Sean C. Capparuccia

2nd Sunday in Lent

2 Samuel 12:1–13; Psalm 32; Romans 8:26-39; Luke 18:9–14

“Son of God, to Thee we look, Teach us the mysterious Book;

Take our weakness by the hand, Make our dullness understand.”[1]

In the hymn we just sang, Augustus Toplady wrote, “Be of sin the double cure, Save from wrath and make me pure.” Last week we discussed temptation and how the Devil, Satan – the Adversary – is hell-bent on disrupting our relationship with God. By any means necessary, but always within the permissive will of our Sovereign Father, he will do all that he can to drive a wedge between you and God. So jealous is he over God’s love for you, his only motivation for existence is to make you believe that God does not love you, that God cannot love you, and that God should not love you. And, as we said last week, his power is limited. He would love to just be able to tell you these things and know you’ll believe it. I mean, he could say, “Hey, you, I just want you to know, I am an angel, I have been in God’s very presence before even Adam was created. I have actually been in the throne room of God and, yeah, He doesn’t love you. You are nothing to Him.” But it isn’t that simple. There has to be some catalyst for believing it. And he learned very quickly just how he could do it: He could tempt you to sin. And when you sin, you will feel God’s wrath.

Consciousness of Sin

In Genesis 3, after Adam and Eve had eaten of the forbidden tree, it says “they knew that they were naked, and they sewed fig-leaves together and made themselves loin coverings” (3:7). Isn’t it interesting that they covered their loins when they realized they were naked?

There’s the story of a group of friends, guys, who were spending the afternoon at a secluded part of a lake. They were skinny dipping and having a good ‘ol time. Nothing weird, just splashing around. Anyway, up comes a boat with several girls in it whom they recognized as girls from school. All the boys jumped out of the water and threw their skivvies on except for one who put his shorts over his head. Later, his friends asked him why on earth he put his shorts on his head. He said, “Because those girls all know what my face looks like.” Some people just think quicker than others.     

In the case of Adam and Eve, up to this point they had no shame in front of each other or in front of God. But the one sin destroyed “the natural [and perfect] connection between soul and body… the body ceased to be the pure abode of the spirit in fellowship with God…”[2]  Here, for the first time, they felt ashamed to expose those parts of themselves which removed natural impurities. It wasn’t at all about “sexual awareness” or anything like that as some tend to believe. But, in this first sin it was the consciousness of guilt that was awakened. And they hid themselves in the bushes. And then God called to Adam, “Adam, where are you?”  As if God didn’t know where they were. Oh, God knew where they were and what they had done. But there was something more in what God was asking, wasn’t there? He was asking Adam for confession.

Just this past week I was in the other room in my house and I heard something break in the kitchen. I gave it a couple minutes and then went in and there was my grandson standing by the counter looking very sheepish. And under his little hands was a ceramic coaster that had been laying there. I asked him if he had dropped the coaster. He said, “Yes, but I put it back together. It’s alright now, Papi.” It didn’t look broken, until I examined it further and saw that he had taped it back together with Scotch tape. Sure enough, it had broken right in half. I wasn’t too upset; it’s not like he broke one of my books or anything. But how could I be upset when he readily admitted what he had done and tried his best to fix it?

King David, now, well he was a bit more reluctant to admit his guilt, wasn’t he? The sin of King David, his impregnating Bathsheba when she was already the wife of Uriah, is one of the darkest stains in David’s life. In verse 3-4 of our Psalm today David said, “When I kept silent about my sin, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night Thy hand was heavy upon me; my vitality was drained away as with a fever-heat in summer” (32:3-4). “What a killing thing is sin!” writes Spurgeon, “It is a pestilent disease! A fire in the bones.”[3] 

