3 Impacts of forgiveness that change our hearts
“Forgiveness is the release, on the part of the creditor or offended party, of any expectation that a debt will be repaid or that an offender will receive punishment for an offense. When describing the removal of an inappropriate offense in this way, the removal does not condone the behavior or suggest approval for the offense.” (Lexham Theological Wordbook)
I. Give Thanks for the Results of Forgiveness (V 1-2)
A. Rejoice because He lifted up your sin
Psalm 32:1a - How blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven…
B. Rejoice for He will never bring your sin back upon you
Psalm 32:1 - How blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered!
John 19:30 - Therefore when Jesus had received the sour wine, He said, “It is finished!” And He bowed His head and gave up His spirit.
C. Praise Him who traded his righteousness for your iniquity
Psalm 32:1-2a - How blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered! How blessed is the man to whom the LORD does not impute iniquity…
Romans 10:9 - …that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved…
II. Give Thanks for the Weight Lifted When Forgiven (V 3-4)
A. Unconfessed sin may have physical impacts
Psalm 32:3 - When I kept silent about my sin, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long.
B. Unconfessed sin does have spiritual impacts
C. Confessed sin leads to lifted burdens and sins covered over
III. Give Thanks for the Path to Forgiveness (V 5-10)
Psalm 32:5 - I acknowledged my sin to You, and my iniquity I did not hide; I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the LORD”; and You forgave the guilt of my sin.
A. Seek God and He will bring deliverance
1. Begin with Prayer
…I acknowledged my sin to You…I will confess my transgressions to the LORD…
2. Find refuge in the Lord
Psalm 32:7 - You are my hiding place; You preserve me from trouble; You surround me with songs of deliverance.
B. Seek His Word to know God and He will provide wisdom
Psalm 32:8 - I will instruct you and teach you in the way which you should go; I will counsel you with My eye upon you.
C. Trust the Lord and He will free you
As we continue in our series, Growing in Gospel Gratitude, it’s necessary to put on a Heart of Thanksgiving
Our summer series has us walking through the Psalms to cultivate this heart of gratitude—we’ll be in Psalm 32 this morning if you’d turn there with me (pg. 404)
Can you think of times in your life when you were guilty and you knew it, and so did the person confronting you?
- A teacher (signing my name on the failed test)
- A father (what did you do? What else do you need to tell me?)
- A police officer (do you know why I pulled you over? How fast were you going?)
Imagine with me today that we are in a much more serious conversation about guilt!
- Imagine you stand on the witness stand before the holy judge of the world.
- Wrong after wrong after wrong has been read against you.
- Every wrong action.
- Every wrong reaction
- Even every wrong thought has all been exposed for all to see
Romans 7:24 – Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death?
- - You are guilty!
- - You are busted!
Please follow along as we read our text…
*read Ps 32
Psalm 32 (NASB95)
A Psalm of David. A Maskil.
1 How blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, Whose sin is covered!
2 How blessed is the man to whom the Lord does not impute iniquity, And in whose spirit there is no deceit!
3 When I kept silent about my sin, my body wasted away Through my groaning all day long.
4 For day and night Your hand was heavy upon me; My vitality was drained away as with the fever heat of summer. Selah.
5 I acknowledged my sin to You, And my iniquity I did not hide; I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord”; And You forgave the guilt of my sin. Selah.
6 Therefore, let everyone who is godly pray to You in a time when You may be found; Surely in a flood of great waters they will not reach him.
7 You are my hiding place; You preserve me from trouble; You surround me with songs of deliverance. Selah.
8 I will instruct you and teach you in the way which you should go; I will counsel you with My eye upon you.
9 Do not be as the horse or as the mule which have no understanding, Whose trappings include bit and bridle to hold them in check, Otherwise they will not come near to you.
10 Many are the sorrows of the wicked, But he who trusts in the Lord, lovingkindness shall surround him.
11 Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, you righteous ones; And shout for joy, all you who are upright in heart.
It may go without saying, but we’ll be talking this morning about Thankfulness for the Forgiveness of Sin
And looking to our text, we walk through 3 Impacts of Forgiveness that Change our Hearts.
