Thankful For Forgiveness

Good morning. Welcome to Jefferson Park Baptist Church. It's good to be with you, church, singing and hearing one another sing the words of God's grace together. It was a balm to my soul as I come in with still yesterday's event somewhat feeling raw. Yesterday's events took me through a process and I'm gonna walk through that with you so that I can hope to lead us to our psalm today as we reflect upon yesterday's events. My first response was just shock. Are you serious? How can this be happening in my city? How can this, these events and these people be doing this? And then there was this confusion as it continued to escalate and get worse and then I just became angry. especially as the reports of deaths taking place. And then I had to get to the point that I resolved to do, when I first became a Christian, or soon after I became a Christian, I had to start reflecting upon my own sin. The shock, the confusion, the anger that I was feeling from the events that I was witnessing, I then had to kind of start reflecting. Because I made a commitment years ago when I came across Jonathan Edwards' resolutions to to resolve to think about my sin when looking at others' sin. Let me read this resolution. You can Google this, it's easy to find. Jonathan Edwards Resolutions, this is number eight. Resolved to act in all respects, both speaking and doing, as if nobody had been so vile as I. And as if I had committed the same sins or had the same infirmities or failings as others. And that I will let the knowledge of their failings promote nothing but shame in myself. Improve only an occasion of my confession of my own sins and misery to God. Those are heavy commitments. That's a heavy challenge in a column. Let's read that last part. I will let the knowledge of their failings promote nothing but shame in myself and prove only an occasion of my confessing my own sins. In misery, God. You see, as I watched yesterday, I have no interest in protesting That's not how I'm going to manifest my sin. But as I look at what they're doing, I see a reflection of sin that is in my heart. A self-centeredness, a selfishness. That sadly, it doesn't go against those I'm opposed to, or it doesn't hurt those that I'm enemies with, or just strangers, like yesterday. No, my self-centeredness and my selfishness most often hurts my family. and my friends, my loved ones. My sin against those that God created in His image that are worthy of honor and respect and love is scary to me. It causes me to reflect upon my shame and confess my sin to them, but then it gets terrifying as I realize that my selfishness, My sin is first and foremost against God. That's terrifying. He created all of us in his image. All worthy of honor and respect. And he created us to worship him. Rebel against him. Refuse him. See, that's where we need to get, church. Right there. So that we then can actually be ambassadors of reconciliation, ambassadors of God's grace. We have to first get to the place where we realize we're sinners. We're not any better than the other people we're looking at and realizing their sin. It's easier to see somebody else's sin. We're sinners who have offended God. We must come and confess our sin to God, and this is why today's psalm is especially a helpful place for us to be. It's going to take us. and to our sins so that we can confess it to our God and then receive the blessing of forgiveness. But this is the beauty of our passage is it teaches happiness. You think about yesterday, that was unhappy in every way. The fruit of sin is chaos, hurt, in yesterday's events, in my own home when I sin, among my friends when I sin, but the fruit of confessing sin, the fruit of actually following Christ is happy. This is something we oftentimes just overlook. God's word teaches us a lot about happy. It's one of the key teachings of all of scripture because God desires our happiness. but we have to have the humility to come to Him on His terms to really receive His happiness. That's our thesis for this morning. Happiness comes from the humility to seek forgiveness for our sins. That's where it starts. Happiness comes from the humility to seek forgiveness for our sins. So we're gonna look at Psalm 32. If you look, it says amaskil. That's the pre-script there. That's simply an instructional psalm, that's what it means. There's a number of these in the psalms. It's an instructional psalm. It's instructing us on how to be happy, just like Psalm 1 did. Blessed are those who delight in the law of the Lord. You're blessed if you delight in God's word. Here this morning, we're gonna say we're blessed. We're gonna say that we're happy if we seek his forgiveness. Let's look at our first section. The blessing of forgiveness. This is verses one and two. The blessing of forgiveness. How blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. How blessed is the man to whom the Lord does not impute iniquity, and whose spirit there is no deceit. The psalm is very emphatic about what the teaching's about. Blessing. How blessed. How blessed. It's repeated. It brings a focus to our psalm. The focus here is the power of forgiveness that makes you happy. As powerful as we think about the simple message, happy is being forgiven. Now, Forgiveness is one of these concepts that we oftentimes get confused. And forgiveness, I want to first start out by making it clear, to forgive somebody is to make a promise to them. When you forgive, you're making a promise. I'm no longer going to count those sins against you. I'm going to promise that I'm not going to dwell on it. I'm not gonna bring it up again. I'm not gonna bring it back against you. So when you forgive