Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.
A popular line from a poem could have been written about King David in his attempts to hide his sin. Now that snowballed into more sin and more deception along with increased restlessness and physical ailments. Today on Truth for Life weekend, Alistair Begg shows us how God's heavy hand on us can be an act of kindness and mercy. Father, that is our prayer as we turn to the Bible. We thank you for the way our hearts and minds have been led in praise, and we ask that you will help us now and speak to us, give us ears to hear and eyes to see, for we pray in your Son's name.
Amen. Well, I invite you to turn to Psalm 32, and we reach the end of verse 4. We dipped momentarily into verse 5, but not to do it justice, and so we will pick our studies up essentially from there. Martin Luther referred to the Psalms as a Bible in miniature. Luther, between 1513 and 1515, wrote his first series of lectures on the Psalms. And I was intrigued to discover that he wrote more on the Psalms than on any other book in the entire Bible, including every New Testament book.
Twelve centuries before that, another gentleman who benefited greatly from the Psalms was Augustine. And I was intrigued to learn in my studies this week that apparently this thirty-second psalm was the favorite psalm of Augustine. And it's not a surprise when we think of probably his most famous quote being, O God, our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you. Because here in Psalm 32, and particularly as we saw last Lord's Day evening in verses 3 and 4, we have a description of the restlessness of the human heart. The restlessness of human hearts scarcely needs to be proved.
All we need is this morning's newspaper or a magazine or to sit with someone and reflect upon the passage of time. The explanations for that restlessness are varied, but as to the restlessness itself, few, if any, would be prepared to disavow such a thing. Some of you will recall that a few months ago we referenced the uncertainty and honesty of the author John Krakauer in relationship to this very thing. He says at the end of his book, Under the Banner of Heaven, I don't know what God is or what God had in mind when the universe was set in motion.
In fact, I don't even know if God exists. He then goes on to say, Most of us fear death. Most of us yearn to comprehend how we got here and why. Which is to say, Most of us ache to know the love of our Creator. Most of us ache to know the love of our Creator. Remember the first question of the shorter Scottish Catechism, What is the chief end of man?
Or, Why does man—why do men and women exist? And then the answer, The chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever. And until a man or a woman makes that wonderful discovery, then the pilgrimage of their days is marked essentially by restlessness.
Now, the uncertainty that comes from the pen of Krakauer is more than matched by his honesty. And it is honesty with ourselves that is often the gateway to change, even in the most superficial things. We recognize, going up two flights of stairs, that we are breathless. And in being honest with ourselves, we recognize that we have not been taking care of our physical frame, and perhaps we need to walk a little more or we need to have more exercise.
The same may be true in other aspects of our physical lives. Such honesty is a vital gateway also in terms of spiritual repair. And the psalmist here, at the end of verse 1, in addressing the whole issue of happiness—which we said is a very contemporary interest—points out that happiness and deceitfulness or dishonesty do not sleep in the same bed.
It is ultimately impossible to be a dishonest person and to be a happy person, because there is a dissonance between what is and what ought to be. And so the psalmist, having described the happiness that accompanies a relationship with God, a relationship that is grounded in forgiveness, then, in verses 3 and 4, speaks of this spirit of heaviness which rested upon him. We're familiar with people who are referred to as being like a wet blanket.
When they're around, it's just as though all the clouds and heaviness have descended on us. It is an interesting metaphor. It's not the metaphor that is employed here. The picture here is of the hand of God. Of course, we know that God is Spirit and therefore does not have a hand.
Therefore, this is an anthropomorphism. Therefore, the picture is a graphic picture that somehow or another God, the Creator of the ends of the earth, has extended himself from heaven and has placed his hand, if you like, on the neck of his servant David. And if happiness is his great desire, which I think it is for humanity, then he now points out that sin is his great dilemma. And indeed, verse 3 speaks to the predicament that prevails in his physical frame as a result of his tortured conscience. When I kept silent, he writes, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long, for day and night your hand was heavy upon me, my strength was sapped as in the heat of summer. Now, if we're accurate in assuming that what David is referencing here is his sin with Bathsheba and the subsequent cover-up, whereby not only did he steal another man's wife but he paved the way for the death of the husband in order that he might take this wife to himself, untrammeled by the sorry and sordid and obvious implications of having this other man around. That period of time—at least nine months, perhaps as much as a year—is being referenced here in verses 3 and 4. When I lied, when I covered up, when I sought to dissemble and to cloak my dreadful deeds, he says, then my tortured conscience produced these physical symptoms. It's not my place to comment on psychosomatic illness.
But any of us who have lived any length of time at all recognize that there is clearly correlative aspects between what is going on inside of us and what is happening on the surface—certainly as it relates to deceitfulness, to lies, and to living with a cover-up. Now, presumably, David was managing on one level, and that level was the public level. He was going about his business as king. He was sending people into battle. He was responding to the memos that came his way. He would have been seen moving around his provinces, and folks would have said, There he goes in all of his triumph and his grandeur. In much the same way that you and I may manage to patch it up enough as we go to our offices, as we attend our school classrooms, as we submit our essays, as we conduct our business, as we sweep up the floor of our responsibilities. And yet we may actually find ourselves identifying with verse 3, When I kept silent my bones wasted away. Publicly he was managing, privately his life was unraveling.
Publicly managing and privately unraveling. That may actually be just way too apt a description for some who are sitting here this morning. It makes you move just a little in your seat. You find yourself saying, I hope nobody can see what's going on inside of my mind right now. Because this is me. I haven't slept properly in a long time. I'm no longer the person I once was. I'm unprepared to acknowledge that the root of my predicament does not lie in all the superficial things that people are trying to help me with.
No. When I kept silent, then I began to waste away. Now, my first note in my notes that is underlined is simply four words, and I'll give them to you in case this is of help, and if it isn't, you needn't worry about it. But in order to try and work my way from the stanza, which is essentially verses 3 and 4, into the stanza, which is verses 5, 6, and 7, I simply wrote down, From when to then. From when to then.
Not exactly brilliant, is it? If you look at the text, you will notice that verse 3 begins with when, and you will notice that verse 5 begins with then. When I kept silent, this was what I experienced. Then, he says, I acknowledged my sin to you, then I did not cover up my iniquity, then I said I will confess my transgressions to the LORD, and then you forgave the guilt of my sin. Okay?
From when to then. Now, what we need to notice this morning, and it is something that would be relatively easy to miss, is this—that his physical condition, as described in verses 3 and 4, albeit an unhappy one, actually under God was for his good and benefit. God has brought him to the place where looking at himself, if you like, in the mirror, has confronted him with the fact that the real predicament that he faces is not to be found on the surface but is to be found on the inside. His tortured conscience has wounded him, and the evidence is there for those who know him best to see. There are only two kinds of conscience that will feel the burden of sin. One is a tender conscience—a tender conscience. Most of our children have tender consciences.
That's why, the first time you come back into the kitchen, where there were ten chocolate chip cookies, and now there are only nine, and you said, Where is the cookie? And if they said, I don't know, the tenderness of their conscience will relatively quickly produce repentance. But if, as time goes by, that tender conscience continues to act in the wrong way and to resist the implications of wrongdoing, then it loses its power to convict. The American Indians had a picture of a conscience as a triangle inside your tummy.
It's quite a graphic picture, or in the center of your diaphragm, at least. The tribal chief telling the young men, You have a sharp, three-pointed triangle inside of you. And when you violate our tribal customs, when you disobey our laws, when you go against what you know is right to do, then this triangle will turn inside of you, and it will jab you, and it will jag you, and it will cause you to repent. However, he said, if when it jabs you and jags you, you resist the call to repentance, and you continue in an activity which is unlawful and displeasing, eventually the corners will be rounded out, and your conscience may spin quite freely without it ever having any impact on you at all when you are confronted by your wrongdoing. That's why when we read in the Bible about those whose consciences have been seared as with a hot iron, it is a graphic picture, and it is a dreadful picture. Today, when you hear God's voice in your conscience, don't harden your hearts.
That's why it says that. The other conscience that will bear and respond to the burden of sin is a wounded conscience—a wounded conscience. If you have a fracture somewhere in your body, let's say, in your knee, then the weight of things and the weight of yourself or added weight to your body will become apparent because you're wounded in your knee. The very weakness there will bear testimony to the weight that has been placed upon you. And in the same way, it is a wonderful thing—albeit a hard and difficult thing—when God comes as he comes to his servant David, and he brings his willful disobedience before him, and he confronts him with his systematic attempts at cover-up, and he points out to him that his very conscience is in danger of being seared, and he lays his hand of heaviness upon him—a hand that becomes absolutely unbearable.
Psalm 38 and verse 4, another psalm of David in this series, he says, My guilt has overwhelmed me like a burden too heavy to bear. My guilt has overwhelmed me like a burden too heavy to bear. Is this a dreadful thing? Is this a terrible thing?
Well, it is in one sense dreadful, but it is at the same time wonderful. You see, when you or I have a guilty conscience, because we know we're in the wrong, having offended against God and offended against one another, all of the external influences upon us will tend to say, Cover it up. Deny it. Run from it.
