Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Psalm 32: Suffering for Sin

The sermon text today is said to have been Augustine’s favorite psalm. It is also a psalm that we have learned a musical version of this year. It’s one of the seven penitential psalms and praise God over the last few years we were able now to sing all some form, some setting of all seven penitential psalms, which is what our Ash Wednesday service always consists of. So the psalm reading for today in the scripture text is Psalm 32, and the topic is suffering for sin.

Please stand to hear the reading of God’s word.

**Psalm 32** – A Psalm of David. A contemplation or Maschil.

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.

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.

I acknowledge my sin to you, and my iniquity I have not hidden. I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord.” And you forgave the iniquity of my sin. Selah.

For this cause, everyone who is godly shall pray to you in a time when you may be heard. Surely in a flood of great waters, they shall not come near him. You are my hiding place. You shall preserve me from trouble. You shall surround me with songs of deliverance. Selah.

I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go. I will guide you with my eye. Do not be like the horse or like the mule, which have no understanding, which must be harnessed with bit and bridle, else they will not come near you.

Many sorrows shall be to the wicked. But he who trusts in the Lord, mercy shall surround him. Be glad in the Lord, and rejoice, you righteous, and shout for joy, all you upright in heart.

—

Let’s pray.

Lord God, we thank you for this psalm. Our hearts are moved by the very reading of it. Help us, Lord God, to understand it. And beyond that, Father, please transform our lives. May we be like this psalmist—quick to embrace truth, trusting you, quick to turn from deceit, quick to confess our sins to you, to be guided by your eye, and not the sort of man that needs bit and bridle to harness him.

Bless us, Lord God, with this psalm today. Transform us by the power of your Holy Spirit in your word. In Jesus’s name we ask this gift from you. Amen.

Please be seated.

Well, so often when I read the scripture text, I just like to stop and let’s all meditate on this. We’re going to talk a little bit about the structure of this psalm. There’s some important things happening here, and we’re going to talk about its relationship to some other psalms, and then we’ll actually kind of go through the progression of what the psalmist goes through in this psalm.

Moving from a statement—an introductory statement of blessing—to then a statement of his past when his sin was difficult upon him and he wouldn’t confess it, to a present tense in which he confesses his sin, and then to the wonderful future of those who act in this way.

So we’ll move through the psalm that way after a few structural comments. I wanted first to put this in the overall context of our Lenten season together. On your outlines there’s a recapitulation, a reminder of what we’ve talked about so far in the first series of these—what was to be four and now is three sermons that are Lenten sermons for 2009.

In the first of these, I talked about the suffering of the Father. So we began talking about suffering in this season of Lent by looking at the suffering of the Son, but beyond that, the suffering of the Father that occurs as the Son goes to his crucifixion. It’s we begin with God, and it’s important to have an understanding of the suffering of the Father and Son even before we begin to think about our own suffering.

And today we’re going to talk about a particular suffering that applies to us, and this is suffering for sin.

Now in two weeks—next week I’ll not be here in the pulpit; fliers will be—but in two weeks we’ll return to suffering one last time, but there we’ll look at suffering that isn’t directly related to our sin. So we have suffering, and it always seems to me whether I’m more sensitized to it or if it actually is this way, that Lent is a season when things just seem to be intensified—sufferings. And it’s important for us to understand the God who suffered and died on the cross and the Father who suffered the loss of the Son.

It’s important to recognize our grieving, our ability to make the Holy Spirit suffer in some way, to experience pain or grief in terms of us. So it’s important to start with that. It’s important to recognize that a lot of our suffering is related to our sin. We normally like to jump to the third sermon, which is suffering not for sin, and think of ourselves in that way.

But may the Lord God grant us during this season particularly, and as a result of this sermon, to think about when we suffer and to let God do that deep cleaning that I mentioned—that Lent really is spring cleaning, deep cleaning.

My wife is suffering today because of deep cleaning. She—we were getting ready for the third Sunday fellowship which we were having at our house this month because Dave and Kathy are gone—and she was deep cleaning as she likes to do, getting ready for people to come over. And we have a washstand with a granite top, and she picked it up, and that was okay. And then she cleaned whatever she was going to do.

I don’t know why you have to disassemble the furniture to clean, but women, I guess, understand this stuff. It always seems strange to me. And then when she puts the top back, her back just completely blows apart. She is now flat on her back and will be that way for several days, at least. Please pray for her. She’s in intense pain.

So you know, when we go through Lent, it’s a season of suffering, and we should think when we suffer about what are we doing wrong? How is God trying to get our attention? Now, sometimes it’s not related to our sin, which I’ll talk about next week. But this psalm clearly—the suffering that’s described here is suffering that is happening because of sin.

So, you know, I’m not trying to make you feel bad if you’re suffering justly. That is certainly part of the Christian life. But today we’re going to talk about suffering for sin.

Now, we have this wonderful psalm in front of us, and it’s a Maschil. Well, what does that mean?

