Psalm 32 verse 5. Psalm 32 is a psalm of a penitent man. It is the second of what we call the seven penitential psalms. Psalm 6, 32, 38, 51, etc. These psalms are all distinguished by a grief and a sorrow for the sins of the psalmist. He's repenting, he is a penitent because he's fully aware of what his God thinks of sin. It is that abominable thing that I hate, he says in Jeremiah. And therefore if sin is a hateful thing to our God, then how much more should it be a hateful thing to us? Now the occasion of David penning this 32nd Psalm isn't 100% known, but most men take the view that it is concerning his great sin with Bathsheba. It's contemporary with Psalm 51. Whatever is the case, it is clear that he is crushed. He is under a huge weight. that's pressing down on him and he needs to rid himself of this weight, this crush, this pressure he's feeling because he has offended his God. And it's very instructive to us as to how we as believers, if we are believers this night, are to deal with our sins. We are to be on our guard, aren't we? Paul tells the Hebrews, we are to be on our guard lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. And that's the deceitfulness of sin, isn't it? It comes telling us it's not that bad. It's not really that abominable thing that God hates. See how deceitful our hearts are. But this psalm contains great instruction to us as to how to deal with our sin, because remember, it's the cry of a believer. This is a believer who knows that he has offended the majesty, the holiness of his God, and through this crushing weight, he has been brought to humble, contrite confession. He's been brought to repentance. He's been brought to penitence. Did we not sing that in Psalm 51? The only have I sinned, in thy sight I have done this ill. So we want to look at three things that our text speaks to us about the penitent man or the penitent woman. The first thing that we want to look at is the penitent's burdens. What is it that is burdening this penitent man? The first thing that we see from the text is very instructive. It's a personal thing. Four times in the text, he uses the personal pronoun, my. It's my sin. It's my iniquity. It's my transgression. It's the iniquity. of my sin. You see, the first step in dealing with sin is identifying it. You have to have that desire to identify the sin. That's the first mark of a penitent. You cannot relieve yourself of a crushing burden unless you have a desire to find it and get rid of it. If you deny its existence, we read that in 1 John. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves. Oh, how often we deceive ourselves. Our heart is so deceitful. He tried ignoring it. Verses three and four tell us the consequences. of what the psalmist's experience was when he tried to ignore my sin, my iniquity, my transgressions and the iniquity of my sin. The burden only got heavier. It crushed him even more. And there's four awful strands to this burden. The first is his sin. He is acknowledging his sin. You see, it would have been very easy for David to make a sweeping generalization, wouldn't it? Oh, forgive my sins. Or it would have been very easy to go into a confessional box, tell a man your sins. But what David is showing us here is that he is not sweeping over this with a broad brush. He's getting right down into the DNA of what sin is. And there's four strands that he's identified. First of all, he says he's a sinner. The word there means to miss the mark, missing the target. It's like, the picture that the word there is, it's like an arrow that's heading for the bullseye, but it can't hit it, it's impossible. The flights have been taken off, or the shaft has been twisted, and the arrow cannot hit the mark. He's constantly missing the standard that God has set. He's not treading the path that God has marked out, he's missing it. He's missing the steps. He's conceived in sin, he tells us in Psalm 51. See, David sees his sin, but not only does he see his sin, he sees his iniquity. The word there tells us, and it's a word that's been perverted in our own time, and that's the word that's perverted. It's been twisted in our time. so that it only relates to sexual misconduct or sexual immorality, but here David is using it in its true sense. It means to be twisted. You're bent out of shape. It's a bit like a key that's twisted and won't go in the lock. Or if you've ever taken a paper clip and you play with a paper clip and you unwind it, you can never get it back into the shape that it started. It's twisted, it's been bent out of shape. That's what David's saying here. I have a positive inclination to do wrong. I've been shaping an iniquity. My whole nature is corrupt. Why did I behave like this? Because I'm twisted, in the true sense of the word, because I'm a pervert. I'm perverted and twisted. David identifies the iniquity in his bosom. but he also sees his transgressions. It's another particular