RECEIVE HIS MERCY

Introduction

-{Psalm 32}

-Although there are always exceptions to the rules, when one considers the concept of mother, we usually think of care and compassion. When a child is hurt, the first one that they run to is mom—mom is going to help me when I am in pain. We also consider that moms have such a heart for their children that they willingly endure a lot with the hopes of restoration, and if a child should so seek reconciliation and forgiveness, mom is quick and overjoyed to extend forgiveness and mercy in order to have fellowship restored with their child.

-Now, the Bible conveys God to us as Father, but also describes Him in motherly terms—God also has a heart of care and compassion, and God also endures much with the hope that His children will come to Him to seek restored fellowship.

~This is true in the sense that God wishes all people to seek Him for salvation in Jesus Christ that forgives sins.

~But even after salvation, we Christians sin and when we sin we break fellowship with God. There is a spiritual and emotional barrier that is erected that God is willing to bring down if we are willing to come to Him to seek forgiveness and receive His mercies.

~The problem is that we are often too stubborn to admit our sin or to seek God while we are in sin, so we go on with life with this barrier to fellowship, and then wonder why God seems so far. But God is waiting for us to come and receive His mercy.

-I started a series on prayer last week, and what we find is that if there is unconfessed sin in our life, our prayers don’t go very far. But we are given a great promise, and so I want to first recap a verse I used last week:

Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. (Hebrews 4:16 ESV)

-With complete confidence we can draw near to God at His throne in heaven, a throne of grace, a throne of favor, and we can receive mercy.

~What do I mean by mercy? Sometimes the word is used to mean acts of kindness when we are in misery, but that is not the meaning I am using for it today—although, in a sense, it does have to do with God’s kindness.

~The sense in which I am using the phrase is that mercy is not receiving from God that which we deserve to receive from God for our sins. Mercy is different from grace which is receiving good things from God that we do not deserve, and thankfully mercy and grace are both much different from justice which means to get what exactly we deserve.

-By God’s grace we initially receive mercy at the cross of Jesus Christ when we are given spiritual life and brought into God’s family, but then we still sin and it messes with our fellowship with God (thankfully, not the relationship). But if we are going to walk with God rightly, we still need to come to the throne of grace and receive mercy—and we seek this mercy through prayer.

-And so we look at a psalm today written by a man who sought God to receive His mercy. David was a man after God’s own heart. David was God’s chosen ruler over His people Israel. And, even though David was as close to God as anyone can get, he still sinned and that sin erected a barrier from God’s fellowship.

~There are a lot of sins of David recorded in Scripture, so this psalm could speak of any of them—but then what he found out and what he recorded for us is that prayer (approaching God at His throne of grace) is a means of seeking and receiving mercy from God for sin and restoring fellowship.

-What I want us to consider today is that an important aspect of approaching God at the throne of grace in prayer is seeking and receiving His mercies for our sins against Him—and that this not be just a theoretical issue, but a practice we do daily.

READ Psalm 32:1-7

Psalm 32:1–7 ESV

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 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 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. You are a hiding place for me; you preserve me from trouble; you surround me with shouts of deliverance. Selah

-I want to consider several aspects of receiving God’s mercy at the throne of grace through prayer:

1) The blessedness of mercy (vv. 1-2a)

-The psalm begins with a declaration of BLESSEDNESS—meaning that someone is fortunate and has found privilege. Why such a declaration? Because the psalmist approached the throne of grace and received mercy through the forgiveness of his sins.

-The psalmist realized what a privilege it was to approach God and to be able to have his sins forgiven, because he knew how sinful he was and what it was that he had done against God. This is seen in his description of his sin where he uses three terms to cover the multitude of sins that he committed. David knew that his sins, all of them, were an affront to a holy God.

~He calls them TRANSGRESSIONS, which speaks of rebelling against God’s authority. He calls them SINS, which refers to faulty actions that miss the mark of God’s standard, and he calls them INIQUITIES, which speaks of evil and corruption.

~David was talking about everything he had ever done against God. Be it his wrong actions, attitudes, thoughts—be they big or small in his eyes, everything that he has ever done against God (his rebellion, he failure to meet God’s standards in conduct, his evil and wrong-doing) has all been taken care of.

