The Joy of His Salvation :: Psalm 51:1-12
[Lord,] Return for me the joy of your salvation (v. 12).
Today we are going to do something different. Today for our sermon meditation, we’re gonna return to the beginning, return to your confession. I almost always prefer preaching on one of the lectionary readings to continue our journey to the conclusion: absolution. But today (as always), God has given us a divine gift in our Introit ... our entrance into His service ... that we’ve probably forgotten about ... a return to the joy of our salvation ... his absolution.
Do you remember that joy?
Did you already lose it?
Too often we Lutherans forget it and lose it ... if we were listening at all. Then too many of us mourn our lot throughout the rest of the Divine Service. It is so easy for us to stop at Confession.
To begin with, too many of us think that confession is too Catholic, or something ... as if we aren’t catholic in the truest sense, catholics who confess their sins ... and in faith receive absolution. So we shy away from it. Too often we are frightened of confession, of exposing our sins ... frightened of dragging them into the light of God’s Word to be drowned in the waters of baptism, frightened that we will be punished. So we hide them ... or at the very least ... pay no attention to them. And there in the darkness of our heart, they sit, slowly killing us ... until we beg and plead again, have mercy on me, O God.
Why do we do this to ourselves? Have we already forgotten that our Lord Jesus Christ has forgiven our sins and cleansed us from all unrighteousness (1 John 1:9), that he has in fact returned for me the joy of his salvation?
It’s a terrible curse we face ... Doubting the joy of his salvation: the forgiveness of sins. Doubting that he is really here with us, in the Divine Service, his Divine Service ... where two or three are gathered (Mt 18:20). ... Doubting that he is always with us (Mt 28:20), in his temple, and is in fact serving us extra measures of grace ... the joy of his salvation.
Yes, it’s a terrible curse we face ... so hear the theme of our Introit today, lest you forget it.
CONFESSION AND ABSOLUTION LIFT AWAY THE BURDEN OF GUILT AND SHAME AND LEAD US TO THE JOY OF HIS SALVATION.
For about a year after his terrible sin of adultery, David had forgotten this too. He tried to bury his past. But finally, after being called to repentance, and receiving absolution, he wrote a Psalm about it, Psalm 51. David otherwise is just like you and me. He was not a particularly evil man ... at least not any more than the rest of us. He was as 1 Samuel 13 reminds us, a man after [God’s] own heart (1 Sam 13:14). But like all of us, David got caught in public sin. And not just one sin. But sin on top of sin ... adultery ... deceit ... murder ... and even blasphemy. His sin so frightened him, he hardened his heart against repentance, even as his conscience burdened him. Thus he cried in Psalm 32[:3], when I kept silent, my bones wasted away.
What a terrible curse we burden ourselves with ... keeping silent ... letting the sin in our lives fester. First, lust from afar ... like Internet pornography ... then adultery, and the lies and deceit and murder to cover all of that up, and finally blasphemy, denying that you have even sinned.
How many sins are haunting you in your lives?
How many sins have you refused to repent of? Or paid lip service to your confession?
It’s a terrible curse we burden ourselves with. As Luther wrote in our Confessions, when holy people still having and feeling original sin ... and daily repenting and striving against it ... happen to fall into these manifest sins (as David did [2 Sam 11]), then faith and the Holy Spirit have left them.” [SA III III 43-44]
What a horrifying thought! Is that not a crushing blow to your sense of pride?
This is why we have returned to the beginning ... returned to our confession ... returned to hear God’s Word of Absolution again, the word that gives us faith to receive the joy of his salvation. Too often we gloss right over it at the beginning of God’s Service, never paying even one minute of attention to what is actually happening.
Even if you were paying attention ... admit it ... you may well have started thinking ... well, look at what I’ve done! ... I have returned to the joy of “MY” salvation. The Pietists within us love to rationalize that we can actually repent of our sin all by ourselves as we set out to prepare ourselves for this holy meal that awaits us, as if we can make ourselves holy and right with God in OUR service to him! The problem is ... there is no merit or worthiness of OUR own that will ever return the joy of his salvation, let alone restore it.
