The Sin-Sick Psalm 
Psalm 38

Baxter T. Exum (#1768)
Four Lakes Church of Christ
Madison, Wisconsin
January 12, 2025

Good morning and welcome! It is good to be together this morning, and if you are visiting with us today, we are especially happy to have you with us, and we’d like to ask that you fill out a visitor card – either online or on a card from the pew in front of you. And we also invite you to pass along any questions or prayer concerns in that way.

We’ve come together this morning to thank God for saving us, to thank God for sending Jesus, and to preach the good news. The good news is that Jesus came to this earth and died for our sins, he was buried later that day, and he was raised up on the first day of the week. We obey the good news by believing it, by turning away from sin, by publicly proclaiming our faith that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and by allowing ourselves to be buried with Jesus in baptism, an immersion in water for the forgiveness of sins. And, as usual, we do have several examples to share this week, starting with an update from Jake Sutton, a friend who preaches at the Piedmont Avenue congregation in Marietta, Georgia. We actually had a group from Piedmont Avenue come up to Madison more than 20 years ago to help us go door-to-door. Jake is a former police officer, I believe, and now preaches the gospel. He posted a few days ago and says, “Wet sleeves on a cold night bring warm hearts! Praise God! It’s never wrong to be made right. Burt Bode wanted everything to be right between himself and God. We baptized Him into Jesus by faith tonight. Welcome your brother.” That is awesome!

This next one comes to us from the Dallas West congregation down in Texas. They say, “Happy 1st Sunday of 2025! Please join our church family in welcoming our new sister in Christ, Sister D. Williams. To God be the Glory!” Good news from Texas this week!

We have so many we could share today, but I’ll just share two more, with both of these coming to us from Indianapolis. This one comes to us from the Metro congregation. They just say, “All praises to God!Another precious soul has been added to the body of Christ! Welcome sister Candice Williams to God's family. He is so worthy to be praised.” He is!

And this last one comes to us from Ben Vick, a friend who preaches at the Shelbyville Road congregation. I’ve been reading Ben’s bulletin for more than 30 years, and we actually got to worship there for the first time maybe two years ago, on our way home from Ohio. Ben says, “This afternoon, January 10, 2025, I baptized Cheryl Beatty into Christ. We had studied using [the Open Bible Study]. She heard about us through House to House/Heart to Heart.” Ben has been preaching here for a long time and now serves as one of their shepherds. But, great news from Indiana this week! And, as always, we share these pictures by way of encouragement and as our invitation to you to consider obeying the good news yourself. If we can help, if you’d like to study together, please let us know. Pull me aside after worship, or give me a call or send a text to 608-224-0274.

This morning I want to invite you to turn with me to Psalm 38 (p. 891), and as you make your way there you may notice the heading in many of our Bibles describes this particular Psalm as the “Prayer of a Suffering Penitent,” or something to that effect. We look up the word “penitent,” (going back to Latin) and it refers to “a person who repents of their sins and seeks God’s forgiveness.” And the word may seem familiar to us, because we see it in the English word “penitentiary.” A penitentiary, of course, is a prison, but it goes back to this idea of repenting. A penitentiary is a place where people are confined, a place where people may suffer, as they hopefully use that time of confinement to think about what they have done and hopefully come to a point where they have a change of mind resulting in a change of behavior (that’s the goal anyway). A penitentiary is a place of repentance.

Two years ago, on our way to visit our friends and former members here, Donald and Lynn, over in North Carolina, we we toured the West Virginia State Penitentiary in Moundsville, West Virginia. It was a sobering experience. This place was built starting in 1866 and remained an active state prison until it was decommissioned back in 1995. Much of it was built by prisoners, by the way.

We toured the common areas and the cell blocks, and we learned the history of the place. I believe they executed 94 people through the years, 85 by hanging and 9 by the electric chair that was actually built by one of the inmates. The prison was a model for others for a long time, but it deteriorated through the years to where it ended up on the Department of Justice’s “Ten Most Violent Correctional Facilities” list. They had a total of 36 homicides in the prison through the years.

I’ve been on several prison tours in my life (my parents took us on some great vacations), and as with most tours they have a collection of various weapons that were confiscated through the years. In the cafeteria, they had allowed some inmates to decorate the walls with some paintings; remember, this was an active prison through 1995. Since 1995, the prison has been used for training among law enforcement and correctional officers, and it’s also been the scene for several films, including “Out of the Furnace” (which came out in 2013) with Christian Bale, Woody Harrelson, Casey Affleck, Forest Whitaker, Willem Dafoe, and others.

