SPEAKER_01: We continue our summer series through the Psalms.
SPEAKER_01: One of the darkest chapters in David's life is found in 2 Samuel chapters 11 and 12.
SPEAKER_01: He's a man described after a man after God's own heart, and yet in chapter 11 of 2 Samuel he falls into egregious sin.
SPEAKER_01: He lusts after Bathsheba, the wife of one of his own faithful soldiers.
SPEAKER_01: And then he commits adultery with her.
SPEAKER_01: And then when her pregnancy threatens to expose his sin, David attempts to cover it up through deception.
SPEAKER_01: And when that plan fails, he then arranges for her husband Uriah, again a loyal and honorable soldier and warrior for Israel, to be placed in the fiercest part of the battle so that he will be killed.
SPEAKER_01: David commits adultery, deception, and murder, all in an effort to protect his reputation.
SPEAKER_01: And for a time it appears that David had succeeded in doing this.
SPEAKER_01: His sin had remained hidden from everyone except God.
SPEAKER_01: And God sends Nathan the prophet to confront King David.
SPEAKER_01: Now, rather than accusing David immediately, Nathan tells him a story, and that story draws out David's sense of justice.
SPEAKER_01: And what David doesn't realize is that Nathan is just holding up a mirror for David to see himself.
SPEAKER_01: And we read in 2 Samuel 12, verses 1 through 7, and the Lord sent Nathan to David, and he came to him and said to him, There were two men in a certain city, the one rich and the other poor.
SPEAKER_01: The rich man had many flocks and herds, but the poor man had nothing but one little ew lamb, which he had bought.
SPEAKER_01: And he brought it up, and it grew up with him and with his children.
SPEAKER_01: It used to eat of his morsel and drink from his cup, and lie in his arms.
SPEAKER_01: And it was like a daughter to him.
SPEAKER_01: Now there came a traveller to the rich man, and he was unwilling to take one of his own flock of herd to prepare for the guests who had come to him.
SPEAKER_01: But he took the poor man's lamb and prepared it for the man who had come to him.
SPEAKER_01: Then David's anger was greatly kindled against the man, and he said to Nathan, As the Lord lives, the man who has done this deserves to die, and he shall restore the lamb fourfold because he did this thing and because he had no pity.
SPEAKER_01: And one of the most famous passages in the Old Testament, Nathan looks to David, and in 2 Samuel chapter 12, verse 7, Nathan says to David, You are the man.
SPEAKER_01: Now Psalm 32 and Psalm 51 are a pair.
SPEAKER_01: Actually, Psalm 32 is chronologically likely written after Psalm 51.
SPEAKER_01: It serves as a sequel to Psalm 51.
SPEAKER_01: In Psalm 51, we see a rawness of David dealing with his sin as he begs for forgiveness.
SPEAKER_01: We read in Psalm 151, verses 1 through 4, David writes, Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love, according to your mer abundant mercy, blot out my transgressions, wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, can cleanse me from my sin, for I know my transgressions, my sin is ever before me against you, and you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment.
SPEAKER_01: That's the tone of Psalm 51.
SPEAKER_01: We see this begging for forgiveness, this acknowledgement of sins, this confession of sins.
SPEAKER_01: And then we get to Psalm 32, and Psalm 32 reads differently.
SPEAKER_01: It comes from a position of David as he looks back upon his forgiveness that he has from God.
SPEAKER_01: He realizes the depth of the grace and the mercy of God, the breadth of God's forgiveness, and it causes him great joy and rejoicing.
SPEAKER_01: And add to that that Psalm 32 is a rare psalm of instruction, where David not only pours out his soul, but you will read in verse 8 that he has given instruction to his people, and he's shouting to all the congregation, this is how great and loving and merciful and gracious and kind our great God is.
SPEAKER_01: Psalm 32 is written on the other side of that crisis, and looking back upon it, David is a man who has walked through the misery of hidden guilt, and he's come out into blessed forgiveness.
SPEAKER_01: And he now turns back to us, the congregation, and says, Let me show you what I learned.
SPEAKER_01: Let me instruct you in the forgiveness of God.
SPEAKER_01: As one who has been forgiven much, let me tell you how great the forgiveness of God is.
