Of David. To you, O LORD, I lift up my soul; 2 in you I trust, O my God. Do not let me be put to shame, nor let my enemies triumph over me. 3 No one who waits for you will ever be put to shame, but they will be put to shame who are treacherous without excuse.
4 Show me your ways, O LORD, teach me your paths; 5 guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are God my Savior, and I wait for you all day long.
6 Remember, O LORD, your great mercy and love, for they are from of old. 7 Remember not the sins of my youth and my rebellious ways; according to your love remember me, for you are good, O LORD.
8 Good and upright is the LORD; therefore he instructs sinners in his ways. 9 He guides the humble in what is right and teaches them his way. 10 All the ways of the LORD are loving and faithful for those who keep the demands of his covenant. 11 For the sake of your name, O LORD, forgive my iniquity, though it is great.
12 Who, then, is the man that fears the LORD? He will instruct him in the way chosen for him. 13 He will spend his days in prosperity, and his descendants will inherit the land. 14 The LORD confides in those who fear him; he makes his covenant known to them.
15 My eyes are ever on the LORD, for only he will release my feet from the snare. 16 Turn to me and be gracious to me, for I am lonely and afflicted. 17 The troubles of my heart have multiplied; free me from my anguish. 18 Look upon my affliction and my distress and take away all my sins. 19 See how my enemies have increased and how fiercely they hate me! 20 Guard my life and rescue me; let me not be put to shame, for I take refuge in you. 20 May integrity and uprightness protect me, because my hope is in you. 22 Redeem Israel, O God, from all their troubles!
Introduction
What should happen to your joy in Christ when you sin? Should you be full of joy because of His amazing forgiveness? Or should you be crushed and broken over your sin with sorrow and tears of repentance? Is it appropriate to ask for gifts and blessing from God right after you have sinned against Him? And if not, how long should you wait? If I have joy and ask God for gifts of grace, am I failing to take my sin seriously? And if I am broken and crushed with sorrow and sadness, am I failing to truly believe the promises about total forgiveness?
Does God ever become unhappy with a believer? And if so, how do you know when God is angry with you, and what should you do when that happens? In Psalm 25 David asks God not to remember the sins of his youth. Is that really necessary? Didn’t God forgive the sins of his youth way back when he first confessed those sins? (which no doubt, he did. David was a very godly young man.)
David wrote this at a time when he was facing an explosion of trouble in his life from every direction because of his sin. And his response to that was to fix his attention on God. And then his heart had a three-fold response to what he saw. He made those attributes the object of his soul’s desires, he trusted in God’s promises, and he eagerly waited on God, refusing any substitutes for grace. And one attribute that really caught his attention was God’s forgiveness and restoration. One of the truly great things we learn in this psalm is how to take our sin seriously and take forgiveness and grace seriously at the same time. First let’s look at the attribute, then we will consider the three-fold response.
The attribute is God’s gracious memory. And it was an attribute that appealed to David because of his guilt. David is very, very concerned about his sin in this psalm. He brings it up several times, and in verse 11 he says:
11 forgive my iniquity, because it is great.
The seriousness of sin
The reason David had such passion in seeking God’s grace was because of his awareness of the greatness of his sin. And it does not take much knowledge of Scripture to understand that our sin is great too. Even the kinds of sins we tend to think of as small are really great. Every sin we commit is a great evil because it is committed against such a great God. Every one of our sins is a sin against great holiness and great goodness and great power and great mercy and great patience. The longer God has been patient with me the greater the evil when I prey on that patience and use it as an occasion for further evil.
Our sin is great because it is sin against great light and revelation. God has shown us so much from His Word; He has revealed to us so much of His glory – that for us to sin against Him is to sin from a position of enlightenment, which makes our sin especially evil. To prefer garbage to God’s glory is bad enough, but to have a clear view of God’s glory and then to prefer garbage dishonors Him a hundred times more.
Our sin is great because of our continuance in it. We confess it and return to it, confess it and return, confess and return – day after day, week after week, year after year. The clinging of our souls to evil shows our evil to be exceedingly great. Moderate evil might stumble into occasional sin. But it takes great evil to cling and continue and lean toward sin year after year and to keep loving it even after it has done you and others great harm.
Our sin is great because of the frequency and number of our sins. Our sins, piled up, would make an unassailable mountain – and we add more to it every hour. Our sin against God is great because we have done so much of it in the wake of resolutions not to. In doing that we have sinned against our very baptism – that day when we publicly resolved to forsake sin.
Our sin is great because of how it reigns in our hearts. In many cases we have voluntarily re-enslaved ourselves to sins from which God had already freed us. We submit to them as our lord, preferring them over God as a master!
