I looked at my watch and it was 2AM.  I had been awakened from my sleep by worry.  More specifically, worry about our church.  In the four months since I became the lead pastor at Citylight Delco, the most unexpected change with this new role is the weight I feel from the task.  The weight of leading the elder team, casting vision for the church, and preaching each week.  And so occasionally, I find myself awake early in the morning, worrying.  As I lay there worrying, I reminded myself of truth – Colossians taught us that Christ is the head of the body, the church, he ultimately brings the growth, not me.  And the Lord gives wisdom to those who ask.  And the Lord has plan for my life that is not tied up in my job title.  Those truths brought comfort, because they are unchanging and God is faithful to his promises.  Recently, as I kept having this experience the Lord kindly gave me an important realization: my worrying was sinful and I had not confessed that to him.  Yes, combating anxiety with promises from Scripture is a great practice, but I had unconfessed sin that needed to be dealt with.  My repeated worry was bound up with my eyes being focused on the problems and not the Lord.  I was expressing a lack of reliance that God was actually going to be faithful to his promises.

So as I began to confess my lack of trust in the Lord, as I confessed that I was incorrectly thinking of myself as lead pastor first and child of God second, I sensed myself drawing nearer to God.  I felt some joy in being able to be that honest with God.  Lord I am sorry for not seeing my anxiety as an offense to you, your promises do provide a remedy to my problems, but my heart just wasn’t believing it.

You may have noticed as our text was read today, that there are two things David wants his readers to do in Psalm 32: confess their sins and be happy.  However, its important that we understand that those two things are linked together, they are not separate, but really one command.  David experienced the anguish of being silent and not confessing his sins to the Lord but also the joy and blessing of forgiveness leading him to remark in verse 1: “Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.”  In a similar fashion to David, I too felt my heart grow lighter, and I sensed the Lord’s blessing as I repented of my lack of trust in him.

Our big idea this morning is: Experience the Joy of Confession

Blessed Are The Forgiven

Be Quick to Confess

Be Glad and Not Stubborn

Let’s turn our attention to our first point which answers the question, why are we able to experience the joy of confession?  It is because blessed are the forgiven.

In the first five verses of this psalm, David moves in three directions: he describes the blessing of the forgiven, he recounts his burden of not confessing sin, and then shares his testimony of confession.  Listen as I read verses 1-2 and David’s description of the blessing of the forgiven:

Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. 2 Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit. 

What exactly does blessed mean?  Some other translations could be joyful, happy, praiseworthy.  It is living the good life to be counted among the forgiven.  Overall, I think we can agree that it makes sense.  To be forgiven is better than to be condemned.  But the way David characterizes forgiveness in these two verses gives us an opportunity to marvel how great of a blessing being forgiven really is.  First he says, the blessed man’s transgression is forgiven.  Our transgression being forgiven is the same as saying it has been lifted or removed from us.  But second, it has also been covered.  And it is not covered in the sense that God puts his hand over that blemish on your record so he cannot see it, but he has forgiven it, removed it, so when he covers it, he conceals it from his sight forever.  Third, the blessed man does not have iniquity counted against him.  In Genesis 15:6, we read that the Lord counted Abraham as righteous.  The word counted is used in the same way here.  Just as the Lord counted or reckoned Abraham to be righteous, so too the forgiven man is happy because he is not counted or reckoned to have iniquity or sin any longer.  Finally, the man is blessed because when he is searched he found to be without deceit – he has humbly confessed his sin, not arrogantly keeping sins from the Lord.

The objective description of what it means to be forgiven helps us see blessing.  But so does considering the alternative: the burden of hiding sin.  Listen to verses 3-4:

For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. 4 For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. 

David is suffering because, as one commentator points out, deceit was found in him, unlike the blessed man.  Unconfessed sin has made a home within David’s heart.  And instead of being happy, blessed, he is wasting away, groaning, being dried up like the summer.  When I read that last description I immediately related.  When my wife and I were looking to purchase a home I told her I would never buy a home without central air conditioning.  Well, as you might have guessed we are currently enjoying summer number 5 in a great house, but with window units.  My office is upstairs and on summer days the morning is fine but by 3pm I am usually hit with this warm and weary feeling matched with an unquenchable thirst.  Hiding your sin from God dries up the life in you.  