Forgiveness is the release, on the part of the creditor or offended party, of any expectation that a debt will be repaid or that an offender will receive punishment for an offense. When describing the removal of an inappropriate offense in this way, the removal does not condone the behavior or suggest approval for the offense. [Lexham Theological Wordbook]
Our passage opens with the charge to…
I. Give Thanks for the results of forgiveness (V 1-2)
*Luke 7: Jesus dining with a Pharisee (Simon) & a sinning woman anoints Jesus’s feet
Knowing that the host was incredibly disturbed by all of this, Jesus replies by saying:
Luke 7:40b-47 – “Simon, I have something to say to you.” And he replied, “Say it, Teacher.” “A moneylender had two debtors: one owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. When they were unable to repay, he graciously forgave them both. So which of them will love him more?” Simon answered and said, “I suppose the one whom he forgave more.” And He said to him, “You have judged correctly.” Turning toward the woman, He said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I entered your house; you gave Me no water for My feet, but she has wet My feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You gave Me no kiss; but she, since the time I came in, has not ceased to kiss My feet. You did not anoint My head with oil, but she anointed My feet with perfume. For this reason I say to you, her sins, which are many, have been forgiven, for she loved much; but he who is forgiven little, loves little.”
Here’s the trick, was Simon really a lesser sinner?
Certainly not—one of the points Jesus is drawing out of his parable is Simon’s blinding pride, rendering him unable to see his great debt
And if you don’t see the mountain of debt (visualize it) that you owe to an eternal God, you’ll “love little”
But looking now to my fellow brothers and sisters who have—like the woman from Luke 7—fled to the feet of Christ for the forgiveness of our sins…
A. Rejoice because He lifted up your sin
And that’s exactly how this Psalm begins…
Psalm 32:1a – How blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven,
The word for forgiven here—Na-sah—literally means to lift up or to carry away
In Leviticus 16, Moses describes how for the Day of Atonement, the Day the nation of Israel came before God to ask for forgiveness, the priest would bring two goats before the altar. And lots were cast for the goats. One was sacrificed for the sins of Israel and the one on whom the lot fell, the priest would place his hands on the goat’s head, confess the sins of the people, and then a man standing ready would take the live goat to the edge of the encampment and release the goat into the wild. The goat symbolically carried the sins of the people away from them so that they might be forgiven.
Each year, on the Day of Atonement, a scapegoat would carry away the sins of the people. This was never meant to be complete for it was an imperfect sacrifice.
But God always had a plan…
For one day, God would send the perfect lamb of God to be the one who would carry the sins of the world upon himself. He carried them outside the city just as the scapegoat was cast out and your sin…my sin…the sin of the world was then lifted up with Him on the cross that he might be the perfect sacrifice, the only sacrifice worthy of a Holy God to take the penalty that we deserved.
When we recognize the vast burden of our transgressions that have been weighed against us—and when we consider that, in Christ, that burden has been lifted up and carried away…
…what other response could we possibly have than to rejoice!
What did that weight—our transgressions—represent?
*temporally: guilt + separation from God + spiritual death
*eternally: active punishment—forever dying
And just like Paul cried out in Romans 7—who will set me free from the body of this death?
Those in Christ ought to rejoice for the forgiveness of sins, paid for by the blood of Jesus on the cross
But our passage points to even more—we ought to…
B. Rejoice for He will never bring your sin back upon you
Verse 1 continues by reassuring us that those who are forgiven have had their sins covered…
Psalm 32:1 How blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered!
***Illustration needed.
Praise be to God for passages like John 19…
*context—Christ on the cross, paying for our sins
John 19:30 – Therefore when Jesus had received the sour wine, He said, “It is finished!” And He bowed His head and gave up His spirit.
When He said “it is finished,” there was no clause included
When He said, “it is finished,” He meant that the work of justification was totally accomplished and there’s nothing you or I could either do or fail to do that would alter its completed state
- Justification – Just as if I have never sinned
- Justification – Just as if I have always been righteous
I can think of no greater news for each one of us sitting in this room today than the fact that IT IS FINISHED!
- Christ has paid the debt you could never pay
- Christ has made a way for you to be forgiven
- We must be grateful for the finality of forgiveness that God has granted us!
Oh, to see the dawn
Of the darkest day:
Christ on the road to Calvary.
Tried by sinful men,
Torn and beaten, then
Nailed to a cross of wood.
This, the power of the cross:
Christ became sin for us,
Took the blame, bore the wrath:
We stand forgiven at the cross.
Oh, to see the pain
Written on Your face
Bearing the awesome weight of sin;
Every bitter thought,
Every evil deed
Crowning Your bloodstained brow.
Now the daylight flees,
Now the ground beneath
Quakes as its Maker bows His head.
Curtain torn in two,
Dead are raised to life;
‘Finished!’ the victory cry.
Oh, to see my name
Written in the wounds,
For through Your suffering I am free.
Death is crushed to death,
Life is mine to live,
Won through Your selfless love.
This, the power of the cross:
Son of God, slain for us.
What a love! What a cost!
We stand forgiven at the cross.
“The Power of the Cross” – Keith and Kristyn Getty
Additionally…
C. Praise Him who traded his righteousness for your iniquity
David completes the opening of his Psalm with a final word of praise…
Psalm 32:1-2 – How blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered! How blessed is the man to whom the LORD does not impute iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit!