Our sin is great because of how much it has hurt others and even drawn others into sin – compounding the dishonor to God’s name.
Our sin is great because of its source. The fact that it springs from deep within us – from our very heart, makes our condition exceedingly evil. If we relax and stop fighting tenaciously the fight of faith, and we just follow our impulses for a while and do whatever we feel like doing – we would do things that lead away from God. “Prone to wander Lord I feel it; prone to leave the Lord I love.”
Our sin is great because it aids and abets God’s greatest enemy’s attacks against His name. We join forces with Satan against our Savior who died for us!
Our sin is shown to be great because of the magnitude of God’s wrath against it. It is exposed as great because of the greatness of the price that had to be paid for it. What inconceivable vileness it must be to deserve eternal torment in hell? What awesome evil must it be to require the blood of the Son of God to pay for it! Oh, have mercy on us, dear God in heaven, for our sin against You is great.
God’s memory of our sin (chastisement)
6 Remember, O LORD, your great mercy and love, for they are from of old. 7 Remember not the sins of my youth and my rebellious ways; according to your love remember me, for you are good, O LORD.
David asks God to remember him in one way and not in another way. He understood that the most important thing for him was the way God thought him in relation to his sin. So he asks God to call to mind His mercy when dealing with David rather than calling to mind David’s sin as the basis on which he deals with David. “Deal with me on the basis of your mercy, not on the basis of my sin.
So there are actually two attributes that these verses point to. One is God’s gracious memory – when He deals with us according to His mercy rather than according to our sin. The other we can call God’s disciplinary memory – when God deals with us on the basis of our sin. And the reason David is praying and asking for the first one is because he knows the second one is a real possibility. For us to appreciate God’s gracious memory it is essential that we first understand His disciplinary memory.
There is a sense in which God remembers past sin (temporal, not eternal)
Eternal/Legal vs. Temporal/Relational forgiveness
Some people teach that it is not even appropriate to confess your sins or ask God for forgiveness at all if you are a Christian. They say to do so is a denial of the promises about forgiveness. God has already separated your sins from you as far as the east is from the west, so there is no need to ask Him not to remember them. When people say that, they are thinking in terms of eternal, legal forgiveness only. But what David has in mind here, I believe, is not his eternal, legal standing before God in heaven, but his immediate, relational status with God right now. Our sin does not cancel our justification in heaven. But it does hinder our relational closeness with God in this life. To understand the answer to that question it is important to understand that there are two aspects of God’s forgiveness: One involves your eternal, legal standing before God, and the other involves your immediate, relational closeness to God. If you have genuine, saving faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, then you are justified in heaven, which means your eternal, legal standing is that God has declared you righteous in Christ. So your legal standing is spotless – perfect righteousness.
But your immediate relational closeness with God is another factor. Imagine you got in an argument with your friend and flew out of control and hit him in the head with something, and he suffers some internal bleeding in his head, and ends up dying from the injury. So you are arrested and tried and the jury sentences you to life in prison for murder.
Now imagine that you are also close friends with your friend’s father, who happens to be the governor, and he decides to pardon you. So now legally you are considered not guilty – you have no criminal record at all. Does that mean everything is necessarily resolved between you and the governor? Wouldn’t it be appropriate, even though your legal trouble is dealt with, to also go to the governor in person and apologize for killing his son? And until you were willing to do that, don’t you think there would be a bit of a strain in the closeness of your friendship with him?
As a Christian, when you sin against God your eternal standing in Christ does not change. Your record is still spotless legally. However when we are unfaithful to our God, who also describes Himself as our Husband , that puts a strain on our relational closeness and intimacy with Him.
Awareness of sin increased over time
I am sure David had already confessed the sins of his youth and made things right with God at a relational level years prior, so why do it again? If you have a hard time understanding why someone would do that, it may help to realize that getting forgiveness is not the only reason why you confess a sin. In fact, I am not even sure it should be the main reason. Fundamentally, confession is an act of love. If I really love you, and I discover I have hurt you, I want you to know that I realize what I have done. When people hurt you, do not you want them to realize what they have done? Well, love does unto others what you would have them to do you, and so confessing your sin to a person you have sinned against is an act of love. We confess our sins to God mainly because we love Him.
Imagine that you played a practical joke on someone and it made him late for work. And you saw he was a little annoyed, so you apologized and asked forgiveness. And he said, “I forgive you.” Now it is all over, right? Now suppose later you find out through the grape vine that because of what you did your friend got fired, and now he is out of work and has no way to pay his bills and they are going to foreclose on his house and his family will be living on the street. And right after hearing that you see your friend again. What are you going to say? “Oh, I’m so, so sorry. Please forgive me!” Why are you saying that when he already told you that he forgave you? You are saying it again because even though he knew what he was forgiving the first time – you did not. And your little, “Oh, hey, sorry about that” from before just is not enough to express the sorrow and regret that you feel now that you understand a little more the ramifications of what you did.