SPEAKER_01: Now, there's also a helpful tool anytime we are reading scripture, and that's we're we let scripture interpret scripture.
SPEAKER_01: Uh, when scripture interprets itself, we pay careful attention.
SPEAKER_01: And what I mean by that is when we have something in the Old Testament that we're studying and it has been used in the New Testament, it should give us pause to see how the Holy Spirit interpreted itself from the Old Testament to the New.
SPEAKER_01: Uh, the best commentary on the Old Testament is the New Testament.
SPEAKER_01: So 800 years after David writes Psalm 32, the Apostle Paul quotes from verses 1 and 2 in Romans chapter 4.
SPEAKER_01: And what is Paul doing in Romans chapter 4?
SPEAKER_01: He is making an argument that righteousness comes by faith and faith alone, not by works.
SPEAKER_01: And Paul quotes the very verses 1 and 2, the opening verses of Psalm 32: blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven and whose sins are covered, and blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin.
SPEAKER_01: So for Paul, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, David's testimony of forgiveness that we're about to read in Psalm 32, is a window into the doctrine of justification by faith alone, centuries before Christ came in the flesh.
SPEAKER_01: So when we read Psalm 32 this morning, we're not just reading the diary of an ancient dead king.
SPEAKER_01: We are reading a very clear Old Testament statement of the gospel that we still preach today.
SPEAKER_01: Salvation is by grace alone, through by through grace alone, by faith alone, in Christ alone.
SPEAKER_01: So follow along with me as we read Psalm chapter 32.
SPEAKER_01: Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.
SPEAKER_01: Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity, and whose spirit there is no deceit.
SPEAKER_01: For when I kept silent my bones wasted away, through my groaning all day long, for the day and night your hand was heavy upon me.
SPEAKER_01: My strength was dried up as by the heat of summer.
SPEAKER_01: I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity.
SPEAKER_01: I said, I will confess my transgressions to the Lord, and you forgave the iniquity of my sin.
SPEAKER_01: Therefore let everyone who is godly offer prayer to you at a time when you may be found.
SPEAKER_01: Surely in the rush of great waters they shall not reach him.
SPEAKER_01: 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.
SPEAKER_01: I will counsel you with my eye upon you.
SPEAKER_01: Be not like a horse or a mule without understanding, which must be curved with bit and brittle bridle, or it will not stay near you.
SPEAKER_01: Many are the sorrows of the wicked, but the steadfast love surrounds the one who trusts in the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, O righteous, and shout for joy, all you upright in heart.
SPEAKER_01: Now, as we read the Psalms, there's three questions that we should apply to the Psalms as we read them.
SPEAKER_01: One, what did this mean for the psalmist, in this case David, in his own historical moment?
SPEAKER_01: Two, how does this point forward to the fulfillment of Christ?
SPEAKER_01: I've told you as we've studied the Psalms, every psalm we have to apply a Christological application to it.
SPEAKER_01: How does this point us to Christ?
SPEAKER_01: And number three, what does this psalm mean for us, the church, as we sing these words, pray these words, read these words, and study these words, being a church that exists after the resurrection of Christ.
SPEAKER_01: So we're going to walk through this psalm today.
SPEAKER_01: There's actually six movements of this psalm.
SPEAKER_01: We're going to look at five of them.
SPEAKER_01: The ultimate blessing, the ultimate misery, how sin is covered by being uncovered, how forgiveness gives us inheritance, and finally how our joy is found in the work of God alone.
SPEAKER_01: So starting in verses one and two, we see the ultimate blessing.
SPEAKER_01: Now, notice that David does not begin with a confession, he begins with a beatitude, a pronounced uh blessedness.
SPEAKER_01: And actually, this is the first Psalm opening with the word blessed since Psalm 1.
SPEAKER_01: We haven't seen this for 31 Psalms.
SPEAKER_01: This is very significant because before he gets to verses 3 and 4, he's telling us the ending.
SPEAKER_01: He's giving us hope right out of the gate.
SPEAKER_01: He wants us to know before I go over the transgressions, before I go over the sin, before I take you with the valley, we're going to start at the mountaintop.
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to tell you about the goodness of God.
SPEAKER_01: This is the shape of true gospel preaching in the Word.
