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The Joys of Sins Forgiven

This Psalm follows logically after Psalm 51 which we looked at recently. There David had been confronted by his sin and realized his guilt. He then turned to the Lord confessing his sin and earnestly seeking His mercy, he longs to feel clean again.

Now here in Ps.32 David has moved on. He has found the pardon and forgiveness he had been looking for and is basking in the joy of it all. How delightful is his situation now that he knows his sins have indeed been forgiven!

And so Psalm 32 is something of a teaching Psalm. He has been through deep waters and come safely through it all by God's grace. He has a new outlook in his life and wants others to share this with him. In order to facilitate this he casts a backward glance over how he had lived his life. He is open and honest about how he had behaved then but oh how much better things are now.

David here describes his own personal experience. He tells us just how he moved from the sadness trying to hide un-confessed sin to the exuberant joy in which he now stands. While he speaks of his own experience he believes that his example is relevant to others. In short he generalizes from the particular!

The NT refers to this psalm. In particular Paul in his letter to the Rom.4:7-8 quotes the first two verses as he develops the gospel teaching of justification by faith.

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.

Paul affirms that righteousness, that is being in a right standing with God, does not depend upon a man's efforts or a man's works but upon God's generous gift to be received by faith.

The Psalm was obviously important in the thinking of the apostle – let it be so for us too!

As we're beginning to discover the structural patterns of the Psalms are interesting.

A.      Blessings

vv.1-2   David begins the psalm with a declaration of the blessings of knowing that one's sins are forgiven.

vv.10b-11   He ends the psalm with further blessings and an exhortation to respond in appropriate ways – joyful celebration!

B.       Silence

vv.3-4    David speaks first of how he stubbornly kept silent and wouldn't come clean to God.

vv.8-10a   How different things are now! His silence gives way to the desire to speak to encourage others not to follow his earlier example.

C.       Hide

v.5   David stops his attempts to cover up and to hide his sin.

v.7   Now instead of trying to hide from God David finds the LORD to be a wonderful hiding place of refuge and security for himself.

D.      The central thrust of the psalm

v.6   Everything hinges here at this point of the psalm (note the Therefore!) as David urges the godly to call upon the LORD.

The psalmist has also constructed his psalm in a way to underline the truth of what he wants to say by the very way words are used through the psalm!

There are three different words used to describe sin used in the psalm – transgression, sin and iniquity. They appear in vv.1+2 and then again in v.5 but after that point they disappear entirely as if to underscore the fact that sins confessed are completely forgiven and forgotten by the LORD!

Now to look more closely at the psalm and to do that we'll ask a number of questions of it as we go along.

David is a sinner and he knows what it is like to have sin on his conscience and to feel sullied by it and to experience a sense of being cut-off from God. He has come to know God and to be separated from him is a heavy burden to bear so David focuses straight away on the blessing of having his sin dealt with.

He expresses it in a variety of ways in v.1-2:

·       Transgression forgiven

·       Sin covered

·       Iniquity not counted against him

·       Restored – no deceit now found in his spirit.

He not saying that he was innocent and that God could have nothing to accuse him of but rather, acknowledging it all, he rejoices in the fact that all these problems have been taken away. He hasn't done it for himself; this is something God has done for him! And this is the very heart of the gospel!! David might not understand just how it was possible for a righteous God to pardon sinners like him but he knew and enjoyed the reality of the blessing!! Of course as we turn to the pages of the NT we find how God did it and it all centres on the person and work of Jesus Christ!

This is how Paul describes it in Rom.3:23-26:

"for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus."

But that is not all – the blessings that David has recount are more numerous!

v.7  Delivered from his sin David now finds in God a place of safety and security – God actively intervening to secure his safety and this not in a grudging, resigned sort of way. Not a bit of it! Look at how David's describes the way in which the LORD intervenes:

"you surround me with shouts of deliverance"!

And not only is David surrounded with joyful shouts but with the LORD's steadfast, never-failing love v.10b. No wonder that he exhorts others to be glad and to rejoice.

"If God is for us (like this) who can be against us?" Rom.8:31.

None of these blessings were part of David's personal experience as long as he persisted in refusing to acknowledge his sin.

And although David was a godly man this period in his life went on for a long time and still he wouldn't do anything about it! How perverse even the heart of a believer can be.

You see David had sinned over the situation of Bathsheba. They had slept together and she conceived a child. David tried to hush up the affair. Oh, it didn't take much – just deception and scheming. When that didn't word David upped the stakes – treachery was now the name of the game as he sent out deliberately dangerous military orders – orders which led to the death of several of David's men all in an attempt to get rid of Uriah the innocent and upright husband of Bathsheba. And then David married Bathsheba – it was a bit hasty given the circumstances – but David was still trying to cover his tracks – one sin had led to another and he had no thought of going to God with confession and repentance. Not, that was until Nathan spoke to him and drove convicting words deep into David's heart.

