People wander down many pathways in pursuit of spiritual happiness even be attained? We'll look for the answer today on Truth for Life weekend, as we trace King David's journey from utter despair to exaltation. Alistair Begg is teaching from the closing verses of Psalm 32. I don't know how many of you possess Constitution of the United States.
I think a number of you probably do. I have mine with me and want to quote from it from the second paragraph. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The pursuit of happiness. And it's often misquoted, though, to suggest that America is prepared to guarantee happiness as an unalienable right. But it doesn't. It shouldn't.
It can't. It guarantees the pursuit of happiness as an unalienable right. And so it is that in the realm of academics, people with large brains and significant amounts of time analyze, from a psychological and psychiatric perspective and from a sociological perspective, the nature of happiness itself.
And most of that work describes the pursuit of happiness in terms of its futility. Now, the reason we're here at Happiness Revisited, if you like, is because this psalm, this poem, which has been the focus of our studies, is upon a psalm, a poem which has begun with the word happiness itself. Happy is he whose transgressions are forgiven. Happy is the man whose sin the Lord does not count against him. And it is a poem written by a man who would have fitted in quite happily to the Chagrin Valley or to the surrounding communities here in a city like Cleveland, insofar as he was successful.
He was a leader. He was, in many senses, the kind of individual who had it made. But as is often the case with those who apparently have it all, all does not satisfy.
And this particular poet felt the same way about happiness, apparently, because he saw somebody else's wife, and he decided that if he could have her, then that would be equated to happiness. And whatever gratification he enjoyed in the immediacy of his theft, the events quickly unraveled distastefully to murder and to mayhem and to a strength-sapping sadness. The writer has broken God's law. As a result of breaking God's law, he faces the inescapable consequences. When he tries to cover it up, his predicament becomes worse and worse and worse. It's deeper, and his despair is even more bone-chilling. It is, by contrast, when he comes out of hiding, when he confesses his sin, when he discovers forgiveness and cleansing, that he is then enabled to sing about happiness. He is, if you like, in this particular psalm, looking at life from both sides now. And he has looked at it from the side of relentless despair, and then he is able to look at it from the perspective of a quite liberating happiness. Now, I hope this is helpful, and I have nowhere else to go with it.
Therefore, I really hope it is helpful. But I'd like to have us think in terms of just two pictures. Picture number one, then, is entitled The Sorrows of the Wicked. If you go in galleries—and I do every so often, because Susan is more interested than I am, and I want to be a good companion in life, but I'm growing to like things as well, I suppose—and I'm always interested to see what they put on that little card as descriptive of what it is that I'm looking at up here, because it isn't always really obvious when you look at it.
But here it is pretty straightforward. The picture has a title, and the title is The Woes, verse 10, in the NIV, The Woes of the Wicked, or The Sorrows of the Wicked, or The Pangs of the Wicked. So in other words, the picture is a scene. It's a scene of people.
It's a crowd scene, and it's not just any crowd. It is a crowd of the wicked. Now, wicked is not a very contemporary word.
Therefore, we need to unpack it. We already read in Psalm 9 a description in part of the wicked. The wicked return to the grave, all the nations that forget God. So wickedness and the forgetfulness of God go hand in hand. The wicked are ensnared by the works of their hands. So wickedness and wicked activities meet. And the wickedness that is referenced here is described in terms of the transgression of overstepping the mark, verse 1, of being a sinner, verse 2, failing to attain to the standard that God has set, missing the mark of God's appointing, of being iniquitous, being marked by iniquity, which is nothing other than an internal bias, which is a bias in upon ourselves. And when we look at this picture—and it's a fairly large picture, it's a big canvas, and it is completely populated—and again we say, Who are all these people in this picture? And the answer is, it is a picture of the wicked. Now, we shouldn't expect that these individuals would all be the kind of characters that you would find in the post office on the wall, as, Have you seen this person?
Do you have any help? Surely some of the people there would be like that, but the majority wouldn't. The majority would be like us, fairly well put together, quite nice, hair-combed, or whatever way you do it, and looking just as if we'd come off the pages of any photograph album at all. The picture of the wicked has no exceptions. It encompasses all. For all by nature go our own way, all by our natures refuse the truth, and all by our natures have our hearts closed to God. That doesn't sound very nice, but it's what the Bible says. Actually, what the Bible says—and this is a picture of sin—is that we are dead in our sins.
We're dead. And so unless somehow our deadness can be alleviated by a power outside of ourselves, we will remain dead. But dead people cannot make themselves alive, and wicked people cannot be relieved of their wickedness. If you look carefully at the picture as well, you'll see that there is sorrow in the eyes of many of the faces, because, as David says, many are the woes of the wicked. And when he describes his condition on another occasion in Psalm 102, it's amazing the emotional and physical impact that sin, that wickedness, has had upon him.