SPEAKER_01: Blessed are those who are in Christ.
SPEAKER_01: That's the gospel.
SPEAKER_01: Blessed are those who are in Christ.
SPEAKER_01: And what is this blessing?
SPEAKER_01: Now, what we see in verses 1 and 2 is three different words used for what we would call sin.
SPEAKER_01: We see the word transgression, we see the word sin, and we see the word iniquity.
SPEAKER_01: And then there are three different words used for the removal of sin.
SPEAKER_01: We see forgiven, we see covered, and we see not counted.
SPEAKER_01: So David is using this trifecta to deliberately emphasize, to make sure that we understand that this is complete and total.
SPEAKER_01: Transgression is a rebellion, a willful crossing of a boundary that has been set.
SPEAKER_01: Sin is like missing the mark, falling short of the standard that God has set for us, and iniquity is a twistedness, a crookedness from the straight path of morality.
SPEAKER_01: Whatever category our guilt falls into, however we offend God, David wants us to hear all of it in totality can completely be forgiven.
SPEAKER_01: Now, this is not a human blessedness as the world defines it.
SPEAKER_01: You know, we have such a danger today with the prosperity gospel, but not just the prosperity gospel, also the therapeutic gospel.
SPEAKER_01: How can God make me feel better?
SPEAKER_01: How can church make me feel better?
SPEAKER_01: I want to feel better when I leave out of here.
SPEAKER_01: That's a therapeutic gospel.
SPEAKER_01: You're going to feel better, go get a massage, go to counseling.
SPEAKER_01: If you want to know the truth of the word of God, sometimes you're going to walk out this door with conviction.
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes you're going to walk out this door having faced the words of God head on, and he's come and stepped all over our toes.
SPEAKER_01: It's not a therapeutic gospel that we're looking for.
SPEAKER_01: We're looking for eternal blessing in Christ Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: And that's far deeper than a prosperity gospel or a therapeutic gospel offers us.
SPEAKER_01: The world says, Blessed is the one who is wealthy.
SPEAKER_01: Blessed is the one who's comfortable.
SPEAKER_01: Blessed is the one whose circumstances are pleasant.
SPEAKER_01: But David, a king who has a lot of possessions, who has access to every worldly blessing available, says the ultimate blessing is not found in circumstances or in wealth.
SPEAKER_01: It is found in a right standing before God.
SPEAKER_01: You can have every earthly comfort and be under the crushing weight of unforgiven guilt, and you are in fact miserable.
SPEAKER_01: And the opposite is true.
SPEAKER_01: You can have nothing that this world has to offer and be a pauper and be forgiven, and you are in fact blessed.
SPEAKER_01: This is the logic of the entire Bible.
SPEAKER_01: Blessed are those who are in Christ Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: But how can God simply not count iniquity against a sinner?
SPEAKER_01: Now the rest of the scripture answers that for us.
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't leave that question unanswered.
SPEAKER_01: God simply doesn't sweep sin under the rug.
SPEAKER_01: That would make him unjust.
SPEAKER_01: Iniquity is not counted against David, but it has to be counted somewhere.
SPEAKER_01: And the New Testament tells us where.
SPEAKER_01: It's given to Christ on the cross.
SPEAKER_01: 2 Corinthians 5.21.
SPEAKER_01: For our sake, he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
SPEAKER_01: So when Christ dies on the cross, David's sins are there.
SPEAKER_01: 800 years earlier, the sins that David committed are on Jesus Christ on the cross.
SPEAKER_01: The blessing that David describes here is only possible because centuries later, the innocent Son of God, prophesied as the Son of David, would stand in the place of the guilty, and the ledger of David and all of God's people for all time would be settled on the cross at Calvary, not simply erased.
SPEAKER_01: God is not going and just erasing sin.
SPEAKER_01: He's transferred it onto Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Paul's use of Psalm 32 in Romans 4 is not an accident.
SPEAKER_01: It's extremely intentional.
SPEAKER_01: He's telling us, Paul is telling us that David's blessedness and our blessedness are the same blessedness purchased by the same Christ, applied by the same faith, through the same grace, by the same steadfast love of the same great Heavenly Father.