strand to this, and you see how he's not sweeping over it. He's saying, I know my transgressions. The word there means to rebel. It's the rebellious nature. We will not have this man to reign over us. Ye shall be his gods. You'll be your own gods. Ignoring the conscience. Do we do that? We know it's a sin. We know it's wrong. We ignore the conscience. Well, that's the rebellion. That's the defiance. That's the revolt in the natural heart. David's saying, I've transgressed. I've rebelled against God's law. And I did it willingly. You see, that's the nature of it, isn't it? I did it myself. It's nobody else's fault. It's my fault. So we have missing the mark. We have perverted and twisted out of shape. We have the rebellious nature in the heart, but there's something else. The iniquity of my sin. Now there's much opinion and views given on what this actually means and there's certainly many things present in this when David sees the iniquity of my sin. He's certainly saying that there was a calculation in his conduct and it was sustained over a long period of time and there was a hypocrisy in his deeds. There's also the strand that he mentioned in verses three and four, the ignoring it, the pretending that it didn't happen, the keeping silent. There's also the attempts to camouflage, to hide from it. But what we think the nub of this is that David has come to the point where he actually grasps how loathsome a thing his sin is and how Abhorrent it is to his God that it was deliberately carried out and then ignored. The exacerbating of the sin by not confessing, the exacerbating of the sin by ignoring the conscience and continuing on a path that he had set out. He could have stopped at any point. And we all know what the culmination of his conduct was. in the taking of a man's life. One man says this, in these five words, the iniquity of my sin, we have condensed the vile embodiment of the exceeding sinfulness of sin. The aggravation upon aggravation. We asked at the beginning, why did he not just make a sweeping generalization? Why did he not just simply say, I'm a sinner? Is he being overly melodramatic? Well, thankfully the answer is there for us in verse eight, why he has gone through this process so that you and I would be delivered from making the same mistakes. I will instruct thee and teach thee in the way that thou shalt go. Yes, God speaking to David, but David speaking to us. The instruction is there clear for us. His personal experience for our warning and for our instruction. He's given the model for self-examination. to look within us and see whether or not there is the sin of missing the mark, the iniquity of being twisted and perverted, the rebellious nature of the transgressions, and then the iniquity of the sin of trying to lessen its offence before God. And the greatest danger that you and I have is when we read this Psalm or when we read of David's conduct, because our hearts are hardened and deceitful, we'll automatically say, well, I'm not quite as bad as David. I haven't committed adultery. I haven't murdered anybody. I haven't sought to ignore my sins. Well, the Savior has something to say about that, hasn't he? He says, whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery in his heart. He says, whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer. Which one of us can say that we are not as bad as David? The penitent's burden, no wonder he's crushed. We see secondly, the penitent's duties. His duty could be summed up in one word. His duty is to repent. His duty is to come before the Lord in repentance and confess his sin. It's a constant in the believer's life, isn't it? That constant repentance. You know, we often hear, don't we, you reformed Christians, you're very morose. You're always talking about sin. You're always mentioning it in your prayers. You're always seeking forgiveness. I've repented. I've had my sins forgiven. So now I can really behave how I like. Well, when Christ came and began his public ministry, it is of no little significance that the first words that we have recorded from him are repent and believe for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. And the word there tells us very clearly that it's repent and go on repenting again and again and again and again. Keep on repenting. It's a daily exercise. Repentance is a duty, but it's also commanded. Repent and believe. It's very unfashionable. But to those who say it's unfashionable, that it's morose, and that it's unnecessary, we say this. It's a belittling of an understanding of the consequences of sin. and it's a disparaging of the price that was paid for its forgiveness. One man says there's only one power greater than sin, God. God is greater than sin and that dominant principle of sin has been broken. Sin shall no longer have dominion. Ah, but there are still the daily sins, so there's a duty on the penitent. What's the example that David