I've also been asked to read the Scriptures for us this morning, taken from Psalm 32. Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity, and in whose spirit there's no deceit. For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night, your hand was heavy upon me. My strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity. I said, I will confess my transgressions to the Lord, and you forgave the iniquity of my sin. Therefore, let everyone who was godly offer prayer to you at a time when you may be found. Surely, in the rush of great waters, they shall not reach him. You are a hiding place for me. You preserve me from trouble. You surround me with shouts of deliverance. I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go. I will counsel you with my eye upon you. Be not like a horse or a mule without understanding, which must be curbed with bit and bridle, or it will not stay near you. Many are the sorrows of the wicked, but steadfast love surrounds the one who trusts in the Lord. Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, O righteous, and shout for joy all you upright in heart. This is the reading of God's holy word. Thanks be to God. We are really deeply grateful for the gospel. We're thankful, Father, for the gift of your Son, the gift of the Holy Spirit. Thankful that the Holy Spirit is the one who illuminates our hearts and minds to see that ray of light of Christ that we might trust in him. Lord, we thank You for this church. Lord, we know that we shouldn't do things just because we feel guilty, but that there should be a response of the incredible joy we have in knowing of our salvation, that we should be like the disciples unable to stop speaking about that which we've seen and heard. And even today, Father, we have heard the news that's heavy and dark, but also the news of the cross which was necessary for such dark and troubling things as people like us. God, would you even now open this text to us, teach us, convict us of sin, and give us the hope of Christ that is beyond measure, beyond our ability to comprehend, that we might leave free, free at last, as we ask in Jesus' name, amen. This morning has been a day in which I've really been looking forward to all week. I love the privilege God's given me to come here every Sunday morning early, to go through two, sometimes three services, to just be fed, to see your faces, to see new faces, to welcome new people, to know that the gospel is going to be sung about and prayed about and preached about, and to know that there's no other hope in the world but Jesus Christ, and we are committed to that. I'm glad you're here. Yesterday, I downloaded a book on my Kindle at the suggestion of a friend by an author with the first name, Brennan. Last name, Manning, some of you may have read Brennan Manning books like The Ragamuffin Gospel or Abbas Child, and some of you may not like everything he says. I think he has some weird ideas at times, but he really understands the love of God, and the love of God particularly for people who have fallen like himself, like myself. In this book that he has recently published, he begins it this way. He says, I am Brennan. I'm an alcoholic. How I got there, why I left there, why I went back is the story of my life, but it's not the whole story. I'm Brennan. I'm a Catholic. How I got there, why I left there, why I went back is the story of my life, but it's not the whole story. I'm Brennan. I was a priest, but I am no longer a priest. I was a married man, but I'm no longer a married man. How I got to those places, why I left those places is the story of my life, too, but it's not the whole story. I'm Brennan. I'm a sinner, saved by grace. That is the larger and more important story. Only God in his fury knows the whole of it. Several years ago, I was at a conference that I really didn't want to be at. I was at a crisis, likely my marriage would have ended, likely my ministry would have ended. Not because of an immoral discretion, but because of a lack of understanding of God's affection and infinite love for me. A man by the name of King Cope saw me in a conference and at the end of the conference, he said, Mark, would you come here? We'd never met. I went up to the front and he said, what's wrong? Well, lots of things. What do you want? I don't understand. He said, I just had it pressed upon me during this lecture that you need to talk to someone. That seemed a little weird, but it seemed safe. And so we began to talk. My answer to what was wrong was I don't know, but I'm dying. Something's wrong. I don't think I'm really who I say I am. I don't know if I've any hidden sins, but there's something missing in me. I'm just so tired. He said, I don't think you really believe God loves you. I think you believe you have to perform for his love, and he gave me a book called, Obis Child by Brennan Manning, and it changed my life. It changed my life soon. The walls, these borders and boundaries that had bound up around my heart that had not allowed Christ in began to crackle and break, and then