Happy Are the Forgiven – 12/8/24

Good morning, friends. It is great to see you all again this morning as we continue in this series, The Beatitudes in the Psalms. I do want to give my invitation for our Christmas Eve service at 4 and 5:30 p.m. I hope many of you can attend.

Long ago, there was a young man named David. David was from an unremarkable city and an unremarkable family. The family business was actually sheep. David was the eighth son in the family. Eight sons. Imagine that house. Imagine that grocery bill. Imagine what it was like for that young kid with his seven older brothers.

I’m sure he experienced the joys of family. He was picked on. He probably lost some fights. He got pushed out of the way. He probably got the worst jobs on the farm and got passed the least desired shifts when it came to watching the sheep.

One day, a famous prophet of God showed up, and in front of his family, dedicated David to God’s service. God had told the prophet, David is going to be king of Israel one day. Great news. But oddly for David, nothing immediately changed.

Soon, however, David’s life would become remarkable. Even as a young man, David won a military battle with a shepherd’s sling. He ended up moving in with the king as an armor bearer and a musician, and he became best friends with the king’s son. And in time, David actually married a princess named Michal.

But the king, his name was Saul, became jealous of David’s accomplishments. Saul could see that God was with David and not with him anymore. And at one point, the king lost it and tried to kill David. That began a year’s long cat-and-mouse game between David and Saul, where David hid in caves, trying to stay alive.

Through sinful and sad decisions, Saul finally dies, and David actually becomes king of Israel. David then has access to power and wealth, which are rarely a good combo. David was both a good and a terrible example of operating with power and wealth.

At one point, David took in the physically challenged and cared for them and yet in another instance misused a married woman. In his life, David would go back and forth it seems. He would seek God, and then he would almost ignore God. David desired closeness with God and sometimes would act as if God wasn’t even real.

David, this shepherd, musician, poet, warrior, king, ends up living a long life with more wealth than we could ever imagine, with power that was virtually inexhaustible, while he was believed to be God’s decreed ruler of an entire nation. David really did know God’s love despite his own foolishness.

So if anyone ever existed that would know how to tell us what the blessed life is, what the happy life is, it’s got to be David. So let’s ask him. David, what does it mean to be blessed? What does it mean to have the happy life? Psalm 32:1-5, A Maskil of David.

“Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven,”

Happy. Happy 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’s 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

“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. Selah”

So what type of people possess the happy life? In this Psalm, David makes a promise. Happy are the forgiven. Happy people, blessed people are forgiven people. Fortunate is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity. Blessed is the man that the Lord counts as guiltless. Blessed is the person whose spirit is pure.

So last week, if you were here, we began this series learning that in the Psalms, the vast majority of beatitudes, or blessings, in the Psalms talk about God being blessed.

God is the happiest being in existence that ever has been or ever will be. God is blessed to infinity and beyond. So the blessed life, the happy life, comes from God. He’s the only source of blessing since he is blessing itself. God has a monopoly on blessing.

Since David knew God — David was called the man after God’s own heart actually — since David knew him, it makes sense that for David, if forgiveness brings the happy life, then that forgiveness must come from God himself. So the door to enter God’s house of blessing is forgiveness. How do we get into God’s dwelling of blessing? It’s through forgiveness.

Now in real life, like everyday life, you’re interacting with people, your family, your friends, and you say the phrase, “I’ve been forgiven.” That implies something. It communicates something. It means you did something wrong. You needed to be forgiven. Forgiveness only exists when there’s a problem.

And that’s what David tells us about in this text — his problem, his brokenness, we could call it. And he describes his brokenness in two ways. He uses words, and he uses a personal story.

He uses some specific words, and he piles them on: transgression, sin, iniquity, and deceit.

You see, brokenness precedes the beauty of forgiveness.

And that’s sometimes hard to take in, that David is starting us, the master poet, he’s penning these words that cut to the quick of who he believes he really is. We’re reading a personal confession.

David is saying before forgiveness, I had sin, transgression, iniquity, and deceit. So happy people are people who are like that. Prior to forgiveness, we were rebellious, treasonous, guilty people who did wrong and missed who we were really created to be. You’re not who you’re meant to be. Therefore, you’re not doing what you were meant to do without forgiveness.

These words are interesting. Transgression is the idea of rebellion or treason. Sin is the idea that you’ve missed the way. There’s a way you’re supposed to go, and you missed it or you missed the mark. There was a way you were supposed to be and you’re not reaching it. Iniquity is guilt, and fault, and wrong. And deceit is the idea of treachery. You’re being treacherous.

