BLESSED FORGIVENESS

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. ³ 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
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. Selah
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.⁷ You are a hiding place for me;you preserve me from trouble; you surround me with shouts of deliverance. Selah

⁸ 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.¹⁰ 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." Psalm 32:1-11

How do you picture God when you think about your sin? What do you think His expression is when you come to Him with the same old sin time after time again? What do you think His attitude toward you is in the light of your failures? What do your emotions tell you as you contemplate these questions? Are there sins from your past that continue to hang over you like a dark cloud? Do you feel your potential for God’s Kingdom has been destroyed because of your past disobedience? Your answer to these questions tells whether or not you have come to grips with God’s forgiveness or not. God has given Psalm 32 as a precious gift to encourage you. Psalm 32 is primarily about the joy and blessedness of God’s forgiving love!

David had sinned greatly and kept it covered for one year. (Read 2 Samuel 11-12) Then one day the prophet Nathan told David a story. It was all about a rich man who stole the one little ewe lamb of a poor man rather than taking a sheep from his own huge flock. "Surely this man deserves to die!" shouted an enraged David. With a bony finger pointed at David's nose, Nathan calmly declared, "You are the man! ... Why did you despise the word of the LORD by doing what is evil in his eyes? You struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and took his wife to be your own'(2 Samuel 12:7, 9).

Listen to what David says in Psalm 32 about the impact of his sin as it festered unconfessed and unforgiven in his heart for that year. " 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 sapped as in the heat of summer." (Psalm 32:3-4) Then David confessed his sin in 2 Samuel 12:13, "So David said to Nathan, "I have sinned against the LORD." And Nathan said to David, "The LORD also has put away your sin; you shall not die." Psalm 32 is a recording of Davids confession and forgiveness in greater detail. Listen more closely still to the song of God's forgiving love.

First we read David’s heartfelt and sincere confession of His sin in verses. 1-2,5. You talk about confession! David ransacks his dictionary for every word for sin he can find. He calls what he did a transgression , a word that refers to the rebellious and disloyal nature of his actions. He calls what he did a sin , a word that points to any act that misses the mark of God's revealed will. And he calls it iniquity (v. 2,5), that is to say, a crooked deed; a conscious intent to deviate from what is right.

Why do you think David goes to such verbal lengths to portray his sin? First, He knew that the prerequisite of receiving forgiveness is confession or acknowledgment of our sin to the Lord from a spirit free of deceit (verses 5 and 2). When you put these two things together, acknowledgment of our sin and not deceiving God, a very precise meaning for confession emerges. Confession to God is not merely admitting our sin as real but also rejecting our sin as repulsive.The longer you walk with God, The more you understand who He is, what sin is, and who you are in Him and apart from Him, the better you become, the more you are ashamed for being bad, not just doing bad. As N.P. Williams said, “The ordinary man may feel ashamed of doing wrong, but the saint refined with moral sensibility, and keener powers of introspection, is ashamed of being the kind of man who is liable to do wrong.” 

 There is deceit in the spirit of the person who admits with his mind that he sins but feels no revulsion in his heart at those sins: his bad temper and irritability, his hypercritical attitude, his gossiping, his lukewarm love for Christ, his failure to discipline his children, his dishonesty on tax forms and financial reports, etc. This is deceit because sin is repulsive and horrid in God's eyes and ought to be hated and shunned. So to come to God admitting to sin and feeling no grief or repugnance is to come with deceit, for what you are acknowledging is not really acknowledged as sin. The prerequisite therefore of divine forgiveness is admitting our sin as real and rejecting our sin as repulsive,

Secondly, my sense is that he does so to emphasize that every sin, any sin, whatever its cause or character, no matter how small or big, secret or public, intentional or inadvertent, all sin can be forgiven!

David also uses three different words to describe his confession. He acknowledged his sin to the Lord. He refused to cover up his iniquity. He was determined to confess his transgressions (v. 5). Why is this necessary? Why doesn't God, in His great grace just forgive all sin in everybody, no strings attached? Why does there have to be in every individuals case the prerequisite of confession? Every sin we commit is an insult to God, a slap in His face, whether we see it that way or not. That is why  David says in Psalm 51:4, "Against You, You only, have I sinned, and done this evil in Your sight-- that You may be found just when You speak, and blameless when You judge."
This has to be seen if we are to understand the dynamics of confession and forgiveness. When David confesses his sin, nothing is held back, there is no cutting of corners, no compromise, he comes totally clean. All the cupboards of his soul are emptied. All little black books are opened and read aloud. His confession is like opening the floodgates of a dam. It may be messy at first, but the release of ever-increasing pressure is life to his burdened heart. Three different words for sin. Three different words for confession. But better still, three different words for forgiveness!

David joyfully pronounces, " Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven" (verse 1). The word literally means, "to carry away." David's sin, my sin, your sin, is like an oppressive weight from which we long to be relieved. Forgiveness lifts the burden from our shoulders.

