So Lord, may you graciously help
me, I would turn your prayerful attention to the psalm that we
read, Psalm 32, and reading verse one as a text that I do, as the
Lord helps me, want to go through this very instructive psalm as
to how we are to be blessed. Psalm 32, verse one, blessed
is he whose transgression is forgiven,
whose sin is covered. Psalm 32 and verse 1. You may be familiar with how
the book of Psalms opens in Psalm 1. It says, blessed is the man
that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth
in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful,
but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in his law doth
he meditate day and night. This is, in Psalm 1, declared
as the blessed man. And yet, how do we get to that? How do we get to not walking
in the council of the ungodly, not standing in the seat of sinners,
and not sitting in the seat of the scornful? By nature, you
see, we're all sinners. And in a sense, in a strictest
sense, it's only the Lord Jesus that has ever really walked in
Psalm 1 perfectly. But you see, in the text that
we have before us in Psalm 32, we're told by David how to become
like that, how we can get into that state. Blessed is he whose
transgression is forgiven. Really, this is a explains Psalm 1. This is how the blessed man in
Psalm 1 got to that position in Psalm 1. It's because he's
been forgiven. It's not that there is a certain
class of people that naturally are sinless. There's only one
that's been sinless and that's the Lord Jesus Christ. So really
in Psalm 32 we have a declaration of how to be blessed. And blessed
is a word which is linked with happiness. True happiness, true
blessedness is to be found here. This is where it is. There's
a lovely hymn that is very precious to me. Happiness, thou lovely
name, where's thy seat? Oh, tell me where. Learning,
pleasure, wealth, and fame all cry out. It is not here. Here
it is. Blessed is he whose transgression
is forgiven. So the blessedness comes when
transgression has been forgiven. And this is very important. This
is written by David, the sweet psalmist of Israel. But this
is written by somebody who walked this out. This is written by
somebody who experienced firsthand this. This is not academic. This
is not David writing as if I think this is probably the case. This
is David's own experience. And we're going to see that as
we go through the psalm. He's going to open his heart and actually
say, for the best part of a year, I wasn't there. I wasn't in that
state. I was fighting against it. But
this is where it brings him. Blessed is he whose transgression
is forgiven. Transgression is crossing the
line. God has given the line, the standard
in his word, and we go past that line. We sin. Blessed is he whose transgression
is forgiven. So it's forgiveness. Here in
our opening hymn, it was sweet to see how that was a theme in
the opening hymn of the repentance and the forgiveness. And David
here sees that this is the place of true blessedness. Oh, the
world will tell you many places which are blessed as they believe,
but this is the truth. This is the position of true
blessedness. Blessed is he whose transgression
is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Now, there's two ways sins can
be covered. You see, David, with his sin
with Bathsheba, and Uriah the Hittite, he covered it for the
best part of nine months, but it wasn't in this sense. He hid
it himself, and he didn't want to acknowledge it, and he didn't
want to confess that that was what he'd
done. Now that's not the covered in
our text. The covering that is speaking about the blessedness
is when God has covered it, covered it with his robe of righteousness.
There's a totally different between God covering us in the robe of
his righteousness and us hiding our sin, hoping nobody knows. Blessed is he whose transgression
is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man under whom
the Lord imputeth not iniquity. Imputeth is a word of accounting. so that God has not accounted,
if you like, sin against that person. Not that they weren't
sinners, but God has not put that on their account. Because,
not because he's not a good accountant, because he's balanced it a different
way. He's balanced it because he's put it on the other side,
on his own beloved son. That's why this man, this person,
this man or this woman or this boy or this girl is blessed because
the sin that was truly, totally theirs has been taken, that sum,
in the accounting sense and been put somewhere else. It's been
imputed, it's been accounted to another. And that is indeed
the Lord Jesus Christ. Blessed is the man whom the Lord
imputeth not iniquity. And it's the Lord that's doing
this. This is not a person saying, well, I think I've given myself
forgiveness and I've put the blame on somebody else and somebody
else can carry it. This is God doing it. This is
God's work. And you see, true forgiveness
is, it's not forgiving ourselves, it's God forgiving us for Christ's
sake. Blessed is the man whom the Lord
imputeth, accounteth, on the accountant's sheet, not iniquity,
in whose spirit there is no guile. Now guile here, if somebody's
not full of guile, there's no deceit in them. They're not trying
to trick somebody. They're not trying to pretend
one thing when they're really thinking another. And you see,
of course, David, for the best part of nine months, was really
being very deceitful to those around him are seeking to deceive
what he really had done. But David comes back, you see,
to blessed is the man whom the Lord imputed not iniquity, and
in whose spirit there is no guile. Well, in verse three and four,
we have what happens when we don't deal with this. So perhaps
before I get on to verses three and four, so really what we have
is the need in verses one and two of dealing with sin. Sin needs to be dealt with and
it needs to be paid for. And this morning, as those of
you who were at the Sunday school, I brought in that bottle of golden
syrup and also a bottle of bleach. And the importance that we spoke
about to you children was that they were labeled correctly.
