Thankfulness for the Forgiveness of Sin

I appreciate the time and the thoughtfulness that went into our prayer this morning to remember those who died during the attacks 21 years ago and to remember those who gave their lives in the fight to keep us safe in the years since then.

There are events in our lives that cause us to remember. We remember exactly where we were and how you heard the news. For Kathy and I, on the morning of 9/11, we received a call from a co-worker who told me to turn on the TV because it was 3 am. We were stationed in Hawaii at that time. It did not seem real at first because seeing it on a screen made it feel like we were watching a movie. That day in history was devastating and terrible, even horrifying to consider the images of people emerging from the clouds of ash when the towers came down in NYC.

Yet, because of God’s grace, I can give thanks for His protection over those who survived. Thanks that God gave the courage to the men and women on the fourth plane to overcome the attackers and prevent it from killing even more people. Thanks that God gave the first responders in NYC and at the Pentagon the courage and skills to save many lives that day. Thanks for how it unified our nation to address the issue of terrorism at home and overseas.

Though 9/11 may be considered one of the more horrendous days of the past decades, it can also be viewed as a day for which we can give thanks. But I have to acknowledge, it is difficult to give thanks because we can still feel the impacts today.

It is because of the influences and barriers like these to give thanks that we have chosen our annual theme for this year to be Growing in Gospel Gratitude.

We began our year walking verse by verse through Paul’s letter to the Philippians where we found an overarching theme of choosing joy and I continue in my prayer, along with the apostle Paul, as he prayed for all of us in Phil 1:9 that our love may abound still more and more in real knowledge and discernment.

Has your gratitude for the gospel grown this year?

I pray that our knowledge and discernment grew together as we explored what Scripture reveals to us about handling criticism and that we would give thanks for victory over a critical heart.

Then last week we began our fall series so that we might cultivate a Heart of Thanksgiving through a study of a selection of Psalms. We certainly cannot cover the entire book of Psalms in the weeks that we have planned, but I do hope that you will be encouraged and challenged to continue studying the Psalms as part of your personal time in God’s Word. Many people find the Psalms to be a favorite to study because of the very personal nature of the writings. We find that the Psalmists are deeply honest about their own struggles, not just with you and me, but in how they cry out to God.

In Biblical Counseling, it is not unusual that I might choose to walk with someone in their struggles by meditating on the Psalms first allowing us to rest in the truths about who God is, remembering that He is not defined by our suffering. Rather, to the contrary, our refuge from suffering can only be found in Him. As this truth sets a foundation for us, it causes our Heart of Thanksgiving to grow because of what He has done for you and for me. As such, we grow in our gospel gratitude.

Last week we found our path to thanksgiving coming even through our suffering as we choose to address our suffering honestly with God and turn and trust in Him with all that we have.

This week we are going to turn to a problem that none of us can run from, none of us can avoid. This problem, in truth, is the greatest problem that each of us faces in our lives. The impacts are more horrific than the destruction of terrorist attacks. The effects are more tragic than the discovery of stage 4 untreatable cancer.

The problem that every one of us must face, no exceptions, is sin

And the wages of sin is death – the eternal punishment, the complete separation from our heavenly Father caused by our unrighteousness.

But today, we will not focus only on the problem, We will learn to give thanks for the solution, our salvation that can come only through the forgiveness of sins through grace which is the gift of God to his children.

I may need to be reminded to send a thank you know for a gift received on my birthday, but my prayer is that we will hold onto these truths so tight that we will choose to have Thankfulness for the Forgiveness of Sin all the rest of our days.

As guide today, we will be looking to a Psalm of David, specifically Psalm 32. Please open God’s Word with me today so that we might read the very words of the Psalm together. If you are using the Bible in the chair, please turn to page ___.

While you are turning there, I want to briefly discuss the background of this Psalm.

David wrote this Psalm as well as Psalm 51 after confessing and repenting of his sins of adultery, murder, and deception. In Psalm 51:13, David committed to teaching others what God had shown him so that, as David wrote, sinners would be converted to you.

