Did you see Todd's Road Grace Church would
like to invite you to listen to a sermon by our pastor, Todd
Neidert. We are located at 4137 Todd's
Road, two miles outside of Mattawar Boulevard. Sunday services are
at 1030 a.m. and 6 p.m. Bible study is at
945 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 Nyberg. I've entitled the message
that I'd like to bring this morning, Covered by Uncovering. Covered by Uncovering. I'd like to read the first two
verses of Psalm 32. And the setting of this psalm
is David wrote this after he was confronted by Nathan the
prophet. over his sin with Bathsheba. In verses 1 and 2 of Psalm 32,
we read, Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose
sin is covered. Blessed is the man unto whom
the Lord imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is
no guile. Now, I know this, I want my sin
covered. I don't want you to see my sin.
Most especially, I don't want God to see my sin. I want it covered, covered from
God's sight so that he can't see it. Can that be? Well, David tells
us, blessed is he whose sin is covered. In verse five of this same psalm,
he said, I acknowledge my sin unto thee and mine iniquity have
I not hid. And that word hid is the same
Hebrew word that's translated covered. In verse one, he said,
I didn't cover my sin. I exposed my sin to you. I didn't try to cover it. I didn't
try to lessen its guilt. I exposed my sin to you. And only in us uncovering our
sin before God, being honest before God and uncovering our
sin before God, will He cover our sins. covered by uncovering. Now, it's not my uncovering that
covers my sins, it's the blood of Christ that covers my sins,
but my sin will not be covered by the blood of Christ apart
from me uncovering them before God. Now, as I said, the setting
of this psalm was after David's sin with Bathsheba. Let me remind you of what took
place. David was in a mess. He had committed adultery with
a woman by the name of Bathsheba, the wife of one of his most loyal
soldiers, a man by the name of Uriah. He had watched her bathing
on a roof and called for them to come and get her and bring
her to him and they committed adultery. And she became with
child through that sin. So David tried to get Uriah,
her husband, back from off the battle to get with Bathsheba
so he could cover up his sin so Uriah would think that the
baby was his. But Uriah, loyal soul that he
was, he said, while the armies of Israel are out fighting, I'm
not going to go into my wife. So he just stood at the door
of David's home, laid there and waited. He wouldn't go in to
his wife Bathsheba. So David, the next day, tried
to get him drunk and tried to get him to go in with his wife
and he refused to do it. So David did something unconscionable. He wrote a note to Joab, his
general, and he said, You put Uriah at the head of the battle
and then pull back from him and let him get killed. And then
he gave that note to Uriah, sealed, where Uriah, he knew Uriah was
such a fine man, he wouldn't open the king's seal. And Uriah
took his own death execution note to Joab. So what David did,
David committed adultery, and he committed premeditated, cold-blooded
murder. This is the man after God's own
heart. He did these things. Somebody
says, can a believer do things like that? Now, if you ask that
question, You demonstrate great ignorance of yourself. There
is no sin that we will not commit apart from the grace, the restraining
grace of God. It's in us. David committed a
great sin, adultery and premeditated murder. David went on, business
as usual, without truly confessing his sin. As a matter of fact,
we know that Bathsheba went through the full term of pregnancy, nine
months, and had a child, so he went at least that long without
confessing his sin, perhaps a year. Now, then you remember the story
of Nathan, how God sent Nathan, the prophet, to David and told
that story of the man who had that little lamb that he loved
so dearly, and his rich neighbor had many flocks. And this man
who had this little lamb actually had it eat with his kids. It
was like a pet. It treated it as a child. And
this rich man who had many flocks had a visitor come, and he didn't
want to use a lamb from his flock, so he took this man's little
lamb and killed it and served it to his guest. And Nathan told
David about this, and David said, Get the man and kill him. And
Nathan said, Thou art the man. You're the one guilty of this.
