Forgiven ... Forgotten

How blessed is the man who can say, our sin has been covered finally and fully.

God knows what you will do tomorrow and the next day, in fact, for the rest of your life. And that's part of the amazing grace of God that God knew you would sin. He had his son pay for God. And then he watches you commit that sin and knowing full well the agony that his son went through for it, he sees you do it 2,000 years later and he still loves you. Have you considered recently the amazing truth that even though God knows everything about you, he still loves you? He watches you every time you sin.

But no matter how many times you fail him, he never fails you. No matter how many times you prove that you deserve hell, he offers you heaven. What happens to our sin? The answer from God's word is that our sin is forgiven. These are just a few of the profound truths that Paul reveals to us in Romans chapter four.

This is wisdom for the heart and today's lesson is called Forgiven, Forgotten. Indian tribes in our own country had ancient practices of animal and human sacrifice. The Aztecs who have been touted in recent years as some old, wise, spirit-saturated people in tune with the great divine literally with their complex ritual calendar sacrificed thousands of human beings every single year. Chinese and Celtic history alike include the religious practices of child sacrifice. Ancient Greece, if you go back in time, discovered a practice called foundation sacrifices where they would take little children and bury them alive in the foundations of their great temples, hoping that that would somehow ensure the pleasure of their gods. Go to India and you'll discover a highly developed system of sacrifice and you'll also see a history where India's royally sacrificed human beings as substitutes for their own sin and their own mortality.

The Middle East, the practice of offering children goes back to Old Testament days. We're aware of the god Moloch from Old Testament scriptures of a cruel and gruesome practice. Moloch was shown to be some statue of a human body and the head of an oxen.

His inside would be hollow. He would be standing on a low oven and they would use that oven to stoke the fire until the statue was hot and they would place into the hollow there in his belly the children and then with the beating of drums they would drown out the screams of those kids. Up through the last century children have been thrown into rivers to appease the gods. Throughout the history of mankind sacrifices have been offered to gods for everything from sunshine, for rain, for harvest, for victory in war, for the barren womb, for diseases, for prosperity and most often for the appeasement of the angry deities. Making satisfaction to the gods by the way is simply unbelieving man giving credit to the truth of scripture that we have already learned in Romans chapter 2 where mankind has the law of God written on his heart and his mind and he does things without ever having read the copy of this law.

He does things to prove that there is indeed some sin he's aware of and there is an angry divine being he must appease. The Greek Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church teach a form of appeasement called the doctrine of purgatory. Purgatory comes from the Latin verb which means to cleanse. The word never appears in the New Testament.

It appears in the fictitious apocryphal book called Second Maccabees that most believe was written late in order to simply prove what they believe. But these churches basically teach millions of followers around the world that purgatory is a place where imperfect people go in order to make amends for their sins. You can't go directly to heaven unless you're perfect and since nobody's perfect everybody in some part some way spends some time in the tormenting cleansing fires of this place called purgatory and you might stay there a few days. You might stay there a thousand years depending on how much sin must be burned away as you are purged or cleansed by fire. The only hope you have of limiting the time in purgatory or having it shortened is through the prayers of priests still living and masses provided by relatives or friends on behalf of the deceased.

Every practicing Roman Catholic was offered an incredible opportunity. Those who believe in this extra biblical doctrine for the pope declared the year 2000 to be a year of Jubilee and he dedicated certain cathedrals as sacred sites and claimed that those who went and celebrated mass and those cathedrals during this Jubilee year of 2000 would be guaranteed never to spend any time in purgatory. The doctrine of purgatory was reaffirmed by the councils throughout the years. And again at the Council of Trent in 1545 of course it was rejected by the leaders of the Reformation who went directly to the New Testament scriptures to say what does the Bible teach and they gleaned from the word of God that people who believe in Christ by faith alone when they die they go straight to heaven upon their death.

There's no intermediate state. There is no making of amends for Christ has made amends completely. So Paul could say to the Corinthian believers to be absent from the body that is to be dead physically to be absent from the body is to be present where with the Lord Jesus Christ could say to the dying thief one who certainly had a long list of crimes one who'd certainly need to make amends. He didn't say to him in 2000 years or 3000 years you'll be with me in paradise.

He said today you will be with me in paradise. The point remains millions of people around the world and all sorts of religions are basically attempting to appease what they believe to be their living God and to make atonement for their sin somehow earn their way to heaven. For those who claim to know this true and living God to do anything like that means that you do not understand even the basic truth of awful depravity the offensiveness of sin the bankruptcy of our lives and the holiness and the justice of God.

