Psalm 32 • The Hiding Place
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(This transcript was prepared using software tools and has not been reviewed for complete accuracy.)
We are looking at Psalm 32 today, Psalm 32, as we continue looking at our Summer Psalms.
In your Grace bibles, that's page 462.
We're preparing our hearts this morning for the Lord's Supper as we consider what God has provided for us, that we might come and worship Him.
Despite our sin and our weakness and our unworthiness, He gives us great mercy.
It's not a new message.
It's what the Bible has said all along.
Let's find the path to the mercy of the Lord as we read Psalm 32.
Let me ask that you stand as we honor God's Word and I read to you Psalm 32.
"Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.
Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit.
For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long.
For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer.
I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity; I said, 'I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,' and you forgave the iniquity of my sin.
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.
You are a hiding place for me; you preserve me from trouble; you surround me with shouts of deliverance.
I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you with my eye upon you.
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.
Be glad in the Lord, and rejoice, O righteous, and shout for the Lord, all you upright in heart!"
Let's pray together.
>>> Father, what a simple path You provide to Your great mercy.
We confess to You our need of You, and You are there.
And, yet, sometimes it's a path that's bitter.
Acknowledging our need, the sin that has made us have to come to you is often difficult for us.
So bless us this day to see the sweetness and the goodness of the grace that is in You.
We ask in Jesus' name.
Amen.
>>> Please be seated.
One of the churches that it was my privilege to pastor early in ministry was in downstate Illinois.
It was actually the first Presbyterian Church in the Indiana Territory.
So before Illinois was a state, this church was established by a Scottish missionary named Samuel Wylie.
Hard to think that one time we were a mission field.
That a Scottish missionary came and established this church in downstate Illinois.
In its first 150 years, it had only 3 pastors, each with a roughly 50-year stay.
Now, that's impressive.
The first, the first was Samuel Wylie, the second John Wylie, the third Robert Stewart.
Wylie, Smiley, Stewart: Sounds like a Scottish law firm, I know.
[Laughter]
They were men who were faithful.
They were sacrificial.
They established the scriptures well and also maintained a few Scottish traditions.
One of the traditions of the Scottish Presbyterian Church was that when you came to a Communion Sunday, it was not viewed as very good that you would just kind of show up on Sunday and notice the Communion Table and, "Oh, it's Communion."
That you would actually have had some time to prepare your heart for compess--, confession, for contemplation, am I right before the Lord?
And so the custom was that there was a midweek service known as a preparation service that people were expected to attend to prepare heart and soul for participating in the Lord's Supper on Sunday.
Now, as sometimes happens in the church, what begins as a good idea becomes problematic when it becomes a command.
It was such a good idea to prepare ahead of time, but what happened was that preparation service became necessary to qualify to come to Communion service.
If you came to the preparation service, you got your token.
This one actually says 1843 on it.
So this was a token from 1843.
And you had to get your token in order to be able to participate with the unqualified, unconditional grace of the Lord Jesus Christ.
[Laughter]
In essence, it seemed like you had to, of course, pay by your extra effort debleto--, to be able to participate in the Lord's Supper.
You in some way had to earn it, to deserve, to qualify, to participate in the Lord's Supper.
If there's anything that this psalmist is telling us, it is this: The only people who are qualified for the mercy of the Lord Jesus Christ are those who are sure they are unqualified.
That if we are not able to confess our need of the mercy of God, we are not ready at all for His actual provision.
What are the simple things this Psalm 32 is saying to us?
First, simply this: That confession blesses believers.
If we are honest about what we need to be coming to God for, there is blessing in that.
And so there is blessing to those who are really honest.
You might see a hint of that in verse 2: "Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity, in whose spirit there is no deceit."
Now, there's a sense in which if you say, "Oh, so those who can come are those who don't tell lies or those who are honest in business.
There's no deceit in them."
But if that's your interpretation, you're not actually seeing things in context.
The deceit is deceiving yourself about your need of God's mercy.
You see that more clearly in verse 3.
"For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away."
Verse 5, "I acknowledge my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity."
The honesty that's being called for is the honesty to say, "I'm not worthy to come.
As a matter of fact, I recognize I don't experience the mercy of God until I have been honest about my need of His great grace."
The apostle John picks it up using very similar words in 1 John 1:8.
"If we say there is no sin in us, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.
But if we confess our sin, God is faithful and just to forgive our sin and cleanse us from all unrighteousness."