It makes sense that there is such a contrast between those who have confessed and those who are hiding sin.  When unconfessed sin lives in our heart we feel a barrier between us and God.  How could we commune with our holy God and expect intimacy when we are harboring unconfessed sin?  Maybe you have felt that tension firsthand with a child or a spouse?

Notice the foolishness in the contrast in the covering of sin between David and God.  When we cover our sin, we hide it from God, we waste away, we suffer.  But when God hides our sin, we are forgiven, the sins are gone from his eyes forever, and we are happy!  Confessing our sin leads to the blessed life, which is exactly the conclusion that David makes in verse 5:

5  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.

When I retreat out of my upstairs office on a hot summer day to our kitchen, I instantly feel my strength come back and with it my focus.  In a far more grand experience David’s burden is lifted as he comes to the Lord and confessed his sin.  Two observations can be made from this verse.  First, an understanding of confession.  I argued with my sister as a child and then was forced by my mom or dad to say, I am sorry.  What is in view here is far more personal and real.  David has felt the weight of the guilt of his sin and was honest with the Lord.  Charles Spurgeon so helpfully says: “We must confess the guilt as well as the fact of sin. It is useless to conceal it, for it is well known to God; it is beneficial to us to own it, for a full confession softens and humbles the heart.”  We learn here confession is a legitimate mourning for your wrongdoing and then fully, specifically, acknowledging that sin to the Lord.  

A second observation from this verse is that a mark of the people of God is that they confess their sin, they don’t hide it. Pastor Mike.  Being a Christian is not synonymous with perfection, its synonymous with being in progress, being transformed from one degree of glory to another.  So when you sin, and you will, you name your sin to the Lord in confession.  Don’t be ashamed or try to hide it.  That only leads to pain and a strain in your relationship with him.  But confession leads to happiness, an experience of joy because your sin is forgiven.  Spurgeon’s gift of words helps us grasp why this is so joyful: Not only was the sin itself pardoned, but the iniquity of it; the virus of its guilt was put away, and that at once, so soon as the acknowledgment was made. God’s pardons are deep and thorough: the knife of mercy cuts at the roots of the ill weed of sin.  Experience the joy of confession, it is a blessing to be forgiven.

This takes us to our second point, which is the first of two answers to the question, how can I experience the joy of confession? Be quick to confess

I will read verse 6:

Therefore let everyone who is godly offer prayer to you at a time when you may be found; surely in the rush of great waters, they shall not reach him.

David has experienced the joy and blessing of confessing his sin and being forgiven.  He was weighed down, burdened by hiding his sin from God.  Yet he prayed, received forgiveness and now wants to see all of God’s people do the same.  And that is a key observation in verse 6; by saying “let everyone who is godly,” we can conclude this Psalm is directed toward God’s people.  Those who are not counted among the people of God are not aware of their sinful state because they do not know the standard, whose law they are offending.  However, the godly do, they understand their sin, and so they should confess it to God and experience the joy of being forgiven.  

But there is an important time element at play here.  David says, they should offer this prayer, “at time when you may be found.”  There will come a time when it is too late to confess and judgement will be on the scene.  Do not be like the ungodly who try to keep secret their sin, instead as a child of God, be quick to confess.  Why are we not quick to confess our sins?  Here are a few reasons.  First, we can be too flippant with confession of sin.  Life is hectic right now, with young kids, I’ll get to it, but I don’t have time for another spiritual discipline.  Or you meet with a discipleship group and instead of getting into a text and confessing sin to another you spend an hour catching up and now you have to leave.  I will get to it.  A second reason could be shame.  You are embarrassed to come before the Lord and confess the specifics of your sin; how could I fall short in these areas!  A third reason could be arrogance.  I was reading one pastor’s thoughts on this passage and he helpfully said we can so arrogantly deceive ourselves by saying something to the effect of, I am not that sinful.  I am not like that person. 

