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, October 11, 1987.

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. 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 sins.

Therefore, let everyone who is godly pray to thee in a time when thou mayest be found. Surely in a 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 bit and bridle to hold them in check, otherwise they will not come near to you.

Many are the sorrows of the wicked, but he who trusts in the Lord, 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. Pray briefly. That your people, Lord, would be filled with your spirit and that the songs of deliverance would be upon their lips, this, our prayer this evening, that with us your praise would be multiplied, and that throughout the earth, as your people call upon you in truth, there would be that unfamed praise with which you are blessed, with which your honor and glory are magnified. We pray this now, asking that your word may encourage us in our service to you through our praise, expressing as it does our gratitude before you. In Jesus’ name, amen.

We are moving on this evening to Psalm 32. This psalm is a specifically strategic It is also an especially doctrinal psalm, and it is also a remarkably personal psalm. Psalm 32, a strategic psalm, and that for a number of reasons. It has been identified as one of the penitential, the so-called penitential psalms.

Now, maybe you know, maybe you realize that it has been the habit of some to divide the psalms into particular categories. There are nature psalms, for instance, and we’ve already preached on a couple of them. We think of Psalm 8, Psalm 19, and certainly Psalm 29 also reflects upon God works in nature, however, we have said that that psalm even bursts those categories. There are also messianic psalms. You can think of those psalms that speak specifically of the coming reign or the person of the Messiah. We can think, for instance, of Psalm 2 in that regard. We can also think of Psalm 24 and others.

The penitential psalms have been identified as psalms six, thirty two, thirty eight, fifty one, we recognize fifty one, one oh two, one thirty, and one forty three. These psalms having to do specifically with penitence, with that act of the seeking out by the psalmist of the Lord under the pressures of sin.

Now, if you were to look at Psalm 6 in this regard, however, you would discover there that the references to sin, to personal sin, are quite indirect. It seems to be sure that the psalmist is under duress in that sixth psalm. But the focus of the psalm doesn’t seem to be his battle with sin personally. Rather, it seems that his battle is with his enemies that have arisen against him. Psalm 25, not listed among the penitential psalms, however, is a psalm in which the references to sin and the psalmist’s experience of sin are much more direct.

In that twenty-fifth psalm, in the seventh verse, you have the psalmist saying this, Do not remember the sins of my youth or my transgressions. According to thy loving kindness, remember thou me, for thy goodness’ sake, O Lord. Then in verse eleven of that twenty-fifth psalm, For thy name’s sake, O Lord, pardon mine iniquity, for it is grave. and the eighteenth verse. Look upon my affliction and my trouble, and forgive all my sin.

This psalm, the twenty-fifth psalm, does deal with the sin of the psalmist directly, but the language here is quite fluid, informed as it is by the plight of the psalmist once more, as in before his enemies, in such a way that that flight before his enemies take center stage and the experience and the expression of that experience of sin personally take a backseat.

But when we come to As if we have had to wait for thirty-two songs when we come to some thirty-two. We find one that is uncluttered by this question of one’s enemies rather right up front right away immediately directly. We are confronted with the sin of the promise in a very personal way and a personal confession of it. The matter of confession is obviously the subject of the psalm, in a way that it has not been so far insulted. This psalm, therefore, is a strategic psalm, expressing directly, it seems, and in a way in which this expression of sin and the confession of it takes center stage in a way certainly that it has not done so before. So some thirty-two strategic song with regard to personal confession of sin, but some thirty-two is also a doctrinal song. I think that you can understand where this line of argument is going to take us.

It should be apparent to us all simply by reading the first two verses of the psalm. Luther called Psalm 32 an extraordinary doctrinal psalm which teaches us what sin is, how we may be free of it, and be righteous before God. For the reason knows not what sin is, and thinks to render satisfaction for it with words. But the psalmist says here that all the saints are likewise sinners and can be holy and blessed in no other way than by recognizing that they are sinners before God, and that they are regarded as righteous before God by faith alone, without merit and without works.

We can understand why Luther was drawn to this song. He saw in it an expression of that doctrine of sin that undergirded his approach to the question of justification by faith. He was drawn to this psalm not necessarily because of his own grasp of it, or because he had been made aware of it through his own studies of the Psalter.

Rather, he had been working through the Book of Romans, and he had come to that fourth chapter of Romans, and he had noted Paul’s quotation of the thirty-second psalm in his argument concerning the doctrine of justification by faith alone. Paul, in that fourth chapter of Romans, uses this psalm to expound upon God’s action, that action whereby he reckons righteous those men who, by faith, now are viewed by God as vindicated, justified in his sight apart from works, apart from the works of the law. If you read through that fourth chapter of Romans, you’ll see there that Paul prefaces his quote from the thirty-second Psalm with words that remind us of Paul’s argument concerning justification, the fact that God reckons us righteous apart from the works of the law. But not only so, for that thirty-second psalm, a quotation of it, in Paul’s thinking provides a bridge to the widest application of redemption and justification beyond the borders of Israel, beyond the race of the Jews, even to the Gentiles, from the circumcised to the uncircumcised. Paul, therefore, is picking up on the universalist type of language that is used here at the beginning of the song. It’s an indiscriminate description.

That person is blessed regardless of who he is. That person is blessed whose sins, whose transgressions are forgiven, whose iniquities are covered. That person is blessed regardless of who he is. That one. to whom the Lord does not impute iniquity, in whose spirit there is found no defeat.”

Psalm 32 is a truly strategic psalm, for here we are confronted as nowhere before in the Psalter with that personal confession of sin. a psalm highly doctrinal, a psalm that appealed immediately to Luther in his defense of the Reformation doctrine of justification by faith. But Psalm 32, in conclusion, is a personal psalm, as personal a psalm as there is. So in a personal way, is this psalm, or was this psalm, for Augustine, that he identified it as his favorite psalm of all?