Well, the New King James Version translates it “a contemplation.” Some people say it means like a teaching psalm. And you’ll notice as we read through the psalm that he does get to the point of instruction just like Psalm 51. By the way, David—and some people actually think that 32 is written about the same incident with Bathsheba that prompted him to write 51, maybe written later. You know, the Psalms are not arranged chronologically. They’re arranged thematically. But in any event, both—one reason why people connect them up is because they both talk about instruction.

So maybe this Maschil thing—Psalm 51 is not a Maschil. Well, maybe that’s what it means: instruction. A little bit of humility as we approach God’s word, I think, is in order though. Some people think that Maschil is actually a music term. Frequently, the psalms will have headings that involve themselves with musical notation of some sort. Selah.

Well, in today’s text we see Selah having some rather obvious break points that cause us to notice that the psalm changes at that moment. But we really don’t know what it means. Maschil might be more of a musical instruction or a setting that these words were to be sung to. And some commentators have noted that well, the difficulty of this term shows us the difficulty of the psalm, because the term is integral to the psalm, right?

And so we’re not going to really understand it fully if we don’t understand—if it is this musical notation—what that meant. So some people say, you know, there’s some unknowability about some of these psalms because we don’t know the setting. We don’t know how it’s supposed to be sung. We don’t know: is it sad? Upbeat? Is it a praise chorus? What is going on here? And until we know that, we’re going to probably miss a little bit of the meaning of the psalm.

Now, the obvious meaning is there. We can approach the text, but a little bit of humility as we approach God’s word is in order, and Maschil is a reminder to us—if nothing else—in our day and age of humility. So let’s approach the text with humility and try to understand what’s happening.

Obviously, what’s happening in the first verse is this blessedness of people, and we think right away—at least we should—of Psalm 1: the introduction to the Psalter. “Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, understandeth not the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful.”

So blessed—we think of the Sermon on the Mount. Blessed. This psalm is about who’s going to be blessed. So it has a relationship to Psalm 1, to Proverbs literature, which tells us what blessing is. The blessing goes to people in one path and not people in the other path.

So structurally, you know, there is this emphasis on instruction. Eventually there’s this humility we approach the text with, and it starts off right off the bat by telling us there’s this introductory comment, and then the psalm will unfold. So there’s a formal introduction to it.

I mentioned the relationship to Psalm 51. And in your handouts, hopefully you have them, it shows the structure that I’m going to deal with this psalm in. And I do think it moves to a center point and then moves back out, and it kind of pairs up. And on the second page of your notes is a structure for Psalm 51. And, you know, it’s interesting because Psalm 51, I think, has some rather obvious points in it that I won’t go into now.

But 32 and 51 are linked through this instruction motif, right? So David—in Psalm 51—it’s of course the famous psalm of after his sin with Bathsheba, and it’s filled with, you know, heart-wrenching—some people described it as if you got a sewer pipe and the sludge is coming out—and David is confessing his sins that he engaged in, and he knows the filthiness of them, and he’s pleading for God’s forgiveness for his sins in Psalm 51.

And it is to the end that having been restored and having experienced God’s forgiveness, he then will instruct other people. That’s the beauty of Psalm 51 as a penitential psalm. It reminds us that as we move through and confess our sin, not only does God forgive us our sin and cleanse us from the past, but he prepares us for the future. He prepares us to instruct other people about who this wonderful and wondrous God is and what the gospel is all about.

These are gospel psalms filled with confession of sin, but moving toward a conclusion of instructing other people in the joy of that instruction.

Another similarity though with Psalm 51—and this is kind of important. I’m going to talk about this more in a couple of minutes. But if you look at verses after the blessed verses 1 and 2 in Psalm 32, there are three designations for sin that are used. Three separate designations. We kind of blow by these things. We merge them all together, but they’re very distinct Hebrew terms. These are three of the most common Hebrew terms used for sin.

The first is transgression in verse 1. The second is sin. And then the third in verse 2 is iniquity. So transgression, sin, and iniquity. And in fact, if you look back on the front page at verse 5, these same three terms are used in a little mini chiasm, right?

Verse 5: “I acknowledge my sin to you. My iniquity I have not hidden. I said I will confess my transgressions. You forgave the iniquity of my sin.” So sin, iniquity, transgressions, iniquity, sin. But they’re the same three terms that are used. Psalm 51, in like manner, starts out in verse 1 with David’s plea: “Blot out my transgression. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin.”

So both 32 and 51 begin with the same three Hebrew words, different order in 32 than 51, but the same three distinct Hebrew terms that we normally blur up in our minds. And so 32 and 51 are related.

In verse 6 of 51, “Behold, you desire truth in the inward parts.” And in Psalm 32, the summation of all that sin is deceit, right? So deceit. And in Psalm 51, the whole point is he’s trying to move away from these things that he might have truth in his inward aspect.

