Forgiveness.  Yes, please!  Forgiveness sought only after God forces my hand.  Ugh.  Yes.  But when we finally do confess, once the Spirit has so worked upon us, into us, that we are ready to confess, we have the great comfort of knowing it is this same Holy Spirit who also gives us the words of confession.  God leads us to confession and guides us through confession so that He can grant us that precious gift of forgiveness.  He can’t forgive what we won’t confess.

O, the joy, the peace, of forgiveness; the hope and encouragement that come with forgiveness.  We long for the blessing of God, the presence of God, the knowledge of the love of God.  God is willing to grant us all this, to pour, abundantly.  The key to open all this blessing is confession: our heartfelt, faithful acknowledgment that we have not been who God calls us to be and that God alone can set us right.  Confession is also a call to remember that it is God’s good pleasure to set us right—He wants to, if we would but want Him to.  Confession, at heart, is always confession of our need for God.

“Blessed is the one / whose transgressions are forgiven, / whose sins are covered” (32:1).  Removed from sight.  To be removed from sight, though, a thing must first be seen.  God sees; there is nothing He does not see.  He wants us to see, too.  How hard it is, to see our sin!  We don’t want to; we avoid it, assemble excuses, amass justifications, point fingers.  We can be practically blind to our sin, especially our besetting sin: the one others can see so clearly but we barely.  You have one.  I have one . . . more.  It isn’t true just because others say it’s so, but if those closest to us keep telling us it is so, well, it might just be.  Ever watch an episode of Intervention?

“Blessed is the one / whose sin the Lord does not count against them / and in whose spirit is no deceit” (32:2).  In the days just before the end of the old Northern Kingdom, God sent the prophet Hosea.  Through His prophet, God called His people to hear their own words, their own deceitful words, in relation to God: people who said, to others and in their own hearts: “no offense has been found in me that would be sin” (Hosea 12:8).  Oh, I may have offended, sure, in little ways, this and that—nobody’s perfect!—but I haven’t done anything that could be considered sin.  I’ve done questionable things, but I tell you, hand on my heart, God’s truth, I haven’t sinned.  Said the sinner.  “Blessed is the one [. . .] in whose spirit is no deceit.”  We’ll never get anywhere in the faith by practicing self-deception.  But who does that?  And who can reveal that this is exactly what we have been doing?

“When I kept silent, / my bones wasted away / through my groaning all day long” (32:3).  Even when we keep silent, keep our secrets—from others, but never from God—God Himself is at work, through our very bodies, to bring us to recognition, to confession and repentance.  Not every illness or ailment is the judgment of God, yet, I tremble to say, it seems to me God can work in that way, too, if He so chooses.  If God can cause the very stones to proclaim His glory, surely He can cause our very bones to proclaim our iniquity.  And sometimes those stones are hardened hearts.

“For day and night / your hand was heavy on me; / my strength was sapped / as in the heat of summer” (32:4).  God won’t let up!  He wants you to do something: not just confess your sin to the walls or your journal, the skies or even a close friend, but to Him, to God the only one who can do something about your sin, who has, who can do something to bring you relief, and has, to offer you comfort, restoration, a future and a hope.  Jesus didn’t come just to teach principles for moral living!  He came to lay his hands on you, God’s hands on your heart, and bring you home.

Sin never strengthens us; sin emboldens us for more sin.  Marijuana used to be labeled a gateway drug.  In these wasted times, I don’t hear much of that sort of talk anymore, but I still suspect that playing with Mary Jane can lead soon enough, and too often does soon enough lead to introductions to more potent, horrible things.  We’ve come across too many stories, seen too many images of too late.  If we won’t take warning from all these?  By the grace of God, people do, we have: “Then I acknowledged my sin to you / and did not cover up my iniquity. / I said, ‘I will confess / my transgressions to the Lord’” (32:5).  And then what?  Heavenly silence?  Holy wrath?  God brings us to the point when we can no longer cover over our sin—the rags have rotted away.  I will confess!  And from where does the will come?  God who gives us the will forgives those who will confess (32:5).  God is ready to forgive, so ready!  He cannot forgive us for sins we will not confess.  If we won’t, if we don’t admit it, He won’t, can’t forgive it.  Forgiveness comes and takes effect in us when we recognize and admit that we need forgiveness because how we have been living requires it.  We need the forgiveness of God because we have offended God.