somebody, you're making a promise. That offense is removed. I'm not going to count it against you. And this is important because when we've sinned against somebody, it makes the relationship kind of awkward. But when we know we've sinned against somebody, it makes the relationship uncomfortable. You don't know how to talk, you're on edge, you're kind of maybe on eggshells, like how do I relate to this person? And here we see God is the one we've sinned against. And he says your blessing when you confess your sin is forgiveness. It renews that happy relationship that God created us to enjoy. I also want us to see something else here. There's the blessing, which is best translated, another word is happy. So our teaching is about happiness and about confession and about forgiveness, and it assumes something that's very important about all of us. The psalmist assumes that we have sin. It assumes that our most important relationship is with God, to know Him, to love Him. And we've sinned against Him. And we need to be forgiven. So this morning, as you think about God, you may feel guilt, distance, anger, confusion. You may feel just confused about who God is, and God did not create you to have that. He created you to have a happy relationship. And so here he's instructing us, come and confess. So what keeps you from happiness? How blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered, whom iniquity is not imputed. Well, those are the three things that keep us from happiness. Our transgression, our sin, our iniquity. And each one of these really focus on something specific. The word transgression, that's really focused on a rebellion. Our turning against God, our resisting Him, our rejection of Him. Sin, that's just simply missing the mark. That's the misdemeanor. You did not obey the law. Iniquity is even harder to think about, though. It's our twistedness. It's how our heart, our desires, our thoughts, they're twisted against God. They're perverse. They're not the way they're supposed to be. Our sin, that's what keeps us from being happy. Okay, well what brings happiness? Forgiveness. Our sin being covered. Our iniquity not being imputed. That verse one, how blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven. This actually captures the idea that this word forgiven for something being carried away. You can easily think of the Old Testament sacrificial system where sin was put on a scapegoat and then cast out into the wilderness. The sin is cast away out of sight. When our sin is counted against, our sin that's ours is no longer counted against us but someone else. Happiness is found when we're forgiven. The sin is moved away. When our sin is covered, God doesn't look at it. It's not imputed. It's not put on our account, even though it's legally ours. God declares us innocent. When God no longer counts our sin against us, when he covers our sin, when he no longer sees it, this is what brings happiness. Now, as we look at this Psalm, notice that the specific sin isn't mentioned. A lot of people hypothesize, a lot of the commentators, they think that this is David, again, reflecting upon his sin with Bathsheba, where he committed murder and adultery. And again, if we had a definite context, it would probably make it a little easier to preach, but the beauty of this kind of instruction, where the sin isn't explicit, it actually allows us to easier pray this with our sin. It invites us in to think about our sin and how it needs to be forgiven, covered, and no longer counted against us. As we think about this particular passage, we need to see something in that our sin is first and foremost against God. He is who we sin against first and foremost. It doesn't talk about the forgiveness we need from others, which is a real need. But the forgiveness we need from God. Sin is serious because sin is really just us elevating ourselves above God. Telling Him we matter more than He does. Our thoughts are higher than His thoughts. Our ways are greater than His ways. Whatever He says, well those were good suggestions back then, but today we've got things figured out a little bit better. Now that's serious. That is a serious self-centeredness. That is a serious sin that we have to repent of. Here's the power of the passage and the simplicity. There's two truths. God is good and merciful. Sin is destructive and cruel. God is good. He's longing for us to come who've sinned against Him so that He can forgive us. God brings happiness, sin brings mercy. So I ask, Christian, how often are we confessing our sin? In our prayers, how often are we giving God a to-do list versus coming to God and saying, here's my sin? Are we confessing sin as often as we sin? Think about how often we sin. And are we seeking forgiveness as often? Let's continue to look at our passage. The need for forgiveness, verses three to four. So to our psalmist, he starts out with just a bold truth. Happiness is found in forgiveness. Happiness is found in forgiveness. Our sin being covered. Happiness is found when our iniquity is not imputed to us. And then verses three and four, that shows our need for forgiveness. Notice the language changes from that general truth to him looking back at his past. When I kept silent. When I kept silent, my body wasted away. My groanings were all day long. Your hand was heavy upon me. My vitality was drained away. The consequence of sin is being wasted away, groaning, feeling the weight being drained. There's the psalmist. He's talking about when he was silent. Instead of confessing sin, which requires words, he's silent about his sin. And the effect of it is the groaning and the wasting away. This reminds me of Hawthorne's famous novel, The