Finding Forgiveness (Let Go Of Guilt)

The Blessedness of Forgiven Sin (Psalm 32:1) 2:19

“Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.”

— Psalm 32:1 (NKJV)

He heard all this, and a certain psalm came to mind, and it's the same psalm that we're looking at today. Psalm 32 came to mind, and the chaplain remembered the first verse, and so he quoted the verse to this inmate. The first verse is this: Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven and whose sin is covered.

After sharing that verse with the inmate, he added this thought. He said, you know, your forgiveness does not hinge on your guilt or on the things which you have done, but it hinges solely on the power of the blood of Jesus Christ. In other words, there's nothing that you could have done yesterday or might yet do tomorrow that puts you beyond the reach of God's grace.

There is no shackles known to God or man that can hold you tight once you've been forgiven through the blood of the Lamb. This morning, there may be some of us who've done things that we don't talk about, don't like to think about, things we can't share with others. Well, God knows every last one of them.

God knows the things we don't name. God knows the things we don't share. God knows the things that we've swept into the broom closet of our mind. He knows all those things, and in spite of what He knows, He loves you still.

In spite of what He knows about not only one thing that you and I might have done, but the whole lot of it. In spite of what He knows, God loves and God forgives, and that's what we see in this morning's text. Let's look now — the verses one and two — and then we'll just kind of look at these first verses and then work our way through the balance.

Chapter 32, verse 1, to say this: Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord does not impute iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit.

David the Sinner: Adultery, Murder, and a Guilty Conscience 4:01

All right, who did we say is the author of Psalm 32? Who's the author? David. Now, what do you know about David?

Most of us know the basics. We think of David and we think of him killing Goliath, and then he rose up in Israel and became the king. Then he's a powerful guy, a man after God's own heart. We think about David and we tend to think about a lot of the good things.

Well, there were a lot of good things, but there was also some bad things. In fact, there was a spectacularly bad event that you may recall. One day, David's looking out at the rooftops while the men are off at war — was looking at the rooftops at a woman who's appealing to him.

Her name is Bathsheba. And in David's heart formed a desire, sinful desire, to make her his own. And so he slept with Bathsheba. In time, she was with child.

And so David realized that he had a problem. He had a problem where he committed adultery with a married woman. Now that was bad. That was bad.

But David, as you might remember, he doubled down on the sin. He doubled down what he did wrong. In fact, he tripled down on it. Because here's his solution.

His solution was, well, I can't have the scandal of this pregnant married woman. I can't have this scandal, especially not when her husband's off at war. No one's going to understand or believe that it wasn't him. I can't have the scandal, so what am I going to do?

And he concocted a series of steps — if you're right — he concocted a series of steps by which ultimately David determined to set this man, the husband of Bathsheba, at the front lines in battle, that he might die and the problem might go away. That's exactly what he did. And if you think about such a thing, if you think about the first sin and then the way that he compounded his sins, you'd say, what a creep.

This is bad. I mean, this is a guy we all love in Scripture, and yet this is bad. This is terrible what he did. David killed a man so that he could steal his wife.

And this isn't the only thing that David did wrong across the decades of his life. Across the decades of his life.

The Holiness and Justice of the God Who Is 5:53

David broke God's law a number of different times. Now, let's say that God, God is dimly aware of this stuff, but let's say that God's forgetful. You know, our culture thinks that God is just kind of this old fuddy-duddy, this old man, the senile old guy who's kind of off in the clouds somewhere.

Let's say that that God was real. Let's say that God is forgetful or senile, or let's say even beyond that, let's say that when people sin, God just doesn't care, that He just shrugs His divine shoulders. Let's say that that were the case. Well, if that were true, if God was either forgetful or senile or cool with sin, then David would be in fine shape.

But, but that's not the God of Scripture. That's not the God who is. The God who is, is on the job. The God who is, is holy.

The God who is, is righteous and just and the like. And if that's true of a holy and righteous and just and perfect God, who's omniscient and all-knowing and His eyes are always on the sparrow, let alone David, if that God is the God who is and the God who was on the job at the time of the sin, then David had a problem, because he was guilty 10 times over of breaking not only the laws of his common man and of society, but of breaking God's law at numerous points.

Now that's the same David who wrote Psalm 32 and who said, Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. See, David knew the things that he'd done wrong, and he knew they deserved consequences.

