Speaker: Gary Peters

Passage: Psalms 32:1-11

FORGIVEN AND FREE

I’m going to share with you a Psalm that if you’ve been with us in our Life of David series, guys, we’re going to talk about some things that we’ve talked about. By the way, Men’s Bible Study, Women’s Bible Study, starts the first week of February. The men will be doing the fourth installment of six weeks. So, we’re going to be done, gentlemen, with David. But we’ve gone through twenty-four weeks when we’re done. 

But when you ask somebody about David’s life, if somebody doesn’t know Scripture very well, they normally know two stories. They know the story of David and Goliath, and what’s the other one? David and Bathsheba. 

And Psalms 32 was written after David had confessed to and repented of all the sins related to his adultery. Because it wasn’t just adultery, there are many facets of this, along with Psalms 51, these two famous Psalms. Psalms 51, “Create in me a clean heart, O God. Don’t take your Holy Spirit from me.” Those were written out of the depths of brokenness that he experienced, which he caused. 

Approximately nine months after his adultery, David writes Psalms 51 and Psalms 32. Why do we know it’s nine months? Because his son that was born to Bathsheba dies. It’s part of the judgment that came upon what he did. 

Sin and eternal consequences are dealt with at the cross. How many of you are glad for that? But if you climb up to the top of this building, I have a second-story corner office with windows on two sides. If I see you fly off that roof and about halfway past my window, you repent, you’re forgiven. But you might break both legs when you hit the pavement. 

That’s not mean, that’s not God’s fault. Pastor Dustin said he’s going to get me a plaque because I quote it all the time, Proverbs 19:3. It says the fool does their own behavior, then blames God for the consequences. 

So, what I want to talk to you about is David, for like eighteen months has put it in cruise control. I told the guys last session, nobody wakes up one morning and says, I’m going to cheat on my wife. Nobody just does that. There’s steps downward. 

You say, What a weird topic to be talking about on Sunday morning. I’m not talking about adultery, I’m talking about what Pastor Daniel shared in the first gathering during the transition, what Pastor Dustin just shared, how our hearts can become calloused, or how we can go through the motions. 

I pastored for over forty-five years now, and I can do this in my sleep. And it scares the hound dog out of me. I talked to somebody right over there when I was getting ready to come up the stage, saying, Look at all these people, and you’re in charge of them. And I’m thinking, No. 

It scares me because I don’t know the needs that are here, but God does. But this is a sacred desk, as Spurgeon used to call it. I get nervous every time I speak, and I’ve done it for years. Why? Because I realize what God wants to do in our midst. 

WHAT JOY FOR THOSE WHO ARE FORGIVEN

Nathan the prophet came to David with the truth and the consequences of his behavior, and I believe we all need Nathans in our life. Thank God that we have the Holy Spirit to convict us. But sometimes we need somebody to say, You’re the man. You’re the woman. 

We need to be challenged. We need the Word of God in our life. We need the Holy Spirit, of course, but we need somebody to have the guts. Paul told the Galatians, “Do you consider me an enemy because I tell you the truth?” He says he confronted Peter’s hypocrisy. Peter. Hypocrisy. The apostle Peter had hypocrisy that Paul had to confront. 

We can have the big sins, I call them totem pole sins, you know, the big ones are the Ten Commandments. What about some of the little things that we do that grieve God’s heart? We’re going to go through this verse by verse or a couple verses at a time. “Oh, what joy for those whose disobedience is forgiven, whose sins have been put out of sight! Yes, what joy for those whose record the Lord has cleared of guilt and iniquity, whose lives are lived in complete honesty and no deceit!” 

Written by a man who nine months previous to this, had ordered the murder of somebody, had committed adultery, had lied about it. It’s just amazing to me that he can get to this point. But he understood no one can read verses 1 and 2 without an understanding of what they’ve done in the past. Follow me? 

“Oh, what joy for those who have had their disobedience or their transgression forgiven.” The danger that I see in the church today, and especially for people my age and older, that have walked with God for years, is we forget we’ve been saved from something. It’s just old hat. 

My father-in-law was a physician. He did cardiology and internal medicine. We had a young man that came to our church who in his thirties had destroyed his life through cocaine, and his heart was enlarged now, and he was going to die unless he got a heart transplant at age thirty. 

But when he got saved, he became a crazy man for Jesus in a good way. And he came up to me one Sunday, said, Pastor, can we sing that new song? And I was like, What song you talking about? He goes, That new one. I go, What’s it say? “That saved a wretch like me.” And he was talking about Amazing Grace because he understood that he was a wretch. 

And some of the newer translations of that hymn want to take wretch away. It means I’m wretched without Jesus. Pastor Greg always says– and I’ve known him for thirty years, and I can testify it’s a fact, but he can testify the same about me– that without Jesus, we’re not good human beings. 

