Well, I have a question to pose to you this morning, and the question is, do you want to be happy? Okay, a few of us are awake this morning ready to answer a question. Maybe we've got some Eeyore’s here in the room. Oh, happiness. What is that even? Well, my follow up question is, if you do want to be happy, where are you going to find that happiness that you're looking for? Where's it going to come from? I don't know if you walked in here thinking, well, if I just had a little bit more money, I would be happy; if my health was improved, I'd be happy; if my family was at peace, if I had some better circumstances than I'm experiencing right now. And I want you walking down the path of life where there is happiness to be found, and in our day and age, too many have forgotten where to find it. It's going to be striking as we look to God's Word this morning, where the source of happiness is, and also where maybe some of our unhappiness might be coming from. So, I'd like to invite you to open the Bible to Psalm 32 open your Bible to Psalm 32 and once you've found it, I invite you to stand. We're going to read the first seven verses and give them our full and undivided attention. Psalm 32. Let's read it together. It's a Maskil of David.
Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit. For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. 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. Therefore let everyone who is godly offer prayer to you at a time when you may be found; surely in the rush of great waters, they shall not reach him. You are a hiding place for me; you preserve me from trouble; you surround me with shouts of deliverance. Selah.
That's the reading of God's Word. You can go ahead and find your seat. And as we look at this chapter, which some of you, you've been thinking about, Psalm of the day, and what we're reading. And you're like, did we just time travel to Tuesday morning? Is it 7am? Is it time to know God? Yes, this is a Psalm we'll be reading this week. But as we look at it, the very first word of this Psalm is this word “blessed,” which is not just something a southern grandma would say to her grandchildren. This is a way that we could translate this word: “Happy, fulfilled, joyful, blessed.” Blessed is the one who has everything going the way they want it to go in their life. Blessed is the one who has plentiful provisions and more than they need. Is that what it says in this chapter? It says something that is very striking. “Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity, and in whose spirit, there is no deceit.” See, David is saying that he found happiness, great happiness, in his life, but it didn't come maybe from where you would expect. It didn't come from his circumstances. It came from the reality of his sin being forgiven by God.
So, let's get that down for point number one, if you're taking notes this morning, and I would encourage you to take some notes, we need to get clear on where happiness comes from. I don't know how you walked in here this morning. I don't know if you walked in feeling a certain way or not. I don't know if you're riding the roller coaster ride of your emotions and your circumstances all throughout the week, but there is a way that you can be happy, and it doesn't come from what's happening in your life. It comes from the reality of what God has done. And so, David, he uses a few different words, which we'll get back into in just a moment. But David, he's saying, “Blessed is the man whose transgression is forgiven.” And then in verse 3, we have this, “For When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long.” Right? I mean, what is he talking about? Osteoporosis here, my bones are wasting away through my groaning all day long. David is saying that, hey, I got to this point of happiness because my sin was forgiven. But before something happened, I was at this point of actually, a lot of sorrow in my life. Things were not going well. And the reason why things weren't going well is because I was keeping silent about my sin. And it was like my bones were eroding. It was like I was groaning all the day long.
I mean, have you ever been to the spot where the word “groaning” would apply to you? Have you had like, the stomach flu before, where you're just so miserable that you're just like, oh, right. Like, that's what sin does. When we're in sin, when we are not really being open about our sin, and not being honest with the Lord, when we're not confessing it, sin does not lead to happiness. Sin leads to sorrow. I mean, you could even look down to verse 10, where it says, “Many are the sorrows of the wicked.” See, in our society, sin is what we look to to make us happy. Well, if you do this, it'll make you happy, it'll bring you joy. And David is here to say to each and every one of us this morning, that is, in fact, quite the opposite. Sin will ruin your life. Sin will multiply your sorrows. Hey, when I was in my sin and I wasn't dealing with it, did it go well for me? No, it did not, is what David is here to say, it’s through my groaning all day long, not just like periodic groaning, like all day long type of groaning, like unhappiness abounding in David's life. And he says, “For day and night your hand was heavy upon me.” Because here's the thing that's true is that God loves you, and he loves you so much that he doesn't want you to continue in your sin. Right? God is able to discipline those whom he loves. And it's like David, you know, God doesn't have a literal hand like we do, but it's like, David is using this anthropomorphism to describe how it's like I felt the squeeze of God's hand pressing on me, it's like I felt like the burden of my sin, and it was heavy, and it was weighing me down. And he says, “day and night your hand was heavy upon me,” like when we're in sin and we're not dealing with it, you know what we should expect? We should expect conviction from the Lord.
Now, conviction is a feeling that many people in Southern California want to run from as far as they possibly can. They don't want to go to church where I might actually feel convicted. I might even feel some heaviness as a result of the sermon, but David is here to say, hey, God's hand being heavy upon me, that was one of the greatest things that ever happened to me in my life. The fact that he wouldn't let me up, the fact that it was like constant, it was day and night, it was there, and he was like, that was a very good thing for me. Your hand was heavy upon me. Let me just tell you friends, you do not want God to take his hand off. You do not want God to just be like, fine, go the way that you want to go. If you're experiencing conviction in your life, that is a merciful grace of God to you, that he loves you. He doesn't want you to go in the direction where your sorrows are going to be many.
