SERIES: Psalms, Cries of the Heart
The Cry of the Guilty Conscience
SPEAKER: Michael P. Andrus
Introduction: We live in the “me” generation, the day of the Boomers, the Busters, and the GenXers. Our age has seen the acceptance of such brilliant farsighted wisdom as, “If it feels good, do it.” And we’re known for such profound musical themes as, “I did it my way.” Not surprisingly, guilt receives a lot of bad press in our society. Current popular psychology gives one the impression that guilt is an emotion to be avoided at all costs. If we experience guilt, we are encouraged to get rid of it by any means possible to avoid the damage it may do to our tender psyches.
One common source of guilt, the experts inform us, is religion. Perfectly natural instincts are labeled as “sin,” and therefore people end up feeling guilty for not meeting the standards set by some holy book or by the clergy. Parents are another common source of guilt with their penchant for unrealistic expectations for their children. In fact, anyone who makes moral judgments on other people arouses this destructive emotion and therefore can be charged with “laying guilt trips” on others.
Fortunately, not everyone, even in the therapeutic community, agrees with this view of guilt. Dr. Willard Gaylin, clinical professor of psychiatry at Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons, in an article in U.S. News & World Report, agreed that inappropriate guilt, like other inappropriate emotions, is destructive. But, he contended, that does not make guilt itself bad. Rather he defined guilt as a legitimate form of self-punishment for failure to live up to internalvalues. He referred to it as an emotion of maturity, presupposing internalized standards and a developed conscience. Gaylin states, “When you have actually done something morally wrong, it is always good to experience guilt—always.”[i]
Furthermore, guilt serves to maintain order in the larger society, assisting us in preserving interpersonal relationships by motivating us to apologize for unjustified bad behavior. In fact, when one examines public behavior today, either on the streets or in the halls of Congress, one begins to sense that the key problem of our time is not that too many are struggling with an overactiveconscience, and thus false guilt, but rather that vast numbers have an underdeveloped conscience and an insufficient sense of appropriate guilt.
No Christian should be surprised at Gaylin’s conclusions. They were written in the pages of Scripture 3,000 years ago. Today I want us to examine “the cry of the guilty conscience” as voiced by King David in the 32nd Psalm. As we noted last week, David may not have had a Ph.D. in psychology, but he had a lot of experience with the topics he addressed—in this case, guilt. And he also knew from experience how to resolve it.
When one normally thinks of David and guilt, one thinks of Psalm 51, part of which we read in unison earlier in our service. There David pours out his heart to God, confessing his sin with Bathsheba and his subsequent murder of her husband. In that Psalm he calls on God’s mercy and compassion, he admits his wrong and calls it inexcusable, he accepts whatever punishment God decides to mete out, and he pleads with God to cleanse him and renew him.
Psalm 51 is the cry of a bruised and broken heart at point of confession, which did not occur, sadly, until about a year after the sin was committed. It is full of emotion, gut-wrenching in its pathos. Psalm 32 deals with the same general subject and probably the same incident in David’s life, but David, the hurting sinner, is now David, the encouraging teacher. In fact, I would suggest to you that Psalm 32 may have been predicted in Psalm 51. In two verses of Psalm 51 which we did notread this morning, verse 12 and 13, he writes, “Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me. Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will turn back to you.” David fulfills his promise to teach transgressors in Psalm 32. (By the way, the Psalms are grouped more thematically than chronologically, and 51 was probably written first).
So, please turn with me to Psalm 32 and let’s read what a man after God’s own heart has to say about the cry of the guilty conscience. We’ll just read the first five verses at this time:
“Blessed is he whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. {2} Blessed is the man whose sin the LORD does not count against him and in whose spirit is no deceit. {3} 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. Selah {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. Selah”
If I understand the structure of this Psalm correctly, the author states his thesis right up front in the first two verses, namely that the only way to experience true happiness is to resolve the guilt in one’s life. Then in verse 3 he backs up to the time before he understood that truth and offers us something of his personal experience with guilt. Then in verses 6-10 he exhorts his readers to pay attention to his experience so that they don’t make the same mistakes. The last verse offers his conclusion. So let’s begin with the thesis, his message in a nutshell.
David’s thesis: The only way to experience true happiness is to resolve the guilt in one’s life. (1-2)
This Psalm begins on a jubilant note: “Blessed is he whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord does not count against him and in whose spirit is no deceit.” We have seen this word “blessed” already in our series. In Psalm 1 we heard that “Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers.”