Years ago now, our 2014 Toyota Corolla was in an accident and totaled. Driver was fine. We were thankful. But the Corolla, she took a hit. You could walk around that car and you could say things like this:

The car is dented.
The car is bent.
The car is broken.
The car is smashed.
And the car is shattered.

Now, each one of those descriptions is unique. Like most of us, when we think of shattered, that’s a window; bent, probably the frame of the car. But if you take all of those words together about our Corolla, you conclude, that vehicle was messed up. It was broken. It was totaled.

I think David’s doing the same thing in his poem. Each word does matter. Each word has a meaning. But the final picture is the point. When you put it all together, David is saying I’ve got a big, pervasive problem. I am not blessed or happy until forgiveness deals with this sin, transgression, iniquity problem.

And David is in solitary and having the problem. It’s not just David, because he extends it to everyone. The beatitude goes out to everyone. Blessed is the man. And it’s not a male issue either. David says blessed is the one — mankind, men, women — we’re all in the same boat as David. The beatitude is for us all, the blessing.

But so is the problem. We all have brokenness. We all need forgiveness to be blessed. David also describes his problem with a personal story. He describes his life without forgiveness from God. What was it like for him? He says this:

Psalm 32:3-4 “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”

When he was silent, when he was deaf to what he heard, and when he did not allow his mouth to speak what was true about himself, when he was silent in recognition of his guilt, when he knew what he was like but didn’t respond to that reality, his entire self was consumed, his bones wasted away.

The strongest part of our body is our bones. It’s the most dense and strong. It keeps us together. And poetically, David is saying the strongest part of me was wasting away. It was corrupted. David was miserable. Not happy. David describes this situation by saying that God’s heavy hand was on him day and night.

Now, unfortunately for us, I think this is true. In our culture heavy-handed, is, I think, mostly a negative concept. If someone’s heavy-handed, they’re doing too much. It’s inappropriate. Something should happen. But heavy-handed was too far.

I don’t think that’s what David is talking about. Think of it this way. This is a picture here of, that’s my granddaughter. She’s the cutest. That’s Skylyn Rae. She’s about five months old. And that was her all bundled up for braving the cold this week.

I’ve gotten back into the habit of what it means to put an infant to sleep or keep an infant asleep. And it takes a light hand. I actually do the pat, twist, and bounce at the same time. That’s a pro move for some of you, all three. And that light hand will put or keep Skylyn asleep.

But if Skylyn is at our house and our house is on fire, I’m not going to use a light pat. My hand will be heavier. It will reach into that crib and grab her, whether she’s asleep or not, and not really care if I wake her up or move her swiftly. My hand will be heavy. Why? Because there’s danger that she can’t react to on her own. She can’t save herself right now from our house being on fire. So my hand will be heavy. It will reach in and grab a hold of her. She will feel it differently than the light pat to keep her asleep.

David is saying the same thing. God’s heavy hand is attempting to wake David from his slumber, from his sleep, from his sin, from his rebellious sleep. He’s got to see the danger in which he finds himself. God is heavy-handed in the sense he’s trying to wake David up to reality.

See your problem of brokenness, David. And David says, when I ignored that, when I ignored God’s attempt to wake me, whatever strength he had, whatever energy David possessed, that he could bring to bear to make himself feel better about his condition, it faded. It dried up as the heat of summer.

Many years ago now, about 20 years ago, I went on a bike trip with a couple of friends to Moab, Utah, and we did a 25 — it was in May — we did a 25-mile loop on sandstone in the sun, and we were not quite prepped with enough water. We had made it about three-quarters of the way through, and we were all out. It was hot, and it was so dry. We were dehydrated.

Two of us made the stupid choice to think if we cut this corner, we’re going to save time — which is something you never do. You never cut the corner off the trail. You stay on the trail. So I found myself now dehydrated, even worse. We ended up finding a four-wheel drive truck who was four wheeling. I paid him $50 to drive me out of there. He had a cooler that had warm beverages in it, and I started chugging beverages, I was so thirsty. It was not a beverage I needed to hydrate. And it came all back up all over the outside of that guy’s car. Hence the $50. I felt dried. I felt like a human raisin.

David is saying that’s what sin does. You feel dried, pruned, tight. Sin dries up people like the sun dries up a puddle. So David is saying pre-forgiveness, I was not happy, fortunate, or blessed. I was worn out, screaming, and exhausted.

