Audio Transcript

Welcome back to the podcast. If you’re reading the Navigators Bible Reading Plan with us in 2024, we read Psalm 22 together two weeks ago and then talked about the challenges it poses to understanding the cross of Christ. That was in APJ 2015.

Today we’re back in the Psalms, reading Psalm 31 together and then Psalm 32 tomorrow. Both psalms — Psalm 31 and 32 — carry the same internal dynamic that Sarah, a listener to the podcast, points out and is trying to figure out. Here’s what she wrote: “Pastor John, hello to you, and thank you and Tony both for this podcast.” You’re most welcome, Sarah! “As I read through the Psalms, I get an amazing picture of the emotional life of faith. I am thankful for such a vivid picture of what it means to be a believer and the spectrum of emotions that we feel, and how the psalmist shows us how to process these emotions.

“But then I come to places in the Psalms that are more jarring and foreign to me, namely, about the physical pain and physical release of sin and forgiveness. Obviously we must be careful not to equate all physical suffering with the direct guilt for one specific sin. But perhaps we need to be careful not to write off specific sins in our physical pains. This comes up specifically in Psalm 31:9–10 and Psalm 32:1–5.

“Can you explain these texts and talk about the physical consequences of our guilt, and the physical health and release that can come with forgiveness? I never hear solid Bible teachers, preachers, or theologians — or even Christian health gurus — connect hidden sin, the torment of guilt, and the release of forgiveness to our physical well-being. To what extent can we make this connection? And how have you seen this spiritual-physical link in your own ministry?”

I don’t have any doubt that Sarah is right, that we should take the Psalms seriously when they picture physical ailments as sometimes owing to unconfessed sin. Now, one of the reasons I say sometimes is because in John 9 Jesus’s disciples saw a blind man and asked, “‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’ Jesus answered, ‘It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him’” (John 9:2–3).

“We should take the Psalms seriously when they picture physical ailments as sometimes owing to unconfessed sin.”

So, I infer from that passage that we must be really careful not to assume that any given sickness or disability is owing to a particular sin — Sarah said that, and I just wanted to underline it — even though we know that all sickness and all disability is owing to the existence of sin in general. God subjected the world to futility, the whole world, all of our bodies and all the world (Romans 8:20). We all live in a fallen and disordered world. And all of us — no exceptions, all of us — suffer and die because of that fallen, disordered, condemned world, even when we have not done a specific sin to bring down on us a specific sickness.

Here’s something she didn’t mention that I think we need to put in as a careful qualification. Nor does the fact that Christ bore all our sins, absorbed all the wrath of God against us, and purchased our perfect, eternal healing forever — no disease, no tears, no crying, no pain — nor does any of that mean that God does not send sickness and hardship into our lives to discipline us as his children and to sanctify us. That’s not wrath. Jesus bore wrath — condemnation, judgment. That’s behind us. We don’t have that anymore. This is a fatherly discipline, a physician-like therapy. Remember Paul’s thorn in the flesh given to keep him from being conceited (2 Corinthians 12:7). And remember the painful discipline of Hebrews 12:3–11.

Now, with all of that in mind, nevertheless, we should not hesitate with Sarah to find true Christian experience in the Psalms that tell us physical miseries are sometimes owing to unconfessed sin. I see this in the Psalms, and I’ve seen it with my own eyes, in my own experience. I’ll mention that at the end, but let me stay with the word for a minute.

Disciplined for Sin

Psalm 31:9–10 — which you referred to, Tony — says,

Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am in distress;     my eye is wasted from grief;     my soul and my body also.For my life is spent with sorrow,     and my years with sighing;my strength fails because of my iniquity,     and my bones waste away.

So, he traces his failing strength and his wasting bones back to his iniquity. Now, here’s a little catch in making the point that I want to make. He might be thinking of the totality of his life’s hardships and the general fallenness of his nature, because he says, “My years [are spent] with sighing,” not just a week, not just a day or a month. I’m going to be careful and not base my case on this particular example, though it might be so. It might be that he’s referring to a specific, limited sickness owing to specific sin. And there are clues to that in the context because of the parallel between bones wasting away, which turns up again over in Psalm 32. So, I just want to be careful.

There’s no doubt in my mind that we are dealing with a specific, unconfessed sin and its physical consequences in Psalm 32. So, looking back over his change of heart and his forgiveness, here’s what he says: “Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed” — he’s just super happy at what has happened in his life — “is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit” (Psalm 32:1–2).

And now comes, in the psalm, his memory of that season when he had not confessed his sin. So, he goes on: “For 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” (Psalm 32:3–4).