Do you see the rather startling contrast between the blessing promised in Psalm 1 and that promised in Psalm 32? In Psalm 1 the promise is given to the man who walks in God’s way. In Psalm 32, however, the promise is for the man who has not walked in God’s way! Now this may be a contrast, but it’s not necessarily a contradiction. Certainly, the quickest route to blessing or happiness is to avoid sin in the first place.
But God has not left us without recourse if we fail to follow the instructions of Psalm 1. Happiness is not completely out of reach for the person who has missed the mark, though some of the evil consequences of sin are inevitable. God’s blessing can still be experienced, but only if and when corrective action is taken. What is that corrective action?
Sin must be forgiven.
Atonement must be received.
Justification must be granted.
The sinner must come clean.
Sin must be forgiven. By the way, the Psalmist uses three different words for sin in these first two verses. It may be that he is just searching for synonyms, but there is enough difference in the nuances of these three words to assume that his choice was deliberate and purposeful. “Transgressions” means rebellion and describes sin as it relates to God. “Sins,” plural, in the second line means to fall short of the target and describes sin in relation to God’s law. “Sin,”singular, in verse 2 means “corruption or crookedness” and describes sin as it relates to ourselves. David was guilty of all three.
Now the Hebrew word for forgiveness means “to lift off.” The picture is that of the removal of a great burden we are carrying. Our children are studying Pilgrim’s Progress in Passport to Adventure. One scene in Bunyan’s great masterpiece finds Pilgrim coming to the cross, at which point in Bunyan’s words, “his burden loosed from off his shoulders and fell from off his back and began to tumble, and so continued to do so, till it came to the mouth of the sepulchre, where it fell in”[ii] and was seen no more. Those words are echoed in the hymn, “It Is Well with My Soul:”
My sin—O the bliss of this glorious thought!—
My sin, not in part, but the whole,
Is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more.
Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!
Atonement must be received. The word “atonement” literally means “to cover.” In the OT sins were literally “covered” by the blood of the sacrifices. On the Day of Atonement the high priest would take blood from the sacrifices and carry it into the Most Holy Place, where he would sprinkle it on the lid, the mercy seat of the Ark of the Covenant. When God saw the blood covering the Mercy Seat, He would cover or provide atonement for the sins of the people. The book of Hebrews makes clear that we enjoy a different kind of atonement today. The blood of bulls and goats can never take away sin, only cover it, but the blood of Jesus provides a permanent covering, a once-for-all atonement, a complete removal of our sin.
Justification must be granted. One normally thinks of justification as a NT concept developed by Paul in the book of Romans. But the fact is Paul quotes this very verse in Romans 4:7-8 when he does his principal teaching on justification. Psalm 32 is the OT foundation for the NT doctrine of justification.
Justification essentially refers to God’s acquittal of guilty sinners. When they put their faith in Him, God refuses to charge them with the sins they have committed. And that is what David says: “Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord does not count against him.” The sin has been committed and the sinner is guilty; but God is willing to accept a substitute payment and renders the guilty “not guilty.” The ultimate substitute, of course, is His own Son, Jesus.
But the fourth corrective action is something we must contribute to the process:
The sinner must come clean. You know something, God does not ask you to do anythingabout your sin except to be honest with Him about it. He does not ask you to atone for it. He doesn’t ask you to do penance. He doesn’t ask you to confess to a human intermediary. He doesn’t ask you to pay any fine. He doesn’t even ask you to cry about your sin, though I think tears are often the natural result when we are really honest about our sad moral state. All He asks is that you come clean. “Blessed is the man in whose spirit is no deceit.” We shouldn’t lie to God, we shouldn’t lie to our spouse, and we shouldn’t lie to ourselves.
Now these first two verses offer us the Psalmist’s thesis. If you wanted to explain to someone what Psalm 32 is about, you could read these first two verses and they’d have a real good idea. But David wants us to understand more than the simple fact that happiness comes through the release of guilt. He wants us to grasp the psychology of guilt. What does guilt do to a person? Why is it important for us to deal with it rightly and promptly? What does it mean to confess our sin and to receive His forgiveness? His own experience is painful but valuable, so he shares it.
David’s experience:
Guilt is the inevitable by-product of sin.
Any deviation from the law of God results in guilt. Now might be the best time to note for us that there are two aspects to guilt. The first is objective guilt. When we sin we are guilty—whether we feel it or not, whether we are discovered or not, and whether anyone else thinks so or not. But there is also such a thing as subjective guilt. This refers to the conscience and the emotions it stirs inside of us. When some little children were asked “What is a conscience?”, one 6-year-old answered perceptively that it is the spot inside that “burns if you’re not good.” A little boy said he didn’t know, but thought it had something to do with feeling bad when you “kicked girls or little dogs.”
