Guilt and Honesty

Good morning.

As you can see, our order is a little different this morning than it normally is, but if you could go ahead and turn with me in your Bibles to Psalm 32.

That's our Psalm for this morning.

If you don't have a Bible, there's a Bible, should be a Bible in the pew in front of you.

You can feel free not only to use that for this morning, but also if you don't have a Bible at home, take that with you.

Write your name in it.

Keep it as your own.

Bring it back week after week as we study God's Word together.

Let me pray for us before we dive into Psalm 32.

Please pray with me.

Father, we uh we give you thanks for your love.

We give you thanks that we can joyfully adore you as we sung about just a moment ago.

That you are worthy of that, that you are worthy of our adoration and all of our praise.

Father, we uh pray that you would be with us now, that you would open our hearts and minds to understand your word, to get into it.

Uh, and we pray that your spirit would work it into our hearts, that we would be changed people as we leave this place.

We pray these things in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Psalm 32.

Psalm 32 begins, a masquele of David.

A maschile is just an instruction, most likely.

So the instruction of David.

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 is 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 is 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 curved 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.

Guilt is good.

Now I know guilt has a bad reputation.

Guilt trips, guilt manipulation, false guilt, right, all of those are bad things.

I get it.

So don't mishear me.

And the church, it's true, sometimes has a reputation for laying on guilt, and our culture is pretty sensitive to that.

But those things aside, when we do something wrong, we should feel guilt.

That kind of guilt is good.

In fact, I think, if I understand correctly, part of the definition of a psychopath is someone who does something wrong but feels no remorse.

Right?

Psalm 32 is a is a picture, gives us a picture in the first couple verses of guilt working as it's supposed to work.

Now, the last thing we want to do with our guilt, of course, is to be honest about it.

The last thing we want to do is share that with others.

We don't want other people to know about our past.

We don't want other people to know about our hearts.

We don't want other people to know about our thoughts.

Honesty feels naked.

We feel exposed and vulnerable when people find out what's going on in our guilty consciences.

We're afraid of what people will think.

We're afraid of rejection.

And yet, this psalm brings guilt and honesty together.

Now, the psalm is not really about guilt as a whole, right?

The psalm as a whole is about joy.

It begins with blessing.

Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven.

And it ends with joy, rejoicing, be glad in the Lord and rejoice, O righteous, and shout for joy, all you upright in heart.

And so essentially the psalm is upbeat.

It's rejoicing in the forgiveness of God.

It's rejoicing that there is a God who forgives.

Yet guilt is good because guilt leads to joy.

Now, I know that seems like a stretch.

I mean, how can one emotion which is essentially negative, like guilt, lead to another which is essentially positive, like joy?

I mean, guilt and joy couldn't be further apart.

And so the question then becomes, well, what's the purpose of guilt?

What is it doing?

We're gonna answer that this morning by looking at the the whole context in which guilt happens and works.

Along the path to joy.

See, what we're gonna see in Psalm 32 is that honesty is the path, really, from guilt to joy.

Honesty is the path from guilt to joy.

And so we'll see the psalmist move us along this path from beginning with sin to guilt, to honesty, to forgiveness, to joy.

Honesty is the path from guilt to joy.

Now we're gonna look at Psalm 32, we're really gonna focus in on the first five verses.

We don't have time to look at everything, but we're gonna look at those first five verses, and we're gonna see three things that they tell us about joy.

Three things they tell us about joy.

We're gonna look at guilt and honesty in that context.

Verses 1 and 2, we'll see that forgiveness, forgiveness is the cause of joy.

Forgiveness is the cause of joy.

Verses three and four, we'll see that silence, silence is the killer of joy.

And then verse five, honesty is the path to joy, as we've said.

So those three things we're gonna look at.

Last week we looked at sorrow.

This week we're gonna look at guilt and honesty and joy.

So forgiveness.

Forgiveness is the cause of joy.

Verses one and two.

The passage begins with a blessing.

Blessed is the one.

Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven.

Or happy is the man, or fortunate is the man.

Right?

The verse is describing here's the man who's got it good.

Here's the man whose life is going well, the man who's forgiven.

And to emphasize that, the psalmist uses kind of a threefold repetition.

He uses uh three words for sin, for one thing.

Uh, three words for sin.

He uses the word transgression, which means uh rebellion in our relationship to God.

He uses the word sin, which means falling short of God's standard, of God's law.

He uses the word iniquity in verse three, which means our own, or verse two, which means our own innate twistedness, our own inner perversity.

And of course, the point is that sin in all of its aspects is being discussed here.

Right?

The psalmist doesn't leave anything out.

All of sin, all of your sin, every aspect of your sin is included in what he's saying here.

So he uses these three words for sin, but then those three words for sin in verses one and two are receive a threefold forgiveness.

Right?

So three words for sin, he uses three different words for forgiveness as well.

He talks about, he says, your transgression is forgiven.

That word forgiven, sort of the imagery behind that word is to be carried away.

And so he's saying the transgression, this blessed man, right, this fortunate man, his transgression doesn't stick to him anymore.

Right?

It's no longer, he's no longer associated with his rebellion.

Then he says that his sin is covered, it's hidden from sight.

God himself no longer sees this person's sin.

Then he says his iniquity is not counted against him.

The point is, God doesn't hold his crookedness against him any longer.

God doesn't hold his rebellious nature against him any longer.

His sin doesn't count in the divine reckoning.

You see, these three images then combine to convince us that this is the fortunate person.

His sin really is forgiven in its totality.

Every aspect of it has been taken care of.

All his wickedness, every sin, every perverse thought, every angry word, every selfish act, the very bent of his soul, his very inner sinfulness, it's all been carried away or covered over or not counted against him any longer.

This is the fortunate person.

Now, if you don't understand how this would be so desirable that the psalmist would call it blessed or fortunate, I mean, just consider this.

You know, in any relationship, when you hurt someone you love, you you you you feel you feel badly, right?

When you hurt somebody you love, you feel badly, you feel kind of a relational tension.

Husbands, you know this well, right?

When you've hurt your wife in some way, and uh you've made her sad, and you you you feel pain about that, right?

You feel sad about that.

But the weight is lifted when the person responds, I forgive you.

Don't worry about it, don't think about it anymore.

You see, uh here in verse in Psalm 32, of course, it's God.

God is the one who is forgiving the psalmist, who's forgiving David.

His forgiveness, God's forgiveness is what it means to really be blessed.

God's forgiveness is the cause of joy.

It's the cause for rejoicing.

Then in verses three and four, though, we see that that silence is the killer of joy.

Silence is the killer of joy.

See, the sweeping blessing in verses one and two takes sort of an odd twist.

Excuse me.

Verses one and two say, 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 is no deceit.

See, the psalm is not just about forgiveness, but it's also about deceit.

Deceit and honesty.

See, it's the honest person, he's the one who is happy and fortunate and blessed.

The honest person.

Right?

Again, look at the end of verse 2.

Blessed is the man in whose spirit there is no deceit.

This blessing is is for someone, it's for the honest man.

Now, clearly that doesn't mean the one who's never lied or the one who's never sinned in that way, never been deceitful.

A psalmist is talking about a specific kind of honesty, a relational honesty.

Again, something that's important for all relationships.

When we sin against one another in our relationships, it's important that we don't try to cover things up.

We don't try to be deceptive about the ways that we've wronged people, but that we're willing to be open and acknowledge when we've wronged those around us.

And think about why that's so important.

I mean, the more you hide in any relationship, the more you hold back, the more you you sin and then try to hide that sin or cover up that sin, the more you hide, the less intimacy you enjoy.

And trying to deceive God about our sin actually hinders our experience of happiness in our relationship to Him.

Look at verses three and four.

David says, 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.

See, David says, When I kept silent, and David knew his sin.

Maybe he's talking about his sin with Bathsheba here.

It's also talked about in Psalm 51.

Maybe not.

Maybe he's talking about some other sin.

But the point is, he knew his sin, but he kept quiet about it.

He didn't want anyone to know about it.

Maybe he wanted to hold on to it.

Maybe he didn't want to stop.

Maybe he was afraid of the consequences.

But whatever the case, he holds on to his sin.

He keeps quiet about his sin.

And look at the results of keeping quiet, the results of hiding from God.

The results of sort of avoiding the exposure of his sin, avoiding that vulnerability.

The first result is physical, isn't it?

David says his bones wasted away.

Maybe God was inflicting some kind of physical discipline on David.

That's possible.

Or maybe it's just that mysterious connection between the spiritual and the physical, right?

Like stress causing a stomach ulcer.

I mean, these things are connected.

And maybe carrying around the weight of his guilt makes David's body just begin to break down as he wrestles with the guiltiness of his soul.

Whatever the case, David's keeping quiet.

It leads to this physical suffering, his bones wasting away.

And yet there's not just physical suffering, but there's a physical reaction.

David groans all day long.

He can't stop thinking about his sin.

His guilt hounds him.

He groans in anguish over it nonstop.

And then night and day, God's hand is upon him.

Maybe God is bringing his guilt to mind.

Maybe there's some other measure of discipline.

Again, whatever the case, God just won't let it go.

Day and night, God's hand is heavy upon him.

To the point that David's strength is dried up.

His strength is gone.

Like someone who spent too much time in the sun.

David's exhausted, he's worn out, he's tired, his guilt has gotten the better of him.

Have you ever been there?

Right?

Where you're you're you you've done something wrong.

You know you've done something wrong, and the guilt just consumes you.

You can't get the sin out of your mind.

There's this ache in your soul, there's this feeling of foreboding, it just won't go away.

You know, there's lots of ways that we deal with that, aren't there?

I mean, when we feel guilty, when we feel convicted, because that's what we're talking about, right?

Conviction of sin.

When we feel bad because of the things that we've done, we we tend to want to get rid of those feelings as quickly as possible.

Right?

We don't want to feel that way.

And so when we feel like David in verses 3 and 4, and the guilt is just heavy upon us, often there are different ways that we deal with it.

Uh, one is self-justification, right?

We begin to rationalize our sin away.

We say, well, it's really not so bad after all.

I mean, everybody's doing it.

We just kind of explain away the guilt to make ourselves feel better.

Another way is through self-indulgence, right?

We we numb away the guilt with pleasure or even with pain, right?

Anything to get rid of the guilt, anything to get rid of the feelings, anything to feel better.

So we we justify ourselves, we indulge ourselves.

Sometimes we turn to self-righteousness or legalism.

We try to cover over our guilt with good works, right?

If I can just do enough good, maybe my guilt will go away.

If I go to church, if I read my Bible, if I pray enough, maybe I'll feel better.

Maybe my good deeds will outweigh my bad, and I won't have to think about my guilt anymore.

Self-justification, self-indulgence, right, self-righteousness, even, right, self-inflicted punishment.

You know, we seek to satisfy justice on God's behalf, so to speak.

If I just feel really bad for my sin, or if I punish myself in some way for what I've done, then maybe I'll feel better.

You know, Christians, we we do this all the time.

You know, we we try to feel as bad as we can for as long as we can to kind of make God happy, to make him think that we've repented enough.

The problem is what all of those things have in common is that in each of those different ways, we're trying to save ourselves.

We're trying to save ourselves by covering over our sin.

We cover it over with rationalization, we cover it over with pleasure and pain, we we cover it over with good deeds.

We even try to cover our objective guilt, the fact that we are guilty, with subjective, guilty feelings.

All of those are different ways of trying to save ourselves.

Maybe I can cover my sin.

Maybe I can get rid of my guilt on my own.

