It is not that I did choose thee,
Lord, Todd's Road Grace Church would
like to invite you to listen to a sermon by our pastor, Todd
Niver. We are located at 4137 Todd's
Road, two miles outside of Manowar Boulevard. Sunday services are
at 10.30 a.m. and 6 p.m. Bible study is at
9.45 a.m. Wednesday services are at 7 p.m. Nursery is provided for all services.
For more information, visit our website at toddsroadgracechurch.com. Now here's our pastor, Todd Nivert. I'm going to be preaching this
morning from the 32nd Psalm where David says, blessed is the man.
and I want to see what true blessedness is, what God would say true blessedness
is. Now, Psalm 32 was written after
David wrote Psalm 51, his great psalm of repentance over what
took place with Bathsheba. And let me give you the story
that will set up this psalm. David, The man after God's own
heart should have been out when kings go out to battle, he stayed
at home and let Joab do his work. And while he was walking around
on the roof, He saw a beautiful woman bathing by the name of
Bathsheba. So in a horrible abuse of power,
he sent for her and had her brought to himself. You see, a king could
do whatever he wanted to back then, and he committed adultery
with that woman who was another man's wife, and she became with
child. Now, he tried to cover this,
What he did was he sent for her husband, Uriah, to come back
in from battle. And he thought that way Uriah
would think the child was his. But Uriah, noble soul that he
was, would not go into his wife while the rest of the armies
of Israel were out in the fields fighting. He didn't want to make
a difference with himself. He refused to do it. So then
David got him drunk. And he still wouldn't do it.
So then David came up with another plan. He wrote a note to Joab
and said, Joab, I want you to have Uriah go right up to the
wall of the city you're attacking and then withdraw from him and
let him be killed by the enemy. In other words, he planned pure
whole-blooded, premeditated murder of this man. And then he gave
the note to Uriah, knowing Uriah was such a faithful soul, he
wouldn't open it. And so Uriah takes his own death
sentence to Joab, and the plan is completed. David implicates
Joab in this evil, and Joab participates in the murder of Uriah. Now what a horrible, evil thing. The scripture says the thing
David did displeased the Lord. An abuse of power, adultery,
trying to implicate others in your crime, cold-blooded, premeditated
murder. That's what David, the man after
God's own heart, was guilty of. Now someone may think, could
a true believer do something like that? If you ask that question,
you prove you're very ignorant of yourself. You see, there's
no sin that you and I would not commit if God took his hand off
of us for just a second. Yes, I would do that. Yes, you
would do that, apart from the grace of God. So David goes on
in this state unremorseful. unrepentant after it took place.
Now, I don't know what was going on deep inside of his heart,
but business as usual. As a matter of fact, Bathsheba
had the child, so at least a year had passed by, and David remained
in this hardened state. And then God sent David a prophet
by the name of Nathan, and he gave David this story. I want
to begin reading in 2 Samuel chapter 12. And the Lord sent
Nathan unto David, and he came unto him and said unto him, There
were two men in one city, the one rich and the other poor.
The rich man had exceeding many flocks and herds, but the poor
man had nothing. save one little ewe lamb which
he brought up and nourished up and grew up together with him
and with his children. It did eat of his own meat and
drink of his own cup and lay in his bosom and was unto him
as a daughter. And there came a traveler unto
the rich man And he spared to take of his own flock and of
his own herd to dress for the wayfaring man that was coming
to him. But he took the poor man's lamb and dressed it for
the man that was come. He took the poor man. This man
was filthy rich. Yet he took this poor man, the
only lamb he had that he loved so dearly, and he killed it and
he fed it to his visitor. And when David heard this story,
verse 5, and David's anger was greatly kindled against the man,
and he said to Nathan, As the Lord liveth, the man that hath
done this thing shall surely die. David could clearly see
the wickedness of this action. And Nathan said to David in verse
7, Thou art the man. Now David could clearly see the
wickedness of this man's action, but he couldn't see that he was
the wicked man. And how did he respond after
God's prophet said, thou art the man. David said in verse
13, David said unto Nathan, I've sinned against the Lord. He now
confesses his sin, and Nathan said unto David, The Lord also
hath put away thy sin, thou shalt not die. Now, after David made
this confession, I've sinned against the Lord, he went out
and wrote the 51st Psalm. Have mercy upon me, O God, according
to thy lovingkindness, according to the multitude of thy tender
mercies. Blot out my transgression, wash
me throughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. For
I acknowledge my transgressions and my sin as ever before me
against thee, and thee only have I sinned and done this evil in
thy sight, that thou mightest be justified when you speak and
clear when you judge. Behold, I was shapen in iniquity
and in sin did my mother conceive me." Go on, read the rest of
that psalm. It's the great Psalm of Repentance. And after writing
the Psalm of Repentance, he wrote the 32nd Psalm. And it begins
with these words, blessed. Blessed is he whose transgression
is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man under whom
the Lord imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is
no guile. Now here is true blessedness. David begins with the word blessed. There are two kinds of people
in this world. Those who are blessed of God
and those who are under God's curse. There's no in between. There's no intermediate state.
