This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “Psalms” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, November 1, 1987.
Our blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Our blessed is the man to whom the Lord does not impute iniquity, in whose spirit there is no deceit. When I kept silent about my sin, my body wasted away through my groanings all day long.
For day and night thy hand was heavy upon me. My vitality was drained away as with the fever heat of summer. I acknowledged my sin to thee, and my iniquity I did not hide. I said, I will confess my transgressions to the Lord, and thou didst forgive the guilt of my sin.
Therefore, let everyone who is godly pray to thee in a time when thou mayest be found Surely in the flood of great waters they shall not reach him. Thou art my hiding place. Thou dost preserve me from trouble. Thou dost surround me with songs of deliverance. I will instruct you and teach you in the way which you should go. I will counsel you with my eye upon you. Do not be as the horse or as the mule which have no understanding. whose trappings include bid and bridal to hold them in check, otherwise they would not come near to you.
Many are the sorrows of the wicked, but he who trusts in the Lord’s loving kindness shall surround him. Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, you righteous ones, and shout for joy all you who are upright in heart.” Our Father, there is the letter, that we are told that the letter kills. There is also the Spirit, and while the letter apart from the Spirit destroys, that letter made alive, quickened by the Spirit, is the source of life to us. Father, we ask that we may be filled with your Spirit, that we might be set at liberty for where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. Encourage us, Lord, in our conviction concerning this matter so that as we look into your word, we would see there the breath of the Spirit. We ask this in Jesus’ name, amen. We have spoken about the first verses, the first two verses specifically, of this psalm in some depth. We have observed how comprehensively the psalmist, or David, treats the matter of sin.
Quickly then, recall the three terms used by David in describing offense towards God. He calls that offense transgression, by which he suggests a boundary defined by God’s law that is violated, trespassed by man. He also calls offense towards God, sin, by which he suggests a pathway that has been wandered from so as to deny the true destination. And finally, he calls this offense iniquity, by which he suggests a straight and true measurement, or rod, that has been twisted perversely. Now, that is certainly comprehensive, expansive in its grasp of the character of sin, and one wonders how such a statement could be expanded upon at all.
Yet that is precisely what the psalmist does, and he does so in a most ingenious way. You see, in looking at those first two verses of this psalm, that the psalmist here couples to each of the nouns that he chooses in describing sin a verb. He couples to each noun a verb.
Transgression is forgiven, sin is covered, iniquity is not imputed. These verbs, however, serve to compound or broaden the nouns, the nouns being transgression, sin and These verbs then act in such a way that they suggest other nouns in addition to those already expressed.
For example, the verb to forgive in the Hebrew used with transgression here in the opening line of the psalm, brings to mind a lifting of a burden. Therefore, not only is the offense against God the trespassing of a boundary, it is also an incredible burden that needs to be lifted. The forgiving of the transgression, then, both sets us within the boundary and frees us from the weight of our offense. Likewise, the second line in verse one.
The verb here is the verb to cover. It sets before us a corresponding noun, that noun being blemish. Thus, the psalmist adds to the word sin used here to describe the offense. He adds here to that word sin, which means a going astray or the missing of the mark, the notion of a grievous sore. So as to disqualify us for service to God. And last, with the beginning line of the second verse, the verb is, does not impugn.
But this brings before us the idea of a debt. language like that used by an accountant in reckoning up debts and credits. And in this way, David has comprehended and deepened his presentation of offense to God by adding to the thought of iniquity, a word which means twisting, the thought of debt. We have, as a result, not three ways of looking at that offense to God or our offensiveness before God, not three ways, but six.
But regardless of the expansiveness calculated here, to consider the whole territory God’s grace in forgiving is declared all the more expansive. Transgression, sin, iniquity, burden, blemish, debt, comprehended and then dealt with by the gracious activity of God in cleansing sinners. the overwhelming consideration of the expansiveness of sin answered by the even greater graciousness of God. Of course, it is well for us to be reminded of that other insight that we had concerning these opening verses.
Namely, that while the psalmist or David here is speaking about the forgiveness of sin or the removal of that sin, he fails to make any mention directly, that is, of the sacrificial system. the means in place for the forgiveness of the Israelites. And the impact of this is overwhelming, for you see, he is saying, the effects of that system are operative without the system itself, so that the system is in effect transcended by what is taking place here. in God’s activity regarding sinners. And because of this, Psalm 32 becomes an appropriate text for the preaching of justification by faith, apart from the works of obedience within the system, the legal system, the sacrificial system of Israel. A wonderful vehicle for proclaiming. the transcendent glory of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and that is precisely what Paul does with this psalm in Romans 4.
One who is blessed, therefore, in keeping with the ultimate intention of this psalm, is that one whose offenses have been removed But now, we pass from consideration of the offense and the blessed, forgiven man in these broad terms in verses 1 and 2, to the psalmist’s own experience with God in forgiveness itself. Verse 3. Now, verse 3 is easily misunderstood.
For instance, when the psalmist says, I kept silent, or as it is expanded, at least in the New American Standard version, I kept silent about my sin.” The psalmist here is not talking about a failure to go to confession, nor is he talking about a public soul-bearing along the lines of what we find in many testimony-dominated churches. Actually, what we have are words that signify, at first, a refusal on the part of the psalmist to admit the truth about himself and properly repent. The words here, I kept silent about my sin, betray a willfulness on the part of the writer. In other words, the psalmist knows the truth, but stubbornness causes him self-consciously, deliberately, to resist confession.
His circumstance, however, is aggravated. He concludes, as he progresses in his description of his experience, his circumstance is aggravated because his resistance then takes its toll upon his soul or upon his health, upon his physical well-being. This silence, this persistent, willful silence, this deliberate silence, is itself a killer. But marvelously, now the psalmist goes on to finish his thought. It isn’t as if his silence about his sin left him silent altogether. In fact, as he confesses, he was quite vocal.
He speaks about his groaning all the day long. He moans. Or, poetically, he sounds like a roaring beast. in his aggravation and in his distress. These groans here are spoken of by the psalmist as if they were fuel by which his bodily frame, by which the very bones of that bodily frame, were being burned away. My body wasted away through or because of my groanings all day long.
But please understand the significance of these cries, of these moans, of this roaring. They are coupled with a silence about sin. While he is silent about his sin, he is not silent in his roaring, his groaning, his moaning. Therefore, these utterances by him are not the cries of repentance. Instead, they are the cries inflicted by conscience. They are the cries of one afflicted in conscience, of one who in his circumstance cries out because he is drowning in nothing else but self-pity and self-justification. And there is an obsessiveness about the entire experience. He says, his groaning, his roaring is perpetual all day long. The silence, therefore, about his sin begets the roarings of resistance and pride.
But why, ultimately, do I groan? Why do I moan and roar? is the ultimate cause to be found in my vain estimation of myself? Or do my groans, my roarings, find a cause which itself engenders my rebellious response? According to the next verse, verse four, it becomes plain that the reason why I groan ultimately, why these roarings are heard from me, is because the Lord’s hand is heavy upon me, and He is not taking the hand off. So while it’s true that I groan and I moan in this experience of self-pity or even self-justification, ultimately I must look even beyond them, and I see the heavy hand of God and the perpetuity of God’s hand heavily upon me.
Therefore, my self-pity and my self-righteousness are my sinful reactions to the Lord’s heavy hand, to the weight of his righteous sentence of judgment upon my guilty soul.” The psalmist goes on to describe his experience graphically. My vitality, my life’s juices, my sap, as if I were a plant or a tree. Before the scorching heat of the summer sun, my vitality, my life’s juices, my sap is dried up, and the Lord’s heavy hand, causing me to stoop, finally overwhelms me altogether, and I am laid low in the dust. It is then in my extremity that the Lord graciously brings me to my senses.
