View: Sermon of the Week: Exposed

(In this 48th installment of the UPI series of sermons, the Rev. Christopher S. Esget, pastor of Immanuel Lutheran Church in Alexandria, Va., reflects on the sins God sees and those he doesn't).

This sermon is based on Psalm 32.

We deceive each other and ourselves with failings, lusts -- our sins. This is born into us. What's more, we live in an age of deceit.

This is not Luther's day, when that medieval monk is on a quest to find a gracious God. We don't care about a gracious God, for we need no grace, since we are guilty of nothing.

If anything goes wrong, we excuse it as an "illness" or a "dysfunction" to be treated with drugs or therapy. This is the worst sort of self-deceit.

Meanwhile, we suffer mightily, because we are neither whole nor complete. We know we need something -- but what?

The Psalmist says, "Blessed is the man ... in whose spirit is no deceit" (Psalm 32:2). The person who is self-deceived appears to serve God, but does it not for God's sake but for his own. He is certain he is a Christian, yet does not recognize his spiritual depravity.

We can cover up and adorn ourselves with an outwardly good life such that we think of our own selves as holy, righteous, and pure -- but underneath lies the wicked filth of self-love (Luther).

David had deceived Uriah by trying to get him to sleep with his wife to make it appear that David's baby was really Uriah's. David deceived him again when he arranged to have him murdered at the front.

David deceived himself, though. Hearing the prophet Nathan's parable about the stolen sheep, "righteous" David is outraged, not realizing that he is the object of the tale -- the sinner.

He seemed righteous, taking in poor Bathsheba, so recently widowed, while not acknowledging his adultery, his murder. His deceit was so thorough he no longer recognized himself.

Thus are we. Thus we need Lent. Thus we need to pray penitential Psalms. Thus we need to confess our sins in all their horrid particularity.

For our normal, daily state is like that of brute animals. "Do not be like the horse or the mule, which have no understanding but must be controlled by bit and bridle."

Animals obey only when it suits them, otherwise they are stubborn. In your sin you are stubborn, refusing to confess and change.

We are ruled not by the Holy Spirit but by our passions and desires. In this we conceal our sins even from ourselves.

Amidst all our chatter, about our real sins we keep silent. The Psalmist says, "When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long."

"That is, I did not want to recognize or acknowledge my sin. I thought I was pious. I did not see the deceit of it" (Luther).

Psalm 32 uses four different words for evil: "Unrighteousness" (or "transgression") is our lack of piety before God when we are stripped of what we should have; true faith and good works.

The second, "iniquity," applies to the wicked deeds that follow -- theft, adultery, lying, but also the good works that are done outside of true faith that comes from God's grace.

The third, "sin," is the evil that is in our nature. The fourth, "deceit," is our cover-up of it.

This leads us to false confidence. One can be filled with pride, anger, hatred, impatience; one can slander one's neighbor, all the while claiming to have acted "righteously."

But the truly righteous does not hide his sin -- he acknowledges and exposes it: "Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity."

This is what this Psalm teaches: Those who cover their sin, God will expose. Those who expose their sin, God will cover and hide their iniquity.

Luther put it this way: "I will rebuke myself; then God will praise me. I will degrade myself; then God will honor me. I will accuse myself; then God will acquit me. I will speak against myself; then God will speak for me."

If we confess like David "I have sinned against the Lord," we will enjoy the blessed life. The marks of blessed life are not material goods and worldly success, though.

We read, "Blessed is he whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered" -- not: "Blessed are they who have no sin," or "Blessed are they who work their way out of their sin."

Rather, the Lord tells us that those are blessed whom God forgives by grace.

Who is the Christian? Not the one who "forgives himself," covers over his sins. He is a Christian who incessantly looks at, recognizes, remembers, and condemns his sins.

These are the sins God does not see, recognize or remember.

This does not come without a price. The Hebrew word translated as "forgiven" in the first verse of Psalm 32 really means "to bear, to carry, to lift, to take away."

It can mean a literal burden that one has to haul with one's arms, or it can figuratively mean to bear a load of responsibility.

In the Scriptures, punishments are heaped on a person, and they must be borne. So Cain says to the Lord, "My punishment is greater than I can bear!" And Leviticus 5 says that whoever sins against the commandments, even if he doesn't know it, has to bear the guilt.

So our sins must be borne as a burden. How then can the Psalm say, literally, "Blessed is he whose transgressions are carried [i.e., are borne away]"?

Because Christ bore them for us, as we read in Isaiah, "He was numbered with the transgressors, and he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors."

The deepest meaning of Psalm 32 to us Christians is this: In Christ, God covers the sin of those who expose it. That's what we hear at the beginning of Divine Service when the pastor pronounces Absolution in God's stead -- after our self-examination and our confession.