Have you ever offended God?  It seems as if there are believers who don’t really believe so.  They aren’t murderers or molesters!  They aren’t thieves or liars!  They aren’t adulterers!  They’re nice!  They’re good people with good hearts.  With that attitude, why bother with Christ?  What can Jesus do for them that they haven’t already done for themselves?  You’ve got to forgive yourself?  You’ve got to learn that you are forgiven, then live your forgiveness.

God’s house is open for mercy; God’s arms are open to forgive; God’s Word is always assuring us we already have forgiveness, if we would only receive it and not walk away.  One of the more unpleasant facts of existence, also amply illustrated by Scripture, is that there are those who walk away.  Now, there’s still time, for them to return.  It’s not too late, but I cannot say it will never be.

We hear this in the psalm: “let all the faithful pray to you / while you may be found; / surely the rising of the mighty waters / will not reach them” (32:6).  Seek the Lord while He may be found—while He makes Himself available to be found, before He comes to settle all accounts.  Call upon Him while He is near.  Will He ever be far?  The sinner sins his or her way further and further from God, though God is always near.  He is near for mercy and forgiveness until He is near for judgment.  We don’t talk about judgment and don’t like to talk about it; we can barely tolerate hearing of it.  We love Jesus telling us not to judge.  (We just know in our hearts he’s not talking to us.)  We hope he might be extending that injunction to his Father in heaven.  But I can’t stand up here and preach with any integrity or faithfulness to the Word of God if I ignore the fact of judgment.  The waters came, beloved, the mighty waters.  We want them to be waters of blessing, baptismal waters, and they are until the day God applies them for another purpose, as He did and will.  But we don’t want to think about this and we’d really rather not believe it.

Those who have forgiveness, these have the favor of God, just as Noah, who, though destruction swirled all around, was safe in the ark: the ark Noah spent his life building, the ark God provided for Noah.  “You are my hiding place; / you will protect me from trouble / and surround me with songs of deliverance” (32:7).  Surrounded with songs of deliverance.  It’s been three months but for a moment let me direct us back to the glories and joys of Christmas, to the angel choirs, singing salvation, singing God’s favor: “glory to God, and on earth peace among those with whom He is pleased” (Lk 2:14).  The angels are singing protection from trouble because they are singing God’s Word, Jesus Christ, our hiding place, in whom all our sins, our many, our ugly sins, are all covered, covered by his love, covered, beloved, by his blood.

“I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; / I will counsel you with my loving eye on you” (32:8).  We need instruction in the way because we do not recognize it by ourselves and do not desire it without instruction—we need to be helped to see its desirability, superiority, reliability.  God pledges Himself to show us, to put us on the sure path, give us signposts along the way, to help us up when we stumble, help us out when we get stuck, to help us back when we wander—prone to wander, Lord! I feel it.  God does not abandon us; His loving eye is always upon us, and why?  To bless us; to use all that happens and every choice we make, good or bad, to result—in His time, by His mysterious means—in blessing for us: growth, maturity, perseverance, faith, charity, hope, love, to grow to the stature of Christ Jesus in whom we move and live and have our being.

Every choice we make.  God teaches us because we are teachable, but when we harden our hearts and stiffen our necks, will God then go away and leave us to our own way?  Finally?  Thank God?  By no means!  God has pledged Himself to our salvation, and save us He will, by the gentle guidance of the Word or by a firm hand on bit and bridle.  God means to have our attention.  How shall we give it?

Let us be resolved to give in the spirit of the one whom God gave for us.  This is a resolution we can keep more and more because of that same one given for us.  To be in him is to live this resolve, albeit imperfectly, with many stumblings.  To be in Christ is to live this resolve, day by day.  This resolve, also, is God’s gift to us in Christ, another outworking of His “unfailing love” (32:10): always there, always at work, accomplishing His purposes, fulfilling His will.  In this love we are saved and safe.  In Jesus, we are forgiven.

Now to the One who by the power at work within us is able to do far more abundantly than all we can ask or imagine, to God be glory in the Church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever.