Confession & Absolution

The Fall of David and Nathan’s Confrontation

Welcome to the teaching ministry of Kungsvinger Lutheran Church. Kungsvinger is a beacon for the gospel of Jesus Christ and is located on the plains of northwestern Minnesota. We proclaim Christ and Him crucified for our sins and salvation by grace through faith alone.

And now, here's a message from Pastor Chris Roseberg.

Our first reading tonight is taken from the Old Testament text, 2 Samuel chapter 11, verse 1 through chapter 12, verse 15. In the spring, at the time when kings go off to war, David sent Joab with the king's men and the whole Israelite army.

They destroyed the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah, but David remained in Jerusalem. One evening, David got up from his bed and walked around on the roof of the palace. From the roof, he saw a woman bathing.

The woman was very beautiful, and David sent someone to find out about her. The man said, Isn't this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, and the wife of Uriah the Hittite? Then David sent messengers to get her.

She came to him, and he slept with her. She had purified herself from her uncleanness. Then she went back home. The woman conceived and sent word to David, saying, I am pregnant. So David sent this word to Joab, Send me Uriah the Hittite.

And Joab sent him to David. When Uriah came to him, David asked him how Joab was, how the soldiers were, how the war was going. Then David said to Uriah, Go down to your house and wash your feet. So Uriah left the palace, and a gift from the king was sent after him.

But Uriah slept at the entrance to the palace with all his master's servants and did not go down to his house. When David was told Uriah did not go home, he asked him, Haven't you come from a distance?

Why didn't you go home? Uriah said to David, The ark and Israel and Judah are staying in tents, and my master Joab and my lord's men are camped in the open fields. How could I go to my house and eat and drink and lie with my wife?

As surely as you live, I will not do such a thing. Then David said to him, Stay here one more day, and tomorrow I will send you back. So Uriah remained in Jerusalem that day and the next. At David's invitation, he ate and drank with him, and David made him drunk.

But in the evening, Uriah went out to sleep on his mat among his master's servants. He did not go home. In the morning, David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it with Uriah. In it he wrote, Put Uriah in the front line where the fighting is fiercest.

Then withdraw from him, so he will be struck down and die. So while Joab had the city under siege, he put Uriah at the place where he knew the strongest defenders were. When the men of the city came out and fought against Joab, some of the men in David's army fell.

Moreover, Uriah the Hittite died. Joab sent David a full account of the battle. He instructed the messenger, When you have finished giving the king this account of the battle, the king's anger may flare up, and he may ask you, Why did you get so close to the city to fight?

Didn't you know they would shoot arrows from the wall? Who killed Abimelech, the son of Jeroboam? Didn't a woman throw an upper millstone on him from the wall so that he died in Thebes? Why did you get so close to the wall?

If he asks you this, then say to him, Also, your servant Uriah the Hittite is dead. The messenger set out, and when he arrived, he told David everything Joab had sent him to say. The messenger said to David, The men overpowered us and came out against us in the open, but we drove them back to the entrance to the city gate.

Then the archers shot arrows at your servants from the wall, and some of the king's men died. Moreover, your servant Uriah the Hittite is dead. David told the messenger, Say this to Joab. Don't let this upset you.

The sword devours one as well as another. Press the attack against the city and destroy it. Say this to encourage Joab. When Uriah's wife heard that her husband was dead, she mourned for him. After the time of mourning was over, David had her brought to his house, and she became his wife and bore him a son.

But the thing David had done displeased the Lord. The Lord sent Nathan to David. When he came to him, he said, There were two men in a certain town, one rich and the other poor. The rich man had a very large number of sheep and cattle, but the poor man had nothing except one little ewe lamb that he had bought.

He raised it, and it grew up with him and his children. It shared his food, drank from his cup, and even slept in his arm. It was like a daughter to him. Now a traveler came to the rich man, but the rich man refrained from taking one of his own sheep or cattle to prepare a meal for the traveler who had come for him.

Instead, he took the ewe lamb that belonged to the poor man and prepared it for the one who had come to him. David burned with anger against the man and said to Nathan, As surely as the Lord lives, the man who did this deserves to die.

He must pay for that lamb four times over because he did such a thing and had no pity. Then Nathan said to David, You are the man. This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says. I anointed you king over Israel.

I delivered you from the hand of Saul. I gave you your master's house and your master's wives into your arms. I gave you the house of Israel and Judah, and all of this, if this had been too little, I would have given you even more.

Why did you despise the word of the Lord by doing what is evil in His eyes? You struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and took his wife to be your own. You killed him with the sword of the Ammonites.

Now, therefore, the sword will never depart from your house because you despised me and took the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your own. This is what the Lord says. Out of your own household I am going to bring calamity upon you.

Before your very eyes I will take your wives and give them to one who is close to you, and he will lie with your wives in broad daylight. You did it in secret, but I will do this thing in broad daylight before all of Israel.

Then David said to Nathan, I have sinned against the Lord. Nathan replied, The Lord has taken away your sin. You are not going to die, but because by doing this you have made enemies of the Lord, the enemies of the Lord show utter contempt.

