Romans chapter 4 and verse 6. Even as David also described the blessedness of the man unto whom God imputes righteousness apart from works, saying, Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven and whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin.

Looking at David this morning, there was something incomplete about Psalm 51 that we would like to complete today. The Psalm in itself is incomplete, if you were to look at it.

It's a Psalm that has been poured out of a very broken heart. But yet we don't see an answer to that sum. What could be the answer to a prayer like that? Where did David find an answer to his deepest woes? Well, sum of David's sum actually has a prayer and it also has an answer. Probably he started writing that song when he was in trouble. He ended it up when he found deliverance. So the song has a section of uh supplication as well as deliverance.

But that's not Psalm 51. It is through and through just a prayer and it stops with a prayer. And that's why we ought to ask, how did David come out of it? After committing adultery, murder and hypocrisy and all kinds of sin, how did David find his footing back again? And importantly, all the things that he actually prayed for, how did he get an answer to it? You see, this is where Paul understands David's plea of Psalm 51 being answered in Psalm 32.

Because Paul is in the middle of an argument that says nothing can be given and that's David's exactly in Psalm 51. I cannot give anything. I can't give you sacrifices. I can't give you great words of praise. I can't give you evangelistic efforts as a recompense to my sin. What I just have is brokenness that is of no value. And so there is then therefore no greater example to show if God can redeem a person like David in such a state and consequences, then that is what true forgiveness looks like.

That without works, not the labour of my hands, not my greater zeal, not my penitent tears, not my even prayer, is going to bring about repentance, is going to bring about deliverance. So if that's how the scriptures have led to help us believe that Psalm 32 is in fact the deliverance, the missing part of Psalm 51. This morning we will consider a few verses from Psalm 32. You read Psalm 32 and verses 1 through 5. Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.

Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord does not charge his account with iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit. When I kept silence, my bones waxed old, through my roaring all the day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me, and my vitality was torn under the draught of summer. I acknowledged my sin unto you, and my iniquity have I not hid. I said I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord, and you forgave the iniquity of my sin.

Psalm 51 is basically encapsulated in verse 5. Psalm 51 is all about David saying, I acknowledge my sin and my iniquity, I'm not going to hide it anymore and in response to that, God forgave the iniquity of David. But here is something we want to consider this morning. One is not just the repentance of David, but what was his state when he was in sin? and what was the deliverance that God gave this man? Everything in between was sound 51 but what was it before he started to repent?

And once he had done repenting, once he had prayed that prayer, how did the Lord respond to him? You see, it's in the backdrop of a very horrible past that the deliverance of God becomes beautiful. Simon the Pharisee could not appreciate God's forgiveness, not as much as that harlot who was weeping at the feet of Christ. unto whom more has sinned, more is given, more forgiveness is given and such will love more. And here is David expounding not just the deliverance that he has gained from the Lord.

But he is also reminiscing what was it before it all began. There are four things about sin that we will consider here. One, that sin is hard. Second, that sin is ugly. Third, that sin is heavy. and fourth that's sin is condemnation and you see all of this coming and boiling down to these few verses that we read. First let's consider the past of David. In verse 3 he says, I kept silence. That was a period of silence for David. It was a period when probably he didn't write as many songs as he always did.

He was not as much as a leader of a spiritual leader to Israel as he always was. He was silent, in fact he was silent to the point where he was not doing what he was supposed to be doing which was to fight a war. Well that was the time of his hypocrisy. uh A span where he knew he had sinned. And probably he thought the best response to sin is to just be silent. Let me not just get engaged, let me not just be too active, let me just be low key.

I'm not going to be any more involved, I'm just going to be silent. I think that is the best I can do with my sin. and he split his hair trying to cover up his sin and once he thought that is done it was approximately nine months or more where David lived a life of hypocrisy and double standards. But here's the first thing you want to see, sin is hard that silencing ourselves or living an isolated life or covering up our sin does not take away the scourge of sin.

