Psalms series

Well, before Tom comes to speak to us, we're going to read and we're going to read Psalm 32, so on page 5 60, if you're using the Bibles and the chairs. Psalm 32 which is of David and Maskell. Lesid is the 1 whose transgressions are forgiven whose sins are covered. Bless is the 1 who's sin the lord does not count against them. And in whose spirit is no deceit.

When I kept silent, my bones wasted away. Through my groaning all day long. For day and night, your hand was heavy on me. My strength was sapped as in the heat of summer. Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my equity.

I said, I will confess my transgressions to the lord. And you forgave the guilt of my sin. Therefore, let all the faithful pray to you while he may be found. Surely the rising of the mighty waters will not reach them. You are my hiding place You will protect me from trouble and surround me with songs of deliverance.

I will instruct you and teach you in the ways go. I will counsel you with my loving eye on you. Do you not be like the horse or the mule, which have no understanding? But must be controlled by bit and bridle or they will not come to you. Many are the woes of the wicked, but the lord's unfailing love surrounds the 1 who trusts in him.

Rejoice in the lord and be glad you righteous. Sing all you for our upright in heart. Father, we do thank you so much for your mercy. We thank you that you are a god who loves to forgive and to cover over our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Thank you that your grace is stronger than the darkness stronger than sin.

And as we look at it, now in this Psalm, we pray that you would help us to understand your mercy and to love it more in Jesus' name. Our men. Please have a seat. And if you could turn back to Psalm 32, that would be really useful. 2 weeks ago, Pete, you might remember preached a sermon in Psalm 51, which is 1 of David's famous Psalms of Repentance.

And so we thought we would do a little mini series just over the summer in Psalms like that, these kind of repentance and, Psalms and Psalms of Thanksgiving, and that's why we're in Psalm 32 this morning. Thomas Brooks, who was an old English writer, described repentance as the vomit of the soul. How about that for a sort of Sunday morning image? Repentance is the vomit of the soul. Now I don't think there are any sensations worse than vomiting.

It's pretty bad, isn't it? So why would why would he say that? Well, if you think about it, there are all kinds of reasons, we get sick. So sometimes it could be self inflicted. In the early days of pregnancy perhaps a lady might get sick.

But mostly it's when the body wants to get rid of something harmful. So too much wine makes someone sick, and the body wants to get rid of the harmful toxins that have built up within you, the norovirus makes someone sick, a dodgy prawn or a, an old clam makes someone sick. Yeah? In all of these cases, to help your recovery, the body wants to throw it out by throwing it up? Well, repentance is the vomit of the soul.

Jesus said it is not the healthy who need a doctor but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous but sinners. Jesus says that sin and sickness go together sin is like a virus, which comes from the heart, and it infects every area of our lives. And that's why repentance is the vomit of the soul. It's the only way to get rid of that virus and to start being healthy again.

And I think based on this Psalm that we've just had read, David would agree at least a little bit with with that imagery. It talks in a similar way. Have a look at verse 3. When I kept silent, my bones wasted away. Verse 4, my strength was sapped as in the heat of summer.

This unconfessed sin in his life was like a virus. It was like a tapeworm living inside him that was sucking all of his life and his nutrition and his energy was making him sick It was wearying his body before he discovered that repentance is the vomit of the soul. That's what his life was like. And so that's where I wanna begin this morning. I want us to just go on this journey through David's experience and to see what he was like and what he learned and how he ended up.

And this morning, I want to begin with this first point, which is the agony of covering up. The agony of covering up. And this sum can can pretty much be divided right down the middle. So you've got David's story in verse 1 to 5, which is like his testimony. But David's story in verse 1 to 5 and then you've got David's sermon in verse 6 to 11.

So the story is 1 to 5. His sermon is 6 to 11. And this week, we're just gonna spend time looking at David's story and hearing his own testimony. And then next week in the morning, we'll have a think about David's sermon. And the way he applies his own story to the rest of us.

And as I say a few weeks ago, we looked at Psalm 51, Pete preached from that Psalm to us, which, in many ways is really similar to this Psalm. It's a Psalm of repentance. And actually in that Psalm, we're told which sin David had in mind specifically. We know what he was talking about. He had committed adultery with bathsheba, who was 1 of the wives of his his most faithful soldiers.

That was his sin, that was what he wrote about, that was what he wants to confess. But in this Psalm, it's not actually clear what he has in mind. It could be the same thing because there was actually a period of time between that adultery that he committed and the moment when Nathan the prophet came and exposed that sin. So there was a period of time when he might have been internalizing it and dwelling on it and refusing to bring it to the lord. And this Psalm would fit quite nicely into that into that time period.

