Psalm 32 – Blessed Are the Forgiven

Very good to see you here this morning. We’ve got a good crowd today and thankful for everyone who’s present. We had a wonderful gospel meeting, as was mentioned earlier in our prayer, and we are thankful to Brother Mike Bonner for holding it for us. He is such a good speaker, and we always enjoy listening to him preach the gospel. And we are thankful that we have these opportunities from time to time to get into the Word and to study a little bit more than we usually do.

And so we are very blessed here to be able to do that from time to time. And I’m thankful to the elders for seeing it in their vision, to have someone to come and to speak to us like that occasionally.

And it’s good for us, and it’s good for me, and I appreciate it also. It fills me full of energy and helps me to get going as well. And so I hope you also benefited from those wonderful lessons that we had.

Well, this morning we’re going to focus on Psalm 32, and so I invite you to open your Bibles. Whether it’s one with pages like this one or electronically, go ahead and turn to Psalm 32 because we’re going to be spending some time there this morning.

And this Psalm is all about the blessing of forgiveness. And the blessing is so great. It’s so wonderful. But forgiveness doesn’t just happen. And we’re going to see as this Psalm discusses that forgiveness depends upon me and my willingness to want to be forgiven in my life.

And that there’s something that goes along with being forgiven, and that is confession of my sins to God. And so, as we study through this Psalm, we’re going to see there’s responsibilities that we have that accompany the blessing of forgiveness.

As I’ve said before in the past, and I’m sure you know, with every blessing that we receive, there is inherent responsibility on our part to act appropriately in relationship to that blessing. And so this morning, we see God pronouncing a blessing on those who are forgiven. And forgiveness is not without responsibility on our part.

We need to be willing to make the necessary changes in our lives so that we can receive the blessing of forgiveness. And so there’s a wonderful, beautiful, personal relationship between being blessed and being forgiven and our responsibilities in that regard.

So let’s talk about blessed are the forgiven this morning. And we’re going to see that the forgiven are blessed because, number one, God covers their sins. Number two, they confess their sins. Number three, God carries them. Number four, they accept criticism. And number five, they are cheerful.

So let’s look at these five things in relationship to Blessed are the Forgiven. First of all, Psalm 32, verses 1 and 2, God covers their sins. Let’s just read these two verses together. “Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord does not impute iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit.” Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven. So this Psalm is all about forgiveness, but let’s look at these words for forgiveness here. In the original Hebrew, the word forgiven is the Hebrew word nasah, and it means to lift or to take or to carry away.

So God carries away, He carries away our sins when we’re forgiven. Blessed are those whose sins are covered. What does it mean to cover something? It means to hide or to conceal so that you don’t see it anymore. Maybe you’ve got an old chair and that chair has a lot of flaws and imperfections in it. Maybe it’s got some cracks in it. You know, sometimes those old fake leather can develop some cracks and stuff and it doesn’t look very nice anymore. Maybe you’ve bought a cover for that old chair. Maybe a cover for your sofa because you don’t like the style anymore or something. You cover it up and it gives it a whole new look, a whole new feel. That’s this idea. Blessed are those whose sins are covered.

Blessed are those to whom God does not impute. There’s another way of talking about forgiveness, and that’s from our accounting terms. An accountant, what does an accountant do? He tracks numbers, he tracks expenses, and he writes them down in a book, you know, so that he can keep up with them. Well, this is one whose sins are not accounted. They’re not being tracked. They’re not being written down in a book.

That’s the idea here. One is blessed when he is forgiven. And so we see that God forgives, and what a wonderful blessing it is for God to forgive. And when God forgives, He forgives entirely. He doesn’t put it down in His book. He covers it up. He takes it away, as those words indicate to us.

And so it’s very good to be forgiven. And in Romans 11, verse 29, “The gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.” And when God forgives, He doesn’t go back on His word. He’s not like man who sometimes say, I forgive you, but then holds a grudge against you. No, God doesn’t do that. Once He forgives, it is taken away.

And in Psalm 103, verse 12, we read, “As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us.” And so what a wonderful blessing it is to be forgiven. How far is the east from the west? Well, you can’t calculate it because as soon as you start to measure that, what happens? Well, you start to measure and go toward the west and the west just keeps on going.