He wants you to be happy. And sin is not going to make you happy in your life. “Day and night your hand was heavy upon me,” he says, my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. I mean, we've had a few cloudy days recently. Does it feel like fall? Finally, a little bit here, but up until these last few days, who has been over the summer heat? Does any anybody else share that? You're ready to move on to the next season? Maybe some of us are without air conditioning, right? A few you guys. You know who you are, right? What's with this humidity stuff that we're enduring, right? It's, oh, the temperature of 75 feels like 92. What in the world is going on here? Some of us have felt some warm days where it just feels like, I'm in my house and I just feel like my energy is low.
When I was a younger person, I lived in the state of Texas, and during the summertime in Texas, we thought, you know – would be a good right now, not being in the state of Texas. And so, we would drive from Texas to California every summer and enjoy the great weather of Southern California and stay with relatives during the summertime. And there was, and we would make these, anybody have, like, a family minivan that you remember, right? Like a Ford Aerostar that you would take road trips in. And I remember one summer, it's we're in Arizona, and the air conditioning goes out in the Ford Aerostar, and we're out there in the middle of nowhere, and it's like, well, the car is still running. If we just sit here, what good does that do us? So, the thought is, we're going to press on and try to make it to our destination in Phoenix and find some rest. And so, we got the windows open, and as you're getting into civilization, you're seeing those signs with the temperature on the side of the freeway, and it's 116. And I'm looking at my mom in the seat of the Aerostar, and she is quite literally melting into the minivan. That was like, one of the most miserable experiences of my entire life. It's like, I'm glad we survived, because it felt like you just felt the heat sapping you of all of your strength. When we're living in unconfessed sin, it's like we're living a half-life. It's like we're living a life. Yeah, we might be alive, but there's no real life to our life, is what David was saying?
When I kept silent about my sin, it was not going well for me. I was not living life as God intended it to be lived. And I wonder if some of us, as we walk in here this morning, I don't know if you're like, man, I've been really sad. I've been depressed lately. There's been this going on. Could I suggest to you that perhaps it might be it is something that you haven't really dealt with before. Like, some of us could be walking in here this morning, and maybe we thought, Oh, I'm just kind of worn down because work has been hard. Or maybe I've just been kind of worn down because the kids are a challenge and, oh man, hey, I’ve got to do this every day. Like, is it possible that there could be an additional reason to some of the lack of strength, the lack of vitality that we're experiencing? Because possibly there could be some unconfessed sin in our life. There could be some sin that right now we're not dealing with it. We're not making it right with the Lord. We are keeping silent about it. And look at what David says. So, this is the way it was going. It was going bad, right? Like, there's a pause, like at the end of verse 4, we’ve got this word “Selah”. It's not just like a lady's name or something like that. These Psalms were meant to be sung, right? You can see, we're even putting some of them to music. We're going to sing a song at the end of this service that Ryan wrote based on Psalm 32 and it's like, when you see that word Selah, it's like, it's a pause, right? Whether it's like a musical pause that it's like, okay, this is the spot where we stop singing and, like, the trumpets play, or there's some kind of interlude, or something like that. Or it even could be just kind of like a pause in the thought, like, man, my strength was dried up, as with the fever heat of summer. Let me just stop and think about that for a second. Let's just pause here for a second. Some of us that could be what we're experiencing as we walked in here this morning, but it didn't stay that way. And it didn't stay that way because of verse 5, where it says, “I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquities.” David was saying he was keeping silent about his sin, and he says in verse 5, I acknowledge my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity. Now it's not super specific what David is referring to. It's not like he mentions it explicitly in the Psalm, but we can think about a time in David's life where he was keeping silent about his sin, where he was trying to cover up his iniquity.
Can you go with me to 2 Samuel 11? Keep your finger there in Psalm 32, but turn with me to Second Samuel 11. This tragic story of David and his sin with Bathsheba, a very cautionary tale where, David, you know, basically, saw Bathsheba bathing and committed adultery with her. And then it says at the end of verse 4, “Afterwards, then she returned to her house.” And in verse 5, it says, “And the woman conceived, and she sent and told David, I am pregnant. But do you realize, like, hey, between the point where there's adultery happening and there must have been a certain amount of time that would have transpired before Bathsheba would have been able to send word to David the king, letting him know she was pregnant. And what was David doing during that whole time? He was keeping silent about his sin. He didn't go public with it; he didn't confess it to the Lord. He just kept silent about it and tried to act like it hadn't happened. He tried to act like it hadn't happened.