But it's not it's not clear exactly what he has in mind. However, what we what is crystal clear is the effect that this unconfessed sin was having upon his life. See it again in verse 3. When I kept silent, my bones wasted away, through my groaning all day long. For day and night, your hand was heavy on me.

My strength was sapped as in the heat of summer. David was in a bad way. He felt as if he was wasting away in the heat. And for once, here in England, we might be able to sympathize with him just a little bit wasting away in the heat. You know what it's like after a long day in the sun.

Some people love it. But me and others, I guess, just feel weary. You feel drained. You feel you feel sort of heat stroke and headachy and tired and sun cream has dripped through sweat into your eyes during the day and they're stinging. It's not a pleasant experience.

Okay? But of course David is not is not is not talking about just a few warm weeks over the summer months. He's talking about drought. He feels like he's in some kind of drought. Last Sunday, I was, I was coming back from, a place called Lincoln on the train coming down through the countryside.

And it was amazing to see the effects of just this spell of hot weather on, on the country side and the land around. There were all kinds of little rivers running along the train tracks and reservoirs, which at 1 time, I guess, would have looked pretty healthy but now they've been reduced to these sort of green fly infested swamps. And, you know, as far as you can see out across the countryside, There's just this dry, yellowy color. I'm sure if you've got a lawn, you know what I'm talking about. It's that sort of yellow, dry, lifeless image.

That that gives you, I think, just the smallest idea of what it would actually be like to live through a real drought, doesn't it? You imagine what it would be like to live in a real drought, just day after day after day, nothing can grow nothing can live. It's like trying to set up base within a big clay oven. You'd it's just baked hot all of the time. David says, that's how I felt on the inside.

That's how I felt. In verse 3, he says that his bones were wasting away. Now what does that what does that mean? Well, the bones are the strength of a person. There are kind of skeleton are our foundation.

They're the thing which keeps us upright and strong. If your bones are decaying, they're not healthy, then you're gonna be like a house of cards in the wind. You're gonna be like a skyscraper built on jelly or a boat made of cardboard, you know, your your frame is going to collapse. That's what he says. He felt like that on the inside.

My bones were wasting away. The old King James version translates it. When I kept silent, my bones waxed old. Through my roaring all the day long. On the outside, he may have been a picture of good health.

Everything is fine, but inside he was roaring in pain. Proverbs 7 tells us that the guilt of sin is like being shot in the liver with an arrow. We might try to sort of pull it out and get rid of it. We might put some nice armor over the top of it so that other people can't see the wound. But inside, we know the liver is pierced, and we're dying.

That's what unconfessed sin will do to a person. But there's a deeper reason for these feelings that he has, and you can see in verse 4, He says for day and night, your hand was heavy on me. In the in the pilgrims progress written by John Bunion, which we looked at as a church over the course of a whole year, in our, in our mixed services. John Bunion writes amazingly about the moment when 1 of the world, the main character Christian arrives at the cross. And when he gets to the cross, there are 2 main things that happens to him.

The first is that he loses his burden. Remember he's got that big burden, that weight of sin upon his back. And when he looks up and he knows what Christ has done, he finds that burden rolling off his back and down into the empty tomb and he knows the joy of forgiveness. But also he's given a scroll of paper. Do you remember that scene?

He's given this scroll which he can open up and it's called the scroll of assurance. And basically, they give him this scroll to remind him that wherever he is on the road and whatever trials he goes through. If at any point he feels worried or distant from the lord, he can just open up that scroll and remember, here's my name. I'm a child of god. Jesus has died for me.

He's got that sort of assurance in the scroll. But also in the story, you probably remember that it was possible to lose that scroll for a period of time, which Christian actually did. He fell asleep on the road, which he shouldn't have done any lost the scroll of assurance. Now that's not Bunion trying to tell us that a Christian can lose their salvation. The Bible says that if the Holy Spirit has begun a good work in you, he will bring it to completion.

On the day of Christ Jesus. But like a good parent, the father disciplines his children, and part of the way he disciplines us might be to withdraw that sense of assurance. Not the reality of it. That doesn't go anywhere, but he might withdraw for a season that feeling or that sense of assurance. It might be that we begin to lose a sense of intimacy with our god.

Or maybe for a time he might give us over to our sinful choices, not so that he can finally condemn us because there is no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus, but he may give us over to our choices in order to show us our sin and actually bring us back to his grace. In Psalm 32, David seems to be going through something like that He's lost that sense of intimacy. It was as if the lord had put 50 kilogram dumbbells on each hand and a bar across his neck, he felt weary and heavy because the hand of the lord was upon him. Now, as I mentioned, I don't know what the sin he had in mind was, and I don't know why he didn't confess it straight away, that why he put himself through that. Why wouldn't he just bring it to the lord straight away?

