Psalms 32 - Thanksgiving / Psalm 32

Our Deepest Need: Peace with God

A couple of years ago, I got a phone call. Every now and then, I serve as a chaplain in hospice work. I have a friend who owns a hospice organization, and they call upon me here and there. So I received a phone call, and they said, “Can you go visit this gentleman who has stage four cancer? He’s only in his fifties. His wife says he can’t sleep. He has absolutely no peace. He is afraid to die, he doesn’t know what’s going to happen, and he wants to have peace. Can you go visit him?”

I said, “Sure thing.” So I went and visited him. He lived in the downtown area, a little south of where Valley Novelty is. When I walked into the house, I could tell there were probably a lot of stories they could tell; life had probably been pretty rough for them in various ways. But as we began to talk, we focused on the reason I was there: finding peace.

I explained to him that the only way to truly have lasting peace—especially as you face the reality of leaving this world and passing away—is to have peace with God through Jesus Christ. We opened the New Testament. We talked about what Christ had done for him, His sacrifice on the cross, and the resurrection of Jesus. We talked about how to have peace with God, he needed to receive it through Jesus Christ and the forgiveness of his sins. A couple of friends there and his wife were receptive and understood the gospel message. That afternoon, as we talked, he made a profession of faith. He simply said, “I believe that Jesus did this for me. I believe He rose from the dead, and I trust Him. I ask Him to forgive me. I want His forgiveness. I want His peace.”

A few hours later, I received a phone call from his family. They said, “He laid down and took a nap. He’s been sleeping for a few hours now, and this is the first time he has slept this well in weeks.”

I thought, That’s wonderful. He was experiencing the peace he longed for because he received it from God through Jesus Christ.

Then I received a call the next day. They told me that he went to sleep that night and didn’t wake up. He went to be in the presence of God that very night.

When I think about that, I realize that deep down, every single one of us has a need for peace, whether we realize it or not. But it goes even deeper than just wanting peace—it is a fundamental need to be right with God, to be forgiven by God. You might even say it is our deepest, most profound need.

That is exactly what King David talks about. Tonight, we are back in the Psalms. If you have your Bibles or your phones, turn to Psalm 32. Just don’t get distracted by text messages if you’re using your phone!

In Psalm 32, some of your Bibles might include an introductory heading that says, A Psalm of David. A Maskil. King David ruled Israel for about forty years, from roughly 1000 to 960 BC, and he wrote well over half of the Psalms. The term Maskil most likely means “giving instruction,” “having insight,” or “being skillful.” David was a man of insight, and he has a profound lesson to teach us in this psalm about sin, forgiveness, and having peace with God.

Tonight, we are going to look at the first five verses. In these verses, David describes the blessings of God’s forgiveness for sin, which comes after the pain of conviction and the humility of confession. David shows us that God is with us even after we sin, and that God longs to be gracious to people with broken lives and people who make mistakes—whether they already know Him or not.

The Double Blessing of Forgiveness

Let’s begin in verse one.

Psalms 32:1-2 (NASB)

[A Psalm] of David. A Maskil. How blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, Whose sin is covered! How blessed is the man to whom the LORD does not impute iniquity, And in whose spirit there is no deceit!

The Hebrew term translated as “blessed” describes someone who is privileged, fortunate, and in simple terms, truly happy. The word “blessed” is used twice here to emphasize a double blessing—an intensely joyful, profoundly happy state for the person who is forgiven and knows they are forgiven by God.

David uses three distinct words here to describe offending God: transgression, sin, and iniquity. Each carries a slightly different nuance:

• Transgression speaks of offending God Himself. It conveys active rebellion against the God of the universe in how we choose to live and what we choose to do.
• Sin carries the idea of missing the mark. It means falling short of God’s perfection and failing to follow His law perfectly.
• Iniquity refers to our state of guilt, highlighting our inner crookedness, waywardness, or moral perversity. Because of it, we stand guilty before God.