What path does David take to get to the promise? He promises a blessed life. What’s the path to get there? He says this:

Psalm 32:5, “I acknowledged 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.”

When David came face to face with his problem, he reveals to us that he had a choice as to what to do with the awareness of that problem. He either admits his sin, he acknowledges his sin to God, or he attempts to cover his own sin from God, to hide it from God. The tension exists in the poetry itself. At the beginning it says,

“Blessed is the one whose sin is covered.”

That’s passive. Someone else is doing the covering of sin at the beginning of the song. David then says actively,

“I did not cover my sin.”

Either someone else covers our sin, or we attempt to cover our sin. And David recognizes he can’t do it as well as God can. He acknowledges his sin to God rather than trying to hide from God.

Humanity has a long relationship with hiding from God. It goes all the way back to the beginning. If you go back to the origin of mankind’s sin, mankind’s problem, mankind’s brokenness, we discover the first reaction to guilt, to sin, is to hide.

In the beginning, Adam and Eve disobey the one command God gave. God created this wild world that they were able to rule and reign in. They could create culture with everything that God had made. And God said just one thing. This tree right here is not for consumption. This is not for you to consume. Every other thing I’ve created is yours to name and make into a beautiful culture that brings me glory.

Instead, humanity consumed the one thing that was supposed to be unconsumable. And that’s called rebellion. It’s rejection of God’s way. Humanity pursued what was off limits. And after rebelling, here’s what happens.

Genesis 3:8, “And they [Adam and Eve] heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.”

First, that’s a wild verse because apparently before sin, Adam, and Eve, and God were in the habit of taking walks in the garden at the most beautiful time of day. That was their norm. It was togetherness. They were together, walking in what God had made for them.

Sin enters, and all of a sudden we’re separated and hiding. Adam and Eve attempted to cover what they had done by hiding. They would rather play hide-and-seek with God in the trees of the garden, which is such a silly image. They tried to hide themselves among the trees like a kindergartner playing hide and seek with his parents who thinks he’s getting away with it. They tried to hide among the trees.

David says, if you want the happy life, if you want to be blessed, you’ve got to reject hiding. Happy people reveal their sin to God rather than conceal their sin from God. Happy people reveal rather than conceal. David tells us he confesses his sin. He confesses it rather than hiding it.

“I said, ‘I will confess my transgression to the Lord.’”

The poet vocalizes to himself. He talks to himself. I said what I’m going to do. Soul, we have become aware that we have a big, pervasive, broken problem in us, and I’m going to tell God about that discovery. I’m going to confess that reality.

Confession, I think, can sound very legal. Like we’re watching a police show, and someone’s in that little room with a one-way mirror being interrogated by the good cop/bad cop with the light on them. And that’s confession.

I think for some, depending on your background, confession might sound very Catholic, like the idea of confession is telling some other human about the wrong you’ve done, and then you’re okay.

Years ago Allan Sherer, one of our pastors, taught confession as simply telling or admitting the truth to a situation, and I think that’s really helpful. I just want to add to that. Because in this context in Hebrew, confession, at its root, is an action word. It’s not just a thought or a talk. It’s an action. Confess is to throw or to cast.

So you’re throwing a rock into a puddle. That is confession. You’re taking something that you have and you’re throwing it somewhere else. Confession is admitting the ugly truth and throwing it at God. This is who I am. Big broken problem. Take it.

God, the car of my life is totaled, and only you can fix it. God, I know I’ve missed the way you created humanity to be, but only you can course correct me. God, I don’t live the way you tell me to, but only you can change me. God, there are times I purposely reject your ways, only you can change my heart to want to obey. I admit the ugly truth. And I give it, I throw it, at God to handle.

That is confession. Don’t ignore your condition. Acknowledge it. Tell God about it. Don’t attempt to cover your problem on your own. It won’t work. Throw it at God.

Now for me, as I was studying this, this is what I think is really cool, when you study the language, this is how confession and forgiveness hold hands. This is how they come together. So at its root confession is the idea of throwing or casting, forgiveness at its root has three primary meanings.

The first is the idea of taking up. Forgiveness takes up something, it takes up sin. So if I’m throwing and casting sin at God, forgiveness is the act of taking it up. Someone has to own it. Someone must own sin.

There’s this idea in Leviticus of how sin falls upon somebody. This is one example.

Leviticus 19:17, “You shall not hate your brother in your heart, but you shall reason frankly with your neighbor, lest you incur sin because of him.”