And at that time, David composed two psalms. Psalm 51, the great
psalm of repentance, and Psalm 32. Now, in this 32nd psalm,
David says in verses 1 and 2, Blessed is he whose transgression
is forgiven. Now, let me Say, after Nathan
said, Thou art the man, David confessed his sin. He said, I've
sinned. And Nathan replied, The Lord
hath put away thy sin. And that's why David says, Blessed
is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man unto whom
the Lord imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is
no guile. Perhaps you noticed in reading
those two verses, three words, sin, transgression, and iniquity. If you go back into Psalm 51,
David's psalm of repentance regarding this deed, he also mentions sin,
transgression, and iniquity. While they're always together,
You never have one without the other two, yet they're different
things. Sin, transgression, and iniquity. Well, what is the difference?
In Scripture, sin has to do with our nature. David said, in sin,
Did my mother conceive me? Now, he was not talking about
a simple act of his mother in conceiving him. He's saying,
I was born in sin. I was shapen in iniquity. I was
born a sinner. He's talking about his evil nature. You see, you don't become a sinner
when you commit sin. You commit sin because you're
already a sinner. Now, what this is a reference
to is original sin. What is original sin? Now, do
you remember when God said to Adam, in the day you eat thereof,
you shall surely die? Adam ate. He didn't die physically,
but he died spiritually and he became spiritually dead. had
an evil nature, a spiritually dead nature, and all of his descendants
are born with that sinful nature. By one man's disobedience, the
many were made sinners. So I sin because I'm a sinner. I'm not a sinner because I sin.
I sin because I am a sinner. It's the nature that I was born
with. So when he's speaking of his
sin, he's talking about a sinful nature. Have you ever dealt with
your sinful nature? I'm not talking about the things
you do right now. I'm talking about what you are. You see,
what we are is a greater problem than what we do. What we do is
because of what we are. My sin. Next, he talks about
transgressions. Transgressions is the breaking
of God's law. That's the commission of sin. When I lie, I transgress. When I covet, I transgress. When I fail to love God with
all my heart, I transgress. Transgression is the breaking
of God's holy law. And iniquity. What is iniquity?
It's the moral perversity of even the good things. We read
of the priest bearing the iniquity of the holy things of the children
of Israel. The iniquity is the good things
I do. The iniquity is the moral perversity of everything I do
because I do it. He speaks of sin, a sinful nature,
transgression, that's the obvious bad things. Iniquity, that is
the good things. And to not see this is dishonesty. Blessed is he whose transgression
is forgiven, whose sin is covered, blessed is the man unto whom
the Lord imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is
no guile, no deceit before God. Now, this is the spirit that
God gives that enables someone to confess their sin and their
transgression and their iniquity when they're given this spirit
in which there's no guile or there's no deceit. Now, as I
said, David had gone some time without confessing his sin, perhaps
a year. The man, after God's own heart,
just went on business as usual without confessing his sin. But
inside, something was going on. You see, while a believer can
commit sins like this, there's no doubt we can because of our
sinful natures. A believer will be miserable
in this. Look what David said in verse
three. Psalm 32 said, 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. Selah. He said, This even affected
my health. I was miserable. And then he
says in verse 5, I acknowledged my sin unto thee. And mine iniquity,
have I not hid or covered? I uncovered it before you. You
see it anyway. You know, God sees everything.
Our covering doesn't make him not see it. But oh, what a blessed
thing when God gives us grace to uncover our sin before him. He said, I will confess my transgressions
unto the Lord. And the Hebrew word confession
means to throw a stone. What David is saying is I'm throwing
a stone at myself. I'm throwing a stone at myself.
I'm agreeing with God. I'm taking sides with God against
myself. And then he says, Thou forgavest
the iniquity of my sins. Now, this is precisely what the
spirit in whom is no guile does. He acknowledges his sin. He doesn't seek to hide his transgressions
and he confesses his iniquity. There's something sincere about
this. Now, there is an insincere confession
of sin. I want you to listen real carefully.