As we grow in our knowledge of spiritual things our awareness of sin increases, and sometimes we need to cry out in repentance over a sin that we have asked forgiveness for once in the past – but with such halfhearted indifference that we feel the need now to cry out to God in more earnest repentance. And I think that may be what happened with David here.
Plus, cumulative weight
And on top of a deepened understanding of the seriousness of sin, there is also the fact that over time you start to feel the cumulative weight of your sin. If one day I wake up and realize I have been doing something that makes life hard for Tracy, and I have done it over and over and she has had to live with that every day for 17 years, I may feel a new sense of brokenness and contrition beyond what I felt after each individual incident.
Again - if you are a believer your sin does not cancel your justification in heaven, but it most definitely has an impact in your immediate intimacy with God. Let me show you that from Scripture:
The effect of sin on intimacy with God
Angry face turning
First of all, from the immediate, relational perspective God does become displeased with us when we sin against Him. And when that happens God will sometimes turn His face away from us.
Isaiah 59:2 But your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear.
Psalm 27:7-9 Hear my voice when I call, O LORD; be merciful to me and answer me. 8 My heart says of you, "Seek his face!" Your face, LORD, I will seek. 9 Do not hide your face from me, do not turn your servant away in anger; you have been my helper. Do not reject me or forsake me, O God my Savior.
When we sin against God there are times when He responds by turning His face of favor away from us in discipline. Now, He never turns it completely away. As we found last week, there is a certain level of favor and love that the Lord shows us at all times – even when He is displeased with us. The sun never goes out completely for us, but it can go behind some very dark clouds.
God’s turning of His face away from us when we sin against Him can come in small measures or huge measures. Sometimes You sin against God, and there are just a few minutes of sorrow and contrition as you realize your sin and confess it to Him and He immediately restores you and surrounds you with assurances of His favor. And there are other times when He deals more roughly with you. There is an especially serious sin, or sin that goes on for a long time, and God turns His face away for an extended time. When that happens your life turns dark, calamity crashes in from every side, your prayers seem to bounce off the ceiling, and your efforts to spend time with God in prayer are as dry as the desert. David described it as being a deep, internal pain and weakness.
Ps.32:3-5 When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. 4 For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was sapped as in the heat of summer.
Descriptions of face turning (torn to pieces, sickness, death)
God’s chastening hand can be very hard. Listen to how Hosea described it:
Hos.6:1 Come, let us return to the LORD. He has torn us to pieces but he will heal us; he has injured us but he will bind up our wounds.
In 1 Cor.11:30 Paul said that as a result of their sins in church during communion there were many in Corinth who were sick as a result of God’s judgment, and a number of others whom God killed. This is one of the many reasons why it is such a bad idea to ever say, “I will just commit this sin now and ask forgiveness later.” It is best to avoid being torn to pieces if you can.
The purpose of gracious remembering: not just forgiveness, but restoration for glory (verses 18 and 20)
It is crucial that we understand the purpose of God’s chastisement. Why does God sometimes turn His face away from His own people? Why does He tear us to pieces? Is it because of His justice? No! Justice would put us in hell. It has nothing to do with justice.
Purpose: Restoration
The purpose of God’s chastisement is restoration. Forgiveness is just one step in the process. The process works this way: First I sin. Then God turns His face away from me in a disciplinary remembering of my sin. Then the pain of that brings me to repentance. In response to that, God restores me from my sin to the right path. And in doing that He brings glory to His name.
From verse eight all the way through the rest of the psalm you can see that the focus is not just on forgiveness – it is on restoration. In verses 8 and 9 God does not just forgive sinners; He guides them into the right way. He does not just overlook the fact that they took the wrong path; He gets them onto the right path. In verse 15 he does not just ask the Lord to forgive him for getting into the trap; he asks to be released from the trap. He wants to be restored, not just forgiven. In verse 18 he does not say, “Forgive all my sins;” he says, “take away all my sins.”
20 May integrity and uprightness protect me
He wants more than just pardon – he wants God to make him a man of integrity and uprightness.
That is how it is for a truly repentant person. People with superficial repentance want everyone around them to just get over it. But truly repentant people want to be changed. True repentance sees the condition of being enslaved to sin as the worst calamity of all, and wants out.
