Latest / Reformed Thinking / The Joy of Forgiven Sin (Psalm 32) | Charles Spurgeon

Transcript

The Joy of Forgiven Sin (Psalm 32) | Charles Spurgeon · Reformed Thinking

• 0:00
  Welcome to Reformed Thinking, where we take the sources that
• 0:03
  shape our faith, stack them up, and find the essential knowledge
• 0:07
  you need to be well informed. Today we are undertaking a deep
• 0:10
  dive into Psalm 32. And this is 1 David himself,
• 0:13
  labeled gloriously evangelic. It's really a vital instruction
• 0:18
  manual. Yeah.
• 0:18
  And for our source material, we're leaning on Charles
• 0:21
  Spurgeon's exposition in the Treasury of David.
• 0:24
  That's right. Our mission today is to unpack
• 0:26
  David's intense personal story of sin and forgiveness.
• 0:30
  We want to show how the pardon he experienced provides
• 0:33
  practical instruction for every follower of God, no matter where
• 0:36
  you are in your walk. OK, let's get right into it.
• 0:39
  So we open with a title that immediately gives us a clue.
• 0:41
  Masho Masho. Yeah, so.
• 0:43
  This isn't just a poem. It's, yeah, it's explicitly A
• 0:46
  didactic Psalm. It's meant to teach, to instruct
• 0:48
  the listener. And it's placement is so
• 0:50
  important, it comes right on the heels of Psalm 51.
• 0:53
  Which is David's raw, crushing repentance over his sin with
• 0:56
  Bathsheba. Exactly so.
• 0:57
  Psalm 51 is the cry of the accused soul, and then Psalm 32
• 1:01
  is the sound of the acquitted soul.
• 1:03
  The agony has given way to absolution.
• 1:05
  And the very first word is blessed.
• 1:07
  That tells you everything. It signifies a supreme
• 1:10
  happiness, a state we're all looking for.
• 1:12
  It does, but we have to be careful how we define it.
• 1:14
  Spurgeon makes this great point that Psalm 1 describes the
• 1:18
  result of a holy life, what that blessed person does right.
• 1:21
  But Psalm 32 is different. It describes the cause of that
• 1:25
  happiness. And that cause isn't what you'd
• 1:27
  expect. It's not ascribed to the one who
• 1:29
  perfectly keeps the law. Because that's impossible for
• 1:31
  us. No, the blessedness is ascribed
• 1:33
  to the lawbreaker who receives mercy.
• 1:36
  And this mercy is so total, it lifts the Sinner from well, from
• 1:40
  judgment, into a state of conscious comfort and
• 1:42
  acceptance. So the source of all happiness
• 1:45
  is pardoning mercy. And this pardon laid out in
• 1:47
  verse 1 is it's meticulously detailed.
• 1:50
  David uses 3 specific terms for sin.
• 1:53
  He does. It shows how comprehensive the
• 1:55
  forgiveness is. It covers every possible angle
• 1:58
  of our offense. OK, so let's break those down.
• 2:00
  The first one is transgression. What does they get at
• 2:02
  specifically? Transgression points to a
• 2:05
  willful violation. It's stepping over a known
• 2:07
  boundary, breaking a known law. And the corresponding mercy for
• 2:12
  that is that it's forgiven. Forgiven, and the original
• 2:15
  Hebrew word there suggests something is taken off or lifted
• 2:19
  away. Lifted away like a physical
• 2:20
  weight. Exactly like a crushing load
• 2:22
  being taken right off your shoulders, You can almost feel
• 2:24
  the relief in the word itself. And that idea that Christ bore
• 2:28
  this load is what makes the removal real, isn't it?
• 2:32
  It has to be that removal cost our Savior everything.
• 2:35
  The burden is never treated lightly, but when it's forgiven,
• 2:38
  it's not just overlooked, it's literally carried away by a
• 2:41
  substitute. The load is gone.
• 2:43
  OK, so the second term is sin. This one feels a bit broader.
• 2:48
  It is. It often refers to the general
• 2:51
  filthiness, the stain that comes from violating God's law, the
• 2:54
  corruption in our actions. And this sin is covered.
• 2:57
  Covered. Yeah.
• 2:58
  And this is a direct reference to the Sanctuary, specifically
• 3:01
  the Ark of the Covenant. Inside of which were the broken
• 3:03
  tablets of the law. Testifying against Israel, yes.
