Psalm 32

Secrets are heavy. Secrets are hard to hold on to. Secrets have a way of slipping out of our grasp. Even if the secret is good, it’s still hard to hold on to. You buy that special gift, the one you just know they’re going to like, and it’s hard to wait to give it to them. You want to give them hints, you want to give the gift early, because the secret is inside you, just wanting to get out. You know about the surprise birthday party, and you run into the guest of honor, and you have to work at not letting any information slip. Secrets, good secrets want to slip out.

Bad secrets are heavy, too. Bad secrets, regrets, remorse, guilt wants to come out, except we don’t want them to be revealed. There’s a struggle between the secret wanting to come out and us trying to hold them in. We know what we’ve done. We have the pictures in our minds, the memories that can’t be erased. And those memories are heavy. They pull at us. They drag on us. They steal joy from what otherwise would be wonderful celebrations. They dim what could be bright shining moments. They want to come out, and we won’t let them, we can’t let them. At any cost, we must keep them hidden.

But those secrets can eat us alive. They can be so heavy we can actually physically be dragged down, we can become physically sick. Those secrets have to come out, like an infection has to be removed, like gangrene has to be cut away. And this cutting, this removal, this relief is called repentance. Us admitting the secret, finally letting it out, speaking it. Recognizing the failure, and asking for healing.

As we begin this time of lent, we’re looking forward to the cross and the empty grave. But we won’t be ready for the cross and the empty grave if we are still hanging on to those secrets. And let’s be sure a moment what kinds of secrets we’re talking about. Some secrets are about what other people have done to us, bad, hurtful things. And sometimes those things are so hurtful, we can’t talk about them. Those, too, need to be talked about, at some time, to find healing.

But what we’re talking about this evening is our sins, not the sins of someone else. These are the secrets of our own choosing, our own failures. They are the big train wrecks of sin, and they are the sneaky little vices, we may call them little quirks. But they are sin, whatever we want to call them.

And it’s time to let them out. Because, verse 1:

Psalm 32 begins with forgiveness because the Lord begins with the promise of forgiveness. Remember this morning? God forgave us before we repented. While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. His death on the cross was enough to wipe out every sin you have ever and will ever commit, along with every sin of the person sitting next to you. His forgiveness is big enough. His kindness, His love draws us to repent. We are guaranteed that He will forgive, even before we admit those secrets.

But this assurance of forgiveness, this guarantee of grace doesn’t mean we’ve found a way to live with this sin. Forgiveness is where we will end up, freedom is the result, when we repent. Verse 2:

That deceit, that’s the heavy part. When we have the stuff inside, but we try to look like we DON’T have the stuff inside. When we have sinned and are sinful, but we try like anything to not LOOK sinful.

A deceitful life, a life of covering things up is not a blessed life. It’s a hard life, a sad life. Verse 3:

Holding this in hurts. Keeping up the pretenses is painful. Spiritually, we waste away. The life of a Christian is supposed to be a loving, gentle, peaceful, joyful, patient, good life. But we can’t get to that goodness and peace and joy when the sin is in the way. And so our spiritual life, our Christianity, is filled with fear and grudge and bitterness. We’re afraid someone may find out we’re not as good Christians as we’d like to be. We are jealous of other Christians who seem so much happier. We think that somehow they’ve found a way to be happy with their sin. And we haven’t figured that out. So we’re bitter. We’re resentful. We’re wasting away with the sin.

Even physically, we can waste away. Guilt can increase blood pressure. Shame increases stress. We don’t eat as well, trying to cover up the pain of regrets with the taste of junk food. Some of us will drink until we forget. We lose sleep.

We waste away, our bones waste away when we keep silent, when we fight repentance. Verse 4:

It’s just hard, just plain hard to keep this in. It’s hard to talk about it, but it’s hard to keep it in. And if the Lord gives us joy in His forgiveness and grace, well, then there is heaviness and pain when there is no repentance. The psalmist stops for a moment, with the selah there in verse 4, and remembers how bad this all was. That was an awful time for him, with that thing hanging over him, just crushing him. The worry was so great that someone would find out. The pain hurt so much trying to fool everyone. The psalmist just sits and remembers, and shudders.