I'm either under God's blessing or I am under God's curse. Now who is this man who is under
God's blessing? Blessed is he whose transgression
is forgiven. Now when David was writing this,
he wasn't thinking of sin in a generic term. He had this fresh
on his mind. I've been guilty of cold-blooded
premeditated murder. I've been guilty of adultery. I've been guilty of grotesque
hypocrisy. I've implicated others in my
sin. And I've been guilty of the abhorrent
abuse of power. Oh, how great his iniquity was!
And he had this on his mind when he said, Blessed is he whose
transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the
man to whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity. and in whose spirit
there is no guile. Now here is blessing. Here's God's blessing. Having
your transgression forgiven. Here is God's blessing. Having
your sin covered. Here is God's blessing. Not having
your iniquity imputed to you. Now, sin is rebellion. Transgression is mutiny against
God. Iniquity is moral perverseness. Some have suggested that the
transgressions, the rebellions, are the bad things we do. the
iniquity, the inequity. We read of Aaron, the high priest,
bearing the iniquity of the holy things of the children of Israel.
Our righteousnesses, the scripture says, are as filthy rags. Somebody
once said, the transgressions are the bad things. The iniquities
are the good things we do. They have iniquity, they have
sin, they have a moral perversity about them. Charles Spurgeon,
a preacher of the 18th, 19th century, made this statement.
He said, when I look at my good works and my bad works, I can't
tell the difference between the two. They seem so similar. And
the only safe thing for me to do is throw them all overboard
and go into heaven on the plank of free and sovereign grace."
David understood this. He understood his iniquities
and his transgressions was all caused by his sin. Sin has to
do with our nature. You see, you don't become a sinner
when you sin. You sin because you're already
a sinner. David had an evil nature that
brought on these transgressions and iniquities. David was keenly
aware of these three monsters, iniquity, transgression, and
sin, and how thankful he is for forgiveness, for covering, for
non-imputation. Now, to have your transgression
forgiven, What a blessing to have your sin forgiven. Now,
I realize preachers sometimes speak of God wanting to forgive
you, but He can't unless you let Him. Have you ever thought
about how ridiculous that is? What if you hit me in the face
and then said, well, I'm going to let you forgive me. Something's
wrong with that picture. Something's wrong with people
acting like God's just waiting to forgive, wanting to forgive,
but he can't forgive you unless you let him. No, forgiveness
isn't the sovereign prerogative of God. Not everyone is forgiven. There are those people who are
in hell who never had their sins forgiven, but oh how blessed
it is to have your sins forgiven, forgiven by God. The reason God
forgives sins is because that's who he is. He delights in mercy. He delights in forgiving sins. Oh, God forgives sins. He completely forgives sins of
everybody he forgives. Oh, how blessed is he whose sins
are forgiven? And here's how they're forgiven.
Blessed is he whose iniquity is covered. whose sin is covered. This is how God forgives sin.
He doesn't just push it under the carpet and say, well, it
didn't happen. What would you think of a judge who just up
and forgave criminals? He said, ah, it's okay. You might've
murdered, you might've stole, you might've done all these things,
but he lets him back out into society. You're forgiven. No,
that couldn't be. We wouldn't have a judge like
that. Well, the judge of the earth doesn't forgive sins like
that. What he does, here's how he forgives sins. They are covered. covered by the blood of the Lord
Jesus Christ. And His covering is unlike any
other kind of covering. When we cover something, it's
still there. We just can't see it. It's covered. But when He
covers sins, they're removed. They're not there anymore. That's
what the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ actually accomplished,
the removal of sin. My sin became His sin. He shed
His precious blood for it and removed it, and it is gone. Hebrews 8.12 says, I will be
merciful, I will be propitious to their unrighteousness, and
their sins and their iniquities I will remember no more. The
word propitious is also translated a mercy seat, a covering, a lid
of propitiation. When He says, I'll be propitious,
He says, I'll cover their sins. And because their sins are covered
and put away, now once in the end of the world, have He appeared
to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. Because those sins
are put away, He says, I'll remember them no more. Now, the reason
He cannot remember them is because there's nothing there to remember. They have been covered. They
are gone, separated us from us as far as the East is from the
West. He by himself purged our sins. And then he says in verse 2,
Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity,
and in whose spirit there is no guile. Now, David did in fact
commit these horrible sins. He did commit adultery. He did murder someone. He did
implicate others in his crime. He did try to cover it all up.
