Psalm 32

If you brought a copy of Scripture with you this morning you can find Psalm 32, the 32nd Psalm as we continue in our series David, the man who captured the heart of God, and now God has captured the heart of David in this particular Psalm. We’re going to be looking at a Psalm that is very emotive, very expressive, and for really, really good reason. David has been forgiven. Let’s pray together, shall we?

Our Father in heaven forgiveness is a beautiful, beautiful word. And You have given it to us to have our sins removed because of what Christ has done for us, to be able to experience the power, and the beauty, and the glory, and the joy, and the happiness of forgiveness. There are those in this room and watching online who do not understand forgiveness, not experientially anyway. And there is a weight upon them. Lord, I pray that that weight of sin would be removed. It would be erased. They would find their place in You and experience the joy of forgiveness. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

So we’re in the book of Psalms here in our David series. Now, David didn’t write every Psalm. He wrote just short of half of them, probably, that is, they’re attributed to David. He probably wrote several more. They’re just not necessarily attributed him. But he wrote so many that he is called in 2 Samuel, “the sweet psalmist of Israel.” So the whole is sort of given to him, even though he didn’t write them all. And these Psalms are songs. A psalm is a song. Literally, it’s a song intended to be sung to the accompaniment of an instrument. Now we don’t have the musical scores, but we have the lyrics in front of us here. And what they emit are emotion. They tap into our emotions, our feelings, if you please, and I purposely use those terms, emotions, feelings, over what God has done… or what He’s not done, like, “How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever?” That’s how Psalm 13 begins. How do you like starting your prayer off to God like that? And the Psalms repeatedly, they go through history and they also, in so doing, remind us of our own personal rebellious tendencies in juxtaposition to God’s faithfulness. You might say our fickleness, His faithfulness constantly coming out in the Psalms. And sometimes David projects… the feelings he projects can only be described as indescribable. That’s this Psalm we’re looking at here today. This is one of those Psalms.

And just a cursory view of my own life and coming to Christ, I can think of three times in my life, three times where the place I was in in my walk with God was so happy, so deep, so personal that the only way I can describe it is it was indescribable. And I’ll hit on those in the moments to come. David is in one of those places. And so without further ado, the Psalm, itself.

Psalm 32:1-11

1 Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.

2 Blessed is the man against whom the LORD counts no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit.

3 For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long.

4 For day and night Your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. Selah

5 I acknowledged my sin to You, and I did not cover my iniquity; I said, “I will confess my  transgressions to the LORD,” and You forgave the iniquity of my sin. Selah

6 Therefore let everyone who is godly offer prayer to You at a time when You may be found;

surely in the rush of great waters, (he’s picturing the deluge) they shall not reach him.

7 You are a hiding place for me; You preserve me from trouble; You surround me with shouts of deliverance. Selah

8 I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you with My eye upon you.

9 Be not like a horse or a mule, without understanding, which must be curbed with bit and bridle, or it will not stay near you.

10 Many are the sorrows of the wicked, but steadfast love surrounds the one who trusts in the LORD.

11 Be glad in the LORD, and rejoice, O righteous, and shout for joy, all you upright in heart!”

Now this Psalm was written, I’m fairly certain, sometime after David’s sin with Bathsheba, sometime after he recorded Psalm 51 which we looked at last week. Many Bible expositors believe this is sort of akin to the 51st Psalm, and I would agree, except I think David wrote it sometime after, that is, when the reality and the power, and the joy, and the happiness of what occurred when he confessed his sin, was finally settling in, and it was replaced by joy. Now David’s sin, the consequences as a result were still forthcoming, and they might have been actually coming already. We don’t know. But they were forgiven! The guilt that he lived in for a year as he covered and stuffed it away was no longer grinding on his life. It’s been replaced by joy. The word “blessed” there… you see it? — it’s used twice and verses one and two… that is a word, it’s called the Hebrew plural. If we were to literally translate it in the English it would be “blessednesseses.” That would be really weird, but that’s what it would mean… Blessednesseses. The Hebrew plural… Here’s what it does… It conveys, it conveys God-given, multi-faceted, overflowing happiness! — not the limited kind like when your favorite team makes a last second shot and wins the game. This is deeper. It stays with you. In fact, the Hebrew word literally means “Happy! Oh, how very happy!” That’s what it means. And what David is doing in this Psalm, he is testifying to the experience of being forgiven. He’s literally dancing for joy! — and I’ll prove it to you.