The son born to you will die. After Nathan had gone home, the Lord struck the child that Uriah's wife had born to David, and he became ill. Our second reading is taken from Psalm 51, verses 1 through 17.

Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love. According to your great compassion, blot out my transgressions. Wash away all my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me.

Against you and you only have I sinned, and done what is evil in your sight, so that you are proved right when you speak, and justified when you judge. Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.

Surely you desire truth in the inner parts. You teach me wisdom in the inmost place. Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean. Wash me, and I will be whiter than snow. Let me hear joy and gladness.

Let the bones that you have crushed rejoice. Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all of my iniquity. Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me from your presence, or take your Holy Spirit from me.

Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and grant me a willing spirit to sustain me. Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will turn back to you. Save me from blood guilt, O God, the God who saves me, and my tongue will sing of your righteousness.

O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise. You do not take delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it. You do not take pleasure in burnt offerings. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.

Christ’s Forgiveness and the Gospel in John 20

The Holy Gospel according to St. John chapter 20, verses 19 through 23. On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together with the doors locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, Peace be with you.

After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord. And again Jesus said, Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, I am sending you. And with that he breathed on them and said, Receive the Holy Spirit.

If you forgive anyone his sins, they are forgiven. If you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven. In the name of Jesus. Jesus came to die for our sins. The Gospel is the good news that Christ died for our sins and was raised again on the third day.

Those are powerful words because the problem that humanity faces is the fact that we have fallen into sin because of our first parents' transgression and rebellion against God. Every human being born naturally, descendants of Adam and Eve, have inherited their sin.

That's you and I. Each of us were born and conceived in sin. And therefore, in bondage to sin, death, and the devil himself. And Christ has come and bled and died for our sins. And the devil rails against this very Gospel.

And yet God so richly gives this Gospel to us. This Gospel is delivered in the waters of baptism. It's delivered into our mouths when we take the Lord's Supper. And you hear the pastor and the deacon or deaconess say, Take, eat, this is the true body of Christ broken for you.

Take, drink, this is the true blood of Christ shed for you for the forgiveness of your sins. And also, this forgiveness is delivered in the voice of the pastor when the pastor says, I, by virtue of my office, forgive you all of your sins in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Each of these gifts, God has given us. Baptism, the Lord's Supper, and the absolution. He's given these to us to assure us of His great love and mercy for sinners as sinful as me and as sinful as you.

These are precious and powerful gifts given to us by God. And we dare not despise them because our faith needs these to cling on to. And these are the means by which God sustains us as He brings us through the valley of the shadow of death and finally into His glorious kingdom.

These are important things. And so this week, we finally arrive at the part of the Catechism that deals with the topic of confession. Now, it's titled Confession. It really should be titled Absolution because the important, super important part is the words of forgiveness that our faith hangs on to.

And here's what Luther writes. What is confession? What is it? And he says confession has two parts. First, that we confess our sins. Second, that we receive absolution. That is, forgiveness from the pastor as from God Himself.

Not doubting, but firmly believing that by it our sins are forgiven before God in heaven. What sins should we confess? Now, keep this in mind. Confession and absolution comes in two stripes or two varieties.

One is what we do here in church. The other is when you feel like sin has gotten the upper hand on you and there's something that's vexing your spirit and your soul and you can't shake it. That's when you come see me privately and you confess your sins to God through me.

I just get to listen in, if you would. And you receive forgiveness for that specific sin. And that is the way in which God frees us and delivers us. It's a very powerful thing. So Luther asks, what sins should we confess?

Well, before God, we should plead guilty of all sins. Even those that we are not aware of. And that's kind of a big deal. I'm absolutely convinced if God were to allow us, even for a moment, to see the full scope and magnitude and depth.

Of our sin,.

Just that thought would probably crush us. And so God, in His mercy, in a lot of ways, keeps us from even experiencing the full magnitude of our sin. So we confess the ones that we are aware of. But before a pastor, we confess only those sins which we know and we feel in our hearts.

So which are these? Well, consider your place in life according to the Ten Commandments. Are you a father, a mother, son, daughter, husband, wife, employee? Have you been disobedient, unfaithful? Have you been lazy?

Have you been hot-tempered, rude, or quarrelsome? Have you hurt someone by your words or deeds? Have you stolen? Have you been negligent? Have you wasted anything? Or have you done any harm? Those are the sins that you should confess.

And so then Luther, in the Catechism, gives a short form of confession. And here's how it goes. The penitent says, Dear confessor, I ask you to please hear my confession and to pronounce forgiveness in order to fulfill God's will.

And then he continues, I, a poor sinner, plead guilty before God of all sins. In particular, I confess before you that as a servant, maid, etc., I failed to serve my master. I was unfaithful. And in this, that I have not done what I was told to do, I have made him angry.

I have caused him to curse. I have been negligent and allowed damage to be done. I have been offensive in words and deeds. I have quarreled with my peers. I have grumbled about the lady of the house and cursed her.

I am sorry for all of this and I ask for grace. I want to do better. A master or lady of the house can say this, In particular, I confess before you that I have not faithfully guided my children, servants, and wife to the glory of God.