SPEAKER_01: The God that has removed the sins from David is the same God that still removes the sins of his people in Christ Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: And in the last line it says, in whose spirit there is no deceit of verse 2.
SPEAKER_01: This blessedness belongs to the one who has stopped lying to himself and to God about his sin.
SPEAKER_01: Which brings us to what that looks like in verses three and four.
SPEAKER_01: We see the ultimate misery.
SPEAKER_01: Now, for when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long.
SPEAKER_01: For day and night your hand was heavy upon me, my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer.
SPEAKER_01: This is what the weight of sin looks like.
SPEAKER_01: David's taking us into the valley, what he had experienced.
SPEAKER_01: Before there was blessing, there was misery.
SPEAKER_01: And the misery had a very specific cause.
SPEAKER_01: It was silence.
SPEAKER_01: Now, this doesn't mean that David was going around not talking.
SPEAKER_01: I'm sure he was trying to keep himself busy, to keep himself distracted.
SPEAKER_01: Since when he was silent, he means in respect to confession of his sin.
SPEAKER_01: When I did not acknowledge my sin or confess my sin, when I said nothing about it.
SPEAKER_01: Now, this period in David's life is likely close to a year between his sin with Bathsheba and Nathan's confrontation.
SPEAKER_01: And he, in this year, he tries to carry the guilt of this sin, this weight of unconfessed sin privately, tried to manage it himself, tried to move on as though nothing had happened.
SPEAKER_01: And the psalm here, David describes the turmoil of that devastation on his life.
SPEAKER_01: He said, His bones wasted away.
SPEAKER_01: He groaned all day long.
SPEAKER_01: God's hand, not Satan's, God's hand was heavy upon him day and night.
SPEAKER_01: His strength was dried up like the field of a summer drought.
SPEAKER_01: This is what unconfessed sin can do to us as God's people that are made in the image of God.
SPEAKER_01: It can be corrosive to our souls.
SPEAKER_01: And it doesn't stay contained in the soul.
SPEAKER_01: It can make its way out into our bodies, into our emotions, into our mindsets, into our sleep, into our relationships, into every aspect of our lives.
SPEAKER_01: And this is not merely some natural like psychological consequence of guilt that David is experiencing as though he's just describing generic anxiety or depression.
SPEAKER_01: The text explicitly says, your hand, God's hand was heavy upon you.
SPEAKER_01: Make no mistake, David is describing the discipline of a loving father.
SPEAKER_01: He's describing the discipline of a covenant father to a covenant son.
SPEAKER_01: And we know this because Hebrews 12 tells us that the Lord disciplines those whom he loves.
SPEAKER_01: David's misery was not random, it was purposeful.
SPEAKER_01: God was not going to let his own child settle comfortably in unrepentant sin.
SPEAKER_01: The heaviness of that hand itself, although unpleasant, is an act of grace.
SPEAKER_01: Because it was driving David toward the very confession that would bring him relief.
SPEAKER_01: Now, this should reframe how we think about conviction of sin in our own lives.
SPEAKER_01: We too can experience the weight of the hand of the Heavenly Father refusing to let us rest in a lie because he loves us too much to stay silent.
SPEAKER_01: Now, we can be talking about two different instances here, which I'll kind of delineate as we get closer to the end of the sermon, but we can talk about those who are not in Christ.
SPEAKER_01: That's a completely different situation.
SPEAKER_01: They continuously are under the heavy hand of judgment of God.
SPEAKER_01: When we talk about God's people experiencing what David experienced here, this is not a loss of salvation, but this is a conviction from the Heavenly Father that you have unrepentant sin that you need to mortify in yourself.
SPEAKER_01: You need to be sanctified.
SPEAKER_01: This is that battle that we are constantly doing as believers in the sanctification process: mortifying the flesh, mortifying sin, following Christ more nearly.
SPEAKER_01: And here again, the gospel deepens this picture.
SPEAKER_01: Christ himself, although sinless, unlike David, experienced even more of this weight that David's describing on our behalf.
SPEAKER_01: In the Garden of Gethsemane, it says he was sorrowful even to death.
SPEAKER_01: On the cross, Christ uttered and, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
SPEAKER_01: An abandonment that you and I will never comprehend.
