Psalm 38 - Do You Weep Over Sin?

Podcast Transcript (Auto-Transcribed by Apple Podcasts)

You are on Tabernacle Talk, and great to be back with you all today. We are in Psalm 38.

Seems crazy, but there are only three more episodes left in Book One of Psalms, and it's been just a great time, very encouraging for my heart to be able to see along with David and some of the other psalm writers that life's not always easy.

And there are many difficulties.

There are many times in which we're interacting with problems, with problem people, with things just going south and crying out to God and realizing that he's always there, that he wants to hear our prayers and been greatly encouraged through that.

Psalm 38 has this inscription. It says a Psalm of David to bring remembrance. He says, Yahweh, do not punish me in your anger or discipline me in your wrath, for your arrows have sunk into me and your hand has pressed down on me.

There is no soundness in my body because of your indignation. There is no health in my bones because of my sin, for my iniquities have flooded over my head. They are a burden too heavy for me to bear.

My wounds are foul and festering because of my foolishness. I am bent over and brought very low. All day long I go around in mourning for my insides are full of burning pain, and there is no soundness in my body.

I am faint and severely crushed. I groan because of the anguish of my heart. Lord, my every desire is in front of you.

My sighing is not hidden from you. My heart races, my strength leaves me, and even the light of my eyes has faded. My loved ones and friends stand back from my affliction, and my relatives stand at a distance.

Those who intend to kill me set traps, and those who want to harm me threaten to destroy me. They plot treachery all day long. I am like a deaf person.

I do not hear. I'm like a speechless person who does not open his mouth. I am like a man who does not hear and has no arguments in his mouth.

For I put my hope in you, Yahweh. You will answer me, my Lord, my God. For I said, don't let them rejoice over me, those who are arrogant toward me when I stumble.

For I am about to fall, and my pain is constantly with me. So I confess my iniquity. I am anxious because of my sin.

My enemies are vigorous and powerful. Many hate me for no reason. Those who repay evil for good attack me for pursuing good.

Yahweh, do not abandon me. My God, do not be far from me. Hurry to help me, my Lord, my salvation.

Man, I don't know if you can tell as I read through that Psalm, this is not one of David's kind of happy-go-lucky ones. This doesn't really have a, in your presence, there's fullness of joy. Your right hand, there are pleasures forevermore.

Doesn't really have that feel to it. It's not a clap your hands for joy, all the ends of the earth. It's not really that kind of a Psalm.

This one, David knows that he's messed up and he's done wrong. And as a result of his sin, like he feels the weight and the gravity of his sin. That's something that I don't know that we often think about as believers today.

We realize that we have been forgiven fully and truly because of Jesus. And what an incredible fact that that is, that with Romans 8.1, there is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. There's such great comfort in that.

I love the verse later in Romans 8, Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again and is set on the right hand of the throne of God. We are fully forgiven.

That is an absolute fact. You do not have to try and work up enough sorrow to pay off your sin. But I think along with the words of James in James chapter 4, we would do well to consider that sin is serious.

Sin is against God. Sin breaks God's perfect design for our relationship with others. It breaks God's design for his relationship with us.

It can even affect our relationship with the world around us. And James said this in James 4. He says, He gives greater grace.

Therefore, he says, God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Therefore, submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.

Draw near to God and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Be miserable and mourn and weep.

Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord and he will exalt you. I think it's an oft-neglected spiritual practice to mourn our sin, to be sad for what we've done.

We can often be sad at the consequences of sin. So we lie to someone and then we're upset or we're sad when they no longer want to have a relationship with us because we lied to them.

We could do illicit drugs and be upset that we were caught or upset that a friend that we did them with overdosed. We could be upset that we treated someone poorly. We treated them with anger.

We treated them with a lack of respect. And as a result, they talked to our boss and then we got written up at work.

We can be upset at the consequences of our sin, or we can be upset and sad and mourn the sin itself, that God, my actions, not the consequences, my actions themselves are heartbreaking.

Like as we see how God has dealt with us, as we see how Jesus has dealt with us, as we think about how those that we love most in this life and have the most kind of spiritual respect for, as we think about how they've treated us and how we have not

measured up, man, that ought to bring some brokenness to our life, that we say, God, I'm sorry. I'm sorry for my sin. God, I repent of my lust. God, I repent of my lack of forgiveness, my bitterness towards this person.

David here is going through and he's describing in detail, like, a heart that not just I have enemies, he's had lots of that, lots of that discussion throughout the Psalms, but this is one of the times where he's talking about the effects of sin in

his life. I want to read through a few of these again, just so we can see the kinds of thoughts, the word pictures that he's painting here in this poem. He says, your arrows have sunk into me and your hand has pressed down on me.

He says, God, I feel the pressure of your presence and what you're doing in me. He says, there is no soundness in my body. He says, like, my body is not secure.

Like, everything feels wrong. He says, because of your indignation. He says, there is no health in my bones because of my sin.

He says, I literally just ache because I realize what I've done. He says, my niceties have flooded over my head. They are a burden too heavy for me to bear.