This is the main entrance, and I don’t know whether you can see this, but it is a giant rotating cage – on the other side is the entryway, and on this side is the prison. That door is never open in both directions at the same time. We have a somewhat similar situation at our own maximum security unit here in Madison at Mendota. The middle picture up here is of one of the cells. They were still covered in graffiti, just as they were left back in 1995. And I hope you can see what they did here. This cell is for an inmate in a wheelchair. The prison obviously wasn’t handicapped accessible back in 1866, so they cut the wall to the left of the door just enough for a chair to roll through, and then they welded a little wing on the bottom of that door. And they would have inmates stacked three high in many of these cells – two in bunks on the wall and one sleeping on the floor.

This was a dark place, a place of suffering, a place of regret. By the way, as I was preparing for today’s lesson yesterday morning, Johnny Cash popped up on Pandora, “Folsom Prison Blues.” What an awesome song! Two years ago, I was driving through Reno, and I thought to myself, “You know, there’s a song about this: I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die,” so pulled it up on YouTube and listened to Johnny Cash for the next ten hours, “Folsom Prison Blues.” A while later yesterday afternoon, Merle Haggard popped up, “Mama Tried,” “And I turned 21 in prison doin’ life without parole,” and so on. I had prison on the brain yesterday! Now, I realize most of us haven’t spent too much time in prison (I’ve been in several as a guest), but I also realize that most of us understand what it means to live with a sense of regret. We know what it means to sin, and then to suffer as a result of that sin, and then to languish in that condition over time. Maybe there’s something we’ve done that we wish we could take back, but we can’t. Or maybe there’s something we’ve done that broke or damaged a relationship, and it hangs over us. Perhaps there’s a page from our history we wish we could tear out and get rid of altogether.

Well, this morning, as we think about this idea of suffering as a result of something we’ve done, we come back to Psalm 38, a psalm that was written by King David. And this is one of many reasons we love the psalms. The book of Psalms is a songbook, and like the songbooks we have in our pews this morning, some of the songs are psalms of praise and thanksgiving, but there are also songs of lament, songs expressing the pain of regret. And that’s what we find in Psalm 38. But there’s a value to it, because psalms like this one teach us how react in times of great sorrow. Psalms like this remind us to “humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God, that he might exalt us at the proper time.” Psalms like this remind us to “cast all our anxiety upon Him, because He cares for us.”

It is, though, a difficult psalm. King David starts by crying out to God, he lays it all out before the Lord, and he’s obviously suffering in so many ways, but throughout the psalm it’s almost like he glances at God from time to time. He’s overwhelmed in grief over what he’s done, and he’s having a hard time seeing his way out of it. It’s almost like he’s stuck. And there’s no real resolution at the end. But that’s how some of the psalms are, because this is how life is sometimes. Life is not like a sitcom where everything gets wrapped up in 23 minutes. The Psalms, though, teach us how to cry out to God, even when life is hard. And here, David has apparently brought this on himself.

What did he do? We don’t know. In terms of background, we don’t have much of a heading on this one. He may be responding to his sin with Bathsheba, where he commits adultery and has her husband murdered and orchestrates an elaborate cover-up. As a result, David suffers. The baby dies, but that’s just the beginning as David’s family is surrounded by chaos and rebellion from that point forward. So, he may be writing in the immediate aftermath of the incident with Bathsheba. However, there’s also evidence throughout this psalm indicating that he may be writing as an old man – we have references to poor hearing and eyesight, and being hunched over, and everything hurts, and he can feel his heart pounding, and so on – so, he may be writing at the very end of his life, during that time in 1 Kings 1, where he’s languishing in bed, unable to stay warm. But, whatever the case, let’s take a look at all 22 verses of Psalm 38,

1 	O Lord, rebuke me not in Your wrath,
	And chasten me not in Your burning anger.
2 	For Your arrows have sunk deep into me,
	And Your hand has pressed down on me.
3 	There is no soundness in my flesh because of Your indignation;
	There is no health in my bones because of my sin.
4 	For my iniquities are gone over my head;
	As a heavy burden they weigh too much for me.
5 	My wounds grow foul and fester
	Because of my folly.
6 	I am bent over and greatly bowed down;
	I go mourning all day long.
7 	For my loins are filled with burning,
	And there is no soundness in my flesh.
8 	I am benumbed and badly crushed;
	I groan because of the agitation of my heart.
9 	Lord, all my desire is before You;
	And my sighing is not hidden from You.
10 	My heart throbs, my strength fails me;
	And the light of my eyes, even that has gone from me.
11 	My loved ones and my friends stand aloof from my plague;
	And my kinsmen stand afar off.
12 	Those who seek my life lay snares for me;
	And those who seek to injure me have threatened destruction,
	And they devise treachery all day long.

13 	But I, like a deaf man, do not hear;
	And I am like a mute man who does not open his mouth.
14 	Yes, I am like a man who does not hear,
	And in whose mouth are no arguments.
15 	For I hope in You, O Lord;
	You will answer, O Lord my God.
16 	For I said, “May they not rejoice over me,
	Who, when my foot slips, would magnify themselves against me.”
17 	For I am ready to fall,
	And my sorrow is continually before me.
18 	For I confess my iniquity;
	I am full of anxiety because of my sin.
19 	But my enemies are vigorous and strong,
	And many are those who hate me wrongfully.
20 	And those who repay evil for good,
	They oppose me, because I follow what is good.
21 	Do not forsake me, O Lord;
	O my God, do not be far from me!
22 	Make haste to help me,
	O Lord, my salvation!

This morning, I want us to focus on the first part of Psalm 38 (verses 1-12), where King David calls out to God, describing the pain that he’s in because of what he’s done. And here at the beginning, even before we look at each verse here, I want us to notice that David is very clearly suffering because of something he’s done. Most of us understand that sin has consequences. And again, we don’t know WHAT he did that led to this; we’re just looking at the aftermath. What we do know, then, is sin leads to some terrible results: We lie and a relationship gets broken, we steal and we spend time in jail, we shoot a man in Reno just to watch him die and we end up in prison, and so on. At the same time, though we also need to realize that not every terrible thing that happens to us is the direct result of something we’ve done. We have a whole book in the Bible about this: The book of Job. Job suffered, not because he sinned, but because he was righteous. Jesus would be the perfect example of this. So, let’s go into this knowing that not all suffering is the direct result of something we’ve done; however, in David’s case here, he is suffering for what he’s done. This morning, then, I want us to focus in on the first twelve verses as King David describes the consequences of his sin.

    I. And we start in the first four verses as David describes this WEIGHT that is bearing down on him, the WEIGHT OF A GUILTY CONSCIENCE.

In these opening verses, David very clearly understands that what he’s going through is a direct consequence of God’s wrath coming down on his life. He takes this as a “rebuke” (according to verse 1). This is “chastening” (also in verse 1). In verse 2, he sees this as God shooting arrows at him; God is pressing his hand down on him. What he’s going through is happening as a direct result of God’s “indignation” as a result of his “sin” (in verse 3). In verse 4, he’s “in over his head,” we might say. And at the end of verse 4, he gets back to this idea that he’s bearing a “burden” that is “too much” to bear. His sins are weighing him down. And so we start today with the weight of a guilty conscience before the Lord.

And I think most of us understand this idea of bearing a weight that’s too much for us. Thankfully, I may be on the tail end of that age where friends call on me to help them move. I don’t know, but when I think of lifting something heavy, I think of moving. We don’t really appreciate how much stuff we have until we pick it up and move it from one place to another! At our house, and with my parents, I think of file cabinets. I think of the Richter’s piano or Olivia’s futon. In terms of heavy, I think about that time when my daughter was into throwing the shot put on the team at Memorial High School, and she wanted a tractor tire for her birthday that year. She wanted to flip that tire all around our yard. Well, I called Weber Tire out in Bristol, and sure enough, they had a pile of tractor tires out back, and I could take as many as I wanted, free of charge! Now, these tires are 18 inches thick and nearly as tall as I am; they’re not going to fit in my car, so I go rent truck at Home Depot, only $19.99 for the first 75 minutes. I map it out on Google, and it looks doable. Well, I head out to Bristol, and since this is a birthday present, I can’t really bring my daughter with me, so I nearly break myself getting those tires on the truck. Remember: They’re free, so I might as well take two. Things are going well, but when I get near Park Street on the Beltline, there’s an accident up ahead, and the Beltline is closed. That almost never happens, by the way. It’s just closed. So here I am, locked in traffic 60 minutes into a truck that’s costing me $19.99 every 75 minutes. And now it’s dark. I eventually make it home, get the tires off the truck, and get it back to Home Depot for about $45 total (still not bad for a birthday present). I’m just saying that tractor tires are heavy. I could barely lift one up to flip it, but she loved the tires. One of the weirdest birthday presents ever. But that’s how David pictures the weight of a guilty conscience. It is almost too much to bear.

And David talks to God about this. He sings about it. He acknowledges how his sin makes him feel. He feels like he’s being crushed by some unbearable weight. And I know it sounds terrible, but the alternative is that we do NOT feel this way, that the conscience is seared, that the conscience is beyond feeling. And that would be even worse. But as it is, David describes the unbearable weight of a guilty conscience. And maybe you have felt this as well. Maybe we’re disgusted with ourselves, “I can’t believe I did that again,” or whatever. We are weighed down by the weight of guilt, we feel the hand of the Lord pressing down on us.

    II. This brings us to a second broad category (and there is some overlapping between these), but in verses 5-7 King David describes his PHYSICAL SUFFERING AS A RESULT OF SIN.

And again, there is some overlap here. In the first part, we had the SPIRITUAL weight of sin, and here we have some PHYSICAL consequences. Remember: Not all suffering is a result of sin; however, there are some sins that do, in fact, come with some physical suffering. Several weeks ago, we talked about that passage in 1 Corinthians 7 where Paul said that “...it is better to marry than to burn,” and we noted that there are several ways we might “burn” as the result of sexual sin – we might burn with passion, we might burn for an eternity in hell, or we might burn physically. And I think it may be this “Option #3” that seems to be tormenting King David right here. He speaks of wounds growing foul and festering because of his folly. He talks about being bent over and bowed down as a result of his sin. He speaks of his loins being “filled with burning.” There is no “soundness in his flesh.” This sounds quite literal here. King David is suffering physically as a result of whatever he did. We might also think of Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 6:18 when he says, “Flee sexual immorality. Every other sin that a man commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral man sins against his own body.” Some suffering, then, we do bring upon ourselves. And David realizes this. He’s acknowledging this.

Practically speaking, therefore, when something bad happens to us, there may be a value to asking: Have I brought this on myself? Often, the answer is: No. My suffering may be random, my suffering may be due to the fact that I’m a mere mortal, my suffering may be due to somebody else making a wrong choice, and there are times when I may suffer because of a choice I’ve made, even when that choice is not necessarily a sin - I go hiking tomorrow and get frostbite, my choice led to that consequence, even though the choice was not necessarily sin. However, there are also times when bad things happen to me because of what I’ve done, and what I’ve done is a sin. And that’s what King David acknowledges here in verses 5-7. Unfortunately, many will never make the connection. I may do some terrible and sinful thing that hurts me and even those close to me, and I may blame everybody but me. I may even blame God, “God, how could you do this to me?” And the suffering never ends. I don’t learn from that. Thankfully, though, David at least has the wisdom to recognize the connection between his sin and what he’s going through here: I’ve sinned, and these terrible things are happening to me because of it. That’s a valuable thing to acknowledge, as David does here. So, we have the weight of a guilty conscience, we have the physical consequences of sin…

    III. ...and this brings us to the MENTAL ANGUISH that comes as a result of living in sin, this is the EMOTIONAL aspect of guilt.

We see this in verses 8-10, where David describes himself as being “benumbed and badly crushed.” He “groans” due to the “agitation of his heart.” Thankfully, though, in his grief he pours his heart out before the Lord (in verse 9), even though his heart is racing, he’s weak, and his eyes are dim (according to verse 10). Many times, we react to sin by hiding from God, just as Adam and Eve tried to do. David, though, takes his emotional anguish to the Lord in a song. He lays it out before the Lord, “casting all his anxiety on God, because he cares for him” (as Peter alluded to in our scripture reading this morning). Sometimes we turn inward in our sighing, sometimes we refuse to turn outward in our depression; David, though, demonstrates turning to God as he opens his heart to the Lord. The point here, though, is that sin will often result in this mental and emotional anguish, and thankfully, David takes this to the Lord.

    IV. Well, this brings us to the fourth and final consequence of King David’s sin in this Psalm, and that is: King David is ISOLATED AND REJECTED as a result of his sin (we see this in verses 11-12).

So, it’s not enough that he feels the weight of God’s hand on him, it’s not enough that he’s physically suffering, it’s not enough that he’s weighed down with sorrow and sighing (the mental anguish aspect of this), but here we find that all of David’s friends and family turn away from him. In verse 11, in fact, it’s as if he’s been afflicted with the “plague.” As I understand it, this word is used elsewhere in scripture with reference to leprosy, and the Law of Moses was clear: If a person was diagnosed with leprosy, that person had to leave camp, they had to live alone in the wilderness, and if anybody even thought of coming near, the person with leprosy had to cover his mustache and cry out, “Unclean! Unclean!” And there’s some wisdom in that. Today we call it “wearing a mask.” To cover one’s mustache was to at least create something of a barrier for coughs and sneezes, and it would also serve as a sign: Something is wrong with me, so stay away! And that’s the way David felt. He wasn’t actually contagious, but people were treating him like it. They were avoiding him “like the plague.” And we do see this near the end of David’s life. Even some of his closest friends and advisors were bailing on him near the end. And that had an impact. He feels alone here, “...my kinsmen stand afar off.” That allowed his enemies to step in and take advantage of the situation, and that’s what happened near the end. We have that chaos with Adonijah. We have Joab (David’s trusted general) and Abiathar (the priest) joining in. There were times when David felt all alone.

And that happens to us as well. We sin, and (depending on the sin) nobody wants to be around us. Maybe we aren’t trusted anymore. Maybe we’ve done something repulsive. Or maybe it’s just us: If people knew what I’m thinking, nobody would want to be near me, and so we slowly withdraw until we’re all alone. It’s like a self-inflicted banishment. In this case, David was all alone, and this is at a time when he needed his friends and family more than ever. As I was preparing today’s lesson, I ran across somebody who said, “While God is quick to forgive when we repent, our friends and family frequently are not.” Ouch! And yet, David talks about being alone in many of the Psalms. It’s lonely at the top, and especially when you get caught up in some sin or scandal (as David did with Bathsheba). However, it’s also been said that if you really want to know who your true friends are, look around when things are bad or you get in trouble: Your real friends will still be there.

Those who study psychology tell us that people often don’t like being around people who are suffering, because it makes them think about being in that same situation themselves, and they would rather avoid that. This would explain why people so rarely visit those in hospitals and nursing homes. I don’t want to think of myself as being susceptible to that. Nevertheless, King David is all alone. And he’s alone when he needs help more than ever.

Conclusion:

As we come to the end of the first part of this study, can’t most of us identify with what David experienced here? Have you ever felt this way? If so, I do think we need to be thankful, because the alternative is that we sin and do NOT feel this way, and that would be even worse. Obviously, we don’t want this to go on forever, but there is a benefit to feeling terrible over something we’ve done, and there’s also a benefit to pouring our hearts out to God like this. Now, I don’t think David anticipated feeling like this when he first looked over the palace railing and had those inappropriate thoughts about Bathsheba, but that’s the way sin works. The hook is hidden in the worm.

As we wrap it up, I would make two brief applications of what we’ve studied this morning:

First of all, let’s realize that SIN DOES HAVE CONSEQUENCES. Up to this point, I haven’t mentioned the other heading on Psalm 38. The NASB says, “A Psalm of David, for a Memorial.” Some say this one is “For the Memorial Offering,” and others say, “To Bring to Remembrance.” David is writing this, then, for our benefit. And in the first half of the psalm, anyway, he’s wanting us to remember that SIN HAS CONSEQUENCES. The goal, here, is to learn from David’s mistakes. We can avoid the weight of God’s punishment, we can avoid the physical suffering, we can avoid the emotional anguish, and we can avoid the isolation and rejection if we just avoid sinning in the first place. So, first of all, let’s take this lesson from someone who’s been there. Let’s never forget how destructive sin can be.

I would suggest a second very practical lesson from the first part of this Psalm, and that is: WORSHIP IS NOT JUST FOR THE GOOD TIMES. It’s so easy to think that worship is supposed to be upbeat, a time when we thank God for how awesome everything is, but David reminds us this morning that it’s also very appropriate to worship when nothing is going well. It’s okay to sit by the bed of a loved one and to say to God, “Father, this is not okay!” As Peter has said, we cast all of our anxiety upon him, because he cares for us.

I think we’ll leave it at that today. Caleb has agreed to bring our study next week. I’ll be camping in the UP for a bit (we haven’t had enough snow around here), and in two weeks I’m hoping we can look at the second half of Psalm 38. In just a moment, Josh will lead us in a song to help focus our thoughts on what we just studied, but before we sing, let’s go to God in prayer:

Our Father in Heaven,

Thank you for hearing our prayer! We know that we have sinned against you, and we know that our sin has some terrible consequences. Sometimes we are completely overwhelmed in grief and regret, and in those moments, we are so thankful that we can come to you with the weight of our sin. Please, Father, do not be angry with us. Instead, we ask for your patience and mercy. We ask for forgiveness as we forgive those who sin against us.

Thank you, Father, for Jesus. We come to you in his name. AMEN.

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