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I. THE BURDEN.

1. He uses three words, and each word reveals a different aspect of his comprehensive conception.

(1) He calls it his "transgression." The word is significant of a "breaking-loose." The figure is almost that of a horse that has broken the traces, and is bolting. The cords have been snapped. The yoke has been thrown aside. The man conceives himself as in revolt. He is a rebel, a deserter. He has broken the bands; he has discarded all discipline, and has roamed in ways of unconsidered licence.

(2) He also calls it his "sin." He has deflected from the prescribed line of life. He has chosen his own end. He has missed the mark. His life "has not arrived." It is characterized by failure.

(3) He also calls it his "iniquity" His life is marred by crookedness and deformity. Guilt has sunk into his faculties, and all of them have been twisted in a certain perversity. Such is the man's vivid consciousness of his own estate. He is a rebel of perverse inclinations, and wrenched by self-will into spiritual deformity.

2. Now, concerning this burning consciousness of personal sin, we are told the man "kept silence." He invited no fellowship, either on the part of man or of God. How did such secret, silent burden affect the man's life?

(1) "When I kept silence my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long." There is a wonderful intimacy between the flesh and the spirit. To sap the forces of the one drains the energy of the other. This man, with the secret, unspoken consciousness of sin, dragged along a weary body. He was continually tired.

(2) "Day and night Thy hand was heavy upon me." He moved in a condition of constant depression. He felt that "the hand of the Lord" was weighing upon him! That is a pathetic word. "The hand' of the Lord" is usually a minister of succour, of lifting, of resurrection! But here the "hand of the Lord" is regarded as the minister of depression, and the man is held down in mental flatness and imprisonment.

(3) "My moisture is turned into drought of summer." He was the victim of a dry, fierce heart No cool, cooling influences breathed through his soul. He was "heated hot with burning fears."

II. THE CONFESSION. The psalmist had a threefold description of sin, now he has a threefold description of its confession. "I acknowledged my sin." "Mine iniquity have I not hid." "I confessed my transgressions." The marrow of all these pregnant phrases is that the psalmist made a clean breast of it. He hid nothing from the Lord. There was no unclean thing concealed within his tent. lie opened out every secret room. He gave God all the keys. Everything was brought out and penitently acknowledged. He confessed in particulars, and not in generals. He "poured out his heart before God." He emptied it as though he was emptying a vessel in which no single unclean drop was allowed to remain. His confession was made in perfect frankness and sincerity.

III. THE LORD'S RESPONSE.

1. His transgression was "forgiven" — lifted and carried away out of sight.

2. His sin was "covered." "Where sin abounds, grace doth much more abound." Grace rolls over like an immeasurable flood, and our sins are submerged beneath its mighty depths.

3. His iniquity was "net imputed." Forgiven sins are never to be counted; they will not enter into the reckoning. They will not influence the Lord's regard for us. In His love for us, forgiven sins are as though they had never been. Here, then, is the completeness of the freedom of the children of God. Sin forgiven! Sin covered! Sin no longer reckoned! It is not wonderful that this once tried, depressed, feverish soul, tasting now the delights of a gracious freedom, should cry out, "Blessed is the man!"

(J. H. Jowett, M. A.)

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KJV: {A Psalm of David, Maschil.} Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.

WEB: Blessed is he whose disobedience is forgiven, whose sin is covered.