SPEAKER_01: David's misery under the hand of God's heaviness is just a ripple of what Christ experienced on the cross for us as his people.
SPEAKER_01: David's silence in confessing his sin brought him the misery that he deserved.
SPEAKER_01: Christ's silence before his accusers, his willing submission to the Father's heavy hand brought him a misery that he did not deserve.
SPEAKER_01: So that we, as his people, do not have to be silent before God, but we can freely confess our sin and repent and And he quickly forgives.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 5, sin is covered by being uncovered.
SPEAKER_01: David says, I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity.
SPEAKER_01: And I said, I will confess my transgressions to the Lord, and you forgave the iniquity of my sin.
SPEAKER_01: Here we have a turn.
SPEAKER_01: We have a paradox from verse 1 and verse 5.
SPEAKER_01: In verse 1, David says his sin is covered by God in blessing.
SPEAKER_01: In verse 5, David says he refused to cover his iniquity himself.
SPEAKER_01: It's the same word.
SPEAKER_01: This is the great reversal at the heart of biblical confession.
SPEAKER_01: Sin that we cover will remain uncovered before God.
SPEAKER_01: Sin that we uncover will become covered by God.
SPEAKER_01: So sin is covered by being uncovered.
SPEAKER_01: Let me explain.
SPEAKER_01: Sin that is covered by us, hidden, minimized, excused, rationalized, remains exposed before God and crushes us under his hand.
SPEAKER_01: But sin that is uncovered by us, confessed, named, brought into the light, is covered by God and covered so completely that it no longer counts against us.
SPEAKER_01: Again, you're talking about two different processes almost simultaneously: the process of salvation and then also the process of sanctification.
SPEAKER_01: Brothers and sisters in Christ, our sin still does us harm.
SPEAKER_01: Even though it's covered and counted on Christ at the cross, to deal with sin lightly can still go against us here.
SPEAKER_01: It's not going to keep us out of heaven.
SPEAKER_01: We're not going to lose our salvation, but we can still suffer under the heavy hand of God's discipline for our not recognizing sin in our life here.
SPEAKER_01: Let's not get those two things confused.
SPEAKER_01: Now, this is the logic of Proverbs 28:13.
SPEAKER_01: Whoever conceals his transgressions will not prosper, but he who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy.
SPEAKER_01: There is no other way to obtain mercy except through open and honest confession to the Father.
SPEAKER_01: Not through explanation, not through excuse, not through pointing to circumstances, not to pointing to other people's sins against us.
SPEAKER_01: It's always easy for us to try to find somebody who's worse than us.
SPEAKER_01: Remember, nobody else in here is the standard bearer by which we compare ourselves to.
SPEAKER_01: Your standard bearer is Christ.
SPEAKER_00: If you're not as sinless as Christ, you have failed.
SPEAKER_00: David does not say, I acknowledge that mistakes were made.
SPEAKER_01: Perhaps I could have done better.
SPEAKER_01: David said, I acknowledged my sin to you.
SPEAKER_01: Three times in the single verse, he multiplies the vocabulary of confession.
SPEAKER_01: Acknowledged, did not cover, will confess, because he wants us to feel that decisiveness of that moment, the complete surrender.
SPEAKER_01: And notice what happens.
SPEAKER_01: We have a swiftness of God's response.
SPEAKER_01: And you forgave the iniquity of my sin.
SPEAKER_01: There's no gap in the text between confession and forgiveness.
SPEAKER_01: The moment true confession is offered, forgiveness is granted because the ground for that confession, I mean the ground for that forgiveness was never David's confession itself.
SPEAKER_01: His confession was simply the means by which he received what Christ would purchase for David and for all of his people.
SPEAKER_01: Confession does not earn forgiveness, it is the empty hand that receives it.
SPEAKER_01: Now, this is a critical distinction for us as believers to hold on to.
SPEAKER_01: Because it is possible to hear, confess, and be forgiven, and quietly slide back into a works righteousness, as though our confession is a meritorious act that unlocks God's mercy.
SPEAKER_01: This is what the Catholic Church still teaches about confession, and that's not what we're talking about this morning.
SPEAKER_01: This is again your weekly reminder that your salvation is not up to you.
SPEAKER_01: It's up to God.
