“The Fourth Sunday in Lent”
Psalm 32
Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord. (1 Timothy 1:2)
During the Sundays in Lent, you’ve received an insert offering some great insights into the Psalms we read responsively each Sunday. I thought that today I’d like us to reflect on what God’s Word has for us in today’s Psalm reading – Psalm 32.
Let us pray…Speak O Lord your words of life to us and may the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to You, our Rock and our Redeemer. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.
If you’d like to follow along as I move through this Psalm, simply go to your bulletin and there you will find Psalm 32 nestled between the Old Testament and the Epistle readings. It’s also in the front of your service books. You might also want to have the Psalm insert in hand. That inserts begins with verse 2.
2 Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity,
and in whose spirit there is no deceit.
Now for me that sounded a bit like one of those beatitudes from Matthew’s Gospel (5), where the first beatitude Jesus mentions is this one…
3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
I find that it’s very easy for us to turn those “blessings” into curses kind of like this: “Okay, if I want God’s blessing, I better learn how to be poor in spirit.” Or in the case of today’s Psalm, “If I want God’s blessing, I had better get rid of all that iniquity and deceit within me.”
Now it’s true, the Bible does tell us a lot about God’s will for us, what we should and shouldn’t be doing. This is often expressed in “law-like” statements. However, the thing about God’s Law is that trying to fulfill it either leads us to pride or despair. These are the two ditches that we often fall into.
Pride happens when I hear those words, “Get rid of all that iniquity and deceit” and then imagine that I can or even have somehow accomplished it or at least gotten pretty close. I then look to God for the blessing sticker, proud of my accomplishments. I’m a good person. This is pride in its worst sense.
On the other hand, you might hear that verse…
2 Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity,
and in whose spirit there is no deceit.
and it becomes like a high jump bar, set at 8 feet, or for some of us now, at 2 feet, but in any case, too high for us to achieve and this then leads us to despair. There is no hope for me. I’ll never be able to do that. I am lost. Woe is me. That’s the ditch of despair.
So, if we are to stay on the narrow road of blessing between those two ditches of pride and despair, God’s Word going to have to turns us to another Psalm (130:3) where the writer says:
If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities,
O Lord, who could stand?
In other words, I can’t stand on this road of blessing on my own because my life is indeed filled with iniquity, with sin. And my sinful self, with the support of the devil and the world, constantly wants to deceive me into believing that I am a good person, that somehow my goodness outweighs my iniquities or on the other hand, that I am without hope of ever being what God or I would have me be.
One of the reasons we come to worship every week is to correct these deceptions of the devil; to get reoriented toward God’s true north. That occurs every Sunday as we begin with our confession and absolution which reminds us that neither of these views are true; that neither am I as good or as hopeless as I think.
God uses the entire Divine Service to help us walk on that narrow road of blessing so that we do not fall into pride or despair.
Now that could never happen apart from Christ. When we read the Psalms, we need to read them with Christ in mind, with Christ as the center. In this case…
2 Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity,
and in whose spirit there is no deceit.
The only man whom God counted no iniquity, in and of himself, and in whose spirit there was no deceit was Jesus, God’s only Son. And yet Jesus doesn’t run the race on that road of life so that he can stand by himself on some gold medal platform while look down on us losers. Instead, Jesus enters into the muck race of our lives, takes our iniquity and deceit upon himself and dies for us on that cross so that we can be winners too. It is only as we stand by faith within the shadow of His cross, within the blood of Christ poured out upon us for our cleansing that there is forgiveness, the remission of our iniquity, and our deceit; that there victory over sin, death and the devil, only because of Christ and what He has done for you and for me.
This is the blessing the psalmist speaks of in those first two verses:
1 Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven,
whose sin is covered.
2 Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity,
and in whose spirit there is no deceit.
We cannot stand on that road of blessing one day, one hour, one minute, one second without first realizing who we are apart from Christ as sinners and secondly, who we are by faith in Christ Jesus, as His forgiven saints. To forget either of those realities, our sinful nature and our Redeemer, is to do damage to our soul. The Psalmist reminds us of this in verses 3 and 4:
3 For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away
through my groaning all day long.
4 For day and night your hand was heavy upon me;
my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer.
