Psalms 32:3,4

When I kept silence, my bones waxed old.

Unconfessed sin

On several grounds we may set forth the urgency of the duty of making immediate and penitent confession of our sins unto God.

I. every sin is manifest unto God whether we confess it or not. His scrutiny penetrates every disguise, and analyzes every motive. Every sin is not only naked unto God’s eye, but it is clearer unto Him than any confession of ours could make it. He sees its growth. “He understandeth the thought afar off.” All the aggravations of every sin are clearer unto the eye of God than any confession of ours could state them. Those that are brought to a sense of their sins are often filled with amazement when they think of the forbearance of God towards them in their state of guilt. Should not they that are God’s children, and have been enlightened in their understanding, chasten themselves before God because of their transgressions that they may walk in the light of His countenance? If it be true that unacknowledged sin separates the soul from God, that the regarding of iniquity in the heart makes prayer useless, and sacrifices an abomination, that the look of lust and the motion of causeless anger against a brother provoke God’s anger, an immediate and humble confession of sin from the heart unto God is both necessary and safe. Unto them who keep silence God gives sorrow. He maketh their bones to rot.

II. no sin is diminished by deferring the confession of it. If murder or malice or falsehood or any transgression be a crime because it is a violation of God’s holy raw, the mere lapse of time does not alter the fact that the law was violated. If one day is with the word as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day, God’s view of sin will not be otherwise a thousand years hence than it is on the day that the sin is committed. God judges according to the principles from which an action springs, and His judgment cannot be nullified by lapse of time. Is sin represented as a burden on the conscience? The bearing of a burden is not alleviated by lapse of time, but rather becomes more oppressive. Some hearts seem callous, but even they get no actual relief from their burden of guilt by deferring confession of their sins unto God. They are treasuring up wrath unto themselves against the day of wrath. Is sin represented as pollution which makes us hateful unto God? Pollution does not liquify and evaporate, but extends and deepens. “Evil men and seducers wax worse and worse deceiving and being deceived.” The canker of corruption increases to more ungodliness. Is sin represented as a debt? Deferring to pay never diminishes the extent of the indebtedness. In the natural world those substances that cannot resist destroying agents become weaker and weaker. Wood rots; iron rusts; and stones crumble. Lapse of time never makes good that loss of substance, nor does it even arrest the loss.

III. sin unconfessed corrodes the heart. There is an inner unrest. One who suppresses confession unto God nevertheless roars all the day long. Whoso will not pour out his corruptions before God tortures his own soul, wears himself out, and makes himself old before his time. “My moisture is turned into the drought of summer.” The corroding effect of unconfessed sin arises from the necessity which is laid on the heart to reconcile itself to its condition. The sin must be explained in some way that will quiet the conscience. Not a few screen themselves behind those that act for them. Because an agent procures and pays a dividend, the investor thinks himself exonerated from all blame that may attach to the methods and means, by which a Limited Liability Company gets prosperity for its shareholders. David gave his command to Joab, and Joab doubtless acted through not a few subordinate officers, before Uriah could be set in “the forefront of the hottest battle,” and deserted at the critical moment, and it was really the sword of Ammon that shed the brave man’s blood; but God joined David immediately with Uriah’s death. It was David who was made to cry, “Deliver me from blood-guiltiness, O God.” “Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation.” Sometimes men extract a balm from the general course of God’s providence. ‘Twas a soothing sophism unto David, “The sword devoureth one as well as another.” By many such shifts do men remove themselves from the actual sin which has gratified or profited them. But their heart suffers. Tolerating sin, it soon becomes insensible to the heinousness of sin and foregoes its own brotherhood. In many other ways also unconfessed sin corrodes the heart. It betrays us to other forms of sin, even as one virtue leads to another. Craft uses deceit. Violence seeks justification or concealment in lies. Sensuality loosens every fibre of virtue, and paves the way to every relative vice. Were the sin confessed, the heart would be renewed. Unconfessed sin indisposes us for duty. “Sinful heart makes feeble hand.” Duty is enforced by conscience, but when the conscience itself lies in a comatose state, because of the diffused poison of an unconfessed sin, its authority is paralyzed. Through confession of sin, a sinner is purged from an evil conscience to serve the Living God. Unconfessed sin makes all our services unacceptable unto God. “If thou bring thy gift to the altar,” etc. If service be unacceptable when a brother hath ought against us, much more must it seem vile when God Himself hath something against us! Unconfessed sin exerts an exasperating influence on the heart. There is a state of mind in which a man regards all things as out of joint. It sets him at variance with himself and his surroundings, and fills him with idle longings for change of scene. God’s hand lies heavy on him day and night, and makes duty burdensome. The want of inward peace deprives him of that element which sweetens life’s sorrows and smooths its roughness. Instead of the well-spring of joy, with which a good conscience cheers the mind, there is gloom and unrest and a dread of ill. How can a man with an evil conscience put his trust in the living God, and if he trust not in the living God, how can he be happy, or feel secure? “The light that is in him is darkness.” (H. Drysdale.)