But somehow God could be satisfied with a few prayers and a few coins and any other puny effort on our part. Can you imagine just by way of a rather trite illustration but maybe it'll make it a little clearer. Can you imagine today after church everybody rushes for their car. That doesn't take too much of an imagination but just imagine you're in a hurry we're going to all beat the Methodists to the restaurants right so you get in your car and you rev it up and you juice that baby and you peel out and you lose control and you smash into the side of another car. Make it worse you smash into the side of a pickup truck.

A blue pickup truck that's just recently been washed and I'm walking out there to get into my beloved truck and I see it happen. You get out and you come to me and you say I'm sorry I lost control I don't know what to do I'll tell you what I'll do I'll give you everything I've got and you pull out your wallet you open it up and say I've got a dollar in here I'll give you the dollar will that satisfy you. Well would it satisfy me?

Absolutely not. A life of servitude maybe but not a dollar bill. Can you imagine multiplying that a million times over we pulverize the holy command of God. God is watching and we go to him and say oh we're really sorry look we'll give you everything we've got. We got a little money we have a little prayers we have a few good deeds and we promise never to miss church again. Could that satisfy God? Do you realize that over the course of an average lifetime the average person will spend I have read three years in meetings 19 years sleeping six years eating and five years waiting in line. If that same person never missed a Sunday morning church service their entire life they will have spent five and a half months in church. Imagine five years waiting in line five months corporately waiting on God.

God we want you to be impressed with the fact we've never missed. God isn't impressed. Question remains then how do you satisfy the true and living God? Is it sacrifices? Is it self-abasement? Is it penances?

Is it purgatories? What does the Bible say? Well that's the question that Paul has begun answering. In Romans chapter three he has described the doctrine of God's satisfaction. In Romans chapter four he illustrates the doctrine. In Romans three it is truth by proposition. In chapter four it is truth by personality. He's going to robe it in the flesh of a human being and he's going to show us what justification by faith looks like.

In fact you'll read him between the lines with me as we go through this next text and you will discover what it feels like. He has chosen the life of Abraham the great patriarch and basically said he's not getting in unless God does something for him. Then he takes David and says in effect the same thing so what he has done is taken the greatest patriarch and said he's come short and now he's taken the greatest monarch and said he's come short as well. And he will tell us now by looking at David's life what it means to be justified by faith alone. And in our last study we looked at the history of David's sinful life.

You remember he lived a life of outward obedience but inside there was a hidden life that included coveting his neighbor's wife and even beyond that to adultery with her and then planning the death of her husband and the lying and the hypocrisy and he covered it all up. Paul will use David ladies and gentlemen as an illustration of undeserved grace of unmerited favor. So he begins by quoting the words of David that he penned after he confessed his sin.

A great song that's often overlooked is Psalm 32. That's where this quote comes from as David now has openly confessed his sin to the Lord. Look at what he says just as David verse 6 also speaks of the blessing upon the man to whom God reckons righteousness apart from works. Blessed are those whose lawless deeds have been forgiven and whose sins have been covered. Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord will not take into account.

Three wonderful words in this text you ought to underline. The first word is in the middle of verse 7 is the word forgiven. And then at the latter part of verse 7 the word covered. And then at the end of verse 8 account or maybe impute in your text.

All I want to do is briefly look at those three words. First of all David says blessed are those whose lawless deeds have been forgiven. The Greek word or verb for forgiven is a theme which has the idea of being carried away. So wonderful Old Testament picture and it is illustrated in the life of the last Old Testament prophet John the baptizer who seeing Jesus Christ said behold the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world removes it.

David as he wrote here now is no doubt thinking of the practices of the Old Testament atonement for sin. Once a year according to Leviticus chapter 16 the high priest would have brought to him two goats before the altar and one goat would be put to death his blood shed an innocent animal dying for a sinful guilty man. And then the high priest would take the living goat and he would place his hands on the head of that goat and Moses would write he would confess over it all of the inequities of the sons of Israel and all their transgressions in regard to all their sins and he shall lay them as it were ceremonially on the head of the goat and send it away.

There's the verb send it away into the wilderness. It was William Tyndale in the 16th century who translated the Old Testament and he invented a word for this goat. It's the word scapegoat. The living goat would bear the sin. This one would be the scapegoat. That is this one is innocent but he is bearing the guilt of those who are not innocent. We use the same phrase of this day centuries later we talk about you know some company folds and somebody is let go and we know that person is probably just the scapegoat.