Smooth it over. Just don't address it. Because it is too ugly to face, it is too difficult to pursue, it is too demanding to climb down from where we are. And yet what the Bible says is that the benefits far outweigh the cost. That's why David, upon reflection, is able to say, You know, when I was overwhelmed by these things, when your hand was heavy upon me, then in actual fact it tended to my good. You see, the Bible constantly asks questions which we just don't ask. It asks, for example, in 1 Samuel 6, a correlative question, and it is this. Who can stand in the presence of the Lord this holy God?
And state their case. This question actually comes in 1 Samuel 6, after seventy individuals had poked their nose into something that had nothing to do with them at all, and they all died. And the people observing it looked at it and said, If God is that kind of God, who then can stand before this holy God? Which of us is able just to go in and stand before God? You think about Moses. He takes his shoes off his feet in the presence of the burning bush, a symbol of the eternal God. Because he realizes that the ground on which he stands is holy ground. Clearly, this is not a reference to some cosmic principle or to some personal creation, where by God, G-O-D, spells whatever we want it to spell. Where G-O-D, whatever that means, exists in order to bolster up our self-esteem or to assure us that everything is not out of control or to placate us in our disobedience.
This is something very different. I wonder, you may never even have asked yourself the question, I wonder who can stand before this holy God? Psalm 7 is not the most politically correct psalm in the Bible.
We even joked about it earlier on. The psalmist says, My shield is God Most High, who saves the upright in heart. That's fine, isn't it? You could put that on a t-shirt, or take that on a little card, put it in your top pocket, and bring it out to people tomorrow morning, and it was a worthy statement of the truth of God. And what about verse 11? God is a righteous judge, a God who expresses his righteous indignation or his wrath every day. How about that for a t-shirt?
How about that for a little card to slip to your waitress at the end of the meal with a decent tip? God is a righteous judge, a God who expresses his wrath every day. He is? Yes. Do you know how the King James Version translates it?
And perhaps even more accurately than the dynamic equivalents of the NIV? God is angry with the wicked every day. God is angry with the wicked every day. If you are wicked, God is angry with you every day.
Every day. You say, Well, I never heard that before. Well, it's in the Bible.
You just need to read it. You see, the God to whom we're introduced in the Bible is not a figment of our imaginations. He's not a creation of our own design and desire, a kind of, you know, tailor-made God to fit the twenty-first century, to fit the pluralistic perceptions of our culture, to allow us to absorb and placate every notion that presents itself. No, God stands above and outside of all of that, calling men and women to account. And he is the God who in his mercy and in his goodness lays his heavy hand upon the neck of David. And wonderfully so, because David was in a mess. David was an adulterer. David was a sinner. David was a liar. David was a denier.
David was at least nine months into his deceit, and when he looked at himself in the mirror, he said, I am finished! I am wasting! My bones cling to me. My skin clings to my bones. I'm like an owl in the ruins. I'm like a desert owl. My friends disabuse me. I am fevered in the day.
I'm an insomniac in the night. Why? Because God's hand of heaviness rested on him. You see, what we seek to disavow in seeking somehow or another to make more palatable to our friends this amazing story of forgiveness is actually what robs our sensible friends from being able to put together the story we're trying to tell them. Unless we have a dilemma, then the story of what Jesus has done makes no sense. It is because God's hand rests in heaviness on the psalmist that he needs to acknowledge his sin. You're listening to Truth for Life weekend. That is Alistair Begg with a warning against placating a guilty conscience.
We'll hear more about this next weekend. As Alistair often mentions, the Bible is the source of life and health, and that's why he encourages you to open your Bible and think it through for yourself. So in addition to studying along with us on Truth for Life, we want to recommend that you spend daily personal time in God's Word. We have an easy-to-use Bible reading plan that will guide you through four passages from Scripture each day so that in a year's time you'll have read through the entire Bible. This Bible reading plan is built into the Truth for Life app. You can also access it on our website at truthforlife.org slash Bible reading plan. You can even print a copy of it if you'd like to have a daily reading schedule to keep in your Bible.
While you're on our website, take a minute and check out the book we're recommending today. It's called Remade, Embracing Your Complete Identity in Christ. This is a collection of readings that will give you a close-up look at yourself as a believer who is being remade into the likeness of Christ. You'll read about how you're a sinner saved by grace, how you are united with Christ in suffering, and how you're a redeemed saint born again to a living hope.
In fact, let me read just a short excerpt from the book. The author says, Scripture has cutting power. It penetrates. As a scalpel in the divine surgeon's hand, the Word cuts through your innermost being. It heals as it wounds. As you read, hear, and listen to the Word, the Spirit evaluates the deepest parts of your inner being, enabling you to see sins and blind spots. This moves you to repent not only of your outward behavior, but also of your loves. Find out more about the book Remade. Visit our website today at truthforlife.org. I'm Bob Lapine. Thanks for studying God's Word with us. Join us again next weekend when we'll learn why a wounded conscience can be a wonderful thing. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.