The Bible calls all of that worldly grief that leads to death.

Worldly grief that leads to death.

See, guilt that leads to those things is wasted guilt.

It's wasted guilt.

It's not what David does.

David doesn't waste his guilt.

See, the Bible says there is a worldly grief, a worldly guilt, but there's also a godly grief.

A godly guilt.

And 2 Corinthians 7 is where it talks about that, and it says, godly grief produces repentance.

It goes somewhere, it doesn't turn in on itself, but but godly grief, it goes somewhere, rather, it goes to someone.

When we respond in a godly way to guilt, rather than cover our sin, you expose your sin to God.

You become vulnerable before Him.

You stand before God naked in your sin.

You see, guilt, guilt is good, but it's meant to drive us somewhere.

It's meant to drive us to someone.

Not to wallow in your guilt.

Don't wallow in your guilt.

That won't do any good.

But be motivated by it to repentance, to be honest before God about your sin.

You know, we often think that guilt motivation is bad, and it is, except in this one case, right?

I mean, repentance is to be motivated, at least in part, by a sense of our own sin.

If we have no sense of our sin, we're not going to repent.

See, godly grief over sin is meant to lead to honest confession of our sin.

That's where it's meant to go.

Guilt should lead to honesty.

Silence for David brought the weight of guilt on his shoulders.

Silence was the killer of his joy, but honesty is the path to joy.

Look at verse five.

Verse five says, 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.

See, verses one and two talk about uh this threefold transgression, sin, and iniquity, and moves to you know the threefold carrying and covering and not counting.

But it does that by way, here in verse 5, of a threefold honesty.

Three times David talks about how he he confesses his sin.

He talks about acknowledging it and not covering it and confessing it to God.

See, the weight of David's silent guilt leads him to make some honest noise before God.

Three times he talks about his truth-telling about himself, repeating those three words for sin from verses 1 and 2.

He acknowledges his sin.

He does not cover his iniquity.

He confesses his transgression.

David's trying to be complete.

He confesses his soul, whole sin.

As much as he knows, of course, he doesn't know everything surely, but he confesses as much as he knows.

He takes it to God.

He confesses even the sinfulness of his sin.

He's not just relating behavior, right?

He's confessing sin, acknowledging wrong.

And the Lord forgives.

The Lord lifts off his sin.

The Lord carries away his burden.

You see, the irony there is that when David, it's only when David uncovers his sin that God covers it for him and carries it away.

Only when David is willing to be exposed does God hide him in his mercy.

See, we want to hide our sin out of fear, but only through confession is our sin really hidden from God's sight.

Hidden from Him because removed by Him, forgiven by Him.

We need to own up to God.

Own up to God about the mess in our hearts day by day.

Own up to God about all the feelings that we try to hide, all the feelings that we don't let anybody else know.

We need to take those to God, confess them to Him.

We need to be honest about our mess and our brokenness.

And as you do, the result will be forgiveness that leads to joy.

You know, the psalm ends, like we said, with this threefold call to praise.

Forgiveness leads to joy.

David says, Be glad in the Lord at the end.

Be glad in the Lord who's carried away your transgression.

Rejoice in the Lord who's covered all of your sin.

Shout for joy in the Lord who does not count your iniquity against you.

You see, your sin was like a weight, like a burden, like a barrier in your relationship to the Father.

But God has removed that burden and destroyed that barrier.

And so the psalmist has moved us from sin to guilt to honesty to forgiveness and to joy.

Now, something still seems to get in the way.

You know, our fear remains, doesn't it?

I mean, will God really accept me?

I mean, you say to be honest, but but how do I know?

And once I've exposed my sin, I can't cover myself back up again.

If I let it out, there's no taking it back.

How do I know that God will really receive me if I'm really honest about what's going on in my heart?

Well, of course, the only answer to that is we can be honest because of the cross.

You know, Jesus had no guilt.

He had no guilty feelings because he had no guilt of sin.