Sin goes somewhere. It’s taken up by someone. Sin doesn’t float. It doesn’t just stay out here in the ether. It has to land somewhere. When we confess and God forgives, he’s taking it up and owning it for us.

Second meaning of forgiveness is the idea of carry. It’s carried. Someone must bear it. Someone must bear the burden of sin.

And this is where we have to understand David’s world and his understanding of forgiveness, because it would be very different from ours. He understood forgiveness through the sacrifices and offerings described in the book of Leviticus.

For example, a couple, once a year, on the Day of Atonement, an offering would be made that would take care of the sin problem. It would bear it for one year. Once a year at Passover, David would have to offer a lamb to remind himself that God accepts an offering and passes judgment onto the lamb rather than a person. But that would only last a year.

Throughout the year, on other occasions, David would have to make additional sacrifices for intentional or unintentional sins he committed. The animal would have to bear the burden of his sin. Without a lamb, without blood, without a sacrifice, without a substitute, and believing that that sacrifice could bear the weight of his sin, David had no hope. That was his understanding of forgiveness. When we confess and throw our brokenness at God, God carries and bears our sin.

Finally, forgiveness is the idea of takes away. It takes away. Someone must remove it, not just carry and bear it, but reach into who we are and take it, and remove it. What kind of God could do that?

Exodus 34:6-7, “The Lord passed before him and proclaimed…”

God is making a proclamation about God. You want to know who I am? This is who I am. The LORD. And any time you see capital LORD in most translations, that’s God’s name, Yahweh. His personal name. Not a title. It’s his name.

“The LORD passed before him and proclaimed, ‘The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving …

What? Notice those three things. Same as Psalms.

“Forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin.”

What kind of God forgives? That kind of God. A God that is forgiving to infinity and beyond. Remember, whatever God is, he is forever eternally. God is forgiving to infinity and beyond. It’s who he is. God in and of his person is forgiveness. And David says in his poetry that God removes all sin. When we throw our sin, God removes our sin. Look how David ends the stanza that we’re looking at this morning.

“And you forgave the iniquity of my sin.”

It’s the simplest part of the whole poem. It’s so terse. But man, it’s bold simplicity. I confessed. I threw. You forgave. You took it up. God’s forgiveness is forever. It is limitless. I love this image in Psalm 103:11-12,

“For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love towards those who fear him;”

Do me a favor at some point, if you can. You could do it in the afternoon because you could look up into the blue. You could do it tonight. You could look up into the black sky with white twinkling stars. I think it’s supposed to be clear. I want you to go out there and in your own head, try to tell yourself how high the heavens are above the earth. Try to make your brain do it. Because for the Hebrews, the idea of heavens is anything above what we walk on. So it’s from earth until whenever. The poet is saying, that’s how big the steadfast love of God is toward you. It’s not a little bit. God isn’t just okay with you. You just don’t kind of skate into heaven, and he puts up with you. His love for you is like the heavens above the earth.

What about the way God forgives you? What does that look like? The poet continues.

“as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove…”

There’s our word for forgiveness. What does he do? He removes it. How far does God remove your sin from you? “East is from the west.” Well, when does east meet west? When does it happen? It’s another riddle. It doesn’t. It’s perpetually forever eternally removed from you.

My experience pastoring here, and if you’ve been through our Connections Class, our new members class, you know I ask this every time. How long have you been in a church that preaches the gospel? And in our class, that’s often a great number of people. Lots of people here have been in church for a long time. That’s great. If you haven’t, that’s awesome, too.

My experience in pastoring people at this church is, I think, that second half of what God’s forgiveness looks like. We need a big dose of. Because I think many of us walk through life thinking that we can confess it. God will take it, but he kind of has it in his back pocket, remembering it. God looks at us going, yeah, Ryan, I know what you’re really like. I remember what you did. I know who you are. And the poet is coming in and going no, that’s completely wrong. God removes your sin to infinity and beyond. East from west.

Charles Spurgeon — I love this man, a 19th century preacher — he comments on this passage in this way.

“[The forgiven] is now blessed, and ever shall be. Be he ever so poor, or sick, or sorrowful, he is blessed in very deed. Pardoning mercy is of all things in the world most to be prized, for it is the only and sure way to happiness. [If you want the blessed life, you need to be pardoned by the mercy of God.] To hear from God’s own Spirit the words, ‘I forgive you’ is joy unspeakable.”