But here’s the question, what goes into this kind of happiness? What goes into this kind of blessedness? So God given happiness, where does it come from? — and that’s what we’re talking about here. It comes first of all from having the weight of my sin lifted. Now if we were in the New Testament and we saw the word “forgiven,” the word “forgiven” in the New Testament is the Greek word, “aphie?mi.” It means to hurl away, to throw away, and aren’t you glad God takes our sin and throws it away? Amen? But this word is different. The Hebrew word means “to be lifted.” You see it in verse one?  Our sins… “Blessed is the man who’s transgression is forgiven.” It’s been lifted off.

Countless times I have led people to Christ who, the very first, or one of the very first words out of their mouth is, “I feel like a weight has been lifted off of me!” And that’s the idea here. This is what, this is what Bunyan meant when he was talking about Christian, his character in the Pilgrim’s Progress. He’s walking around with this big old burden. He’s doing everything legalistically, religiously, he’s doing good works, keeping the law, nothing can release the burden until he comes under the shadow of the cross and… pshew… off it goes, and tumbles into the tomb! That’s the idea here of the weight being lifted off.

Like the hymn, it is well with my soul. My favorite line in that hymn is:

“My sin… oh the bliss of this glorious thought! My sin, not in part, but the whole, is nailed to the cross. I bear it no more! Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, Oh, my soul!”

Words from the hymn, “It is Well”

That’s the idea. It’s like indescribable.

The first time I had this sense of indescribable joy was the day I trusted Christ as my Savior. I’d interacted with several people. My brother, Mike, a few days earlier, had sent in the mail a Bible to me as he was sharing Christ with me, and this is the Bible he sent me. And it’s the first Bible I had. And if you open it up… if I open the fly leaf of this Bible, I’ve taped in there the note he sent with this Bible. Here it is:

“Pat,

A Bible that is falling apart — usually belongs to somebody who isn’t!

Mark Twain once said: “Most people are bothered by those passages of Scripture which they cannot understand; but as for me, I have always noticed that the passages in Scripture which trouble me the most are those which I do understand.” And then he cites Romans 10:17:

“So then faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God.” And then he concludes with this: “I pray that this book will change your life as it did mine.” (2 Cor. 5:17)

Note written to Pat Nemmers from his brother, Mike Nemmers

But if you look in the far upper right hand corner, it says 9/7/82 on it, right? I came to Christ on 9/6/82. Unbeknownst to him, it had already changed my life and was changing my life! And the sense that I had walking around with that very Bible… I can still picture walking around my house thinking, “My sins have been forgiven!” It was indescribable! It can be yours as well.

Someone has said that the only… ‘Only the forgiven are truly happy.’ And I think that’s true. Only the forgiven are truly happy.

Now we’re not just forgiven, but look at verse 1 again. You’re not just forgiven. Your sins haven’t been just forgiven, but they’ve been covered! You see that?

Psalm 32:1

1 “Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, (weights have been taken off) whose sin is… covered.”

Now David, in the verses that follow, verses 3 through 5, he admits the misery that he was living in while covering his sin. And he describes it in very descriptive terms. “My bones were wasting away,” verse 3, “…groaning all day. Night and day Your hand was heavy on me.” I mean, he felt this pressure. “… strength dried up like summer.” And then he says, in verse 5, ‘I acknowledged it.’ ‘I acknowledged my sin to You and did not cover my… (Now, you’ve got two different “covers” going on here!) And so David admitted that he’d been covering his sins, and the pain that he endured during that year long time. But here’s the deal. Though he had lost physical vitality during that time, that was actually a mercy from God, because God’s hand pressuring him caused him to go from covering to confessing.

I wonder how many here or watching online… are you feeling that heavy hand of God on you? You feel like you’re being grinded right now. Even though you’ve tucked that sin away, it’s hidden, you just feel a heavy hand upon you right now. You know what David was saying here? He’s exclaiming, ‘I’ve exchanged my covering for God’s,’ and we don’t cover as well as God. You ever notice that? We don’t cover nearly as well as God does. And this is what forgiveness does. Forgiveness… covers. And it means that when you cover something, you don’t see it. You can’t see it. God isn’t looking at your sin anymore. His eye is still on you… versus 8 and 9… but it’s not on your sin.

And by the way, if God isn’t looking at ’em, you don’t have to either. If God isn’t looking at ’em, you don’t have to look at the one you’ve forgiven sin. You don’t ever remind … because forgiveness, by definition, says, ‘I’ll never remind you. My eye’s not on it anymore.’

