So Psalm 32 begins, blessed is
the man. Boy, it's full of interesting
and exciting things for the church. It starts out, blessed is he,
and as we look at these psalms, Almost,
not almost, every single one of them declares something that
God has done for us. And as this psalm, it's addressed
to the church, just like we find the scriptures are written to
the church. David says in this psalm in verse
6, For this shall everyone that is godly pray unto thee in a
time when thou mayest be found. So it's written to those folks. And it's the same word that God
uses to draw His people to His Son in the Gospel. So it's your
basic, your dual purpose, feed the flock call people with the
gospel scriptures. So blessed is the man. And again,
this psalm, Paul quotes it in Romans, the fourth chapter, to
illustrate some truths to those Jews to whom he was speaking.
And so all these psalms amplify the cause of blessedness. And
we always find when we read these psalms that God is the cause
in every one of these. And as we look at at these different ones in Psalm
32, Psalm 1, Psalm 34, Psalm 40, Psalm 65, Psalm 84, Psalm
94, Psalm 112. In Psalm 112 it says, And it's blessed because his
heart is fixed on God. And that's an important thing
for us to remember. His heart is fixed on God. It's
established, it says, and it's not afraid, and it's trusting
in God. And that becomes very relevant
as we look at this Psalm 32 and as we look at all the Psalms.
And because they all amplify that the cause of blessedness,
and that word blessedness just means happiness. It's pretty
simple. True, eternal happiness is based
on what God has done. And Psalm 40 says, wonderful works. And then it
goes on to have a little bit of a prophecy in there about
the gospel in Christ in that psalm in verse 5-7. He says, Lo, I come in the volume
of a book, it is written of me. And so we find that David, many
times we find his things that he said interwoven with prophetic
utterances by the Savior as He speaks to us. And so this psalm
begins, it says, a psalm of David, and then there's
this Hebrew word, mashiel. And that means, what that word
simply means is, it's instructive. And it's instructive, or what
they would call a didactic poem. And that simply means it was
written for the purpose of instruction. And actually, it's derived from
a word that indicates expert instruction. Expert instruction. So the things that are written
here are not just idle words, not just words that are nice
and have a good, pleasing sound. They're written for the instruction
of the church. That's what Paul wrote in 1 Timothy
3.16. All scripture is given by inspiration
of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproved for correction,
for instruction in righteousness. And that's not instruction on
how to obtain or acquire righteousness. It's instruction on how righteousness
comes. And as all these Psalms say,
it's all because of God. Psalm 65 says, Blessed is the
man whom thou choosest and causes to approach unto you. So we find
that teaching throughout all of them. And the Apostle Paul
again quotes this psalm and gives the relevance to the expert instruction
in his epistle to the Romans there in chapter 4. And again,
David calls this the prayer of the godly. What an interesting
way to view this. For this shall everyone that
is godly pray unto thee in a time when thou mayest be found. So He begins out here, blessed,
or happy, happiness, eternal, true, unshakable happiness is
He whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Now, there's
some interesting words here and thoughts that are kind of really
critical to salvation and one's understanding of that miracle
of God and why it alone brings true eternal happiness. And of
course, we just mentioned that that word blessed means happiness. And we have the word imputed.
And imputed is kind of a bookkeeping term. something is imputed to
you, it's charged to your inventory, it's placed in your account.
