The vision for happy life – forgiven life (Psalm 32)

Cornerstone Mission Church, Sunday Sermon

Corrie Ten Boom is a Christian woman who survived a Nazi concentration camp during the Holocaust. She said this about forgiveness.

“Forgiveness is to set a prisoner set free, and to realize the prisoner was you.”

Corrie Ten Boom recounted when she faced the former Nazi guard who had become a Christian. Who said to her, “I have become a Christian. I know that God has forgiven me for the cruel things I did, but I would like to hear it from your lips as well… will you forgive me?” She described coming to face to face with one of her captors as when her blood seemed to freeze. She remembered her sister Betsie who had died in that concentration camp. It could not be more than split seconds, but to her felt like hours had passed as this former Nazi guard held his hand out and waited for Corrie Ten Boom’s response.

She stood there with coldness and clutching her heart. But she reasoned with the truth; “forgiveness is an act of the will, and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart.” So, she prayed, “Jesus, help me… I can lift my hand. I can do that much. You supply the feeling.” And, she described what happened next; “the current started in my shoulder, raced down my arm, sprang into our joined hands. And then this healing warmth seemed to flood my whole being, bringing tears to my eyes.” And, she cried, “I forgive you, my brother with all my heart.”[1]

So, she the prisoner was set free that moment, truly happy! She was set free from bitterness and hatred that was eating her inside. She was set free from the desire for revenge. She experienced God’s power to forgive and this made her truly happy.

• The vision for happy life

Do you have the vision of truly happy life? Is there such thing as a prerequisite for happy life? Rather we acknowledge it or not, without honestly dealing with our sins and experiencing God’s forgiveness, we cannot experience true happiness. Without experiencing God’s forgiveness, we cannot extend forgiveness to others. Without forgiveness, we cannot be happy.

David spells out the prerequisite for happy life in Psalm 32. Verse 1 and 2, he says that blessed that is one who is truly blessed, truly happy is the one whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered; blessed, truly happy is the man whose sin the LORD does not count against him and in whose spirit is no deceit.” Forgiven life is happy life.

Contrary to what people believe about God, God really wants us to be happy. He doesn’t want us to settle with substandard happiness but go for the vision of truly happy life. The way you are going to realize the vision of truly happy life is experiencing God’s forgiveness.

Psalm 32 lays out for us how we can experience God’s forgiveness. Let me unpack them for you.

• Don’t cover your sins deceitfully. Be honest.

A stumbling block to happiness is temptation to hide and not be honest with ourselves. David calls it deceit in verse 2.

Self-improvement is a form of deceit. It is our act to cover up. It is our attempt to prove ourselves that we are worthy to be forgiven. Do you ever notice after sinning, you have this self-talk going on in your head? “I really messed up. I am sorry God. I am going to try really hard not to mess up again.” So, you feel this surge of self-determination and you begin trying really hard not to mess up. But, soon or later, you run out of steam, you get distracted, and you feel overpowered by temptation, and you are back to where you were.
This doesn’t work because you are not dealing with the core of sin. The truth is that you cannot manage sin; sin must be forgiven. God never forgives your sin because you are good enough. Your good enough will never be good enough to satisfy God’s holiness and his justice. No amount of your self-improvement and self-determination will make you more forgivable. You cannot cover your sins with self-improvement. God has to cover you. God has to forgive your sin.
Matthew Henry in his commentary wrote “the wounds of sin, not opened, will fester, and grow intolerably painful.”^[2] Trying to make yourself good enough to draw near to God is like covering up infections with dirty Band-Aid. It only makes things worse.