David’s Failure and the Depth of Depravity

David was intimately familiar with these terms because Bible scholars believe he wrote this psalm shortly after the devastating events recorded in 2 Samuel chapters 11 and 12. For the sake of time, I won’t read those full chapters tonight, but I encourage you to read them later.

To summarize: King David was on the throne of Israel. Second Samuel 11:1 notes that it was springtime, the time of year when kings typically went off to battle. But David didn’t go. The text explicitly points out that David remained in his palace. Right off the bat, he sent Joab, his commander, and the troops off to war while choosing to neglect his own responsibilities as king.

Failing to be where he was supposed to be led him to be where he shouldn’t have been: walking on the palace roof late at night. From that elevated vantage point, he saw a beautiful woman bathing on her roof. Her name was Bathsheba. Instead of looking away, he lingered and gazed. That gaze led to lust, which led him to abuse his royal power by summoning her to the palace. That led to adultery, which led to pregnancy, and suddenly David found himself in deep trouble.

Bathsheba was married to Uriah, one of David’s close friends and one of his elite “mighty men.” David schemed to bring Uriah back from the front line so that Uriah would sleep with his wife, and everyone would assume the baby was Uriah’s. But when Uriah returned, he refused to go home to his wife. He said, “How can I indulge myself at home while the Ark of the Covenant is in the field and my fellow soldiers are risking their lives on the battlefield?” Even after David got him drunk, Uriah maintained his integrity and refused to go home.

Realizing his cover-up had failed, David sent Uriah back to the battlefield with a secret letter to Joab instructing him to place Uriah where the fighting was fiercest and then withdraw the troops so Uriah would be killed. Joab obeyed, and Uriah was killed. David then married Bathsheba, thinking he had successfully buried his secret.

In 2 Samuel 12, Nathan the prophet confronted David directly, exposing his sin: “You are the man! You have committed this great sin against God.” David was shattered. He repented deeply. While there were severe, lasting temporal consequences for his actions, David came to God broken, exposed, confessing his sin, and he experienced the profound depth of God’s forgiveness.

Now, if you’re like me, you might read Psalm 32 and think, No wonder David was thrilled to be forgiven! That guy was seriously messed up. I may not be an angel, but at least I haven’t orchestrated a murder or committed adultery.

If we think like that, we completely miss the point of the psalm. It isn’t just about recognizing how happy David should have been; it is about recognizing how blessed we are to be forgiven.

As I reflected on this psalm, I thought: If I truly lived in the joy described here, my entire life would look different. I wouldn’t spend so much time comparing myself to others, thinking I’m better than someone else. I wouldn’t always demand my own way. I would be far more humble, far more joyful, and far more grateful.

Sometimes we simply fail to grasp the depth of forgiveness we have received. When I first got serious about following Christ around age nineteen, I mainly focused on avoiding obvious, culturally frowned-upon outward sins—getting drunk, cursing people out, skipping homework, or being an outright jerk. I figured as long as I wasn’t doing those things, I was a good guy.

Yet the longer I walk with Christ, the more I recognize how deep my sin actually goes. There are sins of omission—failing to do what is right, just like David neglecting to go to war. There are sins of the thought life. Jesus showed us that sin isn’t just physical adultery; it is the lust harbored in the heart. There are sins of attitude and mixed motives, where we do the right thing for selfish reasons. There are days we don’t even bother to pray or seek God’s guidance, simply doing whatever seems right in our own eyes.

When we see ourselves clearly, we realize we are immersed in sin. You can’t even count how often you fall short. But to understand the true depth of God’s forgiveness, we must first understand the depth of our depravity.