And then he recalls his confession, his forgiveness, and his healing. He says, “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” (Psalm 32:5).

Clinging to Mercy

We see a similar situation in Psalm 107. Sarah didn’t refer to this one, but it has been as useful to me in pastoral counseling as any other text in this regard — of people who feel like they’ve sinned themselves out of God’s possible blessing. So, Psalm 107:17–21 says,

Some were fools through their sinful ways,     and because of their iniquities suffered affliction;they loathed any kind of food,     and they drew near to the gates of death.Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble,     and he delivered them from their distress.He sent out his word and healed them,     and delivered them from their destruction.Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love,     for his wondrous works to the children of man!

Here’s one more text that I call “gutsy guilt” — or it’s the text that I have based this term “gutsy guilt” on. A truly godly person has sinned. They are sitting under the disciplinary darkness and misery that God has sent. But this godly person will not let go of the mercy of God — or we would say, today, on this side of the cross, he will not let go of the blood-bought justification that we have in Christ. And I’m thinking of Micah 7:8–9:

Rejoice not over me, O my enemy; when I fall, I shall rise; when I sit in darkness [that’s where he is right now], the Lord will be a light to me. I will bear the indignation of the Lord because I have sinned against him, until he pleads my cause and executes judgment for me [not against me, but for me]. He will bring me out to the light; I shall look upon his vindication.

“Let none of us continue in sin, hiding it from others and refusing to confess it to God and forsake it.”

So, in view of those texts, very practically, I would say let none of us continue in sin, hiding it from others and refusing to confess it to God and forsake it. If we are truly the children of God, and we do that — that is, we fail to confess our sins — we should expect that such a season of falsehood and hypocrisy will bring down God’s disciplinary rod upon us. If he loves us, we should expect that discipline.

Gift of Misery

Now, I had a very good friend whom I caught in grievous sin. I was the one who saw it. And when I urged him — I mean, this was a serious marriage-destroying, ministry-destroying, life-destroying sin — to confess to those he sinned against, he denied it was true. He did this for about six weeks, and I watched his deceit and growing misery and physical deterioration.

And then, one night, he called me quite late and said, “We have to meet.” I called a few others, and we met. And we sat there, and as we sat there, he quoted Psalm 32:3–4: “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.”

So, the misery — his misery of those six weeks — was a gift. The misery and the physical pain was a gift. It saved his marriage. So, as Hebrews 12:11 says, “For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.”

Audio Transcript

Today’s episode is a meditation on Christmas. Christmas is Sunday. And in 1980, Pastor John was preaching a Christmas sermon on Luke 1:67–79, focused specifically on the idea that in Christ God “has raised up a horn of salvation for us” (Luke 1:69). That may seem to be an odd and remote way of saying it. We don’t tend to think of Christmas as the celebration of a horn cut off a bull. But it is. And it makes for exactly the Christmas that we needed. Here’s Pastor John to explain. And as a little footnote here as we begin, he has just invited his small church over to his house for an open house. Here’s Pastor John.

If someone had given me, last Christmas, a super-duper mouse trap, I would not have been very impressed at all. I never saw a mouse in six years at our old house. If somebody gave me a guaranteed-to-catch-them, super-duper mouse trap this Christmas, I would be very glad, because we have many mice, and I can’t catch them. Come to the open house anyway. I tried three different kinds.

If you offered me — late some night, after the evening service — a quick ride to the emergency room at the Metropolitan Medical Center, I’d kind of look at you funny. I’d think you were strange — unless I saw the big gash in my arm or felt a severe pain in my abdomen. If the police screeched up beside me on my way home one night there on 15th Street and said, “Get in the back,” I’d think they were putting me on — unless I saw, up around the corner, the armed gang waiting, hiding.

Deadly Disease, Great Enemy

That’s the way it is in all of life. We will not appreciate a gift that we don’t think meets any needs or fulfills any desires. We do not value or long for any help unless we know we’re sick or in great danger of some enemy. Vast numbers of people think that Jesus Christ and the story of Christmas is a Mickey Mouse trap and of no use whatsoever to them, a crazy trip to the emergency room, a bothersome pickup by the ornery police, because they don’t believe they’re sick to death with the disease of unforgiven sin. And they don’t think they have a massive enemy in Satan, who is against all God’s people. They just don’t believe it. And so, the horn of salvation is a toy to be played with at best.

“The horn of salvation for me is my only hope of recovery from this disease of my soul called sin.”

But not for me. The horn of salvation for me is my only hope of recovery from this disease of my soul called sin. And he’s the only hope of victory over my greatest enemy, Satan. And there is a real disease. There is a real disease. “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (1 John 1:8). And “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23).