I began to understand grace and mercy in a way that I never had. A few years later, I had the privilege, or at least I thought I did, of meeting the author of Obis Child and the author of this book that I just read from, Brennan Manning. He was going to be the keynote speaker at a conference where I was taking a dozen or so students. It was a leadership conference. It was a discipleship conference. It was for students who were really serious about their faith, and I told them about the book Obis Child. I told them what I didn't think was right about it, what I thought was right about it, and that they would be blessed to listen to this man. We got there, spent the first night there, and the next morning, I received word in the leaders meeting that Brennan Manning had fallen. Not tripping over something like a child's toy and breaking a leg, but he had fallen again. We all prayed for him, and went into the Christian rhetoric that we often do quickly to silence the noise of the fall. Could happen to any of us, the enemies on the prowl. We really needed to pray for him and pray for one another. We ended the meeting with the name in, and then the director of the conference came up to me and said, would you be willing to take his place? Would you speak at this conference? And then my idol rushed in. My sin, my fall, oh, the wicked thirst for glory. I get to speak to a group that came to listen to this man who's written a number of books. I have written none. I can quote him. I can share things I've learned from him, but what do I have to say? And the very man whose words taught me not to be on that performance, suddenly I was racing on that treadmill. How can I impress all who have come that I'm actually better than Brennan Manning? At least, I haven't done what he's done. Those are the thoughts going through my mind, but I was gifted enough not to let it appear that way. Ministers fall. They fall all the time. And when they fall, the fall is loud, it's a crash, it's devastating, it's great. It causes a world that detests hypocrisy. To say see once again, they don't really believe what they're saying. It fuels gossip. Even now many of you are still speculating and wonder what Don really did. It affirms that we, as people, are capable of great things and that we really don't know how weak we are. It splits churches. Some of you were in our congregational meeting about an hour ago. It lasted a total of maybe four or five minutes. Those are good ones. The worst I've ever seen in the church was in a congregational meeting. The very first church I served in was a church in Oklahoma City. It was a church that two couples, mid 30s, late 30s, got together and said, let's start with a church that really preaches the gospel, that really allows people who are broken to come and be broken and to be healed and redeemed. Let's do it. And they identified a man that preached that way, that passion and zeal, who could connect with people, who would counsel and encourage, and would stay within the boundaries of God's law, his word. This is what we're supposed to do, and it worked. They prayed together these two couples in this minister and the church began to explode. 1982, I came to know Christ through the ministry of young life, and that's the church I went to. It's where my young life leader went. A few years later, they invited me to be on staff as a summer intern. And during that summer, it went well, they invited me to stay on, and so I did. And then one day, my boss, along with another intern, went to Wendy's for lunch, important meeting and an important place. He brought a newspaper. Kind of weird. He opened the newspaper to the public records and pointed to it. And there was a woman's name, and a man's name, our pastor, his wife, she's filing for divorce, nobody knew. She told Noah, well, news like that travels fast, and soon we gathered, and what began to happen was the unfolding of a really loud crash. When the minister falls, it's great. It's loud, it's devastating. He was accused and found guilty of multiple affairs within the body. The way the church reacted was so far out of bounds of what the Bible says that it wreaked havoc, and at this congregational meeting people were screaming at each other and shouting at each other, and I left, and I resigned. My resignation wasn't just as the intern to the youth ministry, but it was a resignation to the church capital C. I want none of this. This is why my parents left the church. They were right. I still love Jesus, but I'll stay in a church organization or something like that, but church isn't for me. And in God's good providence, a little bitty church, PCA, our denomination, a minister came to me, the one who preached at my ordination service here, and said, that really isn't all that the church is about. Come and watch. That church to this day has really never recovered, or maybe it's on the verge of recovering now over two decades later. Sin is awful. It's wicked. And when one of God's leaders falls, the crash indeed is great. It's loud. It's devastating. But