Ignoring the guilty conscience is another form of cover up, deceit. David said in verse 3 when he tried to keep things silent, his bones wasted away. Deceit is to believe that if you sweep sins under the rug, if you ignore it and don’t think about it, then somehow it will magically disappear. It doesn’t. you cover up the guilty conscience prompted by the Holy Spirit, it only leads to deeper bondage to sin.
David says in verse 6 that we need to offer prayer to God at a time when he may be found. He is talking about when the Holy Spirit nudges our hearts through our guilty conscience. When you feel that nudge to your heart about your actions of rebellion, missing the mark of God’s standard, crooked evil attitude, you got to know that it is God who is nudging you. Don’t ignore when God nudges you. Pray when he is found.

Another form of covering up deceitfully is to when we don’t mean what we say. When we confess our sins with a purpose to sin again, we are cover up our sins in deceit. It sounds bad, but we do that don’t we? Then, there are times we sin with a purpose to repent again.^[3] Either way, these are sure ways to insult God’s generosity to forgive us.

• Don’t be vague. Be specific with sin.

When you read verse 1 and 2, do you wonder why David uses different words to describe sin? In fact here in these two verses, David used three Hebrew words to talk about sin. It is easier to see when we read from more literal translation of ESV.

Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man against whom the LORD counts no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit.

Transgression is an act of rebellion and disloyalty against God; sin is an act of missing the mark, God’s expressed will; and iniquity is an crooked act with perverse and evil intention.

Why did David use three different Hebrew words with different nuances to talk about sin? He is trying to guard against the temptation to be vague about sin.

When Roger Barrier left for college, his mom who had always done his laundry gave him a canvas duffel bag and told him, “Put your dirty clothes in this every night… At the end of the week, wash them at the Laundromat.”

A week later, he took the duffel bag full of dirty clothes to the Laundromat. To save time, he stuffed the whole duffel bag in the washer, put some laundry power and with right amount of coins, he turned on the machine. Thump, thump, thump went the machine. A pretty gal approached him with a grin and told him, “I watched you load your washer. I think the clothes would get cleaner if you took them out of the bag.”

Another word, confession should never be trite, “Dear God, forgive me for all my sins for today. Amen.” You need to pay attention to individual sin. Are you acting out of rebellious attitude? Are you missing the mark of the moral standard set by God? Are you acting out of the crooked spite?

• Don’t be stubborn. Be willing.

David warns in verse 9 against being like the horse or a mule without understanding (v. 9). For these creatures, unless they are forced with bit and bridle, they won’t stay near you.

Neighbor’s dog – Ryle, the neighbor’s dog was on the loose. I saw Bobby and his wife Tenniel struggling to control him. Ryle wouldn’t listen to their voice, their commands, even bacon bits weren’t working. Lyn told me that I should go out with Rocky to help them out. I went out with my dog Rocky hoping that Ryle might come for Rocky. Ryle did, but every time I or Bobby tried to grab his dog collar, he would skip away just out of our reach. That went on for five minutes. Before I came out, Bobby had been chasing after Ryle for a while already. The only way Bobby got Ryle was by ambushing the dog between us. Rocky and I stood at one side of the house and Bobby went around the house and approached his dog from the other side. And, he jumped on him. Finally, Ryle was caught. You should have seen Bobby’s face. Oh, he was angry.

Do you ever play God like this ungrateful dog did to its owner?

• Rejoice in God’s forgiveness.

See how David rejoices in God’s forgiveness. Verse 10, “steadfast love surrounds the one who trusts in the LORD.” So, he calls you and me in v. 11 to rejoice, be glad, sing for God’s forgiveness.

Consider how God forgives your sins. And, rejoice in the truth about God.

He covers your sins (32:1b)… Sins make us loathsome before God in guilt. Sins also make us feel shame, feeling loathsome about ourselves. Sins expose us to nakedness just like Adam and Eve felt. But, God covers our guilt and shame as he covered Adam and Eve’s sin and nakedness with the coats of animal skins. It required skins of animal to cover the shame, the nakedness of Adam and Eve, but for true covering, it requires the death of Jesus.

Revelation 3;18, “I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire, so you become rich; and white clothes to wear, so you can cover your shameful nakedness; and salve to put on your eyes, so you can see.”