Divorcing Sin from Consequences: The Myth of Good Deeds 7:25

Now in our day and age, let me just have an aside here for a moment. In our day and age, we've managed to separate sin from consequences. Scripture says the wages of sin is death, but we've managed to divorce the two. And so what we've done in the world around us, if you ask most people what the path, what the means into heaven and salvation is, they'll say, well, yeah, I've done a few things wrong.

Yes, I've done some stuff I'm not proud of, but, but I've also, I've tried really hard. And yes, I have this little pile of stuff that's bad and sinful even, but look at all the good things I've done. Look at all the good deeds I've done. I'm a good person.

My neighbors love me. We start to define ourselves on the basis of what other people think, and we assume that God's going to think the same way, and that he's going to weigh us on the basis of good deeds that offset the bad ones. Well, that, that is not the way that this works.

If that were true, who needs Jesus? Who needs the cross? That's not the way that this works. David had done a lot of good stuff.

We've lingered on the bad stuff he did, but he did do a lot of good things. And yet David knew. He knew absolutely. You see in Psalm 32, Psalm 51 elsewhere, he knew absolutely that not a one of his best deeds could pay off one of his least deeds.

Not one of the best things he had ever done could ever pay off even the smallest of his sins. He knew that it's impossible to purchase salvation, to build up credits and chits for things that you've done well and then just shove them in the table and say, God, I deserve. Look at all that I've done.

I deserve heaven and the like. David knew that it didn't work that way. He never for a moment — he never for a moment — wrote anything different. David knew that if you break the laws of a king, you're going to suffer the king's wrath.

Now, how did he know that? Because he was a king. David was a man of law and order in his own society, and he understood that if you break the law, there has to be consequences in order for society to function. So if that's true, if David knew that he was a lawbreaker and he knew that lawbreaking deserves condemnation and guilt and wrath and the wages of sin is death — if he knew that, then what hope did he have?

What hope do you and I have?

The Doctrine of Sin: The Wages of Sin Is Death 9:43

“Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord does not impute iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit.”

— Psalm 32:1-2 (NKJV)

Well, what does he say in verse one? Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. David knew that he was a sinner. He didn't pretend otherwise.

He didn't redefine the things he'd done so they fell outside of the category of sin. He didn't minimize sin. He didn't pretend that he hadn't sinned. He knew that he had sinned, but he also knew that there is such a thing as forgiveness.

He knew that there was a means that God was providing in order that his sin could be atoned for. Let me explain what this means for just a moment before we look at verses three and four. If a man is in sin and the wages of sin is death, then a man deserves to die.

And that's not sin in the plural; that's sin in the singular. If it was true of Adam and Eve that one sin — which was functionally eating a piece of fruit that God told them not to do — if that throws the entire creative realm in chaos, then that means sin's bad. It means that God must be really holy and sin must be really bad.

Now, as we look at that and we say, okay, let's presume that's true for a moment. Then we say, well, I myself have sinned a number of times, maybe differently than David, but I've certainly sinned more times than I can count. And if the wages of a single sin is death, then I must deserve death multiple times over.

What do I need? Well, we need the same thing as David. We need forgiveness. We need a means by which our sin can be paid for somehow by someone other than ourselves.

The Justice of God: Why a Righteous Judge Must Punish 11:18

If God is just, He has to deal with sin. An example is if you had a criminal, let's say here in Gulfport, let's say you have a man and he burns down his neighbor's house and everyone in the house. Now as a society, we're outraged. We think this is the most wicked, depraved thing we've ever heard of.

What a terrible thing. And our presumption is that when this guy gets his day in court, that the judge will find him guilty and lock him up, throw away the key and the like. So that's our presumption — is that a man's guilt will result in consequences, because that's how societies function. Now let's say that this man, after burning down his neighbor's house with everyone in the house, that he comes before the judge, and let's say the judge looks at him and the judge is just having a great day.

Now the judge smiles at him and he says, you know what? I'm having a great day and I'm a loving judge, and you're free to go. What would your reaction and my reaction be to that if that were to happen down in the county courthouse? We'd be outraged.

We'd be angry. We'd say this is an abdication of justice. That's not justice at all. To take one who was guilty, one who's broken the laws, one who's killed and burned down his neighbor's house, and to let him go?