I don't know. But actually, to help us apply this, if we if we begin to read our own hearts, we might get an idea of why he covered up based on some of the reasons that we we might cover up. And the first reason we do that, some of these, Pete, really helpfully covered a few weeks ago as well, but there's no harm to revisit some of them. The first reason we might cover up is because it is humbling to admit before the lord. It's humbling to be honest, isn't it?

You see, you imagine a target. Okay? Imagine a target at the end of a target range and you draw an arrow in the bow, you line it up and you fire it, you fire it towards the middle of the target, and you just watch it, and then it begins to grow weak and it falls short and goes plonk into the ground and it's falling short. That's what sin means in verse 5. Each 1 of us was created to hit the glory of god.

That's the top that's we like arrows that should be hitting the glory of god. We were made to enjoy god and to glorify him forever, but we fall we fall short every day. Or imagine offense with a sign on it. Do not cross. It's pretty clear.

There's no small print. Do not cross. But then that evening, a person comes up to it. They read the sign. They understand it.

Know what it says, and they crossover anyway. That's transgression in verse 5. It's a kind of deliberate disobedience against the law of god or imagine a law court. The evidence has been heard. The spokesman stands up, and he says, we, the jury, find the defendant guilty of this crime.

There is guilt in this person. That's iniquity in verse 5. Means lots of things, but very often it's to do with the guilt that comes with law breaking. All of that is in this Psalm. Sin, transgression, iniquity.

And so for me to admit that I have fallen short like the arrow I've climbed over the fence like the rebel, and I'm guilty like the defendant. It's hard for me to do. Because I stubbornly hold on to this idea that actually I'm not really as bad as other people, a pretty good person. 1 of the reasons we don't uncover our sin before the lord is because we cling to this delusion that we're actually not that bad. And that makes it difficult to confess.

Secondly, we might cover up because often we live a little bit like atheists. Cathy, Kathy Ladman, who's an American comedian, says all religions are the same. Religion is basically guilt with different holidays. Religion is basically guilt with different holidays, which is kind of funny and is quite clever, isn't it? And and maybe maybe that was her experience.

But I think she does sum up what lots of people actually think. Guilt and shame aren't real emotions Religion makes you feel them. Religion makes you feel like that guilty. That's how they keep you. That you feel guilty.

It's up to every person to do what is right for them. There is no higher power, more moral than me, no higher authority that I must listen do, so why should I feel guilty for anything? I make my own morals. Yeah? 1 of the ways that we cover up is by believing that lie that god has no right to decide what is right and wrong.

If I can justify my actions, then that's all that counts because I'm at the highest moral seat in the universe. Religion is just guilt with different holidays. Thirdly, 1 of the reasons we might cover up is because we care more about what other people think than what god thinks. Have you ever wondered that? I have.

I've wondered that. Why why it is that public sins make us feel so much worse than private ones. Why is that? What is because the public ones reveal a bit of a problem in our exterior. They reveal that we're not the sort of person we're trying to pretend that we are whereas private ones will only god sees those.

He cares about that. You know, he's he's a bit alright. He sees it all the time. We worry more about the public ones because other people see that. So 1 of the reasons that we cover up is because as long as we're able to keep up a sort of public face, then we don't actually care that much about sin and what goes on in private just as long as the illusion is maintained for another week.

Fourthly, we cover up because certain sins have been around so long, they've just become normal. Isn't that right? We tried at 1 time to deal with it We had some limited success for a while, but before long, we were at it again. And so now I'm just gonna accept this is who I am. This is what I do.

And it's quite scary because at 1 time our consciences would have been very hurt by that idea. But over time, we just learn to keep it out of the way. It's like the dirty basement which we're slightly embarrassed about And so we cover it over with a nice plush carpet. We know it's there. It's just there.

It's just there. No 1 else is gonna see it. I'm not gonna deal with it. I'm not even gonna look in there. But I know it's there rather than going in for a proper clean.

Sometimes we don't come back to god. We don't confess to god because We tried that. It didn't work, and it's been around so long that I'm just gonna give up, give up the fight in that area. Fifthly, we cover up. We don't come to God because we think we can fix the problem.