Man, isn't that true? That our sin is too much of a burden for us to bear. I love, there's a song, Run to the Father, and as much as I can remember the lyrics, I'll quote them.

I've carried a burden for too long on my own. I wasn't created to bear it alone. I hear your invitation to let it all go.

I see it now. I'm laying it down and I know that I need you. I run to the Father.

I fall into grace. I'm done with the hiding. No reason to wait.

My heart found a surgeon. My soul found a friend. So I run to the Father again and again and again and again.

And then the bridge says, My heart has been in your sights long before my first breath. Running into your arms is running to life from death. And I feel this rush deep in my chest.

Your mercy is calling out. Just as I am, you pull me in and I know I need you now. And I love that song.

They're communicating the same truth as the parable of the Prodigal Son.

That in that parable, obviously, the intent of it is Jesus illustrating to the Pharisees that both of these sons did not have a relationship with the Father, like a meaningful relationship with the Father.

The one son left physically, but the other son left his father mentally. He left him emotionally. He didn't have that relationship with him.

And so Jesus is illustrating to the Pharisees, no, no, I want everyone to be a part of this feast and this joy and thinking of the prodigal son, the one who wandered off, who squandered all of his inheritance with riotous living, spending it on

everything under the sun. And then when the tough times came, when he was eating the food from the pigsty, which would have been, as we've mentioned before, to a Jewish audience just absolutely mind-blowing, how far down and low this person was.

Jesus says he came to himself. He came to his senses and went, hey, even my dad's servants, even my dad's slaves have it better than this. So I'm going to go back and I'm just going to ask him if I can be one of his slaves.

And it says when he was yet a great ways off, his father saw him and ran to him and hugged him and kissed his neck. And he threw a feast for him and he put his robe on and he gave him a signet ring.

And he said, kill the fatted calf for my son that was dead is now alive.

And I want to remind us today as we think about our sin, as we think about the countless ways in which we have neglected and abandoned God, as we think about the ways in which we have viewed his children as less important than us, as not worthy of

love or respect, as we have sinned against God's world and have done things to demean his creation and to view it as something to be cast away or thrown away when it was made by his hands. I know that the weight of sin can be heavy.

It can be a weight, a burden that's too heavy to bear. But Jesus came. And though God is a spirit, he is not flesh and bone like us.

He sent Jesus to take on flesh, to become a man. So that for every burden that was too much for you to bear, he himself bear our sins in his own body on the tree. So that we being dead to sin might live unto God.

What an incredible thought. That in our brokenness, in our sin, in our inability to carry the weight of our actions before a Holy God, we experienced that same truth that David brought out in verse number 15.

He says, for I put my hope in you, Yahweh. You will answer me, my Lord, my God. Here in this Psalm, David does not see a wonderful end to his circumstances.

The Psalm ends, Lord, do not abandon me. My God, do not be far from me. Hurry to help me, my Lord, my salvation.

He doesn't see the end yet. And here he doesn't know if he's going to make it out. Obviously, we know he wrote the song and he did not die by the hand of his enemies.

So we know the end of the story. And can I encourage you today, maybe you feel a little bit like David in that moment, where you're just like, OK, God, I sinned, I messed up. I've got nothing.

I've got these other life circumstances where I've got maybe an enemy that's a person like David. Maybe you have an enemy that's a health enemy. Maybe you have an enemy that's a financial struggle and you, if you will, you have a financial enemy.

But can I encourage you with this, the same God that saved David, the same God that saved your soul, has promised that he will meet your needs, that he will care for you. The truth is this, that God is always there for us.

And especially through Jesus, there will never be a day when you are without the presence of God.

That when you have that deep sorrow, when you have that hurt, that realization of who you are before God in your bones, and it threatens to overwhelm you and just bury you, realize that Jesus paid for sin. It doesn't mean that we're gleeful about it.

It can mean that we weep, that we mourn over our sin. View it as repulsive. View it as something that you want to be rid of.

But once you've come to that point, then realize Jesus has forgiven you. You don't have to wallow in your failures because He's the one that took you out of the pig pit. And He's the one that wrapped His arms around you.

And He's the one that has put a robe on you, the robe of the Father on you. And that He will throw a feast for you. So there's no need to wallow in despair.

There's no need to wallow in fear. Your heavenly judge is your Father, the one that loves you. There's nothing that Beer Evelyn could ever do that I wouldn't want to be their Father.

And the same is so much more true for God. He loves you and He wants a relationship with you. If you've been running from Him, run back.

He's right there for you. If you have never turned to Him before, I would invite you to do that today. Call out to Him.

Say, Lord, I know that I'm a sinner, but I believe that Jesus died on the cross for my sins and that He rose again. God, I turn my life over to You. I'm done running.

I'm going to follow You and Your way. The Bible says if we turn to Jesus, if we repent of our sin and we turn in faith to Him, that we will be saved. It's not a bunch of other things that you have to do.

You don't have to give the money. You don't have to have the community service hours in order to have that relationship with God. Simple repentance and belief.

So thank you for being with me today. I know this was something that I needed for my heart. And I pray that it would be encouragement to you tomorrow, Psalm 39.

Thank you.