• 3:07
  But the lid of that ark was the mercy seat, and it covered the
• 3:10
  broken law. When the high priest sprinkled
• 3:13
  the blood on the mercy seat, what God saw was the blood, the
• 3:16
  propitiation, not the failure underneath.
• 3:19
  So Christ's atonement is our mercy seat.
• 3:22
  His sacrifice covers that filthiness from God's sight.
• 3:26
  It makes an end of it. The sin is propitiated,
• 3:28
  satisfaction has been made, and if you really sit with the
• 3:31
  ugliness of sin, you start to grasp the happiness of knowing
• 3:34
  that stain is just gone, hidden forever.
• 3:37
  Which brings us to the third term, and this one has, I think,
• 3:40
  the most weight for a Reformed understanding of salvation.
• 3:44
  Iniquity, yes. This implies perversion, a moral
• 3:47
  distortion, the inherent crookedness of our nature.
• 3:50
  And this iniquity is not imputed.
• 3:51
  Non imputation. This is the bedrock of the
• 3:54
  blessed state. To impute means to account
• 3:56
  something, to reckon it or record it against someone.
• 3:59
  So non imputation means what exactly?
• 4:01
  The dead is never even put on the books.
• 4:03
  That's a perfect analogy. It's not just forgiven, it's
• 4:07
  never recorded against the believer in the 1st place.
• 4:09
  The sin is still a fact of your history, but its legal
• 4:13
  consequences, its guilt, are simply not accounted to you.
• 4:17
  And Paul picks this up directly in Romans 4.
• 4:19
  Doesn't. He he quotes this very passage.
• 4:21
  He stresses that this blessedness belongs to the one
• 4:24
  to whom God credits righteousness without works.
• 4:27
  It's the perfect reversal. Our guilt is not accounted to
• 4:30
  us. And Christ, perfection is
• 4:31
  accounted to us. It's the great exchange.
• 4:33
  It's a total pardon. And David insists it's something
• 4:36
  you can know, something that brings conscious comfort.
• 4:39
  I mean, where would the blessedness be if you were
• 4:41
  forgiven but still agonizing in doubt?
• 4:44
  Right. It has to be a known reality.
• 4:45
  And that leads directly to the final piece of this in verse 2.
• 4:49
  The blessed person is 1 in whose spirit there is no guile.
• 4:53
  Yes, this is so key. Forgiveness doesn't create a
• 4:56
  license to be deceitful. It changes you.
• 4:58
  It produces guilelessness, honesty, so the.
• 5:01
  Pardoned person can finally be honest with himself, with his
• 5:04
  sin, with his God. There's nothing left to hide.
• 5:07
  You're liberated from the need to pretend.
• 5:09
  Spurgeon often said that hypocrisy is a mark of the
• 5:12
  unredeemed. Real grace restores the mind to
• 5:15
  its perpendicular. It takes a crafty, crooked
• 5:18
  nature and makes it simple and honest.
• 5:20
  A person with shifty ways is the least likely to have grasped
• 5:23
  true grace. That's a a sobering but
• 5:27
  essential definition of the pardon life.
• 5:29
  So having laid out what forgiveness looks like, David
• 5:33
  then switches to his own story. He does he becomes the teacher
• 5:36
  by sharing his own terrible experience.
• 5:38
  This is Section 2, the agony of His silence, starting in verse
• 5:42
  three. He.
• 5:42
  Details The cost of trying to hide his sin.
• 5:45
  That awful period when he kept silence.
• 5:46
  He refused to confess. Maybe he hoped it would just
• 5:49
  fade away, but the silence just brought total devastation.
• 5:53
  I'm it starts with a physical decay, my bones waxed old.
• 5:57
  The Hebrew there suggests his deep consuming weakness.
• 6:00
  The very framework of his body was decaying.
• 6:03
  Unconfessed sin acts like a disease, a fire in the bones,
• 6:06
  just sapping your physical health.
• 6:08
  It shows how you can't separate the spiritual from the physical,
• 6:10
  can you? A spiritual sickness manifests
• 6:12
  in the body. It's a holistic destruction.
• 6:15
  And then came the emotional woe, which is such a paradox through
• 6:19
  my roaring all the day long. He was silent about his sin, but
• 6:23
  he was roaring in his sorrow. Exactly.
• 6:25
  Not a quiet weeping, but the loud, desperate sound of a
• 6:28
  trapped, wounded animal. Spurgeon said that the pain of a
• 6:31
  guilty conscience is worse than any physical torture.
• 6:35
  It's a hell within the breast. And this wasn't just his own
• 6:37
  guilt eating at him. God was actively involved.