Remember the joyful life, the godly life is marked by confession, acknowledging fully to God that you have sinned and being forgiven.   Hold confession of sin in a place of importance in your life.  What an amazing gift it is that the Lord invites us into his presence to confess our sins and when we do, we do not fear condemnation, but expect joy.

According to David, those who confess their sins do not have to fear the rushing waters of judgement, they shall not reach him.  Did you see the images of the river in southern Texas rising 30 feet in less than an hour?  It was surreal and terrifying.  When the rising waters of judgement sweep over the earth, those who are quick to confess their sins do not need to be afraid.  Instead they will say with David, the words of verse 7:  

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

How do we promote being quick to confess in our lives?  Let’s think of that both individually and with others.  Individually, we can grow in being quick to confess our sins by building it into our prayer time.  Using the acronym ACTS (adoration, confession, thanksgiving, supplication) can be a helpful guide.  When you filter your prayer time through those categories it puts you into a place of ensuring you search your heart and confess.  For example, consider your bible reading for the day.  How does your life match up with what you read?  Take today’s psalm, you may be led to confess: Lord, I am not quick to confess, but rather I am quick to hide my sin.  Please forgive me.

We can also grow to be quick to confess our sins with others.  At Citylight Delco we have three elders, which gives us the luxury of occasionally taking time over dinner, during our monthly meetings, to share about our lives and confess sin to each other.  It is a gift for one of us to say something like, I was short with my wife this week because I was feeling stress from work. Will you pray for me, to the others.  Because a mark of a godly person is confession, incorporate it into your discipleship relationships, engage in times of confession at Citygroup.

These two applications are not independent of one another, but rather they very much go together.  Godly people confess their sins to God, because it is his law we have fallen short of and Scripture commands us to confess our sins.  Yet at the same time, confessing our sins to a brother or sister in Christ enables us to walk in the light, not live secretly.  Considering this principle and this text, John Piper writes: “The principle is that dishonesty and hiddenness and privateness about our sins brings both spiritual and physical misery. God would spare us that, and so he teaches us to confess our sins to God and to one another.” 

Let’s move to our final point which gives us a second answer to the question: how can I experience the joy of confession? Be glad and not stubborn.

Verse 8 says:

I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you with my eye upon you. 

There is some debate among biblical scholars as to who is speaking here: has the voice shifted from David to God speaking to David?  Or is David now speaking to the people of God?  While I think it’s likely the latter, the conclusions we will draw essentially remain the same regardless.

David has had this experience of the burden of hiding his sin removed from him because he confessed his sin to God.  He knows his sin has been removed from the eyes of God forever, he is not reckoned as guilty.  David is blessed and happy to be found among the forgiven and he wants the people of God to learn from his experience.  So he explains that he will instruct them, he will show them the wise way to live.  But there is also a personal sense in his instruction, he cares about them: his eye is upon them.

His first piece of counsel is do not be stubborn like I was.  Verse 9 says:

9 Be not like a horse or a mule, without understanding, which must be curbed with bit and bridle, or it will not stay near you.

The horse and mule can be stubborn animals.  They are also strong animals, so if they do not want to do what their owner wants them to do, they are not going to do it.  Likely what the owner wants for them is good for them, yet they lack the understanding, they are too stupid, to get that.  They see where they are and what they want to do as better.  So to the horse or the mule to act in a certain way a bit and bridle must be used.  The bit goes in the mouth and bridle over their head and they are guided to where they should go.

This is reminiscent of what we read about David in verses 3-4.  The Lord is offering forgiveness yet David covers and hides his sin leading to his strength being zapped and his body wasting away.  In his stubbornness he thought keeping his transgression to himself was better than the blessing of God’s forgiveness.  Just like the actions of the horse or the mule, this is dumb.  Of course David eventually confesses and realizes his folly but not until after he suffered some. This experience leads Daivd to exhort the people of God: do not be like me.  Do not be stubborn like a mule without understanding.  Instead see the blessing of the Lord’s forgiveness and confess now.