And there is a real enemy, isn’t there? “Your adversary the devil,” Peter says, “prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith” (1 Peter 5:8–9). He is “the god of this world,” Paul says, that “has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing . . . the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:4, 6).

So, there is a deadly disease, and there is a dangerous enemy. And every one of us will die of that disease, and we will be destroyed and devoured by that enemy, if we do not have a horn of salvation.

Horn of Hope

Blessed be the Lord God of Israel,     for he has visited and redeemed his peopleand has raised up a horn of salvation for us     in the house of his servant David,as he spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets from of old,that we should be saved from our enemies     and from the hand of all who hate us [including the greatest enemy of all]. . . .And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High;     for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways,to give knowledge of salvation to his people     in the forgiveness of their sins. (Luke 1:68–71, 76–77)

Those two things are what make Christmas good news and great joy to all the people who believe.

“Fear and guilt have been done away with by the coming of our horn of salvation.”

“The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil” (1 John 3:8). “[Christ] has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself” (Hebrews 9:26). Fear and guilt, the two great spoilers of Christmas, the two great spoilers of life all through the year, have been done away with by the coming of our horn of salvation.

Hebrews 2:14–15 says that Jesus Christ took on a human nature in order that “through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery.” And through that same death, he paid the whole debt for sin so that we are freed from the evil one and we are freed from sin.

Blessed be the Lord God of Israel,     for he has visited and redeemed his peopleand has raised up a horn of salvation for us . . .     that we, being delivered from the hand of our enemies,might serve him without fear,     in holiness and righteousness before him all our days. (Luke 1:68–69, 74–75)

I love everything about Christ-centered weddings. I love the love songs, the festive decorations, the contagious smiles, the time-honored traditions. I love the theology that marriage pictures and the miracle God performs by joining a man and a woman together as one. And I hate divorce. I hate all the damage it leaves in its wake. I hate how sin attacks what God has blessed and all that Satan does to undermine these vows.

So, when my wife and I start premarital counseling with a couple, I tell them that we will seem like good cop and bad cop. My wife openly expresses her joy to the engaged couple, while I keep a poker face over the six meetings, deliberately poking holes to see if their relationship is sufficiently built on the solid foundation of Christ.

Too often, couples stumble into marriage blinded to the problems in front of them because they look at their relationship through the distortion of rose-colored glasses. Then, shortly after the honeymoon (if it takes that long), the glasses fall off, and the couple becomes overwhelmed by what feel like painful, “irreconcilable” issues. Equally sad and tragic are the marriages that make it through earlier years only to yield to feelings of loneliness, resentment, or indifference, and then the couple gives up on the marriage in their later years.

I don’t know where you are relationally, but I’m writing to encourage couples married or about to be: if you and your spouse love Christ, your marriage can survive and thrive. So, for the purpose of thriving in your covenant, I’ll share three common challenges that all marriages between sinners face, holding up Christ as the only reliable solution for each.

1. Remember who the real enemy is.

If your marriage often feels more like a battleground than a bed of roses, you’re not crazy. In the Christian movie War Room, an elderly wise patron, Ms. Clara, tells a young wife struggling in her marriage, “You’re fighting the wrong enemy.” Oh, if every Christian couple took full heed of this danger! Satan studied Adam, and developed a specific and tailored plan — and what did he do? He went after Adam’s bride. He deceived Eve in his successful attack on their union (Genesis 3:1–6; Revelation 12:9). The Bible warns us that his war plan against marriage has not changed.

Before the apostle Paul tells Christian husbands and wives what he expects of them in Ephesians 5, he writes three whole chapters to ground us in the abundant grace that is ours in Christ. That grace is the means by which couples can make our marriages reflect Christ and his love for the church (Ephesians 5:22–31). Without regularly walking in the gospel of Ephesians 1–3 together, marriage easily becomes marred in fights centered around felt needs and grievances.

Then, in Ephesians 6, Paul tells believers why we need all the blessings from chapters 1–3: Satan and his horde of demons are still waging war against us (Ephesians 6:10–12), just as they did against Adam and Eve. You are at war with Satan, and your marriage is the battleground.

What’s the prescription? Remember that your spouse is not your enemy. How often do we turn our weapons against each other and unleash our anger there? That’s how Satan slowly builds a beachhead to launch his attacks against marriage (Ephesians 4:26–27). Our Lord taught us that a house divided against itself can’t stand. Satan’s strategy is to use friendly fire — spouses attacking each other — to defeat our marriages.