I think that you can understand Augustine’s thinking. If you read through his confessions, if you have acquainted yourself at all with the life of Augustine, realizing that here was a man who had given himself over to everything that the world had to offer, its wisdom and its pleasure. He gave himself over to his instruction, to his teaching, because he sought the praise, the congratulations of men. He came to grips with himself before the Lord through the testimony of his mother, because of her prayers, and through the influence of many around him, through the influence of a dear friend who had been converted previous to him. But in that conversion experience for Augustine, there was the realization of his total unworthiness. He realized how sinful he was. In understanding that sinfulness, nothing was as glorious to him as the message of redeeming grace. Not because of his own works or merits, but purely because of God’s love through Christ, he was found then to be righteous only for the righteousness of Christ imputed to him and received by faith alone. Augustine then, in taking stock of the thirty-second psalm, found here words that moved him. the force of the personal line of the psalm, and how that personal line grips us.

The first seven verses of the psalm form a unit. Verses one and two are a general form of address, as we’ve already noted with regard to Luther’s quote of it. and the use of it in Paul in Romans 4, there is something here of a universal. There is something here that speaks indiscriminately of all people, those people then who are found in the state described. But note how the psalm moves.

From the consideration of the person generally, that one, whomever he may be, whose transgressions are forgiven, to the very personal and poignant line of the following verses, verses three through five. These lines are filled full with that personal expression of confession, repentance, forgiveness, and the assurances that arise out of that experience. The autobiographical character of verses three through five most likely appeal to Augustine as much as they appeal to us. These verses speak about how sin unconfessed laid us waste, how it worked upon us how it destroyed us internally, how it worked upon us in such a way that it drained our vitality, leaving us exhausted much in the same way that an extreme heat wave in the summertime does the same. But in verse five, there comes that magnificent acknowledgment.

I acknowledge my sin to be my iniquity. I didn’t. I said I will confess my transgressions to the Lord. Those sins having been confessed, then vowed it forgives the guilt of my sin. I do not know in the personal experience of the anything quite like that sense that accompanies the realization of sins forgiven. There isn’t anything that can compare with the alleviation of that guilt that comes upon one who is overwrought and distraught by their sin. I would judge that where sin has not had its ravaging effects, guilt has. Guilt is subdued, guilt is denied, it is suppressed, But even at that, beneath the surface, that guilt works away upon conscience, upon disposition, upon outlook, and it lays waste those upon whom it is visited. answering the general form of address that we find in verses one and two, and that with a poignant confession of the one who knows the Lord’s forgiveness.

Then, in verse six, we return to the general form of address once more, and here there is an appeal to the godly and a promise of security found only in the Lord. The pattern of this verse, verse six, parallels the pattern of verses one and two. And as we would expect, verse seven then follows in the pattern by taking up once more the personal expression that we found in verses three through five. And what an expression it is! Thou art my hiding place. me from trouble, thou dost surround me with songs of deliverance, songs of salvation.” Thus we have the alternating forms of expression, first considered generally and then quite personally, as the writer himself describes the confession of sin and its fruits.

Verses 8 through 11 take up a somewhat different note. Specifically, 8 through 10 comes to us as a unit, but it comes to us as well as an overture of wisdom, and the parallels we find in these three verses are striking with those that we find in the wisdom literature of Scripture. The question is asked, who is speaking? In verse eight, I will instruct you and teach you in the way in which you should go. I will counsel you with my eye upon you. It seems that here we have an interjection by the Lord Himself.

The consequence of that is the wisdom that then follows. Verse nine, don’t be as those who lack wisdom. Remember the conclusion of the whole affair. The wicked, they end in sorrow, they will be judged, but he who trusts in the Lord’s loving kindness shall surround him.

All of this, the wisdom expressed here, being the consequence then of what has been expressed in the formally in the beginning part of the song. Here you have the conclusion of the matter that this confession of sin and the forgiveness that accompanies it are the bedrock for the wisdom and the instruction that comes on the heels.

The conclusion of the song verse is a call to rejoice, to be glad, to shout for joy all who know the Lord and His uprightness. Here is an expression of thanksgiving that follows on the heels of the instruction, a command that those who know the Lord demonstrate the fact that they know Him, their knowledge of Him Intimately related to the fact that they personally have experienced the forgiveness spoken of in the song. The song is rich. It is manifold in its implications and applications. But it is a strategic song placing before us now in a direct way. the confession of sin and an account of the forgiveness of that sin, placing before us a wisdom that is based upon the actions of a forgiving God and the life then to be lived by those who have experienced the Lord’s grace. Not only as they see themselves surrounded by his lovingkindness, but also as they give themselves over to a life in which they rejoiced in which they shout for joy, because they have known the Lord and his actions in mercy towards them.

Of course, the psalm cannot be expounded without also expressing the truth of the psalm in terms of the act of God and Christ, for whose sake we have been forgiven, our confession to Him being made through Christ, and basing our life upon that forgiveness, we now live wisely before the world and before and our songs of joy are multiplied immeasurably.

Let us pray. Our Father, we do thank you this evening for the expression of confession we have found in this thirty-second song. We rejoice, Lord, in the personal way in which the psalmist speaks, we thank you, Lord, that he has expressed himself in this manner and that we can identify with him. For surely, Lord, we too have known the forgiveness of our sins, and we have known this forgiveness through your mercy toward us, shown us in Jesus Christ. We do ask you, that your grace might be multiplied to us as we would seek to live as those who are wise before you, receiving your instruction. And we ask, Lord, that you would inform our prayers that our love of you would be plain and clear. We ask

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