How is it possible for there to be no deceit in one whom sin abides?
Obviously, we need imputed righteousness in place of our indwelling deceit/betrayal
Our sins aren’t just carried away, leaving us as empty husks
Christ then fills us with His own righteousness…
2 Corinthians 5:21 – He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him
He meant that the work of justification was totally accomplished and there’s nothing you or I could either do or fail to do that would alter its completed state
- - Justification – Just as if I have never sinned
- - Justification – Just as if I have always been righteous
Illustration of a salvation story: MD (grew up trying so hard and failing so often, because he was trying to generate his own righteousness)
Rom 10:9 that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved;
As you sit in the courtroom like we illustrated at the beginning and wrong after wrong after wrong is read off against you, you sit with your head hung – Guilty, hopeless, convicted, awaiting your sentence.
But then the judge, Himself broke into the conversation. He removed your sentence, He credited you with his perfection. He took your sentence and gave you his freedom.
Christian put a smile on your face that can never be removed!
Put a song in your heart that can never be silenced!
Live with a passion that can never be extinguished!
Grow in the Greatest Gratitude ever, because of the Gospel!
God has lifted up your sin
God has removed that sin and will never put it back on you
God has given you His righteousness!
The results of our forgiveness are certainly praiseworthy
The text then compels us to…
II. Give Thanks for the weight lifted when forgiven (V 3-4)
Verse 3-4 serve as a warning
And a bit of context is necessary, since it may seem like a contradiction to what we’ve been saying
What we have been talking about so far is the act of justification—a one-time event of forgiveness for all of our sins—past, present, and future
But just because you’re forgiven doesn’t mean you cease to sin
And as Luther said, the Christian life is one of repentance
The difference between a believer and an unbeliever is not that one sins and the other does not.
The difference is the response to your sin!
While I stand forgiven before a Holy God, imputed with Christ’s righteousness—I still sin and need to bring that before the Lord
“The greatest sinner in this room today is the one who is sitting in your chair.”
- Often while we rejoice in the application of the Gospel in our life for our salvation, we are quick to point to the sins of others in our application of the Gospel in our daily lives.
- Friend I gave you a whole bunch of good news to start our time together!
- Now let’s stop for a second and think about the implications of sin that potentially sits in our lives and clouds our gratitude for the Gospel!
One of the warnings we see in this passage is that…
A. Unconfessed sin may have physical impacts
Psalm 32:3 When I kept silent about my sin, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long.
Psalm 32 and Ps 51 are both Psalms of David, and both are believed to have been written after David’s sin with Bathsheba and Uriah
If you’re not familiar with that instance, let me give you the reader’s digest version
*complacent—lust—adultery—murder—concealment—exposure—death—restoration
David seems to be describing the season of concealment, before Nathan exposed his sin and he repented before the Lord
It’s a stark reminder to us today that a lack of repentance can literally have physical effects
*Bitterness (*poison)
*Lust (*never seeing the true beauty of others)
*Pride (*constantly living as though you are being jilted because you are not being worshipped enough)
*Anxiety (*sleeplessness)
Is it possible that you’re seeing the physical results of unconfessed sin in your own life?
We’ll talk about what to do with that in a minute, but I think it’s necessary to take a sober inventory of your own life
But beyond the physical, we see that…
B. Unconfessed sin does have spiritual impacts
Verse 4 continues this warning:
Psalm 32:4 – For day and night Your hand was heavy upon me; my vitality was drained away as with the fever heat of summer.
The relationship that is most impacted by unconfessed sin is the one with our Lord. When we hold onto our sin, and attempt to hide it from him, we become the one who seeks to hide from Him.
With unconfessed sin comes guilt. We know it is true, that we have sinned. We don’t have to wait for God’s judgement. We know and we judge ourselves, declaring ourselves guilty we may even seek to find punishments for ourselves making the problem further as we add sin on top of sin by trying to do what only God can do.
With unconfessed sin also comes shame. We try to hide our sin. We do not want anyone to know and again the lies that we tell to conceal our sin just compound the problem driving us deeper into sin and further away from those we love, driving us further away from God.
When we are hiding our unconfessed sin, our relationship with God is the one hurt most. It is true that our sin causes separation from God, but we must acknowledge that we are the one who maintains the separation.
When Adam and Eve sinned in the garden, their eyes were opened and they knew that they were naked. Just seven verses earlier, they were naked and unashamed. No more. God knew of their sin. What did he do? He walked in the garden with them. What did Adam and Eve choose to do? They hid. Because of their guilt and shame, they chose to hide from God.
Allow me to ask once more—are you seeing the spiritual signs of unconfessed sin in your life?
- Are you trying to hide from God, the very one who you used to walk with and talk with?