• 6:41
  Thy hand was heavy upon me day and night.
• 6:44
  That is divine oppression. Just imagine the weight of God's
• 6:46
  hand pressing down on you constantly.
• 6:48
  No relief, no rest. Better to have the whole world
• 6:52
  on your shoulders than God's hand on your heart.
• 6:54
  One is physical, the other is it's existential.
• 6:58
  The result of all this is total spiritual emptiness.
• 7:01
  My moisture has turned into the drought of summer.
• 7:03
  It's such a vivid image. The essential SAP of his soul
• 7:05
  just dried up. All the joy, all the life gone.
• 7:08
  He was like a tree blasted by lightning, just withered and
• 7:11
  barren. And this is David, the Great
• 7:13
  King, reduced to a dry, roaring skeleton, all because he
• 7:16
  wouldn't say a few words to God. And right there, the original
• 7:19
  text has the first sela. A pause.
• 7:22
  The music stops. You're forced to just sit in
• 7:24
  that anguish and realize this is what concealment does.
• 7:27
  That pause makes the turning point in verse 5 all more
• 7:29
  dramatic. He finally decides to confess.
• 7:32
  The realization hits him. I acknowledged my sin unto thee.
• 7:36
  And notice how specific he is. First, it was directed only to
• 7:39
  God, unto thee, not to a priest, not to men.
• 7:43
  Straight to the source. And he confesses everything, not
• 7:47
  just the sin, the action, but the iniquity, the guilt, the
• 7:50
  perversion behind it. A shallow confession only deals
• 7:53
  with symptoms. To confess the iniquity is to
• 7:56
  fully humble the heart. And then the whole story just
• 7:59
  flips. The absolution is immediate.
• 8:01
  I acknowledge my sin unto thee, and thou forgave us the iniquity
• 8:05
  of my sin. Instantaneous.
• 8:07
  The moment the resolve was made and the words were spoken from
• 8:10
  the heart, the transaction was done.
• 8:11
  And Spurgeon points out that the forgiveness went to the very
• 8:14
  root. Not just the sin, but the
• 8:16
  iniquity of the sin was put away at once.
• 8:18
  So it's not just cutting the weed off at the ground.
• 8:21
  No, the knife of mercy cuts the root system.
• 8:24
  It puts away the fundamental moral distortion so it no longer
• 8:28
  has a legal hole on the believer.
• 8:30
  The weight, the filth, the guilt, all gone all at once.
• 8:34
  And here we get our second seller.
• 8:36
  But this pause isn't for sorrow. No, this one is for pure
• 8:39
  adoration and wonder. It makes you ask that question,
• 8:41
  Why such love to me? How can a righteous God just
• 8:45
  lift his heavy hand and replace it with infinite favor?
• 8:48
  And that personal experience naturally becomes an
• 8:50
  encouragement for everyone else. It has to, and that leads us
• 8:53
  straight into Section 3, the encouragement to prayer in verse
• 8:57
  6. David's own story becomes the
• 8:59
  instruction for this. Shall everyone that is godly
• 9:03
  pray unto thee. Right the godly those who have a
• 9:05
  God like judgment see that David's path is the only path to
• 9:08
  peace. They'll seek the Lord the same
• 9:10
  way, through the mercy seat. Let.
• 9:12
  Me hit this really sobering phrase in a time when thou
• 9:16
  mayest be found. This is a powerful warning
• 9:18
  against putting it off. God promises pardon now in the
• 9:21
  season of grace, but He doesn't promise it tomorrow.
• 9:24
  The door is open, but it won't be open forever.
• 9:26
  So what's the risk in waiting? The risk is you miss the chance
• 9:30
  entirely. You delay and delay, and then
• 9:32
  the master of the house gets up and shuts the door.
• 9:34
  Like the foolish virgins, your chance is gone.
• 9:37
  We have to pray while mercy rules the present hour.
• 9:41
  OK, but for those who do pray in that accepted time, the security
• 9:44
  that follows is, well, it's astonishing.
• 9:47
  Surely in the floods of great waters they shall not come nigh
• 9:50
  unto Him. This is one of the psalmist's
• 9:52
  favorite images, the floods of great waters.
• 9:54
  They represent overwhelming disasters, famine, war, personal
• 9:59
  sorrow, financial ruin, all the chaos of life and.
• 10:03
  The praying man is kept safe. The idea seems to be that if
• 10:06
  you're saved from the biggest trouble, which is sin, you don't
• 10:09
  need to fear anything else. That's the spiritual logic.
