First Wednesday in Lent 2012

9/26/12 Psalm 32 Title: Hiding from God or Hiding in God? (Psalm 32) In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Our text for today is Psalm 32, which we prayed earlier in the service. We will also be examining the Office of the Keys as they are found in God’s Word, so we can get a better understanding of what God means when he says he has given to his Church the right to lock and unlock the door to heaven. Have you ever hidden from God? Psalm 32, written and prayed by King David compares the man who hides from God to the man who hides in God. And this has nothing to do with what is going on from the outside. Like Adam and Eve, like King David, and like Judas Iscariot from our reading today we excel at hiding from God. I may be able to walk down the street and convince everyone that I meet that I am good Christian because I lead an upright and moral life. I am not like those sinners. We are very good at hiding our thoughts and actions. You can keep your thoughts of betrayal and adultery to yourself. You can keep your thoughts of coveting and wishing for something that isn’t yours under control. You can even turn gossip into sounding like it is oh so much sympathy for whoever happens to be under attack. Yes, we can hide our sins very well. Hiding from God, however is another story. Hear David in verses 3 and 4 say, “For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night Your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer.” In other words when we hide our sin from God, it has consequences. We’ll hear about others who tried to hide their sins from God in the weeks to come, but one of the consequences of our trying to hide our sins from God, is something we all know well; guilt. It eats at you. It won’t go away. You may cover it with work or alcohol or whatever distracts, but guilt will not go away. That is God’s Law coming to bear on your life. It’s uncomfortable. It’s painful. It’s supposed to be for that is what the law does. The Gospel message of forgiveness heals, but the law kills. But your Old Adam, your sinful nature, even though you know that the law kills and the gospel heals just doesn’t want to let go of the law and come clean before God. And so, unless one’s heart has become hard to the law where it no longer condemns you, your sin weighs on you; it holds you down. You may be able to put on a happy face for the time you or in church, or for the day, or the week, or even a month, but the guilt is always there and it hurts. That brings us back to God’s purpose, as it is written in Psalm 32:1. “Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.” We somehow get this crazy idea in our head that God is pleased with us when we cover up our sins and keep a happy face. But it is just the opposite. God is pleased when we confess our sins, so that He can do His work of re-creating us in His image. God wants to forgive our sins more than anything in the world. That is what He lives for. That is what He died on the cross for. He is dying to forgive you. The angels in heaven rejoice over one sinner who repents. That’s you and me, and everyone else who has ever lived, is living, and will live. God in His mercy has given the keys, the binding and loosing keys, to his Holy Church to forgive sins. In other words, this is the place where God comes to forgive your sins. God does this in several ways. He forgives your sins through preaching, through the hearing of God’s Word, through the Lord’s Supper, through Baptism, and through absolution which is just a church word for “forgiveness.” There are two specific ways that God absolves, or forgives your sins in his Christian Church. One you know very well, the other you may not know at all. The first is called the general Confession and Absolution. The other is called Individual Confession and Absolution. This one you may not know at all. This is when someone comes to the pastor privately and confesses their sins. This is usually done when a person is troubled by specific sins. Private confession and absolution is seldom used anymore and has not been for a long time. Even Martin Luther in the fifteen hundreds bemoaned of the lack of private confession when the people found out that they no longer had to confess their sins to the priest. We by nature, rather than confess sins to the person God has put in our midst to hear confession and give absolution in God’s name would rather wallow in our sin, no matter how miserable our lives have become. I have made a private confession to a pastor and I actually think the forgiveness spoken by the pastor was better than the forgiveness spoken in the general absolution on Sunday morning. Same words, but this time they were spoken to just me. My fellow brothers and sisters in Christ even though you might never receive the wonderful blessing of private confession and absolution take advantage of the general confession and absolution spoken on Sunday morning. You are not receiving my forgiveness, but God’s forgiveness when I say, “I forgive you of your sins in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” Listen to Jesus’ call, “Come to me who are heavy burdened and I will give you rest.” Turn, flee to God’s mercy. Flee to Jesus Christ and His Word of absolution. Hide in God, not from God, and God will protect you, and hold you in the palm of His hand. Amen