But here's his hope. God didn't charge him with it. He didn't impute it to him. And
the only way he cannot impute it to him is if he imputed those
sins that David committed to his only begotten and well-beloved
son on Calvary's tree. This is what we call the gospel.
God took my sin and He put it in His Son. His Son bare my sin
in His own body on the tree. It was imputed to Christ. Christ
bore the penalty and His righteousness, His perfect obedience is imputed
to me and becomes mine. That's the gospel. Now that's
blessedness. Blessed is He whose transgression is forgiven. whose
sin is covered. Blessed is the man to whom the
Lord will not impute sin." And then he says also in verse 2,
"...and in whose spirit there is no guile." No deceit. Now, all he's talking about is
the new nature that is given to a believer in the new birth.
You see, the natural man doesn't have a spirit. He's got a soul
and he's got a body, but the spirit died in the fall. When
he said, in the day you eat thereof, you'll surely die, well, he didn't
die physically, but he died spiritually. His spirit died. But when God
saves a man, He gives him a new spirit, and in that spirit there's
no guile. This man is honest before God.
You see, it's the new man that confesses the sin of the old
man. The old man will gloss over it. The old man will never truly
be honest before God. He'll always pretend to be something
that he's not. But the new man is honest before
God, and he confesses his sin. And that's what David was enabled
to do. He had this spirit in which there
was no guile. Now we see in his old man there
was plenty of guile. We see that by the way he conducted himself
with Bathsheba and Uriah. But this new man, this is what
the Lord is referring to when He says, blessed are the pure
in heart. For they shall see God. This
is that clean heart that David prayed for in Psalm 51, this
new man that is honest before God and honesty is seen in the
confession of sin. Now, let's go on reading Psalm
32, verse three. He says, When I kept silence,
my bones 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, when I kept silence. Now, the first
application of this is Christ. He kept silent before Pilate,
didn't he? Now, whenever you read the Psalms,
remember, first it's Christ speaking. Yes, it's David speaking, and
David speaking of his own experience, but this is Christ speaking.
Just like when David said, My God, my God, why has thou forsaken
me? Those are the words of the Lord
from the cross. Yes, David said it, and David felt it, but in
every psalm, the first application is Christ speaking. In Psalm
1, the very first psalm, that blessed man. That's the Lord
Jesus Christ. Yes, it's the man that God has
blessed, but it's primarily the Lord Jesus Christ. And Christ
was silent before His accusers. Why? Because He was guilty. He
was guilty. He offered no excuses, no plea
for mercy. He knew he was guilty and had
to have the justice of God leveled against him. He knew he had to
bear the wrath of God. So we see where Christ kept silent,
but this is David during his time of not repenting of his
sin, of not confessing his sin. He said, when I kept silence,
my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long. I was
miserable on the inside, I turned into a desert during that time
of silence. And then in verse 5, he says,
I acknowledge my sin unto thee. And my iniquity have I not hid? I said, I'll confess my transgressions
unto the Lord. And thou forgave us the iniquity,
the moral perversity of my sin. Now here's David's confession
of his sin. He was no longer silent. He confessed
before the Lord. He was honest before the Lord
about his sin. Now this is what confession of
sin is. It's taking sides with God against yourself. Have you ever done that? Have
you ever taken sides with God against yourself? You know, David
said in Psalm 51 when he was confessing this sin, he said,
against thee and thee only have I sinned and done this evil in
thy sight that you might be justified when you speak and clear when
you judge. If you judge me and send me to hell, I'm getting
exactly what I deserve. Whatever you do is right and
I'm wrong. That's what confession of sin
is. It's taking sides with God against yourself. Now, upon confessing
his sin, he said, Thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin. Oh, what a blessing that is to
have the iniquity of your sin forgiven. And he says in verse
six, For this shall everyone that is godly pray unto thee
in a time when thou mayest be found. For what? for forgiveness,
for covering, for non-imputation, anyone that's godly. I love the
way the believers described as godly. The godly man is the man
who confesses his sin before God. Actually, the godly man
is not the man who boasts of his godliness and talks about
how good he is. No, the godly man is the only
man who really recognizes his sin. And this is what he seeks
from the Lord, forgiveness, covering, non-imputation of sin. He says, for this shall everyone
that's godly pray unto thee and in time when thou mayest be found.