The deceit is not to confess our need, that the blessing comes as we acknowledge the fact that we in fact need the Lord.
That means, in essence, what God is saying to us is that His mercy is for those who are really sinful.
That is, they've actually acknowledged the reality of sin in their lives, that there is something that would disqualify them apart from the mercy of God.
Now, you and I both know this can just be kind of churchy talk.
Everybody's supposed to say, "I'm not perfect.
I know I'm a sinner."
But the apostle and the psalmist are serious about that and it can distress us in the church that we actually know we're supposed to be coming and acknowledging that we are sinners.
I have a friend, a pastor, who said that he mentioned in a sermon one time, "You know, I'm a sinner too in the need of grace, of the grace of God."
And at the end of the service, an older woman met him at the door and she said, "Oh, pastor, you said you're a sinner.
You're not really a sinner."
He said, "Oh, yes, I am."
She said, "Oh, no, you're not."
He said, "Oh, yes, I am."
She said, "Oh, no, you're not."
He said, "Oh, yes, I am."
[Laughter]
Well, that convinced her.
[Laughter]
It ought to convince us all, so that we would not evade, as it were, what is the reality of sin in our lives.
The psalmist here basically covers the waterfront of types of sin to make sure that we recognize that in some measure, our need of grace applies to every person because of the varieties of sin that may characterize us.
The very first verse: "Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven."
Transgression is the notion of knowing the law, knowing the boundaries, and crossing them.
It's hardly ever news to people in the church what the law of God is.
If I say to you, "You should not lie," you say, "Oh, that's not in the Bible."
Now, you know it is.
And, yet, we struggle with the truth at times.
You should be faithful to your spouse.
Oh, the Bible doesn't really say that.
Oh, nobody questions that.
And, yet, we know that lust can fill our hearts and infidelity can characterize our lives.
Transgression is knowing what to do and rebelling.
And certainly there are those who sometimes are in rebellion.
David, as we'll soon see, was one of those persons.
His own life was characterized by adultery and murder and rebellion against God.
He well knew transgression.
But what if that's not what you're thinking about?
What if there are other things that are not so serious in your life and you think, "Well, you know, I haven't murdered anybody.
That's not really my problem."
Well, then the end of verse 1: "Blessed are those whose sin is covered."
The New Testament picks up that word of sin and uses a word to translate it meaning "to miss the mark."
Maybe this is for people who are newer in the church of God, people who are saying, "I thought I was honoring God; I thought I was a good person, and I find out having studied God's Word, being among God's people, I missed the mark.
What I thought characterized me as kind of a basically good person, I found I wasn't living for the honor and glory of God.
In fact, my life was a mess and I'd been led into a mess as I look back over things.
By just not living as God had instructed, I missed the mark."
Perhaps hardest for all of us is the beginning of verse 2.
"Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity."
Iniquity is the stuff inside that no one else sees: right things done for wrong motives; the things that are legally just fine but we're trying to take advantage of people or manipulate their affections or manipulate their favor; maybe the things that are inside of us that are thoughts that are not honoring to God, covetousness or lust or anger or bitterness; the thing that no one else knows.
But the Spirit of God who knows us has the record.
For each of these varieties of sin, outright rebellion, we are told there is a solution.
In verse 1, "Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven."
The language in the New Testament is simply those for whom grace is available.
There is rebellion.
And, yet, from God's perspective, there is still provision for grace.
As though God is saying, "Against those who have sinned against Me, knowingly went against Me, I desire them no harm, but rather there is grace for them."
And what about those who are sinful, who miss the mark?
There we are told their sin is covered.
Some years ago, Kathy and I went to some friends' house for dinner.
And at the end of dinner, we were served brownies that were burned.
And the husband, to kind of make light of it a little bit, looked at his wife and say, "Gee, sweetie, you know, don't we have better brownies than these?"
And she kind of grimaced and smiled a little bit but carved off the charred parces--, charred pieces and served us the rest.
Later in the evening, we found out that the wife had not baked the brownies.
The teenage daughter at the table had baked the brownies, but the mom had covered it, taken the blame on herself to spare the daughter the shame.
Our sin is covered in Christ.
He took our sin upon Himself on the cross, its penalty and its shame, so that we who would miss the mark would be covered.
What about those who have iniquity, the things on the inside that are not right?
There we are simply sa--, told, "The Lord counts no iniquity."
