Worship XIII, Day 12 I Will Confess: Digging Deeper
April 8, 2025
Discover the original intent of Scripture. Make good application to our everyday lives.
Become equipped to correctly handle the Word of Truth!
Psalm 32
whose transgression is forgiven,
whose sin is covered!
2 How joyful is a person whom
the LORD does not charge with iniquity
and in whose spirit is no deceit!
3 When I kept silent, my bones became brittle
from my groaning all day long.
4 For day and night your hand was heavy on me;
my strength was drained
as in the summer’s heat.
Selah
5 Then I acknowledged my sin to you
and did not conceal my iniquity.
I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the LORD,”
and you forgave the guilt of my sin.
Selah
6 Therefore let everyone who is faithful pray to you immediately.
When great floodwaters come, they will not reach him.
7 You are my hiding place;
you protect me from trouble.
You surround me with joyful shouts of deliverance.
Selah
8 I will instruct you and show you the way to go;
with my eye on you, I will give counsel.
9 Do not be like a horse or mule,
without understanding,
that must be controlled with bit and bridle
or else it will not come near you.
10 Many pains come to the wicked,
but the one who trusts in the LORD
will have faithful love surrounding him.
11 Be glad in the LORD and rejoice, you righteous ones;
shout for joy,
all you upright in heart.
The Original Intent
1) Why did David feel his bones became brittle from groaning and God’s hand was heavy upon him when he kept silent about his sin? (verses 3-4)
In Psalm 32:3-4, David acknowledged that when he kept silent about his sin, his “bones became brittle from groaning all day long. For day and night Your hand was heavy on me”. David understood his sin kept him from a right relationship with God. The Bible tells us this chasm is common to all people because sin separates us from the Father. (Isaiah 59:2)
David felt like he was physically and emotionally wasting away due to his sinfulness; sin was causing him to deteriorate from the inside out. (Isaiah 57:21) He felt convicted of his sin by the Holy Spirit, like God’s heavy hand was weighing on him. David echoed this again in Psalm 38:2, when he described how his iniquities made him feel like God’s hand was pressed down upon him.
The more David hid his sin from God, the stronger the conviction grew as God pursued Him in a love too great to see David ensnared in sin. Keeping his sin secret resulted in feelings of sickness welling up from within. Sin is toxic poison to our souls, bodies, and relationships!
Like David, we hold onto the shame and pain of sin instead of confessing our sin to our loving Father God. Rebekah Lyons questions, “What if we felt the freedom to confess our sins, our enslaving habits? I believe it would lead to the healing and freedom we so desperately want. Confession is the gateway to healing, the route to freedom.”
When we confess our sins to God, He is faithful and just to forgive our sins and wholly cleanse us. (1 John 1:9) When you sense God’s conviction, run to Him and unburden your heart. He is willing and longing to forgive you and bring you into right relationship with Him!
The Everyday Application
1) Why did David feel his bones became brittle from groaning and God’s hand was heavy upon him when he kept silent about his sin? (verses 3-4)
My first teaching job was in a private school about 30 minutes from my home. Several students lived in my area and occasionally their parents would arrange for them to catch a ride home from school with me. One afternoon, I gave a ride to a new student who, once excited to be at our Christian school, now seemed withdrawn. She posed a “hypothetical” question, “What would someone do if they didn’t want to smoke cigarettes, but all their new friends pressured them to smoke?”.
She then confided that she never had a problem telling her non-Christian friends she wouldn’t smoke, but she had caved to the pressure when her Christian friends at her new school told her she should try. She knew it was wrong, and the guilt was eating away at her.
My young friend was experiencing some of the conviction David described in Psalm 32:3-4, “When I kept silent, my bones became brittle from my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy on me”. My student learned what David discovered; confessing sin to God and accepting His forgiveness is freeing and healing.
Scott Hubbard suggests that God “disrupts your peace to remind you of your disrupted communion with Him — and to invite you back. He calls you to confess.” The same truth is found in James 5:16, “Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, so that you may be healed […].” I was proud of my student that day for answering God’s call to confess, and she reminded me that God wants me to confess my sin so I can come closer to Him.
The Original Intent
2) What does it meant by great floodwaters coming, but not reaching the psalmist? (verse 6)
David encourages his readers to confess their sins to God, “Therefore let everyone who is faithful pray to You immediately. When great floodwaters come, they will not reach him”. (Psalm 32:6) David suggests that confessing our sin to God immediately will save us from the great floodwaters, which could be anything that brings us anxiety.
Psalm 69 also makes several references to being in the floodwaters of trouble and calamity. The feelings of shame and guilt that overwhelm us when we do something wrong and don’t confess it can feel like great floodwaters, pulling us deeper. One sin leads easily to more without the exit pathway of confession and repentance. Some of us nearly drown in those remembrances of things we have done wrong, and we can’t move past our guilt and shame.
