Thankfulness for the Forgiveness of Sin

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)

But before we get to our passage and this heart of thanksgiving, we’ll need to get pretty uncomfortable…

Many in this room know what it’s like to feel the sting of betrayal

Whether it was a friend, a child, a spouse, a family member, or someone else—you’ve felt that initial gut-wrenching hollowness of disbelief, followed by a swarm of other emotions and responses

Deep sadness, anger, confusion, bitterness, and so on

The closer the person was to you, the more intense your response tends to be

Those of you who’ve endured this level of betrayal (and those who have a creative enough mind to begin to imagine it): how would you accurately describe your experience to the person who had betrayed you?

What words would you use to do justice to the level of pain, the eroded trust, the pints of tears, the restless nights, or the bouts of detached numbness you endured?

This challenge—to accurately put all of this sentiment into words—is the challenge I’m faced with this morning—only the circumstances are far more dire than you and could ever even experience

Because this morning, I’m not speaking to those who have been betrayed… I’m speaking to the betrayers

And what’s more—I’m equally as guilty

We read passages in the New Testament like “all have sinned and have fallen short of the glory of God”

Or “if we say we are without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth of God is not in us”

Or “no one is righteous—no, not one”

Or as Romans 6 describes us: while we were helpless, while we were sinners, while we were enemies…

And we can gloss over those words, impacted the same way as though we were reading a line out of a phone book

Additionally, the Old Testament makes a common practice of describing this betrayal as harlotry, as seen in the book of Hosea, or Ezekiel 16, or Lamentations 1, or Jeremiah 3, and so on

Let me state it plainly—you and I have, and continue to, betray our Creator in ways that are impossible to accurately put into words

And the words that are used are quite unflattering

Every time we sin, it’s a treasonous, harlotrous, evil act of betrayal committed against an eternal, Creator-God

Everything, from the errant thought to the heinous act, rightly deserves the punishment due such betrayal

And how guilty, each and every hour, do every one of us stand!!

Romans 7:24 – Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death?

Please follow along as we read our text…

*read Ps 32

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)

Why did I open our time together by dragging us through the dregs of our own betrayal?

Because if we don’t rightly see the despicable nature of our own sin, we’ll never bask in the beauty of its forgiveness

*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

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!

*hiking with another family— [pic of Benji on back] (eventually got to take him off)

I can tell you—once Benji was off, there was no putting him back on…

As much as I love the little guy, I was incredibly relieved to have him using his own two legs rather than leasing mine

Similarly, when God forgives our transgressions, should we fear further punishment? It is rational to worry about the weight of those sins—far heavier than an 4-year-old—being put back on ourselves?

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

Not “it is finished… as soon as Stefan finally gets his act together”

Or “it is finished… plus all the good things Stefan will do during his life”

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

Christian brother and sister—REJOICE! Put on a thankful heart for the forgiveness of sins!

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

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;

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

While I stand forgiven before a Holy God, imputed with Christ’s righteousness—I still sin and need to bring that before the Lord

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 (*story of advising in 2016 case (“enough sexual sin to fill an episode of Jerry Springer”))

*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.

For the Christian, you literally are indwelled by God—He’s taken up residence within you!

One of the results of this indwelling, according to Jesus’s promise to the disciples in John 16, is that the Spirit of God will convict of sin

But when we choose to sin, we grieve the Holy Spirit, according to Ephesians 4

Obviously, this has detrimental impacts on our spiritual walk

In His goodness, God doesn’t leave us there—He continually convicts us of sin for the purpose of bringing it to Him in confession

That’s the heavy hand and drained vitality that David describes in this passage

Allow me to ask once more—are you seeing the spiritual signs of unconfessed sin in your life?

If you’re a Christian and choosing to walk in unrepentant sin, the Lord is faithfully pursuing you—like Francis Thompson describes God: he’s after you like the hound of heaven

And we’ll see, starting in verse 5, that…

C. Confessed sin leads to lifted burdens and sins covered over

And as a result, we ought to…

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:

i. 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

When you seek to argue that your mountain of sin in only a molehill of folly, which of the two of you is fooled in that equation: you or God?

What’s worse, your depriving yourself of a deeper, more loving relationship with Christ: remember, the one whose forgiven little, loves little

If you confess to a few boulders at the base of your towering peak, that’ll likely be the proportion of thanksgiving you’ll express for forgiveness

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.

Remember what Jesus says—the one who is forgiven much, loves much

And love is a BEAUTIFUL motivator towards repentance

In fact, I would argue the meaningful repentance isn’t possible apart from genuine love and viewing God as your “hiding place,” as David puts it here

*Josh’s phrase: fear-motivated: “I messed up: hope dad doesn’t find out, vs love-motivated: “I messed up: better go tell dad.”

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.

Obviously, it’s better to continually walk in fellowship with the Lord than to flounder about in sin, necessitating confession and repentance

The Word of God is calling us to be proactive in this matter, deriving our counsel from the Lord and walking in His ways

As we do so…

C. Trust the Lord and He will free you

The Psalm closes on another note of thanksgiving for the forgiveness of sins, as if to remind us of the result of confessed sins

*soberly look at the weight of your sins

*rejoice in forgiveness made available in Christ

*look for the signs of unconfessed sin (physical & spiritual)

*walk in confession & repentance

*stay the course