And that’s why in this particular Psalm he says repeatedly, “Selah.” And all… that’s a musical note. It just means, ‘stop. Think about it. Contemplate what you just… what you just sang.’ That’s the idea.

So God given happiness comes and it can be yours if you trust in Jesus as your Savior. And if you’re a Christian, if you’ll acknowledge your sin and confess it, it’s like a weight, because it is a weight, that’s taken off of you.

Now God given happiness comes also from the number of our sins erased. That… go back to verse 2 where he says, “Blessed is the man against whom the Lord…” some of your Bible say “imputes no iniquity.” But this counts… I like “counts,” because it’s a bookkeeping term. So counts makes better sense. It means to account. It means to have to be mindful of something. You can’t get out of your head.

Now later on in Psalm 130, the Bible describes:

[Psalm 130:3-4]

3 “If God should mark iniquities (or count iniquities… different Hebrew word, but same idea) “O LORD, who would stand?”

(It’s a rhetorical question. We wouldn’t stand if God was counting every one of your sins! No! He says)

4 “But there is forgiveness with You that You may be feared.”

(And the word “count” there literally means, “to keep track of.”)

But those first two verses in Psalm 32 are the very ones that Paul uses as a foundation for the forgiveness that we experience in his magnum opus, the book of Romans. Here’s what he says in chapter four. Here’s what he says:

Romans 4:7-8

7 “Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, (he’s quoting right here from Psalm 32) and whose sins are covered;

8 blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not (what) count his sin.”

That’s the Greek word, “logizomai.” Now that word… you can hear the word log in it. When we log something, we’re recording it, right? That’s the idea here. You’re not, I’m not recording your sin. Can you imagine if He did?

I had an issue with a man several years ago. It was really petty, but it went from petty to ugly in over a couple of months period of time. So I was jumping through every hoop to try to reconcile. I’d been to his home, and I went… and then in the course of so doing I was studying the love chapter, 1 Corinthians 13, and that line… which I’d read before but… boy, it took on new meaning. It said, “Love does not keep a record of wrong.” Have you ever read that? I’m telling you, that cut me in half! — and so I was as determined as I’d ever been. I made my way to his home, and I sat down in his home, and I explained how God was working on my heart and and not to keep a record of wrongs. And I was ready to just erase the whole thing if he’d be willing to erase the whole thing. And he was sitting across from me with some papers in his hands with six accusations against me! I came with an eraser. He was waitin’ with a list. Listen to me. First of all, don’t be that guy. And secondly, if you’re in Christ, God doesn’t keep a record of your sins. He erases them! Hallelujah.

So God given happiness, that which has eluded some of you, comes… in Christ, when the weight’s taken off, you sense you believe the sin has been erased.

And thirdly, when God’s hiding place is found. Look down to verse 7 again. I love this!

Psalm 32:7

7 “You are a hiding place for me; You preserve me from trouble; You surround me with shouts of deliverance.”

Now, David had covered his sins. We see that repeatedly, both in the narrative, in Psalm 51, and this one here. It takes us all the way back to Genesis chapter 3. Remember when sin enters the world through Adam and Eve when they first sinned, when they first disobeyed God the first thing they did was cover it with the foliage of Eden. They covered themselves. They covered… and we’ve been covering ever since. It’s what we do. It’s what you do. When your sin is pouring out, the first thing you get dodgy, you make up an excuse. ‘Well, it’s, you know…’ It’s just like Adam did. It’s like Eve… just like Eve did. ‘Well, the serpent…’ We just pass the buck. We’re constantly covering. It’s what we do. First they covered, and then… they hid… and it always works that way. You cover… you hide. You cover… you hide. Listen, when we cover our sins, we hide them away. When God covers our sin, He takes them away!Amen? What a difference. So let me ask you, you got any hiding places? And what do you keep in there, really?

I mean, you’re looking at a guy who had 10 kids and 38 grandkids. I’ve played hide and seek more times that I could ever count, and the kids are the dumbest hiders. They just are! You know they… ‘Okay, I’m gonna hide!’ — and they get behind the curtain. Here’s the curtain, you know… whOomp! I know where you’re at! Hey, listen! You’re that kid! I’m that kid! That’s what we do! And it’s so dumb! —’cause you’re not hiding from God. He sees that. But here’s the Good News. Look at verse six. Look at it.

