Psalm 32

[0:00] The treasure of our hearts. We ask these things in Jesus' name.! Amen. You guys can take a seat for a moment. We've been, for the last few weeks, we've been taking some time out of our regular series in 1 Corinthians! to look at a handful of the Psalms.

[0:23] All the Psalms we've looked at so far have been written by David, and the one that we're looking at this morning is no different. It's also written by King David. This morning, we're going to be walking through Psalm 32.

[0:34] So if you have a Bible with you, I encourage you, open up to Psalm 32. If you're grabbing one of them that we've provided, turn to page 462, and you will find Psalm 32. It begins on the bottom of page 462 in those Bibles.

[0:48] But find it on your phone or on your Bible or in one of the Bibles that we've provided this morning. We're first going to read through this Psalm together. And then we're going to spend a few minutes wrestling with it and trying to understand what is it that God is teaching us through this inspired Psalm.

[1:04] So if you would, stand to your feet again. As we begin in verse 1. A mosqueal of David. Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.

[1:19] 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.

[1:29] 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.

[1:42] And I did not cover my iniquity. I said, I will confess my transgressions to Yahweh. 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.

[1:57] 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.

[2:08] 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.

[2:26] Many are the sorrows of the wicked, but steadfast love surrounds the one who trusts in Yahweh. Be glad in Yahweh and rejoice, O righteous, and shout for joy, all you upright in heart.

[2:43] Father, thank you for this powerful word from the hand of King David. Now may your spirit who inspired him so work in us that we end glad in you, rejoicing and shouting for joy.

[3:04] I ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. You guys can take a seat. I want to ask you a really important question this morning, and that is, do you really genuinely want to be happy?

[3:22] Do you want to be happy? Now, I ask you that question, but the truth is, I already know the answer to that because all of us, deep down, no matter what our surface motivations are, no matter what it is that we might be doing on a daily basis, that may not look this way, all of us want, deep down, to be happy.

[3:44] And that's not just my own observation. You can read in a number of theologians, philosophers throughout the centuries who come to the conclusion that we are motivated by a base desire to be happy.

[4:00] The French philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal said it this way. He said, all men seek happiness. This is without exception. Whatever different means they employ, they all tend to this end.

[4:12] The cause of some going to war, and of others avoiding it, is the same desire in both, attended with different views. The will never takes the least step but to this object.

[4:25] This is the motive of every action, of every man, even of those who hang themselves. All men seek happiness, he says. This is reality.

[4:36] Whatever you do, whatever direction you go, whatever steps you take, ultimately, the motivation that lies at the bottom of your heart is that you want to be happy. You want to be satisfied.

[4:47] You want something better, something more, something different than the drudgery, than the common sadness that infects the world around us. You want something better. And all of us, in everything that we do, are moving, at least we think, we are moving in the direction of things that will make us happy or happier than we are currently.

[5:09] And Psalm 32, believe it or not, Psalm 32 is actually like a manual for us. Showing us how it is that we might actually really be happy.

[5:22] How we might find true happiness. Now you might say, well, I'm not sure. He seemed to talk a lot about sin in here. And he told people not to act like mules and horses.

[5:34] And there was some kind of weird stuff in there. I'm not quite sure that I understand where you're moving. And if you're saying, this is teaching us how to be happy. Where do you see that? Where are you getting that from?

[5:45] Well, I'm getting it from the beginning and the end of the Psalm that I think are intended to reflect one another and act like bookends on this Psalm, helping us to see what the main point of the Psalm is.

[5:56] Look at the end of the Psalm real quickly. Be glad. That's happiness, right? Be glad in Yahweh. Rejoice. And then he says, shout for joy.

[6:07] It's all there tied up at the end of the Psalm. Be glad. Rejoice. Shout for joy. But it's not just there. It's also in the opening word of the Psalm itself.

[6:18] David says, blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven. And then he says again, blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity. That word, blessed, means happy.