And isn't that the same thing that many of us might be doing in our own lives right now? It's like we sin, and we did something that was wrong before the Lord, but we're not talking to anybody else about it. We're not being open about it with anyone. We're not even talking about it with the Lord. We're just keeping silent about it. We're trying to act like, oh, nobody knows about it. But there is someone who knows about it, and his hand is heavy, and his arm is long. Like, are you keeping silent about your sin? Are you someone that you like, even right now, as I'm talking, there's something that God is bringing up to your attention, that maybe he's convicting you about? And, you know, I haven't really brought this up before the Lord, I haven't really brought this up even to another person. I'm keeping silent about it, right? So, David, he doesn't tell anything about it. And then David, verse 6, “He sent word to Joab, ‘Send me Uriah, the Hittite,” Bathsheba’s husband. Hey, let's bring her husband home. And the thought is like, okay, I'm going to act like I'm just talking with Uriah. How's the battle going? And then I'm like, oh well, while you're in town, why don't you go home and spend some time with your wife? So, David, he's trying to cover his iniquity with lies, as if, like, oh yeah, Uriah, I really want to know what you're thinking about, how the battle is going. Oh yeah, I really care about you. I really want you to enjoy time with your wife. David's thinking, all right, there's a way to cover this up. And I could just lie, I could just deceive, and then it would be like it never even happened. And then everybody, when this child is born, they would just think, oh, that happened when Uriah came home from the battle and he just spent time with his wife, and somehow, you know, those extra weeks of time frame, we could just chalk that up to a clerical error or something like that, and no one would ever have to know that there was sin.
That's the same thing that many people are doing today. It's like, I do something wrong, and then what do I do? Rather than being honest about it, I try to cover it up with deceit, with lies. Right back in verse 1 of Psalm 32 – don't turn back there yet, but it says that “Blessed is the” person “in whose spirit there is no deceit.” It's like, man, when you're living in your sin and you're constantly thinking, Well, I’ve got to keep covering this up, and I’ve got to lie, and then I’ve got to cover up that lie with another lie, and it's like my whole life could get filled with deceit, and I'm constantly living life where I know what's really going on in my life, and the persona I'm giving to other people aren't the same. And it's like I'm looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life, and I'm just waiting for the other shoe to drop. And it's like I know, at some point, I'm going to get exposed, but I'm just going to keep trying to cover up my sin with more sin with more deception, so I can put that off as long as possible.
That's going to lead to sorrow being multiplied, right? And so, this plot that David has, this deceitful plot, does not work. Uriah is actually a righteous student. He's like, wait a minute, my bros are sleeping in the open field, and they're like, going through the battle, and I'm just going to act like it's peace time and go home and hang with my wife? No, I'm not going to do it. And then David's like, let's get this guy drunk and see if he'll do it. And it doesn't even work. It doesn't work to cover up his sin. And so, David, I mean, he goes very far into sin, to where he even tells Joab, hey, I want you guys to get up close to them, and then I'll retreat without Uriah knowing it. And it's like, we're not going to kill him. We'll just let our enemies kill. David goes so far as to have Bathsheba husband, Uriah, killed. It's like, once you go down the path of covering your sin with more sin, it gets ugly, it gets wicked, and it happens faster than you might think.
It's evil. It's wicked what David does. And then, you know, the messenger comes back from the battle, right? And he says, in Verse 23, “The messenger said to David, ‘The men gained an advantage over us and came out against us in the field, but we drove them back to the entrance of the gate. Then the archers shot at your servants from the wall. Some of the king's servants are dead, and your servant Uriah the Hittite is dead also.’ David said to the messenger, ‘Thus shall you say to Joab, ‘Do not let this matter displease you, for the sword devours now one and now another.’” Yeah, there wasn't any wrongdoing in this. This is just let's chalk it up to war. “’Strengthen your attack against the city and overthrow it and encourage him.’” It's like man, how much deception. “When the wife of Uriah heard that Uriah her husband was dead, she lamented over her husband. And when the mourning was over, David sent and brought her to his house, and she became his wife and bore him a son.” It's like David's last cover-up strategy is, like, okay, I did something that was really wrong, last ditch effort, let me cover it up with something that seems like the right thing to do, right? Like, okay, yeah, it was wrong for me to commit adultery, to have sex outside of marriage. So, I guess it would be the proper thing for me to do to marry this girl, and that is the same strategy that many people are employing today. Hey, I've done this thing that's wrong, this thing that God's hand is heavy on me, and I'm feeling the guilt and the shame of that. So rather than being open and confessing it and just outing myself and saying I'm wrong, let me go, and I'm going to actually try and just do some things, some good things, to cover it up, like I feel really bad about my sin over here. So, what would be some things that I could do that would make me feel really good about myself, and I'm going to try to cover it up with that. You know what? Everything changed in David's life when he said, I am going to stop the cover up. I'm going to stop the cover up.
Let's get that down for point number two: “Stop covering your iniquity and confess your sin to God.” As I talk about this here this morning, I would not be surprised if there are more than a few of us in the room that right now you have been on a cover-up campaign and possibly even for a long time in your life. It's not going to lead to your happiness. David was doing that, and it led to great unhappiness in his life. But then he changed his mind. Then he said, I'm not going to keep doing that anymore. And honestly, he went all the way to the point where God had to use someone else. Nathan, the prophet, had to go to him with his pointy finger out and say, “You're the man.” And David got convicted about his sin. But then afterwards, it's not like he tried to hide it. It's not like he pulled Nathan aside and said, let’s just keep this private between us. David's writing the Scripture. He's writing that everybody should know how wrong it was what I did, and how wrong the cover up was that I tried to go on in my life. He didn't keep covering it up. He actually confessed it, right?