The Fullness of God’s Grace

Notice that just as David uses three words to describe how we offend God, he uses three concepts to show how God deals with our sin:

First, our transgressions are forgiven. That word literally means to lift up and carry away. Imagine lying on the ground pinned under a massive boulder of guilt and shame. Or think about the Pokémon Go craze where my youngest son takes me out, traps a cartoon creature in a tiny digital ball, and carries it around. That confinement is what sin does to our souls—it traps us under a heavy burden. But when God forgives, He lifts that boulder off your chest. He sets you free. I remember when I was nineteen and finally surrendered my life to Christ, I stood up and literally felt as though a crushing physical weight had been lifted from my shoulders.

Second, our sin is covered. This points directly to atonement. In the Old Testament, the people of Israel offered animal sacrifices to cover sin. Yet the book of Hebrews reminds us that the blood of bulls and goats could never truly take away sins; those sacrifices merely foreshadowed the ultimate Lamb of God, Jesus Christ. Old Testament believers looked forward in faith to what God would provide, while we look back at the finished work of Jesus on the cross and His empty tomb. It is always the blood of Jesus that atones for and covers our sin.

Third, the Lord does not impute iniquity. To impute is an accounting term meaning to record on a ledger or charge to an account. Because of our iniquity, we stand guilty and deserve wrath, judgment, and eternal separation from God. But the gospel declares that God will not charge that debt to your account.

David adds that blessed is the person “in whose spirit there is no deceit.” When we come to God for forgiveness, we can be completely authentic and open about our brokenness. We don’t have to pretend to be better than we are. We don’t have to hide behind bushes like Adam and Eve in the Garden when God called out, “Where are you?” We can come just as we are, with all our mess and broken history.

David prayed in Psalm 51:

Psalms 51:10 (NASB)

Create in me a clean heart, O God, And renew a steadfast spirit within me.

God invites us to cry out with that same honesty: “Lord, take away all deceit. Create in me a clean heart and renew my spirit.”

Imputed Righteousness: The Great Exchange

The good news gets even better: we are not merely pardoned; we are credited with the very righteousness of Jesus Christ. This is the doctrine of justification. The apostle Paul quotes this exact psalm in Romans 4.

Romans 4:5-8 (NASB)

But to the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited as righteousness, just as David also speaks of the blessing on the man to whom God credits 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.’

When you put your faith in Jesus Christ, God does not look at your daily struggles and failures; He sees the perfect righteousness of His Son.

Paul explains this great exchange in 2 Corinthians:

2 Corinthians 5:21 (NASB)

He made Him who knew no sin [to be] sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

Theologian Wayne Grudem describes justification beautifully. He writes that justification is an instantaneous legal act of God in which He:

1. Thinks of our sins as forgiven and Christ’s righteousness as belonging to us, and
2. Declares us to be righteous in His sight.

Imagine you had accumulated all your real-life debts—student loans, car payments, mortgage, credit cards—plus an additional five million dollars in debt that you could never repay, along with criminal charges for theft. You stand before the judge expecting a prison sentence. Instead, the judge slams his gavel down and declares, “Every debt is cancelled. Every charge is dropped. You are completely forgiven.”

As you stand there stunned, he adds, “And on top of that, ten million dollars has just been deposited into your bank account.”

In human courtrooms, that doesn’t happen. But in the court of heaven, that is precisely what God has done for us through Christ. The slate is wiped clean, and Christ’s limitless righteousness is credited to our account.

The Agony of Unconfessed Sin

In verses 3 and 4, David contrasts that freedom with the misery of keeping sin hidden.

Psalms 32:3-4 (NASB)

When I kept silent [about my sin], my body wasted away Through my groaning all day long. For day and night Your hand was heavy upon me; My vitality was drained away [as] with the fever heat of summer. Selah.

David describes the intense personal agony of unconfessed sin during the months between Uriah’s death and Nathan’s visit. He suffered spiritual, emotional, mental, and physical torment. He couldn’t sleep; his appetite was gone; he was haunted by Uriah’s face.

He says God’s hand was heavy upon him. That heavy hand was actually God’s mercy. Because God loved David, He refused to let him stay comfortable in hidden sin. David felt completely sapped of life, like someone laboring under the scorching summer heat here in Fresno on hot asphalt without water or air conditioning. His attempt to cover up his sin was completely failing.