Now, in an insincere, and everybody's done it. I've done it. You've
done it. Let me tell you what it's made
of. In an insincere confession, it's forced. You only do it when
you're caught. In an insincere confession, you
confess with your lips, but you don't mean it. Sure, I'm a sinner. Ain't everybody one? That's not
true confession. Insincere confession admits to
guilt, but it doesn't really believe it. You don't really
believe that you deserve to be damned. Insincere confession
does not take full responsibility. Like Adam in the garden when
he said, the woman that you gave me, She gave me of the fruit,
and I did eat, the implication being, if you hadn't given her
to me, this wouldn't have happened. Ultimately, this is your fault.
You shouldn't have given me this woman. Insincere confession does
not confess all sin, just the one it got caught at. There's
no, my sin is ever before me. Insincere confession always has
extenuating circumstances that lessens the guilt. I stole because
I was hungry or I was just caught at a weak moment. Now, sincere
confession, unlike insincere confession, sincere confession
confesses not because it was caught. Sincere confession turns
itself in like somebody turning themselves in because they've
done it. Not because they were caught.
Sincere confession assumes complete responsibility. My sin is all
my fault. Guilty as charged. You take complete blame. My sin
is not because of the pressure of circumstances. It's not because
of my environment or a bad upbringing or because society failed me.
It's all my fault. And in a true, sincere confession,
there is a vindication of God's justice. You take sides with
God against yourself. You say, with David 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. A sincere confession doesn't
see one reason why it should be pardoned as far as merit goes. I deserve to be cast off. And David says in this confession,
thou forgavest the iniquity, the moral perversity of my sin. Now, let's go back to verse 1. Psalm 32, and I want us to consider
these four states of blessedness that David speaks of. Blessed
is he whose transgression is forgiven. Blessed is he whose
sin is covered. Blessed is the man unto whom
the Lord imputeth not iniquity. And blessed is the man, blessed
by God is that man in whose spirit there is no guile or deceit. Number one, blessed is the man
whose transgression is forgiven. Now, this word forgiven means
literally blessed is the man whose transgression is lifted
off. and put somewhere else. Now,
this is the great mystery of the Gospel. Here's how God forgives
sin. He doesn't forgive sins the way
we do. When He forgives sins, He takes away the reason for
anger. That sin is lifted off of me,
and that sin was placed upon the Lord Jesus Christ so that
He became guilty of it. It became His. and His righteousness
was lifted off Him and placed upon me." This is God's forgiveness. 2 Corinthians 5.21 says, "...for
He had made Him to be sin for us who knew no sin, that we might
be made the righteousness of God in Him." Now, that adultery,
that murder, That sinful nature was lifted off David and placed
upon the Lord Jesus Christ so that He became guilty. He bore all the shame and the
disgrace of that sin. It became His so that He was
guilty before God. And God punished Him. That's
why He died. The only reason for death is
sin. Christ died as the sin-bearing substitute, and His righteousness
is placed upon Me, and God says, I am forgiven. Oh, blessed is he whose transgression
is forgiven. And the next blessing David speaks
of is, blessed is he whose sin is covered. Covered so that it cannot be
seen. And understand this, the covering
David is speaking of is not like our covering. If I cover something
up, it's still there underneath. Let's say I put a blanket over
something, it's still there. Now, when God covers sin, it's
not like it's covered, but it's still there, because that wouldn't
be just on God's part. You see, God sees all. He knows
all. And if He knows the sin is still
there and He's just got some kind of superficial covering
over it, there's no justice in that. But God covers so that
it's not there anymore. The covering of His blood makes
our sin to be gone, purged away. Listen to this scripture from
Jeremiah chapter 50 verse 20. In those days, and at that time,
saith the Lord, the iniquity of Israel shall be sought for
and there shall be none. God looks for that sin that David
committed with Bathsheba. It didn't happen. God looks for
that murder that David performed against Uriah. It's not there. You see, it's been covered so
that it is gone. And the sins of Judah and they
shall not be found. God said regarding the sins of
everybody that Christ died for, of all who believe, He said their
sins and their iniquities will I remember no more. Now, the only way that God cannot
remember something is for there to be nothing there for him to
remember. Oh, how blessed is he who sin
is covered. Oh, if you're blessed by God,
you have no sin before God. And then thirdly, he says in
verse two, blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not
iniquity. Now, what does that mean? Blessed
is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity. Let me tell you of a personal
experience I had that made me understand this verse of Scripture
much more clearly. Some 20 years ago, I became very
ill. I thought I was dying. I came
very close to death. I was at the University of Kentucky
in the hospital, and they actually called my family in to see me
for the last time. And I had lymphoma, and at the
time, they couldn't find out what was wrong with me. I just
had all kinds of health problems, brain swelling, and I had to
have them shut, put my brain, all kinds of things like that.