They were innocent but they paid the penalty for it. That's the idea of Peter when he wrote of Christ he himself bore our sins on his body on the tree that we being dead to sin we're the ones guilty of the sin could live in our righteousness. Jesus Christ is the ultimate and final scapegoat who has borne the sin away. Isaiah said the same thing. In fact that was I think the predominant thought in his mind.

Listen to this text with this in mind. He said surely our griefs he himself bore and our sorrows he carried. He was pierced through for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities.

The chastening for our well-being fell upon him. The Lord has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on him. In other words Jesus Christ is the ultimate and final scapegoat of atoning law. He carried away the blame credited to our account.

He's innocent we're guilty he had laid on him the guilt of it all. So David understanding that now is not simply writing well blessed is the one who has the sins taken away. He's actually thinking theologically through that law of the old covenant saying in effect blessed is the one who has had the blame for his sins placed on the scapegoat that ultimate Redeemer and he himself though guilty is allowed to go free. There's another illustration of cleansing from guilt in regard to the lepers of the old covenant. Throughout the Old Testament the old covenant leprosy was considered an act of God's judgment. In fact it was one of the things that God used to discipline rebelling the sons and daughters of Israel and it was an outward sign of his displeasure.

Unfortunately the church in the early centuries especially failed to distinguish Israel from the New Testament church and therefore applied much of the old covenant in its regulations and its laws to the New Testament believer. One of the results of that form of interpretation is in regard to relation to lepers. The church for centuries assumed that leprosy was still the sign of God's judgment. In fact in the Middle Ages the church would have a burial service for one with leprosy. The priest would come in and walk down the aisle holding his crucifix wearing his robe and his stole and the leper would come behind him dressed in black and they'd go up to the altar and he'd read over him the last rites.

Even though he was alive he was considered dead. Well in the Old Testament if a leper repented they had an interesting practice. The leper would bring to the priest two birds. The priest would kill one bird and sprinkle his blood on a living bird and some of the blood on the leper as a sign of his atonement. And then he would take the priest would take the living bird that had the blood of the dead bird sprinkled on it and he would go to a meadow or a field and he would let the bird go. And as the bird flew away he symbolically carried away the guilt of sin. That's the verb here.

I love Donald Grey Barnhouse's comment in reference to this custom. He said just as that free flying bird flew into the heavens so Christ ascending into the heavens signify that our guilt was carried away. Ladies and gentlemen this is unearned freedom. This is unmerited grace and it is received with joy and all you can say is oh how blessed is the man who has had his guilt carried away. The second word in David's song is the word covered. Blessed are those whose sins have been covered. Again an Old Testament concept.

This is David writing. Goes back to the Day of Atonement. The high priest would take the blood of the bull and he would walk into the Holy of Holies and sprinkle that blood onto the mercy seat which was the lid of the Ark of the Covenant. There God's glory would reside. Inside that box among other things were the tablets of the law.

That law had been broken. Every one of those commands had been violated and crushed by the activity of the Israelite and so once a year the priest would bring in the blood of the innocent animal that would atone in his death for them. He'd take the blood and he'd cover. He'd sprinkle it over that box on top of that lid as if to say then that God would look from above and he would see the broken law but he would see it through the blood that covered it. If God accepted that annual sacrifice the people would celebrate with great joy.

And so David takes you back to the scene where the priest emerges with a smile on his face. Sin for another year has been covered. How blessed is the man whose sin has been covered.

Can you imagine our great joy as we know these symbols and these sacrifices pointed to the ultimate sacrifice of Jesus Christ who once and for all would end the practice and do away with sin. Hebrews 10 verse 10. For the Old Testament saying his sin would be temporarily covered as it were. So David's ticket to heaven then was still needing payment full and final payment and that would be paid in Christ.

Yet in the future for David. For us the payment of Christ for our ticket to heaven was in the past. Now some 2000 years every sin David committed was ultimately paid for in Christ. That was part of what Christ bore on the cross. That means that every sin you committed was also placed in Christ which means that your sins of the future have already been paid for by Christ. You realize what that means. That means that on the cross Jesus Christ paid for all of your sin and he had to pay for all of it which is an amazing thought because God back then knew what you would do today and Jesus Christ paid for it then.

Isn't that incredible. God knows what you will do tomorrow and the next day in fact for the rest of your life and that's part of the amazing grace of God that God knew you would sin. He had his son pay for it and then he watches you commit that sin and knowing full well the agony that his son went through for it he sees you do it 2000 years later and he still loves you. How blessed is the man who can say our sin has been covered finally and fully. The third word David uses is the word that Paul spends a lot of time on. In verse 8 Paul writes blessed is the man who sinned the Lord will not take into account.

