April 28, 2014
Psalm 32:1, 2
(All scripture is from the New King James Version unless otherwise indicated.)
Some time after King David wrote Psalm 51 – that great psalm of confession and repentance – he was thinking back on the whole incident of adultery and murder and penned Psalm 32. Here are the first two verses:
Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed
is the man to whom the LORD does not impute iniquity, and in whose spirit
there is no guile.
I imagine David often thought about what he had done. After all, he had the constant reminder of Bathsheba living in the royal palace as his wife. He had taken her in adultery, and had murdered her husband Uriah to cover up the resulting pregnancy which would have tarnished the king’s reputation. Uriah was a faithful soldier in service to his king. As a matter of fact, he is listed as one of David’s “…valiant men of the armies…” in I Chronicles 11:41. All in all, it was a terribly sinful time in David’s life, and I’m sure the memory of it often played on the king’s mind.
Why am I so sure? Because many times it comes to my mind the things I have done in the past – things of which I am ashamed before God and man. We all have such sinful things in our lives – both in the past and recently – because we are all sinful human beings. It just goes with the territory! And Satan loves to bring up our past sinful episodes. He is called in Revelation 12:10, “…the accuser of our brethren…who accused them before God day and night.” Not only does he bring up our past to discredit Christians before God, but his purpose is to make us so focus on our past mistakes that we beat ourselves up and become spiritually useless to God!
In Psalm 32, David dealt with this problem of memory and guilt and shows us the way to do it also. Consider again verse 1: “Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.” Forgiven and covered! Covered by what? His sin was covered over from the sight of God by the blood of the sacrifices the priests offered upon the bronze altar on behalf of the sinful people.
We have an even better deal today! All those sacrifices pointed toward Jesus Christ offering Himself on the cross. Consider what it says in I Peter 1:18 and 19:
:
…you know that you were not redeemed with corruptible things, like silver or
gold, from your aimless conduct received by tradition from your fathers, but
with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without
spot.
So effective is the blood of Jesus that it does not just cover over our sins, but – as John the Baptist put it in John 1:29 – “Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” So taken away are our sins that God tells us in Hebrews 10:17, “…their sins and their lawless deeds will I remember no more.” He does not even keep our sins in mind! So why should we? We, like David, are forgiven – and our sins are gone!
Go on to verse 2: “Blessed is the man to whom the LORD does not impute iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile.” ‘Imputation’ – this is at the heart of the gospel! Not only are our sins not imputed to us, Christ’s own righteousness is imputed to our account – to our person – so we stand before God as righteous as Jesus Christ Himself! No wonder David pronounces such a one blessed – twice blessed in two verses!
Blessed – Spurgeon, in his commentary on the psalms, The Treasury of David, reminds us, “The word blessed is in the plural, oh, the blessednesses! the double joys, the bundles of happiness, the mountains of delight!” Since the Hebrew singular it can be translated happy, the plural blessed can mean happies! The one whose “…transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered,” the one “…to whom the LORD does not impute iniquity…” has the happies!!! The same plurality is applied to the use of the Greek equivalent of blessed – as Jesus used it, for instance, in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5.
So do you have the happies?! You can if your “…transgression is forgiven..,” if your “…sin is covered,” if to your account “…the LORD does not impute iniquity….” Instead of dwelling on past mistakes, past sins, remind yourself that – as it says in I John 1:7: “…the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin.” It made such a difference in David’s life! It can make an amazing difference in yours also!