It’s immeasurable. The east from the west, it’s immeasurable. But that’s how far God has removed our transgressions. He’s moved them an infinite distance from us because He has forgiven us. But then notice, secondly, the forgiven are blessed because they confess their sins.

And this is where our responsibility comes in. God will forgive. He loves to forgive. He is gracious. He is merciful. He’s forgiving. But we’ve got to confess our sins. Listen to what the psalmist says here. He says, “When I kept silent, my bones grew old through my groaning all the day long. For day and night Your hand was heavy upon me; my vitality was turned into the drought of summer.” “I acknowledged my sin to You, and my iniquity I have not hidden.”

When we think about these verses and we see that the psalmist confesses his sins, this teaches us that we need to confess our sins as well. Notice, he contemplates a time before his sins were forgiven, before he confessed his sins, while he was still in sin, still holding his sin, you know? And what does he say about that state? He says, his bones grew old. He groaned all the day long.

You know what it’s like for your bones to feel heavy, to feel burdened? I do. You know, I get out and exercise occasionally and sometimes I exercise too much. And when that happens, my bones feel old, you know. They feel burdened. They feel weighted.

And he’s describing an inward state, though, of a spiritual being. Our spiritual person, when we don’t confess our sins to God, it weighs on us, right? It makes us feel old. It feels like there’s something heavy upon us. And our vitality, that is our life, and how we normally have joy and peace when sin comes into our lives, it affects us, it changes us, it makes us feel bad, really bad.

And our vitality, he says, was turned into the drought of summer. Now, we all know what it’s like to have a drought in the summertime around here. And how oppressing that summer sun can be, right? And you walk outside and it’s so hot, it’s in the hundreds, you know, and it just beats down on you.

And you’re just like, oh, you know, you come out of the nice cool air conditioning, which I’m thankful for, by the way. Even this time of the year, I’m thankful for it. But that sun just beats on you, just like, oh, it’s so oppressing. God is trying to help us to understand what sin does to us. Sin oppresses us. It beats on us. It makes our bones feel old. It brings a heaviness, right?

But, when I confess my transgressions, I can get all of that off of my shoulders. I can give it to God, and God will forgive me, and He will help me in that situation. And that’s what He’s saying here.

When I acknowledge my sin, you know, when we deny that we’ve sinned, when we deny sin in our lives and we don’t do anything about it, that’s when sin really does take over and take control and hurt us in ways that we really don’t understand and brings a bunch of trouble on our lives, when we deny it.

But when we acknowledge it, and confess it, and don’t hide it, then God can do something about it. In Acts chapter 8, verse 23 there, Simon the sorcerer was gripped by sin, and Peter said to him, “You are poisoned by bitterness and bound by iniquity.” Now fortunately, he asked for forgiveness, and he wanted them to pray for him. But when he was in that sin, it’s like being poisoned. It’s like being bound with iniquity. And a lot of times, you know, when people are poisoned, they get poisoned. They don’t know they’re poisoned until they get sick. And then they realize they’ve been poisoned, you know. Bound by iniquity. That’s what sin does to us. Proverbs 28, verse 1 says, “The wicked flee when no one pursues.” Think about that for a minute. The wicked flee when no one pursues.

They’re constantly scared of someone finding out their troubles. They’re constantly afraid that someone’s going to discover something about them and they don’t have any forgiveness in their life. But if we confess our sins, 1 John 1, verse 9, “He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Confession of sin is an acknowledgement. It is a revealing. We want to verbally talk to God. And notice the psalmist is talking about confessing to God our sins. We need to do that. We need to say, God, I sinned with my tongue.

Or, I sinned when I did this certain thing. And we need to know those things, and we need to confess them to God. And when we do, God will forgive us of those sins, and we will be blessed. So we want to confess our sins to get those burdens off of us, to make our life full of joy and peace and love.

And then we see there’s a blessing here for those who are forgiven. God carries them. And this all starts with prayer and our prayer life. And how is your prayer life, by the way? Does it even exist? We need to be praying. We need to pray every day. I talk to God all the time. Sometimes it’s just in the car while I’m driving. Sometimes it’s, you know, on the football field when I’m out there fishing.