Then he says, "Blessed is he whose sin is covered" (verse1). It is as if David says, "Oh, dear Father, what joy to know that if I will but uncover my sin and not hide it, You will" David doesn’t mean to suggest that his sin is merely concealed from view but somehow still present to condemn and defeat him. The point is that God sees it no more. He has covered it from all view.

Thirdly he says, "Blessed is that man or woman, young or old, whose sin the Lord does not impute or count against them" (verse 2). No record is kept. God isn't a spiritual scorekeeper to those who seek His pardoning favor!

Have you ever fooled around with an "Etch-a-Sketch?" I never was much good at it. I'm not an artist by any stretch of the imagination. The Etch-a-Sketch was made for people like me. If you don't like what you've drawn, and especially don't want to be embarrassed should anyone else see it, you simply tip the screen and your work of art vanishes! It's a crude and simple illustration, but that is a lot like what God does with your sin when He grants forgiveness. Through the course of our earthly existence we sketch an ugly scenario of sin and rebellion and ingratitude and jealousy and lust. There it is, vividly imprinted on the screen of our souls. But when we confess our sin, as David did, God's loving and gracious hand tips the toy, and the slate is wiped clean! No matter how often we return to deface our lives with ugly pictures of hatred and anger and pride and envy, God is faithful to tip the screen. All it takes is confession. All it takes is the blood of Christ. But don't take my word for it, listen to what God Himself in Isaiah. 43:25, "I, even I, am He who blots out your transgressions for My own sake; and I will not remember your sins".
When we confess our sin and plead the blood of the Lord Jesus, God promises never again to bring it up, either to Himself, to you, or to others. How about what David says in Psalm 103:11-12, "For as the heavens are high above the earth, so great is His mercy toward those who fear Him; As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us."

That's forgiveness! That's love! God's not finished yet. He's got another illustration to make His point. Hezekiah put it this way in Isaiah 38:17; "You have lovingly delivered my soul from the pit of corruption, for You have cast all my sins behind Your back." God has taken your sin and placed it out of sight behind His back. All He sees now when He sees you is the blessed righteousness of His own dear Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Such is the love of forgiveness.

Still not good enough? Still not convinced? Still afraid that your sins will do you in? Then pay close attention to the word of the prophet Micah. He has something important to say about the kind of God we have in Micah 7:18-19, "Who is a God like You, pardoning iniquity and passing over the transgression of the remnant of His heritage? He does not retain His anger forever, because He delights in mercy. He will again have compassion on us, and will subdue our iniquities. You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea."
How much more graphic do you demand God be before you enter into the joy of His forgiving love? All vestige of condemning guilt is gone. Again, "Just as God said He put our sins behind His back, so here He says He will hurl them into the depths of the sea. They will not 'fall overboard;' God will hurl them into the depths. He wants them to be lost forever, because He has fully dealt with them in His Son, Jesus Christ.

Finally, listen to David’s response to God’s forgiveness in verses 1-2 I don't know how all this affects you, but I agree with David when he says (shouts?), "Blessed is he whose transgressions are forgiven ... Blessed is the man whose sin the LORD does not count against him. . . ". All hope for happiness is contingent on the forgiveness of sins. The word blessed, by the way, is plural! As Spurgeon has said, "Oh, the blessedness’s! the double joys, the bundles of happiness, the mountains of delight" that abound to the forgiven. Having experienced for himself the joy of forgiving love, David encourages others to seek God's pardoning favor in verses 6-7. God is like a high rock on which we stand when the flood waters of adversity begin to rise. God is a hiding place, a shelter in whom we find safety and protection from all that threatens the soul. And remember, He is all this for men and women like David who have spurned His ways and transgressed His will! What accounts for this willingness in God to forgive? To what do we attribute the peace and release and joy that floods the pardoned soul?

David puts his finger on it in verse 10: "Many are the woes of the wicked, but the Lord’s unfailing love surrounds the man who trusts in him'. God's love is the bulwark of our lives, the bodyguard of our souls, the atmosphere of immutable affection in which we move and live and breath.

"Forgiveness is a powerful force. It never leaves the forgiven unchanged." Dan Allender is on target in saying that "the extent to which someone truly loves will be positively correlated to the degree the person is stunned and silenced by the wonder that his huge debt has been canceled."' Jesus said about a prostitute who had experienced His forgiving love and washed His feet with her tears in Luke 7:47, "Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven-for she loved much. But he who has been forgiven little loves little".
Perhaps you haven’t sinned as David did, nor as the woman of Luke 7. Adultery, murder and prostitution may not be on your list. Perhaps your sins are more subtle and less public, whether fewer or greater in number. Whatever the case, David's only hope, the weeping ex-prostitute's only hope-your only hope-is the unfailing love of God.What is so blessed about having our transgressions forgiven? O, that we might cherish our forgiveness more! ponder the value of your eternal pardon. Compare the affections you feel for things and people in this world with the affection you feel for Jesus and for being forgiven through His death. And if you find that your heart leaps up more vigorously for anything else than it does for the forgiveness of God, repent.

Treasuring divine pardon!
Pastor Bill