When is the time that the Lord can be found? Right now. Not
tomorrow. Tomorrow may never come. Don't
look to the past, some kind of experience you've had or some
kind of work you've performed. That's works. That's all it is. Right now, the Lord is to be
called upon. Oh, Lord, have mercy on me. Whosoever
shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. Surely in
the floods of great waters they shall not come nigh unto Him."
This man who God forgives, who He doesn't impute His sin to,
He covers His transgression, God's judgment is not going to
come upon them because it came on Christ. There is therefore
now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus who walk
not after the flesh but after the Spirit. He says in verse
7, Thou art my hiding place. I love this name of the Lord.
The reference is to somebody on the lower end of the food
chain. What are they always doing? They're looking for a place to
hide. And David said, Thou art my hiding
place. One of my favorite hymns is hail
sovereign love that first began the scheme to rescue fallen man. Hail matchless, free, eternal
grace that gave my soul a hiding place. Against the God who ruled
the sky, I fought with hands uplifted high, despised the mention
of his grace, secure without a hiding place. Enwrapped in
thick Egyptian night and fond of darkness more than light,
madly I ran the sinful race, too proud to seek a hiding place. But thus the eternal counsel
ran, almighty love arrest that man. I felt the arrows of distress
and found I had no hiding place. Indignant justice stood in view,
to Sinai's fiery mount I flew, and justice cried with frowning
face, this mountain is no hiding place. Ere long a heavenly voice
I heard, and mercy's angel form appeared. and led me on with
gentle pace to Jesus Christ, my hiding place. On Him eternal
vengeance fell that must have sunk a world to hell. He bore
it for a chosen race and thus became their hiding place. Should storms of sevenfold thunder
roll and shake the earth from pole to pole, No flaming bolt
can daunt my face, for Jesus is my hiding place. A few more
rolling suns at most shall land me safe on Canaan's coast. There
I shall sing of sovereign grace to Jesus Christ, my hiding place. The apostle Paul understood this
when he said, Oh, that I may win Christ and be found in him. When God comes looking for me,
all I want him to find is the Lord Jesus Christ and me in him. Thou art my hiding place. Thou
shalt preserve me. from trouble. And the only way
I'm preserved from trouble is Him preserving me from trouble. Thou shalt compass me about with
songs of deliverance, streams of mercy never ceasing. call
for songs of loudest praise." Now, this is God speaking in
verse 8. He says, I will instruct thee and teach thee in the way
which thou shalt go. I will guide thee with mine eye.
You know, God teaches His people, and He teaches them to continually
come to the Lord Jesus Christ, their hiding place. He says,
Be not as the horse or as the mule, which have no understanding,
whose mouth must be held in with a bitten bridle, lest they come
near to them. Now these animals are known for stubbornness. Stubbornness
is stupidity. Don't be stubborn. Bow to what
God says. Believe what God says. Acknowledge
what God says. You only hurt yourself if you
don't. Stubbornness is so foolish. And David says in verse 10, Many
sorrows shall be to the wicked, but he that trusteth in the Lord,
mercy shall compass him about." What does it mean to trust the
Lord? Paul put it this way, I know
whom I have believed. And I'm persuaded that He is
able to keep that which I've committed to Him against that
day. What have you committed to Him,
Paul? The entire salvation of my soul. I'm trusting Him to
do it. I know that I can't save myself,
and I'm completely dependent upon Him to save me. I'm dependent upon Him to do
it all, and I'm trusting Him to do it. He that trusteth in the Lord,
mercy shall compass him about. And then David ends with verse
11, be glad in the Lord and rejoice ye righteous and shout for joy
all ye that are upright in heart. Now there's one place to be glad
and that place is in the Lord. One place of safety when God
came through Egypt to smite the firstborn, in the house with
the blood over the door. There was one place of safety
when God had rain come down and flooded the earth, only one place
of safety in all of the world that was in the ark. And there's
one place of safety and security that is in the Lord Jesus Christ. He says, be glad in the Lord. and rejoice ye righteous, made
righteous by God, and shout for joy all ye that are upright at
heart. One old preacher said this, ever
since I heard the good news, I've never heard bad news. Now we have this message on DVD
and CD. If you call the church, write
or email, we'll send you a copy. This is Todd Nyberg praying that
God will be pleased to make Himself known to you. That's our prayer. To request a copy of the sermon
you have just heard, send your request to messages at toddsroadgracechurch.com
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