So he describes a situation where his body is wracked by fever and frailty, that he has eating disorders and weight loss and sleeplessness and rejection and melancholy and despair. And the more you look at the picture, no matter how apparently lovely it appears, it's a stark picture, it's a sad picture, it's the kind of picture that makes you almost recoil from it. Picture number one, the title is there, just off to the side, The Sorrows of the Wicked. Now, they did well to put that in the north side of the gallery, where it's a little chilly.
Now our guide takes us through into the south side of the gallery, where the sun comes in through the skylight windows, and it's really quite attractive and pleasant. And it's no surprise that picture number two is found there. This picture has a title as well, and the title at the side of this picture is The Songs of the Righteous.
It once again is a group scene—people, a crowd, albeit a smaller crowd. And this crowd comprises those who, according to verse 11, are upright in heart. Upright in heart.
In the same way that we don't make much reference to wickedness, I'm not sure anybody has said to anyone this morning, now, come along, Fred. I wish you were a little more upright in heart. But are you upright in heart? Am I upright in heart? And if I were to be upright in heart, what would that mean?
What would that look like? Would that mean that I was a perfect person? That I was a man of impeccable character?
No. The upright in heart are those who trust in him. Verse 10. The Lord's unfailing love surrounds the man or the woman who trusts in him.
Then rejoice in the Lord and be glad, you righteous. Who are the righteous? The ones who trust in him. Sing, all you who are upright in heart. Who are the upright in heart?
The ones who trust in him. The righteous. This righteousness coming as a result of the confessing of his sin. Verse 3, when I kept silent, I was a waster. Verse 5, when I acknowledged my sin and didn't cover up my iniquity, confess my transgressions, then you forgave my sin. And the songs of the upright, the songs of the redeemed, are songs of God's wonderful faithfulness, of his covenant love.
The Lord's unfailing love surrounds such individuals. Now, I saw on TV the other day, in the advertisements, a scene with little children, and they were sitting on what looked like a sort of plastic blanket. And it had a variety of scenes on the blanket, and then if they pressed the scene, it made a noise.
And the response of the children, albeit an acted response, was quite dramatic. Whoa, that's amazing! You pressed, and it made that noise, and then you pressed over there, and it made another noise. Now, you've got to stretch your imagination here, but I want to suggest that if you walk up to the canvas in picture number one and press it, it makes a noise. And the noise that you hear when you press canvas number one is the noise of self-assertive boasting, or it is the noise of self-inflicted groaning. When you press the canvas of picture number two, then you find that if you go up and press the tummy of somebody who appears in that canvas, then it comes out as songs of deliverance. All of a sudden, you press it, and somebody goes, animatedly, how can I say thanks for the things you've done for me, things so undeserved? We stand back from the picture and say, that's amazing!
That's amazing! Why are they saying that? Well, why are they saying that?
Why would they be saying that? Consider it, then, in relationship to David. When he writes of the woes of the wicked there in verse 10, picture number one, many are the woes of the wicked. This is not some arm's length description on the part of a fellow standing on a balcony looking down and seeing the mess of certain people's lives.
This is a description of someone who has been there, done that, got the t-shirt. This is somebody who's saying, many are the woes of the wicked, and if you doubt that, you should just come and talk to me, because I can tell you that wickedness and woe or pangs or sadness are constant bedfellows. He stands, as it were, in between the pictures, saying, testifying to the fact that no matter how appealing the inducements to sinful deeds, the pathway is strewn with regret—a pathway that leads to a dungeon of unrelenting torment. He was a tormented soul. And you may be here this morning, and you are a tormented soul. But we're not there yet.
We must stay with David. How is it, then, that he walked the path, or if you're like, What is the path, from the north side in all of its gloom and groaning to the south side in all of its light and love and laughter and liberty? Well, he tells us exactly what the path is.
He says, I acknowledged my sin, I confessed my transgression, I came clean. Finally, what about picture one and picture two in relationship to ourselves? Did you listen carefully to Romans 3? There is no difference—there's no difference—for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
All are, therefore, wicked. Therefore, all of us, by nature, are in picture number one. We exist in picture number one. We've exchanged the glory of God, Paul says in Romans 1.
We've fallen short of the glory of God here in Romans chapter 3. Well, then, how would a man or a woman ever get their face erased from picture one and replaced in picture two? Well, the exact same way that David did.
Remember what he did? I acknowledged my transgressions, I confessed my sin, I didn't try and cover up my self-assertiveness. You see, in many ways, the whole of life is just one gigantic cover-up. And we, by nature, cover things up from God. And we think that if we can continue to do that and inure ourselves against the ravishing, searching, x-ray eye of the Bible, then we'll actually be happy, only to discover that the more we hide and cover it up, the more unhappy we become.