All chastisement is redemptive
For the world, God metes out punishment for sin that is strictly punitive. It does not change them. In fact in some cases it drives them into even deeper rebellion against God. It is designed not to restore them but to destroy them.
But for us, 100% of what God does in response to your sin is remedial - corrective. It is never mere punishment.
Ro.8:1 There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
If you are a Christian, God has nothing for you but mercy and grace. NOTHING! Even when He turns His face away from you it is 100% redemptive. In fact, the purpose of God’s chastisement is precisely to protect you from His judgment.
1 Cor.11:32 When we are judged by the Lord, we are being disciplined so that we will not be condemned with the world.
If God does not attach some real, serious pain to my rebellion against Him, I would very quickly destroy my conscience and go farther and farther into sin and end up being condemned to hell with the world. I would just keep drifting farther from Him, keep becoming less and less interested in spiritual things, Scripture would become more and more boring to me, prayer would become drier and drier, heaven would seem less and less real, the pleasures of this world would seem more and more attractive, my flesh would gain more and more power in controlling my life, the truth of Scripture would become harder and harder to believe, sin would seem less and less evil to me and more and more enticing, until finally the day would come when there was no trace of saving faith in my heart at all.
The purpose is not to punish for justice’ sake, but to restore you.
Heb.12:9-11 We have all had human fathers who disciplined us and we respected them for it. How much more should we submit to the Father of our spirits and live! 10 Our fathers disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness. 11 No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.
Your human father disciplined you as he thought best, but he did not know all things. And so he did not know exactly what level of severity was best for your heart. And sometimes he was way too lenient. And other times he was too severe. And not all of his discipline worked to make you more holy. But God’s discipline is not like that. It does bring a harvest of righteousness.
So when God shows up in the woodshed with a switch in hand, you can be glad. And the countless other times when He opens the door to the woodshed and instead of a switch He has an armload of gifts, obviously He is making a statement. So do not miss what He is saying. Do not refuse to enjoy the gifts out of some kind of self-punishment. If you sin and the next morning you find sweet, joyful fellowship with God – take that for the massive statement of His mercy that it is. But when you get the rod, you can kiss the rod that God uses to smite you. It is precious. It is wonderful. It does you nothing but good – never harm.
Now let me ask you this: When God tries to produce a harvest of righteousness in someone, does He succeed? The world of psychology believes a really messed up person can never change. And it is no surprise that they think that way because psychology is bankrupt of power to change the heart or to defeat the flesh. The sad thing is so much of the Church has bought into that thinking. But the Bible says that God brings his discipline so that the person might share in the very holiness of God and produce a harvest of righteousness. That means Christians who fall into really, really sick, disgusting, horrible sin, and as a result endure severe chastisement from God, if we believe the Word of God we will fully expect that those people would be full of holiness and will bring forth a harvest of righteousness.
The great Recycler
When a person proves himself to be a horrible sinner our tendency is to just discard him as worthless. But God is into recycling. It struck me as I was praying through this psalm and lifting my soul to God what a worthless thing I am offering Him when I lift my soul to Him. But God is the great recycler of ruined souls. He not only accepts them but in His accepting He renews them and takes what is worthless and makes it a work of eternal beauty.
The Broken Don’t Need Breaking
So the purpose of God’s chastisement is to bring us to repentance so that we can be restored. And if you know that you know how to avoid God’s chastisement. Just repent of your sins. God does not punish us for accidents. If we are continually examining our lives and repenting of our sins, we will not face His chastisement.
1 Cor.11:28-32 A man ought to examine himself before he eats of the bread and drinks of the cup. 29 For anyone who eats and drinks without recognizing the body of the Lord eats and drinks judgment on himself. 30 That is why many among you are weak and sick, and a number of you have fallen asleep. 31 But if we judged ourselves, we would not come under judgment. 32 When we are judged by the Lord, we are being disciplined so that we will not be condemned with the world.
The person who is already broken does not need to be disciplined. If your child comes to you weeping bitterly and completely crushed over some sin that he wants to confess to you - he did not get caught, no one suspected anything; his conscience just forced him to confess - and he is more broken than you have ever seen him, and he actually asks you to punish him, even offering some ideas. That happened once with one of our kids, and even though the sin was very serious we did not even punish the child. There was no need. Conscience had already done all the work discipline is designed to do. All that was needed from us was comfort and instruction for restoration. The purpose of discipline is to accomplish what Hosea six calls being injured and broken to pieces. But if you are already broken to pieces God can skip right to the comfort and restoration part.