Let's go back to Psalm 32 because he says, if you look at verse 5, “I acknowledge my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity.” So, if you're covering your iniquity here this morning, it needs to end today. The cover-up campaign needs to stop right now. And he said, “I said, I will confess my transgressions to the Lord that there was a way out of this misery.” From God's hand being heavy on him, his strength being depleted, as with the heat of summer, there was a way out, and it was to confess his transgressions to the Lord. To confess, now we here in Southern California are not very good at this confession thing. We are good at like saying something that is actually not confessing our sin.
Go with me to 1 John chapter 1. 1 John chapter 1 because we need to see this isn't something that David was just saying he did and, oh, that's nice that David did this. Look at what John has to write in 1 John chapter 2, towards the end of your Bible. There right before the end small book of the Bible, 1 John, chapter 1, verse 8, it says, “If we say we have no sin, we” what? “we deceive ourselves.” There's deceit in our spirit if we're saying we have no sin, and the truth is not in us that a lot of people, the way that they want to think about themselves is not like I'm a sinner, not like I'm someone who's been doing something wrong. We like to think of ourselves like we're good people, like we're mostly good, like some of us. I've had people say, oh, yeah, I'm not a sinner. I haven't really done anything wrong in my life. And the Bible would say, yeah, you’ve deceived yourself. The truth is not in you. If anybody's saying, I don't got sin, you're not speaking the truth. You are self-deceived. And so, what does it say in verse 9? ”If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Now this word “confess” here in the Greek, it's this, like, mash up word where there's kind of two words put together, and there's one word that means “to speak,” and then there's one word that means “to say the same.” It's like this Greek word “logeo” and then this Greek word that we get, like “homogenous” from where it's like “the same.” So, it's like to say the same thing, that when we're confessing sin to the Lord, the thought here is that we're saying the same thing about our sin as God would say about it.
Go back with me to Psalm 32 because you can see that David, he's actually doing this. Because what we do, and I think what other people do, maybe even what David had done, is that we try to kind of say something different about our sin than God would say. Have you ever, like, been in a situation where someone's like, clearly doing something wrong, and maybe you're trying to talk to him about it, and then they say something like, well, I was just doing this, I was just doing that, and I've had to look some people in the eye and say, are you trying to justify yourself to act like what you did wasn't actually wrong, right? We like to say something like, well, I did this because this other person did that. I'm not the one who's responsible for the wrong. It's really like this other person, they did this to me, and so it made me do this. We like to call sin a mistake. I just made a mistake. Oh, I just messed up. Go back with me to verse 1, and let's look at these words that David uses here. He says, “Blessed is the one whose” what? Transgression. Who's transgression? I mean another way that you could translate that word is rebellion. Rebellion, like when we sin. It's like rebellion, straight up rebellion against the Lord that he's got a design for the way that he wants us to live, and we've got a king. And some might say his way is the best, like the way that God has designed life to be lived. His commands are not a burden. They're actually the path to joy. They're actually the path to happiness and life. And so, for us to say, yeah, God, I know what you're saying for me to do, but I'm going to go my own way. I'm going to actually say, I don't think that your way is the best. I think that my way is superior to your way. Do you know what that is? It's rebellion, it's transgression. It's like, man, this is wrong. This is wrong for me to say to God, I know better than you. God, I know that you say that, like, hey, sex is only for a husband and a wife in marriage, but I'm going to go my own way outside of what you say. I mean, do you see what sin really is? It's rebellion. He says, “Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.”
Now this is the common Hebrew word for sin, and it carries this idea of, like, “missing the mark.” And I think some of us, the way that we want to think we've missed the mark is like, very small, like, you might need some kind of optical apparatus to see the very small distance with which I've missed the mark, as if, like, obeying God is like the center of the bullseye on the dartboard, and we were just a tiny bit off. Like, did I really? Yeah, it's not that big of a deal. But this is not like, I just narrowly missed it. This is like, I'm I missed it entirely. This is like, my dart didn't even hit the dart board. I missed it so bad.
Like, when we go our own way, when we go off into sin, we're going far away from the way that we should go. It's not like we're just slightly off. It's not like, oh my bad. It is just a little mistake. Like it was sin. It was missing the mark; it was going the wrong direction. Look at what it says in verse 2, “Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity.” This word in the Hebrew, it's got this idea of something being twisted, something almost being perverted, like here I am the king of Israel, in David's case, and I'm supposed to be leading the people in the ways of the Lord and of righteousness. And for me to go and do this and then do that, and then do that and do that, to cover it up, like this isn't even wrong. It's like the wrong is wrong. There's like wrongness to my wrong. It's like this sin is twisted and perverted. It's like God's way is so good and I messed it up. It's like I perverted God's good way. You see what David's saying about himself, it goes way beyond I just made a small mistake. Like there is a way that you could feel God's conviction, and you could just try to think, well, I should say something to get out of it, but you haven't really said the same thing that God says about it. You need to agree with him about your sin. There is a whole lot of unhappiness flowing from the fact that I'm trying to use a different definition for what I did than God had. Like, man, when you come before the Lord and you're really being honest with him, there's going to be no excuses. There's going to be like, that was evil what I did, that was wrong what I did. I'm not shifting the blame to someone else. I'm not trying to minimize what I did wrong. I'm actually being honest. I'm actually confessing my sin. And look at what it says, “I said I will confess my transgressions,” plural, not just like, okay, well, I know I sinned, and then I sinned again to cover it up, and then I sinned again, and then I sinned again. But really, I'm just going to confess the sin that made me feel the worst and leave the other ones. I didn't really address those. Like, when you go to God and you're bringing him honestly, and you're saying the same thing to him, that's what David did. He was like, I'm going to stop this silence campaign. I'm going to stop this cover up. And you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to go to the Lord and I'm going to say the same thing about my sin that he would say about it. Right when, at the end of second Samuel 11, even this thing that David might think was the right thing to do, it's like that thing displeased the Lord. And now here's David, and he's stopping the deceit. He's stopping the self-deception. And he's saying, this is what I have done. Right? Some of us, the furthest we've gone down the path of confession, which actually leads to a lot of happiness, the furthest we've gone down that path is saying, well, everybody sins, right? Like some of us, the farthest we've ever gone in confession is saying, oh, yeah, well, I'm not perfect. What more do you want from me?