A more adult way of looking at subjective guilt is that it is the red warning light that starts flashing when we sin. We can put tape over it, as some do with the warning light on the dashboard of their car, but that is unwise, because the light is a protective mechanism reminding us to take corrective action before more serious damage is done.
It is important that we distinguish between these two aspects of guilt. It is possible to be guilty but not feel guilty. That happens when a person violates his conscience over time—the warning light stops flashing. On the other hand, it’s possible to feel guilty but not be guilty. All of us have known individuals with overactive consciences, who take the world on their shoulders, feeling terrible guilt, for example, for an accident over which they had no control.
When I say that guilt is the inevitable product of sin, I’m referring to objective guilt. But it is also true that objective guilt is always accompanied by subjective guilt unless a person’s conscience has been tampered with or dulled through repeated neglect.
Now David’s second point, which he does make explicitly, is that …
Guilt will deal with you if you don’t deal with it. (3-4)
Look at verse 3: “When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long.” This is the pitiful picture of a person in psychological and emotional agony. It describes the malaise of any believer who is trying to ignore his sin. Have you ever been there? I have. I distinctly remember one time when I had gotten into some serious trouble at Webster Groves Junior High. My conscience was doing a terrible number on me. Late that night I went into my parents’ room, woke them up, and said, “I can’t stand it. I can’t sleep. You’ve got to help me.” They were wise enough to encourage me to lay everything out to the Lord and then they prayed with me. I finally went to sleep that night, but I never forgot how terribly painful that feeling was.
I don’t know exactly what David means when he says, “My bones wasted away,” but I know it’s not healthy. Through this and the later observation that “My strength was sapped as in the heat of summer,” the Psalmist is clearly telling us that there are also physical consequences from unresolved guilt. Don’t doubt it for a moment. The hospitals and the psychiatric wards are full of people who are sick or even dying primarily because of the effects of unresolved guilt.
But there are not only psychological and physical repercussions from guilt; there are also spiritual ones. David says, “Your hand was heavy upon me.” God has ways of bringing pressure upon us, often acute pressure, until we acknowledge our sin. The fellowship David once enjoyed with God is gone. In Psalm 51 he prays, “Restore to me the joy of your salvation.”
Friend, are you living with unresolved guilt? Is your conscience doing a number on you? Perhaps you have stolen money, lied on a resume, or perhaps cheated a friend or a business partner. Maybe you have an illicit sexual relationship going on right now. Perhaps you have allowed some of your possessions to become more important to you than God. Maybe you have a secret addiction that no one knows about, and you have become adept at telling yourself it doesn’t matter. Well, God knows about it, and it does matter. The skeletons in your closet will never go away, and the resultant guilt will never be resolved, until you have come clean.
Every therapist or counselor—Christian and non-Christian—agrees that living with unresolved guilt is not healthy. The world’s solution too often is to deny it, or suppress it, or repress it, or transfer it to someone else. But David tells us …
Guilt is resolved only through confession and forgiveness. (5)
He has already said as much in his thesis statement, but now he puts it in the chronology of his own experience (v. 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.” He says, “I tried keeping quiet. I tried going to work with this burden on my back. I tried going to church and even teaching Sunday School. But it was disastrous. Finally, I could stand it no longer and I told God, ‘I did it. I’m guilty. I’m through hiding.’” And what was God’s response? “He forgave the guilt of my sin.”
Interestingly, the same three different Hebrew words for sin that are used in the first two verses of the Psalm are also used here. That tells me that David did not hold back from confession in any area—and thus all his sin was forgiven. David confessed it all, and God forgave it all. The slate was wiped clean.[iii]
Notice, too, that forgiveness was immediate. “I said, ‘I will confess …” and immediately, “you forgave the guilt of my sin.” Do you see that little word, “Selah,” that is found at the end of verse 4, verse 5, and verse 7? It probably means “pause and take notice.” After revealing the awful consequences of his refusal to confess, David tells his readers to pause and take notice. After he tells of God’s forgiveness, he tells his readers to pause and take notice. But there is no pause between his confession and forgiveness. One follows the other immediately.
Now I suppose it’s theoretically possible that David was unique in his experience. Is there any reason for us to believe that we can find peace the same way he did? Well, let’s see if we can find an answer to that question in verse 6 and 7: “Therefore let everyone who is godly pray to you while you may be found; surely when the mighty waters rise, they will not reach him. You are my hiding place; you will protect me from trouble and surround me with songs of deliverance.”