Someone's not doing their job. We would accuse the judge of not being just if you were to not render consequences for the breaking of the law. Now, if that's true in a temporal sense, just among us in our community, then it must also be true of God. If we've broken the laws of God to the degree and quantity that we have, there's got to be consequences.

And if there aren't, then He's not just. He wouldn't be a good judge at all.

Substitutionary Atonement: Imputation and the Cross of Christ 12:55

He'd be abdicating His responsibilities if He didn't deal with that sin. So what's our hope, then? Well, again, the same thing we see in verses one and two. Our hope is that our sin is paid for, that it's forgiven, that it's atoned for, that God's wrath to our sin comes down — but it comes down on someone other than ourselves.

On Calvary, that's exactly what happened. This is the gospel. On Calvary, the Son of God came down from His throne, was born in a manger, ultimately went to the cross, and while He was upon the cross, He who knew no sin became sin for us. Our sins were imputed to Him.

This is the word we see in the text. Our sins were imputed, credited, placed upon Him. When He was on the cross, our sins hung upon Him. And when God the Father looked at the Son, Scripture says this, that it pleased the Father to crush Him.

One of the most challenging verses in the entirety of the Bible: it pleased the Father to crush the Son. Why? Because in that moment, when He looked down at the Son, He saw your sin and my sin. And because God is good and holy and righteous and just, He had to deal with it.

And so that's exactly what He did, and Jesus died on that cross. He who lived the life that you and I should have lived died the death that we should have died. In this way, God is both the just judge and yet the forgiver of sins. It's not that God took a broom and swept our sins into the closet of heaven or just forgot about them for a while.

That's not what happened. He dealt with them in their entirety, every last drop of them, every iota of sin. But He dealt with it — the sins of the elect, He dealt with them by pouring out His wrath on Jesus. In Psalm 32, that's what David is anticipating.

This one who would come, this Messiah who would bear our sins and our guilt and by whose stripes we are healed. This is the gospel, and it's typified in verses one and two.

The Weight of Unconfessed Sin: When I Kept Silent 15:00

“When I kept silent, my bones grew old through my groaning all the day long. For day and night Your hand was heavy upon me; my vitality was turned into the drought of summer. Selah.”

— Psalm 32:3-4 (NKJV)

All right, let's look at verses three and four. Verse three, when I kept silent, my bones grew old through me. My bones grew old through my groaning all the day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me, my vitality was turned into the drought of summer.

Selah. You know, earlier this morning, I mentioned the story of the prisoner in Europe who was worried that his sins might be too numerous, too great, too significant for God to ever forgive. Talking about this guy who'd done something that he couldn't forgive himself for, so he couldn't imagine that a holy God would ever forgive.

Now, for some of us, that's our problem. For some of us, we've done something or some things, and we just think that we're outside the reach of God's grace, that we're just too far gone. Or there's people in our lives, you know, the people we know, villains in the world around us, they're too far gone.

We think that's true. It's not true of anyone. If Saul of Tarsus could be saved, if the thief on the cross could be saved, then so can anyone. Forgiveness is possible as long as you're drawing breath.

Two Errors: Despairing of Grace and Trivializing Sin 15:59

So some of us, that's our problem though, is we worry that we can't be forgiven. Others though, others have the exact opposite problem. Others don't think too much of sin to think that they can possibly be forgiven. Others think too little of sin, that they don't see it as anything they need to be forgiven from in the first place.

Others take just a really low view of sin, and I guarantee you that's the primary concern in our world. The primary concern in our world is not over God's existence and His presence. The primary problem that man has is he doesn't understand that he himself has sinned and that he needs to be purchased, redeemed through the blood of Jesus Christ, and he needs to profess in that hope.

Some of us have a small view of sin and when we have a small view of it, we kind of just push it aside. We don't think about it. We bury it. Well, for some period of time, that's what David had done.

For some period of time, David had just out of sight, out of mind. He'd taken what he did and maybe he didn't trivialize it, but at the very least, he didn't deal with it. And he just threw it off to the side of his mind and he worried about being a king. And verse 3 says, I kept silent.

Verse 3 says that although I know what I did, I kept silent about it. And as I kept silent, something happened. And David says, as I kept silent, my very bones began to groan within me. Began to feel old and achy and brittle and sickly.