and we did not start trying to eat or drink the bleach, which
would have been terrible for our health. But you see, sin,
therefore, needs to be called sin. You see, we live in a day
where sin is, when transgression of God's laws, the Ten Commandments,
is no longer considered to be sin in our land, many of them. And therefore, it seems as if it's not a problem. It's a bit like you having this
bleach in a bottle and you say, well, it's not actually dangerous
anymore. You're welcome to drink it. No, you see, that would be
devastating. And you see, sin is devastating
if it's not dealt with. It will. bring forth death, just
as surely as if you drink a bottle of bleach, you will die, unless
immediate medical attendance is sought for, it will be your
death. Or so sin will be our death. Not just we will all die naturally
if the world remains, but here I mean the spiritual death. That
means sin does give us our natural death, but then it goes on and
gives us an eternity in separation from God. So sin is serious. And that's a message that is
very, very important for you to lay hold of. Sin is serious. And though you can have people
come along and change the label on the bottle and then say this
is a delightful treat, this will do you good, you're only young
once, everybody does it at university, it's quite acceptable, quite
normal now to do this and to do that and to do the other,
which is totally contrary to the word of God. Sin is sin,
and the fact that somebody puts a different label on the bottle
does not change its contents. Sin is exceedingly sinful, because
it's against a holy God. the God that made us, the God
that formed us, and it's against true happiness. And that's the
solemnity of it. You see, Satan's been at this
right from the beginning. Wasn't that in the Garden of
Eden? It was Satan seeking to relabel the tree of the knowledge
of good and evil. He wanted to say, well, this
was good for you to eat of this. Whereas God said, you shall not
eat of it. But Satan wanted to change the
label and said, eat and enjoy. Well, Satan hasn't changed and he's
at that all the time. And sadly, Eve listened and Adam
fell. And that's where we have the
beginning, as it were, of original sin and the whole a creation
being changed by sin. But the wonderful blessing is
that there's a second Adam. And that's what the preaching
of the gospel about is the two Adams really, isn't it? It's
about the first Adam, or we fall in Adam, and the second Adam,
there is this one that's coming to pay the price of sin and to
take away our sin. Blessed is the man unto whom
the Lord imputeth not iniquity. You see, if you don't think sin
is serious, then you probably won't worry whether it's on your
account or not. But if you realize the seriousness
of sin, and that God judges sin, then you will start to realize
that you need a substitute. Well, David, so the first point
then really is the sin is a destroyer of blessedness. So if blessed
is the one whose transgression is forgiven, then clearly, if
it isn't forgiving, it's destroying that blessedness. And really,
it is a destroyer of happiness. It was for Adam and Eve. They
were told that you should be as gods, and no good and evil,
as if that was something that really they should look forward
to. And when they ate, they only realized their shame and nakedness. and fear came into them and they
hid from God. But blessed is he whose transgression
is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Now, this needs to be dealt with
urgently. It is so, isn't it? If you were
to swallow bleach or something like that, urgent action is needed. It's not a case of saying, We'll
just wait a few hours and just see how things go. Just take
it easy. No, there needs to be immediate
action to dilute and to bring that out of you, that poison,
which will be your downfall. Well, you see, David sat on his
sin for something like nine months. And he gives in, I believe in
verse three and four, a summary of nine months of not confessing. Nine months of having a stiff
upper lip, seeking, I won't say sorry, I won't confess my sins,
I won't do this. Verse three it says, when I kept
sins waxed old through my roaring all the day long, for day and
night thy hand was heavy upon me. My moisture is turned into
the drought of summer, Selah." This was, David, it was a great
load to David. You see, this was God's mercy
to David, wasn't it? He could have left David, you
see. David could have sinned with Bathsheba, and he could
have just carried on, and God could have left him. left him
to his own devices, left him to be satisfied with separation
from God. But it was God's mercy and God's