Amanda Bible Williams suggests “Lack of repentance breeds shame, and shame whispers lies. […] Shame tells me I can’t be forgiven. Shame tells me I’m not worth forgiving. But the Cross tells a different story; the true story.” When we are forgiven by God, those remembrances may come, but they no longer have the power to take us down like they did before God freed us from the chains of guilt and shame. (Romans 8:1-3)
Theologian Charles Spurgeon asserts, “He who is saved from sin has no need to fear anything else.” The floodwaters can threaten, but they can’t reach us because God has freed us from the power of sin and death. (Romans 6:22)
The Everyday Application
2) What does it meant by great floodwaters coming, but not reaching the psalmist? (verse 6)
While we were dating, I lived in the state of Missouri and my husband lived just across the border in the state of Kansas. Our towns were connected by a bridge over the Missouri River, and one summer the river flooded and cut off our immediate access to one another. We spoke on the phone, but we didn’t make the hours long trip around to see one another.
I had to smile one morning when I opened my newspaper and saw a picture of my future husband filling sandbags and stacking them in front of Main Street in his hometown. I then had to laugh when I noticed he was wearing his giant sports goggles in the picture… apparently his glasses had gotten lost or broken in the chaos! I was proud of him for working so hard to keep the floodwaters from reaching his town.
It makes me think of David’s words in Psalm 32:6 about confession of sin, “Therefore let everyone who is faithful pray to you immediately. When great floodwaters come, they will not reach him.” When we confess our sins to God and ask for His forgiveness, sin no longer has any hold on us. Jesus removes our sin far from us, as far as the east is from the west. (Psalm 103:12)
Just like those sandbags kept the floodwaters from reaching my husband’s home town, the power of God’s redemption (Ephesians 1:7) ensures the floodwaters will not reach God’s beloved. That doesn’t mean there will never be trouble (John 16:33), but it means that those who are washed in Jesus’ blood have secure hope in Him that is not impacted by circumstances. (Romans 8:28)
The Original Intent
3) How does God surround someone with joyful shouts of deliverance? (verse 7)
In Psalm 32:7, David tells God He is his “hiding place; you protect me from trouble. You surround me with joyful shouts of deliverance”. David rejoices in the forgiveness he receives upon confessing his sins; he is surrounding himself with the joyful shouts of his deliverance. Theologian C.H. Spurgeon notes, “The world is full of music to the man to whom God has said, ‘I forgive thee.’”
The Pulpit Commentary describes these joyful shouts as “such songs as men sing when they have been delivered from peril. God will make such songs to sound in the psalmist’s ears or in his heart.”
Resounding worship and divine rescue are evidenced in Acts 16:25-26 when God delivers a singing and rejoicing Paul and Silas from prison by a dramatic earthquake. Jehoshaphat and the children of Israel defeated their enemies while shouting and praising God in 2 Chronicles 20:22. Joshua and the people of Israel destroyed the walls of Jericho with trumpet blasts and victory shouts. (Joshua 6) In Zephaniah 3:17, we see that God Himself rejoices and sings over Jerusalem.
Scott Hubbard suggests that when we are “besieged with accusations, [God] surrounds us with shouts of deliverance. . . We have no guilt for which God has not a corresponding grace. For in Jesus Christ (the Messiah David hoped in but didn’t yet know by name), God has forever out-mercied our sin.”
This elaborate grace (Ephesians 2:8-9), experienced when God delivers us from sin and trouble, makes the rescued and redeemed want to shout his praise from the rooftops! (Psalm 107:2)
The Everyday Application
3) How does God surround someone with joyful shouts of deliverance? (verse 7)
With today’s technology, school snow days have turned into virtual learning days, with kids and teachers logging onto an online classroom link from the safety of home to continue learning on inclement weather days. Back in the days before Zoom meetings and even personal computers, however, snow days were a much-anticipated event. My sister and I would wake up and sit by the radio or TV, waiting for school closings to be announced.
We would half-heartedly begin our morning routine, hoping the news would proclaim our freedom from school for the day. When the good news finally came through, we would dance around the room, whooping and hollering joyfully before scrambling to bundle up in our snow gear and head outside for the morning.
The sounds we made on these mornings could count as “joyful shouts of deliverance” like the ones David described in Psalm 32:7! David celebrated deliverance from much more than a day of schoolwork; he rejoiced in being set free from the guilt and shame of sin. (Isaiah 44:22) As soon as he confessed his sin to God, he received freedom and couldn’t help but shout about the good news!
John Phillips asserts, “David saw himself completely circled with song! This was the man who, moments before, had been talking about his […] irrepressible anguish. Praise is a wonderful thing; it disarms the enemy! What can he do to a person who turns every experience of life into an opportunity for praise?”
David was surrounded by joyful shouts of deliverance, even though his physical circumstances had not changed substantially. He was delivered from the spiritual darkness of sin (Isaiah 9:2) and rejoiced in his freedom.
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