In verse 8 in Psalm 51, he says, “Make me hear joy and gladness.” And at the end of 32, that’s what happens, you know, to the ones that have been forgiven and are used to instruct others. They’re commanded to love and exalt in song. And the sort of songs that are talked about at the end of 32 are songs—they’re like the same kind of terminology that’s used when you have victory over an enemy in an army on a battlefield, rather. They’re songs of victory and joy and exaltation to God.

And that sort of is the sort of joy that this psalm and Psalm 51 moves us through if we pay attention to how we get there. And we get there through confession. We get there through confession.

And as I said, in 51, at the very center of the second section—the center of the first section is the sovereignty of God that he might be glorified in all this. In the center of the second section of 51 is the statement by David that “then I will teach transgressors your ways and sinners shall be converted.” You see the victory will sound forth.

So 32 and 51 are sort of linked.

One other linkage: if you’ve been here very long, you know that in the first book of the Psalter—right, the first 41 psalms—verses 1 and 2 form an introduction, Psalm 1 and 2. And then the next 39 are a complete book. This is one of only two sets of two psalms—Psalm 32 and Psalm 33—that do not have a title. And now no title for 33. And so some people have actually looked at 32 and 33 as one psalm. But if you look at them, they’re quite obviously two different psalms.

The interesting thing is that Psalm 33 is written—it’s not an acrostic. It doesn’t start with all 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet the way that Psalm 119 is structured. But it is structured in 22 obvious verses, the same number of letters in the Hebrew alphabet. And so 33 is preeminently a teaching psalm. So 32 tells us that we’re going to get to this place of instructing others with joyfulness and gladness, and 33 is sort of what we then instruct them in—is the way to think of it.

So there’s these connections between 32, Psalm 1, 32 and 51, and 32 and then its subsequent followup, Psalm 33.

Okay, now I want to—another way to look at this psalm is, as I said, I mentioned this already. It has a three-part aspect to it. It talks about his past when things were bad, and then there’s a present aspect of confession, and then there’s what happens in the future to those who are moved that way. So the psalm moves from past, present, and future.

It has this sort of trinitarian structure to it. And so that’s one way to think of the movement of the psalm.

Another way to think of this trinitarian thing is I just mentioned the three terms that are used for sin, and we’re going to talk about this a little bit a couple of minutes here. The reason is, let me get your attention with it first. Let me read you some verses. And this first one is Daniel 9:24.

And this is, if you think about it, this is the verse that predicts what Jesus will do after the 70 weeks are completed for Daniel. This is what Jesus will accomplish in his death and resurrection and ministry. Okay. And we read in Daniel 9:24: “70 weeks are decreed about your people and your holy city to finish the transgression, to put an end to sin, and to atone for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal both vision and prophet, and to anoint a most holy place.”

So, what does Jesus come to do? Daniel 9 says that his work can be summarized as dealing with three aspects of sin: to finish transgression, to put an end to sin, and to atone for iniquity. The same three terms that Psalm 51 uses, the same three terms that Psalm 32 uses twice. And the second time kind of focusing in on the transgression at the middle.

Now, what do these words mean? Well, you know, there’s not universal agreement on what these words mean, but I can kind of give you, you know, some background to each word very briefly.

Transgression can sometimes actually be translated rebellion. So the idea of a transgression is that you’ve transgressed. You’ve done what you weren’t supposed to do, or you didn’t do what you were supposed to do. You’ve transgressed a commandment. You’ve broken one of the teachings of God’s word, right? So that’s the transgression. The actual committing of the act is stressed, and it’s stressed as an act of rebellion against God, okay?

So that’s what transgression is, and it’s used all the time for sin. And this is an aspect of what we do when we sin that this word wants us to focus upon. And its repeated use in this three-fold structure throughout the Old Testament wants us to focus on this: that our sins are acts of rebellion, in terms of violation of God’s word.

Well, another term that’s used—the second term that’s used—is sin. Now, sin has the connotation—sin is the same word that’s used as a description of a sin offering in chapters 4 and 5 of Leviticus. And by now in this church, you should know that the sin offering is what we do when we confess our sins, right? We’re cleansing ourselves. The problem with offering sacrifices in Leviticus is the place gets dirty. Every time we sin out here in the world somewhere, the worship facility gets a mar on it.

So both us and the worship facility have to be cleansed. One aspect, one specific offering, one aspect of the single offering of Jesus is to cleanse us. So sin has the idea of uncleanness, you know, kind of defilement. We’re dirty, right? We become like dirty rags. And so the act of moral rebellion against God by transgression of his word creates a condition, okay, that’s a single point action rebellion, but it creates a condition of uncleanness. Uncleanness is the manifestation of the Fall, you know, so it’s a sin has that aspect to it. It refers to our sins as unclean things. It creates in us an uncleanness.

And then the third word for sin here is iniquity. Now, iniquity has the connotation primarily of liability. It actually—some people relate it to crookedness. So iniquity is kind of like a crooked act, but I don’t think that’s really quite on mark. There is a crookedness to it. But the root Hebrew word for iniquity has this idea of something that produces a liability to get punished.