love because we read, whom the Lord loveth, he chasteneth. And God loved David, so God chastened
David. And God chastened David to bring
him back, to bring him back from this wayward state. And I believe
he's done it so that we have a wonderful record of how we
come back to God from the dark paths of sin. How would it be
if all the characters in the Bible never really had any sin
talked about? How would we feel today when
we know ourselves as sinners? But the characters in the Bible,
and David, I understand that there's more written about David
than any other character in the Bible. So much is written about
David in the word of God. So many chapters given over to
the life and writings of David. But this one, He says, he admits,
you see the Bible is realistic, it admits of sin. It admits the sins of God's people. And this was David, when I kept
silence, my bones whacked old. He had committed adultery, he'd
committed deceit, cover up, twisting, getting people drunk, twisting,
trying to twist their morals. And then when that didn't work,
then, well, kill Uriah by the sword of the children of Ammon.
Oh, and it wrapped it all up so nicely, nobody would ever
know. When I kept silence, my bones waxed
old through my roins all the day long, for day and night thy
hand was heavy upon me and thy moisture was turned into the
drought of summer. Barrenness. Barrenness. You see, it's not blessedness,
is it? In verse three and four, it's
barrenness. It's far off from God. David knew God. He knew what it was to have fellowship
with God, and he knew that he wasn't in fellowship with God.
He knew he was separated from God. You see then, in this instructive
psalm of David, in verse five, he comes to confession. The Lord
breaks him and as we read in the account in Samuel, there
was that decree, Nathan was given that message, thou art the man,
came to David with this parable of the ewe lamb. In verse five
then, I acknowledged my sin. So here you see that David is
acknowledging his sin. He hadn't for nine months or
so, He tried to hide it. Not the hiding in verse one. I acknowledge my sin unto thee. You see, he comes clean. He comes back to God. Iniquities
have I not hid. His iniquity is his crookedness.
You see, iniquity is what sin does to us. It makes us crooked.
It makes us twisted. And we can become... It's amazing
when one thing goes wrong, like with David, then it led to all
these other sins. David had a very upright life
in many ways, but if you just read the bit of Bathsheba and
the deceit and the twisting that was going on around that time,
it makes pretty grim reading. I acknowledge my sin unto thee
and mine iniquity. The twistedness of what I've
done, have I not hid? I said, I will confess my transgressions
unto the Lord, and thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin. See, the Lord is ready to forgive. We need to come and we need to
be broken by the exceeding sinfulness of sin and how much that God
has as rightly needs to be worshipped, and we are sinners. This is a
vital step, and this was not David coming for the first time,
was it? This was not David coming to the Lord for the first time,
although I believe this can be for the first time as we realise
our sin, but this was David, who was a mature Christian, I
believe, I understand, he was something like 50 years of age
when this happened, verse 5. of that sort of order. I acknowledge
my sin unto thee, and mine iniquity have I not hid. I said I will
confess my transgression unto the Lord, and thou forgavest
the iniquity of my sin. So this is a great and important
thing. Blessed is he whose transgression
is forgiven. How can there be forgiveness? Well, David says here, it's by
confessing. Not by blaming somebody else,
not by pretending it didn't happen, by covering it and saying, well,
I'm not so bad, the person down the road's a bit worse than me,
so probably I'll be okay. No, it's a case of saying, I'm
the sinner. I acknowledge my sin unto thee,
and mine iniquity have I not hid. I said, I will confess my
transgressions unto the Lord and thou forgavest the iniquity
of my sin. I want to just say here that
we mustn't think that this is only true and only has to be
done if there's some catastrophic sin that we've committed that
everybody would notice and everybody would say, oh yes, that's a terrible
sin. No. Taking a fruit that was forbidden
was the sin that cast Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden. And perhaps taking a piece of
forbidden fruit you might think is a pretty, not such a serious
sin as David's with his murder and with his adultery. But sin
is a transgression of the law. It's flying in the face of God.