Psalm 32 is a part of David’s teaching – we see in the title it is described as a maskil.

“The word had been interpreted many ways: “a skillful song, a song of instruction, a contemplative poem.” The word means “instruction” and is translated that way in verse 8.”^[1] I believe that is the correct translation in this case as we will find the instruction that brings is to Thankfulness for the Forgiveness of Sin.

With that backdrop in mind, please read with me Psalm 32

READ PSALM 32

With the time that we have remaining, I want us to receive the instruction from this Psalm that will teach us to give thanks for The 3 Impacts of Forgiveness that Change our Hearts.

David took us straight to a truth that we need to know and trust so that the remaining truths can also impact our hearts. But we also need to make sure we understand what is meant by forgiveness.

Many of us, when we were little and we were caught taking something from another child, or we were caught hitting our brother or sister were required to go say I am Sorry and shake hands or maybe even hug the person to show them that we were sorry. I don’t know that this instruction was helpful because as we grew, we responded when we were caught “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” But what were we really saying – I am sorry I got caught. Or maybe, when we are the one’s on the receiving end, we then were taught that we just need to forgive and forget. Here’s a diet coke, let’s just move on and never speak of it again. None of this address how God sees forgiveness…and we can be thankful for that…

I stated earlier that we all have the same problem – Sin. So let’s make sure we can have a common understanding for sin.

Sin can be described as any action displeasing to God, any action that violates his holiness. God gave us His law so that we might know His righteousness and understand our need for Him. Sin cannot be simply described as breaking the rules God gave us for then we might think we could earn our salvation by following the rules., but the law has revealed the sin within our hearts which causes us to choose ourselves, to love ourselves before we love the Lord, to love ourselves before we choose to love our neighbor and even when we choose actions that might appear loving, our hearts are deceived. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and as I said earlier – the wages of sin is death. A death we all deserve – But God offers forgiveness

Forgiveness as defined in the Lexham Theological Wordbook as

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]

Just hearing that definition is reason enough to give thanks because of the permanence in the meaning of forgiveness, but I want us also to see that there is so much more described in today’s Psalm.

So we will begin right from the start to find the first impact upon our hearts is that we can

I. Give Thanks for the results of forgiveness (V 1-2)

David begins both verses 1 and 2 by saying “How blessed” is he…

He is speaking of a heart that is not only “happy” the way that we might describe being happy, but contentment and a fullness of heart.

This is a blessing that has a cause…because these things are true about being forgiven. As such, we can

Rejoice because He lifted up your sin

Psalm 32:1a How blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven,

The word David used here which is translated as forgiven, means literally to lift up and to carry away. Blessed is he whose sin has been lifted up and carried 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.

Then David continues on to describe even further what it means to grow our heart of thanks…

We rejoice because He lifted up your sin so that you might be forgiven. And we rejoice knowing that

Rejoice for He will never bring your sin back upon you

because he has covered them over.

Psalm 32:1 How blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered!

And God does not just put our sin in a box waiting for the day of judgment to bring them back out again to punish us, nor does he ask us to seek forgiveness over and over again.

When Christ was lifted up on the cross with our sins, as he sacrificed himself as the payment for our debt – His final words on the cross were

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. [please bold or make “It is finished” stand out from the rest of the text]

Nothing more needed to be done, there would not be another sacrifice, our sins were lifted up and they were covered and we can rejoice because he will never bring them back upon you.

And in the depth and beauty of our Father’s grace, he reveals even more that we can give thanks for and

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

We might think that David was just so thankful that He simply had to say the same thing over again three times. That may be true, but we can also relish that fact that he kept adding to the depth of the meaning of forgiveness by how he restated the blessing.

To whom the Lord does not impute iniquity.

This statement does not apply to all of mankind.

The word I want you to see here and ultimately rejoice over is “impute.”

This is a term to show how God manages the ledgers and how he accounts for sin.

