Lent 1

Psalm 32 [Matthew 4:1-11] - Invocavit, Lent I - February 26, 2012 

Blessed Is He Whose Transgression Is Forgiven

A while back there was a popular movie that I remember watching.  In it, the main character was a crooked lawyer who made a living getting criminals off the hook.  But then something magical happened that made it impossible for this man to tell lies.  A lawyer who couldn’t lie.  Well it made for a pretty funny movie at least.  In one scene, right after this lawyer lost his ability to lie, a faithful customer of his called him on the phone.  He had just committed yet another crime, and, wanting to avoid punishment, he asked for legal advice.  He received from his lawyer, however, a helplessly honest response: “Quit breaking the law!” 

What good advice.  There are consequences to breaking the law.  It’s wise to obey it.  When one obeys the law, he has nothing to fear from those who enforce it.  We avoid all sorts of punishment by doing what the one who is able to punish tells us to do. 

It’s the same with the law of God.  The law teaches us how to live good and pleasing life before God and man.  Scripture teaches us that those who do according to what God’s law demands will live; those who don’t will die.  We don’t.  Therefore, the law reveals in us exactly what the law condemns.  And the wages of what it reveals is death.  This is the relationship between the law and the sinner.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we just didn’t sin?  Think of all the heartache and pain that we bring to ourselves and to others that we could avoid.  We agree that the law is good and wise.  It’s beneficial for everyone if we all just obey it.  Perhaps that’s what we should do.  But our agreement to what is good is not the same as doing what is good.  Praising virtues is not the same as being virtuous.  We have to actually obey the law in order to avoid its threats and earn its blessings. 

All of us here, in some way or another, regularly benefit from the blessings promised to those who obey the law – because we all, to some degree or another, obey the law.  We know this is true from experience.  There’s much blessing in living a life free from drunkenness, fornication, infidelity, laziness, and so forth.  The young man who resists sexual temptation and who instead honors the marriage bed finds that his future marriage benefits because of his self-control.  The woman who avoids conversation that tears down her sister and who instead defends her against petty gossip will earn the respect and trust of her friends who will then be more inclined to do the same for her.  The man who does not cheat and steal finds satisfaction in the fruit of his own labor.  There is much reward in such personal discipline.  Blessed is he who resists temptation, who keeps on the straight and narrow.  

But these blessings are only temporal.  We can’t take them with us when we die.  Of course we’re all able to obey the law externally by guarding our hands and our mouths; in fact it’s good for society when this happens.  But this righteousness that we are able to perform only avails before man.  The law requires much more than that.  The law requires perfect and willing obedience from pure and loving hearts.  Have you held back your hand from evil?  But to what desires has your heart fallen prey?  Have you held your tongue?  But what uncharitable judgment have you harbored against your brother or sister?  Have you worked for what you have?  But what treasure have you idolized here on earth?  The law requires a righteousness that avails before God. 

But the law can’t bring that about!  It can dangle the blessings it promises in front of us.  But it can’t give them to us.  It can teach us what is required.  But it can’t give us the ability to do it.  St. Paul wrote in Romans 8 that the law was weak because of our sin.  This means a sinner can’t use the law to make himself righteous before God.  That’s not what the law is for.  When it comes to making sinners into saints, the law is weak.  No, more than that – the law is powerless – because we are powerless.  The law retains, however, its own peculiar strength for the use that God has given it.  The law has the power to kill.  It shows us our sin and what we deserve because of it.  The law silences all excuses and withholds its greatest blessing.  Oh, if only we just didn’t sin. 

But listen, dear Christians, to what the Psalmist teaches us today.  He does not sing of the blessedness of him who knows no sin. That’s a song that the law will teach us.  No, the Psalmist sings of the blessedness of him whose sin is forgiven, who apart from any work that he has done is freely counted righteous by God. 

“Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.  Blessed is the man against whom the LORD imputes no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit.” 

When God’s law first does its work on sinners, it is true that we are left speechless and without excuse.  But God doesn’t want us to remain speechless, as though by ignoring the accusations, the condemnation will just go away.  When we keep silent, the law does not keep silent.  It keeps accusing.  The condemnation will not just go away.  It remains as long as our sin remains.  We need our sin to be taken away.  We need someone else to bear it for us.  We need to know this need.  We need to know how serious our disobedience to God is in our daily life – in our heart of hearts – and how dangerous it is to keep silent about it.  Because when we do, we remain sinners.  God wants us to confess our sins to Him. 