And what of you? Do you hesitate long before going to the LORD to confess your sin and to seek His forgiveness. Do you allow un-confessed sin to linger on drying up your spiritual life until you like David feel the effects physically as your bones waste away and your strength dries up?

How slow and how stupid we can be! The LORD is kind and compassionate and has pledged to forgive as we come confessing our sins to Him and yet we stay away.

Sometimes we refuse to admit that what we've done is sin – sometimes we just want it so much – sometimes we drift on and on and God's fellowship becomes less and less real to us so that we're less and less troubled by His absence.

Let us learn to practice what our fathers in the faith used to do – let us learn to keep short accounts with the LORD our God!

1.       Who is concerned?

The sinner is concerned – whether he is coming to God for the first time or whether he has known God for many years. Did you notice in v.6 that David specifically encourages the "godly" to pray in times of such difficulty?

2.       When and how?

As soon as we're aware of our sin – that is the time to come!

David adds in v.6 that we need to pray at a time when He can still be found. At the very least these means that we must rectify matters between us and God before we die as there is no possibility after death intervenes and seals our destiny.

He suggests too that we should settle the problem before we are overwhelmed by disastrous events. As we notice things getting worse surely that should push us to pray and not to put things off any further!

3.       To whom must we go?

We must go to God! Not to our friends, not to a pastor a priest or other religious professional, not to a psychiatrist, not to a social worker, counsellor or doctor. Each of us must go to God ourselves. The God we must go to is the LORD; the God who reveals Himself in the Bible and supremely in the person of our Lord Jesus Christ; the God who delights to respond joyously with displays of His steadfast covenant keeping love.

4.       What about behaviour, what's appropriate?

No excuses, no pleading of mitigating circumstances just straightforward avowal of our sin. Let's not try to be complicated or clever but simply allow ourselves to be instructed as the Spirit shows us that we have a problem and that God alone can solve it.

And let's come expectantly – why carry on in the way of the wicked, a way that is strewn with many sorrows, Let's be ready to respond with real gladness as we begin to appreciate something of the wonder of sins forgiven!

At first sight it is not evident how we can relate this Psalm to Christ – after all how can the sinless One talk of His having hidden sin and refused to confess it?

And yet there are lines of thought that we may well find helpful.

After all Jesus was the One who paid the penalty for our sin and thus it is His work that forms the basis of the blessedness that is spoken of so eloquently here.

Who better than He to speak of the blessedness of being right relationship with the Father? The state into which He introduces each repentant sinner.

The psalm speaks of forgiveness and the root of the word means that the burden of sin has been "born or lifted away" from the sinner. Yes, in truth it has and it has been placed on His shoulders! The burden crushed Him and drew from Him all His strength – in His sufferings in the garden, in His sufferings during His crucifixion, in His suffering of death itself – the ultimate weakness!!

There is similarity and there is contrast too.

The sinner stubbornly keeps silent refusing to acknowledge his guilt. The Saviour bearing all sin willingly (including that sinful silence of the resistant sinner) keeps silence too. He wasn't trying to cover up His sin (He had none) – knowing the cross to be the basis our salvation He didn't cry out to save Himself, He didn't cry out for justice or for angelic support. No in silence He accepted to be our Saviour taking our place and paying the debt that we could never afford to pay.

Surely His death is comparable to that "rush of great waters" mentioned in v.6 but He is succoured, strengthened and enabled to go through it all. Then shortly the "shouts of deliverance" ring out the third day. At first the shouts were muted but gradually grew in strength.

"Why do you seek the living among the dead?" said the angels to the women at the tomb Lk.24:5. "He is not here, but has risen." v.6

"(The women) came back saying that they had even seen a vision of angels, who said that he was alive." Said the disciples on the Emmaüs road Lk.24:23.

“The Lord has risen indeed, and has appeared to Simon!” said the eleven to those Emmaüs road disciples Lk24:34.

The Spirit's own clear testimony is declared by Paul to the church in Rome:

He "was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord," Rom.1:4.

My friends we have every possible incentive to follow David's example and advice – we have a glorious Lord Jesus who took our sins upon Himself and willingly suffered to pay in full the debt that stood against us. His resurrection is God's sign of approval on all that the Son accomplished. There is the reality of the blessedness of having sins forgiven and peace with God. May each of us know and rejoice in "so great a salvation"!

Amen.