So today, brothers and sisters in Christ, repent. Mourn sin and recognize your need for a savior, just like David. In faith, our Lord will return to you the joy of his salvation. He works repentance within you, lifting your guilt and shame through his means of grace ... baptism, absolution, and the Lord’s Supper. He has done all of this to you, for you, through you. Don’t think for a second, this is anything more than your cooperation that he initiated to begin with.
Like every other journey, ours has a starting point. It begins as we gather around God’s Word and Sacraments, gathered in his Name ... the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ... the name above every name ... the name of the one who serves us ... to deliver to us his means of grace in his Divine Service to impart life and the joy of his salvation.
He has brought us back into the remembrance of our Baptism by those 15 words. What follows our remembrance ... or I should say, his remembrance of us ... is the new life that God has raised us into. As Luther recounts in the Large Catechism: Here you see that Baptism ... comprehends the third Sacrament, which has been called repentance ... as it is really nothing else than Baptism. For what else is repentance but an earnest attack upon the old man [that his lusts be restrained] and (an entrance) into a new life? Therefore, if you live in repentance, you walk in Baptism, which not only signifies such a new life, but also produces, begins, and exercises it. For therein are given grace, the Spirit, and power to suppress the old man, so that the new man may come forth and become strong. [LC V 74-76]
In the practice of the Lutheran church, the Sacrament of Holy Baptism takes place at the beginning of Divine Service so that each of us will be ushered into the kingdom of the heavens as soon as possible ... where our Lord begins serving us with the joy of his salvation.
We then confess our sins ... in faith ... at the start of God’s Service so that we would receive his forgiveness via Holy Absolution at the earliest possible moment and that we may proceed through his liturgy with a lightened heart to hear God’s word and receive God’s gifts with great joy and thanksgiving. We should hold in high and great esteem God’s Word in the Absolution part of Confession. Why ... absolution is the joy of his salvation.
And this is that salvation fully realized: Our Lord Jesus Christ has taken away your sin ... all of it. He has made your sin his own. He has paid the bloody price for it with his innocent suffering and death. Though he deserved only your worship and honor, our sin killed him.
But in dying on the cross, he has freed you to confess your sins on his account knowing that he who is faithful and just has forgiven your sins and is purging you with hyssop, making you clean, washing you in baptism, making you whiter than snow (v. 7), giving you the joy of his salvation ... eternal life ... secured in the marriage between the Lamb and his church. Your forgiveness is absolute because of what Christ has done.
For weeks you have been hearing me preach almost endlessly about our need to complete his Divine Service to us every Lord’s Day. Each week we return to the beginning ... confessing our sins and receiving absolution ... there is joy in that salvation. But our journey isn’t supposed to end there. Until he comes again, he longs to deliver the joy of his salvation in the Supper that nourishes our faith and delivers the tangible forgiveness of sins. He longs to unite us with the first Christians who received this every time they met. As our confessions say, whoever would gladly receive grace and comfort should drive himself and allow no one to frighten him away.
Nathan didn’t withhold God’s forgiveness from David ... He didn’t force David to do acts of penance first to receive that forgiveness. Nor do we. Nathan didn’t make David wait another week to receive that forgiveness. Nor should we. Instead, he modeled Christ’s love for us, quickly pronouncing God’s absolution ... and delivering the means of grace.
And this is good news for us, because with the merciful he shows himself merciful; with the blameless, he shows himself blameless. He saves a humble people. (2 Sam 22:36).
Jesus, by His death and resurrection, sets our hearts right with our Father in Heaven and then leads us through the liturgy back to the marriage feast of the lamb in his kingdom where the joy of his salvation never ends.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, the eternal feast awaits. Come as often as you can. Receive it with joy, knowing that in this meal, the joy of his salvation is yours; that he sustains in us a willing spirit ... in Jesus’ Name.