Scarlet Letter, and we usually think of Hester Pryne there, but if you remember, it's Dimmesdale who dies with a hidden letter on his chest. Hester Pryne, She had Pearl. Her sin was obvious to everyone. What she had done was normal to everyone, but it was Dimmesdale, the other adulterer, who wasted away because he kept that sin hidden. See, sin is destructive. Hidden sin is deadly. Let's go back to verse two. Many of you are wondering, when are you gonna talk about that fourth line in verse two, or the second line of verse two? Here's where we need to talk about it. and in whose spirit there is no deceit. When we are honest about who we are and what we have done before God, we get to confess and we get blessing. But our natural state is to be twisted. To believe the lie that it's okay. To believe the lie that I can be silent. To believe the lie that my sin, it isn't that bad. It's not going to cause that much trouble. It isn't that destructive. And we lie to ourselves. Because there's one truth about sin. It always leads to more sin. It has to be confessed. It has to be stopped. Sin always leads to more sin, and then that sin always leads to more destruction. That's all sin does. It's pretty amazing. What does sin promise? It promises happiness. Sim wants to say, come in and just take a little bite. Just gossip a little bit. Your anger, you're justified in that anger. You enjoy that anger. It's going to make you happy. It's constantly telling you, just enjoy this little bit. It's okay. You got it under control. But it's consuming. And then it becomes exhausting. And then it's deadly. That is our self-deceit, that we think we can control it, that we think we're in charge of it. No. It wastes us away. It causes a groaning. This confession of the need, how deadly forgiveness is in verse three and four is extremely important for us to realize. As we think about this, what keeps us from confessing? Maybe we question, is God really good? Will he take my sin that I confess and use it against me? Well, no, he already knows what you've done. We can be assured that he is a good, gracious God because he sent his son to die so he can forgive us. Really, it's our love for sin that keeps us silent about our sin. It isn't until we see how gross, destructive, and deadly our sin is that we'll come and confess it. We have to pray, God help me to not be deceived about what this is I'm actually doing, and what it's doing to me, and my relationship with you, my relationship with my loved ones, and my relationship with my neighbors. We have to see it for what it is. It's dangerous and deadly. That's what we need, forgiveness. So we've seen the blessing of forgiveness. Happy is he whose transgression is forgiven. We've seen the need for forgiveness. When I kept silent, I wasted away. And now we have this sweet declaration of the certainty of forgiveness. The certainty of forgiveness. Verse five, let's just focus there for as long as we can. This is worthy of your memorization and meditation. acknowledged my sin to you. In my iniquity, I did not hide. I said, I will confess my transgressions to the Lord, and you forgave the guilt of my sin. The psalmist has given a bold assertion, you're happy if you're forgiven. He's reflecting on how miserable sin has made him, and now he turns and he makes this confident confession of sin. I acknowledged, I did not hide, I confessed, and then that sweet consequence, you forgave me. I acknowledged, I stopped hiding, I confessed, and you forgave my sin. What happened between verses four and five? The psalmist simply turned his posture. He stopped embracing sin and he started embracing God. He stopped loving sin and he began to realize that his love for God is what really matters most. That is where happiness is. I will confess my transgressions to the Lord. And confession leads to forgiveness. Brothers and sisters, this is what's really unique about Christianity. If you're not a Christian, you need to understand, this is what is unique about Christianity. We get to come, as John did earlier, and boldly confess our sin with a complete assurance that we can be forgiven. That is unique about Christianity. Most religions want to look at sin in two ways. That it's not real. You know, it's not a real sin against a real God. Or more so, typically, it's wanting to say, if you just outdo your sin with good works, then you'll be okay. No, as we look at the bold truth of who we are, we get to confess our sins. We get to look and say, God, will you forgive me? and we're forgiven. Now, I wanna be very clear, that's not cheap, it's not easy, it's just that simple. Forgiveness is not cheap because Jesus Christ had to die so that we can be forgiven. It's not easy because turning away from sin and to God, that is hard, but His grace is efficient. It is that simple. It's turning from our sin and turning to the gracious God that sent his son to die for us, that's forgiveness. It's that simple, but do not think it's cheap, and do not think it's easy. Let's look at how this makes Christianity unique. We don't deny that sin exists, we need to realize how our sin affects us, our relation with God, our relation with others. But more so, I really want to challenge because this is how we mostly think. If I just outdo my bad deeds with my good deeds, then I'll be okay. Most religions teach this. I actually went and looked up, what does Islam teach on this? And Islam says this, pray fast and help your neighbor. And I was listening to a sermonette by an imam, and he said, if you do those three things, then you will know You're on your way to forgiveness. That's not very assuring. If you do these things, then you'll know you're on