To start – before we can claim the blessings of forgiveness, we must acknowledge our position under sin.

1 Corinthians 15:22 tells us that “in Adam all die.” That is to say that Adam’s sin is imputed to all of mankind. Because of the very sinful nature of our hearts, our ledger before God records Adam’s sin on our account. Does that mean we are not accountable – of course not, for it is only a matter of days in this life, before our sinful hearts result in our sinful actions and we add to our ledger, we add to our debt even though it is already greater than we could ever pay.

Then when we are forgiven, that all changes and our ledgers are wiped clean.

Let me share something that happened just last week that shows the beauty of forgiveness. I am not going to use names because this involves one of the children in our church.

For some time, one child who has been a part of our ministry for some time, has been struggling with obedience, with loving their brothers and sisters and was pushing back against Mom and Dad about even being part of her class in Children’s Ministry.

Last week, while doing battle right here, in our hallways, what came out was not just the disobedience, but thankfully they communicated to Mom about the frustration that even if they wanted to be obedient, they just were not able to do so on their own.

Mom saw their heart in that moment and chose not to scold, punish or force obedience. Instead, she chose to share the gospel truth –

To her child she said “You are right. You cannot be obedient on your own.” In sharing the love and care of Christ, His grace broke through. Can we just stop right here and give thanks for the results of forgiveness

Is that your struggle too – No matter how hard you try, you just can’t do it on your own, you can’t clear your ledger…

Even when you do one good thing, a lot of good things…even when we think we are adding positive entries to our ledger…we can’t even make a dent in it. The debt remains so large we could never repay it.

You are right - we cannot find our way to forgiveness on our own. We need God’s grace, we need His rich mercy in forgiveness

And he asks nothing of us in return.

We don’t need to clean ourselves up.

We don’t need to make things right by avoiding our sin for 7 weeks or even 7 days

We don’t need to repay Him by going to church 7 times

He asks only one thing.

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;

It happened last week – do you want it to happen again today?

If you have acknowledged that you are a sinner in need of a Savior…in other words you have accepted that you are just like the rest of us.

You too can confess Jesus as Lord and he will wipe your ledger clean.

Don’t wait. For we do not know what tomorrow will hold. And when you have confessed Jesus as Lord – tell somebody. Tell me after the service. Tell Pastor David

Because we all want to Give Thanks for the results of forgiveness.

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Then because the Lord just keeps on giving, we can move to the rest of Psalm 32 and

II. Give Thanks for the weight lifted when forgiven (V 3-4)

Last week as we explored Psalms 42 and 43 we saw the suffering of the writer and the impacts that it had upon them. In that case, the suffering was likely caused by the circumstances surrounding the psalmist.

In counseling, as we walk with someone experiencing suffering, we will explore the causes to help us choose how to respond…

When ours suffering is the result of a broken world, such as a family member being diagnosed with cancer, we lament and turn to God, trusting Him for comfort.

When our suffering is brought upon us because of the sin of another. Again, we look to God for comfort while also looking to His word that we might respond to the person with God’s love and grace even if that means our suffering continues.

But we also need to acknowledge that there is a third cause for our suffering – it may be as a result of our sin.

David had sinned and, in his attempts to cover and deceive, his own sin was causing himself harm.

We must acknowledge that

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.

In the case of David – It was during the hiding of his sin, that he felt the physical impacts. The words of this verse do not give us the specific details, we find it in David’s other Psalms where is seeking God’s forgiveness.

In Psalm 6, though it cannot be positively tied to the same backdrop of Bathsheba, David is calling out for God grace. “Lord, do not rebuke me in Your anger, nor chasten me in Your wrath.” After which, he follows with a request for healing as he says that his bones ache describing that his whole body is in pain because of his sin.

But what about for us today?

Consider a young girl whose sinful heart is comparing herself with others or listening to what the world says she should be such that every time she eats, she believes it will make her fat and that if she gains weight, then no one will love her. As a result, she restricts her diet or purges after meals to the point she has lost so much weight she needs medical care.

