How Full and Free Are the Forgiven

Psalm 32 How Full and Free Are the Forgiven Introduction: The first paragraph or stanza of this Psalm makes it known that Yahweh can and does remove guilt -iniquity. -The God of the Bible is Powerful. It also makes known something about his character - his concern for us. God is concerned (committed) to remove from our lives what inhibits blessedness - fullness, contentment, and happiness. (God’s love and concern for mankind is a Biblical idea.) Sin, the Bible teaches is the big problem in the world. Whereas God created the world good, and to be a harmonious dwelling place for humanity; Sin, through Adam and Eve’s disobedience, has brought evil, disorder, death and chaos into God’s creation. It’s funny because most people associate God with ruining their lives with his requirements to righteousness, seeing God’s standards as hindering are fun, fullness and freedom. Nothing could be further from the truth. 1. The Offer - Blessedness - (contentment, fullness rest) - through the forgiveness of sin. Blessed is the one whom the Lord does not associate with sin.. (who is the blessed individual?) 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. 2. David again describes sin in three ways: 1. Transgression is the deliberate disobedience of God’s known will. 2. Sin is moral failure - missing the mark or getting it wrong whether in thought, word or action. 3. Iniquity means to be bent or twisted - (the inner warp of the fallen nature.) 4. Sin, the Bible claims, brings shame and guilt. The Bible gives us a story to portray this truth. Before Adam and Eve sinned against God, the Bible says, “the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.” But as soon as Adam and Eve had sinned, it says, they were suddenly aware that they were naked and they made coverings out of fig leaves to cover up their nakedness. Adam and Eve suddenly felt shame and guilt. 5. Shame, according to cultural anthropologist Ruth Benedict, is a violation of cultural or social values while guilt feelings arise from violations of one's internal values. Shame arises when one's 'defects' are exposed to others, and results from the negative evaluation (whether real or imagined) of others; guilt, on the other hand, comes from one's own negative evaluation of oneself, for instance, when one acts contrary to one's values or idea of one's self. [5] 1. Everyone of us can relate to feelings or association with shame and guilt. 3. David is talking about God’s power and offer to free us from the power, guilt, shame, or even an association with sin. 2. The Issue - Guilt and the wasting away - vs 3-4 1. “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” 2. "When I kept silent" - This is an example of the different things we try to do to hide our shame and guilt. (Religious & Irreligious attempts: Self Esteem or Self deprecating) 1. The way we try to justify our sin, or to silence the inner conscience, maybe the voice of our parents, friends or colleagues, the conviction of God’s word and his Spirit. 2. Sin has the corrosive power to eat away at you from the inside out. The more we push it down and hide it, the greater power it has over us, (we might be exposed -losing face - bringing shame, we might lose power control, security, love) The thing about shame and guilt is that even when we are hiding it, keeping silent about, it is actually affecting our life in all these different areas -Paul describes sin’s power as cancerous or like gangrene. David’s hidden sin (guilt) is tainting everything else in his life - relationship with family, friends, his kingdom, and especially his relationship to God… Sin undermines and destroys the social fabric of the universe! 3. Acknowledgment and Confession -vs 5 1. “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 (guilt) of my sin. Selah" 1. The Power of Confession - Now Confession is not all there is to our healing, obviously, it is simply the gateway, the door, that we must walk through. But there is a way in which confession is a healing work, because in confession we are acknowledging the wrong we did, owning up to our willful rebellion, lack of faith, fear, lust or covetousness etc, rater than letting it fester. 2. Have you ever had the experience where you are just running through what you did over and over agin in your mind? It’s amazing the difference it makes when you voice what is going on to the Lord, it might seem like venting - but the Psalmist often does this… and it is a confession.. he is owning up to his thoughts, words or actions that do not honor the Lord. 2. David says that He confessed, and look what it says the LORD did - “You forgave the guilt of my sin.” The word “forgave” (Hebrew, Nasa) means to lift up, bear, or carry. David confessed and God took up and bore his sin! 1. “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed….” - 1 Peter 2:24 1. Now we begin to understand how God does not associate us with our sin, or with sin. Because our sins have been removed by confession and taken up, borne, lifted up on his own body on the tree... 2. In the beginning of this Psalm David declares the fullness of the one that God does not associate sin with. Paul the Apostle explicitly quotes these lines near the beginning of Romans 4 and says, - David also speaks of the blessing of the one to whom God counts righteousness apart from works” 3. Paul’s thesis in Romans is that believers are not justified by their own goodness or any law that they keep, but simply by trusting in God’s gracious justification for us through Christ redeeming work on the cross. 4. Our justification before God is not merely “positive thinking.” It truly, really makes us holy… “just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him” - Ephesians 1:4 -Remember he does not impute iniquity - he doesn’t associate us with sin, but rather “counts us” or associates us with righteousness and holiness!! 5. How free this makes us! And not just free but full! It’s so fascinating to think about how for years and years we have diagnosed the wrong, hurtful, evil things that people have done with either -a lack of self esteem (western thinking), or with too much self esteem -pride (eastern thinking). And the scripture all along says neither will get you what you are looking for…. Only the imputed righteousness, only the stamp of Divine approval can give you the fullness that your heart really desires… You may still associate yourself with sin or the sin of your past, others may associate you with sin or the sin of your past, but if you have confessed your sins to the Lord he has lifted off, he has carried your sins -himself, on the cross, they are paid in full and he no longer associates you with sin or your sin, but instead he has given you his righteousness! God doesn’t just set you free from sin, but he fills you with the righteousness of Christ! 1. You might say, ‘but I still associate myself with sin, and my particular sins’ - God says you’re not. Do you have a greater standard of righteousness than God?? 2. Tim Keller in his book -The Freedom of Self forgetfulness, says, “You have been justified by God! STOP putting your self in the courtroom of human approval.” - whether your own, or that of others. 3. This kind of approval, only this kind of justification can change your life - setting you free, and filling you up. (You didn’t earn it, You can’t add to it, you can’t take away from it, you cannot lose it) 4. The Universal Call -Therefore let everyone who is godly - “Whoever knows this..” 1. “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, 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” 1. The offer is for anyone. Anyone who knows, anyone who hears can have “the blessed life” offered in this Psalm. But David here uses a peculiar phrase. He says, Offer this prayer (of confession), while God is near, while he may be found. Now that application might look different for each of us but the idea is, like the Psalmist says elsewhere, Do it today! “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts” (Psalm 95) Today is the day to confess, and receive this freedom and fullness. Don’t wait! Sin also has with it this hardening power… the more we resist the conviction of the Holy Spirit, the more we harbor and hide our sin and guilt, the harder it becomes to confess. 2. Look at this promise - Though you might think that your confession will bring a flood of destruction and retribution, certain death, or trouble, God promises that he will not allow the waters to reach you - Think about the promise in Romans 8 - “There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus!! He shouts his deliverance over us!! (Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. 34 Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. -Romans 8:33-34) 5. Learning to Listen - Maintaining the Fullness and Freedom Found in Christ. 1. 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. 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! 2.