Text: Psalm 32:1-5
Why do you begin your service that way? It’s so negative. I don’t like that part of your worship. Ever heard that? I have. Ever thought that about the way we usually begin our worship? By confessing our sins, our sinfulness?
Well you know what? We shouldn’t like it. It shouldn’t be easy to say to the One who made us, who provides for us, who gave his own Son to suffer and die for us, I have sinned against you.
Yet maybe it has become easy for us — at least to say the words we are about to say. Maybe at times our confession has become something else. Kind of a shrug your shoulders ritual where the words roll of our lips but hardly speak from our hearts.
Today we hear the inspired words of King David who wrote this psalm. It’s one of a number of psalms we call penitential, that is a psalm of repentance. Of course, when we think of David it’s easy to say, no wonder. That guy really sinned. He had a lot to confess. No wonder he was so happy to be forgiven.
But if that’s our reaction, we’re missing the point. This is not just about David. It’s about each of us here. For how have we come today? How do we come every time we gather. Trailing a trash bag behind us. A bag that contains all kinds of things. Unkind words to those we are supposed to love, lousy attitudes, ingratitude, impatience, anger, lust to name a few.
With this psalm the Holy Spirit urges us to come to God confessing our sin. But here with David, the Spirit shows us so much more. This is the great thing we see today in this Word. The blessedness…
O the Happiness of God’s forgiveness
There are Christians who believe that if you are a true Christian, you can never fall away. If King David were here, he would tell us something much different. About himself. He did fall away like some of us have at times in our lives. The tawdry details of David are in 2Samuel 11. One night, up on the roof of his palace, he spotted a woman bathing. She was beautiful. David wanted her even when he found out she was married. He had to have her for himself even if it meant conspiring to have her husband killed. He did that. And then he flaunted his sin by bringing Bathsheba into his palace.
Then we come to chapter 12. We hear how the Lord’s prophet courageously confronted the King. He showed him his sin and David confessed it. But what we don’t see is that a year went by in between.
During that year it may have seemed to many, that things were going good for David. After all, David was in his palace. There servants attended him. He lived in luxury, doing whatever he pleased and there he was surrounded by a bevy of gorgeous women. It might have seemed that David’s sin, his guilt, was no big deal.
But read this psalm. Read psalm 6 and you learn the real story. In stubborn silence, David was wasting away. Listen to him describe it: 3 When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. 4For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was sapped as in the heat of summer. David’s guilt would not leave him alone. He couldn’t sleep. His body ached. And he was dog tired like we might be on a hot summer day. All symptoms of something far worse. A soul weighed down, burdened with guilt hemorrhaging inside. A soul in stubborn silence, keeping its distance from God, wasting away.
And we are no different. We waste away when we live in our own stubborn silence. When we refuse to open that trash bag of our lives and admit to God what we’ve put there. For guilt is a terrible thing. And yes counselors may be able to help us push back against those guilty feelings. But they can’t take away the guilt for what we’ve done or failed to do. They can’t remove the threat of God’s judgment.
So David warns us here. Do not be like the horse or the mule, which have no understanding… You or I may not have four legs but there have been times when I have born a close resemblance to a mule. I foolishly went on in my own stubborn silence. Don’t, David says. .Instead as we see here: confess your sins and enjoy the freedom of God’s forgiveness.
5Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity. I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord” That didn’t happen by itself you know. The Lord sent his prophet Nathan to bring David back to his senses. Who is your Nathan? It’s easy to resent that Christian who shows you your sin. It’s easier to kill the messenger than listen to the message. It took a lot of courage for the prophet Nathan to confront his King.
But that he did. And it convicted David’s heart. The Holy Spirit broke down that wall of stubborn stony silence. And now David confessed, I have sinned against the Lord. And here David must have marveled. How can this be? For right on the heels of his confession came this: The Lord has taken away your sin. (2Sam 12) Of course, we Christians today need not be surprised. We know that parable told by our Lord Jesus. How a father waited anxiously for his son’s return. That son who had made such a mess out of his life. But what did that son find when he returned? A father so very ready to forgive his son.
That father represents our Father in heaven. God the Father who sent his one and only Son to this world. He made it possible for David to hear. He made it possible for us to hear every time we come confessing our guilt: The Lord has taken away your sin.
David can hardly contain himself here. 1 Blessed is he whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. 2Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord does not count against him and in whose spirit is no deceit.
That first word blessed hardly conveys the joy David then knew. O the happiness of sins forgiven. Happy is the man. Happy is woman who truly knows what God has done. Listen to how he meets us.
Our sins are forgiven. Literally it means, lifted. He has lifted the guilt from you. He no longer sees it. As far as the East is from the West so far have I removed your transgressions from you.
And we know where that trash went from our bulging bag. Away from us to God’s own Son on a cross. Look at that cross and know the Lord has taken away your sin. O the happiness of sins forgiven.
O the happiness of sins now covered. Sometimes it’s really hard. Someone offends us so that every time we see that person we think back to what they did or said. Well in countless ways we have offended God. But how does God meet us when we confess our sins? They are covered. Covered with something that is yours in Christ. His righteousness. His good and perfect life. You know the kind of life we fail to live. Our life is now covered with his goodness. That’s what God sees. O the happiness of sins now covered.
It’s the happiness of sins that the Lord will not count against us. In another psalm, we are reminded, if you O Lord kept a record of sin, O Lord, who could stand? None of us. We’d perish. But how did God meet this guilty sinner named David? Just as he meets us. If we confess our sins, he promises to forgive us. He promises not to drag those things out that now make us ashamed. And why? In love, Jesus stood in our place. In love. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us. O the happiness of God’s forgiveness in Christ.
So bring that trash bag that we keep filling. Admit what’s in it here before the Lord. And I realize. It’s no fun. It’s doesn’t make me feel good to look at the contents of my bag.
But listen to one who has know it both ways. He speaks to you in this psalm. King David. He speaks to you from this pulpit. Your pastor. One who has wasted away in stubborn silence. It’s no good at all. Better to Confess your sin and enjoy the freedom of God’s forgiveness. Think about it. In Christ, He gives you the right to set that bag down and leave it behind. O the happiness of God’s forgiveness.