Why men are unwilling to confess their sin

1. Because the devil stupefies and benumbs the soul, that it has little or no feeling of its sin; and then it lies, as it were, concealed in the soul; which makes it either thoughtless about it, or careless to acknowledge it.

2. Because the custom of sin takes away the sense of it; for, the longer any poisonous liquor stands in a vessel, so much the harder will it be to get it cleansed, and the poisonous quality eradicated.

3. Sometimes the soul has so great a sense of his sins, and is so apprehensive of the number and deformity of them, that it becomes thereby either ashamed or afraid to confess them to the Lord.

4. Satan sometimes prevails so far upon the soul as to persuade it that it can hide its sins by an act of oblivion of its own making; that is, he makes men foolishly flatter themselves that God will never remember those sins which they forget; and that what they themselves bury in silence shall be concealed from His all-seeing eyes. But see what God says to such as these (Psalms 50:20). (J. Hayward, D. D.)

Confession and pardon

“Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven;” not, Blessed is that man who lives in a four-storey house; not, Blessed is that man who has a hundred thousand dollars to his credit in bank; not, Blessed is the man that owns the most railroad stock and government bonds. If you want to be happy, you must obtain the favour of God. And the way to obtain it is to seek God’s pardon. David declares that happy is the man who is pardoned, and “unto whom the Lord umputeth not iniquity.” My relations to God are determined by my loyalty to Him. In the sight of God you are a transparent man. He can see through you. I have a contempt for a man who has anything in him to hide. I believe in having no wrong side and no right side to a character. It should be all right. I like that. But poor old human nature is so made up that no man knows everything. Some will say in their hearts, “If our pastor knew these things about me, what would he say?” Oh, listen; God hath already found it out. Be what you are through and through. Some pieces of humanity are put up like some bales of cotton down South. They put The nice, white cotton outside, and in the centre they put the dog-tail cotton--the worst cotton there is. And some humanity is put up on the same principle exactly. Dealers have got a method of finding out what a bale of cotton is right through. And some of these days God will show you what you are through and through. David tells us that he sinned against God, and kept silence, and would not confess; and that by reason of his refusal to confess his sins, “day and night the hand of God was heavy upon him, and his moisture was turned into the drought of summer.” Oh, what striking figures he uses here! Listen to me now, you who have not had peace of mind for months. Days seem years when your mind is on yourself, because you are miserable. David told what his trouble was, what your trouble is; and he said because of it, “My moisture was turned into the drought of summer.” I have learned how a person feels by seeing how the fields are in a droughty season. Our garden is dried up, and every green thing droops, and the best land produces only about ten per cent of a crop. A drought of this kind may only last for weeks, but a drought in the human heart may be one that will last for ever. “My moisture is turned into the drought of summer.” Oh, to see the drought of summer upon the hearts and lives of professing Christians, and upon those out of the Church, and to see their spiritual nature droop, and wither, and die under a drought that is brought upon them by their own voluntary conduct and action! Where is there a man that won’t confess? We come to him to-night asking him to seek the Lord, and he says, “I don’t want to come up.” What he means is, “I don’t want to confess”; that is the trouble. When a fellow gets willing to confess he will go and do it before anything else. The Lord says, “He that confesseth shall find mercy.” “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Sin is a debt: “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” Now, as sin is a debt, the best thing to do in the world is--don’t sin at all. That is best, and thank God it is possible. “Yes,” you say, “but I can’t help sinning.” You can help it just as well as you can keep from getting into debt? Am I obliged to get into debt to-day or to-morrow? Which sin am I obliged to commit to-day or to-morrow? “You are not like me,” you hear people say; “I cannot live without sin.” Whenever you hear a person say that, you may know he is falling into sin more deeply, and that he has made provision for it. Well, I say, the best thing in the world is, don’t do wrong. But if you do happen to slip and do wrong the best thing is to fall down and repent. Don’t let it get cold before you have repented of it. A man ought to be able to repent and to pray anywhere that he can afford to sin. Sin is a debt you have to meet at the mercy-seat of God with an honest, open confession, or you will have to meet it in the judgment with eternal bankruptcy of your soul. Now, which will you do? If you have sinned, the best time for you to repent is now. You cannot afford to put it off any longer. (S. P. Jones.)

Repentance the way to happiness

I. the silence which he kept. Its criminality is clear from the circumstances by which it has been occasioned, and from the perseverance with which it has been maintained against the mercy and the power of God. Your silence has been occasioned by--

1. Thoughtlessness and indifference.

2. Pride and enmity of heart against God.

3. Procrastination; notwithstanding the variety of His appeals.

II. the misery which he endured. What misery is occasioned by sin when--

1. It has to contend with keen and deep convictions.

2. It is accompanied by the dread of discovery.

3. The hatred to God which it produces in the heart is connected with a dread of His almighty power.

4. All these internal feelings are accompanied with eternal adversity and tribulation.

5. The sinner looks forward to the future and anticipates that eternity to which every moment brings him nearer.

III. the confession which he made.

1. It was minute and unreserved.

2. He confessed that his sin was ever present to his mind.

3. He confessed that his sin admitted of no apology or extenuation.

4. He confessed that his sins exposed him to the Divine rejection.

5. He confessed that his sin was a source of deep distress to his mind.

6. His confession was accompanied with prayer.

IV. the pardon which he received.

1. The source whence it was derived.

2. The promptness with which it was bestowed.

3. The gratuitousness with which it was granted.

4. The encouragement which it is calculated to afford to those who, like himself, have broken their impenitent silence, and begun to confess their transgressions to the Lord (Psalms 32:6).

5. The blessedness of which it was productive.

(1) Pardon blessed his condition, saving from depravity as well as from condemnation.

(2) Pardon blessed his feelings, making him happy as well as safe and holy. Happy in his affections. Happy in the privilege of communion with God. Happy in the performance of holy duties. Happy in anticipation of the future. (J. Alexander.)

Terrible convictions and gentle drawings

David here describes a very common experience amongst convinced sinners. He was subjected to extreme terrors and pangs of conscience. The terrors he experienced were indescribable, filling his soul with horror and dismay. We would speak--

I. To the subjects of God’s rebuke and the terrors of God’s law. What are the causes of your terror? I shall borrow my divisions from quaint old Thomas Fuller, and, as I cannot say better things than he said, I shall borrow much.

1. Those wounds must be deep which are given by so strong a hand as that of God. Remember it is God that is dealing with you, the almighty God. Do you wonder, then, that when He smites, His blows fell you to the ground. Be not astonished at your terrors.

2. Then think of the place where God has wounded you. Not in hand, head, or foot, but in your heart, your inmost soul.

3. Satan is busy with you. “Now,” saith he, “God is driving him to madness, I will drive him to despair.”

4. The terrible nature of the weapon with which God has wounded you. The sword of the Spirit, so that it cannot be a little wound.

5. The foolishness of the patient. Some are much more quickly healed than others; serenity of mind and quietude of spirit help much, but fretfulness and anxiety hinder. It is even so with you: you are a foolish patient; you will not do that which would cure you, but you do that which aggravates your woe: you know that if you would cast yourselves upon Jesus you would have peace of conscience at once; but instead of that you are meddling with doctrines too high for you, trying to pry into mysteries which the angels have not known, and so you turn your dizzy brain, and thus help to make your heart yet more singularly sad. You seek to file your fetters, and you rivet them; you seek to unbind them yourself, and you thrust them the deeper into your flesh.

6. Yours is a disease in which nothing can ever help you but that one remedy. All the joys of nature will never give you relief. When Adam had sinned he became suddenly plunged in misery; he had unparadised paradise. And so it will be with you. If you could be put in paradise you would not be happier. There is only one cure for you.

7. Now why does God let you suffer so? He does not deal so with all His people. Why, then, with you? We cannot tell all the reasons, but it may be because you were such a stony-hearted sinner. You were so desperately set on mischief, so stolid, so indifferent, that, if saved, God must save you in such a way, or else not at all.