I wonder if there are people in this room sitting here at a nine o'clock service that what you need to realize here this morning is, like, I don't know if I've ever really confessed the sinner that I am before the Lord. Yeah, maybe I've confessed I'm not a perfect person. It's a big difference between saying I'm not perfect and this is who I really am. I'm a sinner. It's evil, it's rebellious, it's wicked, it's twisted. When was the first time you ever honestly went before God and said that about yourself, there will not be much happiness. Happiness will be a fleeting experience up and down with your circumstances, until you've actually gone to God and said the same thing about yourself as he knows to be true about you. So, we could, we could fool one another, right? Like church might be one of the fakest places in America, right, where people are just coming and they're dressing up and they're trying to make everybody think that they're a good person, and God knows it's not true. And, while there's deceit in your spirit, while you're trying to act like something's true, but if we knew the whole story, we would know it's not, there's going to be no happiness there. But when you confess, when you say the same thing to you the Lord, right? When it's not like, oh, I just got caught. Like David, he did get exposed. Nathan, the Prophet, God sent him to him to really help him see his sin. But it wasn't like David was like, well, I got caught, so I'm just kind of going through the motions of saying what I want to say, but really I just want to keep living the way that I was living.
If you look down in in Psalm 38 Look at verse 8, it's almost like the perspective shifts after this, where now it's God is the one who's speaking, and he's saying, “I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go. I will counsel you with my eye on you.” Like David confessed his sin. And now it's like, okay, now I'm really willing to learn from the Lord. Now I'm really like, God's going to get specific with his instruction about me, where he would actually teach me and show me the way that he wants me to go in my life. So, it's like, I'm confessing it, but it's not just like I'm saying these words on my way to go do it all over again. It's like I'm confessing it, and I'm willing to turn away from it, like, God teach me. Like God, okay, now you want to show me the way to go so I don't keep living in that sin anymore.
I mean, some of us need to change what we're saying about ourselves. Some of us, we've never really confessed our transgressions to the Lord, but then there are some where we're like, man, I remember when I went to God and I was being honest with him, and I was confessing all my sins, and I wasn't trying to hide it, I wasn't trying to act like there was some excuse for it, but like, are we perfect after that? Have you become sinless after that? I mean, is there going to be a day where we get perfected in the future when we're with the Lord. Who wants to be at that day? Amen, amen. But in the meantime, man, have you sinned? And maybe, maybe things aren't going the way that they should in your life. Because even though you've confessed your sin in the past, like why I need to go to God today. I need to have a fresh conversation with him, and look at what it says in verse five, he says, I said I will confess my transgressions to the Lord, and you put me on a payment plan. You informed me of the amount of time that I would be in the penalty box, sidelined from your goodness. It's not what it says. It says, I said I will confess my transgressions to the Lord, and you forgave the iniquity of my sin. You forgave the evilness of my missing the mark. You forgave how twisted and perverted it was. It's not like, hey, I said, God, I'm going to confess my sin to you. And God was like, well, let me take that under advisement. Maybe you should prove it to me a little bit. Maybe we should wait and see how you do after this; I confess my transgressions to the Lord. You forgave the iniquity of my sin. Boom.
Do you realize that's the way it works with the Lord, that, like God forgiving sin, right? And this word, “Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven.” It's like it's taken up. It's like it's taken away. It's like it's removed from you. It says, “Blessed is the one whose sin is covered,” right? Like when I stop the cover-up campaign of my own sin, and I'm trying to make it right on my own, and I'm willing to be honest about it, you know what would happen right then when I go to the Lord and ask him to forgive it, it's like he covers it up. It's like he does something to it where it's taken away, never to be seen or heard from again.