And the more the prospect of being discovered or uncovered is a dreadful thought. But it was as David stepped down in repentance and in confession and in trusting in God's promise that he discovered that God is a God who keeps his promise. He's the God of Isaiah 43. I, even I, am he who blots out your transgression for my own sake. Now, let me end in Romans 3.
That's why I read from it. Because the story of the gospel, the story of the good news, the story of the transformation that is described in Psalm 32 answers a fundamental question that any thoughtful person needs to ask, which is, if it is as has been described so far, on what basis can a righteous God justify the ungodly? How can God transfer people from picture one into picture two without making a royal hash of picture two?
On what basis can a righteous God justify the ungodly? And Paul answers it in the little section that we read. The answer is that it is entirely and all of grace. It is entirely and all in Christ. Verse 22, this righteousness from God, this provision which God makes from God, comes in Jesus Christ. Verse 22, it is entirely all of faith. It comes in Jesus Christ through faith. And it is entirely all of God. Now, that's substance for a series of sermons on their own. But I think you can get all of that, can't you? You can understand that.
You can fasten on that for a moment. On what basis can a righteous God justify the ungodly? Answer, it is all of grace, it is all in Christ, it is all of faith, and it is all of God. In other words, it's all about God and what he has chosen in the immensity of his love to do, not about us cleaning ourselves up sufficiently to make an application for picture two to see if we could get transferred to the sunnier side of the gallery. So where's your face?
I'll tell you where it is. If it's not in picture two, it's still in picture one. And if, by God's grace, and it makes you marvel because you say to yourself, knowing what I know about myself and what I'm like, it is an amazing thing that I could even have my picture in picture two. And if your picture is in picture two, one of the ways you'll know is because the people you love most and care about most, you will long to have them in the picture with you.
And if you and I don't long to see the faces of those who are in picture one join us in picture two, then there's something really wrong. Molly Weir was a journalist and an actress in Scotland in the twentieth century. She wrote three books about her childhood in Glasgow, and they became a quite wonderful trilogy of social history in Glasgow. And in the second of the two books, a book entitled Best Foot Forward, she describes her religious environment. And she describes how she went to the Church of Scotland, which is the Presbyterian church, and then she supplemented that by going to various Bible classes when friends invited her.
And she discovered a man who was in a big interdenominational mission hall in the center of Glasgow called Jock Troop, and he used to come and preach around the neighborhood and outside, and they would sing and have musicians, and then he would preach, and she describes how he could make heaven seem so appealing that you just wanted to run right in, and he could make hell seem so alarming that you wanted to get as far from it as you possibly could. And she describes going home to her house where she lived not only with her parents but also with her grandmother. Her grandmother never left the house except one day in the year, Hugman A.
That is the last day of the year. All the rest of the time she stayed indoors. So when Molly came home from these evangelistic ventures, full of this story of grace, she urged her grandmother, You must come! You must come and hear this wonderful story! Granny, please come!
But she wouldn't leave the house. She goes to the Salvation Army, and here is one of the most poignant quotes in the book. After the outdoor service, we marched up Springburn Road behind the band and went into their hall to listen to another short service and discover how many sinners felt they now wanted to be saved. There was a long bench at the front called the Penitent's Bench where those wishing to be saved knelt. I found this all very moving and was saved twice—once for myself and once for Granny—since she wouldn't budge outside the house to make sure of her salvation in person.
It's very Pauline, isn't it? Paul said it broke his heart to think of his fellow Jews being damned. And he said, I would be prepared to be accursed if they, by my cursing, would be saved.
And Molly attempts to do what is impossible to do, for we will never be brought into picture two on the tale of our dad, our mom, our sister, or our brother. We are placed there by God's grace personally, purposefully, and permanently. I wonder, do you get this? You're listening to Alistair Begg on Truth for Life Weekend. Today's message wraps up our study in Psalm 32. I hope you've benefited from these encouraging lessons about all the ways God cares for us even when we try to hide from Him. If you've missed any part of this study or you'd like to re-listen or share the teaching with a friend, you can download a single message or the entire series for free at truthforlife.org.
The series is titled The Missing Peace, and that's P-E-A-C-E. While you're on our website, let me encourage you to check out a book we're recommending titled Future Proof—How to Live for Jesus in a Culture that Keeps on Changing. There are dramatic changes happening at such an accelerated pace in our culture today that it's creating an anxiety epidemic. How are we as Christians to respond in a world that is moving away from Christian beliefs? As you read the book Future Proof, you'll be encouraged to face the future with confidence, knowing that Christ is on the throne. His church will prevail regardless of what we see happening all around us. This is the last weekend we'll be talking about the book Future Proof. If you'd like more information, visit our website today at truthforlife.org. I'm Bob Lapine. The whole Bible is about the Gospel, and next weekend we'll see how that's true as we find Jesus in the Old Testament book of Ruth. I hope you can join us. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.