what happens, as I've mentioned already, is we quickly run to silence the noise by going into this Christian rhetoric or Christian ease, where we simply say things that I'm really not sure we believe. We say things like, it could happen to me, it could happen to any of us. We're all sinners. Those are all the right things to say, but deep down, I think we're saying other things. How did it happen? What went wrong? Where was the accountability? Am I really capable of such sin? The answer to the last question is, yes, and it's not just rhetoric, it's not just Christian ease. It's the truth. But we don't really believe it, perhaps, or we would think and feel and sing differently about this amazing love of God. God is amazing. He gives us this song that comes from a man who's after his own heart. Let me remind you of his story. When I was singing, I will tell the wondrous story. So listen to David's wondrous story. He steps out in the spring when all kings go to war and he steps out onto his roof and as he steps out onto his roof, something catches his eye. It's a woman and she's bathing and as he sees it, he has a moment. He can decide to turn away and not look or he can gaze and he gazes. His gaze is certain impulses, sinful desires begin to consume him. And the life from the enemy, this is life, come outside this boundary, transgress here, trans pass here, becomes so great that he calls for her to come and she does. She becomes pregnant, he fears man, he fears the shame. He wants it to go away quietly, he wants to keep the secret to himself and so he has her husband murdered, a tainus and it's our scripture, 2 Samuel 11. Then David gives this Psalm 51, reflecting what it means when his friend Nathan comes to him and confronts him with the sin, he's caught and in Psalm 51, he cries out, create in me a new heart, oh Lord, restore to me the joy of my salvation. And then after it he says, verse 13, then I will teach transgressors your ways and sinners will return to you. Psalm 31, Psalm 32, Psalm 32 is David's teaching. He's teaching what it means to be a man who's had a heart restored. He's teaching what it means to understand the forgiveness of God. He's teaching what it means to be truly blessed when he was a man who wasn't walking as a blessed man and so I want to look at it this morning briefly in terms of what it means for us. Look with me at verse 1 of Psalm 32. This Psalm begins with the Beatitude, just like the very first Psalm does. Psalm 1, blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked nor stand in the way of sinners nor sit in the seat of scoffers. His delight is in the law of the Lord. And on his law he met a day's name and night. David didn't do that. This is not where David was in that moment when he went on the roof and he saw Bathsheba. But now as he teaches from Psalm 32 he begins with the Beatitude, just as Psalm 1 did, blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. In verse 2 it says blessed and it's plural, which means blessing upon blessing. The word blessing really means happy, not in the way that we think of happy but in an overwhelming sense of joy and happiness, elation, I'm free, happy, happy because I'm forgiven. So David teaches, blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered, blessed as a man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity and in his spirit there is no deceit. David uses three words for sin in those two verses. I wanted to describe them briefly for you. The first word is in verse 1 it says transgression. Transgression literally means to go outside the boundaries of which God's law has determined. It means to look at a no trespassing sign and say, I don't care. It's what the prodigal son did. I don't care. I'm going to a far off land. I'm going to waste these gifts in this perverted warp type of life. That's what transgression means. God's given us boundaries, transgression means to go beyond the boundaries. The second word that he gives us in the psalm is also in verse 1 and it's the word sin itself. The word sin itself means to miss the mark. It's an archery term. It means that all of us have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Every one of us have missed the mark. The third word, which is really significant, he uses for sin as found in verse 2 and it's the word iniquity. Iniquity means to be crooked, twisted, warped. It's why when we hear of a fall of someone and we wonder how could they have done it? Well the reason they could have done it is because in iniquity their mind gets twisted just like yours, just like mine. One day the enemy seeks to say, come here, outside the boundaries of this law is life. We see it in Genesis 3, the very first question in the Bible is not a question from God, it's a question from Satan and the question is this, did God really say he stands over here and says come, life is here, did God really say and for us in that moment of temptation when it moves from temptation to sin, we're doing what makes sense to us in the moment with a mind full of iniquity