Don’t misunderstand – not self-punishment
Please don’t misunderstand this. I am not saying that you should punish yourself for your sin – as though you could somehow pay the penalty for your sin. If you do something to punish yourself for your sin, that is blasphemy. I am not saying you should inflict suffering on yourself so that God won’t. I am simply saying you should repent of your sin. And repentance is a painful process. But if you constantly examine your heart and repent of your sin, you do not have to be worried about God turning His face away from you.
Consequences not the same as face turning
That is not to say there will be no long term consequences. But consequences are not always the same thing as God’s face being turned away from you. It is important that you understand the role of consequences of sin. The consequences God has built in to sin help us learn to take sin seriously. Being sad about the consequences of sin, in itself is not necessarily the sorrow of true repentance. The sorrow over consequences is like training wheels that prepare our heart to be broken over our sin. It is much easier to go from weeping over painful consequences to weeping tears of true repentance than it is to go from no tears at all to tears of true repentance. So, painful consequences are a wonderful gift.
But those consequences are not synonymous with God turning His face away from you. When David committed adultery and murder, at first he did not repent. He did not even acknowledge to God that he had sinned. Somehow he talked himself into believing that because of his prerogatives as the king, he could do what he did.
So for months – at least nine months, and possibly many more – David did not repent of his sin and fell under the chastening hand of God. God turned His face away from David in anger. Here is how David described that experience:
Ps.32:3-5 When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. 4 For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was sapped as in the heat of summer. 5 Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity. I said, "I will confess my transgressions to the LORD"-- and you forgave the guilt of my sin.
When God turned His face away and pressed His hand of discipline down on David, it was absolute agony. David groaned all day long. He started wasting away from the inside out. The pain penetrated deep down – right to his very bones. It was relentless – day and night there was no escape. It left him without any strength.
And then he confessed and repented and God forgave him and his strength returned and the suffering of discipline was lifted. The consequences of his sin, however, persisted. His child by Bathsheba died. And the sword never left his family, and his own son rebelled against him. The horrible, horrible consequences of the sin persisted, but the relational distance from God did not persist. As soon as David repented God turned His face back toward David in favor, and David’s strength and joy returned. Even when his child died, although he was sad, he had the strength to handle it because God’s favor had returned to him. In fact, the people in his household were amazed because after he got the news he got up and went in to worship the Lord and then enjoyed a nice meal. When God’s favor returned David’s inner strength and joy returned.
Consequences of sin can hurt, but they are nothing like the pain of God turning His face away from you. I think I have experienced God turning His face away from me. And I can tell you that I would rather have every single bone in my body broken than ever experience that again. On the other hand, when you have God’s favor – you can endure any consequences.
That is why, when David experienced all kinds of pain in his life, and it made him aware of the enormity and seriousness and volume of his sin against God, he said,
7 Remember not the sins of my youth and my rebellious ways; according to your love remember me, for you are good, O LORD.
In this case, for God to remember his sins means pretty much the same thing as turning His face away.
God’s chastisement is a wonderful thing because it makes you treasure His forgiveness (forgiven much loves much) – feel flames.
It struck me as I was studying this how little concern I have had in my heart over the possibility of God remembering the sins of my youth. And at one level that is as it should be. God does not want us to wallow in constant sorrow over forgiven sin. He demands that we live in joy. But that joy to really be full we need to have a sense of how much we have been forgiven. He who has been forgiven much loves God much (Luke 7:47)
So we treasure both the gracious memory and the disciplinary memory of God. We need His disciplinary memory to teach us to treasure His gracious memory. The intimacy you have with Him after being chastised is ten times deeper and more profound than it could have been before. I am convinced this is one of the reasons – if not the main reason why God allowed evil in the first place. He who has been forgiven much loves much. The intimacy and joy you can have in God after having sinned horribly against Him and then having been forgiven far exceeds the kind of joy and intimacy you can have with Him if you have no deep sense of how much you have been forgiven. If you have never experienced God lifting you up out of the horrible, deep, black pit of darkness into the light, you cannot have the love and joy in God that you can have if you have experienced that. To really appreciate salvation you need to feel the flames of hell almost reaching you.
In fact, according to 2 Corinthians 5:11 it is our fear of God’s chastisement for our sin that motivates us to persuade non Christians to be saved. Because once you know how horrible His chastisement is, you cannot bear the thought of someone enduring the fullness of His wrath.
2 Cor.5:10-11 For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive what is due him for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad. 11 Since, then, we know what it is to fear the Lord, we try to persuade men.
Makes the joy deeper than the sorrow
There is a joy that continues even when we are crushed in sorrow over our sin, because His purposes in redemption are bigger even than our sin! You fall is temporary. His promises are eternal. His eternal, perfect plan cannot be derailed even by our sin. And He has promised that He will restore you.