Covering sins does not mean God forgets our sins as though he experiences amnesia over our sins. Sins are not covered from God’s omniscience because he sees all and knows all. Hebrews 8:12 says, “For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.” This doesn’t mean that God would forget our sins. What God does is he covers our sins from his justice with his mercy.

God doesn’t count sin against you. This means he doesn’t hold his relationship with us in hostage (32:2b). He is not going to abandon his relationship with us at whim. No, instead he promises to be our hiding place, to protect us from trouble, to surround us with songs of deliverance. .

God’s ready to forgive you; God is far more willing and quick to forgive than we imagine him to be… We think of God as God who has us jump through the hoop before he lets us off the hook, we think of God as stingy with his forgiveness as an old stingy Ebenezer Scrooge from ‘A Christmas Carol’…

We must see the face of the Father of the prodigal son. See how long it took and what it took for David to come to terms with his sins and yield to God’s forgiveness. And compare it to how quickly God forgave David. Compare how long it took the prodigal son to come to terms with his sins and to that of his Father’s eagerness and quickness to welcome his son back by forgiving his son’s guilt and cover his shame.

God’s vision is to give you blessed life. His promise is to instruct you, teach you in the way you should go, to counsel you and watch over you (32:8).

Would you pursue true happiness by being honest, being specific with your sins, being willing, and by rejoicing in God’s forgiveness?

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[1] http://www.crossway.org/product/663575723080

^[2] Henry, M. (1996). Matthew Henry's commentary on the whole Bible : Complete and unabridged in one volume (Ps 32:1–6). Peabody: Hendrickson.

^[3] Henry, M. (1996). Matthew Henry's commentary on the whole Bible : Complete and unabridged in one volume (Ps 32:1–6). Peabody: Hendrickson.

Fight for brutal honesty about yourself (Romans 7:24)

Cornerstone Mission Church, Sunday Sermon February 15, 2009

Last several weeks, I’ve been exploring the ways to fight against the disconnection between what we know to be true and how we live it out. It is a fight against hypocrisy. Today, I want to explore with you how learning to be brutally honest about ourselves lays down a firm foundation to fight against the rampant and insidious poison of hypocrisy.

1. Fight against feel good psychology of building up self-esteem.

I picked up a book this past week by Don Matzat, titled Christ-Esteem and subtitled Where the Search For Self-Esteem Ends. As the title and the subtitle suggest, the author seeks to establish the biblical case against self-esteem while affirming Christ-esteem. Self-esteem is looking inwardly to find solutions to problems in life while Christ-esteem is looking to Jesus as the solution to our problem and learning to love, adore, respect, honor and prize Jesus.

For now, let seek to understand why we need to fight against the feel-good psychology of self-esteem.

Self-esteem is about finding oneself and feeling good about self by improving one’s self image through positive-thinking and affirming self worth.

When I was a ninth grader in Korea, my best friend’s home room teacher established a ritual that could be heard through the walls of many classes. Every morning, and throughout each school day, this teacher would have all his students stand up and recite aloud in unison this phrase countless times, “나는 할수있다,” “I can do it.” By repeating this phrase 10, 20, 30 times and more day after day, week after week, through the whole school year, this teacher sought to raise positive and self confident thinkers who can positively solve all problems. I don’t know how much change took place because this teacher’s effort to boost the self esteem of his students. I did see my friend improving academically and in his leadership. Things got little confusing since this teacher reinforced his students’ positive thinking with fear of punishment from him for their substandard performance.

Here is my point. If I can achieve self-confidence and positive self image about myself and begin to really like myself and love myself, and be able to tackle life’s problems in stride, would I need Jesus after all? If I can become a good person simply by way of disciplined positive-thinking, telling myself, “I can be good, come on! I am going to be good because I can,” would I need Jesus?