But David discovers that keeping silent wasn't the answer. And not only did his silence weigh on his conscience, but it weighed on his whole body.

Sin, the Body, and a Broken Spirit 17:34

Body and mind and spirit were affected by his lack of reconciliation with his God. Now that's not unusual. You can even go to secular physicians and ask them if there's a relationship between what's going on in one's mind and the health of one's body. This is something even a secular physician will acknowledge is true.

Your emotional condition, your spiritual condition can affect your physical health. Proverbs 17 says this, a merry heart does good like medicine, but a broken spirit dries the bones. Those who are generally happy and well-contented and fulfilled, they're right with God and they're right with their fellow men. This is good medicine to the body.

But those with a broken spirit, it's as if the very bones are drying up. Bones are brittle enough, but they're drying up. Proverbs 3 adds this warning. It says, do not be wise in your own eyes, but fear the Lord and depart from evil; this will be health to your flesh and strength to your bones.

The Bible here is telling us something that no hospital chart ever will. It says that part of the reason some people feel so bad, feel so crummy, is that their spiritual illness, their spiritual sickness, is manifesting itself physically, with symptoms that no EKG can point out and yet which are legitimate and causing an individual to feel terrible.

Now, to be clear, that's not to say that every sneeze results from a sin. It's not to say that every sneeze, every cough, every cold or cancer or things like this are all spiritually induced. There's times when the apostles got sick. Even the Apostle Paul mentioned a thorn in the flesh and the like.

With that said, what Scripture does say is if you're constantly just feeling just miserable, just terrible and weak and broken in the body, there may — there may be a relationship between your lack of vitality and the huge amount of sinful baggage you've slung over your shoulder that you're not dealing with. There may be a relationship between you're feeling terrible in the body and you're repressing sins and not bringing them before God.

Again, this is not a one-off verse in Scripture. This comes up multiple times. When I kept silent, my bones grew old, my vitality like the drought of summer. If it feels this morning like you're falling apart, you'd be wise to at least ask the question whether a contributing problem to your conditions may be spiritual.

And then if so, consider doing something about it. Do what David did. Unburden your heart before God. Bring that which is weighing down your conscience and your mind and even your body before Him, seeking the forgiveness.

Let's look at verse five.

Confession and Immediate Forgiveness (Psalm 32:5) 20:21

Verse five: I acknowledge my sin to You. This is a point of transition. David was feeling bad before, but now he's done something. He says, I have acknowledged my sin to You; my iniquity I've not hidden.

I said, I will confess my transgressions to the Lord, and You forgave the iniquity of my sin. Selah. All right, the previous verses suggest that for some period of time David had kept his sins and his pain to himself, and the longer that he did so, the worse he felt. Well, by the time we get to verse five, David says, all right, that's — that's enough of that.

He's changed his approach. Specifically, verse five says that I acknowledge my sin to You. I acknowledge my sin to You; my iniquity I have not hidden. Furthermore, David says, I will confess my transgressions to the Lord.

I'm going to stop bearing them, and I'm going to start naming them before God if no one else. Now, remember who wrote these words. This is not Joe Schmoe. This is King David.

This is a man whose power and prestige were known worldwide at that time. This is a man of incredible power. Other people bowed and scraped before King David. Other people sought his forgiveness.

Other people entered into his throne room on their knees and the like, and entered in his presence with trepidation. This is King David, and yet here King David is the one who takes on the heart of the penitent man — says, before You I shall bow, I will seek forgiveness, I will confess my transgressions.

David was a king. He was a proud man. This couldn't have come easy, but it was necessary. May have taken him a while, but it was appropriate.

Now, for as long as it took, and we don't know, it could have been years, for as long as it took for him to bring his weight of sin before God, as long as that might have taken, you know something that's interesting here is how long it took for God to respond. David confessed his sin, and the very next breath, he says, and You forgave it.

I've confessed my sin and You have forgiven it. I will confess my transgressions to the Lord, verse 5 says, and You forgave the iniquity of my sin. There's no sign of a gap. There's no sign of a pause.

There's no sign of God saying, I got to think about this. There's no sign of God saying to David, well, after you've spent enough time in purgatory, learning your lesson for all that you've done, and after your friends and relatives and neighbors have paid enough money to buy you out, maybe then you'll be okay.