But at the time, I thought that very night I was going to die.
I was in that hospital room, and I started asking myself the
question, are you really saved? Do you really know the Lord?
Are you a believer? I started looking for reasons
in myself to make me convinced that I was saved. I wasn't concerned
about the stock market at that time. I wasn't concerned about
the economy. I wasn't concerned about anything
but this one issue. Are you in Christ? Are you saved?
Do you really know the Lord? And I started looking within
my heart. And all I could see was sin and hypocrisy. Nothing more. And it scared me
to death. I thought, I'm going to hell.
I'm going to hell. I can't see one thing in myself
that would recommend me to God. And I thought, I'm going to go
to hell this very night that I can remember the fear that
overcame my soul. And I stayed that way for some
time. And then the Lord brought this
scripture to my mind. Psalm 32, 1 and 2. Blessed is he whose transgression
is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man to whom the
Lord will not impute sin, and in whose spirit there is no guile.
And I saw very clearly that everything I thought about myself was true. And I didn't know the half. But
here's my hope. God didn't impute it to me. He didn't charge me with it.
He took my sin and imputed it to His Son, and it became His. And He took the righteousness
of His Son and imputed it to me so that when I give my life
story, it's a story of continual, perfect obedience, the obedience
of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, what a state of blessedness
that is, to not have your sin imputed to you and to have the
very righteousness of Christ charged to your account. What
a state of blessedness. And then he says in verse 2,
Blessed is he in whose spirit there is no guile, no deceit. Our Lord said, Blessed are the
pure in heart, for they shall see God. He spoke of that honest
and good heart that receives the seed in the parable of the
sower. This is the new heart. The new
heart that He gives is not the natural heart. It's not the heart
I'm born with. It's the new heart that causes
me to confess my sin. It's the new heart that causes
me to believe the Gospel. It's honesty before God. You
see, honesty before God is seen in a confession of sin. You really
believe before God that you really are totally depraved. It's one thing to believe that
in theory. It's another thing to believe it in fact. It's another
thing. It's one thing to believe in
a doctrine. It's another thing to believe that you really are
sin before God. You take side with God against
yourself and you're honest with yourself. That's why you don't
trust yourself. You see how sinful and deceitful
you are. And you're honest with the Word
of God when you don't have this spirit, when you have this guileless
spirit. You don't use the Scriptures
in order to prove your position. You go to the Word of God to
find out what to believe. You don't deceitfully use the
Scriptures and pull out one Scripture out of context and another to
try to give you some assurance. No, you bow to whatever God says
in His Word. And a guileless spirit is honest
in their preaching. They don't try to sugarcoat the
word of God. They preach the truth as it is in Jesus, preaching
the whole counsel of God, how God saves sinners by his grace. Now, this is the one who has
his sin forgiven and his transgression covered. And his sin not imputed
to him, that one in whose spirit God's placed it there. He didn't
have it there before God put it there. But he's got a spirit
in whom is no guile. Now, blessed is that man. Now,
David committed these great sins. And my dear friend, you and I
are just as bad. And if committed just as bad
as sins, if we haven't done it literally, we've done it in our
heart and in God's sight, that's just as bad. It's doing it. You
know, the Lord said, it's whoso looketh a woman to lust after
in his heart hath committed adultery with her. He doesn't say it's
as if he did. He said he did it. He did it. And you and I are just
as guilty. as David is. But here's the hope
of the believer. Blessed is he whose transgression
is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man to whom the
Lord imputes not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile. Now we have this message on cassette,
DVD or CD. You call the church or I will
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
or you may write or call the church at the information provided
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