That word logizomai gives us our word logic but it's actually an accounting term. You can render it God doesn't keep a tabulation or an account of sin atoned for in Christ. Now the same word appears up in verse 3.

Look there at Romans chapter 4. It's a positive statement there. Abraham believed God and it was reckoned same verb. It was imputed. It was accounted to him as righteousness and there it's positive.

Now with David it's negative. The Lord will not impute or account or reckon sin. So in terms of the record of your life he removes all of the sin and accounts nothing of it to your account and he places on your account all of the righteousness of Jesus Christ.

In other words the ledger of the believer's life has had every sin erased and every page embossed with the righteousness of Christ. He doesn't reckon to your account the sin. He reckons. He uses that word over and over again reckons this and reckons that. It tells us that Paul was originally from North Carolina.

He reckoned all this stuff. It's amazing to me what people go through to have their name cleared. Jay Leno the host of the Tonight Show spent an incredible amount of money having his name cleared up. If you can believe it when he was in high school 30 years ago the article said he was suspended for burning rubber in the church parking lot.

That tells you how far we've come to be suspended for that but he was suspended for three days. He wanted the incident stricken from his high school records and so he donated recently two hundred and fifty thousand dollars worth of computer equipment to his high school in exchange for having that incident removed from his school records. Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars for a clean high school record. But you know when I thought about it more I thought that's nothing because there's going to come a day when all the world will stand before him and for the unbelieving world it will be too late but they would give anything at that moment to give everything away that they had. Everything they ever hoped to have.

Everything they owned and possessed they would give it all away in exchange for having their slate cleaned. But for the believer how blessed is the man or woman who has trusted the work of Christ alone. The one whose work allows no sin to be imputed to your account. How blessed will it be for us to stand before God one day and for him to look at you and say oh you I know you. Listen I have already forgiven all of your wickedness and I will remember your sins no more. Jeremiah thirty one thirty four.

Oh you I know you why as far as the east is from the west. So I have already removed your transgressions from you. Psalm 103 verse 12. In other words God will say to the redeemed listen I have already chosen.

I have already remembered to forget anything you've ever done because my son paid for that. What hope did David have? His case was hopeless. And you know what your case is hopeless and my case is hopeless as well. You and I have a horrible record of sin we know in our own minds and our own memories there isn't a single person among us who hadn't done many things you aren't ashamed of not one of us. And you know even today the depths of the battle that you're facing in your own mind with the memory of those offenses against God and you know the current struggle you have with the filth of your own flesh.

None of us in our condition could ever merit. We could never earn or deserve the grace of God. We simply by faith hand to him as it were the ledger of our lives. If this were the first sin I ever committed and this were the last sin I ever committed in my life I go to him and I offer him the filthy ledger of my life.

And it pleased the father to bruise the son and he laid on him the iniquity of us all. And he hands back to me and to you a clean ledger and all we find is the righteousness of Christ. How blessed is the one whose sins have been forgiven whose lawless deeds have been covered.

The one to whom God will not take sin into account. That declaration of joy I think was probably in the heart of Horatio Spafford as he wrote the same idea when he penned my sin. Oh the bliss of this glorious thought my sin not in part but the whole is nailed to the cross and I bear it no more. Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord.

Oh my soul. How blessed is the man whose sins have been forgiven and forgotten forever. Isn't that a great way to end this lesson and this week of Bible teaching.

There are several more lessons to go in this series and we'll pick right up here next time. This is Wisdom for the Heart with our Bible teacher Steven Davey. Before we end today I want to share a note we received here at the office.

A couple from Florida said hello from Tampa. Several months ago we shared the ministry of Wisdom for the Heart with our blind friend named John. He's been listening to Steven's messages regularly and tells us that he's been greatly encouraged especially during these weeks of quarantine. Thank you for delivering God's word accurately, faithfully, joyfully, and encouragingly. Well thank you so much for taking the time to send us that note. We're glad that God's using this ministry in your life and in John's life. We know it's been a difficult year but God's word is what sustains us all. I want to mention to all of you that we certainly hope you're able to worship with your church family on Sunday mornings.

But if that's not possible for you, you can watch Steven live online each Sunday. The link and information you need are on our website or on our free Wisdom International app. Our website is wisdomonline.org. Thanks so much for being with us today and join us Monday for more wisdom for the heart.