The Blessing of Forgiveness

Psalm 32. Blessed are the forgiven. 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.

Selah. Selah. I acknowledge my sin to you. I did not cover my iniquity. I said, I will confess my transgressions to the Lord.

And you forgave the iniquity of my sin. Selah. Selah. Selah. Selah.

Selah. 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.

Selah. Selah. Selah. Selah. 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.

Thank you very much for reading, First Faye. If you were here five Sundays ago when we began this summer in the Psalm sermon series, you might recall that we began in Psalm 1.

Psalm 1 extols the blessedness of the righteous man, the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers, but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. But this morning, as we continue our summer in the Psalm sermon series, we come to Psalm 32, and we encounter another man, another man who is also described as blessed. But in the circumstances of Psalm 32, this man that we're considering this morning is very different from the man we considered in Psalm 1. This man in Psalm 32 knows firsthand that in and of himself he is not righteous.

This man in Psalm 32 has sinned. And even after sinning for an extended period of time, this man in Psalm 32 resisted confessing his sin to God. And yet, this man in Psalm 32 is described exactly like the man in Psalm 1. Both of them are described as blessed. Why is this man in Psalm 32 blessed? In fact, how can he be blessed? It's not hard to see why the man in Psalm 1 is blessed.

But what about this man in Psalm 32? How can this man be blessed? Why is he blessed?

This morning, by God's grace, I pray that we will see how this man in Psalm 32 is blessed. But first, let me pray for us. Father, would you draw near to us now? Your word has been read, and now as it is preached, would you open our hearts and our eyes to the truth of your word, Lord, and would you speak to us? Lord, you alone knows exactly where each of us is and what we need to hear.

So, Lord, would you speak to all of us, and indeed, would you speak to each of us? And we ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. From the superscription of Psalm 32, we know that David wrote this psalm.

But we don't know the exact context of the psalm. What we're able to see is Psalm 32 is the personal testimony of David on the issue of sin and God's forgiveness.

David sinned. And David writes a song about his sin and God's forgiveness of his sin.

And David's song that he wrote doesn't remain as a personal song. It doesn't remain as a song that he listens to in the quietness of his home.

David's song that he wrote ends up in the psalms, in God's word, for all of God's people.

And the reason it's not confined to David is because what David writes about is relevant to all of God's people. All of God's people need to hear what David testifies about in Psalm 32 because even though we are God's people, even though God has saved us, one of the realities of being a Christian is that we still sin.

And sometimes we even sin seriously of the kind, although we don't know specifically, but of the weighty kind that we obviously see in Psalm 32.

Psalm 32 brings us face to face with this inescapable reality that we who belong to God, though he has redeemed us to himself, we still sin.

And sometimes we sin seriously. Psalm 32 may be organized around three activities that we see in the psalm.

And in our remaining time, I want to consider these three activities. The first activity that we see in Psalm 32 is the activity of concealing sin. That's what the psalmist testifies to doing in verses three to four.

And he recounts how his silence about his sin affected him both spiritually and physically. Look again at how he says it in verse three. 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.

What is clear from Psalm 32 verses three and four is that the psalmist was not being silent about what deceased theologian Jerry Bridges called respectable sins.

The psalmist was not being silent about respectable sins. Sins like anger and gossip and envy and gratefulness and jealousy.

Jerry Bridges in his book Respectable Sins highlights these sins among others and he categorizes them as sins that we as Christians have somehow gotten comfortable in committing.

Although we do our very best to avoid the weightier sins, it seems like what David is experiencing, what he testifies of experiencing in Psalm 32 is not among those respectable sins.

It's among the weightier sins. sins, the sins that we seek to avoid, the sins that shame us. The psalmist was concealing his sin.

He tells us in verse 3 that his bones, as he did this, his bones were wasting away. The psalmist in verse 3 is testifying to the spiritual reality of the spiritual crisis that happens in our souls when we do not confess sin as God's people.

It has negative consequences on our bodies. The psalmist was experiencing in his body the result of not confessing sin, but more than that.

What the psalmist was also experiencing, he tells us in verse 4, was that he was under God's heavy hand of conviction. That's what he says in verse 4.