Go with me to the book of Micah. And ever since reading this in the prophets, this has just been such a tremendous picture to me of who our God is, right? He is not like us. Right? If someone comes to me and they've wronged me, I might want to consider, I might want to make them prove it to me a little bit. I might be a little bit hesitant to extend that forgiveness. God is not like us. He is so much better than us. Look at what it says in Micah 7, verse 18. Micah, chapter 7, verse 18. At the end of this book of prophecy that Micah writes, he says, “Who is a God like you?” There's no god like our God, right? All of the other so-called gods that people are worshiping, they're putting people on a path of works to earn it back there. That's like, okay, you did this wrong. Here's the good stuff you’ve got to do to make it up before the Lord. The true God is not like that, right? That's a perversion of God. That's not the way he is. “Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity and passing over transgression for the remnant of his inheritance? He does not retain his anger forever.” Like, yeah, when we're in sin, God's not okay with that, and he's going to have his hand be on us because he cares about us, whom the Lord loves. He disciplines like, yeah, God does. Sin does not please the Lord. It displeases the Lord when we go our own way, when we turn away from his way and go the opposite way. But he doesn't retain his anger forever. Like when we come to him and he and we confess, he's not wanting to stay mad. He's not wanting to stay like there's distance between us, because he delights in steadfast love. Like when God introduces himself, the fact that he's merciful, that he's gracious, that he's willing to give us better than we deserve, that he's willing to pardon iniquity, like this is one of his favorite things about himself. This is something he wants each and every one of us to know. This is the way he is. He will again have compassion on us. Verse 19, “He will tread our iniquities under foot. You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea.” Back in these days, there's no scuba gear, there are no goggles, there are no air tanks. We're not getting weights and going down on submersibles and exploring the ocean floor. When you drop something into the depths of the sea, it's like it's done. It's never to be seen, never to be heard from, ever again.
Do you realize, like, that's what's on the table for you, that's what's on the table for each and every one of us here this morning, that if we go to God and we confess our sin to him, that it could be forgiven, not like, he's like, okay, well, I'm going to write that one down in case you do it again, and I'm going to be ready to bring it up to you, like, I've got a list, I'm checking it twice, kind of thing. Like, that's not the way God is. Like, when he forgives you, it's like, boom, it's done, it's covered. You're not going to find it again. It's like we need to realize that, like when we go to God to forgive us our sin, there's something that he actually did that has the power to cover our sin. We could try to cover it up. We're not going to succeed. God actually did something that can cover up your sin. When his son came and died in your place. It's like the blood of Jesus covers your sin, and God doesn't look at you as the sinner you are. He looks at you as someone who's righteous, someone who's forgiven because of what he has done. And this is something I don't know that we really get this enough in our life.
Go with me to Ephesians, chapter 4, because what God is saying is like, hey, you could sin and you could be forgiven. It could be taken away; it could be covered. It's like, it's a done deal. And this is something that is the good news of the gospel, that God sent his son that we could be forgiven of our sins, so we wouldn't have to perish, so they wouldn't have to keep being deceived in our spirit, but we could know the truth, and the truth could set us free from our sin. And Paul, he was talking about this in his letter to this church in Ephesus. And look at what he says in Ephesians 3:14, he says, “For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family[c] in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being.” Why do we need to be strengthened? “so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”
Husbands and wives, have you ever been at that moment where there's a disagreement between you and your spouse, and it's turned into an argument, and we've said things that we shouldn't have said; we've sinned against one another. But then there's this beautiful moment where we could come back to one another and we could really confess our sin to one another. We could really stop making excuses for it, and we could just say to our spouse, hey, what I did was wrong. Full stop. No excuses, no shifting the blame to you, what I did was wrong. There was no excuse for that. And then there's this beautiful moment where we could actually forgive each other. And I don't know if you've experienced this, where you're kind of like befuddled, and you're thinking, wait a minute, we were just like against each other five minutes ago, and now it's like, I love you more than ever. How can these things be? What's the power of forgiveness and in our relationship with God? Like he's never doing the wrong thing to us, the wrong is all on our side, right? He's always doing what's right. But the same thing is true. When I go to him and I'm just honest with him and I confess my sins, He's not wanting to hold it against me. He's not harboring bitterness. There's forgiveness. He's ready to cover it up. He's ready to treat me as if I had never done what I did. And you know what that's meant to do is it's meant to make me love him more and to understand to have my mind continually blown again and again and again with the amazing love of Jesus. Some of us, it's like, because we're not really going to God, it's like, man, I'm missing out on an opportunity for my mind to be blown with how much God loves me, that like, hey, I'm kind of like acting distant before the Lord because of my sin, and that's kind of making me more hesitant to pray and more hesitant to read my Bible. That could change today. You could go to God, and you could be honest with him about your sin, not saying like you're not a Christian, but like man, even as a Christian, here was this wrong thing that I did, and you could experience the joy of his love for you. You can have your mind opened to see, wow. Like his love for me, like when I when I first confessed my sins, I thought it's amazing that Jesus would do this for me, but it's like, there's more. It's like, throughout my whole life, he just wants to continue to build up the work of Jesus, like this work that Jesus does that covers my sin. It's bigger than I ever imagined. And it's like I love him now. And now it's like there's not this distance where there's sorrow. Now, there's this closeness, there's this affection. And you know what? That's going to make me happy. It's going to make me happy because I'm near God, because there's nothing outstanding between me and God in my relationship with him.