So our rebellion against God makes us unclean and puts us in a place where he’s going to punish us. It makes us liable for punishment, okay? We deserve, you know, worse than what we actually end up with as forgiven sinners. So liability is what iniquity is about. And so if you think of this verse from Daniel 9, he’s going to finish transgression. He’s going to definitively move the world away from rebellion. He’s going to put an end to sin. He’s going to do away with uncleanness. That’s very definitive. He cleanses everything. And then he’s going to atone for iniquity.

You know, Day of Atonement, the goat went out there and died. And atonement involves the death of the offerer. And so atonement means accepting this liability for punishment. Jesus accepts our liability for punishment for us, okay?

And I’m belaboring the point a little bit, but I think it’s really important. These psalms that want to move us toward confession—51 and 32—they want to move us to confession that is understanding what’s happened when we sin. We should feel bad that we just broke God’s word, that we rebelled against him by not doing what he said to do. And we should recognize that when we do this, we get unclean. We get dirty. We’re, you know, we got leprosy on us. We can’t, you know, we’re not really, you know, supposed to come into the worship facility till we’re clean. We can’t approach God in a defiled state. That defilement has to be taken care of.

And then thirdly, we’re liable to punishment. It produces—its iniquity is another aspect of our sin. So a past act produces a present state of uncleanness, and it’s getting ready for future judgment from God. We’re liable now to have our rear ends kicked, okay?

Now, all those things are part of what we do when we sin. They’re aspects, right? Leviticus has four or five different offerings, but there’s only one offering they’re really talking about ultimately: Jesus’s death on the cross. But if we understand those aspects and effects, then we understand a little more about what it means. What Jesus actually did. He saved us from our sins. Yeah, okay, fine. What does that mean? Well, I don’t know. I guess we’re going to go to heaven. Well, what it means is he’s removed the rebellion from you. He’s removed your uncleanness, your stinkiness, and he’s made it so that you don’t got to worry about him, you know, striking you dead. That’s what it means.

So, now, why do I stress this so much? Because the Bible does. These two Psalms do. Daniel 9 does.

Let me read you a few other verses. Exodus 34:7. Remember, this is where God declares who he is to Moses. This is who God is. The essence of God is being described for us in Exodus 34:7. And what is it? “Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgressions and sin. By no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity, the liability for punishment, on the fathers unto the children.”

The children receive this liability for punishment unless it’s dealt with. And the children, his children, to the third and fourth generation. So God is gracious and merciful, very specifically forgiving three aspects of our single sin: iniquity, liability for punishment; transgression, rebellion; and sin, uncleanness.

Job 13:23: “How many are my iniquities and sins? Make me know my transgressions and my sin.” See, he uses the same three words. His confession is good. His confession is sort of down to the bone because he’s not just confessing an act: yeah, I agree that was wrong to do. No, he understands that he’s become a stinky, unclean, dirty thing because of it. And he understands that he’s liable for punishment. That’s what his sin has done. And he recognizes that and repents of it.

Leviticus 16:21: “Aaron shall lay both his hands on the head of the live goat. This is Day of Atonement. Confess over it all the iniquities, liabilities for punishment, of the children, right? You see, that’s placed forward here because that’s what’s going on in the Day of Atonement: the goat’s going to get suffered for us, showing us that we have—we’re liable to get killed. So, he’s going to confess over it all the iniquities of the children of Israel, all their transgressions, rebellions concerning all their sins, uncleanness.”

So, he’s putting the whole thing on the sacrificial goat that’s going to be sent away and die in the wilderness. So what Jesus is going to do is carry the whole thing. But that particular part of what’s going on—the death in the wilderness—the stress is the liability for punishment. But see, all three terms: we’re supposed to understand these things.

Isaiah 59:12: “Our transgressions are multiplied before you. Our sins testify against us. For our transgressions are with us, and as for our iniquities, we know them.” So transgressions is used twice, more of an emphasis upon rebellion, but the other two terms are in there, too: liability for punishment and uncleanness. You see, it’s all over the scriptures.

Ezekiel 21:24: “Therefore, thus says the Lord God, because you have made your iniquity, your liability for punishment, to be remembered in that your transgressions, your rebellious acts, are uncovered, so that in all your doings, your sins, your unclean disappears in everything you do because you have come to remembrance, you shall be taken in hand.”

So, when God forgives us, you see, it’s each of those aspects of our sin. Lent should be a season when we sort of do spring cleaning, a little deep cleaning, focus on, you know, the repentance of our sins. And if we do that, it’s a big help, I think, to remember what God says are three primary aspects of what sinfulness is all about.

One of the commentators said that these three aspects of our sin are like the three-headed dog that guards the gates to hell. For you “Lost” aficionados, the smoke monster, Smokey, is sometimes thought of, or it might even have been named Cerberus or whatever the name is, the three-headed dog who guards the gates to hell. And Smokey is at the—well, when we find out lately about him, is he comes out of, or at least seems to be working in context of guarding the temple.

There’s a temple on the island, and there are these vents—Cerberus vents—and this smoke monster comes out of those to guard the island and specifically the temple somehow. And at some point in one of the episodes, Smokey actually appears as three puffs of smoke, not just one big puff of smoke that can take on different aspects. Three puffs, small puffs.

Well, that’s what these things are. These are like the three aspects of the hound from hell. This is what happens to us. This is what awaits us: rebellion, uncleanness, and liability for punishment—unless we turn away from these things.

Psalm 32 is one of seven penitential psalms. These psalms focus on our being sorry, penitent—big word, but a little word for kids: sorry for our sins. And similar to Psalm 51, both 51 and 32 focus on forgiven sinners teaching others. So, the end goal of this, of meditating on this three-fold aspect, is to be moved not to just getting your ticket punched for heaven, but so that you might be usable for the kingdom here on earth—that you could tell other people about God.

Psalm 33 is linked to Psalm 32. It’s the instruction, the kind of thing that the forgiven person is supposed to teach. Psalm 51 and 32 both use three terms for sin. Transgression is sometimes translated, for you young kids, rebellion. I should probably slow down, huh?

So, they were doing the hand—we’re doing the fill-in stuff now for the young kids’ outline. Transgression is sometimes translated rebellion. You young people or you older people should all fill out that thing too today because that will help you to remember. I heard a thing on the radio that if you doodle, that’s good because you remember more of what’s being said. It’s okay to doodle. And what you ought to maybe doodle right now is these three terms: rebellion, uncleanness, liability to punishment. Draw a little three-headed dog—horrible thing that’ll drag you down into hell. That’s what those things will do to you.

Transgression is sometimes translated rebellion. Iniquity focuses on us being liable to be punished. Liable to be punished. Sin stresses our state of being unclean, smelly, dirty, unclean. These three are summed up.

I didn’t mention this, but if you look at verse 1, these three aspects: transgression is forgiven, the rebellion is forgiven; the sin, or uncleanness, is covered over—not in the sense of hiding it, but I mean, it’s done away with. But it’s covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord does not impute liability for punishment, okay?

And this is quoted in Romans 4, right? In Romans 4, he says, “Not only does God—God doesn’t impute liability to punishment for you, but he actually imputes the righteousness of Christ, which means God is blessing you.” So your liability has been turned into a positive. You’re negative turned into a positive. No neutral ground in God’s world.

And then what does it say finally? “In whose spirit there is no deceit.”

Now, the way I take that is that’s a summation of the three terms. At the end of the psalm, he’s going to say the whole gig is trusting God. And when you don’t trust God, you sin. You break his word, and that makes you dirty, and that makes you liable to punishment. But if you do trust God, you’re not going to hide your sins. You’re going to confess your sins, right?

Adam and Eve didn’t trust God. And so they lied. He looked for them, and they weren’t there. That’s a lie. That’s deceit. They know that God is there, and he’s there for a reason. He’s there to talk to them about their sin, and they run away. It’s deceit.

I cannot stress too much, particularly to you young people who have not yet established your final patterns—most adults, they sort of get into a pattern by the time they’re 35, 40. Even then, if it’s a bad pattern, break it. But what you know, in my counseling with young people, more and more I’m finding that this is the whole gig: deceit. Deceit instead of trusting God is what gets them to that point.

Well, I had to sin because, you know, I couldn’t trust my parents, or I had to sin because this thing came up, or I don’t know what was going. I was frustrated, and so well, what could you do? Are there other creative alternatives? You know, we get people telling us, well, you know, if you guys would just listen more and enter into dialogue with me, we’d have other alternatives. We—I wouldn’t have to sin this way. I sin. And the answer to all that with your kids, with adults, whatever it is, is always: there’s always a godly alternative.

You and your parents are sideways. They’re part of this church. Have you come talk to me. That’s okay with them. It’s okay with you. I’m just a guy that helps people communicate. Nine times out of 10: deceit. That’s what is the summation statement for what these three sins are all about. Deceit.

So, God imputes to us the righteousness of the One that the scriptures say “in whose mouth was no deceit.” That’s what Isaiah 53 says as it talks about Jesus taking care of each of these conditions. In his mouth there’s no deceit. That’s what we get. That’s what’s imputed to us. He counts it to us. He reckons it to us. He doesn’t reckon to us our sins as we confess them. He reckons to us the righteousness of Jesus Christ.

This is all gospel stuff here. This is quoted directly in Gospel text in Romans 4. Okay.

So, let’s move on then from those first couple of verses.

When we act like that—when we don’t confess—what happens? “When I kept silent, my bones grew old.”

Now, we think of bones and what—oh, bones get, oh calcium. I don’t know what it is. Think biblically. The bones were what held the temple up. You know, the temple had supports, and then it had some skin or drapery material—the tabernacle, rather, drapery material around it—and then it had stuff inside where the work was being done. It was a body. It had bones, it had skin, and it had internal organs: the Holy of Holies and all that stuff, the Holy Place, the labor, you know, lampstand, etc. That’s the beating heart of the thing.