What he experiences in verses 3 and 4 is because he was remaining silent about his sin and concealing it in his bosom. And God was dealing with the psalmist.

The psalmist was not dealing with God. The psalmist was silent toward God. But God was dealing with the psalmist and God's hand was heavy upon him.

So heavy, he says, I had no strength. The psalmist says that he was as if his strength was drained by the heat of summer.

I thought this was a very vivid description, an illustration of what kind of sensation the psalmist was going through as he walked through this moment.

And I thought in this season that we are in with the constant power outages and heat, if you don't have a generator that we could identify with, having our strength sat from us because of the heat.

I was literally preparing this sermon on Friday in the midst of a five hour blackout and literally I was so spent, I could only lay on the floor in my office and try to recover.

And I thought the psalmist did a great job of describing how little energy he had because of what he was going through in this crisis in his life.

Now once again, we don't know the specific sin that the psalmist was concealing. Some have speculated that David in Psalm 32 is again recounting and referring to his sin of adultery with Bathsheba and his murder of her husband Uriah and the other deceptions surrounding his sins.

But we can't know that for sure. We don't know that. And anything beyond what is written here is pure speculation. And the reason we don't know is we don't need to know.

I believe that it is by divine design that we do not know specifically what the psalmist was silent about.

It's by God's design that we don't know that. And it's by God's design we don't know that because we don't need to know that. We don't need to know that to benefit from Psalm 32.

But it still raises the question what made the psalmist continue in this state of silence and concealment of his sin?

Was it that the sin or the sins were so shameful that he was motivated to conceal them and not confess them? was it perhaps a habitual sin over which he was in deep despair that he had failed once again and there was no evident progress?

Sometimes when we fall prey to habitual sin, we can even entertain the thought, will God forgive me again?

Why should he forgive me again? And we despair and so we remain silent about our sin towards God.

I was thinking that among the repeated questions that I have received as a pastor over 36 years now, this would be one of the repeated questions.

Would God forgive me again after I have failed so many times? Recently I had someone say to me, I think God has just given upon me.

When you feel that God's there's silence towards God. Or maybe the psalmist was silent about his sin because he had not yet repented of his sin.

And sometimes that is our circumstance. Sometimes we aren't confessing our sin because we have not yet repented and turned away from our sin.

And there are many other reasons that sin may go unconfessed and there may be silence between God and a believer who has sinned.

But whatever it is, whatever it is, Psalm 32 deals with this issue of the psalmist remaining silent concerning his sin.

Well, again, we don't know how long the psalmist remained in this condition. It seems like it was a prolonged period of time because of what he experienced in his body.

But the good news is he didn't remain there. However long the psalmist wrestled with this silence before God concerning his sin, what we see is he did not remain there.

And this brings me to the second activity that we see in Psalm 32, which is also my second point, and that is confessing sin. We move from concealing sin to confessing sin.

That's what we see the psalmist doing in verse 5. He says in verse 5, 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.

The psalmist's confession is expressed in three ways. First, he acknowledged his sin to God. He ceased covering it up and he outrightly confessed his transgressions to the Lord.

God's confession to confessing his sin. Why does he do that? The psalmist does that for one reason. The psalmist does that because God mercifully convicted the psalmist.

God's conviction was upon him. confession is more than mouthing words, mouthing even the right words, and glossing over sin and quickly moving on.

Confession of sin is taking responsibility for our sin. It is being honest before God concerning our sin. And true confession of our sin is only possible when by God's grace we can overcome whatever it was that caused us to conceal our sin and be silent about it in the first place.

Whatever in a moment will cause us to conceal our sin unless and until that goes away we will not confess our sin.

Whether it is shame or despair or unrepentance whatever that barrier is to confessing sin it is only when that is removed that we will be made right with God and we will see being right with God more important than whatever that barrier is.

That is the only time that we can honestly come before the Lord and confess our sins. As I prepared this sermon I reflected on my years of doing prison ministry and encountering men who were guilty of crimes or who had been charged some cases convicted some cases not yet convicted and some were privately acknowledging their sin but publicly denying their sin.

Privately acknowledging their crime but publicly denying it. Brothers and sisters biblical confession doesn't work that way. If my wife says to me you were harsh and short with me when we spoke this morning and I say no I wasn't and then I go before the Lord and I said Lord forgive me for being harsh and short with my wife I'm not doing business with God.

If I'm going to do business with God I have to acknowledge to my wife yes I was. Would you forgive me for doing that? Brothers confession biblical confession calls us to do business both with God confession and with those against whom we have sinned.

Confession must be honest before the Lord. So the psalmist came to a place he came to a place of openness and honesty before God confessed his sin.

We now come to the third activity that we find in Psalm 32. The psalmist finally confessed his sin and we're told at the end of verse 5 that God forgave the iniquity of his sin.

And the third activity that we see is what God does. And it's also my third and final point which is covering sin. That's what God does. And I've used covering sin instead of forgiving sin because I think it makes a better point of what God actually does in forgiveness.

What God does in forgiveness is he covers us. He doesn't just say, oh, you're forgiven. But he also covers our sin.

In verse 1, the psalmist says, blessed is the man whose transgression is forgiven, comma, whose sin is covered.

That's what it means to be forgiven. It means to have our sin covered. True forgiveness is a covering of sin.

True forgiveness is not raising it up again and throwing it in a person's face. True forgiveness is covering it, never to be mentioned again.

The prophet Micah in Micah 7 verses 18 19 rejoices over how God forgives his people and how he covers their sins.

He says, who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity, passing over transgression for the remnant of his inheritance?

He does not retain his anger forever because he delights in steadfast love. He will again have compassion on us. He will tread our iniquities underfoot.

You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea. The prophet Micah says that God takes our sins.

When he forgives us, he takes our sins and he casts them into the deepest place that you can place anything on this earth. If there's a place that you want to forget about something, you want to throw something away forever, never to be reunited with again, you don't dig a hole because you would even see the place where you dug the hole and you could only really go down so far and so you don't dig a hole.

What you do is you throw in the ocean. You throw it in the depths of the sea. And when you're thrown in the ocean, the ocean looks just like it did before you threw it in.

And you can't tell where that was. The ocean covers it completely. And the prophet Micah says that's what God does with our sins. He covers them in the depths of the ocean never to be seen ever again.

that's the effect of forgiveness. Our sins are covered never to be remembered against us again.

And I'm sure all of us in this room are old enough to experience human forgiveness. Human forgiveness by and large is not like that.

Human forgiveness in a lot of cases is a layaway. It's not a covering. It's a layaway on an easily accessible shelf to be pulled at the opportune time before us.

Micah says no, God doesn't do that with us. He takes it and casts it into the depths of the sea. The psalmist says something similar in verse 2, but from a different perspective.

He says blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity. He's saying that the man against whom God holds no record of sin is a blessed man.

God forgives and he holds no record of our sins. In our criminal justice system, when a person commits a crime, even after they've paid the fine or they have spent the time, they have a record.

They have what is called a criminal record. and the reality is it is held against them. Why else would there be a record?

If the fine and if spending the time was intended to fully deal with the sin, why would there be a record of it? there be a record of it?

If it has already been dealt with? I remember a number of years ago, and some of you would remember I've shared this before, I was doing some yard work and there was a guy I had met in prison ministry and I was aware that he had come out and he needed work, so I had him to come and help me several days work in the yard and he was helping me with that.

And then on one of the days, he told me, he said, you know, I can't come early in the morning, I have to go and deal with the police record, I have to pick up my police record.

And he was really troubled by it and was just saying how he was still going to try to find a job, but he had such a serious record, he wasn't very, very hopeful.

And so the next morning, later in the day, I saw him coming in the yard and he had a big smile on his face. And I couldn't understand why, why is he smiling?

And he came to me, he said, Pastor Moss, Pastor Moss, here's my police record. And I'd only, at that point, seen half page police records, you know, the short ones.

I'd never seen a full page police record. And he had two pages. And I couldn't understand what he was excited about.

He said, Pastor Moss, a page missing. And I thought to myself, I'd never seen anything like that.

He was excited because he didn't get his whole record. But just think for a moment. Suppose the Lord, even after he forgave us, tracked, gave us a sin record.

He just tracked all of our sins from the day we were born. And just think that maybe, you know, we have a sin record.

We're forgiven, but we have a sin record. How many pages do you think yours will be? how would you go pick it up?

The truck. Yeah, I think they would have to put them on, you know, those external hard drives, the terabyte ones, they would have to put them on a drive for us, if God would account our sins.

The good news, brothers and sisters, is God does not just forgive us. He doesn't hold a record of our sins. No record of it.

That is good news, brothers and sisters. Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity.

our sins have been forgiven. Sins are only truly covered when God covers them.

They are covered finally, they are covered fully, they are covered never to be raised or mentioned against us again.

you know one of the other common questions that I have received as a pastor over the years. Pastor, on judgment day, is the Lord going to call out all of our sins?

The Bible says we are going to give an account, we are going to stand before the judgment seat of Christ and we are going to give an account for everything that we have done in our bodies. Is God going to do that to us? And really what they are asking is this, is God going to go to the depths of the sea and pull up all of my sins and call me to account for them?

Brothers and sisters, if God does that, it is no different from human forgiveness to put it on a shelf, to take it back down, to recount it before us.

If God does that, then what did Jesus accomplish on the cross? If God does that, was it really finished? Did Jesus really pay it all?

God has forgiven us and he separated us from our sins as far as the east is from the west and he's not going on that final day to bring them again.

and ask us, because what would we say? What would be the point? If God were to do that, if God were to do that, what do we do with them? What would be the point?

To shame us? While the whole world is watching Cedric Moss, you did this when you were six. Now, brothers and sisters, God covers our sins.

He separates them from us forever. There's a connection that is easy to miss in Psalm 32 between verse 5 and verse 1.

The psalmist says in verse 5, I acknowledge my sin to you and I did not cover my iniquity. I said I will confess my transgression to the Lord and you forgave the iniquity of my sin.

What the psalmist is saying in verse 5, essentially, in context is, then I acknowledge my sin to you. Then I cease being silent about my sin to you.

I did not conceal my sin. I didn't cover my sin any longer. But what we see in verse 1 is the psalmist says, blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.

Do you know, as Adam's fallen race, as Adam's children, do you know that all of us reflexively seek to cover our sins?

all of us reflexively seek to cover our sins, to make ourselves look better, to make ourselves look innocent, sometimes to blame others for our sins, sometimes to excuse ourselves of our sins.

We're experts at that. sin. The first picture we have of sin, in Genesis 3, we see Adam and Eve becoming aware that they're naked, they sew together fig leaves, and they make loin cloths for themselves.

And then a little later on, in that same account, we see God coming, and what God does, is he sacrifices one or more animals, and what the Bible says he makes for them is garments of skin, not just loin cloths, not just to cover what they thought needed to be covered, but God made them garments, and he covered them, he covered them properly.

And brothers and sisters, it is a beautiful picture of the covering that we all need from God, that we cannot, in our own effort, cover our sins.

Our efforts are nothing more than fig leaves, loin cloths, that are perishing, that will go away, and God gives us something more permanent, more enduring, this garment that he gives us.

And for those of us that we connect the dots this morning, those of us who have come to Christ, that's a garment of righteousness that comes to us as a gift, not as a result of merit.

In light of God's gracious forgiveness, the psalmist in verse 6 says, 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. What is the psalmist saying? Who are the godly who should pray?

The godly are God's people. God's forgiveness will be faithful. The psalmist seems to be saying two things. First, he's saying, in light of God's gracious forgiveness, God's people should freely pray to him and confess their sins, and they should do so early.

And second, he seems to be saying that those who pray to God early, confessing their sins, will be spared from the overwhelming consequences of remaining silent in their sin and about their sin.

Brothers and sisters, we should not miss what the psalmist says in verse 6, that although God's people sin, they are still rightly described as godly.

Still rightly described as godly, even though they sin. Our reality is that we are both righteous and sinners at the same time.

Notice also in verse 11, that the psalmist refers to God's people as the righteous, contrasting them with the wicked in verse 10. How is it that God's people who sin and are described, they are described as godly and righteous?