And Paul in Romans 4 kind of brings both sides of that, but
in this psalm it says, you're blessed when God doesn't charge
your sin to your inventory. Now you think, wow, that's a
That's something to make one happy. And at the end, he says,
be glad in the Lord, because He has taken care of this issue,
and He has fixed it where your sins are not charged to your
account. They're charged to another, who's
His son, who made the payment for them. And he says, and rejoice,
you righteous, you that have been made righteous by this transaction. Paul calls it imputed righteousness. Because our righteousness that
we have has been charged to our account, put in our inventory
by Christ, and not by what we've done. So we'll look at that a
little bit more as we get into Romans. But very interesting
words here. Forgiven. And you know, it was
interesting that that word, he says, Your sins are forgiven. That means lifted. That word
forgiven there means lifted. Your burdens have been lifted
off you and placed on another as it says in Isaiah 53. He's laid the iniquities of us
on His Son, on Christ. He's laid on Him the iniquity
of us all. And then there's this word covered
here that we find, means to hide. And in verse 7 of this psalm,
He says, Thou art my hiding place. your sins are covered, they're
hidden. And Christ turns out to be that hiding place. And then, of course, we have
this word guile that's used here in the beginning here. Blessed is the man unto whom
the Lord imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is
no guile." There's no falseness, there's no treachery, there's
no deceitfulness. And we find that is kind of applicable
when we try to come unto God under false terms and false works
and those kind of things. that are deceitful from our heart. They don't do any good. The heart is deceitful above
all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it? That's what
Jeremiah said in chapter 17. So, that's just a fact of an
attribute of our natural heart as we try to come to try to come
to God on her own. It's like Adam in the garden
where he tried to hide himself. He tried to hide his sin. And
instead of it being hidden in Christ, he tried to hide it himself.
And he tried to supply his own righteousness and blame God. And all these deceitful, treacherous
things that we find there that are exemplified in that. So this
first word we come to, and this is where we want to kind of spend
our time today and focus on, is this word blessed. And it
means happiness, true eternal happiness. It's not transitory. And it's not fickle. It's not variable. It's not unstable. It's solid. It's stable. And
that's because when it's truly based in God, it's 100% what God has done and not something
that we do. Yvonne and I were just talking
the other day about this. We knew this lady up in Alaska
where we lived up there and they were in the Air Force. She was
just all over the place. She vacillated from one day to
the next, from one minute to the next sometimes. Oh, I'm saved,
I'm saved, I'm so happy. And then something would happen
that was not good, or she'd think something, or say something,
or do something, and then, oh, I can't, I'm not saved. And she
just never really knew. She just like, one day I am,
and one day I'm not. So emotionally, she was just
all over the place, because there was no stability in it, because
it was all based on what she had said or done, and not what
Christ had done in her behalf. And it was just sad. But you couldn't really explain
it to her. Well, the reason you're unhappy
all the time is because you don't believe the report. You don't
believe the report that Christ died for your sins. You know,
back in my time, back before the Lord revealed His Son in
me, and I was just suffering pretty tremendously with Him
showing me sin and things. I must have read Psalm 34 about
a thousand times. Because this poor man cried and
the Lord delivered him out of all his troubles. And I just
kept reading that and kept reading it and not believing it. Because
it hadn't been made true to me yet. It was true. that the work was finished from
before the foundation of the world. But he hadn't made it
personal to me yet. And when he did that, when he
made that connection for me then, it unlocked everything. And wow, it was wonderful. And
it was such a relief. I remember thinking, I could
just float right off. So it was such a relief. Remember
when we said that word lifted? Well, that's kind of what happened.
All your burden was lifted off and he said, take my yoke on
you. It's light. It's easy. But I
couldn't do that myself. I couldn't make that relevant. I couldn't make it true myself
no matter how hard I tried. It had to come from him. And
when he did do it, then, of course, then it was unshakable. It was stable. It was solid.