It's an accounting term here, as though God alone, who can keep the marks in the book of the things that are inside of us, the wrong motives and the wrong thoughts, nonetheless because of His great grace counts not the iniquity of those who confess it to Him.
Whether it's transgression or sin or iniquity, the great urge of the psalmist to say, "Confess it to God."
Recognize there is blessing to those who confess.
They will have their transgression put away.
God Himself will be kind even to those who have rebelled against Him.
Those who have missed the mark: God will cover that.
Those who have things on the inside that only God knows about: He will not count it against them.
So bring it to Him.
Confess it to Him.
And if that's not enough simply to know that the goodness of God would be yours, the psalmist is bold enough to talk about the consequences of lack of confession.
After all, you know this psalm is not merely saying that confession blesses believers but that lack of confession sickens believers.
There are more graphic verses in the Bible about the consequences of sin.
But there are not more graphic verses than verses 3 and 4 of the lack of confession.
Do you remember what it says?
"For when I kept silent," writes the psalmist, "my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long.
For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer."
As best we know, this psalm was probably written by David after his sin of adultery with Bathsheba.
And not only did he commit adultery with Bathsheba, because he was king, having power over a woman, the wife of another man, that when she became pregnant so that he would not be found out, he got complicity of his general to put Bathsheba's husband in the front of a battle so that he would be killed and then would be able to take Bathsheba with his wife without impunit--, with impunity and without blame.
The consequence was he was not only guilty of adultery but of murder and then conspiracy to do it with his own general.
Now what would your nights be like?
Guilt.
Lord, how could I have done that?
Not only adultery but murder: Me, the Lord's anointed, the one the Lord has blessed, the one the Lord has been so good.
How could I have done that?
And not just guilt but fear: And what happens if my people find out?
What happens if others know?
And not only fear but regret: Oh, Lord, the families that I hurt, the people whose lives I destroyed.
How could I have done such things?
And remorse: And, Lord, I've done it against You; against You and You only have I sinned.
My sin is ever before me.
As though God has so greatly bla--, blessed me, how could I possibly expect His help in the future?
How could I possibly expect God to watch over me when I have been so wrong and what I knew was wrong to do?
And so David begins to describe a life of sleeplessness.
Some of you know it.
I have known it.
What it means to exist where you are just plagued by the reality of your own sin, where you lose weight, where you can't sleep, where it seems the nutrients go out of your body as though the bones themselves are going to break because there's just no strength left in you.
I know you may look at the life of David and you may say, "Well, you know, I haven't committed adultery and I haven't committed murder."
Listen, we can't be in a group of people this large without recognizing there have been moments of infidelity among us.
And if it is not murder, there have been people hurt by what choices we have made in our lives.
And we know what it is to be up at night kind of going, "How could I?"
But even if it's not David's flavors of sin, the reason the psalm begins as it does with talking about the varieties of sin is so that we will all recognize in us there is something that applies that God must forgive.
I confess to you that part of the difficulty in my own life, the thing over which I wrestle the most, is unforgiveness.
I recognize that when I have served people, when I have given my best, when I've given them my heart and suddenly there is the report that comes of blame, of accusation, of willingness to hurt and harm by the very people I have tried to help, what happens in me is anger, is bitterness, is rage.
And I confess: I've had the nights I could not sleep; I could not eat.
I've had months sometimes I have lost weight in worry about how to respond to particular things.
I'm not proud of it.
I simply say what the scriptures are saying is true: that there can be the reality of sin in us that if we do not take care of it, it begins to sicken us.
And it is not what God desires for us.
And so He says plainly to us, "Confess your sin, that this lack of peace, this lack of sleep, this lack of nutrients in your life would be gone."
The very purpose that God has grace for us is to suppress guilt that would otherwise destroy us.
I have a pastor friend who says simply, honestly, he believes he has put a number of people in the grave because of unreconciled guilt in their hearts and lives.
They went exactly through this process of sleeplessness, of not being able to eat, of not being able to deal with the reality of sin in their hearts, and because they could not confess it and really deal with it, they were sickened even unto death, he says.
I don't know what all that means to you, but I recognize many of you, some of us, always at times in our lives there will be those moments of the plague of lack of confession.
I think how we are to deal with it is made clear here in this psalm, not only with the problem of lack of confession denying us the experience of grace but verse 5, the verse that tells us so much, the avenue by which lack of confession will now help us.