How is that? How is How is sin? Because we did not become godly and righteous by ceasing to sin.

That's not the way you become godly and righteous. You don't become godly and righteous by waking up one day and ceasing to sin. And therefore, by the same token, if we don't become godly and righteous by ceasing to sin, we do not become ungodly and unrighteous when we sin.

We become godly and righteous because God in His mercy saved us and brought us to Himself and made us His own.

And salvation on this side of eternity doesn't perfect us, but it makes us godly and declares us righteous and because we are the godly, we will pray to God.

Even if we delay doing it as the psalmist testifies to doing here in Psalm 32. In verse 7, the psalmist testifies of God and he says, you are hiding place for me, you preserve me from trouble, you surround me with shouts of deliverance.

brothers and sisters, what we see is that we are to see God as the one in whom we hide rather than the one from whom we hide.

We don't run from the Lord, we don't hide from the Lord. That's what Adam and Eve did when they sinned. They ran and hid themselves from God and God sought them out and God spoke kindly to them, was merciful to them.

And the psalmist is testifying, he's essentially saying, what was I delaying for? God is merciful, God is a hiding place for those who come to him.

And therefore he says to us, seek the Lord early. He's a hiding place. He preserves us from trouble and surrounds us with shouts of deliverance.

He's not saying that trouble will never come to us. We've all lived long enough to know that's not true. We're not exempt as God's people.

We get sick like unbelievers. We have car accidents like unbelievers. We have other accidents like unbelievers. Sometimes our marriages break down like unbelievers.

We lose jobs like unbelievers. Businesses fail like unbelievers. God does not exempt us from those things. what he promises is that he will keep us in the midst of those things.

Those troubles and trials will not overwhelm us because God surrounds his people and he will deliver his people in the midst of those difficulties.

And the truth is that no victory that we experience in this life is permanent. we may get sick and healed and we'll get sick again.

There's no permanent victory in this life. The permanent victory that we can all look forward to is in the life to come. That's when the victory is final.

The words of verses 8 and 9, you'll notice, are not in quotation marks. But when we read those words, it's clear that it is God speaking and not the psalmist.

It is God speaking to his people in verses 8 and 9 and not the psalmist. The psalmist would not be saying, I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go. I will counsel you with my eye upon you.

God's promise to his people. It's God's promise to his people.

It begins first with the psalmist. He first promises that to the psalmist. The psalmist who had sinned and who was concealing his sin and who was being silent before the Lord.

And the Lord has forgiven him. The Lord makes this gracious promise to him. I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go. I will counsel you with my eye upon you.

And then verse 9, we see the admonishment. 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.

what a wonderful promise. What a sober admonition. The promise that God will stay near to us and he will lead us and guide us by the admonition that we must not be like a horse or a mule.

One without understanding. And see, side by side, those are the two options. The first option is in verse 8, to be this teachable one whom God can instruct with his word, with his eyes upon us, leading and guiding us.

That's the person who is being led by God's word, who is being obedient to God's word. God is leading that person, guiding that person. The other option, verse 9, is to not be guided by God's word, to be stubborn, or to be without understanding as a horse or a mule.

You know, no one would, in his or her right mind, would think of riding a mule or a horse, just jump on them and say, let's go, turn left, turn right, with no harness, no bridle over their head, and a bit in their mouth to lead them and guide them in the way they should go.

No one thinks about doing that because those are animals that can't think. And the picture is, the picture is, that God is saying that sometimes we as his people, we can be that way, not guided by his word, and it is as if he needs to put a bridle on our head, a harness on our head, a bit in our mouth like a horse, and direct us, discipline us to go the way that he wants us to go.

Brothers and sisters, that's not the way God wants us to live and to be, not like a horse or a mule without understanding, who needs that kind of on-hands discipline, admonishment to do the right thing.

But sadly, sometimes we live that way and God has to pull us out of danger and pull us away from sin and from self-destruction.

although Psalm 32 is, it's really a weighty psalm. It's a weighty psalm about how God's people can sometimes sin and conceal their sin, but it's amazing how Psalm 32 begins and how it ends.

First two verses and last two verses. In verses one and two, we're told that God covers the sins of his people through forgiveness and that makes them blessed.