twisted, perverted, crooked, and what's what Satan does? He says life exists outside this boundary and the moment you bite on it, he then becomes your accuser, judging you, mocking you, making you feel so much shame that you could never return. One of the interesting things maybe sins great secret is this, and once you go outside the boundary of God's law, he, the enemy seeks to convince you now that there's a boundary to God's love. It's not a boundless love at mercy, no, it's limited and it's not going to extend this far to you. You should have known better, you're a minister, you should have known better, you're on a Christian school board, you should have known better, you're a seminary student, you should have known better, you're a woman's Bible study leader, you should have known better, you've been a God example to your children, you should have known better. He convinces us that there is a boundary to God's love and so we don't want to go back and we keep it a secret. What happens when we keep secrets? Well, look with me at verse 3. David says, for when I kept silent my bones wasted away through my groaning's all day long, for day and night your hand was heavy upon me. My strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. In the heat of summer my family used to go camping. When I was a little boy, we loved it. Our favorite place to go was a place about an hour outside of our hometown in Oklahoma called Red Rock Canyon. It wasn't in any way like the Grand Canyon, not at all, but it was a canyon and it was red and it was called Red Rock Canyon. You could repel, you could hike, you could climb and bike and fish and swim and we loved it. But as a six or seven year old, your parents give you boundaries. You can't go climbing without your older brother and your older sister or mom or dad. So me and my best friend, we always went together. Todd Alfonso, our families were there. Todd's dad, my dad said, Mark, Todd, we're sitting up camp. Scatter, get out of the way. But don't go climbing a boundary. Todd and I, toward our beautiful hats, mine was a coon skin hat, his was a feather sticking up and we went climbing. We broke the boundary. We've done it many times before. It's not that dangerous. We're seven years old. We climbed along the edge of the cliff and as we got to this one point, it's about 50, 60 feet up, we're watching as cars are beginning to travel in to enjoy their long weekend. Todd looks at me and says, Mark, do you think you can hit a car with this rock? I bet I can. I was the pitcher for the overwholesome raiders. I'll have you know. I took the rock. I watched a few cars go by. I tested the wind. And then this tan colored station wagon with wood paneling, some of your parents had that car. I'm sorry. I took the rock and I launched it. And unlike Sin, I did not miss the mark. I nailed the hood of that car. And when I did, our mouths dropped and we looked at each other, kind of astonished and excited. But then the reality of what would happen if we got caught set in. The people quickly opened their doors to look to see what it was and Todd and I dropped. We're hiding behind these little bushes. I said, Todd, do not stand up. He said, okay. And then he stood up and he ran. Feathers flying on the edge. And me and my coonskin cap, I chased him. We went back to our camp, terrified the entire weekend that we would get caught. I couldn't eat. I couldn't sleep. I couldn't enjoy us more. None of it, because inside I had a secret. And I knew that this family was going to go camp site to camp site, asking if anyone knew a child who might have thrown a rock who was wearing a coonskin cap and had a short friend with feathers in his hair. I was terrified that never happened. And I never told my parents the truth. It was wrong. It robbed me of joy. My bones wasted away for a season. But because they never asked, I got over it pretty quick. Sins get bigger when we get older, don't they? And the fear of what would happen if we spoke the truth seems overwhelming. Could anybody really forgive me? What would happen if they really knew? The three sin words that David gives us are followed by three words that are also given for forgiveness. Look with me at these words. David says in verse 1, blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven. The word forgiven means to be lifted off. If you this day are carrying a secret sin that you have never confessed to the Lord, just consider the perversion of that mind that you can hide something from God you can't. If you have never confessed it to someone else so that you can have help with the struggle, your heart is heavy. And if it's not heavy and even as you're hearing this preach this not heavy, I would really deeply consider whether or not you truly are saved. God pursues his people. The Holy Spirit is the hound of heaven. He wants the secrets to be known that you might experience the power of his redeeming grace. Tell him and tell someone else that you might know the wonder of his amazing love. The second word that David gives us for