SPEAKER_01: We rest completely in the work of Christ and in his righteousness that's put onto us.
SPEAKER_01: We do not earn salvation.
SPEAKER_01: Scripture tells us it is a free gift of God.
SPEAKER_01: 1 John 1:9 tells us why confession works.
SPEAKER_01: If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins.
SPEAKER_01: What does that mean, faithful and just?
SPEAKER_01: John doesn't just say if we confess our sins, he forgives our sins.
SPEAKER_01: He describes God.
SPEAKER_01: He says, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just, and then he forgives our sins.
SPEAKER_01: What does that mean?
SPEAKER_01: What does faithful and just mean?
SPEAKER_01: Well, that's the basis on which we can depend that God is going to forgive us of our sins.
SPEAKER_01: Because of this, Christ has already satisfied God's justice.
SPEAKER_01: God is not being generous or flexible when he forgives the confessing sinner.
SPEAKER_01: He's not in some boardroom just making some haphazard decisions.
SPEAKER_01: He is being faithful to a promise that was secured in the blood of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: And he's being just because that blood has already paid for what our sin has demanded.
SPEAKER_01: What this means is that for the people of God, the transaction has already occurred.
SPEAKER_01: God is not going to go back on that transaction.
SPEAKER_01: It's a promise that Christ has already fulfilled.
SPEAKER_01: Christ standing there next to the Father says, bought and paid for.
SPEAKER_01: It is finished.
SPEAKER_01: Confession is simply agreeing with God about what is already true.
SPEAKER_01: Our sin is real, and Christ's payment for it is sufficient.
SPEAKER_01: Now, brothers and sisters, if you are in Christ this morning and if you have sin that you have been covering rather than confessing, if you have a field in your heart or in your soul that you have not brought before the Lord, Psalm 32 tells you plainly what awaits you on either road.
SPEAKER_01: Continued attempting to cover that sin.
SPEAKER_01: It's going to lead to wasting away, groaning and misery under the hand of a disciplinary father who loves you too much to leave you there.
SPEAKER_01: Or a confession of that sin and the practice of mortifying sin in the flesh, taking off the old self, walking more closely to Christ, sin less, be more like Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Continue to live in the blessed life that Christ has already bought for you.
SPEAKER_01: Be a reflection of Christ more and more in this world until we get to our final glorification where we don't have to deal with this anymore.
SPEAKER_01: We do is rejoice.
SPEAKER_00: No more sin.
SPEAKER_00: And again, let me be clear.
SPEAKER_01: I'm not talking about unconfessed sin in believers causing us to lose our salvation.
SPEAKER_01: Scripture teaches as far away from that as possible.
SPEAKER_01: But we can experience that heavy hand of God's discipline.
SPEAKER_01: We can grieve the Holy Spirit as his people, which we ought to be afraid of.
SPEAKER_01: But for those of us in Christ, we rejoice because that confession of sin, sin uncovered before God, is now sin that God covers.
SPEAKER_01: Verses 6 and 7, forgiveness gives us inheritance.
SPEAKER_01: Now, what does forgiveness give to the godly people?
SPEAKER_01: David describes it using a great image of great waters.
SPEAKER_01: Waters in Scripture is usually related to chaos.
SPEAKER_01: Think of the flood, think of the crossing of the Red Sea, think of Jonah's descent into the deep.
SPEAKER_01: David says that the one who has been forgiven now approaches God at a time when you may be found, will not be reached by those waters.
SPEAKER_01: Not that trouble will never come.
SPEAKER_01: Again, we're not prosperity gospel, we're not therapeutic gospel.
SPEAKER_01: We will have trials and tribulations in this life.
SPEAKER_01: David himself faced immense trouble after Psalm 32.
SPEAKER_01: But the forgiven man has a hiding place that the waters never penetrate.
SPEAKER_01: We have an eternal refuge in Christ Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: O Lord, my rock in my redeemer.
SPEAKER_01: Forgiveness is not merely the removal of a debt.
SPEAKER_01: In other words, through Christ, we don't have our sin removed, and then God says, you no longer have sin, and then we just die and enter some kind of blank space like purgatory, where it's like, hey, you're not going to suffer because your sin's been forgiven, but it's just meh.
