Death and Life: Confession and Absolution (Sermon for April 2, 2025)

Watch the sermon here. Listen to the sermon here.

Texts:   Psalm 32

            2 Samuel 12:1-15

1 John 1:5-2:2

Matthew 18:21-35

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Let us pray: Almighty God, our Heavenly Father, although we are often slow to confess our sins, You, in Your abundant mercy, sent Your Son to suffer and die for us so that we could have complete absolution from our sins. May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in Your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer, that we may always be quick both to confess our sins to You and others, and quick to absolve others who have sinned against us, showing to them the abundant mercy that You have for us; through Your Son’s name we pray. Amen.

My dear brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus,

Dying is not something that we like to do. As Christians, we certainly look forward to everlasting life with God, but death, well, that ain’t as much fun. As a society, we try to put off death as much as possible. Anti-aging creams, drinks, butters, lotions, exercise routines, and medicines are all the current rage. We all desire to continue to live. Why? Because what’s beyond death is unknown. Just as much as we don't like thinking about death as we struggle to face death, we also struggle to admit when we are sinning. And we struggle to admit that we are sinners. Yeah, we're quick to point out other people's sins, but our own sins? Not so much. I'm going to impose a hypothetical and I don't want any of you to participate because I don't want to be guilty for any fights in your marriages. But I'm sure that if I asked everyone to close their eyes and then I asked the men to raise their hands if they thought their wives were wrong more often than they were, most husbands would raise their hands. Likewise, women, before you think more highly of yourselves than you should, if I posed you the same question, I bet I'd get pretty similar results. We like to point out other people's sins, but we struggle to identify our own sin. Our sinful nature inclines us to blame others rather than blame ourselves. It inclines us to point out the sins in others rather than point out the sins in ourselves.

In our Old Testament reading for tonight, David has been battling a lot of obvious sin. He had coveted after the wife of another (tenth commandment) while he was failing to do his job as king (fourth commandment). This led him to sleep with the wife of Uriah, even though both of them were married (sixth commandment) with her getting pregnant. He calls Uriah, but when Uriah won’t go to his wife out of respect for the Ark of the Covenant, David lies to Uriah (eighth commandment) and then sends him back to the front line to have him murdered (fifth commandment). In doing all of this, he also very clearly broke the first commandment. In the story leading up to our Old Testament reading, at least six of the commandments have gotten broken by David. David, a man who's called a man after God's own heart, he's knee deep, well, probably more like neck deep, in sin. And that leads us to the prophet Nathan coming to David and presenting him with this parable of a rich man who had abundant flocks and a poor man who had a single beloved ewe lamb. And Nathan tells David the parable that you heard. And David is quick to point out that that man must surely repay all that he has spent, all that he has cost the poor man. He’s quick to point out other sins, but not in recognizing his own.

St. John says, “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us” (1 John 1:8). Just as a husband can easily identify when his wife is wrong, just as a wife can easily identify when her husband is wrong, when we sin, we are sometimes blind to our sins, whether intentionally or unintentionally. But just as most of our sins can't even fool our fellow human beings, even more so our sins can't fool God. He sees each and every one of them. And those sins wrap up and become an unpayable debt.

In our gospel reading for today, the parable of the unforgiving servant. The servant owes 10,000 talents. One talent was 20 years worth of wages. In today's terms, that would put one talent well over a million dollars. This man owes 10,000 talents. 200,000 years worth of labor. Well over ten billion dollars by today's We can't even begin to fathom what a billion is. A while ago, I was curious just how long a billion seconds was. It's well over 31 years to make a billion seconds. This guy owes $10 billion to the king. And that sin weighs us down. That sin crushes us. David talking about the sin with Bathsheba years after the fact in our Psalm writes, “For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer” (Psalm 32:3-4) When sins remain unconfessed, they weigh us down. They become burdensome. They become unbearable. That weight crushes us.

But what about the sins that others commit against us? Those sins we’re all two quick to point out. The man in our parable was quick to go out and demand his fellow slave repay him a hundred denarii, that’s one hundred day’s worth of wages. David was quick to demand justice for the man in the parable the Prophet Nathan told about the rich man who took the poor man’s beloved ewe and killed it. So likewise we are quick to demand justice when others sin against us. Although we beg for mercy from others, we seek only condemnation for those who have wronged us. In so doing, we become hypocrites, and that sin is added to the debt we owe.

And that debt of sin that we owe? It can't just be wiped away. That ten billion dollars that the servant owed, someone had to pay that cost. Either the man who had borrowed the ten billion dollars, or the king by forgiving the loan. You and I would never dream of writing of ten billion dollars. Yet that's exactly what the loving King does. He hears the cries of his servant for mercy and he bears that burden. He writes off that debt. He takes the hit on his books for that cost.