And then verses 11 and 12, we're told that God's steadfast love surrounds his people, those who trust in him.

And the good news, brothers and sisters, is steadfast love is exactly that. It's steadfast love. It never changes. steadfast love is the same after we have sinned as it was before we sinned.

In many ways, I think this is very difficult for us to comprehend because we generally know actions and consequences, actions and people changing towards us, God's love towards his children is steadfast.

It is unchanging. And we see the psalmist sandwiching Psalm 32 with these two verses in the beginning and at the end, talking about the blessedness of the one who is forgiven and then talking about the steadfast love that surrounds the people of God, those who trust in him, calling them to rejoice, calling them to be glad, O righteous, to shout for joy, you upright and high, because that is the way God sees his children.

brothers and sisters, we should all be amazed that verses 1 and 2 in Psalm 32 are true about us.

That should amaze us. That should amaze all of us, that that is true about us. 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.

Why should we be amazed? We should be amazed because rather than being blessed, cursed, we all deserve to be cursed.

We all deserve to be cursed for our many sins. But despite being deserving to be cursed, we're blessed.

And we're blessed because of another. another. We're blessed because of another who was cursed. We're blessed because of another who truly was righteous.

He was cursed in our place that we might be made righteous. And brothers and sisters, it's important for us to see that forgiveness is not God saying to us, don't worry about it.

That's not what forgiveness is. If God simply said to us, in response to our sins, don't worry about it, he would be unjust.

But that's not what he does. No, God forgave our sins and God forgives our sins because he crushed his son.

He crushed him on the cross as our substitute. Jesus took our place. Jesus took our punishment for our sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, that we might be forgiven of our sins, that our sins might be covered, and that we might be called those who are blessed.

That's how we are blessed. That's how the man in Psalm 32 is blessed. He is blessed because another was cursed. Justly that he might be forgiven, justly.

Jesus bore our sins, was justly punished for those sins, and God is therefore able to justly call sinners like you and me righteous, because that righteousness has been paid for in the death of his son.

Oh, the blessedness of the man and the woman whose sins have been forgiven, whose sins have been covered.

And again, part of the blessedness of that is knowing within ourselves we deserve otherwise. Every one of us, the best of us deserve otherwise.

And so we wear a garment of righteousness that God has given to us. So how do we respond to Psalm 32? How do we respond to this sermon this morning?

How do we respond to such amazing grace and steadfast love? Do we leave this place and live careless lives? And just say, you know, whatever happens, you know, God is going to take care of me, he's going to hold on to me.

That's not how I live. is that the way we respond? That's not the way we respond, brothers. If we hear the message of Psalm 32, if we heard the sermon this morning, the way we respond to this amazing grace and this steadfast love is we seek to live as debtors to the mercy of God, knowing we will never repay it.

we can never repay it. But we live as debtors to this mercy. This should cause us to humble ourselves and fall to our faces.

I really say with the psalmist in Psalm 8, Lord, why are you mindful of me in this way? Why is your love for me changing when I know within myself I don't deserve it?

Brothers and sisters, this correctly heard Psalm 32 in this sermon this morning is a motivation for us to live holy lives in gratitude to the amazing grace of God.

forgiving for forgiving sinners like you and me. But there are some of you this morning who are here or listening online and you don't know Jesus Christ as your Lord and personal Savior.

And to you, I want to invite you to respond to Psalm 32 and respond to this sermon by coming to Jesus.

Coming to the only one who is able to forgive you of your sins and to put you in a place that you can be among those who know the blessedness of the forgiveness of sins.

That your sins aren't held against you anymore. That your sins have been separated from you, they've been thrown into the sea of forgetfulness, never to be raised against you again.

I pray that you would respond in this way. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, thank you for amazing grace and for steadfast love.

it comes to sinners who deserve judgment and wrath. Thank you that we can be among those who are blessed because your son was cursed.

Cursed on our behalf. Would you help us, Lord, to live as deadest to your mercy, those of us who have trusted Jesus and those who do not know him.

Have mercy on them this morning. We pray in Christ's name. Amen. Let's stand together for our closing song.