Happy are the forgiven.

I want us to appreciate the idea of being forgiven in our day because we’ve talked about David’s understanding of forgiveness. What is our basis of forgiveness? Because at our church we don’t have animals in a pen somewhere to take care of the burden of our sin. How is it handled for us?

We’re going to talk to a guy named Paul. He wrote a lot of the New Testament Scripture, and he actually quotes this Psalm in his letter to the Roman church. And he quotes it to support how forgiveness actually works.

In his letter to the Roman church, Paul does something that David does. He takes three chapters to do it, while David used three words. He describes our sin problem for three chapters. And Paul’s doing that for a unique reason. For this early church in Rome, he’s trying to bring together Jew and Gentile, which is kind of a shorthand way of talking about everybody in the world at that day.

But those two groups of people argued with each other in the church, and Paul is bringing them together in three chapters by saying, hey, be on the same page because you’ve got the same problem. You’ve got the same problem David had in Psalm 32. You have a sin problem. You have a brokenness problem.

Paul begins to describe how that sin problem is taken care of in chapter 3. And it’s the same as David, and it’s a little bit different than David. It’s the same in that everyone needs to acknowledge or confess that they’re a sinner. Paul says it this way,

Romans 3:23, “For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

We all have the same problem. We’ve all missed the mark of who God created humanity to be. We’ve all missed the way that God wanted humanity to travel.

It’s different than David, though, because as we talked about, David was believing in this sacrificial system. David’s belief in God’s forgiveness hinged on God’s promise. If you will cast your sin on this animal, I will count that as righteousness. I will declare that that is faith in me, and you will be counted as righteous rather than being counted with iniquity.

This is the same in Jewish history. You go back to Abraham, the O.G. patriarch of the Jewish nation, he believed the same way. God made a promise to him and Abraham believed it. And that belief, that trust, that faith, was counted to Abraham as righteousness. Doing everything correctly in that one faith choice.

Both David and Abraham believed in a future where God would somehow keep his promise of blessing forever. Somehow a lamb or a sacrifice would arrive that would negate the need for animals. There’d be some perfect sacrifice that would arrive in the future. And David and Abraham were looking forward to that reality as they cast their sin on a lamb. A forever substitute would have to come and take, and carry, and remove sin. Paul describes it this way.

Romans 4: 1-3, “What then shall we say was gained by Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh?

What did Abraham get for being Jewish and working really hard?

“For if Abraham was justified by works,

What he did, I’ve worked really hard in life, I’ve been a good person.

“he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the Scripture say? ‘Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness.’”

Did Abraham do something really cool? Did he live enough correctly to be blessed by God? To be forgiven by God? Is that how Abraham got a hold of the happy life?

Paul answers his own question. No way. Because if it was his work that he did, then he would have the possibility to look at God and brag about how he lived. I’ve earned my righteousness, God, because I’ve done this, and I’ve done this, and I’ve done this. We’re ok because of what I’ve done. And Paul’s like, no. No way. It doesn’t work. If it’s work, he could brag. But Paul says righteousness, being counted righteous, and not having iniquity counted, is about a belief in God’s promise. That word righteousness is really similar to what David writes in the Psalm,

“Blessed is the man… in whose spirit is found no deceit.”

You have no treachery anymore. You’ve done everything right. You’re righteous. Paul continues with a short illustration:

Romans 4:4, “Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due.”

This Friday when you all get paid from wherever you work, your boss isn’t giving you a gift. He’s giving you what you’re owed because you worked for it. You’re getting what you deserve. Paul plays on this idea of work and says this:

Romans 4:5, “And to the one who does not work [the one who doesn’t work] but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness,”

You can’t work for the happy life. You have faith in God for the happy life. It’s a blessed life that’s based on belief and faith. It’s a present. It’s a gift. It is not your due. And then this is where Paul quotes our Psalm and equates Abraham’s saving faith and David’s saving faith.

Romans 4:6-8, “just as David also speaks of the blessing of the one to whom God counts righteousness apart from works:

David preached Paul’s messages hundreds of years before Paul wrote the letter. David is saying the same thing, guys.

“Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, and whose sins are covered; [happy is the man] blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin.”

Forgiveness, no deceit, no sin, no transgression, no disobedience, being counted as righteous, comes from believing God’s promise. We don’t work. We believe. What do we have to believe in? What brings us that blessed life?