Even more so it is with us. Our sins create a debt of sin that we can never repay. Our sins which we commit create a debt of death that we can never repay. We need someone to take our place. We need someone to eat that cost for us. And so that's exactly what Jesus did for us. St. John continues, “If anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world” (1 John 2:1-2). That’s sacrificial length. That's the language of paying off the debt for us. Christ paid the debt that you and I owe. He became our propitiation, the sacrifice that both forgave our sins and also appeased God's wrath over our sins. Christ became the sacrifice bearing the debt that you owed, paying it off for you through His death on the cross. That's how great God's love is for you. That's how much He cares.

So how do we receive this great gift of our sins being washed away? It becomes ours through confession. David continues in our Psalm, “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” (Psalm 32:5). And St. John writes, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). That is the promise that is ours. That as often as we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins.

So how do we confess our sins? Well, there are three ways that God has given us to do this. The first is on one's own through prayer. We pray to God that he would forgive us as we do in the Lord's Prayer. There we have the certainty that God forgives us. But do we always feel forgiven when we simply ask God in prayer for forgiveness? Not always. Because when we just pray to God for confessing our sins, asking Him to absolve us, while the absolution is certainly there, Satan likes to make us think, “Eh, maybe God doesn't actually forgive you. Maybe He's not there to care for you. Maybe your sins are too great.” And so God also gives us corporate confession and absolution, as we do here every Sunday, as we did here tonight as well. As here as the body of Christ, we join together and we confess our sins and hear that absolution is spoken, that forgiveness won for us is proclaimed. Satan likes to create doubt here as well. Satan likes us to think, “That absolution, yeah, the pastor is speaking to everyone but you.” And so God also gives us private confession and absolution. Just you and your pastor. You confessing your sins to God and your pastor speaking that sweet word of absolution to you and you alone. Now do we always leave private confession and absolution leaping for joy, dancing and singing praises to God? Not always. While there is certainly the absolution there as well, sometimes we still don't feel forgiven. But no matter what you feel, God's Word is true. No matter whether you feel this great weight lift from you or you leave absolution going, “I don’t really feel any different”, the absolution is true for you. Your sins are absolved.

Does that mean that you won't have to face earthly consequences for your sins? Well, no. God certainly forgives us, but you might still have to face earthly consequences. David confessed his sins and was forgiven, but his son still died. The thief on the cross confessed his sins and was forgiven, yet the thief still died. There's still earthly consequences sometimes for our sins. You might still have to face punishment for your sins, but it's there not as God's wrath, not God hitting you with his anger. Instead, it is there as God as a loving Father training you on how to go, how to live your life so that you may live it in a more holy way. It's like the dad who sees his two-year-old about to stick a fork into an electrical outlet. The dad would pull the kid away. The kid might say, “I’m sorry, dad, I'm sorry”, and the kid might still get a spanking, that warning there to help train him. It’s the father telling the child, “Don't do that because as much as the spanking hurt, being electrocuted would hurt even more.” So yeah, God still disciplines us, but it's out of love, not out of wrath.

Now as people who have received the forgiveness of sins, what should we do? We get to learn from God and His word. God says in our Psalm, “I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you with my eye upon you” (Psalm 32:8) God instructs us in his word on how to live holy lives, on how to live in the way that is pleasing to him. And this leads David to confess in Psalm 51, the other Psalm about his sin with Bathsheba, saying, “Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will return to you” (Psalm 51:13). As ones who have been abundantly forgiven, we get to go out and bring others, teach others about how great God's forgiveness is for them. How do we do this? Well, it begins by forgiving them. The debt that they have against us is nothing compared to the debt that we have against God. Therefore, we gladly and eagerly forgive so that they may also have that sure and certain comfort. Does that mean that there will never be earthly consequences for sin? Well, no, just as God disciplines us. So likewise, there might be earthly consequences. The girl who sneaks out of her bedroom on a Saturday night and goes, sneaks off with her boyfriend might get grounded. The husband who hooks up with a prostitute when his wife finds out, might find their marriage destroyed. They've been forgiven, but there's still consequences. But oh, what a joy it will be on the last when we are in eternity, living in that absolution, the day of God's grace each and every day.

My dear brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus, in confession and absolution, we die to our sins and live to walk before God. And this is yours each and every day. God's forgiveness has no bounds. So continue to come, confess your sins to God, receive his word of absolution, and then go forth and share God's love with others. And as you sin, know that your God is always there to forgive your sins and cleanse you from all unrighteousness each and every time you confess. Amen.

And may the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.