David here exhorts his readers based upon his own experience:
David’s exhoration:
Seek God and he will become a hiding place. (6-7).
I think he is in essence saying to us in verse 6, “I blew it badly, I sinned terribly, and then I compounded it by trying to stuff it. Please don’t make the same mistake I made. Pray to God while He is available.” The implication is that there will come a time when it is too late to seek God. Death is just such a time. There are a lot of religions in this world that teach that we should pray for the dead, but the Bible doesn’t. Instead, it says in Hebrews 9:27, “Man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment.” It is possible to reach a point, even in this life, when we have turned a deaf ear to God for so long that He turns a deaf ear to us. Isaiah says, “Seek the Lord while he may be found; call on him while he is near.” (55:6)
When we seek God, we find Him to be all we need. “You are my hiding place; you will protect me from trouble and surround me with songs of deliverance.” What a great promise! Instead of feeling His heavy hand, we are comforted by His protecting hand. Instead of hiding from God we can hide in God.
Not only does David exhort us to seek God; he also warns us about the opposite choice:
Become stubborn and you will be sorry. (8-10)
Look at verses 8 & 9: “I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you and watch over you. Do not be like the horse or the mule, which have no understanding but must be controlled by bit and bridle or they will not come to you.” Verse 8 is a favorite of many people, but it has often been misunderstood. In the KJV it sounds like a promise from God to give us special guidance: “I will guide you with mine eye.” In fact, however, it is probably not God who is speaking here but David, and he is simply affirming to his readers that his goal is to instruct, teach, and provide counsel to them.
But whether it is God or David who is speaking, the truth remains that when we act ignorantly or stubbornly like the mule, resisting God’s control and fighting the bit and bridle, we only hurt ourselves. “Many are the woes of the wicked,” he says in verse 10. A few weeks ago in Psalm 73 Gene talked about the fact that the wicked often prosper. That is true, and our sense of fairness is outraged whenever they do, but the fact remains that the wicked also bring a lot of suffering on themselves. In contrast, “the Lord’s unfailing love surrounds the man who trust in him.”
Finally, look at David’s conclusion to this great Psalm.
David’s conclusion: The righteous have reason to rejoice, be glad, and sing. (11)
Verse 11: “Rejoice in the Lord and be glad, you righteous; sing, all you who are upright in heart!” Why does he end this Psalm on such a high note? Because there is nothing like forgiveness to make the heart sing and the soul rejoice! You can’t rejoice, you can’t be glad, and you surely can’t sing when there is unconfessed sin and unresolved guilt in your life. But there doesn’t have to be.
Do you remember the story in Luke 7 of the young woman who demonstrated her love and gratitude to Jesus in a rather overt fashion. The Pharisee in whose home the event took place expressed his disapproval, but the Lord said, “Her many sins have been forgiven—for she loved much. But he who has been forgiven little loves little.” David knew he had many sins, and he knew he had been forgiven much. No wonder he reacted with joy and gratitude.
I close with a quote from Stuart Briscoe:
“Have you ever thought, if only I had gotten into sin in a big way, I could have been forgiven in a big way and then I couldn’t help but love God in a big way? Will you promise never to think like that again? Because the truth of the matter is, you did get into sin in a big way. Day after miserable day, you transgressed and sinned and acted in iniquity and guile. You have constantly done what was forbidden, have left undone what was required, have perverted that which is right, and have projected that which is false. But what a thrill to know that it is the greatness of your sin which qualifies you for the vastness of forgiveness. And it is the knowledge of His forgiveness that leads to love and commitment.” [iv]
Have you received forgiveness of your sins? Do you know the freedom of a clear conscience? You can. All you need to do is to come clean before God and put your faith in the sacrifice Jesus made for you on the cross. He has promised to forgive you and to give you eternal life.
It is the vastness of forgiveness that we celebrate at the Lord’s Table. He who knew no sin took upon Himself our sin that we, though guilty sinners, might hear God say, “Not guilty.”
DATE: August 3, 1997
Tags:
Guilt, subjective
Guilt, objective
Forgiveness
Confession
Repentance
[i] Willard Gaylin, U.S. News & World Report, “The Emotion of Guilt Has Been Given a Bum Rap,” April 30, 1984.
[ii] James Montgomery Boice, Psalms, Vol. 1, 279.
[iii] Boice, 280.
[iv]Stuart Briscoe, What Works When Life Doesn’t, 95.