But it has—if the bones grow old, if the bones, which are the support of everything, the columns of your body, if they start to rot away more and more, you’re losing the very foundation of your being. When you don’t confess sin, this is what happens. You keep silent. And if you’re, you know, the object of Christ’s spirit, it—your bones start to grow old. You start to lose your support.

Now, people, you know, are in denial all the time. We don’t even admit it yet. You know, it’s like that night in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. “It’s just a flesh wound.” He’s all cut to pieces, and he’s sitting there a stump of a man. “Oh, no. It’s no big deal. Just a flesh wound.” That’s what we can think. But God says when we don’t confess our sins, we keep silent. And when we keep silent, our bones grow old, okay.

Now, I don’t think people always keep silent literally. What it’s saying is they keep silent about confessing their sins. They’re silent about not confessing their sins. Maybe you do all kind of talking, but they’re silent about confessing their sins. And I think that if this psalm moves toward the one who confesses his sin being the one who teaches, that means that the guy who won’t confess his sin is the last one in position to teach anything. Why? Because he’s self-deluded. He doesn’t know what’s going on. He loses his ability for rationality. Rationality would be: he’d open his mouth and confess his sin to God. Irrationality, and irrationality doesn’t do that.

So as people, if you don’t confess your sins—if okay, if you don’t recognize that sin is the basis for some of your suffering, and if you don’t confess your sins—God says you’re not really a fit vessel. And he’s going to give you over to various kinds of stupidities in your life, okay? Because you didn’t obey, and you just get worse and worse. And what happens as a result of that—keeping silent and—is that your bones, the foundation of your being, begin to rot away.

That’s what David says. “When I kept silent, my bones grew old through my groaning all the day. See, this is another indication. Groaning is like, you know, a horse would do or a mule when it’s, you know, in terrible pain. It’s an animal-like sound. It’s not literate speech. It’s not human, you know, human talking.”

Some amazing songs—there’s a song by Pink Floyd, “Keep Talking.” And it’s about a guy who can’t speak. He doesn’t know what’s going on in his relationship with his girlfriend or his wife. She’s bugging him to speak. “Why don’t you talk to me? You never talk to me.” You know, I feel—and he says his response is, “I feel like I’m drowning. I don’t know what to say.” He’s lost. And he begins—he loses his articulation. The purpose of the song is to say, “Keep talking.” That’s the important thing. Stay in the game. And instead, what happens is people—when they don’t talk in terms of godly speech—they end up groaning.

Now, there’s a picture here, of course, of great suffering. The word can be translated and is sometimes “roaring.” The roaring is going on all the day long. So it perpetuates—it’s all day and then even day and night.

“Your hand was heavy upon me.”

Right? Your hand is heavy. The very touch of God is too much to bear. Well, of course, right? We can lay hands on people, do a little damage, but if you think of Atlas and he’s got that world on him, right? And he’s struggling under the weight of it. Now, compare the hand of the world, so to speak, the world being on somebody, with the hand of God himself being upon you. There’s no comparison. The hand of God much heavier than if we were carrying the whole world.

David says, “This is the state of people that don’t confess their sins. We can cover it up. We can make a good show on Sunday sometimes, but David says this is bad news. You lose your foundations. You lose your humanity. You become like a roaring beast, and God’s hand is heavy upon you.”

And finally, “My vitality was turned into the drought of summer.”

Pause and meditate. The word vitality here is a weird one. It’s oil, but it’s the best of oil. The only two other places where this particular word is—the other place is manna. Somehow it’s connected to manna, the best of the best or something. So, the best of your vitality, the best of your oils—your, you know, your what lubricates you—and it’s Holy Spirit enablement, sort of stuff. It all dries up, and your Holy Spirit enablement goes away. Your vitality goes away.

Bob Dylan, you know, has a song, but and the way he expresses his despair is that my fee—my “I’m beginning to hear voices. There’s no one around. I’m all used up. My fields have turned brown.” That’s what it means to you. Your fields have turned brown. You’re not like a productive thing anymore. You’re drying up. Your vitality, your oils, your best oils are turning into the drought of summer.

So, you know, we should have a full sense of the horrific long-term effects of keeping sin hidden and not coming to confession.

And then we got: “I acknowledged my sin to you. My iniquity I have not hidden. I said, ‘I’ll confess my transgressions to the Lord. You forgave the iniquity of my sin.’”

As I said, kind of a chiastic little thing going on here. Now, he expresses himself. Now, this is a good confession. You see, this is the sort of confession you want to have. And by the way, in verse 5, where it says, “I acknowledged my sin to you,” he actually says—it’s actually in the imperfect tense. It actually means continuing action, literally. Now, most translators don’t do that because of what’s happening here. We always think of confession as point action, and there’s a sense in which it is. But I think that this good confession that happens with David at this point is: I’m going—I acknowledged my sin. I continue to acknowledge my sin. I’m not going back to being that idiot, that brute beast, that destroyed thing, that deceitful thing, that stinky thing, that thing liable to punishment, that thing in rebellion against God. I’m not going back to that as a characterization of my life. I acknowledge and I continue to acknowledge my sin to you.