• 10:12
  But there's an obvious question, isn't there?
• 10:14
  We see godly people suffer terribly.
• 10:16
  They get sick, they lose everything.
• 10:17
  How can David say the water shall not come nigh unto him?
• 10:20
  That's what I was thinking. How do we square that?
• 10:22
  Well, the early commentators made a crucial distinction.
• 10:25
  The floods do come near a faithful person's goods, their
• 10:28
  body, their natural soul. But they can't touch their core
• 10:32
  Christian identity. So they can't come near him.
• 10:34
  Exactly the real Him, the core of the believer that's joined to
• 10:38
  Christ by faith. Your humanity isn't defined by
• 10:41
  your circumstances. So even if the body is
• 10:44
  destroyed, the person defined by faith remains secure.
• 10:48
  The Lord keeps the soul from being spiritually overthrown.
• 10:52
  So the external storms can crash all around, but they can't
• 10:55
  breach the inner person. That's a that's a very
• 10:57
  stabilizing thought. It changes how you process
• 11:00
  hardship. You feel it, yes, but you aren't
• 11:02
  destroyed by it. And this security leads to a
• 11:05
  whole new kind of relationship with God.
• 11:07
  In Section 4, David shifts from seeing God as a distant judge to
• 11:11
  an intimate refuge. The change is so personal.
• 11:14
  He says Thou art my hiding place.
• 11:16
  That's a claim. The same God whose hand was
• 11:18
  heavy on him is now his shelter. It shows just how fast and
• 11:22
  effective confession is. The judge becomes the refuge,
• 11:25
  and the assurance this brings covers all of time, doesn't.
• 11:28
  It it does, you have the awful past which is now overcome.
• 11:31
  You have the joyful present. Thou art my hiding place, and
• 11:34
  you have the cheerful future. Thou shalt preserve me from
• 11:37
  trouble. And preservation doesn't mean
• 11:39
  you avoid trouble. No, but it means the trouble
• 11:42
  won't do ultimate harm. It might be like a file scraping
• 11:45
  off the rest of self-reliance, but it won't destroy the metal.
• 11:48
  This security then erupts into that amazing sentence in verse
• 11:51
  7. Thou shalt compass me about with
• 11:54
  songs of deliverance. It's one of the most beautiful
• 11:57
  pictures of the forgiven life. The person is completely
• 12:00
  encircled by music, joyful, triumphant sound.
• 12:03
  You live in an atmosphere of praise.
• 12:06
  From the internal roaring all the day long to being surrounded
• 12:09
  by songs, what a shift. It's a total reversal.
• 12:12
  Hope is in front of you, sounding the symbols.
• 12:15
  Gratitude is behind you, beating in the timbrel.
• 12:17
  It's the soundtrack of justification.
• 12:20
  And from this place of refuge God then becomes the teacher.
• 12:24
  The voice shifts, and God says, I will instruct thee, and teach
• 12:27
  thee in the way which thou shalt go.
• 12:29
  See, pardon is never a license for spiritual laziness.
• 12:32
  It's a benefit that leads straight to education and
• 12:34
  holiness. When you're adopted as a child,
• 12:36
  your father teaches you. And the method of teaching is so
• 12:39
  intimate I will guide you with mine eye.
• 12:41
  This is the highest level of guidance.
• 12:44
  It implies you're so attuned to the master that you can take
• 12:46
  your cues from a simple glance and nod.
• 12:49
  You don't need a Thunderbolt to get you to obey.
• 12:51
  It sets a high standard for our spiritual sensitivity.
• 12:54
  It does, but we often resist that gentle guidance, which
• 12:57
  leads to the harsh warning in verse 9.
• 12:59
  The animal contrast, yes. Be not as the horse or as the
• 13:03
  mule, which have no understanding.
• 13:06
  We're warned against this, the stupidity of heart, this
• 13:09
  willfulness. We who should be guided by an
• 13:12
  eye, make ourselves like beasts that need to be forced.
• 13:16
  A pretty degrading comparison. It's meant to be.
• 13:18
  It's a condemnation of our chosen stubbornness.
• 13:21
  When we refuse the gentle guidance, we show, we're
• 13:23
  unwilling to learn. So the bit and bridle in this
• 13:26
  analogy, that's affliction. That's the constraint of
• 13:29
  affliction. Yes, an animal needs a bitten
• 13:31
  bridle because it's hard mouthed and stubborn.