Jesus was guilt-free.

And yet, six out of seven uses of the word guilt in the English New Testament, really interestingly, they refer, they refer to Pilate saying that he finds no guilt in Jesus.

Six out of seven times you find that word guilt in the New Testament, in the English New Testament, right?

Pilate is saying he finds no guilt in Jesus.

And yet Jesus took our guilt upon himself, didn't he?

He bore our burden.

Think about the, again, the three terms used for forgiveness here.

First, Jesus carried our sin so that we wouldn't have to.

You know, the word forgiveness, again, it means it means to lift or to carry.

It means to remove a burden off of someone's shoulders.

Of course, it's more than that with Jesus, isn't it?

Because he not only lifted our burden of sin, he carried it himself.

He lifted it off of us and bore it in his own body.

Peter says he himself bore our sin in his body on the tree.

See, Jesus took our burden that we might be forgiven.

He bore it so we wouldn't have to.

And of course, was Christ was uncovered so that you could be covered.

You know, we live our lives trying to hide.

Clothing is symbolic of that, isn't it?

It's meant to sort of cover over our shame.

Of course, it can't do that.

But Jesus died.

He died naked, naked on a tree, taking our sin and unclothed, that the shame of our nakedness might be covered, that our sin and shame might no longer be seen by God.

And Jesus gives us his righteousness, his righteousness as a covering for our sin.

And of course, your sin was counted against Christ, so that it wouldn't be counted against you.

When Jesus went to the cross, he bore our sins, as we've said.

And another way to say that is that our sin was counted against him.

And if it was counted against him, it won't be counted against you.

He paid the debt we owe, which means we are debt-free before God.

See, Jesus was naked and exposed and vulnerable on the cross.

Our sin was counted against him, that we might be clothed in his righteousness and have it count for us.

See, the irony of irony is there that we must be willing to be exposed and vulnerable before God, naked in his presence, if we are to be fully clothed in the righteousness of Jesus.

Being honest is the path from guilt to joy.

Being naked and exposed before God is actually the path to being clothed and covered by Him with His righteousness.

Of course, all of that means we can be honest before Him without fear.

God cannot reject you if you come to Him through Jesus.

In Jesus, we stand clothed without any fear of rejection for who we are or what we've done.

We can come to God through Jesus.

Your sin will be carried by him on the cross, covered with his blood and righteousness, and not counted against you any longer.

But the truth of the matter is, even as Christians, we need to do this every day.

We need to come to God every day.

You know, in one sense, when we come to Jesus for the very first time, all of our sins are forgiven, past, present, and future.

When we're joined to Christ by faith, God's judgment and wrath are fully dealt with and we're safe.

But our relationship with God is dynamic, it's not static.

It's a relationship with a real person.

He desires for us to come and ask for that forgiveness, and he promises to forgive when we do.

It's the way relationships work, isn't it?

I mean, rather than taking people's love for granted, we seek forgiveness when we sin against them.

We give them the joy of offering that forgiveness, which gives us the joy of receiving it afresh day after day.

Seek that joy.

1 John 1.9 says, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sin and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Let your guilt drive you to honesty with your Savior.

Day after day after day, that you might find joy again in his forgiveness and mercy.

Let's pray.

Father, we come before you and we confess.

We confess how often we fall short.

We confess the desires of our heart are wrong.

We confess that we love so many things in this world that we shouldn't love.

We confess that we want so many things we shouldn't want.

We confess that we we hate people when we should love them.

We confess, Father, that rather than delighting in you, we delight in the world.

Rather than caring for our neighbor, we care only about ourselves.

Father, we confess just the wickedness of our hearts, our iniquity, the crookedness of our very souls.

And we confess those things, knowing without a doubt, that you will forgive us because of what you have done in your son Jesus.

Father, teach us to run to you, to run to you, to delight in you, to enjoy you, to seek forgiveness in you.

And teach us to have the confidence that knows that we will find it because of your son.

We pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.