in wickedness and his companions are few. His life through his wickedness brings only misery and turmoil and disappointment and chaos.

[23:18] And discord is his only achievement and his great reward on this road is his destruction. He walks in ignorance and stupidity.

[23:31] A road which he has built brick by brick with each unconfessed and unrepented sin. Now in contrast, the one who trusts in the Lord walks on a narrow path with the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

[23:52] He lives his life with them in their power and he is strengthened by each of them and it is through them that he desires and he desires continually to do the will of his Father in the example of the Son and in the power of the Holy Spirit.

[24:14] Verse 11 Be glad in the Lord and rejoice our righteousness and shout for joy all you upright in heart.

[24:27] A man is to respond to the grace of God finally by rejoicing in God. David wrote Psalm 32 as an Israelite.

[24:43] He was anticipating the arrival of Christ and he exhorts all believers to be glad in the Lord and to rejoice and if David can write such words of praise though he had never encountered Christ how much more should the Christian rejoice because he has encountered Christ.

[25:15] How much more should Christians praise the Most High for Christ? Christians ought to rejoice with greater joy. Their hearts ought to beat with greater purpose and their voices ought to be raised to heaven louder and more joyfully because Christ has come.

[25:38] Christ has lived perfectly. He has died sacrificially on your behalf and he is risen in glory.

[25:51] He reigns with the Father and through him and him alone is forgiveness and salvation. Words are not enough to express the gratitude we must have for Christ.

[26:05] David goes beyond just speaking words. We are to shout with joy to God to rejoice in the heart, to rejoice in the mind, to rejoice with the spirit.

[26:24] We are to be exuberant in our praise of him that all we can do is shout for joy. what reason is there for such happiness?

[26:36] What reason do we have for this amazing delight? The only reason is Christ and him crucified. Because of him, we as Christians, we are forgiven.

[26:51] Christ died upon the tree. His blood was poured out, his wrath that we justly deserved is gone. our sins are as far from us as the east is from the west and he will no longer remember them if we come to him and tell him, oh Lord, I am the cause of great offense toward you and I desire to be forgiven.

[27:21] And if we come to him with that attitude, if we confess and repent, though all hell with all its might, prevent our advancement, we will press into the kingdom, we will gain the crown, we will win the battle, and we will step into eternity.

[27:42] We will be gathered up in the loving arms of him who was crucified so that we may have peace with God. And we will spend eternity in his presence praising his name forevermore.

[27:57] And we will proclaim to him forever that we have been forgiven. We have been forgiven. And even though we didn't deserve it, even though we deserve to be plunged down to the deepest depths of hell, we have been forgiven.

[28:13] Because God in his love and for his glory has rescued us. May his name be evermore exalted for his abounding grace to you and to us.

[28:29] And therefore I plead with you again, if you are a Christian and living in unrepentant and unconfessed sin, come to him.

[28:42] Come to him. You can even pray right now asking him to forgive you. And after you have asked him for forgiveness, repent of your sin.

[28:57] Determine never to go back to your sin ever again. Because here's the danger in going back. When you go back, it takes a stronger grip on your life.

[29:10] And your heart is more hardened toward God. So don't go back. Repent. Be done with it. If you do that. If God graces you with that gift.

[29:25] Indeed, that miracle which is eternal life. Which is forgiveness. And he will enter the kingdom of heaven.

[29:38] And he will have victory. Constant victory. Continual victory in your Christian life. You will grow in your love toward God.

[29:49] You will desire him more deeply, more richly, than you ever have before. And if you are still doubting that you can be forgiven, if you do not have assurance that God can forgive the vast wickedness that you have wrought, then I plead with you, just come to him.

[30:13] Come to him. You need to understand that if you feel that you cannot be forgiven, you are wrong. you are gravely wrong.

[30:25] God will forgive any sin if you just come to him. So I beg of you and I plead with you, come to him.

[30:40] You don't have to die in your sin and in your wickedness if you would come to him for forgiveness, for mercy, for repentance.

[30:56] Just come to him. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we come to you as men and women in desperate need of you.

[31:20] In desperate need of your mercy and of your grace and of your gospel. We need to know more of you and more of Christ so that we may love you more and come ever more quickly to you when we have wronged you even in the most grievous ways.

[31:53] Oh Lord, continually remind us that we can always be forgiven no matter what we have done.

[32:05] If we come to you on our knees in humility, bowing our head low and submissive to you that you will be good to us.

[32:15] Oh Lord, what a great God we serve. who else could so such mercy such grace to us who are sinners undeserving.

[32:38] It is only through you oh Lord. It is only through the blood of your Son. It is only through the gospel of our precious Lord that we can come before you and be forgiven.

[33:04] So, oh Lord, we also come to you in thanksgiving thanking you continually. Thanking you always that you forgive and forgive even the greatest and most wretched and wicked sinner.

[33:23] You, oh Lord, may your name be magnified on high. May you always be remembered as the God who forgives and who loves.

[33:42] We are eternally grateful to you. And let us express that gratitude in our lives through living holy, living righteous, living as you would have us live, doing your will.

[34:02] And oh Lord, finally just give us the power through the Spirit spirit, that we may come to you for forgiveness, that we may freely confess our sin to you, that we may repent and believe in the gospel.

[34:25] In your heavenly name, through the blood of your Son, and through that third person of the Trinity, your Holy Spirit, who strengthens us to live in relationship with you.

[34:52] We pray. Amen.