The Burden of Hidden Sin

The burden of hidden sin that King David carried for an entire year cost him dearly. It broke his health, plagued his mind and wounded his spirit. It created havoc in his home, disillusionment in God’s people, and mockery among the godless. 

Finally, David cried out, “For I am ready to fall, and my sorrow is continually before me” (Psalm 38:17, NKJV). 

Some Christians might look at David in his time of turmoil and think, “What a tragedy Satan was able to bring upon David. How could this once-tender psalmist come to the brink of a fall? God must have been terribly angry with him.”

No! It was not the devil who made David’s sin so heavy; it was God. In his great mercy, God allowed this man to sink to the depths because he wanted him to see the magnitude of his sin. He made David’s unconfessed sin so heavy that he could no longer bear it and was driven to repentance. 

The truth is that only a righteous man like David could be so powerfully affected by his sin. His conscience was tender, and he felt the sharp pains of every arrow of conviction God thrust into his heart. That’s why David could say, “My sorrow is continually before me.”

That is the secret of this whole story. David had a godly sorrow, a deep and precious fear of God. He could admit, “I see the Lord’s disciplining hand in this, pressing me down to my knees, and I acknowledge that my sin deserves his wrath.” 

The author of Lamentations writes, “I am the man who has seen affliction by the rod of his wrath. He has led me and made me walk in darkness and not in light…. He has aged my flesh and my skin, and broken my bones. He has besieged me and surrounded me with bitterness and woe. He has set me in dark places like the dead of long ago. He has hedged me in so that I cannot get out; he has made my chain heavy…. He has blocked my ways with hewn stone; he has made my paths crooked” (Lamentations 3:1-9).

The point is clear. When we live with hidden sin, God makes our chains so heavy, chaotic, and terrifying that we are driven to open confession and deep repentance.