[6:32] That's what it means. Happy is the one whose transgression is forgiven. Happy is the man against whom the Lord will not count no iniquity. And if you doubt me on that, let me give you two other places where we see this exact same word in the Old Testament so that you will know and understand that I'm not just making things up.

[6:52] Deuteronomy chapter 33. We're going to see this word two times. Deuteronomy 33. And I'll read it to you in the same version, same translation. Verse 29. Moses, in his parting words to the nation of Israel before he goes off to die, says, Happy are you, O Israel, who is like you, a people saved by Yahweh, the shield of your help, and the sword of your triumph.

[7:20] Your enemies shall come fawning to you, and you shall tread upon their backs. Happy are you, who is like you. Or, later on in the story, we move ahead to 1 Kings 9, verse 8.

[7:36] This is the queen of Sheba who's come to survey, to see if the rumors are true of the greatness of King Solomon, David's son. Are they true? She says, after surveying and seeing the land of Israel and the capital Jerusalem and all that Solomon has accomplished, she says this to him, Happy are your men.

[7:56] Happy are your servants who continually stand before you and hear your wisdom. This is the same word in each time that we see it in these verses. Happy, happy, happy.

[8:08] Happy. That's what David is communicating to us at the very beginning of this psalm. He's telling us the way to happiness. He's giving us directions. How do you get there?

[8:20] How do you experience this thing called happiness? Now, one of the difficulties that we have as Christians living in the 21st century is that for about the last, oh, I'm going to say 100 years or so, maybe less, but for roughly the last 100 years throughout much of the 20th century and now even into the 21st, many Christian writers have made a distinction between happiness and joy.

[8:49] And they have told us over and over that happiness is really not a good thing. It's not terrible, but it's not the thing you should be seeking. Rather, you should be seeking joy in its place.

[9:01] And we see this all the time. Even in writers that I respect and I enjoy reading their things, they will often make this artificial distinction between joy and happiness that we don't find in the Bible.

[9:14] Let me give you one example. Oswald Chambers. I'm sure some of you are familiar with him. He's got a devotional that's been popular for decades. He says this, Joy should not be confused with happiness.

[9:28] In fact, he says, it is an insult to Jesus Christ to use the word happiness in connection with him. Over and over, we are told by Christian leaders that joy and happiness are two very different things.

[9:45] And you should want to have joy, but don't worry about happiness. But the truth of the matter is the Bible doesn't make that kind of distinction. The Bible uses all of these words, joy, happiness, gladness, rejoicing, delight.

[9:59] It uses them all interchangeably. There's no such distinction that the Bible itself makes between these two things. David says, happy.

[10:12] He doesn't limit himself to one vocabulary word, joy. He says, happy. Happy is the man who has experienced God's grace and mercy.

[10:23] Some of you know Johnny Erickson Tata. She's written a number of things. Her life is a testimony to happiness, to joy in the midst of suffering and pain.

[10:39] And she writes this in one of her books as she's reflecting upon Psalm 68. She says this, we are often taught to be careful of the difference between joy and happiness.

[10:50] Happiness, it is said, is an emotion that depends upon what happens. Joy, by contrast, is supposed to be enduring, stemming deep from within our soul and which is not affected by the circumstances around us.

[11:03] That sounds very much like Oswald Chambers and so many other Christian writers and preachers. But here's what she goes on to say. I don't think God had any such hair splitting in mind.

[11:17] Scripture uses the terms interchangeably, just what I said a moment ago, along with words like delight, gladness, blessed. She says there is no scale of relative spiritual values applied to any of these.

[11:31] Happiness is not relegated to fleshly minded sinners nor joy to heaven bound saints. We should do away with this distinction. It's confusing to us.

[11:42] We think that an emotional experience is somehow less than something else that we've named joy, which, by the way, is none other than an emotional experience.

[11:54] We need to do away with this distinction. It's not helpful to us and it's certainly not helpful when we go to communicate the gospel to a world of people that are wired, just like us, to seek their happiness.