~Imagine that—every single drop of sin has been forgiven. Someone who can claim that is definitely blessed.

-And as much as he uses three words to cover the whole host of sins, David uses three words to cover the whole host of forgiveness. What happens to us when we receive the mercies of forgiveness?

~He first says that his sins are “forgiven” in the ESV, but the word literally means to be lifted or carried—imagine this, the burden of sin had been lifted up off of his shoulders.

~He then says that his sins were covered=God took all of his sins and buried them where no one would be able to dig them up again.

~And then he says that God no longer counts or imputes iniquity against him—the debt of sin is not counted against him. Sin is not kept in the ledger of his life and held against him.

-What blessings!!! For us, when we first come to Christ, our slate is made clean and every act of rebellion and sin is lifted, covered, and erased from our lives. But then the sin that we pick up along the way of our journey on earth can also be lifted, covered, and erased if we approach the throne of grace to receive mercy—and then we can enjoy unhindered fellowship.

-But there’s something else he makes mention of about this mercy of forgiveness:

2) The honesty of mercy (v. 2b)

-David also makes mention that the blessedness is also when there is no deceit in someone’s spirit—and within the context it is speaking of seeking mercy at the throne of grace. When you approach the throne seeking mercy and forgiveness, there should be no guile and deceit in your heart and spirit. How would there be guile and deceit when you approach God?

-First, you are being deceitful when you approach God when you don’t think that you have any sin that has caused a barrier in your fellowship with God. If you think that you are so holy and so clean that you don’t need to seek mercy, you are being deceitful.

-The apostle John makes this very clear in his epistle:

1John 1:5 This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. 1John 1:6 If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. 1John 1:7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. 1John 1:8 If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. 1John 1:9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 1John 1:10 If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us. (1 John 1:5–10 ESV)

-Three times John says that if you sin and try to say that you don’t sin then you are in even more sin. If you walk in darkness, but claim to walk in light, you’re a liar. If you say you have no sin, you are a liar. If you claim that you have never sinned you are a liar.

-But another way that we are deceitful in our spirits and hearts is when we deny the severity of our sin, excuse our sin, blame our sin on others, or even try to justify our sin.

~If we try to pass our sin off as anything less than it being rebellion, missing the mark, and an evil corruption, we are being deceitful. If we think that our sin is someone else’s fault, we are being deceitful. If we think we deserved to do that sin because we are owed in some way, we are being deceitful.

-The deceitfulness started at the beginning. When Adam was confronted for his sin, he blamed the woman and blamed God who gave him the woman. The woman blamed the serpent, and the serpent blamed God. That is not how we approach the throne of grace.

-What God is looking for when we approach the throne of grace is openness and honesty about our sin.

~But if we instead ignore dealing with our sin or if we try to be deceitful in our spirit about our sin, then we find:

3) The misery without mercy (vv. 3-4)

-David describes what happened when he went through a period of time when he absolutely refused to confess his sin and to seek forgiveness and mercy at the throne of grace.

~It’s hard not to think of David’s sin against Bathsheba and Urriah. David plotted and schemed to get his way and to cover his tracks. He thought that he had gotten away with it too. Nobody knew—or if they did, they refused to do anything about it.

-But God would not allow the man after His own heart just keep on living as if nothing happened—so God’s hand came down heavy upon him in an effort to force David to come back to Him.

~David uses very picturesque imagery to describe the state that he was in while he tried to conceal his sin.

~The imagery speaks of a deadness and a dryness. It speaks of his spiritual condition—he had no spiritual vitality in him. And yet the imagery is given in physical form—wasting bones, fading strength. David’s spiritual problems may have manifested themselves physically. As his spiritual health deteriorated, his physical health deteriorated.

-To sum it up, while David lived with unconfessed sin, he kept his distance from God. He would not approach God except maybe to go through the motions of religion. But it left him dead and dry inside. He groaned. His strength had completely left him.

~I picture how someone might feel after they spent an entire day working in the hot sun in the middle of the summer. When you’re finally done, you come in, take your shower, maybe try to eat something, but then you slump into your couch and you are completely done. You are do drained, you have no strength left to do anything else.

~That’s how David felt spiritually and in a sense physically. He was drained. He wasn’t effective in life because he was emptied of true life. His sin wore him out. And yet he was still a man after God’s own heart.

