Todd A. Peperkorn, STM

Messiah Lutheran Church

Kenosha, Wisconsin

Wednesday of Invocabit (March 7, 2001)

Psalm 32

 TITLE: “Hiding in God”

 In the name of the Father and of the † Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  Our text for tonight is Psalm 32, which we prayed earlier in the service.  We will also be examining the office of the keys as we prayed from the Catechism earlier as well.

Blessed is the man whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered.  So prays the Psalmist.  This flies in the face of what we see as blessed.  In the eyes of the world, blessed is the man who has money, who has a nice family, who handles himself well, who is in control, in charge.  Blessed is the man whose got it together.

Now this may be true for the world, but it is not true for God.  In Psalm 32 we have a comparison.  The Psalmist 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 from last Sunday, like King David, and like Judas Iscariot from our reading, we excel at hiding from God.  I may be able to walk down the street and convince everyone that I meet that I am the perfect Christian.  I lead an upright and moral life.  I have everything together.  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.

But notice from the Psalmist what happens.  Verse 3, when I am silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long.  For day and night your hand was heavy upon me, my strength was sapped as in the heat of summer.  In other words, dear friends in Christ, when we hide our sin from God it has consequences.  We’ll hear about others in the weeks to come, but one of the consequences we know very well.  Guilt.  It eats at you.  It won’t go away.  You may cover it with business 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 remember, God’s purpose is to forgive your sins.  But to do that, He has to kill you with the Law first.

But your Old Adam, your sinful nature just doesn’t want to come clean.  You don’t want God to see your sinfulness, so like a child hiding behind his hands, you think that God won’t see your sinfulness.  And yet it weighs on you, it holds you down.  You may be able to put on a happy face for the day or the week or the hour, but it is always there.

That brings us back to God’s purpose.  Blessed is the man whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered.  We somehow get this crazy idea in our head that God is pleased with you when you cover up your sin.  But it is just the opposite.  God is pleased when you confess your sins, so that He can do His work of recreating you in His image.  God wants to forgive your 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.

So that brings us to the question: so how does God forgive my sins?  That’s what Lent is all about.  Hear those words again from the Catechism, which we prayed earlier:

 

 

God in His mercy has given the keys, the binding and loosing keys, to the 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 two different kinds of Absolution.  Remember, the word absolution is simply a $.50 word for “forgiveness.”

There are two specific ways that God absolves, or forgives your sins in this place.  One you know very well, the other you may not know at all.  The first is called the general confession and absolution.  This is what we do at the beginning of the service.  I a poor miserable sinner, confess unto to you all my sins and iniquities…  and so forth.  I, then, as your pastor absolve, or forgive your sins in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  So remember, this is not my doing at all; it is God’s doing.

The second kind of confession and absolution is called Individual Confession and Absolution.  This one you may not know at all.  This is when someone comes to the pastor privately or individually and confesses their sins.  They may have specific sins to confess; they may not.  Then using words almost identical to our church service, I forgive their sins in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Like a treasure hidden in an old shoebox, the gift of Individual Confession and Absolution has been little used for generations among Lutherans.  I go to my own pastor on a regular basis to hear God’s Word of forgiveness in my ears.  Human beings are by nature like the horse or the mule, as our Psalm says.  We don’t know what’s good for us, and rather than hear God’s word of forgiveness, we by nature hide from God and wallow in our sin.

But God seeks you out.  He wants nothing more than to forgive your sins and release you from the pain and hurt that your sins bring with them.  As we pray with the Psalmist, You are my hiding place; you will protect me from trouble and surround me with songs of deliverance (Ps. 32:7).   And as Saint Paul wrote in Colossians 3, For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.  Flee to God’s mercy.  Flee to Jesus Christ and His Word of absolution.  Hide in God, and God will protect you, and hold you in the palm of His hand.  In the name of Jesus.  Amen.

Copyright © 2001 by Todd A. Peperkorn.  This sermon may be reproduced freely, as long as credit is given to the author if it is reproduced in print.