and it's sinning against the one that is holy. See the nature
of God is that God is holy. He's holy and that is what is,
it's a really strange thing really to grasp the nature of God. He's holy, holy, holy, Lord God
Almighty, he's the God that Sin cannot enter heaven. He's so
holy. And you might think, well if
God is so holy, surely I'm unholy and anything that's unholy is
just going to be totally cast out. totally, I'm not going to
be able to come to such a holy God. But this is the wonder of
the gospel that that one that is so holy is also merciful. Isn't that an amazing combination
of holiness and mercy? That that one that's so holy
also is so merciful. It's a tremendous thing to grasp.
Because you might think, well, somebody who's not got such a
high standard of holiness, somebody who is pretty lax in many areas
themselves, I can understand them overlooking some of my sin
because, well, they've got lots of their own. But that's not
the way God is. God is truly pure and holy and
truly righteous. And yet that God is a God that
has mercy on sinners. And that's the wonder of the
gospel, that God is merciful. And that when somebody comes
to God, that he's able to be merciful
to them. Are you looking at Psalm 25? Psalm 25. I mean, you might think,
what sort of reason is this? Psalm 25 and verse 11. The Psalmist said, another Psalm
of David, It says, for thy name's sake, O Lord, pardon mine iniquity,
for it is great. You might say, well, that's a
pretty unusual way to reason to a judge, isn't it? It's like
coming to a judge and saying, have mercy on me, Mr. Judge,
because I've been absolutely terrible. And that's a reason
why you should have mercy on me, because I've been so terrible.
You'd say, well, I'm sorry. You don't reason like that. You
say to the judge, I want you to be lenient to me because it
wasn't really quite as bad what I did as what you think it was.
Or there was some extenuating circumstances. And therefore,
I want you to think favorably towards me. But that's not how
it is. That's not how David comes to
God. For thy name's sake, O Lord, pardon my iniquity, for it is
great. You say, well if it's very great,
then I'm absolutely just in totally damning you. You've just given
me a complete clear plate to do that. But what does God do
instead? When Peter, when that boat, when
there was that great catch of fishes, right early, before he'd
really become a disciple, Jesus showed his power in telling him
to let down that net, and the net was full of fishes. And Peter
comes to Jesus and said, depart from me, for I am a sinful man. And you might think, well surely,
then the only way forward forevermore is separation between Peter and
God. That's the way forward, because
Peter's a sinner and God's absolutely holy and mighty. But Jesus' solution
was so different. Fear not, from henceforth thou
shalt become a fisher of men. What a difference, what a difference. Pardon my iniquity, for it is
great. It seems really that God looks
upon our sin in a similar way to what we would look at somebody's
poverty. You see, if your beggar came
to your door and said, please could you give me some money
because I've got a Rolls Royce back in the garage. You'd say,
well, you don't really need much money. But if he said, please
give me some money, I'm absolutely broke, I've got no money at all.
Then there's something there that draws in our hearts some
empathy for that person, that individual, isn't it? Their poverty
is what gives us more cause to want to be kind to them. But
you see, this is the way that God works with our own sinfulness. It is the extent of our sin that
seems to draw forth a kindness to the most unworthy. Do you see, it's not the same
as a person being poor, because a person being poor isn't actually
any slight on us, in a sense. But the iniquity that David had
was a sin against the one he was coming to ask for mercy.