I don’t know how it is when you get into an argument, or a fight, with your spouse, but I’ll tell you how it is with me. I do something, or maybe she does, it’s usually me, and pride steps in and says, “I’m not admitting nothing! She’s going to come running after me soon enough.” An hour goes by. Then two. Maybe by nightfall there’s no movement coming from her side. Then she doesn’t inform me that she’s going to take a shower, but I hear the water running. Then she doesn’t tell me she’s going to bed, but I see that the lights are off. Then I’m starting to feel this ache in the pit of my stomach. If it goes until the next day, I’m feeling it in my chest and in my bones. Something’s gotta give. I tell you, when there is genuine love there, you feel the separation, don’t you? And how much more so with God?  David cried out, “When I kept silent about my sin, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long.” He was keenly aware, not just in his mind or in his heart, but in his body, that something had to give.  The weight of sin, that thing, whatever it was – done in thought, word, or deed – that drives the wedge between us and God is a very real and tangible presence. And we must cry out, “Save me from Your wrath, O Lord, and make me pure!”

Culpability of Sin

Confession is like finally going to the mechanic when the check engine light has been on for six months. Some of us put tape over the light. Spiritually speaking, that’s not repair — that’s denial. Psalm 32 tells us that the engine will eventually seize up.

In this particular instance in David’s life, as he was wasting away inside but hiding it from everyone else, the prophet Nathan finally confronted him. Faced with the truth of his own sin he could do nothing else but cry out. He “acknowledged his sin and his iniquity was not hid from God” (Ps. 32:5).

We have inherited the guilt of Adam. We can all say, as Toplady wrote, “Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it! Prone to leave the God I love…”  Now here is where Satan likes to step in and twist things up a bit. He will say, “Look at what you’ve done! Now God is hiding His face from you. You’ve done it now. I told you He couldn’t love someone as worthless and prone to sin as you. You think you’re a Christian and want to do great things for His kingdom? Why would He ever use someone as weak as you in His service?” Have you ever heard him say that to you? I know for sure that I have. But let me say it again, Satan, the father of lies, has one goal: to disrupt and to distort our relationship with the Father of Truth.

Confession of Sin

So, naturally, the worst thing we can do, from Satan’s standpoint, is to confess our sin. To say with the tax-collector in the Temple, “Lord, have mercy on me, the sinner” (Lk 18:13). To “acknowledge our sin and hide not our transgressions.”

I John 1:5-8 says, “…God is light and in Him there is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with God and yet walk in darkness, [we] lie and do not practice the truth, but if we walk in the light as He Himself is in the light, [then] we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin… If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” God is light. He’s not a light; He’s not “lit up”; He’s not this thing that is brighter than everything else. He is light. Nothing can be hidden from Him. In His presence there are no shadows. He is omnipresent – you can’t show Him your left hand and hide the thing in your right hand behind your back. Friends, you can’t even hide that thing in the deep recesses of your mind.

When the Apostle John was writing this, he was especially writing against a group of people called Gnostics who said they believed in Jesus, but who didn’t really know Him at all. One of the hallmarks of their belief was to separate everything physical from everything spiritual. They thought everything physical would be annihilated and the only thing that would “go to heaven” was the spiritual. In other words, it didn’t matter what you did in your physical body, it was evil anyway. There was a separation between word and deed; between what was said and what was done. They walked in darkness and did not practice the truth. They said they lived for God, but the things they did were quite to the contrary. By their deeds they were alienating themselves from God.

“Be of sin the double cure, save from wrath and make me pure.” The penalty of sin is God’s wrath (Rom. 1); the power of sin is slavery and death (Rom 7) and thus, the desire to continue in sin and death. I Peter 2:24 says, “[Jesus Christ] Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness; for by His wounds you were healed.” He says in verse 21 of the same chapter, “For this purpose you have been called.” What purpose? “To do right so that you may silence the ignorance of foolish men,” and to “act as free men, not using your freedom [in Christ] as a covering for evil” (2:15, 16). In Christ, and in Christ alone, we are set free from the penalty and the power of sin. He is the double cure. Not even death can separate us from the love of God in Christ (Rom. 8:38). For the Christian, there is only one real funeral, and that is the day you come to faith: a funeral for the old self who was under Satan’s dominion. 