And so instead of repentance, we try to repay the lord with our efforts. I've definitely noticed this kind of thing. And it goes it goes a little something like this. 1 1 day of failure, can be made up for with 2 weeks of reasonably good obedience. So it's like I was at 60 percent Christian And then I did this and I went to 30 percent, but if I have 2 weeks of good quiet times, I'll be back to 60 percent, and god will be happy.

And so the way you try to deal with it is actually in our own efforts, we think we can fix the problem. We might not repent because we think the lord has become some sort of slave master who needs our obedience to make us happy. Secondly, we cover up because we confuse repentance with regret. We confuse repentance with regret. But of course, you don't have to be a Christian to regret something.

Most people feel bad about things that they've done. Most people regret decisions that they've made. That's not really a sign of anything. But sometimes we prefer that kind of option. If we can just spend an hour or so talking about how bad we are, and the things that we've done and how rotten we are inside.

It it's kind of soothing. And it makes us actually feel like we might have got right with god just by regretting things that we we have. But actually, it's possible to ignore god in that entire process. We might not repent because we confuse feeling bad with repentance. And number 7, perhaps, I think the most important We cover up because we've forgotten what God is like.

I'm sure most of us at 1 time or another have been so frustrated with our sin and so annoyed with our lack of progress in the Christian life. And so ashamed that we just can't seem to get rid of the things that we've been doing for years. We start to think we've actually overstepped the mark. And in those moments, I think we start to believe that the prodigal Sun story cannot be true of us again. This time, we must stay in the mud.

This time, we must go back as a slave, not a sun. And I think that is at the heart of all these other reasons. We don't repent before the lord because we've stopped believing that he is a gracious and compassionate god, slow to anger and abounding instead fast love. We've Stop believing that he is a god who loves to cover over the sins of his children. And we've started thinking he's some kind of monster who's exhausted his supply of grace and will turn us away or some kind of machine who just doesn't care anymore.

Very simply, I think the biggest reason we cover up our sin is because we've recreated the god of the Bible in our own image. Now I don't know which of these would be true of David, if any, but David was a sinner, like me, and I'm a sinner, and I know I know these do these things, and so he may well have done these things as well. But the point is whatever method he used or we used, David says, don't cover up your sin. It just doesn't work. It just doesn't work.

And it might be that you're here this morning and you know that Maybe you're here this morning and you you feel weary because of sin. You're act you actually maybe even feel physically weary because of sin. You're tired of covering up, and you wanna get back to the sort of freedom and joy you remember having. Well, in 1 way or another, that's all of us. And we need to remember that the father's discipline is not meant to destroy us It's meant to draw us back to our god.

He has absolutely no intention of leaving us in the mud, and then finally condemning us. He wants to woo us home back to his grace. And so that's the second point that we'll move on to now, the agony of covering up, and secondly, the joy of being covered. Let's have a look at verse 5 and then verse 1. Then I acknowledged my sin to you and I did not cover up my iniquity.

I said I will confess my transgressions to the lord, and you forgave the guilt of my sin. Blessid is the 1 whose transgressions are forgiven whose sins are covered. Blessid is the 1 whose sin the lord does not count against them and in whose spirit is no deceit. When we bring our sins to the lord, there is forgiveness. You see, when we try to cover up, we're basically just hiding our sin But when god covers over, he's plotting it out.

Always think of the story of, nowhere in his sons. You might remember after he's come off the arc. And, they've began a kind of new humanity. It's a fresh start on a fresh earth. And, Noah is a man of soil, and he begins to drink wine, and he he gets drunk.

And you remember he's lying there drunk and he's naked and he's ashamed in his sin and Ham, 1 of his sons comes out and says, brothers, come inside here. This is hilarious. Come and have a look at what our fool, our dad has been. He tries to expose and shame his father, but the 2 sons won't do that. And they get a garment and they walk in backwards so that there's no chance of them seeing what their father has done, and they just they just cover him over.

They cover him over. Wonderful picture of what Jesus offers us in the gospel. He doesn't just enjoy our shame so that he can condemn us. He comes and he he covers he covers over our sin. That's the kind of language that's used here.

And that is a wonderful promise for every single person in this room. When we bring our sin to the lord, he covers it in at least 2 ways. Firstly, he covers it with his blood. There is a fountain filled blood that is drawn from emmanuel's veins, and sinners plunged beneath that flood will lose all of their guilty stains. It's kind of squeamish, isn't it?

A bit weird being plunged into a fountain of blood, and it's meant to be squeamish, it's meant to be. We need a sacrifice. We need atonement we need someone to take our penalty to die our death to bear our guilt, or we will die. And at the cross, Jesus was that sacrifice. He shed his own blood to take away the guilt of our sin.