[12:08] We are fundamentally wired by God to want to be happy. And when we look into the eyes of non-Christians and say, well, I don't know about happiness, guys, but I can tell you how to be joyful, that does not compute with them.

[12:23] They don't see a distinction between them because in the English language and in every other language, they are synonyms. They mean, essentially, the same thing.

[12:35] John Piper says, if you have nice little categories for joy is what Christians have and happiness is what the world has, you can scrap those when you go to the Bible because the Bible is indiscriminate in its uses of the language of happiness and joy and contentment and satisfaction.

[12:52] They are not two different things. They are the same. There is such a thing as worldly happiness or worldly joy and godly happiness, godly joy, but the fundamental root emotion is the same in either.

[13:08] What changes is not the nature of the emotion or the experience but the object of your delight. It's delight in either case but what matters is the object of your delight.

[13:22] Who or what is it that makes you ultimately happy? That's the real issue. The question is not will we try to be happy?

[13:33] You will. The question is in what or in whom will you find your delight and your happiness and your joy?

[13:45] Listen to C.S. Lewis. He says this, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong.

[13:55] In other words, he's not opposed to our seeking out happiness. He doesn't find that to be too strong of an impulse within us. In fact, he says, but too weak.

[14:07] We are half-hearted creatures fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us. Like an arrogant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea.

[14:22] And he concludes and says, we are far too easily pleased. The problem is not that you want to be pleased. The problem is not that you want to be happy.

[14:32] The problem is not that your neighbor wants to be happy. No. The problem is that we are prone as sinful fallen people to satisfy for a lower lesser object that cannot provide us with the degree of happiness and joy that we all need and we all ultimately long to possess.

[14:59] David says, blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven. In other words, happy is the one who has experienced God's mercy, God's grace.

[15:10] He says toward the end that we are to be glad and rejoice in the Lord, in Yahweh. In other words, when God becomes the object of our delight, then our natural inclinations and God's design come together.

[15:29] They meet. Let me say that again. When God is the object of our delight, our natural inclinations, our natural desires and God's design come together in the way that He intended in the first place.

[15:47] That's what David is trying to say to us at the beginning and end of this psalm. You can be blessed. You can have happiness. You can be glad and rejoice and it can be lasting and enduring and more powerful than the sorrows that encroach upon you from this world.

[16:02] But the object of your delight must be the Lord Himself. or you will find that delight fades, doesn't last.

[16:16] And it can be a delight in good things. You may find happiness in your children or your grandchildren. You may find happiness, genuine happiness in your job and satisfaction in the job that you have.

[16:32] You might find happiness and delight in the church itself. There may be good things that God intends you to rejoice in, intends for you to enjoy, but when they become the primary object, the thing that gives rise to your delight and your satisfaction, something is wrong.

[16:59] And that delight and that satisfaction will be limited. it will ultimately fade. Listen to A.W. Tozer.

[17:11] He says, the people of God ought to be the happiest people in the whole wide world. Goodness is that in God which desires the happiness of His creatures and that irresistible urge in God to bestow blessedness.

[17:28] That's what God's goodness consists of. God's goodness consists of the happiness of His creatures and His desire to bestow blessedness or happiness upon us.

[17:40] The goodness of God takes pleasure in the pleasure of His people. For a long time it has been drummed into us that if we are happy God is worried about us.

[17:51] We believe He's never quite pleased if we're happy. But the true, the strict, true teaching of the Word is that God takes pleasure in the pleasure of His people.

[18:01] Now note this, provided His people take pleasure in God. Listen carefully because I think this is a good summary of Psalm 32 and I'm about to show it to you in Psalm 32 but listen carefully.

[18:16] God takes pleasure in the pleasure of His people. Provided His people take pleasure in God. Or as Jonathan Edwards said it, the happiness Christ gives to His people is a participation in His own happiness.

[18:34] If you would be happy in a way that lasts and endures even when sorrow enters into your life, even when life does not go as planned, if you would be happy even in those times, Christ must be the source of your happiness and delight and joy.

[18:55] Now let's see how David proves that point to us in Psalm 32. Psalm 32, I showed you it has these bookends that speak of blessedness, happiness, delight, gladness.

[19:10] It speaks of these things at the beginning of the Psalm and at the end of the Psalm but in the middle we get first David's own story of how he moved from being one who was not happy, not experiencing God's mercy to become one who was experiencing those things and then from his experience to his instruction for others.

[19:32] So we get David's experience beginning in verse 3. Note he says, when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long.

[19:48] For day and night your hand was heavy upon me, my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. That is a poetic description of unhappiness, of sorrow, of lamenting, of dissatisfaction.

[20:05] My bones wasted away all day long. When? When he says I was silent. What he means is when I did not cry out to you.

[20:18] because everything changes in the experience of David when he cries out to God himself. Note verse 5, here's where the shift happens.

[20:29] Instead of being silent, it says, I acknowledged my sin to you and I did not cover my iniquity. In his silence, he covered over his sins, his iniquities.

[20:41] He didn't speak of them. He tried to keep them in the dark. But now something has changed. I said, now he speaks, I said, I will confess my transgressions to the Lord.

[20:52] And here's the result, and you forgave the iniquity of my sins. That's David's experience. So for David, one of the steps, a key step in the direction of happiness is that we actually confess our sins to God, which means that we repent of those sins.

[21:14] We admit that we've done wrong. We admit that we ourselves are, in fact, sinners. Admit it. It's true. There's no point in hiding it. There's no point in trying to push it to the dark corners as if no one knows it.

[21:29] God knows it. You know it. Probably everybody else around you knows it. You are sinful. You have transgressions. You have broken God's law.

[21:40] You have not lived for the glory of God himself. We are sinful people. It does no good for us to remain in silence regarding our sins. It brings sorrow and holds sorrow in our lives.

[21:55] You will not find freedom from sin when you ignore your sin. You will not find it. David says, I confessed. I acknowledged.

[22:06] God's sins. And that resulted in forgiveness of the iniquity of his sins. And then he begins to instruct us in what we should do.

[22:18] How do we respond to that? How do we respond to this sort of step one, acknowledge, confess, admit to our sins, repent of our sins? How do we respond? What do we do in light of the example from David's life?

[22:31] Verse six, Therefore, therefore, let everyone who is godly offer prayer. So pray like he did. Let them offer prayer to you, Lord, at a time when you may be found.

[22:45] Surely, in the rush of waters they shall not reach him. A few weeks ago, I can't remember, a couple of weeks ago, we saw language about waters and floods in one of David's psalms.

[23:02] And we said that there was a reference back to the flood of Genesis 6 and 7 and 8. And I think that there's a veiled reference here back to that because not only are we seeing it here in close proximity to his other reference to flood, but throughout David's psalms, floodwaters, sinking, it's all language that communicates God's judgment upon a person.

[23:28] I was sinking in the mire. Why? Because of my sin. And then God pulled me out. Right? David talks like that all the time. And what he says now, he says, listen, you have to pray now while there's time, while he may be found because judgment is coming someday.

[23:47] Judgment is coming someday. We read earlier at the end of the psalm, verse 10, where David divides all of humanity into two basic categories.

[23:59] He says, many are the sorrows of the wicked, but steadfast love surrounds the one who trusts in the Lord. Many are the sorrows of the wicked.

[24:11] Why? Because those who do not confess their sins, those who do not repent, what awaits them are the great waters. What awaits them is judgment day.

[24:24] And this is not some antiquated Old Testament concept that's done away with in the New Testament in favor of grace and mercy and love and peace and all those things.

[24:36] Jesus talks more about hell than any other person in the Bible. He talks more about hell than he talks about heaven. He says more about hell than he says about love in the Gospels.

[24:48] He has a great deal to say about hell and judgment in the Gospels. And Jesus makes the same distinction between the sorrows of the wicked and the love that surrounds those who trust in the Lord.

