Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - You Are What You Consume | The Writings | Psalm 32

Episode Date: February 13, 2024

What do you consume with your eyes, ears and mouth? What are you watching and listening to? How does it shape you? What are you becoming lately? In today’s episode Tanya discusses how to use Psalm 32 to combat the lies the enemy wants you to believe. Read the Bible with us in 2024! This year, we’re tackling a group of Old Testament books traditionally known as “The Writings”— Psalms, Chronicles, Proverbs, Daniel, Ruth and more! Download your reading plan now. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it so that others can find it, too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Psalm 32

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Tanya Wilmeth. One of the really cool things that happens when we study and pray the Psalms is that we become more like the speaker in them. We become more immersed in the story that unfolds within them. We're going to explain, but when I was little, my grandparents used to buy those blue cans of planters cheeseballs when I came to visit. And I would eat so many, my grandma would say, you're going to turn into a cheeseball. Hyperbole, of course, but there's a way in which we understand that we become what we consume.

What have you become lately? N.T. Wright wrote a book to encourage believers to be in the Psalms. He calls the Psalms the steady, sustained, subcurrent of healthy Christian living. They shaped the praying and vocation, he says, even of Jesus himself. They can and will do the same for us. That's pretty cool. See, the Psalms draw us into a human experience, and in them we may find ourselves saying, yes, I have felt exactly the same way.

Or maybe we will think, I've never thought of it that way before, but now that I can see it like that, I will never see it the same way again. They give us language to use in our prayers that can feel like putting on a soft, warm pair of socks, or they can give us language that we wouldn't have been able to come up with on our own. Today we're going to take a slower walk through Psalm 32. This is one of the Psalms that I keep coming back to, because I can identify with the writer about the heaviness and isolation that he feels when he keeps his sin to himself and the way he feels differently when he tries to work it out with God.

And I want to experience more and more the release and the lightness on the other side of that. But first, I have to acknowledge the tension. Psalm 32 begins Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered, blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit. For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away. Through my groaning all day long, for day and night your hand was heavy on me.

My strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. So the second greatest lie, the enemy wants us to believe, is that sin is our problem to handle. When Adam and Eve believed the serpent in the garden, the next thing they did was hide from God and make coverings for themselves because they knew they were naked. And when the Psalm says day and night, your hand was heavy upon me,

we feel like the writer is reaching out his hand to take hold of ours and say, I understand. I understand the way you feel when you keep your sin unconfessed. The enemy tells you to hold it close and deal with it privately, and it feels too scary to bring it into the light. Even though we know God can help us, we don't want to face our sin head on because it might cause us to surrender something we don't want to give up. We might have to take off a mask we'd

rather hide behind. We would prefer to keep feeling anxious and guilty than face the reality of what our sin is doing to us and take the necessary steps to see what's on the other side of it. Some people think David might have written this Psalm just a little while after he committed adultery with Boshiba. Maybe it's because there's some perspective that takes time to uncover and put to words. But for someone like David who knew the feelings of hiding things and doing more sin to keep it hidden, the next part of the Psalm is really encouraging. Verse 5 says, I acknowledge 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. Therefore, let everyone who is godly offer prayer to you at a time when you may be found. That sounds pretty urgent, doesn't it? When we say the words, I acknowledge my sin and do not cover my own iniquity, there's no longer a mask or a facade or a distance between us and God. We're surrendering whatever it is that we do because we don't trust that. God has something better for us on the other side. When we surrender that sin, whatever it is, we have believing that our lives will not be empty or meaningless without it, because God is better than anything else. What about you? Do you have something that seems like if you give it up,

God won't be good enough? Like your life will be lonely or empty or it will lose meaning or significance. Let me give you an example. Let's say your job is a place that you've made off limits to God. While you pray and go to church and know that God wants you to obey and love him above everything else, you've got a job where you are better off in control. You, after all, know how much money needs to be made this year so your family can keep up with your lifestyle. You know how many people are depending on you for their finances also.

You know that people assume you're always confident and always competent. If you confess to God that you have made your job off limits and ask him to reveal ways that you need to be truthful or honest about your work, that gets on really scary. What if you don't make as much money? What if you don't look professional? My friend Sear told me this morning that she once saw a painting of a little girl reluctantly holding her teddy bear out to God. And God was holding a much bigger teddy bear behind his back. Now, I'm not saying this is like some big teddy bear. theologically sound thing. But doesn't this describe the way we feel about God at least?

We think that if we give him the teddy bear, we'll be without one. But God actually has something much better in store for us. This is what the psalmist has experienced, and this is what he wants to share with us. He knows the heaviness and isolation that come with keeping sin to ourselves. The enemy wants us to believe that having it exposed and out there is the worst thing that can happen to us. But really, we're living in the worst thing that can happen. We're living in the rushing current of guilt and self-induced but unsuccessful solutions while God wants to pull us out of our heads and put our feet on a firm rock. The second part of verse 8 says, surely in a rush of great waters, they shall not reach him. You are a hiding place for me. You preserve me from trouble. You surround me

with shouts of deliverance. When you surrender, there will be no doubt about God's deliverance. If you were wasting away inwardly and silently, that much more will you recognize the shouts of God's deliverance when you surrender your sin to Him. And when you're assured of God's deliverance, sin will have a different flavor. It just won't taste as good. You'll face tension instead of just sinning without feeling it. You'll be quicker to confess it when you fall on your face. The voice of the Lord interrupts David in this Psalm to say, I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go. I will counsel you with my eye upon you. We tend to think that if we stop being who we are, we won't be anything. But God says, when we stop and confess, you will guide

us into living out our true identity. We won't be insignificant, but more significant when we're honest and transparent and surrender our sinful habits to God. Finally, the Psalm ends by making the claim that the happiest person is the most forgiven person. It says, many are the sorrows of the wicked, but steadfast love surrounds the one who trust in the Lord. Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, O righteous, and shout for joy all you upright in heart. If true happiness comes from forgiveness, where are you on a scale of one to ten? Do you see yourself as someone who needs forgiveness? The enemy wants us to be detached from God and do our own thing without thinking about him much.

And yet the psalm show us that those feelings of overwhelm on isolation, they're not just the way things are. They're actually a sign that we need God. The discomfort we feel is actually God's tenderness, revealing to us that he has something better in store when we come to him. Let's circle back to where we started. What or who have you become lately? What is God putting on your heart maybe right now to confess?

The Bible reminds us that whatever it is we think will make us happy, won't. Whatever we chase apart from God will eventually leave us, but there is real joy and true deep happiness of surrendering to God and standing before him with an upright heart, because he knows everything about us and loves us still. But we have to be in it to become part of God's better story. How might you remember Psalm 32 or make it part of your day or your week?