And so common in religion that someone just talked into merely
repeating it. There's a guy on TV every day,
two of them, I think, that come on all times. All you have to
do is repeat this prayer. Just repeat after me, and then
call this 800 number, and give us your bank account, and everything
will be fine. You know, and maybe the Lord
uses that, but maybe not. So I think maybe it's more of
a case of when he makes himself known in you, then it will happen,
but not because you, You repeated something and tried to put God
in, well, I said the prayer, I said the words. It says right
here, if you say this, this, this, and this, then God will
do this, this, and this. And no matter what condition
your heart is in, so they leave that, they kind of leave that
part out. So a profession that's based on something they did is
just kind of the same as Paul gets into with those Jews in
Romans, the fourth chapter. It's all based on mechanical,
physical things, not spiritual things. And so true happiness really just lies
in one whom the Holy Spirit has done a work. And then they recognize
that salvation is of the Lord, that salvation is entirely of
grace. It's just sometimes words on
a paper that we read and read and read and read, and we just
kind of gloss over it. But when the Lord makes them
pertinent to you, makes them true to you, makes them real
to you, then they become something entirely more wonderful, something
entirely different. And so, as Paul writes here,
a person who has been sovereignly made aware of their sin and the
sacrifice which was made in their place, there's no free sin. Sin just does not get forgiven.
It's paid for by somebody. It's either going to be paid
for by you or it's been paid for by Christ. And there's no
gray area in that. So, their sins imputed to Him
are placed in His inventory, and He took them to the cross
and dealt with them. And to redeem them from the penalty
of sin, and in place His righteousness is imputed to them and placed
in their inventory. What a great deal. What a great deal, but it's just
words on paper if it's not made valid in your heart. Their cause
to believe the gospel and the faith that they now have is Not
of themselves. It's a gift of God. Not of works
lest any man should boast. And so the knowledge that one's
salvation doesn't really hinge on what they have done or are
going to do or are doing. But it's based on faith that's
a gift of God that's total reliance on Christ for salvation. And
that gives the children of God happiness because it doesn't
depend on On me, a hundred percent being faithful all the time,
or me doing this all the time, or me not doing that all the
time. And John, Mike was talking from 1 John this morning in the
Bible class that when we sin, we have an advocate with the
Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. And if we say that we don't sin,
we're just liars. And so we have that to deal with. And so our happiness, our eternal
happiness can't depend on that. It has to depend on the finished
work of Christ in our place. And so when we have a bad day
or a down day, things are not going well, misfortune seems
to strike, their confidence in salvation
seems to disappear like a vapor, because it's all based on things,
on physical things, things they've done. And so they vacillate from
one minute to the next. One minute they're saved, one
minute they're not. And true salvation in each one
individually is a personal work of God. He comes to each one
of His sheep. And again, I mentioned that Psalm
34 really had no relevance, no help for me until He made it
personal. And then when He did, I said,
man, He did. I cried unto Him and found out
that He saved me out of all my troubles, you know. And then
we go forward from there. So when God reveals His Son in
you, when God assures you that the work has been completed for
you from before the foundation of the world, that in fact He
chose you, as Craig brought out here in a Wednesday night class,
He chose you or elected you to salvation, that you were His
from eternity, and He gave you to His only begotten Son to redeem
from all that sin and to present you back to the Father spotless,
your sins forgiven, lifted from you, paid for by Christ, and
your sins covered or hidden in Him." Isn't that just a wonderful
thing? If that doesn't make a person
happy, then there's no happiness for them to be had. So this word sin means covered,
concealed, or hidden. In Genesis it means, it's described
as to wrap around. To wrap around because, you know,
Adam and his wife, they were, they said, oh man, I'm naked.
I don't have any covering. And so the Lord God made coats
of skin and covered them, and that word means to wrap around
them. And isn't that what He does with
us, with His righteousness? And Psalm 32 again in verse 7
acknowledges that Christ is our hiding place. Our sins are covered
in Him and by Him and not... by ourselves as Adam attempted
to make his own fig leaf there and blame everybody. So this
then, this work of God Almighty, I think that was brought out
in a class here recently. What can we do to work the works
of God? They wanted to do all that magic stuff and Jesus said, it's the work of
God that you believe. You can't do that on your own.