Those nine months would have been the darkest and the most... tiresome was laborious period of David's life. He thought it would be easy with silence but he says, my bones grew old and it was through my roaring day and night. Like David is in strays, he knows he is sinned and day in and out he is roaring, he is not knowing what to do with his sin. The very fear of others knowing about that sin has brought him into that space where he wants to be silent but it is not helping him.

And those nine months, He knows He has lost fellowship with the Lord. It is not as it was before. He says, day and night, your hand, He knows the Lord's heavy hand is upon Him. And my life or it says my moisture or my life, my vitality is being turned into drought. You can just imagine how water being turned into drought, being sucked up. That's how David saw his life going out during that period. He couldn't sleep. His sin bogged him down.

His sin made his life extremely hard. His sin made his life extremely heavy. You see how he writes, my bones... He has written about his bones many times. He says, my bones are become old or its bones essentially stand for strength. He's a man who's losing his strength. In Psalm 51, he says, the broken bones might rejoice, which means that is what his bones really ended up. It became broken. Let's consider one more Psalm, Psalm 38. 38 verse 2, it says, arrows pierce me and your hand presses me sore.

Imagine if you have made God your enemy and God is piercing you with his arrows and He's continuously piercing your conscience. He's calling out to you. How uncomfortable would that be? David wanted silence. He wanted peace. He wanted rest and that's last thing he got in those nine months. Well apart from the fact, even sin affects our physical body. You see in verse 3, He says, there is no soundness in my flesh. Yes, there is no health in my body.

Again He says in verse 7, the last part, there is no soundness in my flesh. He repeats it to show how sin took a toll on His health. And then again physically speaking of His bones, He says, there is no peace, there is no rest in my bones. He says in verse 4, My iniquities are gone over my head as a heavy burden, they too heavy for me. You see how much Sim took a toll on his mental health, where he's talking of great floods of guilt, of burden overflowing his head.

In verse 5 he says, my wounds, obviously he got no physical wounds, but he still says my wounds stink. Exactly, they stink and they're corrupt. When do wounds stink? A quick question... How come wounds stink or when do they stink? Infection? Anything else that suggests it's stinking? Septic? Yes. Exactly, it takes time. It doesn't stink from day two. You don't treat it, it will stink, it will get septic, it becomes corrupt.

And imagine that's what happens to our sin, they become more deep, the wounds become more deep, the more we delay and the more we do not treat it or the more we do not seek forgiveness. David thought silence is his option, silence is the way out but the more he was silent, the more he chose not to ask forgiveness, the more his wounds were stinking and it became more corrupt. The more he tried to cover up, the more into a ditch he became, he got himself into.

Finally he says in verse 8, um of my heart. This is when Nathan came to David. You see in the record of history we don't read much of what happened in those nine months. We just see him getting married to Bathsheba but this was his state physically, mentally, spiritually. Day and night he was groaning. Day by day his bones were becoming broken and weaker. He was losing health, was losing mental peace, he had nothing, no soundness at all.

And so when Nathan told David, you are that man, it didn't take him a split second to realize, yes, that's me. You see, that nine months literally broke down David because he was a man after God's own heart. Whatever hypocrisy he was trying to live up to, it was just making it more hard for him. And so from that horrible past, he writes this beautiful Psalm 32, where he says, blessed the joyfulness, the happiness of forgiveness.

If you see it carefully in your Bible, it is not blessed as He whose transgression is forgiven. It's actually blessed transgression forgiven. Like a point blank statement without any pronouns. Blessedness of transgressions being forgiven, whoever is the person. Blessedness of sin being covered. Blessedness of the man to whom the Lord will not hold him accountable. And blessedness of a spirit in which there is no deceit, no guile. You see, there are four things I mentioned of sin.

And those four things are being addressed here. First and foremost, sin is extremely heavy to bear. You see all of these four things in the first four chapters of Genesis. When Cain was punished, he actually said, this is too unbearable. I cannot bear this punishment. That was the experience of David in those nine months, unbearable pain. But when God deals with it, the first thing He does, bless her is the transgressions that are forgiven.