[25:02] Let me show you that in two places, alright? If you'll hold your place in the Psalms and turn all the way in the New Testament to the Gospel of Matthew. We'll just look, we'll stay in Matthew and we'll look at two places in Matthew where we see this reality.

[25:16] The first one will be in Matthew chapter 25. Matthew chapter 25. So everybody turn to Matthew chapter 25. And I'm going to begin in verse 31.

[25:28] He's speaking of the final judgment. He's speaking of his return and he says, When the Son of Man comes in his glory and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne.

[25:42] Before him will be gathered all the nations and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats and he will place the sheep on his right and the goats on his left and then the king will say to those on his right, Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.

[26:06] So to one group, he divides all of humanity, all the nations into two groups and to one group he says, Come, those of you who are blessed, inherit the kingdom. receive the full joy of the kingdom of God.

[26:21] But to the other group, verse 41, Then he will say to those on his left, Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.

[26:37] Judgment is not an Old Testament idea and the doctrine of hell is more fully developed in the New Testament by far than we find it in the Old Testament.

[26:48] Jesus is clear. He is as clear, even clearer than David. There are two categories for all of humanity. If you belong to one category, everlasting destruction awaits you.

[27:00] But if you belong to the other, everlasting blessedness awaits you. Or turn back a few pages to Matthew chapter 13. Matthew chapter 13.

[27:14] Verse 41. Jesus says, The Son of Man, he's speaking of himself, will send his angels.

[27:26] So this sounds a lot like Matthew 25, right? The angels are coming. The Son of Man is coming. It's his judgment. The Son of Man will send his angels and they will gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all lawbreakers and throw them into the fiery furnace.

[27:43] In that place, there will be weeping, the opposite of happiness. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. The righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their father.

[27:58] He who has ears to hear, Jesus says, let him hear. Listen to these things. Take these things to heart. heart. This is reality.

[28:10] David divides us all into two categories. The wicked and those who trust in the Lord. He warns of those who refuse to confess their sins and turn from their sin that the floodwaters await them.

[28:26] But then he gives this sweet promise in verse 7. Addressing God again. You are a hiding place for me. You preserve me from trouble.

[28:37] You surround me with shouts of deliverance. In other words, judgment is not inevitable. It can be avoided. God can be a hiding place for you.

[28:50] What a strange thing that God could hide you from his own judgment. But that's what David tells us. He continues his instruction in verse 8.

[29:01] I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go. I will counsel you with my eye upon you. And here's what he says. Be not like a horse or a mule without understanding which must be curbed with bit and bridle or it will not stay near to you.

[29:20] In other words, don't be stubborn like a horse or a mule. A horse or a mule has to be drug along sometimes. Or you've got to put a bit in its mouth and make it uncomfortable.

[29:33] Make it go where you want it to go instead of it going where it wants to go. And David says, don't be like that. Don't remain silent. Don't refuse to confess your sins.

[29:47] Don't be stubborn. How many of you are stuck in stubbornness? You've heard the gospel. You've heard the good news about Jesus and yet you've not said, yes, I'm a sinner.

[30:02] I need that. I will trust in him. I will walk with him. I'll turn away from who I was and I'll be made a new creature in him. But instead, just cling even though you've heard it and you know it.

[30:14] David says, don't be like that. Don't be a stubborn mule. Don't be like a horse who's got to be drug around where it needs to go and forced in the right direction. Don't be like that. Don't be that person.

[30:28] But instead, draw near to the Lord. We have to acknowledge our sin. We have to confess our sin and turn away from it.

[30:39] But then we also must, as we turn away from our sin, turn in trust to the Lord. That's what David says. Verse 10. Steadfast love surrounds the one who what?

[30:54] Trusts in the Lord. This is the key. Yes, you have to turn away from your sin. You have to confess your sin.

[31:05] But you can live in a pattern of constant confession and it do you no good if you don't trust in the Lord. That trusting in the Lord and turning from your sin are meant to be two sides of the same coin.