sets us in our daily duties of repenting? Well, the first thing that we see is there's a resolution. There's a change in David. You see, he says, I said. There's a change. He didn't say it before. He wasn't saying anything before. He was keeping silent. But there's a resolve. He's resolved within himself and he's said, I have said, I have got to do something about this. Oh yes, it's all of grace. It's all of grace to be brought to the position, to the realization that you failed in your duties to confess. But David's been brought there. He's resolved anew. I'm going to rid myself of this burden. Was it not Bunyan that said, I must pray to confess even if my confession leads me into hell? The resolution to get rid of this burden. He's fed up with his bones waxing old. He's fed up with his roaring. He's fed up of the crushing weight of his sin. And he has now resolved to get rid of it. He's been brought low, hasn't he? He's been brought very low and he now has a positive determination, a positive resolve. He realizes that he must repent. So once he has this resolution, the first thing that he does is he acknowledges his sin. He acknowledges that he's missed the mark. There's an open acknowledgement. It's my sin, I missed the mark, it's me. And what Nathan said to him, thou art the man. Yes, I am the man, it's my sin. How deceitful is the heart. We see it at the very beginning in the Garden of Eden. Hast thou eaten of the tree that I have forbidden thee? The woman gave me it, it's not my fault. What hast thou done? It was the serpent. You see, right at the very beginning, there's a transference of the blame, not with David. He's resolved and he says, it is mine. It's my sin, the personal pronoun, my iniquity, my transgressions. And then we see he is acknowledging the fact that he misses the mark. And then he confesses that he was hiding His perverseness. I was trying to camouflage it. I was pretending it wasn't there. And now, because of this resolve, by God's grace, that I've been brought low, I'll take the veil off my sins. I'll uncover them all. I'll display them in all their ugly technicolour. The plottings, the scheming. Oh, how twisted. David was, and how twisted we are. Achan tried to hide his treasure, didn't he? He tried to hide the treasure away, to cover it over in the midst of his tent. And his sin had consequences not just on himself, but the whole of the children of Israel. He says, I have done wickedly. It's his duty to uncover his iniquities. And he confesses his transgressions. He confesses his rebelliousness. There's a free, candid confession. He says, it's my rebellious nature. It was my rebellious conduct that took me down the path. I have sinned against heaven. I am the man. You see, this is the only true confession, isn't it? One man says, I'm very, very good at identifying sin, as long as it's in other people. Is that not like ourselves? We can see the sin in other people very easily, but what about our own sins, our own iniquities, and our own transgressions? And so we ask in love, as I apply this to myself, We ask in love, what's your resolve this day? Is your resolve, have you said, this is the day for acknowledging my sins, uncovering my iniquities, and making full and free confession of my transgressions before my God. That's our duty. Our confession of faith is very, very clear. Man ought not to content himself with a general repentance, but it is every man's duty to repent of his particular sins particularly. But this is not a public thing. This is something that's done in the closet. This is something that is done on our knees before our God, fulfilling our duty. I have said I will come before God and cry, nothing in my hand I bring. Simply to thy cross I cling. Foul, filthy and odious, foul I to the fountain fly. Wash me, Saviour, or I die. That's the resolution in the penitent man. to flee to God with full apprehension of his mercy in Christ Jesus. See, natural man won't confess. Sin is so deceitful that sometimes even the believer won't confess. But David is thankful. David's thankful that he has been brought by grace to this point. Only the believer can be thankful for such a lowly condition. As one man says, the best place to view the cross is face down in the dust looking up to it. The world would think we were crazy if we were thankful for being brought into this condition. That's the Christian paradox. Are you and I attending to our duties this day? We see thirdly, and finally, the penitent's consolation. The penitent has a burden, the penitent has a duty, but the penitent has a consolation. If we left it with the burden, if we left it with the duties, we would have legitimate cause for despondency, discouragement, despair. But in the midst of this painful duty, there is a great consolation for the true penitent, the one who comes with a broken spirit and a contrite heart. It's there in the text. It's shining like a