It's not something you can manufacture. So this results in happiness
which can't be removed. It's solid. It's inextricably
linked with humbleness because you know you didn't do it. The
Lord says, you are so valuable that even the hairs on your head
are numbered. How much does He think of you? And it's humbling because it's based
solely in God and not in works of righteousness, which we may
or may not have done occasionally. Occasionally we do some good
thing, but it doesn't really count for righteousness. And
that's what Paul brings out in Romans 4. And so when one from
the heart prays, God to be merciful to me, a sinner,
there's truly, there's already been a work of grace and power
as one recognizes that where mercy comes from, it comes from
God, and it only comes from Him. And that only the redeemed really
come to the knowledge of their being a sinner by They're centered by birth, nature,
and choice. But that's only really revealed
to them in the new birth that gives them something to look
at from a spiritual side. And so now we're going to kind
of move from this Psalm 32 to the application that Paul makes
of it, the same text in Romans, the fourth chapter. If you want
to turn in your Bibles there to Romans chapter 4, And he makes
a direct connection to Abraham and addresses a number of false
religious notions that lineage to Abraham equals one part necessary
to salvation. We'd be Abraham's children. In modern days, we might say,
well, my whole family has been in church My whole family is
religious. My whole family is blah, blah, blah. But it's not
an individual, personal thing at that point. So when was Abraham
saved? He brings this out. When was
Abraham saved? Well, it was well before the
law was given on Mount Sinai. And one of the things that the Jews
relied on was, I've kept the law from my youth up. I do all
the things that God says to do or to not to do, which was a
lie. And I've done all those. Well, I started doing them yesterday.
Well, what about all the time before that? And then circumcision. In the
New Testament, we find oftentimes that the Jews were always trying
to impose circumcision on those that were proselyted into the
Jewish religion, and even those that became Christians. They
said, well, I know you're saved, but you still need to be circumcised. And they missed the whole point
of of what that was based on. And so, what were the circumstances
of God saving Abraham? Based on what? It's kind of what
he's bringing out here. So in Romans chapter 4, what
shall we say then that Abraham, our father, as pertaining to
the flesh, has found? Things of the flesh. He says,
what did Abraham do that made him savable or earned him salvation
with God. And when we go back to Genesis,
we find that God came to Abraham, not the reverse. God came, and
it mentions that in Genesis and then again in the New Testament.
God appeared to Abraham and told him, get you out of this country
and away from your family and away from your kin and to a land
that I will show you. And Abraham believed him and
it was counted to him for righteousness. So Paul writes in verse 2 of
Romans 4, well, if Abraham was justified by works, he has whereof
to glory. If he did so many good things
that he earned salvation, then he would really have a reason
to boast, to be proud, but not before God because it didn't
count with any of that would count with God. And then Stephen
brings this up in Acts chapter 7, in verse 2 he says, "...Men
and brethren of fathers, hearken! The God of glory appeared unto
our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he dwelt
in Charon." God appeared unto Abraham. And by faith, by total reliance
on Christ for salvation, it's written in Hebrews 11 verse 8,
By faith Abraham, when he was called to go into a place which
he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed. And he went
out not knowing whether he went. By faith he sojourned in the
land of promise, as in a strange country. dwelling in tabernacles
with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise.
For he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder
and maker is God." So he gives us a little insight into Abraham
and how that happened. God appeared unto him by faith, by total reliance on
Christ. He did what, he obeyed God and
did what he said. And so in verse three of Romans
four, Paul writes, for what saith the scripture, Abraham believed
God and it was counted unto him for righteousness. And that's,
he's quoting Genesis 15, six there. Well, this word counted
is the same word as imputed that we find in Psalm 32. He believed God and it was imputed
unto him for righteousness. What did he believe? He believed
that Abraham, he says, Abraham saw my day and was glad. And
so, blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity
and in whose spirit there is no guile. That's the same word
that we find, Psalm 32, 2, and that we find in Genesis 15, 6. And so now in Romans 4, 4, now
to him that worketh, is the reward not reckoned of
grace." So if you try to do something for your salvation, it's just
chalked up as more debt. It's just more debt that you
owe. He says, him that worketh, the reward is not reckoned of
grace, but debt. And that's pretty self-explanatory.