8. And there is that in your heart which would take you back to your old sins, and so He is making them bitter to you. He is burning you that you may be like the burnt child which dreads the fire.

9. And He would make you the more happy afterwards. The black days of dreary winter make the summer days all the fairer and the sweeter.

10. And, maybe, God means to make great use of you. The Lord gets his best soldiers out of the highlands of affliction. These are His highlanders that carry everything before them. They know the rivers of sin, the glens of grief, and, now their sins are washed away, they know the heights of self-consecration, and of pure devotion. They can do all things through and for the Christ who has forgiven them.

II. To those who have never felt these terrors but strangely wish they had, It is not true that all who are saved suffer these terrors. The most, and they amongst the best, do not. And God has brought you in quieter ways to Himself--then be grateful to Him. You might not have been able to bear other means. And perhaps if you had much experience you would have grown self-righteous. There is a brother who has never known, to the extent some of us have to know, the plague of his own heart, lie has never gone through fire and through water, but, on the contrary, is a loving-hearted spirit: a man who spends and is spent in his Master’s service; he knows more of the heights of communion than some of us. Do not, then, desire to be troubled, but trust to Christ. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

The exercises of a soul seeking pardon

These verses give us the experience of a soul convinced of sin, and aware of the value and blessedness of pardon, without as yet possessing the power to assume that pardon as its own.

I. the individual is first exhibited to us in silent meditation or self-examination.

1. This is a most necessary but painful duty (Psalms 4:4; 2 Corinthians 13:5; Psalms 77:6).

2. It has for its subject the nature and amount of sin. The rule by which that sin is measured is readily supplied by the Holy Spirit, from all the works and dispensations of God.

II. This self-examination was supposed to be carried on in silence; but the sentence closes with a seeming contradiction, saying that his bones waxed old with his continual roaring. The work of self-examination may go on in silence and in secrecy; men without hear nothing of the sorrow, see nothing of the distress and agony within--“The heart knoweth his own bitterness, and a stranger doth not intermeddle with his joy.” But God looks upon the sorrow within; God beholds the workings of this troubled conscience, its throes of grief, and hears its moans.

III. conscious impotence arrived at last. “My bones waxed old,” etc. Here it is not requisite to bring in the machinery of outward trial and experiment to convince the believer of his weakness; let him alone; let him lie there, while varied forms of evil pass over the thoroughfare of his memory or imagination, and while he detects the tendency of his affections to these forms, and battles hard, too, to turn it to good, and fails, the experiment is repeated, till he sinks under the shameful conviction, the sickening one, that he can do no good thing; hold his heart right, no, not one moment, with God; think no one good thought alone. And then he is in utter weakness cast on Divine compassion. And then impotent for ever? No, not for ever; impotent in self, but mighty through Christ (2 Corinthians 12:9).

IV. the stubbornness of the nature dealt with. “Day and night Thy hand was heavy upon me.” Converted men, without a failure, may be passed or hurried on from trial to trial externally, in order to bring out and mature that faith which eventuates in holiness. Thus with Joseph; what a series, what a sea of calamities had he to wade through, after the treachery of his brethren; what repeated trials and temptations had he to encounter, without an instant’s breathing time, till he is placed in full peace upon the government of Egypt. This was heavy work upon the soul. Not temptation, merely, but distresses likewise; these, under a Divine Providence, sift and humble the soul, fix and form the faith, ere they flee before the sunshine of spiritual prosperity.

V. the soul now in its distress mourns over departed prosperity. “Moisture”--the word is figurative, but most significant. He was as a tree planted by the rivers of water, his fruit rich and ripe, his leaf fresh and verdant; all are now withered, and blasted, and scorched; what misery!

VI. can all this escape the cognizance of the fallen believer? No; he must hear it, and see it, and heed it, and repent. Aye, repent, not perish. God is still gracious, and though this subsequent repentance may be doubly bitter, yet through it he shall pass once more to peace. (C. M. Fleury, M. A.)

The danger of unconfessed sin

Grief kept within grows more and more intense. A festering wound is dangerous. Let thy soul flow forth in words as to thy common griefs, it is well for thee. And as to such as are spiritual the same rule applies. What a mercy that we have the Book of Psalms and the life of such a man as David. Biographies of most people are like the portraits of a past generation, when the art of flattery in oils was at its height. There is no greater cheat than a modern biography. We have no biographers now-a-days. David’s psalms are his best memorial. There you have not the man’s exterior, but his inward soul. You see the man’s heart. There is no man who has known the Lord in any age since David but has seen himself in David’s psalms as in a looking-glass, and has said to himself, “This man knows all about me.” David is one who “seems to be, not one, but all mankind’s epitome.” Be thankful that David was permitted to try the experiment of silence after his great sin, for he will now tell us what came of it--“When I kept silence,” etc.

I. let us think of the child of God thus acting. Children of God sin, for they are still in the body. But when he sins the proper thing for him to do is at once to go and confess it to God. Sin will not come to any great head in any man’s heart who does this continually. But sometimes they will not do this, especially when they have done very wrong. When confession is most needed it is often least forthcoming. It was so in David’s ease. How fully had he fallen! It is no good to try and excuse David’s sin he himself would protest against our attempting it. But why did he not confess it?

1. The sin prevented the confession--blinded the eye, stultified the conscience, and stupefied his entire spiritual nature. What wretched prayers and praises were those he offered while the foul sin was hidden in his bosom. Why was he silent when he knew he was wrong? Why did he not go to God at once? He was stupefied by his sin, fascinated, captivated, held in bondage by it. Beware of the basilisk eye of sin. It is dangerous even to look at, for looking leads to longing. No man ever thinks of sin without damage. I saw a magnificent photograph in Rome, one of the finest I had ever seen, and right across the middle there was the spectre mark of a cart and ten oxen, repeated many times. The artist had tried to get it out, but the trace remained. While his plate was exposed to take the view, the cart and the oxen had gone across the scene, and they were indelible. Upon our soul every sinful thought leaves a mark and a stain that calls for us to weep it out--nay, needs Christ’s blood to wash it out. We begin with thinking of sin, and then we somewhat desire the sin: next we enter into communion with the sin, and then we get into the sin, and the sin gets into us, and we lie asoak in it. So David did. He did not feel it at first, but then he was plunged into the evil deeps. A man with a pail of water on his head feels it to be heavy, but if he dives he does not feel the weight of water above him because he is actually in it and surrounded by it. So when a man plunges into sin he does not feel its weight. When he is out of the dreadful element, then he is burdened by it. Thus at first David did not feel his sin.

2. Next, there was much pride in his heart. A child who has done wrong, and knows it, often will not own it. You cannot bring him to say, “I have done wrong.”

3. Others have been silent because of fear. They could not believe that God would forgive them. They thought He would overwhelm them with His wrath. Do not think thus. Do not think that the Lord’s mercy is clean gone for ever. Did He not love thee when thou weft dead in trespasses and sins, and will He not love us more if we turn to Him again? But now let us use this subject in reference--

II. To the awakened sinner. There are such. But they are slow to make confession. They feel the burden, and will feel it more, but as yet they keep it to themselves. Remember John Bunyan’s picture of the man in the iron cage. There is not in his whole book an incident more terrible. And many full from despair into utter hardness of heart. They say “there is no hope,” and they may as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb. Oh, when God makes your heart soft as wax, mind who puts the seal upon it. If the Spirit of God do not, there is another that will put the seal of despair, and perhaps of atheism and of defiant sin upon it, and then woe is that day that you were born. Refusal to confess is a perilous thing for the soul. If a man is awakened to a sense of sin, if he tarries long in that condition Satan is sure to entangle him. He cares little for careless sinners. He has them safe enough: and hypocrites, he knows, are going his way certainly; but the moment that souls are aroused he is in fear lest he lose them, so he plies all his craft to keep them. So that now is the time for the soul to close in with Christ. There is no comfort else to a bruised heart. If you are willing to confess everything He will help you, and there is good reason for doing it at once. For there is a mine of sin in every little sin. Like a spider’s nest. Open it, and you will find thousands. So in every sin there is a host of sins. Go before God as the citizens of Calais came before the English king, with ropes about their necks. Then make your appeal, and assuredly God will forgive. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

Silent grief injurious

A dry sorrow is a terrible one, but clear sunshine often follows the rain of tears. Tears are hopeful things; they are the dewdrops of the morning foretelling the coming day There is something in telling your sorrow and letting it out, otherwise it is like a mountain turn which has no outlet, into which the rains descend and the torrents rush, and at last the banks are broken and a flood is caused. A festering wound is dangerous. Many have lost their reason because they had good reason to tell their sorrows, but had not reason enough to do so. (C. H. Spurgeon.)