The word forgiven actually means bearable or borne away. We associate the word forgiveness with offense, but in its original sense, forgiveness simply means borne away, taken away. Someone has carried the unbearable. And that is the burdens that were lifted at Calvary for David. The burdens have been gone away. Shackled by a heavy burden, Neath a load of guilt and pain, That's how the hymn writer puts it. My sin and my sorrows, He has borne it to Calvary.

All like we as sheep have gone astray, But the Lord has laid upon Him the scourge, The sins of us all. What is unbearable is being borne away. Here is Christ in His body bearing upon Himself The sins of us all, Of all times, of all people, Once and for all. So there is great blessedness that God gives to a sinner that is repentant of all his bodes, all his burdens just being taken away. The second thing, the blessedness of sin being covered.

You see, sin is not just heavy, it's also ugly. Again, in Genesis we see this profoundly where the first instance, the first effort man made to bring about any restitution was covering up. He couldn't stand his own nakedness. Nakedness is a symbol of what's shameful. Nakedness in itself is not wrong because that was there before sin but with sin the glory has gone away and nakedness is now shameful. Nakedness shows how ugly, how despicable sin is to behold.

That if we were to see sin in its truest color we would really reach out to anything even it be fig leaves to cover it up. That if there is any evidence that points to our sinfulness we will do anything. Even if it was to cause murder like David, we would do anything to just cover it up. And compared to what David did, now David is enjoying the fact that God has covered all of what David has done. That my sin is covered.

Brethren, in the New Testament, we actually have a greater joy. It is not just our sins have been covered. For us, our sins have been taken away. In the Old Testament, were sacrifices of offerings and blood that was offered was just for the sake of covering. It could never take away sin, but the blood of Jesus Christ takes away sin. You see, there's something fundamentally wrong if we are living in a world that is going to glory on something that is shameful.

Then nakedness, which is supposed to be a matter of shame, is now becoming a matter of glory and pride. and where something is supposed to give a constant reminder of how ugly is our sin, it is no more being seen as something shameful. The world and the ruler of this world will make all efforts to make sin look unheavy, light as well as beautiful. But it is a sinner in Christ who understands the joy, the happiness of seeing sins being taken away, of sins being carried away.

You see, sin is heavy, sin is ugly. We also see Sin is condemnation where Blessed is the man to whom the Lord does not condemn, the Lord does not account iniquity. You see this again in Genesis when Cain murdered Abel, the blood of Abel was crying out for vengeance, is crying out for accountability and that's the word here where David is saying blessed is the person to whom the Lord is not going to hold him accountable for what he did.

How great is that blessedness that we could walk into the presence of God after having committed the wildest of all sins and still find God not holding us accountable! And surprise, surprise, this is also the same word of which it is written that God accounted righteousness to Abraham for his faith, that when we are supposed to be held accountable, condemned, judged for our sins, God is accounting us the righteousness of Christ. Lastly, sin is hard. We just saw that.

That was how his 9 months of life was. It was hard. Solomon says in Proverbs 13 that the way of transgression is hard. when he was living that rebellious persecution, uh living as a persecutor, the Lord caught hold of Saul and said, it is hard for you to kick against the pricks like you are trying to gawd a wayward cow and the Lord is pricking Paul, the Lord is pricking David. and those nine months was extremely hard for him every time he said no.

He wanted rest, he wanted peace and everything was just illusive. We forget the fact that the Lord is also the Lord who was in His anger. He promised that these people will not enter into His rest. That there is no rest for the wicked, there is no peace for the wicked. And in that horrible mental state, now David enjoys the blessedness, the joyfulness. of a spirit in which there is no deceit, is no guilt, there is no spot in his heart.

There is no burdens that his mind bears anymore. The worst of all what he has done is behind him. This is what the Lord gave to David in the Old Testament. This is what the Lord gives to every sinner who comes to him in faith. Sin that is heavy is taken away. Sin that is ugly is carried away. Sin that beckons judgment is not accounted for. sin that makes life hard is released of all burdens. God's name be glorified.