And that means that when any of us uncover our sin before the lord, he loves to apply the blood of Jesus to it. He loves to cover it over with the blood of Jesus and cleanses us from all unrighteousness. He cleanses us and covers us in the blood of Christ, but also he covers us with his righteousness. That's why David can sing in verse 11, rejoice o righteous. That, by the way, that is an impossible command because by nature, none of us are righteous.

And so if anyone is going to actually obey verse 11, the lord needs to make it happen. The lord needs to make us righteous. And by faith, that is exactly what he does. Not only does he cover our sin with the blood of Christ. He then takes the perfect life of Christ and he wraps us up in his obedience.

He clothes us in his obedience. Just like Noah's sons, he puts a he clothes us in a righteous garment covering the sin so that When they look at him, they see a righteous, a righteous picture. All of that covering, all of that covering waits for us if we will bring our sin to Jesus. And if that's not enough, how about what he says here in verse 2? Blessed is the 1 whose sin, the lord does not count against them.

Just just think of that just for a moment, that if you are trusting Jesus, the god who knows you, inside out and upside down who has a perfect understanding of all that you have ever done will not count your sin against you. I think so many of us have this idea that the Lord's forgiveness is is not real. It's a kind of pretend forgiveness, which he sort of begrudgingly holds out, but basically he's still got a record of everything we've ever done and he's ready to use it. Should the time come up? But that's not the gospel.

You couldn't say blessed is the man against whom the lord stores up iniquity. You couldn't say that. There's not something to sing about. There's not happy news, but you could say blessed happy, glad, satisfied, secure, whole, complete is the person. Against whom the lord counts no iniquity.

If you're here this morning and you know that gospel, you are blessed. You are a ble you are the most blessed person to walk the earth. There are so many things that we look for to give us happiness. So many things but to know the forgiveness of god, to know the love of god, to know the covering of god is the richest variety of happiness. Can you see in verse 1 to 2 before he even gets to his story He can't help say blessed is the 1 whose transgressions are forgiven.

Blessid is the 1 whose sins are covered. Blessid is the 1 who sin the lord does not count against them. That's a blessed that's a blessed person whose transgressions are covered whose sins are forgiven, who has nothing counting against them. And then he says, here's a strange phrase, blessed is the 1 in whose spirit is no deceit. Now what's that about?

In whose spirit is no deceit? Well, remember, he's talking here about sin and forgiveness. And with that in mind, let's turn to 1 John chapter 1. If you'd like to turn to 1 John chapter 1, And we'll finish with this looking at verse 8 and 9 together. 1 John chapter 1.

So on page 12 25. 1 1 2 5. Verse 8, chapter 1. If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.

See, what are you saying? If we if we claim to be without sin or in Psalm 32 language. If we cover it up, if we pretend it's not an issue, if we try to fix it, we deceive ourselves. There is a a kind of deceit in our spirits because we're not believing the lord's word about ourselves and about his forgiveness. So that's a challenge.

It doesn't matter who you are, whether you've been a Christian for 50 years or whether you're not a Christian, If we walk away this morning without acting on this sum, we are lying to us. We are lying to ourselves. We're deceiving ourselves. Doesn't matter how we try to excuse it. You might already even have a couple of excuses lined up for why you don't have to respond.

Doesn't matter how we justify it. We are deceiving ourselves, and we're turning away from the lord's blessing. But if we will have a spirit without deceit, we will be honest with ourselves. We will confess our sins to the faithful and just god and allow him to purify us from all unrighteousness, which he loves to do. Really doesn't matter if it's the first time or if it's the 10 thousandth time, the promise of 1 John and Psalm 32 is true.

There's no qualifications. There's no small print. Just a god who is ready to cover you and bless you. With the gospel of his son. Psalm 32 teaches us a really simple truth.

The joy of forgiveness starts with honesty. The joy of forgiveness starts with honesty. I started, this morning with a quote, and I'd like to finish with this 1, from a chap called, W S Plumber. A good earthy name. Ws plumber.

He says, if guilt makes men cowards, pardon and acceptance makes them fearless. If guilt poisons every cup of joy justification sweetens every cup of anguish. If guilt makes death the king of terrors, an interest in Christ makes the believer shout. Death is swallowed up in victory. The sinner who is saved by grace has all things, and they abound because he has Christ for his sacrifice.

And Christ for his righteousness. Blessid is the person who knows that gospel. Let's take a moment just to, just to spend some time reflecting. Maybe you'd like to just read that Psalm again or take this opportunity perhaps to uncover something before the lord and to allow him to cover it over with his with his grace.