I’m asking God for help. Sometimes I’m just in the house, you know, early in the morning, and I’m asking God to help me with something and praying to God and confessing my sins to God. You know, we’ve got to open up to God and talk to Him about everything in our life. It will help us so much. And then we get this blessing. God will carry us. It reminds me of that old, and this is what the Psalm says. Let’s read the Psalm first, but look at what it says. Psalm 32, “For this cause everyone who is godly shall pray” (they shall pray “to You in a time when You may be found; surely in a flood of great waters they shall not come near him”). That is, the one who prays to God.

“You are my hiding place.” I love that illustration, a hiding place. “You shall preserve me from trouble; You shall surround me with songs of deliverance.” God carries us. Maybe you remember that old poem, Footsteps, you know, and I don’t remember verbatim, but in the story, one is walking along the sand on the beach and he’s leaving footprints, right?

And then there’s two sets of footprints, and then he looks back, and then in the times of greatest trouble, there was only one set of footprints, you know, and at the end of the poem he says, God, why? Why was there only one set of footprints? And God’s answer was, well, it was during those times that I carried you, right? And that’s what’s going on here.

When we confess our sins to God, God carries us. Everyone who is godly shall pray. The godly pray. Think about Hebrews 5 and verse 7, talking about Jesus. It says, It says, “Who, in the days of His flesh, when He had offered up prayers and supplications, with vehement cries and tears to Him who was able to save Him from death, and was heard because of His godly fear.” Godly people pray. Jesus was godly and He prayed. And we need to pray at a time when God may be found. And when is that? All the time. All the time.

Acts 17, verse 21 says, “He is not far from each one of us.” 1 Thessalonians 5, verse 17 says, “Pray without ceasing.” God carries those who pray to Him and He delivers. Think about Isaiah 43, verse 2. “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow you. When you walk through the fire, you shall not be burned, nor shall the flame scorch you.”

God is talking about the blessing of His carrying us when we have trouble in our lives. 2 Peter 2, verse 9 says, “The Lord knows how to deliver the godly out of temptations and to reserve the unjust under punishment for the day of judgment.” God delivers.

And this is one of the great blessings of prayer. Those who are forgiven, God carries them. But then notice this, that those who are forgiven know how to accept criticism. And this is something that is, you know, harder to do for us sometimes because, you know, the way we want to be right, you know, and we don’t want to be wrong.

And so it’s difficult for us to accept criticism sometimes, because criticism means that we’ve got to say, I’m wrong, and I’m not right, you know. But those who pray, those who confess their sins, those are the ones who can accept criticism.

And this is part of being a Christian, is learning how to accept criticism. God can teach a person who is forgiven and who prays and who confesses his sins. God can teach a person like that. Look at Psalm 32, 8 and 9.

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

So when we pray to God, when we confess our sins to God, God is able to teach us because at that moment that we confess those sins, we’re being vulnerable. We’re saying, I’m open to instruction. I’m open to change. And that’s what we need to do when we confess our sins to God.

Now, to be forgiven means that I’ve got to accept criticism. God can teach us. He can instruct us. We don’t want to be like the horse or the mule, right? Those animals are stubborn. Those animals have to be bridled. They have to be controlled because that’s the only way you can deal with them.

But when we pray for forgiveness, we learn what is wrong with us. We learn the right way to go. God guides us with His eyes, as it says, with His vision. And that’s so important for us to have a blessed life.

Think about Proverbs 10, verse 17. “He who keeps instruction is in the way of life, but he who refuses correction goes astray.” And then Proverbs 13, verse 18 says, “Poverty and shame will come to him who disdains correction, but he who regards a rebuke will be honored.” We don’t want to be stubborn. We want to accept correction and be able to let God teach us.

And so, the forgiven are blessed because they accept criticism. But then finally, the forgiven are blessed and they are cheerful. Look at the last couple of verses here in Psalm 32 and see what it says. “Many sorrows shall be to the wicked; but he who trusts in the Lord, mercy shall surround him. Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, you righteous; and shout for joy, all you upright in heart!” Yes, there is blessing to those who are forgiven.

The wicked, first of all, let’s note that there’s something said about them. They have many sorrows. You look back at that description of what happens when we don’t confess our sins to God. We’re burdened. We’re heavy. Our bones are old.

Things don’t go right when we don’t confess our sins to God. But when we do, what do we have? We have mercy. We have joy. We have righteousness. That’s the blessing of being forgiven. He trusts in the Lord, the one who confesses his sins.