Or consider a man who has chosen to escape to drugs or alcohol for years. Now when they do not have it, their body physically goes through withdrawal, or after long-term use, it has done such damage to the body that they will need constant medical care.

David was not alone in that his sin caused physical impacts. They may be the natural consequences that the Lord has allowed because of our sin, or they may be the Lord’s messenger attempting to gain our attention that we might turn back to him.

It is also possible that our sin does not result in what we would term medical issues, but rather emotional or other relational impacts.

When the sin of bitterness grows within us because we have been unable to forgive another, who is the one most impacted? We may think it is the other person because we have withheld our love, but we become the one hurt as our bitterness gnaws upon our hearts. We are the one dwelling on the other’s sin. We are the one hurting our other relationships as our bitterness overflows in anger upon those who are still close to us.

If a husband is struggling with pornography, first, his attempts to keep his sin hidden with result in a separation from his wife. He chooses time alone on his computer when he could be choosing to build his marriage. Then it begins to impact their intimacy, because the fantasies he finds outside his marriage are not fulfilled at home driving him further away and then the marriage feels cold and empty, but not just for him. He has a way.

There are more examples but I want us to keep moving because

Unconfessed sin does have spiritual impacts

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 maintain 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.

Thankfully, God will not leave us there and

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.”

We can give thanks because from the very beginning, God was pointing us to the path to forgiveness and David helps us to see in the remainder of our Psalm today

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.

As we walk this path – I want us to remember – that there are no steps upon which God places a requirement for you to prove yourself or to make yourself ready or worthy of the next step…It is a way where God is the one to walk us along the path

Proverbs 3:5-7 tells us, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight. Do not be wise in your own eyes; Fear the Lord and turn away from evil.

In other words

Seek God and He will bring deliverance

And he will walk you down the path to forgiveness, the first step of which is to

1. Begin with Prayer

“…I acknowledged my sin to You…I will confess my transgressions to the LORD…

What is prayer – it is the personal conversation between you and God, in your heart or from your mouth, in the quiet of your own room or in the company of those who love you,

The path to forgiveness begins with you acknowledging your need for the cross of Christ. We each have to admit our own sins, recognizing that our thoughts, words and actions are displeasing to our Holy God. We must know that because of our sin, we have the death penalty upon us

We must seek God for redemption as compared to seeking it in our own actions or strength. No amount of good deeds, no amount of our righteousness can ever make us right with God.

1. 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.

Then even after acknowledging our sin, we must continue to place our trust in him for the consequences of our sin, the weight and the burden of our sin may still feel heavy even though God has lifted up our sin and covered it over, yet we are still holding onto a piece that weighs us down…

Therefore – We give thanks because we can find rest in Him, a place where there is no condemnation, a place where we can find safety knowing that there is nothing that can separate us from our Lord.

How blessed is he who seeks refuge in the Lord as compared to one looks for escape through drugs or alcohol

How blessed is he who finds satisfaction in the Lord as compared to yearning for the approval of man, the success of work or the acceptance in the world’s relationships.

When we step onto the path of deliverance – it is with a welcoming invitation…

Jesus calls us in Matt 11:28-30 saying

Matt 11:28-30 “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”

In Christ’s words, we see the same next step on the path that Psalm 32 describes. In verse 8 the voice changes as now God speaks to David.

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.

As we walk in forgiveness, it is not enough to simply acknowledge our sin, our love for the one for gave everything for our forgiveness should drive a desire to know him and know how He desires for us to live.

Thankfully, He has not left us to figure this out on our own. God has said that I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go.

Thankfully He has given us his sufficient word through His divine power, He has given us the inspired and complete Scriptures granting us everything pertaining to life and godliness.

And finally, though we had been the ones to put ourselves in slavery to sin, in lifting our burden from sin and covering over our sin, Christ is the one who sets us free.

Trust the Lord and He will 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.

[1] Wiersbe, Warren. Be Worshipful. p. 123