Let’s be honest! We’ve all done this, haven’t we? Haven’t we tried really hard to fight off temptations that are common to us all and temptations that each of us find uniquely more vulnerable to than other temptations? We’ve peppered our earnest effort with good dose of positive thinking, “Oh, I can do this,” but only to find, “I cannot do this.” And, we find our expression in Paul’s words in Romans 7:18-19, “For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do- this I keep on doing.”

If we could ever succeed in improving ourselves enough to be righteous by beefing up our self-esteem through thinking positively about our ability to be good, then Christ would have died in vain. Paul said in Galatians 2:21, “for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!” Christ died precisely for our utter inability to gain righteousness by trying to be good, to get better and to improve.

So, building up self-esteem, feeling good about yourself by boosting your own confidence through the self talk, “I can do it” may lead you to feeling good about yourself. But, when the moment of good feelings passes, you end up crawling right back down to the cycle of shame and guilt and increasing disconnection between what you know and how you live. Building strong self-esteem, self-confidence cannot take out the poison of hypocrisy. It only leads you to further shame, guilt and despair.

2. Fight for brutal honesty with yourself; you were the problem.

To detoxify the poison of hypocrisy, we don’t need to waste our time trying to like ourselves more, love ourselves more; building self-esteem only takes us further away from the solution to the problem. If you are serious about dealing with the poison of hypocrisy, if you are serious about demolishing the gap between the truth and the practice, then what you need is a real solution. And, the Bible teaches no other solution than Jesus Christ.

So, here is the game plan. If Jesus is the solution, we need to make sure we frame our lives so that we go to Jesus who is our solution. We need to fight against anything that would prevent us from drawing near to Jesus. We begin by naming the illusive danger of seeking to bolster our own self esteem.

What we need is to move away from being self-sufficient person with strong self-esteem to move towards growing in Christ-esteem that is finding our confidence, self worth, self-image, self-value in Jesus alone.

But, to move from self esteem to Christ esteem, from self-confidence to Christ-confidence, you and I need to learn to be brutally honest with ourselves, that we were the problem. Apostle Paul talked honestly about himself as being the problem in Romans 7:24, “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?”

Let me explain this by telling you about a leaky ceiling in my house.

Some of you know that our living room ceiling has been leaking since last September. Whenever it rains heavy, or heavily accumulated snow starts to melt, water starts to collect above the ceiling and soaks through ceiling materials and leaks.

Last year, a patch of roof was replaced, it didn’t work. Lately, the effort has been to seal off the roof with tar stuff. Well, it still leaks. The patch work and the application of tar stuff have not worked because the problem is extensive.

I have this suspicion that the few hundred dollars of patch work and applying tar here and there will not solve the problem. Why? The problem is not about the little cracks and holes here and there. The problem is the roof. The roof itself has reached the point where no amount of small temporary fixes will be able to reverse its fate. The house needs a whole new roof because the current roof is the problem.

You and I were like my roof. We think that Jesus died to take care of the little cracks and holes of problems and sins here and there. We think that little bit of the blood of Jesus and his death would do to cover our problems and sins. But, the truth is Jesus didn’t leave the Father’s side to come down, to dwell with us, to suffer unjustly, to walk to the cross, to lay down his body to be crucified, to shed his blood, to be raised up on the cross, to hang on it and to lay down his life just because we had little problems and sins for him to deal with. The reality is that we were in much deeper trouble than my roof that needs to be replaced with the new one. We were more like a condemned house that needed to be bulldozed to make a way for a completely new house.

The truth is Jesus did what he did not because I had few problems, but because I was the problem.