No. You see the exact opposite, that the moment he names the sin, he is forgiven of the sin, because that's the way that God works.

The Thief on the Cross and the Faithfulness of God to Forgive 23:05

Remember the thief on the cross? The thief on the cross, he looks to Jesus to the side, says, Lord, remember me when You get into Your kingdom. This is a man who was a thief. This is a man who his own society was more than happy to be rid of.

And yet after mocking Jesus initially, God did something in his heart. He's regenerated. He looks to Jesus. He says, Lord, remember me when You come into Your kingdom.

What does Jesus say the very next moment? The words out of Jesus' mouth to the man who saw it is: Truly, this day you will be with Me in paradise. The moment confession, repentance is signified to Jesus, that forgiveness is attained, that reconciliation is made possible — to the point that that man, that thief, was in heaven the same day.

If it's true of David, if it's true of Saul of Tarsus, it's true of us. First John 1:9 says this: If we confess our sins, He's faithful and just to forgive us. If we confess our sins, He's just and faithful to forgive our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. This morning, is there something you've done — maybe it was a long time ago — that you've just buried, that you never contended with, something that still weighs upon your spirit?

If so, what's stopping you from bringing it to the Lord? Remember what Jesus said to those who do this. Jesus says, those who come to Me, I will by no means cast out. The humble, the penitent man who comes to Me seeking forgiveness will ever surely find it.

It won't be a day later, an hour later, a year later. If we confess our sins, He's faithful and just to forgive our sins. This is true of us, no matter who we are, no matter what stage of life we're in, no matter what we've done, God's arms are open to receive us.

Selah: Consider Your Need and the Only Remedy in Christ 24:54

As we look to close this morning, I want you to notice the final word, the end of verse 5, and which also continues throughout the stanzas in Psalm 32, the word Selah. Have you ever seen that word perhaps in the Psalms and wondered, well, what does that mean? And if it's a Hebrew word, why don't they just translate it so I know what it means?

Well, the short answer is this, that there is no agreed upon consensus on the translation. There's a lot of different things that this could mean. One of the thoughts, one of the beliefs about what the word Selah means is to define it as meaning consider. Selah, consider.

There's a stanza that says something important about God. Then we see the word Selah, which suggests we should consider what was just written, what was just sung in the case of a song. If that is true, if consider is what's implied in the word Selah, then David's inviting us to consider these things.

David's inviting us to stop keeping these issues at arm's length and pretending forgiveness and sins — that's just an issue for someone else down the street — but saying, what about me? Where do I fit in this equation? Consider, David says here. This morning as we go out these doors, there's two things that we need to consider.

Number one, our need for this, our need to be forgiven. Again, sin cannot be defined in such a way as that is always — as that is always outside of you. You and I have sinned. This morning we've sinned at some point, probably multiple times.

We will yet sin later today. And if that's true, we have a significant problem, because the wages of sin is death. That's the first thing to consider — to see us in the bullseye. I guarantee you, if King David was subject to these verses and the promise and the need for forgiveness and the need for salvation, if he fell in the bullseye of this text — and so do you and I. So consider, consider how this applies to you.

And secondarily, consider this. If you're a sinner in need of forgiveness, in need of salvation, then how is that salvation attained? Well, the singular means from page one to page 2000 plus, the singular means is through the personal work of Jesus Christ. There is no other way.

I'm the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but through Me. You want to get to God's golden shores? It's not going to be because you offset good deeds with bad deeds.

It's because you say to yourself and you say to the world and you say to God that I don't deserve salvation. I don't deserve to walk on God's golden shores. But out of God's grace for me, while I was yet a sinner, Christ died for me and He made it possible through His substitution on my part.

He made it possible for me to dwell in a place I would otherwise not dwell. And when I stand there, I don't stand there clad in my own righteousness, but clad in the righteousness of Jesus Christ. Consider, you need to repent, you need to turn from sin, and you need those sins forgiven.

The only way that's possible is through a right relationship with Jesus Christ. This morning, I would encourage you to consider these very things, to consider the debt of sin that you've accrued the entirety of your life, but trust that who Jesus was and what He did on Calvary is enough to pay that debt.

Don't waste another day. Do it today. Let's pray.