About a month ago, I attended a rally at Fresno City Hall called “No More Slumlords,” organized alongside some folks from our Fig Garden campus. I heard a testimony about a family living in an apartment overrun with toxic mold. When they asked the landlord to fix it, his “solution” was simply to paint over the mold. Painting over it didn’t eliminate the hazard; it only allowed the rot to spread beneath the surface while people continued to get sick.

Covering up sin works the same way. It gives sin greater power to sink its hooks deeper into our lives, poisoning everything around us while we pretend everything is fine.

Moving from Performance to Grace

Why do we hide our struggles? Often, as Christians, we fall into the trap of thinking that once we’ve known Christ for a while, we shouldn’t struggle with sin anymore. When we adopt that mindset, our church community shifts from a grace-based culture to a performance-based culture.

In a performance culture, it isn’t safe to admit weakness. You hide your struggles, I hide mine, and we put on fake smiles, exchange high fives, and try to impress one another. We start measuring people by outward performance rather than recognizing our immeasurable worth in Jesus Christ.

We need to be a grace-based community where there is freedom to admit, “I am broken. I am struggling.” While we must always go to God first for forgiveness, Scripture also highlights the healing power of Christian community.

James 5:16 (NASB)

Therefore, confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another so that you may be healed. The effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much.

God designed the body of Christ so that genuine healing often happens when we confess our struggles to one another, pray for each other, and extend the same grace we have received.

Confession, Restoration, and Ongoing Relationship

Finally, in verse 5, David describes the breakthrough that came when he stopped hiding.

Psalms 32:5 (NASB)

I acknowledged my sin to You, And my iniquity I did not hide; I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions to the LORD’; And You forgave the guilt of my sin. Selah.

The word Selah means to pause and quietly reflect on what was just said.

There are two dimensions of forgiveness we must understand. First, there is judicial forgiveness for our eternal standing before God. When you confess Jesus as Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you are saved.

Romans 10:9-10 (NASB)

that if you confess with your mouth Jesus [as] Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation.

That salvation is permanent. When you are adopted into God’s family, you do not lose your salvation every time you stumble. You don’t live in constant terror of hell over an errant thought.

Second, there is relational forgiveness within God’s family. While our eternal standing is secure, ongoing unconfessed sin damages our daily intimacy with our Heavenly Father. John writes about this to believers:

1 John 1:8-9 (NASB)

If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Think of it this way: I have three teenage sons, and we’ve lived in our house for fifteen years. Over those years, our rental neighbor’s window has been broken three times. It was equal-opportunity window breaking—each of my three sons broke it on a different occasion, using three different balls (a baseball, a football, and a soccer ball), and with three different tenants living there!

Each time, my boys came clean. We went to the neighbor, apologized, and they helped pay for and clean up the repair. But imagine if one of my sons had broken the window, tried to hide it, and lied to my face while I already knew the truth. He would never stop being my son—I would never disown him or throw him out of the family. But our daily relationship and trust would be strained until he came clean.

That is how confession works in our walk with God. He will never cast you out of His family, but unconfessed sin robs you of the peace, joy, and vitality He wants you to experience.

Closing Prayer

Let’s go to the Lord in prayer as we prepare our hearts for communion and worship.

Heavenly Father, thank You for this time together. We thank You that You are a God who joyfully invites us with open arms to turn to You for forgiveness and redemption.

Lord, for some here tonight, there may be a need to receive that forgiveness for the very first time. For others who have walked with You for years, there may be a need to lay down the burden of hiding, to come clean before You, and to find trusted brothers and sisters to pray with.

Help us to be a people who, like David, come before You honestly in our brokenness. Free us from worrying about what others think, and ground us in the truth that we are fully accepted through the cross of Jesus Christ. May our hearts hunger and thirst for You, the living God. In Jesus’ name, amen.