- Are you trying to cover up the obvious nakedness of your sin with poorly thrown together coverings thinking you are somehow hiding things from the One who knows even the content of your thoughts?
- Are you carrying a weight of shame for sins you are still struggling with even though you have already been forgiven and even though you literally could call on the name of the one who stands ready to forgive.
- Friend, STOP trying to cover up your sin and instead see that…
C. Confessed sin leads to lifted burdens and sins covered over
When Adam confessed his sin, it was God who chose to provide the covering. God’s first sacrifice for sin was to provide the skins for clothing to address Adam’s nakedness.
And God would also lift the burden from Adam to pay the debt for his sin.
God promised the way to lift the burden of sin as he cursed the serpent saying, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise him on the heel.”
1 John 1:9 (NASB95)
9 If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
III. Give Thanks for the path to forgiveness (V 5-10)
Thankfully, David’s story didn’t end there…
Psalm 32:5 – I acknowledged my sin to You, and my iniquity I did not hide; I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the LORD”; and You forgave the guilt of my sin.
In Psalm 51, a natural brother to this Psalm, David states: against you only Lord have I sinned
Thus, when we sin, we incur a debt in need of reconciliation with the one we’ve sinned against
Primarily, and sometimes exclusively, that’s God Himself
As many of you know, the simple definition of confession is “to say the same thing”
The fact of the matter is, when we sin, it’s never apart from God’s full knowledge
He knows all and sees all—when we confess our sins to Him, it’s never a matter of bringing Him new information that He was previously unaware of
This ought to free you up to…
A. Seek God and He will bring deliverance
David gives us the first step in this process:
g. Begin with Prayer
“…I acknowledged my sin to You…I will confess my transgressions to the LORD…
An understanding of God’s omniscience ought to radically invigorate your prayer life—especially as it pertains to confession
Listen, you turn to God in prayer to confess your sin.
- It is not like you are telling Him something He does not already know.
- Like a dad asking his child, is their something you need to tell me? Is that all?
- Lord, I realize you know this because you know every detail about me.
- However, I am confessing my pride in thinking I am somehow hiding this from you.
- I am recognizing my failed attempt to be “like God, determining what is good and what is evil in my life”
- I am hopeless in this battle without you!
Confess it all, and then continue to…
ii. Find refuge in the Lord
listen to the imagery painted in verse 7…
Psalm 32:7 You are my hiding place; You preserve me from trouble; You surround me with songs of deliverance.
***Illustration of seeking refuge in the safety of the ultimate King!
- Maybe you are still trying to find ways to fight on your own
- Maybe you are tired of constantly losing
- Maybe you are scared of never defeating this sin
- Maybe you are tire of trying to do it yourself.
- RUN TO THE HIDING PLACE.
- RUN TO THE ONE WHO WILL PRESERVE YOU FROM TROUBLE
- SING WITH THOSE WHO HAVE BEEN DELIVERED.
As a deterrent towards sin, David even compels us to…
B. Seek His Word to know God and He will provide wisdom
The perspective shifts in verse 8…
Psalm 32:8 I will instruct you and teach you in the way which you should go; I will counsel you with My eye upon you.
Does it not seem natural that if a judge were to take your place and credit you with righteousness and stand ready to forgive and offer to be your refuge…
THAT YOU SHOULD WANT TO KNOW MORE ABOUT HIM?
Friend, we should be so busy learning about the one who has saved us that we have no time to be consumed by the things that seek to deceive us.
Let your first thoughts of your day, be from the revealed Word of God.
Let your last thoughts of your day, be of the one who loves you more than you will ever be able to comprehend.
And let the rest of the thoughts of the day, remind you of the thoughts you started with and the thoughts you will end the day with.
How do I live a life that is more Christlike?
- I must study what Christ is like!
*Practical Suggestions
As we do so…
C. Trust the Lord and He will free you
Gal 5:1 tells us that it was for freedom that Christ has set us free. Not that we might sin again, but that we might choose to live under the freedom of Christ, in obedience to His Word holding fast to the promises of eternal life.
As we close our time together today – there are two sets of applications that I would want you to take with you.
If you have not yet chosen to receive God’s forgiveness based on faith in the work of Christ alone.
- Then Give Thanks because he has made a way
- Go to Him in prayer and ask Him to show you how He will set you free from sin
- Then respond to Him, confessing Him as Lord and
- Give Thanks for the weight lifted and blessing that comes knowing you never have to look back.
If you have made that decision in the past – your actions are similar
- Give thanks for God’s grace and forgiveness
- Choose to seek His word in personal Bible Study and in Small Groups
- Choose to share the blessing with someone that you know this week.
Please pray with me as we give thanks for the forgiveness of sin.
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