Most people will
be aware that the Americans talk about their prisons as ‘penitentiaries’. You
may also be vaguely familiar with the concept of ‘penance’. In religious
circles this normally means either a feeling of regret for misdeeds or some
religious payment for sin. In
Biblical terms the word ‘penitential’ means to ‘repent of sin and to seek
forgiveness’. We are going to discover in these psalms a number of lessons
about sin, the sinner and how God deals with sin.
Let
me summarise them:
1.
There
is nothing that can be done by an individual to atone for sin;
2.
God
is extremely angry about our sin;
3.
Sin
weakens and exhausts a person morally and physically;
4.
Sin
has a defiling and contaminating effect in the life of the believer;
5.
Sin
ruins our relationship with God;
6.
God
alone can forgive sin;
7.
God
is gracious and merciful as well as holy and just;
8.
There
are forces against the believer that would seek their downfall (i.e. our flesh,
the world and the Devil).
When reading
these psalms please bear in mind that the man who is writing already has a
relationship with God. This is not the story of an unbeliever but of a saint
who has fallen into sin. Therefore, these psalms are essential reading for
believers.
It is not the
will of God that we should sin and it grieves the Holy Spirit of God when we
do. Sadly, as long as we are on this earth we will be susceptible to sin.
In the New
Testament epistle of Romans (Ch 7) we learn that we cannot live in a way that is
pleasing to God in our own strength.
When we come to
John’s first epistle (Ch 2) we discover the provision that God has made for us
if we do sin.
These seven
psalms describe the experiences and feelings of a man who has disgraced himself
by sinning against the holy and awesome God of heaven. In addition to this they
chart the way that God deals with
us when we do sin. They also define
the attitude that God has to sin and in essence they outline for us
a process of recovery that God has made available to every soul who falls into
sin.
Those of us who
are believers can truly rejoice in a God who is full of mercy.
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