searchlight. It's gleaming like a diamond in the coal dust. And thou forgavest." Oh, what a consolation. When you think of the sins that David has committed, when you think of the sins that you and I have committed, either with our hands, with our tongues, or in our thoughts, what a consolation that we can come in that lowly condition, in that duty, in that endeavoring after new obedience, with the promise that David experienced himself that he was forgiven. And thou forgavest. But I'm an adulterer. And thou forgavest. I'm a murderer. And thou forgavest. I'm deceitful. I'm twisted. I'm a liar. And thou forgavest. Surely there's no more sweeter words to fall on the ears of the penitent man than and thou forgavest. That was David's experience. That's the promise that we have. We read that promise in 1 John. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive. Why are we so slow? Why are we so negligent? Why are we satisfied with us sweeping over? When if we get into the DNA and unpick and unravel our sins as David has here, we have the sweet promise of forgiveness. There's the consolation. That's what constrains the penitent. That's what draws him. That's what gives him the resolve. knowing that at the mercy seat, forgiveness is to be found. That's the rebuttal, the rebuttal to those who say, oh, you're so masochistic, you're talking about sin all the time. Ah, but we know the sweetness of forgiveness when we come with a truly broken and contrite heart. Those who say that it's a masochistic exercise, clearly know nothing about the penitence consolation. They know nothing about rising from your knees after you have been to the mercy suite seat and you can say, such pity as a father hath. He's taken my sins as far as east is distance from the west. And not just once, but again, and again, and again, and again. Plenteous redemption is ever found with thee, through the blood of Jesus Christ. What a consolation, but there's more. There's even more than, and thou forgavest, because he also tells us about the completeness of this forgiveness. He tells us in verses one and two. He tells us of the blessedness. He tells us of the peace. He tells us of the comfort. It's the foundation of the believers. Blessedness is knowing that his sins are forgiven. His transgressions are forgiven. His sin is covered and his iniquities are not imputed. consolation. Do you remember what the Lord Jesus Christ said to the man who was sick of the palsy? He cured his palsy and he said, son be of good cheer. He didn't say son be of good cheer because your palsy's been healed. He didn't say son be of good cheer because you have been restored physically. He said son be of good cheer. Thy sins be forgiven thee. See, the Christian should have a cheerfulness, a joy, a rejoicing, because he knows the sweetness of the forgiveness that is found at the mercy seat at the throne of grace because of what Christ has done in his room and in his stead. for a consolation the penitent has. A few words in conclusion. We pray that in the coming days, you will hear much about the blood of Jesus Christ. the sacrifice that brings that forgiveness, that peace, that blessedness, the blood of Jesus Christ, his son, as John tells us, which cleanses us from all sin. But you have to be sheltering under the blood. And we pray that every soul here is sheltering under the blood, because if you know nothing about the blood of Jesus Christ, You know nothing of forgiveness of sin. That crushing burden is still hanging over you. And if you do not repent, then that burden will crush you on the day of judgment. But listen, he is faithful and just to forgive. How can you resist such an invitation? He is faithful and just to forgive. But for the believer, today is the exercise of repentance. So what sins are in your heart? What sins are in my heart? Have we come here as a penitent? Have we come here prepared? Or have we been lazy? Have we been casual? Have we been inattentive? One man says, it is only the sincere confession of sin that gives genuine and lasting ease to the conscience. Do you remember the first time you realized that your sins had been washed away by the blood of Jesus Christ? how you skipped down the road, how you felt that joy because the burden had been lifted, the picture we have in Pilgrim's Progress, the burden rolling away at the cross. Have you known God's mercy? Have you known his forgiveness? Have you known his pardon? Because you'll never be turned away. And if we confess our sins, Then we can rejoice, can't we? We can rejoice with the psalmist. Each one of us can rejoice with the psalmist and see how blessed is the man to whom is freely pardoned all the transgressions he hath done, whose sin is covered, covered by the work of the Savior who God willing, whose death you will remember on the Lord's day. May the Lord bless these few thoughts to us. Let us unite our hearts together in prayer. Let us pray.