Romans 3:21, This “righteousness [this declaration of forgiveness, this righteousness] of God has been manifested [it’s been shown to us] apart from the law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it…”

The way we’re right with God, the way we’re forgiven, is not the law that David was under. It’s something new. The Law and the Prophets are still important. The Law and the Prophets are kind of like witnesses in court who say, it used to be this way, but look to this type of righteousness, this type of forgiveness, it’s still important, it’s just not the saving way anymore. Being right with God, being forgiven, isn’t about this sacrificial legal system.

Romans 3:22-25a, “the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified [they’re declared righteous] by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith.”

Instead of faith in a sacrificial lamb, that was a symbol, we have faith in a forever-sacrificed lamb named Jesus Christ. We’re declared free from deceit, treachery, rebellion by believing that Jesus is our forever Lamb, that Jesus then bears, carries, and removes our sin. Because it has to go somewhere. There has to be a lamb. There has to be a sacrifice. There has to be a substitute. Because God can’t ignore sin.

David said in his poem that God’s heavy hand was upon him because it’s dangerous. Sin is terrible. It is a destroyer. It is of eternal significance. So Jesus stepped in as our Lamb, not on an old-school stone altar, but on a wood cross. Paul describes it this way:

Romans 3:25b-26, “This [Jesus taking our sin] was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins…”

Now, that’s really weird wording, but here’s what it means. You’ve got Abraham and David who are looking at a lamb on an altar. Their faith and belief in God’s promise is based on that lamb. So God was able to look at that lamb, pass over their sins, knowing that at one point, the forever lamb, Jesus Christ, was going to die.

They’re connected. Their faith in that lamb stretches to the forever Lamb of Jesus. There had to be a lamb because God has to be just. God has to be able to declare us righteous because sin has been taken care of. Jesus had to be the forever Lamb.

David and Paul give us this invitation to believe — to believe that we need to be forgiven to have the blessed life. And it really is beautiful when brokenness is forgiven.

Even on a relational level, if you’ve been forgiven by your spouse, by a family member, by a friend, by even some random relationship in church where you or they did something, but it was forgiven. There is something about that feeling that going into it is so painful, but coming out, forgiveness is beautiful.

David and Paul are saying, acknowledge who you are. You’ve got a brokenness problem. Confess who you are. Throw that condition at God, and God will forgive. Through Jesus, God will take, bear, and remove your sin. God will bless. That’s the real happy life. One more time, the great Charles Spurgeon writes this:

“Oh, the bessednesses!

He had to make up a word. The plural blessings.

“The double joys, the bundles of happiness, the mountains of delight! Transgression, sin, and iniquity are the three-headed dog at the gates of hell, but our glorious Lord has silenced its barkings for ever against his own believing ones. The trinity of sin is overcome by the Trinity of heaven.”

Blessed is the man whose transgression is forgiven. Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no guilt. In Paul’s language, if you would allow me to paraphrase, “Happy is the man that the Lord himself counts as completely righteous through Jesus.”

Happy are the forgiven.

I was talking to Peter and the team earlier this week about preaching this passage. And again, I mentioned earlier, many of us have grown up in a church context, and you might be familiar with the idea of what some churches call an invitation. It’s a moment at the end of services where there’s an opportunity to, in the moment, respond to the text or respond to whatever was preached from God’s Word.

I have had this sense coming into this idea, this psalm, this beatitude, that it would be wrong to not take a moment and offer people the literal opportunity to believe. Right now, in some ways, culture complicates Christianity.

David is just saying, look at your life. Listen to what God says, and respond accordingly. Who are you really at the core? Do you really think everything about you is perfect? You have no wrong or have never wronged, or you don’t have any of the brokenness that is described with sin, transgression, and iniquity? You’ve got none of that? You’re good? Really?

And if it’s true that you have some of it, well, how is it handled? Because if you’re broken, how can you handle your own brokenness? You can try to cover it, like David said. But I think David would look at you and go, reject that. Don’t try to cover it on your own. You’ve got to trust something. And I think David and Paul and the story of the Scriptures as a whole say trust in Jesus Christ.

What we’re going to do is we’re going to take a moment together to create a space to respond to an invitation to believe in Jesus.

We’re going to have a song that is another invitation. The words themselves are an invitation to believe to broken people. And we’re going to listen to that song, and we’re going to respond. And then we’re going to stand and we’re going to sing together.

And there will be people down here who would love to pray with you. And if you want to know more about believing in Jesus, they would love to talk to you about that, as well. This is a great day to believe, to trust God’s promise, and enter the blessed life.