Psalm 32:6

6 “Therefore let everyone who is godly offer prayer to You at a time when you may be found;”

I’ve got news for you. Godly people sin.

Every time I read this, I think of a time many years ago… first church. And for about 20 years, every Sunday night… every Sunday night, without exception… our family all came back together… all of us. My original family, and then my new family when I married Marilyn. And so we got together at the end of every Sunday… every Sunday, for about a half hour, and everybody had to share one thing they got out of their day. Didn’t have to be a positive thing. It might be a negative thing. Something they got out of church. Didn’t matter if it was a song we sang, an encounter in the foyer or something Dad preached. It didn’t matter… something.

Well, back in the day, when I was in this little country church, we had opened testimony times on Sunday nights. And on that particular Sunday night, the man who was a mentor and a father figure to me, his name was Dallas Campbell. He was just an incredibly godly man. And we all, the whole church looked up to him, but he stood up and he confessed to the whole church a sin that he had sinned against his wife. I don’t remember what it was. I think it was some attitude that he copped or something. But he was sincere about it. And there were probably half a dozen other testimonies that went on that night. And I remember he was fairly impactful, but we went on with it. That night we all met together after church in the home before we went to bed, and we were going around, and we came to my five year old, and we got to my five year old. I’ll never forget word verbatim what came out of his mouth. He looked at me and he said, “Mr. Campbell sins?” In his wildest imagination, he could not imagine Mr. Campbell ever sinning. Well, I’ve got news for you. He did. And so do you! But here’s better news. Even the godly sin, and, therefore, let everyone who is godly offer prayer in a time when you may be found! Isn’t that wonderful? — because forgiveness is for you! And look again at that line… I love this line! — at the beginning of verse seven:

Romans 32:7

7 “You are a hiding place for me;”

For 10 years, I hid my sexual indiscretion from my first wife, now with the Lord. Never in those 10 years did I lie to her… but I danced around the truth edges as close as you could until I couldn’t dance any longer. And on the night I confessed my sin to my wife and sought her forgiveness and she forgave me, I’ve gotta tell you something. The relief I felt… indescribable! — absolutely indescribable! I can relate to what David says here. I was surrounded by shouts of deliverance! — because I’d been delivered through confession.

So David was hiding from God. Now he’s hiding in God. What a difference! He’s still hidin’… but he’s hiding in God. And that’s what Paul meant when he said on the flip side… ‘You died if you know Christ, and your life is hid with Christ in God.’ Beautiful place to be, right? So where are you hiding right now? We’re all hidin’. The only question is, where are you hiding?

So, God given happiness… which again has eluded some of you… comes from having the weight of sin lifted, having the number of our sins erased, having found our place in God, and having God’s leading experienced. And that’s what the back half of this Psalm is talking about. He says in verse 8, it’s… By the way, in verse 8, it’s like… it’s almost like God takes the pen from David and starts to write, ‘I’m taking this part over.’ And God says:

Psalm 32:8

8 “I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you with My eye upon you.”

Now it’s one thing to be forgiven. It’s another thing to sense you’ve been forgiven, to feel like you’ve been forgiven, to experience the forgiveness of God. And I know that some of you inside go, “Amen! Amen! Amen! I just wish I could say ‘Amen!” — because you’ve experienced that, or you wish you could experience that. Listen, this is talking about God’s protection. “I’ll instruct you and I’ll teach you in the ways you go. I’ll counsel you with My eye upon you.” Verse 10:

Psalm 32:10

10  “Many are the sorrows of the wicked, but steadfast love surrounds (protects) the one who trusts in the LORD.”

So God doesn’t just protect us. God directs us. And you might be saying, ‘Well, what is… protects us from what?’ Well, how about ongoing guilt? How about a sense of failure? How about the feeling of uselessness? How about sins that have been forgiven, and you’re having this false sense of guilt. You know they’ve been forgiven. Somebody just the other day came to me about something. And remember I said this last week, that if you confess your sin to God… you’ve genuinely from your heart confessed your sin… God forgives you of your sin! And if you are one of those people who say, ‘Well, I just don’t feel very forgiven.’ You’re not being humble. You’re being faithless, because you’re not taking God at His Word. “If you confess your sins, He’s faithful and just to forgive you of your sins, cleanse you from all unrighteousness.“[1 John 1:9] Amen? So believe that! But there’s protection here in the love of God, in the forgiveness of God. There’s protection from all of that. [John] Piper says this:

“Protection with direction, care with counsel, that is the happy condition of the person who prays to God and receives forgiveness for his sins.” John Piper

The night that God revealed to me that I was making my son… who was completely off the chain… an idol, that night I experienced forgiveness like I’d never experienced it before. I can still remember thinking… I was so laboring over… I so wanted to change him! “I’ve gotta change this kid!” I couldn’t change the kid, and God reminded me that I had so idolized the change that needed to take place in his life that I had shrouded my worship of Him! I had to confess that as a sin. It was idolatry! — and I confessed it as idolatry. And I told God I would trust Him. And I’m gonna tell you in that moment, I know I was forgiven and I no longer held the burden of delivering my son. And the only way I can describe the feeling that I had in that moment as tears were coursing down my cheeks, is it was indescribable! I felt like I got saved all over again! That’s not good theology, but it’s good feeling. So that’s why I love this line at the end of verse 8:

Psalm 32:8

8 “I will counsel you with My eye upon you.”

I want you to think about that. See, when God puts you back in the game, when God forgives you, He doesn’t just throw you in the pool and, you know, help you flail around and, ‘Hope you don’t bob and quit bobbin’!’ I mean, He does throw you in the pool. But when God throws you in the pool, you know what He does? He sits on the side with His eye on you. He’s not going to let you go down. It’s not going to happen, because He never fails! Amen? ‘His steadfast love is never failing, and His mercies are new every morning.’ [Lamentations 3:22-23] God will put you back in the pool, but He’s not going to leave you alone. He’s going to sit on the side and make sure you don’t go down. And that is the love of God! Amen!

This is the forgiveness that we… this is what causes the explosive praise that comes out of David’s mouth and through his pen. As I said, it’s as if God had picked up the pen, took it away from David and then in verse 9, he says… I don’t know if God’s writing this… I mean, what difference does it make? It’s from God! Right? But verse 9… don’t be like… So he takes you from the pool to the barnyard. He says:

Psalm 32:9

‘Don’t be like the horse or the mule. They don’t have any understanding. They gotta be held with a bit and a bridal or they won’t come near you.’

I think God, He’s reminding David of what he was like during that year. And He’s reminding you, He’s reminding you, He’s reminding me of our inherent stubbornness to repent, and stubbornness is as the sin of idolatry. That’s what the scripture says. If you’re a stubborn person, you’re an idolatrous person. And God is reminding David… He’s reminding us! — because this isn’t David anymore. David can read the… ‘Yeah, I’m not like the horse and the mule anymore!’ I mean, David is no longer harnessed as a horse. He is free as a dancer right now. And he is dancing! God isn’t dragging him around anymore. Look at verse 11:

Psalm 32:11

11 “Be glad in the LORD…” (The Hebrew word “glad” literally means “to spin around.” It pictures somebody spinning like a top in a dance! Be glad in the Lord) and rejoice, O righteous, and shout for joy, all you upright in heart!”

(Dancing for joy! You will too, in time… if you’re forgiven.)

Just the other day, a dear friend and a fellow servant confessed a sin to a couple of large groups. In the course of so doing, he made this comment. He said that his life might be better off (quote) “If I wouldn’t have admitted my sin, but I wouldn’t change it, not even now.” His joy will come, and yours will too if you confess and experience the forgiveness of God. Will you pray with me?

Our Father in Heaven, thank You for being our forgiver. Thank You for the truth of Your Word that tells us, It tells us, those of us who know You, that if we do confess our sins in Your faithfulness, not our fickleness, but in Your faithfulness, and in Your righteousness, and because of what Your Son, Jesus, did for us, You will forgive us of our sins and You’ll cleanse us from all unrighteousness. And, O God, I pray that many here would experience the joy of forgiveness, the release of forgiveness. And they would be able to be like David eventually, once it all rests upon them, that they could be glad and spin for joy! — because You are a faithful God. Now Lord, I do pray for those who are here who’ve never experienced the forgiveness that the cross of Jesus offers to us. If that’s you, dear friend, and the weight of your sin is crushing you even as we pray, would you just acknowledge your sin to God and believe that Jesus died and rose again for you? Trust Him as your personal Savior. And for the rest of us who know You, Lord, we thank You for the life of David, and thanks for giving it to us, warts and all, because it reminds us that we’re a whole lot more like David than we are like Jesus. And like David, we can experience with joy, inexpressible, indescribable, and full of glory when we come back to You for forgiveness. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen. Let’s stand. [Music]