After all, what the apostle is saying in verse 5 is that lack of confession, if that's really what's happening, lack of confession: It will cause a pause in our lives of the experience of grace that we need.
A few technical things before we go into the sweetness of the psalm.
Right at the beginning of the psalm in most of your bibles, it says, "A Maskil of David."
Now, we don't exactly know what that means.
It's some form of song.
So this is being identified as a type of music.
And because it's a type of music, there are musical notations within the psalm.
You saw them, right, at the end of verse 4?
After it says, "My strength was dried up as by the heat of summer," there's that little word: "Selah."
It occurs three times in the psalm, as seemingly a pause is being indicated in the music.
It's not just a pause separating out the portions of the psalm: It's separating out the themes of the psalm.
The opening of the psalm talking about the human response; the middle of the psalm talking about God's reaction; the latter part of the psalm talking about God's instructions, first in the human voice, then in the divine voice.
The "Selah" is breaking up the themes with a pause.
But the great blessing of seeing that is recognizing there is no "Selah" in verse 5.
Verse 5, do you see what it says?
"I acknowledged my sin to you, and did not cover up my iniquity; I said, 'I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,' and you forgave the iniquity of my sin."
There is no pause.
With the confession, there is immediate forgiveness of God, as though the whole point that the psalmist is making, the song that is being sung, is when we confess our sin, He is faithful and just to forgive our sins immediately, no pause.
I think of the song Joseph Hart once penned.
The hymn was of a man who had been in church, knew what church was all about, but his heart turned against God.
He showed up at a revival given by John Wesley at one point, just to take notes of things he could criticize.
And actually wrote a well-distributed booklet called "The Unreality of Religion."
But then the Spirit of God began to work in his heart.
And as he faced the sin that was there, the transgression that was so obvious from a life where he had known the Lord and not only turned against God but become a rebel against the purposes of God, he began to be not able to sleep, believing that if he slept he would wake up in hell.
Until he went to a little church where a Moravian preacher said, "Not your works but the grace of God makes you right with God, and the grace of God is greater than all your sin."
When Joseph Hart later wrote a hymn to reflect it, he wrote these words: "Come, ye sinners, poor and needy, weak and wounded, sick and sore; Jesus ready stands to help you, full of pity, love, and power."
I love it.
He stands ready.
There's no pause.
As you come, seeking Him, in confession, there is no: He stands ready.
There's nothing more to be done.
Confess the sin and He's ready to forgive.
He is able.
He is able.
"Doubt no more," says Joseph Hart.
And our minds begin to rebel.
Our logic says, "There's got to be more to it than that.
I can't just kind of say, 'I'm sorry,' and with heart broken before God seek His grace.
I mean, surely I've got to do something, right?
I have to go to church a lot more.
I have to pay some money in the offering.
I've got to cross a desert, climb a mountain, go to a Cubs' game, something horrible, you know."
[Laughter]
Now, I meant to make you laugh and some boo, because I want you to hear how totally unreal are any of the suggestions in the face of the gospel, none of those things.
We confess and He forgives.
There is no more.
There is the immediacy of the grace of God that is being promised.
It's the whole purpose of the psalm: to recognize it is not the works we add.
When Paul in Romans 4 picked this same passage, he picked it to say, "God forgives apart from the works of the law."
This is the very New Testament passage picked up by the apostle to say, "God makes us right, not on the basis of what we do but on the basis of our dependence upon what He has done."
His grace, not my doing.
And not to have that understanding of how quick and ready is His forgiveness is to absolutely miss the joys of the gospel.
I think of other versions of faith and how far away they are from being able to provide peace to the heart.
Simon Wiesenthal is a name that some of you may know, a Nazi hunter, an Austrian Jew who himself survived the Holocaust.
At one point, he was in one of the Nazi death camps and he was assigned to an infirmary to the most menial and awful of the jobs in that hospital.
And as he went doing his duty one day, he came into a room where there was a Nazi guard in the bed.
The guard had been, by accident, seriously burned and was now dying.
As Wiesenthal entered the room, it stunk with decaying flesh and bandages improperly changed.
But as he crossed beside the bed to clean up the room, the man totally bandaged with only holes for eyes and his mouth reached his arm out and grabbed him.
"You are a Jew.
I must have the forgiveness of a Jew before I die."
And he told the account: "When I was with a troop that entered a town in Russia, we were so upset with the booby traps left by the Russians that we rounded up 300 Jews from the village and we put them into a multistory locked building.