Do you see? It's different. It's like this
tramp that had said, have mercy on me because I've stole so much
from you before and I've stole this and I've stole that and
I've ruined that and I've set fire to that barn and I've ruined
that for you. Have mercy on me. You say, well
there's not much of a plea there. but you see this gives honour
to God. The dying thief, you see, we indeed justly, for we receive
the due reward of our sins. You see this sort of confession
glorifies God. I hadn't seen it as I was preparing
for this sermon, I hadn't quite seen that what the dying thief
said gave glory to God. We indeed justly, for we receive
the due reward of our sin, but this man hath done nothing amiss.
That was a way of honouring God, wasn't it? It honoured Christ
because everybody else was ridiculing him, but that honoured God. He
saw a separation. and it wasn't good, it wasn't
favourable for him, we indeed justly, we're absolutely in the
right place. We're being crucified and that's
exactly the right place for us. Justice demands correct, that's
the right payment. But what does this judge of all
the earth do? Remember me when thou comest
into thy kingdom. Today shalt thou be with me in
paradise. This one who had spent his life
as an enemy of God, was obtained mercy. It's a tremendous combination
between God's holiness and his mercy. You'd think that the holiness
of God would cause him to hate sin, and yet a sinner that comes
to them and confesses that they're nothing but sin, he looks upon
mercifully. It's strange. And it's our wonderful
mercy that it's the truth of the gospel. The gospel is for
sinners. And you see, David was a sinner.
One that was loved of his God, and yet he was a sinner. And
he wrote these things out so that we can see the way back
to God from the dark paths of sin. And I challenge you, have
you got a sin worse than David's? Have you got a sin worse than
David's with his adultery, with his murder, with his deceit?
with his cover up. I'm sure David would love in
some sense to write those things out so that they're never recorded
because it must be a shame to him as it were to think that
these things have gone over again and again amongst the Lord's
people. But David understood. David understood
that the things that he had passed through, that God was able to
do something amazing with. At the end of Psalm 51, which
is David's well-known penitential psalm, he gets to verse 13. After he's confessed his sins,
God's restored the joy of his salvation. David then doesn't
stop there and he says, will I teach transgressors thy ways.
I wasn't able to before because I hadn't been there. I hadn't
experienced it. I hadn't been forgiven. I hadn't
been in the gutter and I hadn't sinned so terribly. But now I
have. I can then teach sinners, transgressors,
thy ways. And he could teach it because
he'd experienced it. And you see the Lord's people,
those that preach the gospel are to experience the gospel.
God has not in his wisdom appointed angels to preach the gospel.
He's appointed sinners to preach the gospel. Because they've obtained
mercy and they're to tell others that that God that is so high
and holy and mighty is also a God that we don't understand why,
but he delights in mercy. And that's the gospel. It's not
that he doesn't mind sin too much, so he pardons it. He absolutely
hates sin. But he delights in mercy. And
that's the picture of the gospel. He loves mercy. And that is what
we are to come with. David, all the time that he was
trying to hide his own sins, oh, he got, well, we read, I
kept silence. My bones waxed old through my
roarings all the day long. For day and night, thy hand was
heavy upon me in God's mercy. God was punishing David or correcting
him or chasing him for his sin. He couldn't get away with it
like those in Psalm 73 that were shaking their fists at God and
saying, how does God know? And is their knowledge in the
most high? And they carried on all their way to their journey's
end before they were brought up and realized that David had
the hand of God on him. after these events, because David
was one of the children of God, and David was going to be brought
back to God, and he was going to be a living, working example
of what it is to come back to God from the dark paths of sin. I acknowledge my sin unto thee,
and my iniquity have I not hid. This is verse five. I said I
will confess my transgressions unto the Lord. and thou forgavest
the iniquity of my sin. God gave him forgiveness. We
read that, that as soon as he confessed his sin to Nathan,
Nathan said, God hath put away thy sin. Oh, the merciful hand
of God. And yet, you see, of course,
David's sin was affected him for the rest of his life negatively.
There was a sad outcome of his sin. And yet, you see, it did
not stop his relationship with God. Though my house be not so
with God, yet hath he made with me an everlasting covenant, ordered
in all things and sure. But then in verse 6 you see David
is going to teach, For this shall every one that is godly pray
unto thee in a time when thou mayest be found. And this is
a very important, a time when thou mayest be found. In other
words you see, What would have happened if David had died between
the time of Bathsheba and before Nathan came? Well, I know he's
in the Lord's hand, but he wouldn't have been died in a good place.