[31:19] They're not meant to be separated and experienced separately from one another. When we turn from sin we should trust in the Lord and in order to trust in the Lord we must turn from our sin.

[31:30] Repentance and faith go hand in hand. And the one who trusts in the Lord is surrounded by God's steadfast love.

[31:41] They are the ones now who are empowered and enabled to be glad in the Lord to rejoice and to shout for joy. They are able to do those things now because they've turned from sin and trusted in the Lord.

[31:57] How does that happen? It does matter that we understand how is it that our confession or our repentance and our believing or trusting how is it that those things actually change our destiny?

[32:16] how is it that they root us in God as the source of our happiness? Well that's what the beginning of the psalm is for.

[32:29] He starts by showing us how these things work. Look down at verse 1. Blessed is the one he says whose transgression is forgiven and whose sin is covered.

[32:50] When he says one's transgression is forgiven the word that nearly all of our English translations render as forgiven is actually the word born as in carried along.

[33:03] Not born like born as a baby born as in something is carried along carried away even. Blessed is the one whose transgression is carried away born away from him and whose sin is covered.

[33:22] There is another place in the Old Testament where we see sin being born or carried away the same word and associated with sin.

[33:34] It's found in Isaiah chapter 53 a passage that you might be familiar with verse 4 you can't make this up.

[33:47] Surely he has borne our griefs and our sorrows yet we esteemed him stricken smitten by God and afflicted but he was pierced for our transgressions he was crushed for our iniquities upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace and with his wounds we are healed.

[34:12] Verse 6 at the end the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. This is Isaiah's prophecy his prediction of a redeemer who would come and would bear the sins of his people who would in fact be pierced wounded for their transgressions crushed for their iniquities have their sin laid upon him and he would carry it away by suffering in their place.

[34:45] He would bear their sins. Blessed is the man happy is the man whose transgressions have been born and carried away but that doesn't happen magically out of nowhere.

[35:08] There is a sin bearer. There is one who carries them for us and his name is Jesus. He came into this world so that he might carry away our sins upon his back and bear our punishment on the cross.

[35:30] It's why he came. blessed is the man against whom David says the Lord counts no iniquity because our sins have been carried away and they've been born by another and their punishment has been meted out in him and upon him now there is no need for the Lord himself to count our sins against us.

[36:00] He will no longer regard our sins as our own and see them as in need of punishment. He doesn't count your sins if you're in Christ.

[36:12] If you trust in Jesus he does not bring out the ledger and show you all the things that you've done and then mete out the judgment you deserve.

[36:26] He doesn't do that if you are in Christ. blessed is the man. Happy is the man who sins the Lord no longer counts.

[36:40] He doesn't count them. He doesn't impute them to you. The apostle Paul picks up on this in Romans chapter 4. He quotes this very verse from Psalm 32.

[36:56] 2. I want you to turn to Romans 4. I want to show you this in context so that you can see and understand the connections that are being made.

[37:14] He says in verse 3, what does the scripture say? Abraham believed God and it was counted counted. It's the same word.

[37:25] Now that's a quotation from Genesis 15 6. What does the scripture say? The scripture says Abraham believed.

[37:36] That's what David says at the end. Blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord. He's rejoicing. He's glad. What does the scripture say? Abraham believed God and it was counted to him for righteousness.

[37:51] Now here's Paul's comment. Now to the one who works his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. In other words you can try to earn happiness God's blessing you can try to earn that by obeying his law and performing good works and being a decent person in the world.

[38:15] You can try the thing is if you try that you'll get what you earn. and your goodness will never outweigh your sin against an infinitely good God.

[38:32] It will never do it. Now to the one who works his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due but to the one who does not work doesn't think that by their good deeds by their obedience they can earn a place in God's presence or earn the happiness he promises to the one who does not work but believes there it is again believes in him who justifies the ungodly his faith is counted as righteousness his trust his faith is counted before God as righteousness in other words there's two countings there's a not counting your sins!

