The Bible Recap - Day 134 (Psalm 32, 51, 86, 122) - Year 7

Episode Date: May 14, 2025

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Hey Bible readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble and I'm your host for The Bible Recap. All our psalms today were written by David. As he pours his heart out in song, we see his repentance before God. We see him praising God's forgiveness and mercy. And we come full circle at the end with the praise song focused on God's relationship with all the people David rules over, which is especially fitting since David's recent sin had national consequences.

Psalm 32 is a psalm of thanksgiving to God for the unique way he works in the hearts of his kids to bless us even when we sin. He doesn't bless our sin, but he still bless us even when we sin. He doesn't bless our sin, but he still blesses us when we sin. And two of the ways he does that is by covering our sins and convicting us of our sins. Those are both blessings.

There are two ways sin can be covered. When I cover my sins, I hide them. But when God covers my sins, he atones for them. He pays for them. It's kind of like when you forget your wallet and the bill comes and your friend says, I'll cover you. Except God's covering is for a lot more than just a steak dinner. It's for all your sin and rebellion—past, present, and future. At the start of this chapter, David was the one doing the covering. But at the end of the chapter, David uncovers his sin and God covers it.

This is what God the Son did for us on the cross. God the Spirit plays a different role. He lives in believers, and one of his jobs is to point out the places our sin has trapped us and guide us out. John 16, 8 calls this conviction. And it's important to note that this is different from condemnation. According to Romans 8, 1, God's kids will never be condemned because our sins have been covered by Jesus.

Conviction, on the other hand, is when God the Spirit prompts us to grieve our sins, and He changes our hearts and our actions to align with God's will. When the Spirit's conviction comes, there's no rest or true happiness for the person who doesn't respond with repentance. That's what David's pointing to in verses 3 through 5. He's been experiencing the heavy weight of the Spirit's conviction all day long, and it's exhausting. Then he finally goes to God and confesses. David says it like this,

When I kept silent my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me. My strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity. I said, I will confess my transgressions to the Lord, and you forgave the iniquity of my sin." In these three verses, David uses almost every possible word to describe his evil actions. Sin, iniquity, transgression, he really owns it.

We see that he's repentant here. This is what it looks like to go to God when we sin instead of hiding from him. And this act is so freeing for David that he encourages everyone who is godly to confess their sins to God. In Psalm 51, we see David demonstrating this in a deeply personal way. This is the psalm of confession and repentance, he wrote, after sinning against Bathsheba and murdering her husband. In verse 4, he says he has only sinned against God. But don't let this confuse you.

He knows he's sinned against Bathsheba and Uriah and the whole nation of Israel as well. But his focus in this particular psalm is on restoring the broken intimacy between him and God, first and foremost. Nothing else can get set right until that is set right. David acknowledges that he's been a sinner from birth, even from the womb, because of the fact that he's born into the fall.

From the moment of his existence, sin dwelled in him. This isn't him passing the blame. It's more like he's saying, this isn't the only time I've screwed up. My whole life is full of things like this. It seems to be an attempt to confess even more than just this moment's sin. Maybe you've felt like this before,

like, why can't I ever get this right? I'm always doing these things I don't want to do and not doing the things I do want to do. If so, you're in good company. Both David and the apostle Paul felt that way. In verse 10, David asked God to create a new heart in him, to change him. The word used here for create is the Hebrew word, verah,

which means to form out of nothing. When God gives us new hearts of flesh, it's not the same material as the heart of stone we were born with. We get new spiritual DNA. In verse 11, David asked God not to remove his spirit from him. And as we've talked about, this was a legitimate prayer back in David's time when God the Spirit moved around a lot. But present day, now that God dwells in people, the expiration date on this prayer has passed. So if you're a child of God, you never have to pray this prayer. It's something He cannot do because it violates His will and His promise. Therefore, it's impossible.

But this verse is still helpful as a good reminder not to take God's presence and his grace for granted. In Psalm 86, David laments and seeks God's help. He praises God's forgiveness and asks God to teach him truth and change his heart so that he'll walk in nearness and obedience to God. David knows he has a divided heart and he's asking God to fix it,

to deal with his duplicity, and unite his heart. We close with Psalm 122, which is the chapter I read aloud on our trips to Israel, when we first enter Jerusalem and stand on the Mount of Olives looking over the city.

It's one of the Psalms of Ascent that the Israelites would sing when they made their pilgrimages to Jerusalem. This city is the place that brings God and His people together in one location. David prays for its peace and security, and he promises, unlike the actions we've just seen him commit, that he will seek its good. Today my God shot was in our first chapter. Psalm 32, 8-9 says, I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go. I will counsel you with my eye upon you. Be not like a horse or a mule

without understanding which must be curbed with bit and bridle or it will not stay near you. I never get tired of hearing that God wants me near Him. So when He asks some advice for me on how to do that, I'll take it. First of all, He offers guidance to His kids. He doesn't leave us to figure it out on our own. He instructs us. He teaches us. He counsels us.

He watches us. And second of all, He tells me not to be foolish and stubborn in response to Him, to pay attention, to yield to His leading, like the conviction of His Spirit that we talked about earlier. The more I loosen my grip when I'm trying to control things, the more I'll easily feel and follow His promptings, which always serve to keep me near Him. Hallelujah! That's where I want to be!

He's where the joy is. We know you all have a lot going on over the summer, and we want to help you stay on track even when your schedule is off. So we've put together a list of our best digital organizational tools and tips to declutter your inbox. And secretly, we're also hoping that these tips will keep you from breaking the habit of reading and recapping. When you're more organized, you can stay on schedule. And look, you have made it this far. Do not fall off the wagon now!

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