David complains in the Psalm that when he kept silent, his bones grew old.  When he kept his sins to himself as though he could deal with them on his own, his strength dried up like by the heat of summer.  But he remained a sinner.  God’s hand was heavy upon him and it hurt.  And it’s because God loved him.  And God’s hand is often heavy upon us as well for the same reason.  It is for one gracious purpose: always to direct us to where His hand was heaviest, to where our sin and all the wrath of God was borne for us on the cross.  God taught David in the same way that He teaches us that we should not ever try on our own to cover what His holy law exposes in us.  He wants to cover it for us.   And He does a much better job than we do. 

“Blessed is the man … in whose spirit there is no deceit.”  Blessed is he indeed, because the one who does not deceive himself is the one who confesses his sins to God who is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 

In our Gospel lesson this morning, Jesus faced the devil.  He was just baptized.  He had just committed Himself to earning our salvation.   And this is how He needed to do it.  It was the Holy Spirit who led Him to be tempted by the devil in order that He might resist his wiles for us and live the life that pleases God.  And He did.  When we recall our status as children of God, we do not recount all of our successes against temptation.  Let God reward the good that we do in faith.  No, we consider our failures.  We consider where our heart was a million miles away from loving our neighbor even as we did the outward work.  We consider how despite the willingness of the spirit, the weakness of our flesh has succumbed time and again to the devil’s lies and lures.  We consider our unrighteousness so that we might clearly see and love the righteousness that Jesus fulfilled in our place as our holy Substitute.  We see our blessedness not only in His perfectly obedient life, but in His precious death that fulfilled the Father’s wrath which the law had revealed against us. 

Jesus resisted the devil by the word of God.  And He gives us His victory by the same word.  And so that is what we cling to as well.  It is Him to whom we run in prayer when the devil assaults us.  And He rescues us from trouble.   As the Psalm says:

“For this cause everyone who is godly shall pray to You in a time when You may be found; Surely in a flood of great waters they shall not come near him. You are my hiding place; You shall preserve me from trouble; You shall surround me with songs of deliverance.” 

This is what it means to be blessed.  This is what the godly do.  We bring our sins and our guilty consciences, and everything that makes us ashamed to come before God, and we confess it.  We confess it because we know where God is found.  He is found always where His Son Jesus Christ is standing there before Him showing what He has done to atone for everything that the law revealed in us.  Everything!  Surely in a flood of great waters, surely when all the evils of a bad conscience, and all the dead-on accusations of the law rise up to drag us back down to the pit of despair where we are forced to keep silent, surely in this flood of great waters, they shall not come near us.  Because Christ is our hiding place.  The waters of Baptism have already buried us into His death.  In His wounds we always find refuge, and there we are preserved from everything that can trouble our consciences or grieve our hearts.  This is blessedness. 

To the world this is a strange blessedness.  With all its laws and good ideas and wise rules that punish and reward, this appears to be the greatest miscarriage of justice that one can possibly imagine.  The innocent Son of God became Man to suffer and die for disobedient sinners who can’t offer a thing in return.  The world sings a different tune than we do.  They sing the song that the law teaches.  “Blessed is he who has no sin.”  No kidding.  We already know what we could avoid if we just didn’t sin.    

But Scripture does not teach us to sing about the blessedness of such a man.  Instead we sing of that Man’s suffering and death.  We do not sing of the blessedness of Him who resisted the devil’s every temptation until we have first sung of Him who redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us (Gal. 3:13).  We sing of Him who truly knew no sin, who became sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him (2 Cor. 5:21).  That’s the song that we sing.  That’s the song of deliverance that our faithful God surrounds us with. 

While we still tarry here on earth, while our spirit continues in the battle against our flesh and the devil, the law will also continue to show us its demands and accuses us.  But let us not answer the law as though we were subject to it.  We do not depend on the law for the blessing that it promises.  “We answer not to you, O law.  We answer to God.”   And so we speak to God these words that the Holy Spirit once gave to David, “I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions to the Lord.’  And You forgave the iniquity of my sin.”  Let the law keep demanding an answer; we don’t need its blessing.  We have already the blessing of our Savior Jesus Christ.  He fulfilled the law in our place, and gives to us not only the blessedness of the man who lives a righteous life, but He shares also with us the glorious inheritance of the Son of God Himself. 

“Many sorrows shall be to the wicked, but he who trusts in the Lord, mercy shall surround him.”  That’s the blessed life of a Christian.                  
In Jesus’ name, Amen.