Test everything: this week we test the voices that say sin doesn’t matter, and those that say we’re beyond God’s love, and follow God’s voice from hiding to forgiveness. “God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything” (1 John 3:20).
While I Kept Silent
David hid what he had done, until he told God.
Psalm 32 starts with the happy ending: "Happy are those whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered" (v. 1). Then David tells us how he got there, and it wasn't easy.
"While I kept silent, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long" (v. 3). David knew he had done wrong, and he tried to carry on as if he hadn't. It dried him up "as by the heat of summer" (v. 4). The voice inside him was telling the truth. Some of ours do too, about what we've done or the self-interest underneath it. And most of us know the other voice, the one that says it doesn't matter, everyone does it.
"Then I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not hide my iniquity; I said, 'I will confess my transgressions to the LORD,' and you forgave the guilt of my sin" (v. 5). That's the path, in one verse. While David hid his sin, it wore him down. When he stopped hiding it, God covered it. The one he had been hiding from became "a hiding place for me" (v. 7). God's voice doesn't crush us when it shows us our sin. It calls us out of hiding and back to life.
- Is there something I've been keeping quiet about with God: something I did, or the reason I did it?
- Where have I been telling myself it doesn't matter?
He Knows How We Were Made
God knows us completely, and his love doesn't run out.
Many of us carry a nagging fear that God is running out of patience with us, and that one more failure will be the last straw. Psalm 103 says otherwise: "The LORD is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love" (v. 8).
That doesn't mean God shrugs off our sin, or forgets it. Sin matters to God because it is destructive to all, so he deals with it. God forgives it and takes it away: "as far as the east is from the west, so far he removes our transgressions from us" (v. 12). You only remove something that is really there.
"For he knows how we were made; he remembers that we are dust" (v. 14). God knows everything about us, the worst included, and still he has compassion on us, "as a father has compassion for his children" (v. 13). We are worse than we think, and loved more than we can imagine. So the voice that says you are useless, hopeless, beyond God's love is not God's voice. He knows you better than that voice does, and he hasn't let go.
- Where am I making my sin smaller than it is, and where am I making God's love smaller than it is?
- Read verse 14 slowly. What difference does it make that God already knows exactly how I am made?
It Is Written
Jesus, hungry in the wilderness, answers every voice with God's word.
"Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tested by the devil" (v. 1). After forty days without food "he was famished" (v. 2). That's when the voice comes, as voices often do when we're tired and alone.
Listen to how it talks. "If you are the Son of God" (v. 3). It picks at who Jesus is. Then it flatters, and offers him the world: "All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me" (v. 9). It even quotes the Bible (v. 6). The voices we hear can work the same way. One says, "If God really loved you…" Another says, "You deserve this. Nobody will know." Sounding spiritual doesn't make a voice true.
Jesus doesn't argue. Each time he answers, "It is written" (vv. 4, 7, 10), and holds on to what God has already said. John tells us to "test the spirits to see whether they are from God" (1 John 4:1). He has teachers in mind, but the test carries over. Does this voice sound like Jesus, who was tested and stayed faithful? If not, you don't have to believe it.
- Which voice in me picks at what God has said about me, and which one flatters me?
- What has God already said that answers it?
Godly Grief
Two kinds of sorrow over what we have done, and where each one leads.
Paul had sent the church in Corinth a hard letter. It hurt them, and for a while he regretted sending it (v. 8). Then he heard how they had taken it: "now I rejoice, not because you were grieved but because your grief led to repentance" (v. 9).
"For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation and brings no regret, but worldly grief produces death" (v. 10). Godly grief says, "That was wrong. Come back and put it right." It names what we did, and it leads somewhere: to God, to forgiveness, to a fresh start. Worldly grief says, "You are hopeless." It goes round and round, and pulls us away from God and from other people. One leads to life, the other to death.
The Corinthians had done real wrong, and Paul didn't tell them it didn't matter. He didn't leave them in shame either. Look at what godly grief did for them: "what earnestness this godly grief has produced in you, what eagerness to clear yourselves, … what zeal" (v. 11). When the voice inside is right about our sin, the answer is to repent: own it, tell God, put it right where we can, and get up again, forgiven.
- Think of something I feel bad about. Is the voice naming something I did, or telling me I'm worthless?
- Is there something I need to repent of, and put right with someone, this week?
Who Is to Condemn?
Paul asks who could ever condemn us, and points to Christ.
Paul ends this chapter with a string of questions, like a lawyer who knows the case is already won. "If God is for us, who is against us?" (v. 31). "Who will bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? It is Christ who died, or rather, who was raised, who is also at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us" (vv. 33–34).
The only one with the right to condemn us is the one praying for us. Our conscience still speaks, and sometimes it's right. When it is, we confess and we're forgiven. But the voice that says we are beyond God's love has no say here. God has given his verdict, and it outranks every accuser.
"No, in all these things we are more than victorious through him who loved us" (v. 37). Nothing on Paul's long list "will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord" (v. 39). That's true on good days and bad ones, whether we feel it or not.
- What does the voice I've been testing say most often? Does it accuse me, excuse me, or run someone else down?
- If it accuses me, which line in today's reading answers it? If it excuses me or holds a grudge, what do I need to confess?
To One Another
Praying, singing, and telling someone we trust.
James wants what's going on inside us said out loud. "Are any among you suffering? They should pray. Are any cheerful? They should sing songs of praise" (v. 13). If someone is sick, they call for the elders of the church to come and pray over them (v. 14). This is a church that turns up for each other.
"Therefore confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, so that you may be healed" (v. 16). "One another" goes both ways. James means ordinary believers telling each other the truth, and praying for each other.
The negative commentary of our Inner Critic can sometimes feel overwhealming but when shared with someone safe, they often lose their grip. The other person can't fix it, but they can pray, and they can remind us of what is true when we can't hear it for ourselves.
- Is there something that has more power over me because I've never named it or challenged it?
- Is there someone I trust who might help me do that?
A Lamp to My Feet
Loving God's word, the voice we can trust.
"Oh, how I love your law! It is my meditation all day long" (v. 97). All week we've listened to what runs through our heads all day long: the critic, the excuses, the old resentment, the fear that God has given up on us. This psalm pictures God's word running through the day instead, turned over so often that it becomes part of us.
"How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!" (v. 103). The better we know the true voice, the easier it is to notice a false one. "Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path" (v. 105). A lamp gives enough light for the next step.
Psalm 19 is the text for this morning's combined Mosaic service. This week we've walked a path: out of hiding, through honest grief, to forgiveness and to each other. Two other voices tried to pull us off it: one said sin doesn't matter, and the other said it matters so much that God could never love or forgive us. Neither is God's. His voice calls us forward, into life.
- What runs through my mind "all day long"? What would I like to be running through it?
- Looking back over this week, which voice did I name, and what answered it?