It’s imperative, then, for couples to learn how to engage in spiritual (not spousal) warfare. And spiritual wars can be won only with spiritual weapons. So, put on the whole armor of God, all the gracious gifts God has given you in Christ. “Resist the devil, and he will flee from you” (James 4:7).

2. Reject any voices who reject God.

Satan spoke through the serpent to confront Eve with a choice: believe what God had said, or accept what she was hearing now. She chose to believe the serpent’s lie. She believed that she could step out from God’s authority and decide for herself what was right and wrong. As Satan led, Eve followed, and as Eve led, Adam followed. The order of creation was turned upside down, with God at the bottom. And lest we think we would have fared better, this is always how sin works in a marriage — yes, even our sin.

God has not called the husband to lead because he is superior to his wife (he’s not). A husband must lead because God intentionally made the man to lead and his wife to help (Genesis 2:18). God looked at that kind of marriage, and he saw that “it was very good” (Genesis 1:31). Satan saw the same dynamics, and he hated them, so he came to overturn them. He sought to make the wife the head; the head, the helper; and God, the enemy. And, again, he’s whispering the same lies today. He wants women to chafe under the idea of submission and for men to run from the calling of headship.

What’s the prescription? Again, notice how Paul weaves the marriage story in Ephesians. Wives are called to submit to their husbands (Ephesians 5:22–24), and husbands are called to sacrificially love and serve their wives the way Christ loved the church (verses 25–30). This kind of marriage is possible only when wives and husbands are filled with the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 5:18). Elsewhere, Paul adds that believers are filled with the Holy Spirit when we are filled with God’s word (Colossians 3:16).

So, regularly read God’s word, on your own and as a couple, and follow what you read by faith. And know that when you hear a voice that contradicts God’s word — in society, in your circles of relationships, in your own sinful mind — you hear the enemy’s voice (1 Timothy 4:1). Satan stirs the zeitgeist of societies to rebel against God’s ways (Ephesians 2:2–3). When I counsel struggling couples, I make sure I ask questions like these: What has your time in God’s word been like? How consistently are you attending Bible study and adult Sunday school? Not surprisingly, couples struggling in their marriages usually aren’t consistently listening by faith to the word of God.

3. Resist the urge to idolize marriage.

So far, I’ve only mentioned Eve’s failure in the fall, so let me shift to the principal one responsible for the fall: Adam. Where was he?

The indictment God raised against him was that he “listened to the voice of [his] wife” (Genesis 3:17). What could be sinful about Adam listening to his wife? We know that God gives a wife to help her husband, and he assumes the man will listen well to her counsel. The book of Proverbs personifies wisdom as a woman whom a man should embrace and listen to. It climaxes with a man finding a wife whose wise words are immensely helpful to him (Proverbs 31:26). However, preferring anyone or anything to God (or against his will) is to make that person or thing an idol.

We don’t know much about the first woman, Eve, but Moses makes at least one thing about her clear: her husband delighted in her (Genesis 2:23). The serpent, then, seems to have used the man’s delight against him. Satan used her to get him to choose her over God. And if we let him, he’ll do the same in our marriages today. How often couples sin to try to get what they want from each other (James 4:1–2)! Anytime you are willing to sin to get something (or to sin because you don’t get something), you have an idol.

What’s the prescription? If you are sinning in your marriage, follow that pattern to the idol and repent of it. God blessed couples to enjoy each other in marriage, but we’re never to allow our delight in marriage to supplant our desire for God. Whether your spouse gives you much or little, true contentment will never come from him. It can’t. So, stop telling yourself that. If your spouse could satisfy your soul, why would we need the bread of life and the fountain of living water (John 6:35; 7:37–38)?

Embrace the secret to contentment (in marriage and in all of life): that you won’t find contentment in getting what your flesh wants, but in being satisfied in what God has given you in Christ (Philippians 4:12–13).

Greater Than Our Challenges

Sadly, because of sin and the consequences of sin, we’ll have to face more challenges than these in our marriages. The fall robbed us of shalom with God, with our spouse, and with the world. The hope for our marital challenges is the last and better Adam, Christ. God, who knows the end from the beginning, promised in Genesis 3:15 that he would send another man who would subdue the serpent and restore God’s righteous reign over our rebellious creation. Through his death and resurrection, that man is reconciling all things back to God. He is the hope for your marriage, and his name is Jesus.

No, he has not lifted the curse from creation yet. So, none of us has a struggle-free marriage. However, he has overcome sin and Satan for us. He is Immanuel — God with us — and he is all the grace we need to overcome the challenges common to our marriages.