1. Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Heavenly
Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
Amen. One TV show that I enjoyed
watching while I was growing up was Home Improvement with Tim Allen. One
episode in particular comes to mind. Tim Taylor, played by Tim Allen, returns
home from doing his Tool Time show. His hands are in his pockets. He
won’t take them out. His family suspects something, and they try to trick him
into taking his hands out of his pockets. But no matter what they do, he
refuses. Finally, something happens, and he reveals what they had suspected.
His hands are dyed green up to his wrists. There’s no denying it. His clumsiness
is there for all to see. Here’s a
perfect example for us as we consider sin. Sin stains our hearts just as dye
had stained Tim Taylor’s hands. There’s nothing you can do to get rid of that
stain. What we may try to do is hide it. Hide it from everyone else. Hide it
from God. Sometimes we may be so convincing that we even hide this stain of sin
from ourselves.
2. This seems to have been the case with David. David was
a man after God’s own heart. David killed Goliath with one smooth stone and a
sling. David was the great king of Israel. But, he became involved in the
sordid matter before us. You know the
story. David committed adultery with Bathsheba. In modern times, people might
say, “What’s the big deal? It’s only sex.”
They may have said it back then too, at least in the pagan world. After all,
David was the king. He could do whatever he wanted. But David? David, a
man after God’s own heart? When David
learned that Bathsheba was expecting a child, he had to find a way to hide his
sin before he was found out. Uriah the Hittite, Bathsheba’s husband, was given
a leave of absence from the war. David wanted to make Uriah think that this
child was Uriah’s, but Uriah would have none of it. His buddies were engaged in
battle. He wouldn’t let them down.
3. David tried everything, but Uriah wouldn’t spend the
night with Bathsheba. Finally, David gave up. He sent Uriah back to the front
and developed a plan to kill him. His plan was subtle. Uriah would be assigned
to the most dangerous spot on the frontline. In an attack, the frontline
soldiers were the first to be killed. In this way, David murdered Uriah the
Hittite with the sword of the Ammonites. Then very quickly, David married
Bathsheba, and now the baby makes it look like David is on the up and up. He
thought he was home free. His sin was hidden. No one would ever find out.
4. Have we been there? Are we there? Is there something
in our past that no one has discovered? Maybe even a sexual sin? We never ask,
and no one should start thinking of anyone but himself or herself, but even in
a Christian congregation, it’s not unlikely that there have been extramarital
affairs. Or maybe activity before we were married—maybe with the ones we’ve now
married, maybe with someone other than our current spouses. Does she or he
know? Maybe there was once an abortion even our parents never knew about. Or
maybe it’s something everybody knows about, a matter of public record, but
we’ve convinced ourselves was never wrong: a divorce. We’ve since gone carelessly
on our way, glad to have the world’s okay.
5. But, David couldn’t hide his sin from God. God knew
what had happened. God was aware of the stain of sin on David’s heart. So God
sent the prophet Nathan to David. Nathan
told David this story: There were two men
in a certain town, one rich and one poor. The rich man had very large numbers
of sheep and cattle. The poor man had only one little pet sheep. He treated it
like a daughter. He even let it eat his own food. When a wealthy visitor came
to the rich man, he took the poor man’s pet lamb and slaughtered it and ate it. Oh, how angry David became! How could someone
be so heartless? The man ought to die! He should pay 4 times what that lamb was
worth. I can imagine that Nathan looked him right in the eye when he said to
David, “You are the man!”
6. You are the man, David! Then David’s hands were out of
his pockets. He could hide it no more. The crushing weight of sin fell on
David’s shoulders as Nathan told him that God would punish him for his sin. Before
your very eyes I will take your wives and give them to one who is close to you.
What you did in secret, I will do in broad daylight before all of Israel. David
was caught red-handed. What could he do?
He turned to Nathan and said, “I have
sinned against the Lord.” Nathan now has David right where he wants him.
Then Nathan said to David, “You can make
things all better by tithing and not missing any more church services.” What
a great opportunity for Nathan to lay out a list of things he would require of
the great King David. Nathan had it made. But that’s not what God directed
Nathan to say. Nathan replied, “The Lord also has put away your sin; you
shall not die.”
7. What a wonderful word rang in David’s ears from the
voice of Nathan when he said, “The Lord also has put away your sin.” Those
same words ring in our ears, especially when we use the liturgy that reads, in
David’s own words from Psalm 32, “I said,
I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord, and You forgave the iniquity of
my sin” (LSB, p 184). That’s what happened here. We’re remembering
this event of God’s wonderful forgiveness to a penitent sinner and know that
forgiveness applies to us as well. Yes,
we could keep our hands in our pockets. We could act as if the Sixth, Eighth,
or other Commandments are unimportant. But we can’t fool God. John writes in
his First Letter, “If we say we have no
sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (1 Jn 1:8). You may
be able to deceive yourself, but you are not going to be able to deceive God. “But if we confess our sins, God, who is
faithful and just, will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all
unrighteousness” (LSB, p 151). This is a wonderful, wonderful
promise from God.
