Hiding from God or Hiding in God?

Sermon: 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 tonight is Psalm 32, which we prayed earlier in the service.

¹Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.

²Blessed is the man against whom the LORD counts no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit.

³For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long.

⁴For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. Selah

⁵I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity; I said, "I will confess my transgressions to the LORD," and you forgave the iniquity of my sin. Selah

⁶Therefore let everyone who is godly offer prayer to you at a time when you may be found; surely in the rush of great waters, they shall not reach him.

⁷You are a hiding place for me; you preserve me from trouble; you surround me with shouts of deliverance. Selah

⁸I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you with my eye upon you.

⁹Be not like a horse or a mule, without understanding, which must be curbed with bit and bridle, or it will not stay near you.

¹⁰Many are the sorrows of the wicked, but steadfast love surrounds the one who trusts in the LORD.

¹¹Be glad in the LORD, and rejoice, O righteous, and shout for joy, all you upright in heart!

(Psa 32:1 ESV)

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, 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. Hiding from God, however, doesn't work too well.

Notice from the psalmist what happens. 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, 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 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 remember, God's purpose is to forgive your sins. But to do that, He has to kill you with the Law first. And that's exactly what happens when we behold the cross of Christ. For there we see graphically God's hatred of our sin. We see what we deserve. We see ourselves and our sin in the suffering and violent death of Jesus.

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 his face 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 one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered" (Psalm 32:1). We somehow get this crazy idea in our head that God is pleased with us when we cover up our sins. We see in this that if our sins are covered by Jesus, then it's OK to go ahead and sin. But it is just the opposite. God is pleased when we confess our sins, repent of our sins and turn away from them 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.

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 Small Catechism, which we read earlier:

What is the Office of the Keys?

The Office of the Keys is that special authority which Christ has given to His church on earth to forgive the sins of repentant sinners, but to withhold forgiveness from the unrepentant as long as they do not repent.

Where is this written?

This is what St. John the Evangelist writes in chapter twenty: The Lord Jesus breathed on His disciples and said, "Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone his sins, they are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven." (John 20:22–23)

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 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 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 service, I forgive your 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. 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 a hiding place for me; You preserve me from trouble; You surround me with shouts of deliverance" (Psalm 32:7). And as Paul wrote in Colossians, "For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God" (3:3). 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. In the name of Jesus. Amen.