And this is what I'm praying for you. I'm praying that this sermon would even just give you strength to grasp a little bit more like, wow, look at the love that Jesus Christ has for you. You don't deserve it. I didn't deserve it. Even after I got saved, I still haven't earned it. I still haven't deserved it. But here he is, just ready to love me over and over and over again. It's amazing what God has done. This is good news. Like, go back with me to Psalm 32 because the next thing that David's like, hey, I was messed up. I was royally messed up. I was the king. I was royally messed up. I was going the wrong way. But then I confessed my sin to the Lord. I stopped my cover-up campaign, and boom, he forgave me. And you know what he says next? He says, “Therefore,” verse 6, “let everyone who is godly offer prayer to you at a time when you may be found.” Hey, I prayed to the Lord. I asked him to forgive me. I confess my sin. Everybody should do that. We should be telling everybody that this is a possibility for them.
Let's get this down for point number three: “Tell others to get forgiven before it's too late.” Tell others to get forgiven before it's too late. That if you know the forgiveness that you've experienced from confessing your sin before the Lord, why are you keeping that to yourself? I mean, we get upset with a bro, if he's like, holding out on us on a good restaurant. You're like, wait, you knew that this place had good food, and you didn't tell me, bro, that's not what bros do. But yet, we've got the greatest thing of all time, and we've got people in our neighborhoods and people at our workplaces and people through the kids’ sports teams, and old friends here and new friends there, and we're not telling them this good news? We're not like, actually going up to them and saying, like, you should confess your sin. Like, look at me, I was this sinner. I was going the wrong way, and God forgave me. He would do that for you, too. Like, when was the last time you said that to someone? When was the last time you actually shared this good news about forgiveness with another person, right? I mean, look at what he says next, “Surely in the flood, surely in the rush of great waters, they shall not reach them.” This is bringing our minds back to the flood where Noah, he was a herald of righteousness, he was trying to tell people, hey, we need to get right with God, and people were not listening to him all until the moment where the rain started falling and the floods started rising, and at that moment, the door to the ark was shut. Like, there was a moment where they could have gotten right with the Lord, and then that moment was over.
Did you realize that same scenario is going to play out all over again, like today. Are we Living in the day of salvation? If we cry upon the Lord and ask him to be saved, will he save today? Absolutely, he will. Do you realize that that's like a limited time offer that we're experiencing right now? I mean, when I was remembering in the book of Revelation, right? And how, like, bad it gets where it's like, okay, this next time, it's not going to be like water, that's delusion, the earth that's flooding. It's going to be fire, it's going to be judgment, like, there's going to be things poured out, but it's actually the bowls of God's wrath that are going to get poured out on the earth. And in Revelation 9, it's like these plagues are happening, and like this, like bottomless pit is opened up, and it's like filling the world with smoke, and out of this bottomless pit there's like, do you guys remember, like we read in Revelation the demon locust? Do you remember those things where they've got, like scorpions sting and they sting people, and it's like they want to die, but they can't? And then in Revelation 9:20, you've got it there on the screen, “The rest of mankind, who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands nor give up worshiping demons and idols of gold and silver and bronze and stone and wood, which cannot see or hear or walk, nor did they repent of their murders or their sorceries or their sexual immorality or their thefts.” Like when God cues off the judgment and people are getting stung by demon locusts and they want to die for five months, but they can't die for five months, they're not going to be in the kind of mental space to really understand the good news of Jesus, like, even when God's judging them for their sin.
We've got to really understand the way this works. It's not like, oh, well, God will bring consequences, and that'll make everybody like, get it. No, they need to hear about forgiveness. They need someone to go tell them. Wen was the last time that you told someone that, like, when was the last time you went beyond just kind of like living out a godly example? And you actually opened your mouth and you said to a friend, hey, I just want to share with you, like how God forgave me and I was a sinner. What I was doing was wrong, and I confessed it to the Lord, and he forgave me. He covered it. It's not like he put me on a payment plan. It's not like he gave me another chance just for me to blow it all over again. No, he forgave me all the way. And you know what? He wants to do that for you too. Like, there's someone in your life that if you've experienced that, God does not want you to keep it to yourself. When David had experienced that, he's like, I don't care who knows what sin I've done. I'm forgiven. I'm forgiven. I don't care who knows it. I'm ready to share it with everyone, because I want people to know that God is a God who forgives, it's like he casts all of our iniquities into the depths of the sea, never to be seen or heard from again. Can't keep that good news to yourself.
Now in Psalm 32 look at what it says in verse 7. It says, “You are a hiding place for me. You preserve me from trouble. You surround me with shouts of deliverance.” Now some of us, it's like, man, I remember when I first confessed my sin to the Lord, but then I sinned again, like this last week, or two weeks ago, or whenever it was, I did something that that was wrong, and right now, I'm just feeling it. I feel, yeah, I'm feeling that heavy hand, Pastor Bill. I know what that's like. And you know the way it works right now is it's like, man, our flesh is so messed up that sometimes, rather than experiencing the joy of forgiveness. It's almost like we want to wallow in that shame and that guilt like a pig in the mire. We just want to wallow in it, and that's exactly what Satan wants us to do. I mean, Satan, in the Bible, is described as the accuser of the brethren. Go with me to Zechariah, chapter 3, right before the couple books before the New Testament starts. Zechariah, chapter three. And there's this, I won't forget it. Since we got to Pastor Bob, we got to preach through Zechariah, where there's this vision that he has of Joshua the high priest, and it's like we're there before the Lord, and Satan is there. Zechariah, chapter 3, verse 1, it says, “Then he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the Lord, and Satan standing at his right hand to accuse him. And the Lord said to Satan, ‘The Lord rebuke you, O Satan! The Lord who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you! Is not this a brand plucked from the fire?’ Now Joshua was standing before the angel, clothed with filthy garments. And the angel said to those who were standing before him, ‘Remove the filthy garments from him.’ And to him he said, ‘Behold, I have taken your iniquity away from you, and I will clothe you with pure vestments.’ And I said, ‘Let them put a clean turban on his head.’ So they put a clean turban on his head and clothed him with garments. And the angel of the Lord was standing by.”
I mean, I don't know that we realize that the Lord is a hiding place for us, that when I'm honest with the Lord and I'm confessing my sin, it's like I'm safe with him, and even if my flesh wants to condemn me, even if Satan would be there before the Lord with a list, an accurate and a long list of your sins that he's ready to bring up before the Lord, you know what's going to happen. It's like you're surrounded with shouts of deliverance that if Satan would want to bring up your sin before the Lord, it's like Jesus is right there in his presence to shout him down. Like if we're in the courtroom of heaven, Jesus is there, may it please the Court, that sin paid in full.
It's like a forcefield of God's shouts of deliverance is surrounding you each and every day for the rest of your life. God's not going to let you go. God's not going to be like, well, I thought I'd forgiven you, but now I'm reconsidering you. When he forgives you, it's like your sin is done, your sin is covered, and for the rest of your life you're safe. You're safe with him. And so, some of us, maybe this week, we need to go back and remember who we really are and what Jesus has really done for us. Maybe some of us, we're not getting happiness because we're up and down with our circumstances.
Let's get this down for point number four: “Take refuge in God's shouts of deliverance.” Take refuge in God's shouts of deliverance. Like sometimes when I sin, I don't feel good after that. I'm bummed, I'm sad, man, I don't want to do that. Oh, God, deliver me from this body of death. I don't want to sin anymore. And I think some of us, what we're doing is we're putting it all on us. And it's like, well, if God is shouting his deliverance all around us, far be it from us that we would think anything different than what he says about us. Like I might not like when I go and confess my sin, does it mean that I am immediately overwhelmed by this feeling of forgiveness every single time? Not all the time, but yet, God is surrounding me with his shouts of deliverance. It's like Jesus is happy to shout down my sin each and every time. Jesus is happy to shout his deliverance around you, right to say that there's going to be nothing that could accuse you because he has forgiven you and your sin, it's covered.
That's what God has done for you. You are safe. Now there are some of us that what you need to do here today is you need to go to God and confess who you really are for the first time. You've been deceiving yourself. There's been deceit in your spirit for years, for decades, you've been trying to act like you're this good person. God knows you're not. Go to him, say the same thing about your sin to him. Don't try to be covering it up like, okay, oh, I feel bad after this sermon, so I'm just going to go do some good deeds, or I'm just going to remember this one time where I did this good thing way back in 1997 or whenever it was. No, I'm not going to cover it up anymore. I'm just going to be honest before the Lord. Some of you need to do that for the first time. But then, those of us that praise the Lord, he's forgiven us. Like, hey, right now am I experiencing the happiness that comes from that forgiveness? Like I want you to walk out of this room stoked out of your mind that like man who cares what's happening in my life today, my circumstances could be up, they could be down, but I've been forgiven from the Lord. My sin is covered. I am surrounded by his shouts of deliverance. Amen. Amen. Well, let's pray and ask God to do that.
God, we need your help right now. God, I know that there are some that, God, they're being convicted by this sermon, and they want to go cover it up again. God, they want to cover it up by leaving this room as quickly as they can. God, don't let them do that. God, I pray that Lord, people that you're convicting of their sin right now, that they would talk to someone, God, that they would talk to you, but that they would also just be willing to stop the charade and be open and be honest. And, God, we are so thankful that you are who you are, God, that you are a God who forgives our iniquity. God, our sin is wrong and evil and twisted. God, we're a bunch of people who have rebelled against you. We've gone our own way. God, we're not good people, we're sinners. Oh god, we're so thankful that you sent your Son Jesus Christ, so that sinners like us could really be forgiven, not just so that we could have a reset, not just so that we could have another chance to try harder and do better next time, but so that we could truly and utterly be forgiven because of the blood that your son shed on the cross. And so, God, we want to praise you. God, we want to even sing this song from Psalm 32. God Lord, I just pray as this songs being sung, God, I pray that Lord, that you would cause people to confess their sin to you, God, that they could bring it to you. God, that they wouldn't have to hide it that they wouldn't have to minimize it any longer, but they could bring it to you now, God. So let that happen. And for those of us that you have forgiven, God, let us revel in the joy that you bring. God, let us be happy that you love us, that you loved us so much that you would forgive us for all of our sin and cover it forevermore. And all God's people said, Amen.