8. John goes on to tell us why all of this is true: “If anyone does sin, we have an advocate with
the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins,
and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world” (1 Jn
2:1–2). This Jesus, nailed to the cross, was nailed there for your sins and mine,
so that Nathan, together with pastors though the centuries, is able to say, “The Lord
also has put away your sin; you shall not die” (2 Sam 12:13). That’s what
the cross is all about. What a great and wonderful thing it is to have the
privilege of being your pastor and sharing those words with you.
9.
How
often we take them for granted. There was a time years ago when, due to an
electrical problem, when a pastor was given the task of announcing on Sunday
morning that there would be no Christian Day School on Monday. A cry and cheer
went up from the congregation such as was never heard before—at least from
those in the 8th grade and below. This gets us to think. “Sunday
after Sunday, the Pastor says, ‘Your
sins are forgiven,’ and there’s no reaction.” Forgiveness is just taken for granted. But the release from sin
is more valuable to us than a day released from school. What a wonderful thing it is that God gives
us the privilege of sharing forgiveness with one another. Sunday after Sunday,
I can say to you as your pastor, “As a
called and ordained servant of Christ, and by His authority, I therefore
forgive you all your sins in the name of the Father and of the † Son and of the
Holy Spirit” (LSB, p 151).
10.
From time to
time people from a non-Lutheran tradition will come to me and ask, “Who are you to forgive sins? You’re just a
man.” Of course, I am just a man. Jesus alone can forgive sins, but he
gives that right and privilege to the Church.
On the night of the resurrection, what is Jesus giving away? He’s giving
the forgiveness of sins. Jesus came to his disciples, breathed on them, and
said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you
forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven” (Jn 20:22). He gives that right
and privilege to the Church. He’s saying, “You
have the right and privilege to forgive sins, because I give it to you.” The
congregation by calling a pastor has authorized him to fill the Office of the
Public Ministry and do this forgiving officially for the entire congregation,
but the right and privilege to forgive comes from Jesus.
11.
Luther’s
Small Catechism asks and then answers, “What
do you believe according to these words? I believe that when the called
ministers of Christ deal with us by His divine command, in particular when they
exclude openly unrepentant sinners from the Christian congregation and absolve
those who repent of their sins and want to do better, this is just as valid and
certain, even in heaven, as if our dear Lord dealt with us Himself.” Luther has some other interesting things
to say about confession. He was very concerned to purge false notions about
private confession. Before Luther and the Reformation, private confession was
thought to be something you had to do. It was ordered and commanded. Luther
explains it with this example that I embellish a little bit: Imagine there are poor miserable beggars. The
authorities order them to go to a certain place at a certain time. For example,
maybe the corner of Cleveland Avenue and Glenlord Road. The authorities never
tell why or what they’ll find there or what benefit it’ll be for them there.
They are just ordered to go. How many beggars would do this? The ones who did
would go grumbling and complaining. Luther says this is the way it used to be,
but it is not the right way. Rather, imagine the beggars are told that on the
corner of Cleveland Avenue and Glenlord Road they will find immense piles of
riches. All the food they can eat and wonderful wealth are there for the
taking. You can be sure the beggars will flock to receive these great gifts
(BEC 23–24). As I read Luther using this
example, I thought of people heading into the Klondike during the gold rush. Amid
the snow and ice, people were climbing mountain passes lined up like ants. In
the Klondike, they imagined finding gold lying on the ground for the taking. In
fact, we do have the gold of forgiveness freely given to us in confession and
absolution.
12.
The Bible
talks about two kinds of confession. The first is the need to confess our sins
to God every day as we do in the Lord’s Prayer. This is a constant ongoing
need. We also confess our sins one to another. When we’ve sinned against
others, we need to confess our sin to them. Again, the Lord’s Prayer implies
this when we pray, “Forgive us our sin
(or trespasses) as we forgive those who trespass against us.” That is
what’s commanded. Private confession isn’t a divine command but given to us as
a rich treasure (BEC 14–15). When you feel sin weighing on your soul, you can
come and receive personal consolation and forgiveness. If something is
troubling you, maybe in your past, maybe something even those closest to you
don’t know about—and maybe they never need to know—but something that’s ever
caused you to say, “Those words of
forgiveness are for other people; I’m too bad,” or if today there’s
something you’ve realized has been wrong all along and for the first time it’s
causing you grief, what an invitation to come and hear the words of forgiveness
directed personally, to you. Your sin—yes, that sin—is forgiven!
13.
Jesus placed
absolution in the hands of his Christian people; we read about it in John 20. I
assume that at night or sometime during the day, you ask God for forgiveness.
He does forgive, but how many times has he answered you with words you can
actually hear: “The Lord also has put
away your sin; you shall not die”? This is why God has given us the
privilege of coming to the pastor. So that Through Human Lips You Can Hear God’s
Word of Forgiveness in Your Ears, whether it be in church on Sunday morning or
in confession in the pastor’s office. In
this way you experience exactly what David experienced. David said, “I have sinned against the Lord.” Nathan was privileged to say
on God’s behalf, “The Lord also has put away your sin; you
shall not die.” Amen.
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