If you are hiding your sin from God, he may eventually use the bit and bridle, like he did with David to draw you to a place of humble repentance.  The bit and bridle could be a season of suffering, a season of a barrier in your communion with God.  As you consider your life, is that true of you today?  Is your body wasting away because of unconfessed sin?  Maybe you have tried to defend your sin to God or rationalize it to fend off conviction: Lord, I know we should not be living together before marriage, and yes we have given into sexual temptation as a result, but it’s convenient to share a place before the wedding .  Or Lord I know I should give joyously, regularly, and sacrificially to my local church, but I need some more time to build up my savings account.  Lord, I know I should regularly be gathering with the people of God on Sunday mornings, but work is really taxing. I need to rest on the weekends.  I need some time to recharge by taking long weekend vacations.  

Remember the mark of the godly is regular confession.  Their sin grieves them so they confess it before the Lord.  Seeking to follow the Lord and stubbornly living in unrepentant sin do not necessarily go together.  So again, let me ask you to search your heart this morning?  Are you, brother or sister, rationalizing the sin in your life?  Do not be so stubborn, like David, to think that you know better than God.  Bending the rules for a season isn’t what we are called to do, we are called to live a life that honors the Lord.  Gladly turn to the Lord today and repent and experience the joy of forgiveness.

The second piece of counsel that David gives the people of God reminds us of our big idea: be glad.  Listen to verses 10-11:

Many are the sorrows of the wicked, but steadfast love surrounds the one who trusts in the Lord. 11 Be glad in the Lord, and rejoice, O righteous, and shout for joy, all you upright in heart!

David gave us a glimpse into the sorrows of the wicked in verses 3-4 – he is in physical pain and burdened by the heavy hand of the Lord upon him.  The barrier that developed between him and God because of his confessed sin was overwhelming.  We can imagine the many sorrows of those who are not repenting of their sins.

Alternatively, for the godly, there is great joy to be experienced when sin is confessed and forgiveness is received.  The steadfast never changing love of the Lord surrounds them, not sorrows, God’s love.  This is a reason for rejoicing and gladness!  The ones who are counted among the glad, the righteous are those who are quick to confess, who do not hide their sins from God.  They are not stubborn, but eager to live in peaceful harmony with the Lord.  Their sin has been removed by God, it has been removed from the eyes of God forever.

If you are here this morning and you are counted among the godly, you are a Christian, confession of sin is not a burden but a great joy because of Christ’s finished work on the cross.  See apart from Jesus, our life overall would be characterized as having many sorrows, the heavy hand of God would be upon us and we would be staring down the barrel of judgement and eternal separation from God.  But in his great love for us, God sent his Son Jesus to die in our place.  And Jesus was the only one who could be our sacrifice because he was fully God, enabling him to live the perfect life we could not live, but he was also fully man, enabling him to be our substitute and die in our place.  And so even though Jesus was sinless, completely and fully obedient to the law of God, never needed to confess sin, deceit was not found in him, he took on the penalty for our sins.  And when he rose from the dead three days later he conquered sin and death for us.  So now we are not justified as without sin before God because of our obedience but by faith alone in Jesus.  The Lord does not count iniquity against you.

And so now we are free to come before our holy God and confess our sins without fear of wrath for our sins: the wrath due us was completely poured out on Christ.  There is no need to fear judgement: confession is not a chore or a task filled with worry over whether I confessed enough to keep God happy – we are justified by faith not our works – but we confess to enjoy communing with God in joy and honest integrity.  Instead of hiding your sin, acknowledge it before God and have it forgiven, covered forever by the blood of Christ.

If you are not a Christian, we are glad you are here this morning.  While the experience of joy in confessing sin is for the people of God, I want you to know that you can be counted as among the godly, by admitting your need for a Savior today.  By acknowledging that Jesus is Lord, that he died on the cross for your sins you too can then experience the joy of being forgiven.  And really consider that this morning, because just as Christians should not hide sin, but be quick to repent there is also urgency for the non-Christian.  One day, when Jesus returns to judge the living and the dead there will not be time to confess him as Lord.  Consider today, are you trusting Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins?

Friends, we have a reason to rejoice and be glad!  Because Jesus took on the penalty of death we were due for our sins we are forgiven, we are justified by faith and not works.  So now we eagerly confess our sins to the Lord, feel our burden removed, and be joyful.