your way to forgiveness. You'll start doing so many more good deeds, then all your bad deeds, they'll be removed. Or they won't be, they'll be counted over against them. Christianity doesn't work like that. I don't believe our sin lets it work like that. No, when we come to God and we say, God, I've sinned. When we come and we don't pretend that we can outdo our bad deeds with our good deeds, we realize that we've sinned in such a way that we've not honored God, we've not given thanks to God. God says, I forgive you. You can know there is now no condemnation for those who have come and believed in Jesus Christ. There's a certainty of forgiveness that this psalmist even declares. And that's because we can look and we can see that Jesus Christ, he came down to be like us in every way. He was a true human. Yet, he was without sin. He lived a life that fulfilled all the righteous requirements of God. He then died a death he did not deserve. His death was covered with shame, dishonor, and pain, and most of all, the wrath of God. See, what's happening that day on that cross as that righteous man died, the wrath of God against our sin was counted against him. He paid our penalty so that His blood covers our sin. When God looks at us, when we believe in Jesus and we confess our sin and we're forgiven, He no longer sees our sin. He sees the blood and righteousness of Jesus Christ. He no longer imputes our iniquity to us. No, He's imputed it, He's carried it to Jesus. We are now assured of forgiveness. We can now come to Him with complete confidence because we know He's a God who is eager to forgive because He sent His Son to die for us. As we look at this verse five, again, I commend it to you for your memorization and meditation. I acknowledge my sin to you. My iniquity I did not hide. I confess my transgression to the Lord and you forgave me. It's very important for us to see here. We're confessing my sin, my transgression, my iniquity. It's my confession and that leads to my happiness. Now, what can keep us from this kind of happiness is being so overwhelmed with other people's sin that we get distracted and don't realize the danger of our own sin. Notice it doesn't say I confess your sin and your transgression, your iniquity, it's my confession. No, that leads to my bitterness. And that leads to my self-righteousness. Something important here. The psalmist is leading us how to confess our sin. Knowing it's very easy for us to get overwhelmed with other people's sin. As we continue to look at verse six and seven, therefore let everyone who has godly pray to you in a time when you may be found, surely in a flood of great waters that will not reach him. You are my hiding place, you preserve me from trouble, you surround me with songs of deliverance. There's a surety. God is my hiding place. You preserve me, you surround me with songs of deliverance, there's a great confidence in coming to me with forgiveness. And then there's verse six that actually serves as sort of a warning here, doesn't it? There's a promise, pray to God while he may be found. So you can pray, right now you're here, you can confess your sin to God, you can come and repent of your sin, come to Christ for forgiveness, and he hears you, but there's also a sense here in which that may not always be available to you. That invitation may not always be available, which is why we say do not put it off. As we finish this section, blessed are those who have forgiveness, who see a need for forgiveness, who see a certainty of forgiveness. I want us to think about what does it mean to confess my sin? What does it mean to confess my sin? First and foremost, we confess to God. We look to Him, we know we can trust Him. Again, we look to the cross, and we meditate upon how clear His love is displayed. He can be trusted. We can turn to Him and know that when we confess our sins, He's sure to forgive us. We know that we deserve wrath, and so we acknowledge before God, we have sinned against you, and we receive forgiveness. Second, What does this mean about our confession to others? If your sin was against someone else other than God, you confess it to that person directly. First and foremost, any sin we commit is always, first and foremost, against God. But if others are victims of our sin, you confess that to them. I also want to say I believe if anyone actually witnessed that sin, you You ask for their forgiveness. So anytime I sin against Lisa in front of my kids, I bring them in and they should hear my confession. Anyone who has witnessed the sin should witness the confession, hear the apology. Third, well, what if my sin was done in private? There were no witnesses. I'm just sending my own thoughts and my own private home. Well, it is helpful for you to go and find someone who believes the gospel and you know you can trust and confess that sin. It is primarily you confessing to God, but there's something important about us learning how to confess our sins to one another. But you've got to find somebody you can trust in the gospel. Here's how you identify somebody you can trust to confess your sin to. First, find someone who talks openly about their own sin, not the sin of others. Find somebody who talks about their own sin, not the sins of others. Secondly, they talk freely of God's grace with great joy. They talk about their sin in light of God's grace with great joy. So that's how you find someone, and I encourage you to do that, and here's just one other thing on confession. What do I do if someone confesses sin to me? You quickly say, in the name of Jesus Christ, you're forgiven. say with absolute confidence that in Jesus Christ you're forgiven. Now you're not