Psalm 32 “Prayer of Confession”

As most of you know, we come together in bible studies prior to the sermon to discuss the text of the sermon and allow the Holy Spirit to inform the church prior to the Sunday time of sharing in worship. This is truly a wonderful tradition. Usually we start with exegesis, then pull out the main points of the text, try to recontextualize to our own lives today, and apply the scriptures as the Word of God over our lives.

In the bible studies we really got caught up in the discussion of this text. It was far more than the typical debate. We had some hardcore forensics going on. If God is all-knowing, that is omniscient, then why should I have to confess anything at all? Surely God knows that I have sinned in my life already!” Or in regards to asking for forgiveness, “What if I do not have it in my heart to forgive the other person? What is supposed to happen to me?” “If I pretend to forgive someone in confession to God, but really do not, is that not lying to God and is the greater sin?”

So, I kind of expect that during this message you might also have some points of debate, an argument you might want to make. Write them down. Engage me after worship. We can talk about anything. We love to argue about God. We find the Will of God in sharing the Word with one another in debating the Holy Scriptures.

uements come even with the first word in the Hebrew. The word is the name of King David himself that has the Hebrew letter “Lamed” attached as a prefix making his name the indirect object grammatically in the original text. What does this mean? This most likely is not a Psalm of David as the editors of our pew bibles seem to think but rather a Psalm written to David. In this case, it is not King David encouraging his royal subjects to confess their sins but rather quite the opposite. The singer of Psalm is asking King David to consider his iniquities. This is a text that reminds David to be humble before God. So, looking at this Psalm from the start at the very top, we see a superscript that says the Psalm is “of David.” I am of the opinion in my own understanding and reading of the Hebrew that the Psalm is not necessarily written by David but rather TO David! In Hebrew the letter “lamed” before David’s name means “to.” It is literally the marker of the indirect object in grammar. This makes a big difference in how we understand this text. In this case, this makes it an admonition to the King of Israel to get busy in confessing to God.

Why would someone think that King David needs to confess? In reality there were a lot of things that King David did that no one would consider to be righteous actions before God. Nathan the Prophet points this out in 2 Samuel 12:9-10: “Why have you despised the Word of the Lord, to do what is evil in his sight? You have struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and have taken his wife to be your wife. . . .” This is a reference to King David’s love affair with Bathsheba, but King David did a lot of not so virtuous things besides the illicit affair and murder.

Psalm 32 to David: “Blessed are those whose transgressions are lifted.” The word for forgiven here is “nasa” in Hebrew which means to be lifted. I like to look at it as God Almighty in heaven looking down and taking the sin off of us. Lifting the sin as Chrit himself was filled with the sin of the world and lifted up on the Cross.

I have to point out as well that the verb tense in Hebrew for “lifted” is in the grammatically “perfected” tense. It is already complete. Even David’s sins were lifted up upon the Cross through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ–even though it is in the future still. Turn with me to 1 Peter 2:24, this is the Apostle Peter talking of course after the death and Resurrection of Christ: “He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that, free from sins, we might live for righteousness.”

Psalm 32:2 “Blessed are those to whom the Lord imputes no iniquity, and whose spirit there is no deceit.” How often do we hear the word “impute”? Anybody know what it means, besides those who were in bible study this last week? Some translations will use the term “count” here. That is fine. So, we can read “God does not count up sins.” The theologian Eugene Peterson translates this line as “Count yourself lucky that God holds nothing against you, and you are holding nothing back from him.”

I have a different way of looking at this line and the word “impute.” Do any of you remember way back in the 1960’s a television program called Lost in Space”? In that show there was a robot that had a computer for a brain. Oftentimes if one wanted to trip up the robot all one had to do was make up something that made no sense and feed it to the robot brain. The robot would then respond with the words “That does not compute. That does not compute.” So, I imagine God up in heaven when we transgress also being befuddled and saying “That does not impute, that does not impute.” Transgressing God’s law only hurts ourselves, and God must really wonder why we do that to ourselves. Yes, God is all-knowing, but probably does not really understand how we can be so foolish! We do not compute!

We just finished the sermon series on the Book of Romans, so this is probably still fresh in your minds from Roman 7:15 when Paul writes: “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” Soooo, we need to talk about this with God, right?

In verse 3 of Psalm 32 we read that our bodies themselves might waste away if we continue to do this transgressing and not knowing why or without confession to God. So, here we have an interesting thought: Confession is not for God’s sake! It is for us that we do not carry the burden of sin in our bodies that may make us “groan all day long.”

In the Hebrew mind the body and soul are intricately connected. Only in the New Testament when a huge injection of Greek philosophy is mixed in with the faith do we get this unique understanding that the spirit and body are somehow two completely different things. But, what does your heart tell you? Is it just an organ that pumps blood? Or is it your heart? What does your gut tell you? The physical and spiritual are connected! I hope everybody recalls Genesis 2:7 when God took the earth and formed humankind and then breathed God’s own Spirit into us. Are we earth? Are we Spirit? The answer is yes!

Just as we swim or run to keep physically fit; therefore, we pray in confession to God in order to stay spiritual fit. Confession is a spiritual exercise that makes us stronger! It needs to be part of our spiritual training. It should be right up there with regular worship, prayers of gratitude at meals, and bible study. In all of these things we open up the truth of our lives to the Almighty to build our spirit lives stronger.

So, in a way we confess our sins to help God to understand us better–just to share our heart with God. God knows that we sin. God just needs to hear it from us, too. God has already lifted our sins on the Cross. God has already covered our sins by the grace of the Lord Jesus. We can just be affirmed in that knowledge and faith.

This is good for us to do. It takes the burden of sin from our own hearts. “Hey, God, I really screwed up this last week, and you know that already. I ask for your forgiveness.” Hmmm, I really do feel better already. I do not feel as if I am “groaning through life.”

This last week I came into conversation with someone who reminded me of a third reason to confess to God our sins. If we can open up to God, that means we can be honest with ourselves, and even be honest with others around us.

The fellow I met for the first time told me how it was that his life had been filled with drugs, alcohol, greed, the abuse of women, and the like. He ended up in prison. He was ministered to in prison and came to accept Jesus as Lord and SAvior over his life. Now, he shares his witness with youth in order to help them get their lives straightened out before God in heaven–and hopefully before prison.

If you are willing, your personal witness to God, can be your public witness to those who need to hear the message from someone who has struggled with the exact same sins. I want to lift up the memory of one of modern Christianity’s great theologians: Chuck Colson. (He is one of the three Chucks, right? Chuck Smith, Chuck Swindoll, and Chuck Colson.) He was President Richard Nixon’s hatchet attorney. He went to prison for his role in Watergate. In prison he became a Christian. When he was released he started a prison ministry to help others who had been incarcerated. He could connect with prisoners because he had the “street cred.” He had been in prison himself.

Today, thousands have come to confess their sins before God and change their lives because of Chuck Colson. Maybe your confession can help other Christians reconcile their lives once more to God. Maybe that is the best reason of all to pray the prayer of confession–for God, for yourself, but also for others.

Amen.