And the purpose of restoration is His glory
And He does it all for the sake of His name. The reason why the logic of mercy works is because of verse 11.
11 For the sake of your name, O LORD, forgive my iniquity, because it is great.
It magnifies and displays the glory of God when He forgives and restores, because it shows Him to be merciful and loving and compassionate and gracious.
Okay, so now that we understand all that, we are ready to answer the questions I asked at the beginning of the sermon. What should we do when we sin? And what is the relationship between Christian joy and the sorrow of repentance? And when is it appropriate to ask God for blessing after you have sinned? Usually, when you are in the woodshed, that is not the best time to ask dad about taking you to Disneyland. If you do, he is not going to think you are taking your sin seriously (and he is probably right). But in Psalm 25 David asks God for blessing upon blessing upon blessing. Over and over he keeps asking for relief from trouble and the favor of God and prosperity and everything else. Let me walk you through his three-fold response, and we will get some really exciting answers to these questions.
So what should your attitude be right after you sin? Or right after you have repented? What should you do when you are in the dry desert of God turning His face away, and your spiritual life is a dustbowl? The answer is in that same three-fold response we saw the last two weeks.
Three-fold response
1) Desire God’s gracious memory
The first part of the three-fold response is making God’s gracious memory the object of your desire. As long as you are willing to accept God’s disciplinary memory, and it would be fitting and righteous for God to deal with you according to your sin, it is okay to desire God’s mercy instead. It is never wrong or inappropriate to desire the experience of one of God’s attributes. The reason it is okay to ask God for restoration even when you are under God’s discipline is because restoration is the whole purpose of His discipline. David is not asking for Disneyland – he is asking for restored intimacy with God. If you want to see a really beautiful picture of this, take a look at Micah seven.
Joy in confidence of rest during discipline
Micah 7:8-9 Do not gloat over me, my enemy! Though I have fallen, I will rise. Though I sit in darkness, the LORD will be my light. 9 Because I have sinned against him, I will bear the LORD's wrath, until he pleads my case and establishes my right. He will bring me out into the light; I will see his righteousness.
God has turned his face away from Micah because of his sin. And Micah’s enemies are rubbing it in. They are gloating over the fact that God is punishing Micah. And Micah says, “Do not gloat over me. Yes, it is true I sinned. And yes, I realize I am sitting here in the darkness. And yes, God is angry with me because I have sinned against Him.
No doubt he has repented, and clearly all of his hope is in God. And yet still, his life is dark and he is still under God’s wrath. The turning of God’s face away from you in discipline is not something that necessarily comes to an end immediately when you repent. If you push God to the point of doing this, it lasts a while. You will find yourself crying out in agony like David in Psalm six, which is another psalm where David is being disciplined because of sin.
Psalm 6:2-3 Be merciful to me, LORD, for I am faint; O LORD, heal me, for my bones are in agony. 3 My soul is in anguish. How long, O LORD, how long?
Micah does not know the answer to that question. He does not know how long it is going to be. But however long it lasts, just like David, Micah desired only one thing - closeness with this God who was angry with Him.
8 the LORD will be my light. 9 He will bring me out into the light… 9 …I will see his righteousness.
You cannot escape God’s anger by running from Him. You can only escape it by running toward Him, because the only refuge from God’s anger is God’s love. And the only place to run from His rod of discipline is into His arms of forgiveness. Micah is like a child who has been sent to his room by an angry father whom that child deeply loves, and who deeply loves that child. The child knows he has done something very bad, and that he is going to be punished. And as he sits up there in his room and cries, he wants nothing more than for the discipline to be over and to be restored to intimacy with his father.
Seek God when you sin
So when you sin, seek God’s face. Seek His presence. Seek His favor. Seek closeness and nearness to Him. Seek intimacy with Him. That is the best thing to do right after you sin, a while after you sin, right after you have repented, when you are under His discipline, and every other time. Do not turn inward and just beat up on yourself for sinning. Turn upward and let the anxiety you have over your sin drive you to redouble your efforts in seeking the face of God.
When you fall to a sin your attitude should be, “Obviously I need more grace from God.” And that should make you redouble your efforts to seek grace from Him. If you sin and then repent, and the rest of your day there is no marked increase in your efforts to pursue intimacy with God, not clear, obvious intensifying of your efforts to pursue the means of getting grace from God, what does that say about your repentance? It is a sham. If I say, “God, change me. What I am doing is not working,” and then I just go right on doing the same thing I have been doing that is not working, it shows I am not all that concerned about receiving more grace. My repentance is a joke, and probably the only thing that will ever drive me to really seek hard after more grace from God will be if He severely chastises me.
Listen to the rest of that passage in Hosea about being torn to pieces by God.
Hosea 6:1-3 "Come, let us return to the LORD. He has torn us to pieces but he will heal us; he has injured us but he will bind up our wounds. 2 After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will restore us, that we may live in his presence. Let us know the LORD; 3 let us press on to know him. As surely as the sun rises, he will appear; he will come to us like the winter rains, like the spring rains that water the earth."
The promise that He will return again with His favor is as certain as the rising of the sun, so start seeking Him. Always seek after His presence. The thing you should do when you have sinned is the last thing you are naturally inclined to do – run to Him. Do not ever think this way: “well, God is angry with me. He has withdrawn His presence. So I will just wait it out until His anger blows over.” That is absolutely the worst thing you can do. Do not every think, “Well, God is angry with me, so it is not really appropriate for me to seek after intimacy with Him right now.”
Or another variation: “I have sinned, so I don’t really deserve the joy that comes from God’s presence right now, so I will hold off on seeking Him for a while.” Every one of those is a lie right out of the pit of hell.
And if you struggle with those kinds of lies in your heart after you sin, maybe it will help to think this way: “It may be that God is going to chastise me for this sin by withdrawing His presence from me so that I will not really enjoy the sweetness of fellowship with Him until I have sought earnestly for several days. The closeness and sweetness and joy that I normally experience after just an hour of seeking after Him in earnest will now take a week of earnest seeking.” If that is the case, then you had better get started right away, because I can assure you it is not going to come as a result of no seeking. One thing that is very clear is that intimacy with God is found only by those who earnestly seek Him. And so any time God seems distant, or your spiritual life is dry and you are out in the desert like David at the beginning of Psalm 63, the only wise course is to double your efforts to seek after God. Don’t ever think it is inappropriate. It is never more appropriate than when you are under His chastisement, because that is the whole purpose of chastisement!
2. Trust in God’s promise of restoration
The second part of the threefold response is to trust in God’s promises of restoration. That is what David did, that is what Micah did, and that is what Hosea called for. In Psalm 25 David refers to God’s promise of restoration in verse three, then again in verses 8, 9, 10, 12, 13, and 15. David was broken and humble with regard, and at the very same time bold and confident with regard to the promise of God. Just look at verse ten and then look at verse 11.
10 All the ways of the LORD are loving and faithful for those who keep the demands of his covenant.
11 For the sake of your name, O LORD, forgive my iniquity, because it is great.
Right at the same moment his iniquity and sin were great, and yet he was keeping the demands of God’s covenant! That is incredibly good news for us, because our iniquity is indeed great. Even our best prayers and holiest acts need to be repented of. We are shot through with sin. And yet God has not placed the keeping of His covenant out of our reach even for us.
Micah was the same way. Listen to his confidence in the promises:
- Though I have fallen, I will rise.
- Though I sit in darkness, the LORD will be my light.
- I will bear the LORD's wrath, until he pleads my case and establishes my right. - He will bring me out into the light;
- I will see his righteousness.
Take a pen and underline every place in these verses where you see the word “maybe.” It is not there. Micah is absolutely sure it is going to happen. His fall into sin will be reversed. In fact, God Himself will end up pleading his case.
John Piper calls that “gutsy guilt.” He is broken over sin, but not defeated by sin. Yes, he is in the darkness now and God is angry. But no, he has not given up or lost heart. He is full of hope in God’s promises of restoration. Have I sinned against God? Yes. Am I in some darkness now? Yes. Am I being chastised by God? Yes. Is God angry with me? Yes. Is God against me? No way! Not in a million years! Is God giving me anything that is not in my best interests? No chance!
Here’s Hosea in Hosea six:
1 He has torn us to peices but he will heal us;
1 … he will bind up our wounds.
2 he will revive us … he will restore us, that we may live in his presence.
3 As surely as the sun rises, he will appear; he will come to us like the winter rains, like the spring rains that water the earth."
When God turns His face away from you it is essential that you know with absolute certainty that after the discipline is over your Dad will do what he always does and hold you on his lap and comfort you and at that moment you will feel closer to Him than ever before. And the Father will be even happier than the child that it is all over.
Satan attacks when you are down
If you drop this shield of faith in times of horrible guilt, you are finished. You will get discouraged and lose heart. We are fighting against a vicious, ferocious, merciless, evil enemy. Satan does not fight fair. He fights to destroy. And he never goes after you like he goes after you when you are down. If you ever see the commercials for the no-holes-barred fights on TV you see that when one guy gets the other guy down that is when he pounces on him and really starts wailing away to finish him off. That’s what Satan does. You fail in some horrible way for the umpteenth time. And you are racked with guilt. Your life is dark. You feel like you hate yourself. You are so frustrated, so discouraged, at wit is end. You have tried everything. You don’t know what to do anymore. Nothing comforts you. And in that moment of weakness and vulnerability Satan will come at you with a vengeance to try to finish you off.