Remember the woman with the alabaster jar that broke it on Jesus in Luke 7, and they were condemning her because she wasted a year’s wages in this perfume? And Jesus said, “Leave her alone because what she’s done is going to be talked about for generations.” We’re talking about it today. 

And he said this: “For this reason, I say to you, her sins–” she was a prostitute– “her sins, which are many, have been forgiven for she loved much. But the one who is forgiven little loves little.” We’ve all been saved from some incredible things, whether we’ve done the biggies or whatever we consider a big one. 

Because human nature is we have the sin of comparison. I’m glad I’m not as bad as you. See, the enemy tries to do two things in our life all the time through comparison: we either compare ourselves to somebody that’s so much greater and done so many credible things, either in the natural realm or especially in the spirit realm. And we’re like, I can never attain that. So, we belittle ourselves. Or most of the time, what I do, is I pick somebody that’s much lower than me and say, I thank God I’m not like them. 

OUR SINDS AND TRANSGRESSIONS 

I know you never do that. Just the pastoral team. But when we have the sin of comparison– listen to this– “There are six things the Lord hates, no seven He despises or detests: haughty eyes.” Anybody ever walk in pride before? How about a lying tongue? If you don’t shake your head yes, you’re lying now. Maybe we haven’t had hands that kill the innocent. God help us for a nation that kills the unborn. 

A heart that plots evil? Anybody have a heart that plots? You say, Well, I’d never done that. I’ve never plotted evil. I used to wait for the weekends. I used to plot my weekend out, and did stuff that wasn’t very Christian-like. 

How about racing to do evil? How about ever being a false witness who pours out lies? How about a person who sows discord in a family setting? And that doesn’t just mean family, it means in church settings, it means in business. How many of you put down somebody in business to promote yourself? 

My point is this: you may not have murdered somebody, you may not have committed adultery, but I guarantee you’ve committed some of the seven sins that God hates, detests. And I have too. So, we can’t totem pole sin. 

There are three words that the Lord uses here to describe sin. The first is transgression or rebellion. It’s willful wrongdoing. It’s an offense against God’s Law. It’s an offense against what is known. It’s the thou-shalt-nots. 

By this Psalm, you can tell that David knew what he did was wrong. And that’s why sometimes, when I see a street preacher, I want to just say, Calm down. We don’t have to point our finger at people and tell them they’re wrong, because in our heart of hearts, when you lay your head on the pillow at night, you know, and I know, if I’ve done something wrong. 

Matter of fact, I backslid for a season after Bible College. Yes, I did. Thankfully, it wasn’t very long. But when I came back to Jesus– I’d go to bed still speaking in tongues, by the way, because He didn’t take His Holy Spirit from me, thank God. 

But people say, What’s the greatest thing of your salvation? Having peace with God, knowing that if I breathe my last this afternoon in the middle of a Bears game, that I will know that I’ll see Jesus. Had to throw them in there some way. 

The solution is it was lifted up and carried away. It’s like, here’s your transgression, here’s my transgression, Jesus came, and He picked it up, and He removed it. It says He removed it as far as the east is from the west. You realize there’s no polar caps in the east or the west, means it’s continual. 

He didn’t say the north or the south. He knew geography before the writer of Isaiah did. There is no east or west. You go to the east, you’re at the west. And you go to the west, you’re at the east. God’s the only one that has selective memory. You and I have a memory bank. How many can remember what you did and didn’t get for Christmas as a kid? 

And so, it’s amazing, God throws it in the sea of forgetfulness because He removes it, and He has the capabilities of doing that. And yet we struggle with it because we don’t understand His forgiveness, because we don’t have that capability. I can remember if you did something bad to me, I have to purposely choose to forget. God chooses to forget, and it’s gone. 

The next word is sin. It’s a careless act of going one’s way or trying on your own. I know none of us have ever done that in our lifetime. It’s the idea of human effort. And the solution is, it’s covered. Love covers a multitude of transgressions. 

By the way, one little chapter in the Book of Acts gives you history that you don’t find in the first five books of the Bible. When Stephen is rehearsing the history of Israel, he gives us some insight. We have in Exodus where Moses kills the Egyptian and buries him in the sand. Remember that story? 

But we see through Stephen’s rehearsing of the history, says, “Moses, thinking that the people knew that he was God’s deliverer, stepped up and tried to defend Israel.” He presumed that everybody else knew what he knew. That’s a whole other sermon. And so, what he did is he killed the Egyptian, buried him in the sand. 

And two days later, he comes, and he sees two Israelis fighting, and he tries to stop the fight, and the one guy goes, Oh, you’re going to kill me like you did the Egyptian? And he freaks. Why? Because us trying to bury our own sin, it always raises a stink. Always comes back. 