He wasn't right with God. But you see, we don't know when
our end is going to be. We don't know when our time will
be cut off. And that's really why I read
that Proverbs chapter one, Wisdom crieth without. She uttereth
her voice in the streets. She crieth in the chief place
of concourse. How long, ye simple ones, will
ye love simplicity and scorn as delight in scorning? How long
are you going to delight in being called good evil and evil good?
How long are you going to carry on like that? Because there's
a time coming when there will be an end of the time that you'll
be able to repent. In a time when thou mayest be
found. In 2 Corinthians chapter 6 we
read this, 2 Corinthians 6 verse 2, For he said, I have heard
thee in a time accepted, and in a day of salvation have I
succored thee. Behold, now is the accepted time,
behold, now is the day of salvation. You see, there's a time coming
when the door will be shut. God is merciful and we are to
come and obtain mercy, but many have described Proverbs 1 as
the most solemn chapter in the sense that we have God laughing
at the calamity of those who have mocked God all their lives. in Proverbs 1 verse 26, I also
will laugh at your calamity, I will mock when your fear come
in. How solemn for the king of kings and the mighty God to be
laughing at us. What hope have we got then? when
your fear cometh as destruction, and your destruction cometh as
a whirlwind. And you see, that's also in our
verse six of Psalm 32. For this shall everyone that
is godly pray unto thee in a time when thou mayest be found surely
in the floods of great waters, they shall not come nigh unto
him. And you see in Proverbs 27, Proverbs 1 verse 27, when
your fear cometh as desolation and your destruction cometh as
a whirlwind. These are the floods, and these
are the difficulties that are going to come. And how are you
going to stand if we've mocked God all our lives? If we've despised
the mention of his grace, too proud to seek a hiding place? We're content with calling bleach
something to be enjoyed. We're content with calling good
evil and evil good. When God says this will be your
destruction, we'll take hold of it and we'll drink it down
and we'll mock God while we're doing it. See, that is the nature
of us by nature. Far off from God. But then you see in verse seven,
there's an exaltation that David gives. Thou art my hiding place. God is a hiding place to his
people. See, there's a great thing that we've got to get our
minds around. God, the Lord Jesus Christ, has two different sides. How can I put it like this? If
you have Goliath, you think of Goliath. Goliath was very nice
to have on your side if you were a Philistine, because he's a
big strong man. So he was good for you if you
were on his side, and he was also at the same time formidable
against his enemies. Of course, he wasn't formidable
against God, and thankfully David, with his sling and stone, overcame
him. But the point I'm making, if
you've got a strong person, if he's on your side, That's a great
comfort to you and a great protection for you, at the same time as
being a real problem to your enemies. And you see, this is
true of God. This is true of God. Thou art
my hiding place. God is a hiding place for his
people. But he's also, at the same time,
that the wrath of the Lamb is a thing that the world and everyone
outside of Christ will be hiding from. Christ will not be a hiding
place for the wicked in that day. They will be trying to hide
from Him. He will be the most formidable
enemy they've ever faced. And that bleach that has in joy
written on it will be the most awful thing that they'll realize.
To sin against the the maker of the universe, their God, the
one that gives them breath and health and everything they have,
the God that's created everything for his glory. They've mocked,
they've ridiculed, they've spat at, they've despised. They'll realize then the awfulness
of that. And you see, for them, they'll
be crying for the rocks to fall on them. to hide them from the
Lamb, from the Lord Jesus Christ. Can you see? He's wonderful to
have on your side and formidable enemy to be fighting against. God is both. Our gods are consuming
fire. Don't think of your God as just
a bit tame and a bit easy and a bit soft. He's not soft at
all. He's an incredible enemy against those, against Satan
and all his hosts. But that's a comfort for the
Lord's people too, isn't it? Because we have enemies. And
God, thou art my hiding place and we have a hiding place in
God that is utterly formidable. Nobody can come and take us away
from that hiding place. Paul, he glories in that, doesn't
he, in the New Testament. There is nothing that can separate
us from the love of Christ. He lists everything that you
might put in a list to ruin somebody's fellowship with somebody else.