And with language with which this psalm began, I confess my offense.” Remember, the trinity of that description, transgression, sin, and iniquity, the nouns that were used at the opening of the psalm, these now recur. as we look at verse 5. My sin, my waywardness, my iniquity, my crookedness, my transgression, my trespass. With this language, then, I make my confession. My confession, then, corresponding to the pervasiveness and expansiveness of the character of sin itself. And in all of this, while I am confessing my particular sin, my particular iniquity, my particular transgression, I am caused to admit that deception by which I hid the truth about or endeavor to hide that truth about myself before God. And what of the Lord’s response? I acknowledge my sin. My iniquity I did not hide. I said I will confess my transgressions to the Lord. And thou didst forgive the guilt of my sin.”
In response to the confession described here, there comes that affirmation of forgiveness. The Lord’s response now to me confessing is the forgiveness, he says in the last line of the fifth verse, the forgiveness of the guilt of my sin. The wording here is instructive. For the Lord doesn’t just forgive my sin, we are told that he forgives the guilt of my sin. And in that he forgave it, we take stock then of the significance of that Hebrew word once more that was used in the opening line of the psalm. How blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven.
You remember the force of it? The force of that verb is to lift a burden. So what is happening is the burden of my sin, precisely in the guilt of my sin, is lifted. It is removed. God is removing the burden of my sin in specifically dealing with its guilt. so that I, having been bent down, laid prostrate, am now righted. And I’m righted in specifically the sense in which this line within the psalm intends me to be righted, namely in the most subjective sense of all. It is that guilt that weighs heavily upon my conscience, and now subjectively that guilt is removed and I experience the liberation of the forgiveness of my God. The offense truly removed from before the Lord, but simultaneously the affliction of my conscience truly removed, so that I live now at liberty before him.” I cannot speak in any way that adds appropriately to this psalm a significance beyond what the psalm itself can say.
That dealing with the whole matter of guilt and the subjective reality of that guilt. We may say, and say with every bit of assurance, our sins have been forgiven for Christ’s sake, but then walk around for the rest of our lives with a guilty conscience, never to be free of To have all of the images of those teenage years and all of that rebellion passing before our eyes, all of those horrible things we did, all of those tragic things that we were guilty of, plaguing us, that may well have been in our later years, the time after we were married, some kind of infidelity swept through our lives. And yet, as we confess and we say, yes, that sin is forgiven, we continue to bear the guilt of it, and it tortures us, and it doesn’t let up. The tragedy of misspoken words, misguided actions, the tragedy of things that keep coming up in our minds and thoughts concerning the waywardness of our souls.
Here, the full blessing of the forgiving process, inaugurated by our God in Christ, laid before us not just the sin but the guilt. that we would walk through Hebrews then, as we are doing on Sunday mornings with Ed Brandeberry’s classes, that we would walk through Hebrews and be gripped by what is being told us there concerning the freedom of our conscience, that conscience afflicted still.
What reactions we may have, we may find ourselves back there in verse three and in verse four. Proudly resisted, not moving on to verse five. But be assured, if you push on then to verse five and you look to the Lord for the forgiveness he offers, realize even more than what David could realize or understand or even comprehend. He could just feel after it.
But we live in the full reality of not just sin forgiven, but guilt, as if an incredible burden. Guilt. How blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. How blessed the man to whom the Lord does not impute iniquity. Why, it’s not just the blessing of the sin removed in God’s mind, it is the blessing of the guilt lifted from off your soul.
Why there’s nothing like it. Why there’s nothing in all the world like it. Of course, there is much more to say about the song, and we hope to take up these verses that follow in the weeks to come. Lord, before a psalm like this, may we not be naive, either about sin or about ourselves.
May we see the root of our forgiveness lies with you, and that you are adequate that you do, in fact, remove our sins from your sight. But even then, how blessed are we, for as the sins have been removed from your sight, you are at work to remove the guilt of that sin from our consciences. O Lord, may we glory in you and rejoice in a salvation that is even more adequate, that is exceedingly comprehensive. O Lord, more than adequate, exceedingly comprehensive. so that all of our offenses are taken care of by that one to whom we confess. We pray these things through Jesus Christ, the final sacrifice, whose blood cleanses our consciences in order that we might live at liberty.
The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.