Anybody ever try to hide something? My mother always knew when I sinned, always. My dad was clueless. Gentlemen, most time you’re clueless, that’s why God gave you a woman to help you, because we’re clueless. We need somebody to help us. It’s a true story. Pilate’s wife, she knew Jesus was innocent. Pilate didn’t have a clue. My mom always knew. Guilty as charged. It was like, Do I have stupid written on my forehead? Yes, you do. 

The third word is guilt or iniquity. When I realized the meaning of this name, I thought, This is why God took such extreme actions against humankind’s sin. It cost Him the life of His Son. There’s no other solution. If there was any other way, God would have chosen that way. Parents, think of you giving your child for somebody that has done some incredibly despicable things. While we were yet sinners, He died for us. 

The word iniquity means this: it’s defilement of soul. Sin has the ability to defile our soul, and soul is the mind, the will, and the emotions. That’s why God took such incredible care to keep Adam and Eve out of the garden, because they couldn’t have eaten of the tree of life, because they’d have been eternally immoral. 

That’s why you see people get more and more and more and more and more defiled, just like the steps of the righteous grows brighter and brighter, the steps of the sinner gets worse and worse. 

And it says this: that the solution is, it’s not imputed. It’s two ledgers: your ledger, Christ’s ledger. He became what you were, so you could become what He is. He doesn’t impute my sin to me anymore. He stepped forward and said, I’ll take the place. I’ll take the place once for all. He’s done it for us. No guilt, no shame, no deceit, no hypocrisy. 

CONFESSION

And then David says this. So, he starts out– we only got through two verses, we’re in trouble. When he says, I know what it’s like, because this is what happened to me. “When I refused to confess my sin, my body wasted away, and I groaned all day long. Day and night your hand of discipline was heavy upon me. My strength evaporated like the water in the heat of summer.”

When he kept silent, you know what that means? He knew he had no excuse. He chose to be quiet about his sin. Aware but refused to confess or acknowledge. But he says, but I refuse to confess. The word confess is this, and it’s the first stage to repentance: confess means to repeat again. 

God says, Gary, you have done this. And I repeat, Father, forgive me for doing that. That’s confession. That’s not repentance. Repentance is I’m walking this direction, and I turn around, and I walk back that way. It’s the prodigal son coming to his senses, eating the pig slop, and saying, “I will return to my father.” Then we knew he was in repentance. 

Then he came up with, “Father, forgive me. I’m no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me as one of your hired servants. I sinned against Heaven and in your sight. Make me as one of your hired servants.” He confessed what God was saying to him, and he repented by walking in a different direction. 

And he says, “My body, my bones, wasted away, my strength evaporated, dried up as in the heat of summer.” It’s the idea of marrow or fatness. The purpose of bone marrow: blood cell production, immune system support, and fat energy storage. 

Do you realize– everybody look at me for a second– do you realize God and His mercy will allow us to start drying up if we continue to walk in sin? Parents, let me challenge you, if you have a son or a daughter that’s not serving God, don’t rescue them. Your prayers may be answered by a fish swimming by and opening its mouth. 

You say, Man, that’s harsh. Just a minute. David says, I knew your hand was upon me, and my vitality was wasting away. I knew of a young man that was walking in unrepentant sin. I literally started watching his body waste away. I am not saying that all sickness is a result of sin, but I’m saying some sickness is. And I think the first place we should look is, God, is there anything in me? 

Whenever I get a stiff neck, it’s always talking about, You stiff-neck Philistines. I’m like, God, I don’t want to be some stiff-necked Philistine. And it’s like, what is a stiff neck? You can’t turn around, so you’ve turned your back instead of your face to God. So, whenever I get a stiff neck, whether it’s my pillow or it’s God dealing with me, I don’t care. I’m like, Okay, Lord, check my heart. Please check my heart. 

The physical toll that unconfessed sin takes. David acknowledges that what he had done before now, the physical and mental anguish, was a result of the hand of God. Man, some of us don’t like that, but sin is so hideous. 

He said, “If your right arm causes you to sin, cut it off. If your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out.” That doesn’t mean literally, it means I want to show you how serious life is lived without Jesus, and the eternity that awaits those people. That’s the seriousness of it. 

But see, the incredible thing about this is grace doesn’t leave us there. Grace doesn’t leave us in that state. You know why we don’t like it sometimes? Because we were raised in churches where that’s where you stopped. You stopped at God gonna get you, and God drying you up, and God gonna kill you, and God gonna make you sick. That’s not where it stops. 

David says, but when I confess my sin to you, and stop lying about my guilt, I said to myself, I will confess my rebellion and transgressions to the Lord and you forgave me. Boom. Over. Done. My guilt and iniquity was gone. I said, God, You’re right. I’m wrong. I quit trying to hide transgression, sin, iniquity. Forgive me. 