And his first tactic will be to try to get you to let down all your defenses. You think, “I deserve everything I get” and so you are not inclined to protect yourself against his attacks and accusations, and you just drop your guard and let him have at you. And he does everything in his power to use your guilt to try to get you to give up seeking after God. “It is not working. It is a waste of time. You will never succeed. You always fail, so why even try anymore. You would be better off dead.” When you have thoughts like that, then you know what it is like to have a thought come directly from the mind of the devil into your mind.
Don’t give up!
Did you notice that there are no verses in the Bible that say, “When you sin against God, beat up on yourself for a while”? No, what does it say instead?
Heb.12:5 do not lose heart when he rebukes you
Heb.12:3 Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.
Gal.6:9 Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.
Do not give up. The pain you are feeling is redemptive. It is designed to restore you. Have you fallen? Get up! Do not stay down – get back up. The war is not over. You need to get back up on your feet. So when you experience the sharp pain of being under the mighty hand of God…
1 Pe.5:6-7 Humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that he may lift you up in due time. 7 Casting all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.
3. Wait for God
No substitutes
And finally, wait for God. Micah sat in the darkness telling his enemies not to gloat because God will come and restore him. He does not try to restore himself. He does not try to cover up his sin – he freely admits it. He does not try to pretend God is not punishing him. He freely acknowledges that too. He does not try to take the edge off his horrible suffering with some alcohol or recreation or pornography or a human relationship or a hobby or anything else. No substitutes. He just waits for God to restore him.
Conclusion: Double your enjoyment of God’s gracious memory by giving that grace to others
Agape Bible Church is called Agape because agape is the Greek word for love, and the Christian life is all about loving God and loving others. The goal of all my preaching is to help increase your love for God. And that is my aim in this sermon, to help you fix your gaze for an hour on this amazing attribute of God – His gracious memory. The goal is to not only see that attribute but to experience it and enjoy it. The more you do that the more it will increase your love for Him and delight in Him. And if you want to double that enjoyment, and really experience God’s gracious memory in the deepest, most joy-producing way, then become an agent through whom God delivers that grace to others.
Every once in a while (or in many cases every few moments) you are reminded of someone who has hurt you. Each time that happens you have the option of remembering them in a favorable way or according to their sins against you - the same two options God faces when remembering you. When you think of some person that you really just do not like, or who has sinned horribly against you - those people who, when their name is mentioned your eyes just go into an uncontrollable roll 1) Use that occasion to remind you of the wonderful attribute of God’s gracious memory of you. He does not roll His eyes when He thinks about you. 2) Involve yourself with that attribute by graciously remembering that person. Let your memories of those people be governed by grace. Let the first thoughts into your mind be gracious, favorable ones that honestly and genuinely and joyfully and gladly (not grudgingly out of duty, but eagerly out of desire) remember them favorably. Focus on their good points by default, and only be dragged kicking and screaming to think about their sins when it is absolutely necessary. I am hoping a lot of thoughts of people who have offended or hurt you will come to mind today so you can practice this. And you will know when your memory is really gracious when it starts to bleed through into your speech. When everyone else is criticizing that person, you cannot help speaking up in a gracious way about them. Let’s become men and women of gracious words that come from deep within us; from a gracious, loving hearts that really do love and favor all those we remember.
Benediction: 1 Pe.5:10,11 And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast. 11 To him be the power for ever and ever. Amen.
1. What should happen to your joy in Christ when you sin?
2. Should you be full of joy because of His amazing forgiveness? Or should you be crushed and broken over your sin with sorrow and tears of repentance?
3. Is it appropriate to ask for gifts and blessing from God right after you have sinned against Him? And if not, how long should you wait? If I have joy and ask God for gifts of grace, am I failing to take my sin seriously? And if I am broken and crushed with sorrow and sadness, am I failing to truly believe the promises about total forgiveness?
4. Does God ever become unhappy with a believer? And if so, how do you know when God is angry with you, and what should you do when that happens?
5. In Psalm 25 David asks God not to remember the sins of his youth. Is that really necessary? Didn’t God forgive the sins of his youth way back when he first confessed those sins? (which no doubt, he did. David was a very godly young man.)
6. What reason is there for to confess sin besides the desire to be forgiven?
7. What is the difference between God turning His face away from you and simply enduring consequences?
8. What does it mean to have gracious memory toward people who have hurt you?
9. What is the purpose of God turning His face away from you?