SPEAKER_01: That's not what forgiveness does.
SPEAKER_01: Once you're forgiven, you don't go to like a spiritual net zero where you're like, okay, now you're back to neutral.
SPEAKER_01: Like God's not against you, but He's not for you either.
SPEAKER_01: You're just kind of there.
SPEAKER_01: That's not what this is about.
SPEAKER_01: When we are forgiven of our sin, when our sin is put on to Christ, the Bible also teaches that Christ's righteousness is put on to us.
SPEAKER_01: The Bible teaches us that Jesus says, I'm going to go before you to prepare a place for you.
SPEAKER_01: The Bible teaches us that the inheritance of Christ, because of his work, now belongs to all who follow him.
SPEAKER_01: When we are forgiven of our sin and come to faith in Christ, you are ushered into a relationship with God as your hiding place, your preserver, the one who surrounds you.
SPEAKER_01: You don't just get forgiveness, you inherit an entire estate.
SPEAKER_00: And you inherit the estate that belongs to Christ Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: And God now surrounds you not with judgment, but with shouts of deliverance.
SPEAKER_01: Ephesians 1 tells us that believers, those of us in Christ, have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, and in the very same scripture speaks of the riches of his grace and inheritance.
SPEAKER_01: And forgiveness and inheritance aren't two separate gifts.
SPEAKER_01: Forgiveness is the doorway by which we enter into the inheritance that Christ has bought for his people.
SPEAKER_01: Why do you think Psalm then moves from personal testimony of David to a congregational invitation?
SPEAKER_01: We see that in verses eight and nine, where David switches to instruction.
SPEAKER_01: And that's the fifth movement.
SPEAKER_01: I kind of skipped over that this morning.
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to give it to you very briefly.
SPEAKER_01: David's now pointing to the congregation.
SPEAKER_01: He says, Don't be like a horse.
SPEAKER_01: If the horse has to wear a bridle, be told where to go.
SPEAKER_01: If you're like a horse, then the world's going to tell you where to go.
SPEAKER_01: Okay?
SPEAKER_01: That's movement five.
SPEAKER_01: Don't be a horse.
SPEAKER_01: Follow Christ.
SPEAKER_01: And then verses 10 and 11, our joy is in the work of God.
SPEAKER_01: David closes this psalm.
SPEAKER_01: Many are the sorrows of the wicked, but the steadfast love surrounds the one who trusts in the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, O righteous, and shout for joy.
SPEAKER_01: We have a brief warning in verses 8 and 9 to not be stubborn like the mule, the horse, not to be dragged.
SPEAKER_01: But we have this contrast.
SPEAKER_01: Many are the sorrows of the wicked.
SPEAKER_01: But steadfast love, the great Hebrew covenant word to describe Hesed, God's loyal, steadfast, unfailing love, a love that is founded on who God is, not in our actions.
SPEAKER_01: The covenant that he had with Abraham, based on his Hesed love, surrounds the one who trusts in the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Notice again the word surrounds, echoing verses 7, shouts of deliverance that surrounded him.
SPEAKER_01: So we see these good things that David is surrounded by.
SPEAKER_01: Shout for joy.
SPEAKER_01: This is the necessary response to everything that we have walked through.
SPEAKER_01: If your sin truly has been forgiven, not covered by you, but covered by God, not counted against you, credited to Christ's account who bore it in our place, then a hoe hum somberness is not the appropriate response.
SPEAKER_01: Joy is commanded.
SPEAKER_01: Shouting is commanded.
SPEAKER_01: Rejoicing is commanded.
SPEAKER_01: This is why so many of our brothers and sisters who have gone before us, who have been martyred for the cause of Christ, walk to the gallows with a heart full of joy.
SPEAKER_01: Some even making jokes as they're being burned at the stake.
SPEAKER_01: I'm not done on this side, or I am done, flip me over.
SPEAKER_01: One of your brothers confess that as they're burning him for the gospel.
SPEAKER_01: What can they do to us but deliver us to our Savior?
SPEAKER_01: This world has nothing over us.
SPEAKER_01: Our sins are forgiven.
SPEAKER_01: We have joy in Christ.
SPEAKER_01: We have an inheritance waiting for us.