I’m an unclean thing. My iniquity, my liability to punishment, I’ve not hidden. I should be destroyed for this. I said, “I will confess my transgressions. The very heart of this chiasm is rebellion against God. His rebellion, his transgressing of God’s commands.” And you forgave the iniquity, the liability for punishment. So I’m not going to be destroyed. And this liability for punishment is related to my uncleanness, the iniquity of my sin. Selah.

So wonderful introduction. You ought to be blessed. This is how it works. This is how horrible it is when you keep silent about your sin and don’t come to godly confession. And this is the way to move to turn the thing—is to acknowledge all the aspects of what our sin is. You know, we normally just think in terms of the transgression and don’t realize that the sin has—our sins have—this uncleanness to it and this liability for punishment to it.

God, this is part of the good confession of a sinner: David, who’s doing this continually, who understands all the aspects of his sinfulness and what’s resulted from it, and who doesn’t hide or cover over any of it—any of it.

And then the center for this cause: “Everyone who is godly shall pray to you in a time when you may be found.”

So this is the heart of the matter. The heart of the matter is not really David personally. It moves now to you know, a multitude of people, everybody. This is what we’re supposed to do. This is the heart of the thing: this is the way everybody that’s godly should approach God in a time when he may be found.

So this is sort of the middle of the section.

“Surely in a flood of great waters, they shall not come near him.”

So David moves from his personal observations, and already he is beginning to teach us because now he says at the very center of the thing—is this brings in you and me and everybody else. We don’t got to relate just to David individually. David says this applies to all men. This is us. This is why we pray to God. A big part of it must involve this sort of good confession that David brings. And then he declares—and now backing out. He just talked about his great blessedness, and now he talks about it again. He’s back to his personal experience in verse 7.

“You are my hiding place.”

So all that uncleanness and all that stuff—all that liability for punishment—God now is a hiding place. “You shall preserve me from trouble. There’s going to be trouble in the world. And if we don’t confess our sins, we’re going to get into it. We’re going to—those guys are going to hit us. It’s going to work. We don’t have a hiding place. We’re out there in the open, undefended. You shall surround me with songs of deliverance. Deliverance is accompanied, or maybe even, you know, directly related to songs.”

So, the blessed state of David is again his subject as we move back from the center.

And then we have this final kind of culmination of what this is supposed to do with David.

“I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go. I will guide you with my eye.”

Now, is this God speaking? Is this David speaking? Well, different commentators think different things. I think probably in this psalm it’s God speaking, but it links it up to our knowledge of 51. So, it could also be—it may also be thought of properly—as what the person who has been forgiven says, his being moved to instruction. So again, the capstone is not personal peace and affluence. The capstone is not heaven—going to heaven to be with Jesus, or even being here when Jesus comes back. The capstone is instruction in the present in a way that brings glory and maturation of people in terms of the ways of God.

“I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go. Not just, you know, this isn’t so much intellectual stuff. This is a way of action. This is like Proverbs, right? Proverbs. Righteousness is not a judicial state in Proverbs. And it is that here. It’s a path that we walk in, and it’s not a path of forgiveness.”

David says, “Everybody who’s going to pray to you, pray in this manner.” David is saying, “Whether it’s me or you, there’s two kinds of people in the world. And it’s not people in the church and people outside of the church. It’s not Christians and non-Christians. It’s not good people and bad people. It’s not people that do real well in their lives and people that sin a lot in their lives. Now, some of that’s true, but here what he’s saying is the two kinds of people in the world are people that don’t confess their sins and those that do. It’s that simple.

Ultimately, you know, this determines whether or not you’re in the context of the church of Jesus Christ. Do you make a good confession? Not a lot of excuses. Confessing the depth of what your sinfulness is: rebellion, uncleanness, liability for punishment, and the breaking of relationship with God that it brings, or a change of relationship when his hand becomes destructive to you and the result of your inability to communicate with those around you.

David says there’s only two kinds of people. You know, David was like Saul. We think of him as different. Saul was a real bad king. David was a good king. But it’s interesting. Saul was taking care of his dad’s flocks just like David was doing. Saul, you know, the Holy Spirit comes upon him just like the Holy Spirit came on David. Saul hangs out with the musicians when he’s called and anointed by God. Saul, the Bible says, became a new man. Saul, you know, David wasn’t some little shrimp. He wasn’t quite as big as Saul, but he was a pretty big guy nonetheless. They could be a lot like Saul.

The difference between Saul and David—the difference between, you know, the two kinds of people in the world—is not whether you sin or not. You’re going to do that. You’re going to sin. Everybody sins. The difference is: are you going to confess your sin or not? And then that determines who’s going to be useful to instruct others, which is sort of the capstone.