forgiveness of sin is that the end of verse 1. He says whose sin is covered. What that means is that Christ Jesus, his blood has so shielded us from God's wrath that we are covered. Our ledger should be just full of all the sins that we've committed, all of them. But instead, Christ's righteousness is imputed into our ledger so that we're seen as free and our sin is poured into his ledger that he might take on the cost. Our sin is covered. Thirdly, and it's a negative phrase, verse 2, blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no andiquity, unbelievable, unbelievable. A sin like David's really? But it's true. Verse 5 is the heart of the psalm. It says, I acknowledge my sin to you and I did not cover my iniquity. I said, I will confess my transgressions to the Lord and you forgave the iniquity of my sin. It's the longest part of the psalm and it's the heart of the psalm. And in that part of the psalm, it includes all three words for sin. And David, he let the secret out. You must. If you don't, indeed, your bones will waste away. Verse 6, therefore let everyone who was godly offer prayer to you at a time when you may be found. This is perhaps the most significant part of David's urging, of his teaching. He says, let you everyone who was godly offer prayer to you at a time when you may be found. Does that mean that there is a time when God may not be found? Yes, there is a time when God may simply deliver you. Let you go, just as in Romans 1, it should terrify anyone here today who's keeping a secret. If you're here today and you begin to sense the pressure of God's hand on you, that you have secrets of things you look at on a computer or secrets of the way in which you use your tongue perhaps to slander other people. If you have a secret life that no one knows about, and the spirit's beginning to press upon you, surrender. Let it be known that you might truly be free and light and seek the help that only the gospel can bring. God, through a servant David, is saying offer a prayer at the time when the Lord may be found. This church in his 19 years has been accused of many good things and many bad things and wrong things and right things, but the one that bugs me the most is when people say it's just a bunch of pretty people. They really dress up well. I'm just going to start inviting them to come. We're not pretty people. Our recent history hasn't shown us to be without faults. We're broken, hurting, messy, sinners, and our confession is that he has a love that sin is sun to the cross, the wondrous cross that we might know forever
life is one of my closest friends and I didn't know. We met every week for accountability and I didn't know. Pastors gathered the first money of the month and none of them knew. Imagine what it's like to carry a secret that long, to come to worship, to teach God's word. It's very perverted, it's crooked, it's twisted. Now imagine, imagine you're driving alone in a cold rainy day to go fishing to get your mind off of these things and the spirit of God says no. It's time you've been caught. The reason I'm preaching Psalm 32 is because this is a song that God used to break in. The Holy Spirit caught in the middle of the night because his hand was heavy upon him. You could do it no more. The Holy Spirit always catches those who belong to God. It can take many years, but he's the hound of heaven. And when he catches you, he catches you. When he catches you, he catches you. The very hand that is heavy up on the soul of the person in sin when the secret is told becomes the hand that hides you. As David says in this song, you are a hiding place for me. Right now there are people here with deep secrets. There's too many for it not to be true. Pray hound of heaven, Holy Spirit, impress upon me to a point where I can't go on that I might then surrender to you. What does it look like practically? Jesus is our high priest. Go to him. But I encourage you. Tell another person. Doesn't have to be a pastor. Doesn't have to be an elder, but maybe it should. Nothing would thrill my heart or any of our pastors or elders more than for you to simply send us an email and say, I need to talk. Like you, I need to confess some things. And we'll listen. And together, we'll seek to silence the crash, the devastation, the noise. Because the greatest sound of the crash, the greatest devastation, the greatest noise is the voice of the enemy saying there is a boundary that God's love,
not for his children, not for his children. Love, the love of God. It's everything. Jesus Christ,
I cannot say that I understand more of the twistedness and the wickedness of our hearts. In fact, maybe I understand less, but I do feel that this week you have shown me more of your mercy and love, that it is so much deeper, so much wider, so much higher, so much longer than we could ever imagine. And so, Lord, like David, I just pray that we as your people would come forward and confess that we might have life and know the power of the blessed forgiveness that David here speaks of. This, we ask in Jesus' name, amen.