-Maybe you are miserable. God seems far. You have no spiritual, emotional, or physical energy. You are drained, and you might even despair. God allows this so that you would come to His throne of grace and deal with the sin that has separated you from your God. Sure, you might be saved, but you are in sin and have no fellowship with the Lord. God makes you miserable as an act of love to lead you to Him so that you can deal with that sin and enjoy a reinvigorated spiritual life that will bear fruit for His glory.

-David was miserable. God made him miserable. But it was for David’s good. Then, in his misery, God sent the prophet Nathan who confronted David head on, and it finally broke David. And then David confessed and repented and it’s as if cool, refreshing, living water overflowed his soul and body.

~God’s misery should lead you to confession that leads you to mercy…

4) The confession that finds mercy (v. 5)

-In v. 5 David reveals how he confessed his sin to God—what that confession entailed. When we approach the throne of grace, we would do well to follow his example.

-First, he says that he acknowledged his sin before God. It literally means that he made it known. Not that God didn’t know—obviously God did know David’s sin because God knows everything. But confession includes us making known to God that we know that we sinned as well. We take responsibility for it. LORD, I ACKNOWLEDGE THAT I JUST SINNED AGAINST YOU. IT IS MY FAULT. I DID IT.

-And then David describes it in the negative—it says that he did not cover up his iniquity. David didn’t come before God and act like nothing happened. He didn’t come before God and just pretend like everything was alright. He didn’t come before God and offer excuses and justifications for actions. He didn’t come before God and try to pretty his sin up. David came before God, acknowledged his sin, not trying to cover it up.

-The verse continues where David says I WILL CONFESS MY TRANSGRESSIONS BEFORE THE LORD. To confess means to agree with God. David agreed with God that he sinned. He didn’t say he made a mistake. He didn’t say that he was in error. He said that he sinned.

~He acknowledged and agreed that he committed adultery and murder—he no longer tried to cover it up. And do you know what David found when he did these things? It says it there at the end of the verse: YOU FORGAVE THE INIQUITY OF MY SIN. David found mercy.

-I read the story about Sam Houston. At one time, the Texas hero was called "The Old Drunk." While he was governor of Tennessee, his wife left him. In despair he resigned as governor and tried to escape his problems by going to live among Cherokee Indians. He stayed drunk much of the time. It is said that the Indians, as they walked through the forest, would have to move him out of the path where he lay in a stupor.

Later, he went to Texas, where he became the great hero of the Texas revolution when he routed General Santa Ana's Mexican army. Houston's battle cry, "Remember the Alamo!" helped win independence for Texas. He married the daughter of a Baptist preacher and later trusted Christ, but he still had some of his old tendencies. One day as he rode along a trail, his horse stumbled. Houston spontaneously cursed, reverting to his old habit. Immediately he was convicted of his sin. he got off his horse, knelt down on the trail, and cried out to God for forgiveness. Houston had already received Christ, but God was teaching him to live in fellowship with him moment by moment. And as soon as the Holy Spirit made Sam Houston aware of his sin, he confessed it.

~Think of this—Sam immediately went to the throne of grace, acknowledged that he had sinned, he didn’t cover it up, he didn’t excuse it, he didn’t justify it, but he agreed with God’s assessment that it was sin, and he received immediate mercy.

~Oh, that we all would do such a thing in our own lives.

~And to encourage us in that…

5) The appeal to seek mercy (vv. 6-7)

-David makes the exhortation that everyone who is godly, everyone who is faithful, let them offer prayers of confession while He may be found. That sounds strange because we just assume God can be found anytime. But he means that while we are still alive and have a chance, go to God. It’s his way of saying DO IT RIGHT NOW! DON’T WAIT!

-Isaiah echoes this:

Isaiah 55:6 “Seek the LORD while he may be found; call upon him while he is near;

Isaiah 55:7 let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the LORD, that he may have compassion on him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.” (Isaiah 55:6–7 ESV)

-Christian—you feel no vitality in your soul, and God seems so far away. Go to His throne today and confess—receive His mercy. Why wait? Come to the altar today and leave with a clean slate. Stop making excuses…justifying…

-But maybe you haven’t found initial mercy with Him…