Now, don’t you love the way it contrasts? “I’ll guide you with my eye. Don’t be like the horse or like the mule which have no understanding with which must be harnessed with bit and bridle.”

So, you know, God’s way with us—with the forgiven sinner—he doesn’t need to beat us or put a bridle around us and make us, you know, yank us around here and there. He guides us with his eye. Now, I’m not sure exactly in the Hebrew what the translation should be, but it has this idea either of God’s protection, of watching us and caring for us, or may actually be of guiding us.

And we know that the psalm we sang when we came into worship today was about that. It was about how we look to God the same way that a person looks to their master. We look and see—we watch his eyes. What does he want us to do? You see, he guides us with his eye. And the wonderful contrast: the spirit of God moving us, guiding us, directing us—or again, we’re be like that dumb roaring beast that God has to beat, put a bridle in our mouths, and then draw him near.

And then finally, you know, “Many sorrows shall be to the wicked. But he who trusts in the Lord, mercy shall surround him.”

There it is. How do you get there? Trust. Not trust in the people you’re having a jam with. Not ultimately, you know, what does it say in First Peter? Trust the civil magistrate. Be submissive. Not because he’s a good guy. The word that you use said he’s the guy that killed the previous Caesar so he could be Caesar. That’s the kind of guy you got to submit to.

Then he says, “Trust the guy you work for, your master. He’s not a good master. He’s a master that beat you all the time for doing what’s right. And God says, ‘Submit to him. It’s good to suffer for doing the right things.’” And then he uses the example of women and husbands. “Trust your husband. Submit to your husband rather. And worst case again, even if he’s not a Christian, your submissive spirit is what you’re called to do.”

Now, every one of those cases, it’s impossible to do if we’re not doing this. If we’re not trusting in the Lord: “He who trusts in the Lord, mercy shall surround him.”

And that’s what Peter does in the midst of all that. He gives us the example of Jesus who unreviled—didn’t revile back. But that wasn’t it. It wasn’t just a test of the will for Jesus. It was a test of his faithfulness, his trust of God. He didn’t revile back because he’s entrusting himself to the One who judges justly.

When he looks at—when we look at the civil governor, we should see God behind him. When we look at our parents, we should trust them, trusting God. When we look at our employer, we should submit to them, trusting ultimately in God. And when we look to, you know, non-Christian spouses, we should be submissive and honoring to them, trusting the God who’s behind them.

That doesn’t justify sin. They tell you to do something sinful, don’t do it. That’s rebellion against the guy. That’ll keep you from doing that, too. If you think of God behind all of this, the end of the day, confession is a hard thing. You know, it’s an old expression: confession is good for the soul, bad for the reputation.

Well, actually, and that’s true with most people, but not for us. You know, if you know people confess their sins, is that bad for the reputation? You might find out stuff about them that you didn’t know before, but you know, you sin. You know, you rebel against God, too. Confession is actually good for both the soul and our reputation if we live in a godly Christian community. And our trust of that, you see, is trusting in the Lord.

Deceit happens primarily for us when we don’t trust God. “I didn’t know any other way out. So, I lied. I sinned. Made this or that charge instead of doing—finding creative alternatives. Your elders are here to help you find creative alternatives. And when you fail to make use of them to guide you into this path—the path of great blessing and trust—the path of being glad in the Lord, rejoicing, righteous—not because we are righteous altogether in what we do, but because we’ve been given the imputed righteousness of Jesus—and our path is one of faithfulness—shout for joy all you upright in heart.”

You know, Augustine—this is his favorite psalm. And the tale goes that as he was dying, in his bedroom or wherever he was, this psalm was inscribed on the wall by him. And actually, I think it was before he died that he had this done. His whole life, this was kind of like the key verse, the key psalm. This was his psalm. And when he was dying, he would meditate upon this psalm as well.

May it be a key psalm for us in our lives, particularly during this season of Lent. As we go through the obvious sufferings that we go through as humans, help us—may God grant us the gift of looking first and foremost about what it is that we’re doing wrong. What thing have we done to transgress his commandment that’s brought us into a state of uncleanness, brought us into a state of liability for punishment, and producing the suffering?

Now, it’s not always the case, but a lot of times it is. And when God brings those things to bear in our lives directly through his word, through his Holy Spirit, or when you get so insensitive to the Holy Spirit, he uses people around you. May the Lord God grant that this church, like Augustine, sees that our lives are lives of confession of sin and resulting joy and victory in songs of exaltation.

Let’s pray.

Lord God, we bless your holy name for the gracious truths that this psalm tells us about who you are. Thank you, Father, that you’re a God who is quick to forgive, to take away not just our rebellion, but to also clean us and to take away our liability for punishment. Thank you, Lord God. May your Holy Spirit grant in our hearts as we bring our tithes and offerings to you a commitment, Father, on the part of everyone in this room, this season particularly, to let Psalm 32 be one of those key texts that tell us the path of blessedness.

In Jesus’s name we ask it. Amen.