When we fall into pride, thinking we are good enough on our own or even as we despair of our inability to be good enough without the hope of Christ, sin corrodes our lives much like the unwashed dirt and salt of winter roads on our vehicles. Unconfessed, known sin weighs heavily upon us – oppresses us, but even the general road salt of sin unconfessed, builds ups and will eventually eat into the very essence of our lives.
King David knew this very well – David, the murderer and adulterer, and it is why he writes…
5 I 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.
Perhaps more famously David, after his sinful encounter with Bethsheba and the murder of her husband had been revealed by Nathan the prophet, David writes in Psalm 51 which was part of our Introit today:
3 For I know my transgressions,
and my sin is ever before me.
4 Against you, you only, have I sinned
and done what is evil in your sight,
so that you may be justified in your words
and blameless in your judgment.
5 Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity,
and in sin did my mother conceive me.
Did you hear that…sin comes into us from the very beginning. Those cute little babies are not innocent until proven guilty. They are infected with the same monster disease that resides in each one of us, every day, even if you’re sitting at home alone. It’s still there.
Repentance, which I’ve talked a lot about these last couple of weeks, and the verbal expression of our repentance in confession is best summed up in these verses we often read from 1 John…
9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 10 If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.
However, confession of sin is not natural to us. By nature, we are more like Adam and Eve who after falling for the devil’s temptation went and hid themselves. Or as St. John records Jesus saying (John 3:19-20),
19 And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. 20 For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed.
And yet, as the Word and Holy Spirit convert the heart to faith, the believer no longer fears the light, but rather sees God’s light in Christ, as a refuge for healing. Again, listen to what the Psalm reading records…
6 Therefore 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.
7 You are a hiding place for me;
you preserve me from trouble;
you surround me with shouts of deliverance.
Amidst what can be the overwhelming and destructive nature of sin, the believer can pray, calling upon the very God, who as we heard on Ash Wednesday is (Joel 2:13)…
slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love; and he relents over disaster.
What a comfort it is to know this God in the face of Christ who would rather die for our sins than condemn us in our sin.
In Christ God freely offers forgiveness to all, but to those who come in faith, repenting of their sins, there is not only forgiveness but life transformation. To us Christ promises the Holy Spirit who comes to instruct us in the way, the truth and the life of Christ. This is what David wrote of…
8 I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go;
I will counsel you with my eye upon you.
We are never left alone to fend for ourselves or to return to the battlefield of life on our own. Our Champion always goes before us and the Holy Spirit equips us to do battle against sin, death and the devil, alongside our Champion. This is what St. Paul reminds us of in his letter to the Ephesians 6…
10 Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. 11 Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. 12 For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. 13 Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm. 14 Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, 15 and, as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace. 16 In all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one; 17 and take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, 18 praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication.
Even when we are armored up, the devil does not leave the redeemed alone. In fact, it sometimes appears that as soon God has done His good work in Christ, baptizing us into His family, and equipping us for the work of ministry, the devil quickly works to try and strip us of that godly armor, convincing us that we do not need the very things God has commanded and gifted us with.
David warns us not to ignore God’s instruction or as Luther would explain in the Third Commandment:
We should fear and love God so that we do not despise preaching and His Word, but hold it sacred and gladly hear and learn it.
Perhaps David’s words in this Psalm today are a little more in your face:
9 Be not like a horse or a mule, without understanding,
which must be curbed with bit and bridle,
or it will not stay near you.
Do you need the Law to whip you into place? The Law may do that, but it can never motivate you to follow Jesus, to trust in him. Only one who has heard and believed the good news of God’s love and grace in Christ Jesus will respond in faith by listening to God’s Word and obeying His will with joy.
It is to such a person that God’s blessing comes, not to one who is perfect, but to one who is perfectly forgiven in Christ. The Psalmist comes full circle and ends his prayer:
10 Many are the sorrows of the wicked,
but steadfast love surrounds the one who trusts in the Lord.
11 Be glad in the Lord, and rejoice, O righteous,
and shout for joy, all you upright in heart!
Apart from Christ all is sorrow and yet that doesn’t mean that we who are in Christ are without sorrows and do not experience the wickedness of this world. Even so, in Christ we are surrounded by His steadfast love which by faith enables us to be glad in the Lord, to rejoice amidst whatever may come our way because we are covered in Christ’s righteousness and therefore, we can shout for joy as we await the Day of the Lord.
In the name of Jesus +. Amen.