And then, verse 5:

I let it go. I stopped the fight. If the sin wants to come out, then fine, the sin will come out. I’m not hiding it anymore. It’s just too much work. It was time to name the sin, to tell it to God, and not put a nice spin on it, or grade on a curve, compared to others. I’m not pretending anymore. I wasn’t fooling myself, and I’m sure not fooling God. Still verse 5:

There’s relief. You forgave the guilt of my sin. There’s joy. You forgave the guilt of my sin. There’s maybe even a little surprise. You forgave the guilt of my sin. Even THAT sin! The guarantee came true. The promised grace arrived. All that fear I had when I was trying to hide that sin was for nothing. I didn’t need to be afraid! When I finally admitted, when I finally repented, I wasn’t met with scorn. The Lord wasn’t angry. He didn’t scold me and say, "I told you so." Instead He spoke those words. "I…forgive…you. I already did."

And again, the psalmist stops and thinks, with a selah there in verse 6. He remembers that day, that hour, that minute when he gave it all up. The relief that flooded over home. The pain that stopped throbbing. The joy that came rushing over him. He didn’t need to hide anymore. There was no more deceit. He was who he was before the Lord, and the Lord forgave Him, and the Lord welcomed him in. That day was like the first day of a brand new life. Like he was born all over again. And the awe and the release just make him sit there in silence remembering.

And then he shakes himself back to the present and he looks around and he sees a lot of other people who are trying to hide themselves from God, and looking very miserable doing so. And he wants the same relief for them as he has found. And he says, in verse 6:

He has discovered that the Lord is not someone to be afraid of. When he finally took that terrifying step of repentance, of admitting failure, he found that the Lord is the only safe place he had. Instead of the Lord striking down, crushing him in anger, verse 7:

And one more time, the psalmist stops to think, with the selah at the end of verse 7. He does a comparison between the way life used to be, with the heavy secrets dragging him down to his death, wasting his bones away, sapping his strength, to his life right now, safe in the hiding place of the Lord, protected from trouble, surrounded by songs of deliverance.

And now, the Lord breaks into the psalmists thoughts. He’s been there the whole time, holding out the guarantee of forgiveness, nudging, urging, pulling him toward repentance. And now that the communication is open, they’re talking, there’s no deceit, no hidden sin, then the Lord has a word with Him. And in verse 8, the Lord speaks more promises:

Now that everything is open and clear between the writer of Psalm 32 and the Lord, the last thing that God wants is for more stuff to come between them. And that’s the last thing the psalmist wants, too. He remembers how bad it was when he was hanging onto all those secrets.

And the Lord says, "Don’t worry. I’ll teach you. I’ll instruct you in the way you should go. I’ll counsel you and watch over you to make sure you don’t get back into that situation." Our kind, forgiving Lord teaches us two things. First, He teaches us to obey. And not just to obey in fear, but to obey in joy and eagerness. Verse 9:

God wants us to obey because we want to obey. He wants our obedience to be natural, like we’re wired for obedience. He has to do some rewiring of our brains and our desires, but that’s what He does. He doesn’t want us obeying because His hand is hanging over us, just waiting to swat us. He wants us to truly be holy, not just act like we’re holy. So He teaches and He corrects and He transforms. He takes bitter, resentful people who hide their sin into joyful eager people who actually don’t sin as much as they used to. He’s making sinners into saints. He’s teaching us to obey.

But He’s also teaching us to repent. Because we’re not going to just jump from being sinners into being saints in a day or two. While Jesus is taking over our lives, while the Lord is teaching us holiness, transforming our minds, we’re still going to sin. Hopefully less and less all the time, but we’ll still sin. And so the Lord trains us to repent, to come to Him quicker than last time. He teaches us to not hang on to those secrets for so long, because it hurts. He teaches us to trust in His willingness to forgive. He urges us to run to Him as soon as we realized we’ve sinned, because the sooner, the better.

Verse 10:

Their life is hard. The burdens are heavy, their strength is sapped, their bones are wasting away. But:

It’s okay. You can let the secret go. It’s okay. You can trust that He will forgive. You know how much it hurts to hold on. You know you can’t hold on to it forever. If you’re finding it too difficult to come and repent, to open up your life to God, come talk with me. And if you don’t want to talk with me, then talk with your Lord, your Savior, your Father. He’s waiting. He’s urging. Because He know that when you let go, and open up, you will life like you’ve never seen. And when you’ve found that, you’ll turn around and tell everyone you know, verse 11: