Welcome back to the podcast. If you're reading the Navigator's Bible Reading Plan with

us in 2024, we read Psalm 22 together a couple of weeks ago and then we talked about the challenges that that

Text poses to understanding the cross of Christ. That was an ABJ episode number 2015

Check that out and today we're back in the Psalms reading

Psalm 31 together and then Psalm 32 tomorrow both of those Psalms

31 and 32, carried the same internal dynamic that Sarah, a

listener to the podcast, points out and is trying to figure out, and here's what she wrote us.

Special John, hello to you, and to you and Tony, both for this podcast.

Your 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 Psalms shows us how to process those 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 pain.

This comes up specifically in Psalm 31 versus 9 and 10 and

Psalm 32 versus 1 to 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.

...