Jump Start # 3718
Psalms 32:3 “When I kept silent about my sin, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long.”
I love how honest, open and even raw the Psalms are. They often reveal things that we feel, but we’d never admit them. The Psalms do.
Our verse today was written by King David. He was not in a good place. This was not one of the best days of his life. He felt like he was dying. I’ve seen cancer patients wasting away. Energy, strength and life all drained from them. They haven’t eaten in days and there is nothing to them any more. Families gather and just stare as all life seeps away from the dying patient. This was David. Yet, he did not have cancer. His problem was self inflicted. It was sin. And, for a long time, David tried to keep quiet about the sin. Bathsheba knew about some of the sin. It involved her. David’s commander knew about some of the sin, it involved him. The longer David kept quiet, the more life was being drained from him. The fun of sin had quickly turned to shame, fear and guilt. And, more than anything else, David knew that God knew. Yet, David remained quiet.
This is a great lesson for us. Sin doesn’t go away on it’s own. A person can move, yet the sin in the heart remains. We can busy ourselves with superficial things, yet the sin remains. We know. God knows. And, as long as one keeps quiet about it, the joy and peace in our hearts leave us.
Psalms 32 fits with Psalms 51 and David’s sins concerning Bathsheba and the coverup that followed. Psalms 51 is David’s confession. Open. Honest. Humble. Broken. Penitent. Psalms 32 describes the before and after picture of David as he was dealing with his sins. You’ve seen pictures of people before they were on drugs and then after they were on drugs. Hardly looks like the same person.
Our verse describes the internal guilt that was eating away at David. He was like an old man. In other verses he feels as if God’s heavy hand is crushing him. He states that his vitality was gone. But as he confesses his sin, sunlight flows once more in his heart. Joy returns as he again walks in righteousness.
At the beginning of this chapter, three different words are used: transgression, sin and iniquity. In one way, they seem the same. They describe the heart that abandons the Lord. However, these words do have different specific directions.
· Transgression involves rebellion, going away from what is right. This is descriptive of the relationship with God. One has turned against God.
· Sin means to miss the mark. It identifies our relationship with God’s law, we missed it.
· Iniquity carries the idea of deception, cover up and it reveals our relationship to ourselves. We have lied and deceived ourselves.
Notice three quick lessons from all of this:
First, things do not get better on their own. We know this in life. It is true spiritually. If you look up one day and see water spots on your ceiling, you don’t think, ’It’ll go away in time.’ In time, your upstairs may fall to your downstairs. Your engine light comes on your car. You can put a piece a tape over it and ignore it, but it will still be there until your car breaks down one day.
A sour spirit doesn’t just get better on it’s own. An unforgiving heart doesn’t get better on it’s own. And, for David, months after the sin, things were not getting any better. A person may even forget about the wrongs that he did, but that doesn’t mean God has forgotten them.
Second, God urged David through the prophet Nathan. “Thou art the man,” sure rings true to David’s heart. When the one sheep was lost, it was the shepherd who left the ninety-nine and went looking for the lost. When the coin was lost in the house, Luke 15 tells us, the floors were swept and a lamp was lit until it was found. God will come looking for you. It may be in a sermon that you are hearing on Sunday. It may be through this blog. It may be the voice of grandma or a dear friend. God can use every tool available to get you to stop playing hide and seek with Him.
Third, once David confessed, joy and hope were restored. He likely wished that he had not waited so long. Maybe he was afraid. Maybe he thought even God will forget. But, the longer he remained silent, the more lifeless his soul became. God is calling upon us to be honest with our sins and transparent with Him.
David felt like an old man. Sin will do that to your soul. One doesn’t have to live that way.
Roger