SPEAKER_00: Now take this home.
SPEAKER_01: Our joy, we have to remind ourselves of this because we always kind of get back into it.
SPEAKER_01: That's why we have to meet once at least once a week.
SPEAKER_01: It's your reminder.
SPEAKER_01: Our joy is never grounded in the strength of our own confession, or the depth of our own repentance, or the consistency of our own obedience.
SPEAKER_01: Our joy is rooted in Christ.
SPEAKER_01: He did all the work and he did it perfectly.
SPEAKER_01: That's our joy.
SPEAKER_01: If you are in Christ, that's where your joy is.
SPEAKER_01: And he was perfectly obedient.
SPEAKER_01: And he sits at the right hand of the Father and He's interceding for you right now.
SPEAKER_01: If our joy was rooted in our abilities, our joy would rise and fall with our performance.
SPEAKER_01: And it would collapse every moment that we fall into sin again, which we know all too well will be very soon.
SPEAKER_01: Our joy is grounded in the work of God, his forgiving, his covering, his not counting our sin, his surrounding love that envelops us, his shouts of deliverance around us.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 11 does not say, be glad in your progress.
SPEAKER_01: It says, be glad in the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: This is the heartbeat of the truth of Scripture.
SPEAKER_01: Salvation from beginning to end is the work of God, His sovereign grace initiating it, Christ's finished work on the cross and resurrection accomplishing it, the Holy Spirit applying it, and our faith simply receiving what has already been secured.
SPEAKER_01: And so our rejoicing is never anxious, calculated, rejoicing, wondering if we've done enough to deserve it.
SPEAKER_01: It is the free, uninhibited shout of a people who know that the transaction has already been settled by someone else on our behalf once for all time.
SPEAKER_01: So, in conclusion, let's return to where David began.
SPEAKER_01: Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is being covered.
SPEAKER_01: That blessing was purchased at a great cost.
SPEAKER_01: The Son of God prophesied as the Son of David, carried David's blood in his veins, came to bear David's sin, your sin, if you are in Christ, my sin, the sin of all of God's people for all time, from Adam and Eve to the last one who confesses Christ, so that the Father's hand might rest not in discipline, but in delight upon everyone who by faith is in Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Now, if you are carrying silence this morning, a sin that is covered rather than confessed, maybe you are groaning about it in your soul.
SPEAKER_01: Hear David's testimony and do what he did.
SPEAKER_01: Acknowledge it.
SPEAKER_01: Do not cover it.
SPEAKER_01: Say, I will confess my transgressions to the Lord and discover as he did that your distance between your forgiveness of your sin and your confession is not great at all.
SPEAKER_01: Because Christ has already closed it for us.
SPEAKER_01: Perhaps this morning you need to come to Christ for the first time.
SPEAKER_01: This forgiveness, this salvation, this rejoicing, it's not for everyone.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, it's only for a few.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus tells us that narrow is the path that leads to life, and few will follow it.
SPEAKER_01: Wide is the path that leads to destruction, and many will follow it.
SPEAKER_01: What I've been talking about this whole morning is only for a few.
SPEAKER_01: This is only for God's people who repent of their sin, confess Christ as Lord and believe in their heart that God raised him from the dead.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe you are in a position where, for the very first time this morning, you need to confess your sin and repent and declare Jesus Christ as your Lord and be born again and saved this morning and join God's people in eternal forgiveness and the inheritance as we bask in the steadfast love of God as it envelops us now and for all eternity.
SPEAKER_01: And I would beg of you to do that this very moment.
SPEAKER_01: Would love to talk to you about it after the service.
SPEAKER_01: But for the church, the people of God, if you are in Christ, and if you have confessed and you know this forgiveness, then hear the final command of this psalm as it is meant to be heard, not a suggestion, but as the fitting response of a forgiven people.
SPEAKER_01: Be glad in the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Rejoice, O righteous one.
SPEAKER_01: Shout for joy, all you upright in heart, not because of what you've done, but because of what has been done on your behalf in Christ Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Blessed is the one whose sin is forgiven.
SPEAKER_01: Let's pray together.
SPEAKER_01: Heavenly Father, we thank you for Christ and the forgiveness of sins that we have in Him.