Don Matzat wrote, “We erroneously believe that God is in the repair business; that he compassionately repairs human lives like a friendly father fixing his children's broken toys. We make up a list of our specific problems and go about seeking the Lord for specific solutions, but nothing ever gets checked off the list and it seemingly never ends.”[1]

Until I come to understand that I was the problem, I will not fully know that Jesus was, is and will be the solution for me, the problem. Unless I descend as Paul did to consider his life as wretched, whatever was to his profit to consider loss for the sake of Christ (Philippians 3:7), to consider them rubbish in order to gain Christ and be found in him (Philippians 3:8), I am only dealing with the surface of the problem, just the tip of the iceberg.

I was the problem that could not be fixed or repaired into a good shape with just few patch works here and there. I was the problem that needed to be crucified with the Lord, to be put to death. And, now it is not this crucified self, but the new me hidden in Christ that lives following his resurrection from the dead and ascending with Jesus to be seating at the right hand of God.[2]

And, this is why Paul says in Galatians 2:20, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

My old self crucified no longer lives. This is why trying to build on our old self through building self-esteem makes no sense. It is like digging the grave and exhume the dead body hoping to revive it back to life, to repair it back to the old shape of life. God is not in the business of repairing our old condemned self. But, God is in the business of raising people who are in Christ, his Son, who find Jesus as their esteem, their confidence, their honor, their adoration, their hope, their everything, and their salvation and who will inherit his righteousness, his holiness, his joy and his peace.

Here is the tricky part about our old self. Paul says in Colossians 3:5, “Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature [that is the old self crucified and put to death]: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry.”

Some one said, “The old life is dead; they must let it die.”[3] Although our old self was put to death with Jesus when he was crucified, the habits of sin die very slowly. Another scholar illustrates this by likening believers to immigrants who have moved to new country. In this new country with new culture, new way of living, immigrants have not yet become adapted to the new ways of life.[4] Or, another image would be to likening to a person who gets his finger stuck and drawn between rollers of a giant machine. “Another minute and he will be flattened to a shapeless bloody mass. He catches up an axe lying by and with his own arm hacks off his own hand at the wrist… It is not easy nor pleasant, but it is the only alternative to a horrible death.”[5]

When you and I see the habits of sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed creeping back from the old self that has been crucified, we are to be brutally be honest with ourselves and declare, “I was the problem, and I was crucified with Jesus, and the old me that was put to death on the cross with the death of Jesus, must remain dead.

Whenever we allow the old self, the problem that was slayed on the cross with Jesus back to new life hidden now in Jesus, it is like living the old movie, Night of the Living Dead.

When we recognize that we were the problem, and our old self, the problem had to be crucified with Jesus on the cross, now when we see the old habits creeping back to the stage of our new life with Jesus, we now have only one thing to do. Show no mercy to the habits of sin and do whatever it takes to let them remain dead.

3. Conclusion

Paul after recognizing he was the problem when he said in Romans 7:24, “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” He answers his own question in Romans 7:25, “Thanks be to God-through Jesus Christ our Lord!”

When we remember that our old self has been crucified with Jesus and we now live hidden in Jesus, it makes no sense trying to exhume the old, condemned, expired self by feeding the old habits of sin. When we fight for brutal honesty about our old self, then it only make sense to do all that we can to actively put to death the remnants of old habit of sin. And, it is more than possible in Jesus to put to death that which was already put to death by Jesus.

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[1] Don Matzat, Christ Esteem: Where the Search for Self-Esteem Ends, 1990, p. 52.

[2] Boice, James Montgomery. “4. Justification by faith alone (2:15-21)” In The Expositor's Bible Commentary: Volume 10. 451. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, © 1976.

[3] Vaughan, Curtis. “a. Sins to be put to death (3:5-7)” In The Expositor's Bible Commentary: Volume 11. 211. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, © 1978.

[4]Garland, David E. “The Old Morality (3:5 – 9a)” In NIV Application Commentary, New Testament: Colossians and Philemon. By David E. Garland, 204. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, © 1998.

[5] Vaughan, Curtis. “a. Sins to be put to death (3:5-7)” In The Expositor's Bible Commentary: Volume 11. 211. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, © 1978.