• 13:34
  If we refuse the loving whisper, we should expect the tight reign
• 13:37
  of discipline. The verse says it's needed, lest
• 13:40
  they kick against thee. So our trials are often evidence
• 13:43
  of our own spiritual stubbornness.
• 13:45
  It's a hard truth. We force God to use severe
• 13:48
  measures because the gentle guidance of the eye failed.
• 13:51
  And that contrast leads us right into the final section, verse
• 13:54
  10, which lays out the two paths for humanity, the stubborn and
• 13:59
  the trusting. 1st we get the wicked.
• 14:02
  Many sorrows shall be to the wicked because they act like
• 14:05
  stubborn animals. They just reap cuts and bruises.
• 14:07
  Their joys are fleeting, but their sorrows multiply.
• 14:10
  What kind of sorrows? A tormenting conscience, the
• 14:12
  disappointment of failed schemes, the terror of future
• 14:15
  justice. It's an inevitable heritage.
• 14:18
  They get a hive of Wasps instead of a swarm of bees.
• 14:21
  And the opposite of that is the trusting.
• 14:23
  He that trusteth in the Lord, mercy shall compass him about.
• 14:26
  Faith is the antithesis of wickedness.
• 14:29
  The believer, by trusting, lives in an atmosphere of grace.
• 14:33
  Mercy is all around them like a bodyguard.
• 14:35
  So it's everywhere, at home, at work, in success and in failure.
• 14:39
  It's universal. Mercy watches over their
• 14:42
  thoughts, guides their steps, secures their souls.
• 14:45
  The wicked are surrounded by consequences.
• 14:48
  The trusting are encircled by favor.
• 14:50
  This absolute certainty of mercy and protection then leads to the
• 14:54
  final command in verse 11, which is a mandate for joy.
• 14:58
  Be glad and rejoice and shout for joy.
• 15:01
  Joy becomes a duty. David is basically saying, look
• 15:04
  at what you've received. A free total pardon from the
• 15:06
  King of Kings. How can you sit there in
• 15:08
  sadness? Murmuring becomes almost
• 15:11
  inexcusable. But the joy has to be directed
• 15:13
  properly. Be glad in the Lord.
• 15:15
  Crucial point. This keeps it from being shallow
• 15:18
  or superficial. The joy isn't rooted in your
• 15:20
  bank account or your health, but in the unchangeable fact that
• 15:23
  God is yours, reconciled your Father.
• 15:26
  That truth alone is enough for a perpetual song.
• 15:29
  And the expression should be loud.
• 15:30
  Shout for joy. It's not meant to be a quiet
• 15:33
  internal feeling. No, it should be outward
• 15:35
  expressive. Sometimes a hearty vocal shout
• 15:38
  is the only fitting response to the great spiritual spoil we
• 15:41
  found. We shouldn't let a sense of
• 15:42
  propriety stifle that. And this command is given to the
• 15:45
  righteous and the upright in heart.
• 15:47
  It brings us full circle. It closes the loop.
• 15:50
  It reminds us that the pardon soul is restored to honesty.
• 15:54
  The wicked person is twisted, but the pardon person is
• 15:57
  delivered from guile. His heart, while still
• 16:01
  imperfect, is now fundamentally upright in its aim toward God.
• 16:05
  That combination, pardon and integrity, is the sign of a
• 16:08
  truly blessed person. What a magnificent deep dive
• 16:12
  this has been. We've traced the path from the
• 16:14
  crushing weight of hidden sin through that spiritual drought
• 16:18
  to the immediate relief of confession and ending in a life
• 16:21
  encircled with songs of deliverance.
• 16:23
  It really is an instruction manual on receiving gospel
• 16:25
  peace. And the central instruction is
• 16:27
  the blessedness of a pardon that is not only given but is fully
• 16:30
  imputed. Our guilt is not reckoned to us
• 16:33
  because of Christ's work. That simple truth is the heart
• 16:36
  of it all. So as our listeners reflect on
• 16:38
  all this, what's the one thought they should carry away about
• 16:41
  confession and grace? I would say ponder the radical
• 16:44
  simplicity of that turning point in verse 5, Augustine pointed
• 16:48
  out that David simply determine I will confess and the
• 16:51
  forgiveness followed instantly. Just consider the power and the
• 16:54
  freedom in those few words. I have sinned when they're
• 16:57
  spoken sincerely from the heart to God alone.
• 17:00
  You've now seen the way of salvation laid out.
• 17:02
  The final step is, David showed, is to publish that way to others
• 17:05
  so they can know this blessedness too.