Unconfessed sin also alienates us from one another. Where there is unconfessed sin in a family, discord naturally results. Where there is unconfessed sin in a church, disunity follows. When a church allows sin to run rampant, it will begin to run others off, and there is going to be a problem. I hope we don’t ever have that here.

Correction of Sin orSin’s Big But…

“But if we walk in the light, we have fellowship with one another.” Through confession, peace is restored. Peace with God and peace with one another. Through the admission of guilt, unity is restored. And this is the secret that Satan does not want you to believe: “If we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us.” He is faithful because He promised us that He would forgive us when we come to Him in confession. He is just because He sees that the blood of Christ was shed for us and will not hold us accountable for our sin any longer. So, you must see why confession is instrumental in the life of a believer and in the church itself. It is an instrument of God’s grace.

And yet there are times when we simply don’t know what has happened. I think it is wrong to say that the only sins we can commit are ones we are aware of: just as God’s depths are unfathomable so are the ways we can transgress His law. At times like these, we can rely on the Spirit in us to intercede for us, as Paul wrote: for “He who searches the heart knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He intercedes for the saints according to the will of God” (Rom. 8:27). If God freely gave us His Son, Jesus Christ, then He will also freely give us all things that will bring us into deeper relationship with Him. It is He that brought us from the spiritual dead, and it is He who continues His salvation of us, even as we are “working out our salvation” in Him.

In the hymn, we sing, “Could my tears forever flow, Could my zeal no languor know, These for sin could not atone; Thou must save, and Thou alone. In my hand no price I bring; Simply to Thy Cross I cling.” Crying over our sins is not enough; being zealous in the knowledge of our sins cannot save us; penance does not save us. We must openly confess our sins to Him for only He can save us.

Then we can joyfully sing, “Here’s my heart, O take and seal it, seal it for Thy courts above.” It is not only essential to confess our sin, but it is freeing. If my grandson had not confessed what he had done, but knew that I knew, how that would eat at him until perhaps at some time his conscience was seared. Just knowing that God knows is not confession. But instead of searing our hearts and creating a scar by keeping silence, by confession, the Lord seals it, He places His image on it and sets us free from scars.

Cessation of Sin

What we refuse to confess will eventually begin to have some control over us, but if we confess, God will cleanse it. Isn’t it amazing how something so easy can be so difficult?

John Wesley wrote,

“Humility…cleanses our minds from those high conceits of our own perfections, from that undue opinion of our own abilities and attainments, which are the genuine fruit of a corrupted nature. This entirely cuts off that vain thought, ‘I am rich, and wise, and have need of nothing’’ and convinces us that we are by nature ‘wretched, and poor, and miserable, and blind, and naked.’… without the Spirit of God, we can do nothing but add sin to sin; that is, [it is] He alone who works in us by His almighty power, either to will or do that which is good…”[4]

True confession and true repentance are evidence of a regenerated life and the Spirit dwelling within. I invite us all, then, to find the joy that is in His forgiveness. We aren’t perfect, one day we will be. And by the help of the Holy Spirit living in us we are striving to be. In the meantime, we are simply to be disciples of Jesus Christ who are living for Him and making disciples of those around us. With His help, let us happily do that together. ~Amen

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[1] Charles Wesley, The Unpublished Poetry of Charles Wesley: Hymns and Poems for Church and World, vol 3, “Before Reading the Scripture” stanza 1 (Nashville:Kingswood Books, 1992), 172.

[2] Keil & Delitzsch, 60.

[3] Charles H. Spurgeon, Spurgeon’s Treasury of David, vol. 1 (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1984), 90.

[4] John Wesley, John Wesley’s Fifty-Three Sermons, Sermon XIII “The Circumcision of the Heart” I.3-4 (ed. Edward H. Sugden: Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1983), 189.