Philippians 4 and verses 4 through 7 teaches us about praying to God and casting all our care upon Him, you know, and that includes the sin that burdens our life from time to time. But let’s look at this passage. “Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I will say, rejoice! Let your gentleness” (or your moderation) “be known to all men. The Lord is at hand. Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.” That peace of God, it can guard us, it can keep us, it can bless us so greatly, and we can have joy.

Regardless of what troubles may come our way, we will always be joyful when we are praying to God, when we’re talking to Him, confessing our sins, casting all our cares upon Him. Yes, God will bless us with wonderful, beautiful peace, righteousness, joy, mercy.

All of those things will surround us, and it’ll be like everything is great and wonderful in relationship to our God. The forgiven are blessed. What a wonderful Psalm. I hope you’ll go home and read this Psalm again. I hope you’ll really study it and look at it, because there’s so much truth in this Psalm, so much for us to learn from what God teaches us here.

And so much on our part that we need to do more of in order to have that forgiveness. What do I need to do this morning to be forgiven of sins? Well, if you’re a Christian, then, and you’ve sinned privately, you can confess it to God privately, and He will forgive you.

And basically, that’s what this Psalm is about, those private confessions that we make to God personally to remove that sin from our life, to become a better person, to grow daily. We’ve got to be doing that. We’ve got to be praying to God on a daily basis in that regard. Now, if we’ve committed a public sin, something that’s happened in the sight of many, and we regret that, and that’s weighing on our heart, There is a way for us to deal with that sin and that is to bring it before the church. God says through the Apostle Paul in the book of 2 Corinthians, when you deal with it before the church, it’s dealt before all mankind. And whatever the church forgives, God forgives.

And so you know what? That’s the way to deal with those public sins that we’ve committed and wherein we’ve caused problems maybe or something has happened And because of that, there’s something that we need to do publicly to make a correction. Bring it before the church. Look, we want to forgive you, I promise. The church isn’t here to act judgmentally or to berate you or to do something like that. That’s not what we’re about. We’re here to forgive.

And the thing is, is that sin is harder upon the person who committed the sin than it is on those who are forgiving. You know, that’s the thing. And we’ve got to understand that, that when we come forward to confess a public sin, we’re the ones that are receiving the blessing. You know, that’s something that sometimes people don’t see because their pride kind of gets in the way a little bit of receiving that great blessing. But it is a great blessing to be forgiven of public sin.

And maybe, you know, that’s something that some need to take advantage of. And that can be done this morning. And we can work with you on that. It doesn’t have to be now in the assembly. We can talk to one of the elders. You can talk to me and we can work on it. You know, we can get you there if that’s something that you want to do.

But we need to be thinking about those things sometime. And how we act in public and the example that we set is very important. And we want to make sure that we set a good example and act in a right way.

And so that’s something perhaps that some need to take advantage of today. Or maybe you’re not a Christian. And you say, well, you know what? I’m not really a Christian. How can I be forgiven? Well, you’ve got to establish a relationship with God first, right, to be forgiven. The psalmist already had a relationship with God, so all he needed to do was go to God in prayer, and then he was forgiven. Today, Christians already have a relationship with God. All they need to do is go to God in prayer, and they can be forgiven. But if you’re not a Christian, you’re not a child of God, you need to establish that relationship first. And how do you do that? You have to listen to what Jesus said.

Jesus gave us a very clear plan on how to become a child of God. Hear His word and believe it. Repent of your sins. Confess that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and be baptized for the forgiveness of sins. And when you’re forgiven through baptism, that’s the initial point where you become a child of God. You establish a relationship with God there. Okay? And now, from this point forward, after baptism, after you’ve had your sins forgiven, Those sins that weren’t forgiven prior to that point, now they’re forgiven and now you stand in a relationship with God as one who is forgiven.

Now you can confess your sins to God and He will forgive you because He’s listening to your prayers. As one of His children, He hears your prayers. If you’re not a child of God, He’s not going to hear your prayers. And so I know what the denominational world teaches.

They say, well, just pray this prayer. Well, how can you pray a prayer if you’re not in a relationship with God first? You can’t. God’s not going to hear that prayer. So we’ve got to get in a relationship with Him first, and then He will hear our prayers, and then we can be forgiven. Maybe there’s someone here this morning who needs that.

We’d be happy to help you with that. Whatever you need may be, you can come make it known right now while together we stand and while we sing.

End of transcript. Thank you for reading along!