And he said, none of these can do it. None of these can separate
me from my hiding place in the Lord Jesus Christ. That is the
value of that hiding place. And you think of the hiding places
that you'd have here below. They would be soon ruined by
these things happening. This is the list that Paul gives
in Romans 8. Romans 8 verse 34, Who is he
that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea,
rather that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of
God, who also maketh intercession for us. Who shall separate us
from the love of Christ? Who shall take us away from this
hiding place? Who can take us away from it
and kill us? Who shall separate us from the
love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution,
or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, for
thy sake we are killed all the day. We are counted as sheep
for the slaughter. And then he goes on in verse
38, for I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels,
nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things
to come. That's a pretty comprehensive
list. What have the world got to challenge that sort of a list?
And Paul's saying, I'm persuaded that none of these things, nor
height, nor depth, nor any other creature shall be able to separate
us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
That is why the gospel is so precious. And that is why Paul
laid hold upon these things. And he wanted sin to be called
exceeding sinful. He didn't want it relabeled as
enjoy, here below, because sin, is what separates us from blessedness. But the gospel of the grace of
God is those, yes, the very worst of sinners, who on Jesus' aid
rely, shall of endless bliss be winners, because of the gospel
of the grace of God. How God, who is so holy, who
hates sin so greatly, can yet be so merciful and to be able
to be pleaded to on the grounds of the greatness of our iniquities,
is beyond our understanding. This is the truth as we read
it in the Word of God. Thou art my hiding place. Thou
shalt preserve me from trouble. Thou shalt compass me about with
songs of deliverance. I will instruct thee and teach
thee in the way that thou shalt go. David wants us to be instructed. This is the way of blessedness.
This is the way of true happiness. Don't listen to the world. Don't
listen to your best life now. That's not the way of happiness.
Happiness is holiness. Holiness, being right with God.
Not self-righteousness. That's filthy in God's eyes.
But holiness. Holiness is being right with
God. is truly, sincerely hating sin,
and truly having obtained mercy. Coming with that true, honest
confession, they all declare, I nothing am. My all is bound
up in the Lamb. And you see, they point to Christ.
And that's why you see the song of the redeemed in heaven, as
one great object worthy is the Lamb. It's the only reason they're
there, not there, not there, because of their own righteousnesses.
They haven't got any. But blessed is he whose transgression
is forgiven. How can that be? That true, sincere
confession of sin. If we confess our sins, it says
in 1 John, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and
to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. This is what God is able to do. Blessed is he whose transgression
is forgiven. whose sin is covered. David knew
it. David experienced it. He knew
what it was to delay coming. He knew what it was to say he
wouldn't come. He was going to stand his ground.
He was going to carry on his iniquity. He was going to enjoy
his sin. He was going to have his fill of sin. And let's see
how much he enjoyed this sin. When I kept silence, my bones
wax old, through my roaring all the day long, for the day and
night thy hand was heavy upon me, my moisture is turned into
the drought of summer. It wasn't much fun. It wasn't
a good part of David's life. Sin is hollow, is empty. But he acknowledged his transgression.
The Lord forgave him. And so David points, this is
the way. This is the way of happiness.
And you young people, do please listen. Because we live in a
world that tells you that there's so many happinesses out there,
which are basically sin is relabeled as enjoy. And it's more dangerous
than bleach. It's more dangerous because it
will send you not, it won't just kill you. but it will send you
into eternal punishment, eternal separation from the source of
true happiness, which is God himself. May we be amongst those
who confess our sins. The Lord shows us that we're
sinners, and we come to hate that sin, and come to ask for
mercy, and we're told here, David experienced it himself, that
God is one that's ready to forgive. and is able to forgive, and able
to bind up the brokenhearted, and able to truly, blessed is
he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered, not that
they've covered it, God has covered it with his robe of righteousness,
with his precious blood, and they are white, therefore are
they there before him, amen.