Daily Devotional Reading from Psalm 32:1-4
Psalm 32:1–4
A Psalm of David, Maschil.
1 Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.
2 Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity,
And in whose spirit there is no guile.
3 When I kept silence, my bones waxed old
Through my roaring all the day long.
4 For day and night thy hand was heavy upon me:
My moisture is turned into the drought of summer. Selah.
We find in this wonderful reading a contrast between confession with it’s resulting forgiveness and a refusal to come clean. David knew what both were like. When he had committed the sins surrounding his adultery with Bathsheba he refused to come clean for a while. He describes the effect this had on him and the effects were not just spiritual but mental and physical. The guilt within us and the conviction of God can make us miserable when we are living with unforgiven sin. There are many who say this is simply the result of our environment. They say these feelings come from the social standards in which we are raised. I disagree and I believe the Scriptures do as well. I believe there is built within us a desire to please God and an intuition about right and wrong. While that inner voice is not always well informed without help from God’s word it is present in us all. I preached a sermon a long time ago that I titled “Throw a Brawny on It”. It came from Proverbs 28:13 which says, “He that covereth his sins shall not prosper: But whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy.” It also came from a story about my kids and their wiener dog. I am not a fan of that creature. He is a hairy vile of dog urine. He relieves himself on everything. Our relationship (the dog and I) went sour when he took a leak on my notes on the book of Revelation. There were fifteen years of hard study and research in those notes and he ruined them. I can only assume he doesn’t agree with my eschatology. June and I had gone somewhere and left the kids with the dog one day. We came home to discover the dog had left puddles around the house. The solution of our children? Throw a Brawny on it. They covered the mess with paper towels. Covering the problem didn’t fix the smell. Covering the problem didn’t fix the filth. As a matter of fact, time made the covered mess more difficult to clean. David says that his sin was a covered mess and it made life miserable. On the other hand, when he confessed, he found happiness. The word “blessed” means happy. Happy is the man whose sin is covered. I thought if you covered your sins then you would not prosper? True, but if you will uncover your sins to God then he will cover them with the precious blood of his son that cleanses and heals. It is time we uncovered our sins to God and sought his forgiveness and the corresponding joy it brings. Amen?
Yes, generalized, unspecified confession often prevents us from repenting. I remember hearing a preacher talk about how washing clothes in a sack doesn’t work. He said you have to take each item out in order for them to get clean. I believe that is what the Lord wants in 1 Jn 1:9.
I remember that sermon and it brought to my realization that when you know you have a certain sin that you committed and you try to just generalize it because you don't want to actually discuss or say it out loud to the Lord (ie. Dear Lord please forgive me of my sins today...) - He knows and expects you to bring that sin to Him and confess it specificly not just try to hide it under a generalization of unnamed sins and turn away from it. Boy how relief and rejoicing and utter amazement at His love for me it brought! I wish I had better words to describe it. I knew what I was trying to do…