We doused it with gasoline.
We set it on fire and waited with automatic weapons to shoot whoever came out of the building.
Most never even tried.
But at a window appeared a woman, a mother with her child that she tried to get to safety, and, O God, I shot her.
Forgive me.
I need a Jew to forgive me."
And Simon Wiesenthal reported in his book "The Sunflower" after he was asked for that forgiveness, there was a long pause.
And then he walked away.
The message of the psalm is that there is no pause in the Savior, but He comes to us.
He is Emmanuel, God with us.
He comes to us to take the penalty for our sin.
He comes to us by His Spirit, even at a Supper, a blessing from Him, reminding of what He has done to say, "I am here, I am near, and I forgive.
In Me there is full, free forgiveness.
And no pause.
Acknowledge your sin to Me sincerely from your heart, and you will know the blessing and the grace of God."
How do you know it?
What is that blessing that you might have?
How do I have any experience of it?
It's such a plain path said by God Himself.
Verse 6, "Therefore let everyone who is godly offer prayer to you at a time when you may be found; surely in the rush of great waters, they shall not reach him."
Pray.
Now.
Not when you think sometime later when you've nursed the wound long enough, when you've participated in the sin long enough.
Listen, you may think there will be a later time, but in the rush of great waters and the trials and the tragedies of life, God is going to seem far.
You know the truth now.
Pray now, "God forgive me."
And then what?
Trust.
Verse 7: "You are a hiding place for me; you preserve me from trouble; you surround me with shouts of deliverance."
That when we pray we have the assurance of God.
You are my hiding place.
Would you say that with me and recognize you're saying it to God?
Would you say that?
You are my hiding place.
Isn't that a blessing?
In the midst of sin, in the darkness of our own inability to sleep and the remorse that we're feeling to know that God is willing to be our hiding place and puts it in His very Word.
And then, not only do we recognize that He is that hiding place that we trust: We recognize we can rest in that.
Verse 8, "I will instruct you," the voice of the Lord, "and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you with my eye upon you."
Now, I know those words "my eye upon you" can be intimidating, but this is not God talking like, you know, the detention hall monitor saying, "I've got my eyes on you."
[Laughter]
No, this is the voice of your grandmother who's reminding you of dear songs of the past, right?
"His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me."
If I do as He says, if I follow His instruction, I can rest in that.
I don't have to come up with a new way and a new path.
I will rest in the Lord and let Him take care of the rest.
And believe that is the answer, so that I'm not like verse 9.
"Do not be like a horse or a mule, without understanding, which must be curbed with bit and bridle, or it will not stay with you."
I mean, I, listen, it's just plain language: Don't be mule headed.
Don't be stubborn.
Here is the Author of the gospel.
Here is the Author of grace.
Here is God saying, "Confess to Me what you know is not right, and I will forgive you."
And, finally, rejoice.
Verse 10, "Many are the sorrows of the wicked," yes, but that's not you.
"Steadfast love surrounds the one who loves, who trusts in the Lord.
Be glad in the Lord, and rejoice, O righteous, and shout for joy, all you who are upright in heart!"
Sometimes we think the great mark of the gospel is that we will feel badder longer than other people, that somehow obsessive guilt or obsessive sorrow is the mark of true godliness.
It's the opposite.
If my sin has been put away as far as the east is from the west, if there is no pause in the grace of God when I am coming to Him in honesty and sincerity saying, "God I need You," then I rejoice that my sin is put away.
He has loved me beyond my weakness.
He has covered me with His love, despite my sin.
And I rejoice.
Do I have any assurance that this can apply to me, that this great expression of grace can be mine?
Yes.
It is before you.
It is the Lord's Table, where the Lord is not saying to you and me, "Are you qualified?"
He is saying, "I'll pick up the meal.
I paid it all.
As you confess to Me, this grace is for you."
Right now.
Let's pray to Him.
>>> Father, we confess to You our need.
We remember if we do not, our sin will be ever before us.
It will crush us or callous us.
And neither is what You desire for us.
So we now prepare to partake of this, the Lord's Supper, acknowledging before one another and the world that we are made right not by what we have done, not by our goodness, but by the grace of God for people as needy as we.
Teach us again of the grace that nick--, makes us not only be aware of the God who came running but now enables us to run to You and embrace You though we are weak and wounded, sick and sore.
You are our hiding place.
Feed us now with the goodness of grace we pray.
In Jesus' name.
Amen.