A Word in Season: Against God (Psalm 51:4)

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Where does sin go? Well, sin certainly goes out.

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Its ugly ripples spread and strike many who are around us. When King David committed adultery with Bathsheba, and then murdered her husband

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Uriah the Hittite in order to help cover his own guilt, his sin certainly had an impact upon Bathsheba, whatever her participation may or may not have been.

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His sin certainly had an impact upon Uriah. It struck and swallowed up Joab, the commander of the king's armies, who was the man who put

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Uriah in the front line in the battle. Certainly would have had an impact on others who were fighting that day alongside

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Uriah. It would have had an impact upon David's family immediately and more remotely, both in terms of the people closer to him and over time.

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It also had an impact upon the whole nation of Israel, because David was the king of that nation.

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The consequences horizontally, if you will, of sin were awful and dreadful.

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Sin also has an impact internally. It penetrates into our own being.

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The New Testament talks again, specifically first about sexual immorality, that this is a sin that a man commits against his own body.

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Obviously, there are others who are involved in that sin, but this and other sins also bring upon us guilt and shame.

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There are consequences for the sins that we commit in ourselves as well as upon others.

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Sin goes out and sin goes in. But first and foremost, sin goes up.

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When David was responding, when his conscience was finally stirred to the sins that he had particularly committed with regard to his adultery, he said in Psalm 51 and verse 4, against you, you only have

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I sinned and done this evil in your sight that you may be found just when you speak and blameless when you judge.

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He was, of course, addressing the true and living God, the Holy One.

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It is God's holiness that really provides the context in which sin becomes sin.

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God himself is holy, and so what is against him is unholy and sinful.

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When we read again in the Apostle John that sin is lawlessness, it is God's holy law that sin breaks.

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It is God's standard that defines what sin is. And so whatever may be the external, horizontal, the internal, personal effects of sin, ultimately sin is against God.

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It is that which makes it to be sin in itself. Against you, you only have

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I sinned and done this evil in your sight. All the motives and motions of David's soul were open to God, and all the actions of the members of his body were seen by him.

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And David has now begun to grasp that God sees and knows to the very depths of his being, and that his sin cannot be hidden from the

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Lord. And so his confession is that God is just when he speaks and blameless when he judges.

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It's why none of us can ever complain against God. If we have low views of sin, it's because ultimately we have low views of God.

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When we can't understand why God would send anybody to hell, it's because we don't understand the depths of iniquity that bubble out of our own souls, and the reason why we don't understand those depths of iniquity is because we haven't understood the heights of the glory that belong to the true and living

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God. And so, my friends, the marvel always is, not that God damns, but that God should save, because all of us, by nature and by deed, are hell -deserving sinners.

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God, in his mercy, has held out salvation to us.

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That salvation comes only through the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. That blood washes us clean.

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That sacrifice is effectual for our salvation. The offended God is himself the one who provides the means whereby we can be restored to a right relationship with him.

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So, let us never diminish the sinfulness of sin, and let us always marvel at the graciousness of a

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God who saves those who have sinned against him, extending grace and mercy, not just to the undeserving, but to the hell -deserving.