[39:15] against you and there's a counting or crediting to you of a righteousness that's not really yours God looks at you and he does not see the sinfulness that is there he sees and said the righteousness of his son covering your sin David said blessed is the one whose sins are covered the righteousness of Jesus covers our sins and then he says just as David also speaks of the blessing of the one to whom God counts righteousness apart from works blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven and whose sins are covered blessed is a man against whom the Lord will not count his sin Paul says

[40:16] Abraham experienced it when he believed and David proclaimed it when he wrote and you can experience it and then proclaim it if you'll trust in him too what do we read in the most famous verse in the Bible John 3 16 what do we read for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son so that whoever believes in him would not perish right but have everlasting life those who believe do not perish for their sins but they receive everlasting life or verse 18 whoever believes in him is not condemned not condemned that's transgression removed iniquity covered not condemned but whoever does not believe is condemned already because he's not believed in the name of

[41:22] God's only son the question for many of us is why have you not believed why have you not turned and repented of your sin and trusted in Jesus why are you still scrapping and scraping for happiness in an object that will fade and disappear over time and will leave you empty and full of sorrow your kids will move out they might rebel against you they might look you in the eyes and say they hate you and the object of your greatest love and happiness scorns you and you're left torn and broken would be far better to make God the object of your ultimate delight and weep over the sin of your children and in your weeping rejoice in the Lord would be better why why would we not trust in him and find the thing that we're all wired to want in the first place if you've never put your faith in Christ

[42:38] I don't mean not agreed with things that Jesus says you can agree with everything Jesus says and not trust in him even the demons believe James says and they tremble in his sight why because they find in him a judge not a friend you can find in him a judge or a friend a friend if you trust in him and what about those who have believed some of you I don't doubt some of you are sitting here thinking look I mean I believe and I've been walking with Jesus for a while and I'm frustrated and I'm beat down and I'm and I'm tangled up in sin and I don't know what to do the answer for the believer is the same repent and renew your trust in him we don't have one gospel for those who are outside of

[43:43] Christ and another gospel for those who are in Christ we have the same good news repent and believe and rejoice in the forgiveness that is yours this in fact was David's own experience long after he had been anointed king long after he had become the king and recognized in the eyes of the people and he was the anointed one who would bring in the future Messiah long after those things David experiences because David still sinned and he still found himself crushed sorrowful distant from the Lord listen carefully to Psalm 51 if Psalm 32 is a manual for how to find happiness in the Lord then Psalm 51 is a manual for how to go back and return to your first love and the joy that you had in him at the beginning

[44:48] I'm just going to pick up in verse 12 of Psalm 51 David has already confessed his sins he's done the thing that he says to do in Psalm 32 and now he pleads in verse 12 restore to me the joy of your salvation and uphold me with a willing spirit restore it bring it back and uphold me change my heart uphold me with a willing spirit I admit I've sinned I've fallen I'm broken restore me make me new give me the happiness back that I had in your presence before I want it back I want to make you the object of my delight again I've been distracted by other things I've been drawn away my eyes have drifted to something else I thought that I would find delight in this and I forgot to keep my eyes fixed on Jesus and I fell into this pit so restore it and give it back that's step one give it back to me first

[46:00] John 1 9 if we confess our sins it's written to believers if we confess our sins he is faithful he is righteous just and he will forgive us of our sins and cleanse us from all our unrighteousness that's for believers that's step one verse 13 what David does in Psalm 32 then I will teach transgressors your ways and sinners will return to you deliver me from blood guiltiness oh God of my salvation and my tongue will sing loud of your righteousness oh Lord open my lips and my mouth will declare your praise restore to me the joy that I had take me back give it back to me make me happy in Jesus again and I will teach transgressors and sinners your ways and I will sing praise to your name this is the response of those who are happy in

[47:01] Jesus to always continually turn from sin and trust in Jesus and find in him something worthy of being prized and something worthy of being proclaimed let's pray