But it's just another one of those phrases that you read in
the Bible until you're born again or you're made to believe. just things that you read. Works
equals more debt to God, and contrarily, it's bad enough that
that happens, but it denies the actual work which God has wrought
in having His Son go to the cross and die and pay the penalty for
our sins. So it's kind of a double penalty
there. when you bring works to God and say, well, here's all
my good things that I've done. I've kept the law from my youth
up. I've tithed. I've been baptized. I do this. I do that. All those things that
we constantly bring up. So in Romans 4, 5 he says, but
to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth
the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness. His faith,
that total reliance on Christ for salvation is counted or imputed
for righteousness. And again, self-explanatory belief
without works is a function of grace. and the righteousness
of Christ is imputed or accounted to their account, placed in their
inventory. Remember in Hebrews chapter 4,
it says, he that enters into his rest has ceased from his
own works. Quit. Gave those up. And of course,
now that's brought up again as we would look at the circumcision
here in just a minute. But in verse 6 of Romans 4, even
as David also described the blessedness, the happiness of the man unto
whom God imputeth righteousness without works. And so he kind of gives us the
converse of what it says in Psalm 32, that we're blessed because
he doesn't impute our iniquities to our account, but he does impute
Christ's righteousness to our account. Even as David also described
the blessedness of the man unto whom God imputeth righteousness
without works, saying, Blessed are they whose iniquities are
forgiven and whose sins are covered. And that's imputed righteousness. True eternal happiness is then
based solely on what God has done and not based on works which
we've done or said. It's an internal work, an internal
knowledge, a heart knowledge. And it can't be obtained any
other way other than He places, He says, I have to give you a
new heart. Can't use the old one. In verse
8 it says, Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute
sin. And the reason He will not impute
sin is because it's been placed in the inventory of someone else.
that man is happy, that man is blessed, based on Christ's substitution. And sin is removed, it's not
placed in your inventory, or not charged to your account.
Now in the next couple of verses, Paul removes reliance on another
form of works, which is emblematic of any kind of works of the flesh. And that was the purpose of of
that metaphor in the Old Testament of circumcision, which he brought
up earlier in chapter 4. Now the act of circumcision was
not effectual for salvation, but it was just typical, and
it was just a metaphor for works of the flesh. And during the act of circumcision, flesh was
cut away and discarded. And so it was just a picture
of works of the flesh being cut away and thrown away, discarded,
never counted on again. It's just a picture. And so Abraham believed God well before
the act of circumcision was instituted. It couldn't really then be applied
as a work necessary to salvation as claimed by the Jews. You must
be circumcised. And it's just really a picture
of any kind of work of the flesh as a substitute for salvation Salvation by grace alone, by
unmerited favor, not of works which we have done, but by His
mercy and by His grace, He saved us. And he calls that in verse
6, he says, that's called righteousness without works. So happiness then
is based completely on imputed righteousness supplied by God,
paid for by Christ on the cross, and then revealed to those that
He laid down His life for ransom for through the gospel and causing
them to believe that gospel. We believe according to the working
of His mighty power. Otherwise, we just wouldn't.
So He uses all those things And then He applies them to us in
a personal way, each one. And so when we go to Christ to
have our burden, our sin lifted, if we have that desire, it's
because He is working that work, and the Spirit comes to us, as
it says in Thessalonians. We know you're elect because
the gospel came to you, not in just word only, but in power
and in the Holy Spirit. There was some effectual working
there by God Almighty. So, that's our lesson. Our message for today is, blessed
is the man, happy, eternally happy, not based on what he has
done, not based on what we do or haven't done or might do or
might not do. It's what he said, the children
not having done any good or bad that the purpose of God according
to election might stand. not based on works, but based
on what He has done for us and revealed to us. So be happy in
that and be free. And Mike will have a closing
hymn for us there.