functioning like a great priest here that gets to dispense grace. You're simply an ambassador of Jesus Christ. If someone has confessed sin, we do get to function as ambassadors of Christ and declare your sins are forgiven. And these are sweet words that are good for us to hear. They're good for us to say. The believer doesn't say, how could you, when they hear a confession of sin, they say, me too, isn't it great to be forgiven? Finally, we look at our last section, and there's an interesting turn here. Look at verse eight. This is the life of the forgiven. The psalmist, he turns from, confessing sin, and talking about his own confession and misery, to giving instruction. And this isn't actually all that odd. We see David doing this in Psalm 51, which we're gonna sing a paraphrased version here soon, where he goes from confessing his sin to teaching his brothers. I will instruct you and teach you in the way which you should go. I will counsel you with my eye upon you. Do not be as the horse or as the mule, which have no understanding, whose trappings include bit and bridle to hold them in check, otherwise they will not come near to you. How many are the sorrows of the wicked, but he who trusts in the Lord, loving kindness shall surround him. Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, you righteous ones, and shout for joy, all you who are upright in heart. So verse eight, I believe, the psalmist is turning to start giving instruction on, he's instructing us, modeling what it looks like to forgive, to receive forgiveness, rather. And now he's going to counsel us, and the counsel really hinges upon verse nine, which is a pretty fantastic verse, if you think about what he's saying here. Don't be a mule. Isn't that encouraging? Don't be like a mule whose trappings whose elaborate dress, whose glory is seen in the fact that they have to have a harness that controls them. Don't be so ornery and hard-hearted and hard-headed that God has to ornate you with a bit and bridle. Be eager to see how deceitful sin is. Be eager to see the sin and the transgressions we've committed. Be eager for these things. Don't be like a mule who has to be pulled to come to you. Be willing and eager to confess sins to find forgiveness. There's a real blessing in being willing to hear correction. When we hear correction, there's something we should always remember. When somebody says something against us, and even if we don't recognize what they're saying is true, it is true that we are definitely worse than they understand us to be. If somebody comes and says, this was wrong with you, I don't know if that's true, but I'm probably worse than what you're talking about. That makes us not like a mule. Secondly, just realizing we're easily self-deceived. I may not see it, but I don't have to see it. If all I ever say is I'm only gonna repent of the things that I definitely understand about myself, then we're gonna be more like a mule. We first see that we're probably worse than what the person is saying about us, and we're easily self-deceived. And third, know that God desires for us to enjoy his happy life. It's good to see sin so that we can confess sin, so that we can enjoy forgiveness. As we turn to the end, verse 10, I believe this is a great summary statement. Many are the sorrows of the wicked. That's verse three and four. When we remain in our sin, when we remain silent about it, when we don't confess it, it's a sorrowful life. Something God blesses you with, Christian, is miserable, just a miserableness, just misery. It's a blessing to be miserable in sin, because God created you to be happy in Him. That means that when we're just pursuing sin, it's going to be miserable, and that's a blessing to wake you up and bring you to true happiness. But he who trusts in the Lord, Loving kindness shall surround him. There's just a great assurance, you can go to God. You can confess your sin and his loving kindness, his steadfast love will surround you. Now look at verse 11, it ends just like almost every psalm ends. Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, you righteous ones. And shout for joy all who are upright in heart. Every psalm, no matter if it starts out with the nations are raging against God, there's a real threat, somebody's attacking me, here's my problem, God, I don't understand what's going on. No matter the problem, this is what's so beautiful about the psalms. They lead us to praising Him with a glad heart, rejoicing in salvation. Here we're confronted with our sin, first and foremost, and we end, be glad in the Lord, rejoice. Be thankful that we can know our sin, confess our sin, and have an assurance of forgiveness. Shout for joy because of what Christ has done for us and what he offers us. Will you pray with me? Father, we come before you. as those you've created in your own image for your worship. Forgive us for how we have not worshiped you. Forgive us for refusing to honor you and to give you thanks. Forgive us for how we've not honored and respected one another. Forgive us for always trying to justify our sin by pointing at somebody who we think is worse than us. We thank you. that you have sent your son, so as we confess our sin, we can do so boldly, knowing that you're not a God who's going to exercise wrath at that moment, but you're a God who's going to and already has exercised your great grace and mercy by allowing us to see that sin, confess that sin, and enjoy your forgiveness. Lord, help us to truly delight, delight, the welcomed invitation, the invitation you give us to confess our sin and be forgiven so that we can shout for joy at your great mercy. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.