Adam, where are you? I’m hiding. Why are you hiding, Adam? Well, I was naked. Who told you you were naked, Adam? My sin. Why are you hiding, Adam? God knew where Adam was. God knows what it’s going to take in our life. Aren’t you glad? 

I am so glad God didn’t let me continue to be an idiot. I’m serious. I was a ding dong without Jesus. I did stupid stuff. I got home, and times I parked my jeep in the front yard, thinking I was in the driveway. By the grace of God, I got home. Did stupid stuff. Instantly forgiven. 

THE LORD’S DELIVERANCE

Then it says, “Floods will not reach you. He’ll be a hiding place in your time of trouble. He will sing over you.” Remember being at Disneyland one time when my granddaughter was getting the whole two-hundred-dollar princess makeover. And I watched some people where I thought, That kid’s ugly. Sorry, this is my thought process. 

And yet, to that mom or dad or that grandparent, she was the most beautiful, incredibly gorgeous human being God’s ever made. Of course, I was thinking that about my granddaughter, and it struck me: that’s how God sees us. You may see somebody’s ugliness, God sees their beauty. You may see what you’ve done, God sees your beauty. You’re a princess or a prince to Him.

And then there’s a shift. It says, “You surround me with songs of deliverance.” God sings over you. God sings over you. And then it says, “Selah,” which they don’t really know exactly, but it means a pause or an interlude. 

And then there’s this, it’s a prophetic word, the Passion says, “I hear the Lord saying, ‘I will stay close to you. I will instruct you and guide you along the path for your life. I will advise you along the way and lead you forth with my eye as your guide.’” 

How many had a father that all he had to do was look at you, and you normally were in trouble? I was that kid, and that was your pastor. So, have grace for that kid that you now are raising. He may be your pastor in thirty years. 

It’s not a stern eye of rebuke, it’s a loving eye of the Father, making sure you’re okay, guiding you, directing you, teaching you. “I heard the Lord saying, ‘I will stay close.'” This is God saying it to David and to us. “‘I will stay close to you, I will instruct you,'” which means to advise, enable you to make wise and intelligent decisions, choices going forward. You’ll learn from your mistake. 

How many are glad you learned from your mistake? I am really glad for myself. “I will teach you.” It literally means to flow like water. How many have had a struggle hearing God? Come to Him first and say, Lord, is there anything in my life that’s separating us? If not, then God, I can hear Your voice. 

He says, I’ll instruct you. I’ll teach you. I’ll guide you. The word guide means to deliberate. God wants to have deliberations with you. Isaiah says, “Come, let us reason.” Let us sit down and talk about this. God is not holding you at arm’s length. 

See, your sin keeps you at arm’s length. But once that’s broken down and repented of, He embraces you. He’s waiting to embrace. It’s the prodigal son’s dad looking for the son to come running. That’s the God we serve. See, my sin separates, but He’s provided this solution, so don’t make it difficult, He says. Don’t be stubborn when I take you where you haven’t gone before. 

We have a thirty-five-pound bowling ball on steroids called a French Bulldog, Bo. Bo Diddley Peters because his mom was Stevie Nicks and his dad was Johnny Cash, so he’s Bo Diddley. When I read this, that’s what I think of when we’re trying to train him. He weighs thirty-five pounds. 

He’s like, I’m gonna go my own way. No, don’t go that way. That dog’s much bigger than you. I don’t care. I can eat that dog. No, that dog’s gonna eat you. That’s what I just thought of when I read this. I’m going to take you where you haven’t gone. Don’t make me tug and pull you along, just come with Me. 

So, my conclusion, David says in this Psalm, come clean, trust the Lord for forgiveness, His love is going to surround you, and you’ll be able to have a testimony of shouting jubilation. Come clean, trust God for forgiveness, His love is going to surround you, and you’ll have a testimony. 

There go I, but the grace of God. Every human being we meet, no matter what stage they’re in, needs to utter those words. There go I. I’m on my own path. Don’t be stubborn. Let’s surrender to Him today. Amen? 

By the way, there’ll be prayer team members up at the conclusion, maybe this has dialed something up, need somebody to agree with you, pray with you. God’s not after you. God brings a smile to your face. You bring a smile to His face, and He brings a smile to your face. That’s the God we serve. 

His thoughts towards you are good and not evil. He wants to bless you. If there’s anything, just ask Him right now, God, is there anything standing between You and me? I’m not talking about getting saved for the first time– maybe that is necessary today– I’m talking about stuff where your heart has grown cold. Is there anything you’re holding God at arm’s length about? Open your hands wide and let Him embrace you.

Father, thank You for Your faithfulness, Your goodness, Your mercy. Lord, I love the fact that You don’t flatter Your heroes in the Scripture, that we see David’s failures and wrongdoing, we see our own self in so many ways. God, teach us with Your eye upon us, counsel us, God, in the way that we should go. Thank You for Your faithfulness, Father. In Jesus’ name, amen.