I have cursed. I have set a bad example by indecent words and deeds. I have hurt my neighbor. I have spoken evil of him. I have overcharged people or sold inferior merchandise and given less than what was paid for.

So let the penitent confess whatever else he has done against God's commandments in his own position. If, however, someone does not find himself burdened with these or greater sins, he should not trouble himself or search for or invent other sins and thereby make confession a torture.

Instead, he should mention one or two that he knows. In particular, I confess that I have cursed. I have used improper words. I have neglected this or that. Let that be enough. But if you know of none at all, which hardly seems possible, that's Luther's little note, if really you're not aware of any sins that you've committed.

At all, really?

Then go back and re-read the Ten Commandments for a little bit and talk to me in a few minutes. So then mention none in particular, but receive the forgiveness upon the general confession which you make to God before the confessor.

So then the confessor shall say, God be merciful to you, strengthen your faith. Do you believe that my forgiveness is God's forgiveness? Yes, dear confessor. So then let him say, let it be done for you as you believe.

And I, by command of our Lord Jesus Christ, forgive you your sins in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

Go in peace. A confessor will know additional passages with which to comfort and to strengthen the faith of those who have great burdens of conscience or are sorrowful and distressed. And see, that's the idea.

Notice it says instructions here to the pastor. Make sure you've got passages to comfort, not to burden. It's not like when you come in here to a pastor and you confess and you hear the absolution, the pastor says, now about that Eighth Commandment, we need to put in an accountability group and here's some other passages that really talk about how evil that is.

It's like, well, that's the wrong thing to do.

Okay?

Because the reason why we have confession is for the absolution. The absolution is the proclamation of the gospel and what Christ has done to unburden you from a particular sin. So this is all run through the gospel.

Other churches that have confession and absolution end up burdening the people upon their leaving because not only are they required to do penance, they get to hear the absolution, but now they've got to make restitution.

Everything gets run through the law in that system. Now, Luther asks a question. What is the office of the keys? And you're thinking, the office of the what? I always lose my keys. What are we talking about here?

And this is an important thing. If you look on your bulletin, it looks like Jesus is playing Pac-Man with the Holy Spirit, according to my daughter. Remember, he breathed on them the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit's going that way.

But notice, there's two keys there, right? Now, if you're familiar with church artwork, those two keys should remind you of something that you may have seen in another church body. Anyone care to hazard a guess?

Two keys, two keys, two keys. Whenever you see the insignia for the Bishop of Rome, the Pope, always has the two keys. But here, Jesus gives the two keys. There's a binding key and a loosing key. One key undoes sins.

The other key locks them up. And so, what is the office of the keys? That's what they call the ability to forgive and bind sins. Luther writes, The office of the keys is that special authority which Christ has given to his church on earth to forgive the sins of repentant sinners, but to withhold forgiveness from the unrepentant as long as they do not repent.

Now, where is this written? This is what St. John the Evangelist writes in chapter 20. The Lord Jesus breathed on his disciples and said, Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone his sins, they are forgiven.

If you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven. Now, I said I would throw a little Greek in here. This is an important part of this. When you read this in the Greek, If you, notice it says, If you forgive, you forgive anyone his sins.

The Greek verb now for they are forgiven, it's a special verb tense. It's in the perfect. And you're thinking, I've never heard of a perfect, and I'm never going to remember this. Why are you telling me this?

Know this about this particular verb tense. It's an interesting form of the past tense. And it means that whatever is being referred to has already happened with the ongoing, into the future, never to stop ending kind of thing to it.

So it happened here, and it's not just happened, it's happened with implications that go, stretch all the way into the future. That's what the perfect is about. So the idea is this. Listen to how this works then.

If you forgive anyone his sins, and here's how it will be translated, they will have already been forgiven and continue to be forgiven on into the future. And because it's in that tense that says, will have already been forgiven, that means, no joke, if you were to put this on a timeline, that the forgiveness of those sins occurred prior to the person saying, I forgive you all of your sins.

Does that make sense? Because it's in the past tense. So when I say, I forgive you all of your sins, you should think back to this text and say, when the pastor says, I forgive you all of your sins, that literally means they have already been forgiven and will continue to be forgiven on into eternity.

In other words, that proves, because they have already been forgiven, I'm not the one doing it. God is. Does that make sense? So that's why I say, do you believe that my forgiveness is not mine but God's?

Because the text, when you understand how to read the Greek and what's going on to it, I can't say I'm the one doing it. I just get to be the guy that sits there and says, all right, I got a message from heaven.

The message from heaven is this. You're forgiven. Do you feel better now? No, actually I won't say it that way, but you know what I'm saying. You should feel better because it's already been forgiven and continues on into the future to be forgiven.

Now here's the important part. There's two keys.

There's two.

Binding and loosing. But if you do not forgive them, if you retain them, they are not, have not been forgiven. It's an important thing. Now, I said that in the Bible, there are three texts that deal with the office of the keys.

The one that we read tonight in our Gospel lesson from John chapter 20. The second is from Matthew chapter 18, and I'm working backwards through the Gospels. Matthew chapter 18. Let's see if this sounds familiar.

If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. Is this not the very text that we all understand is the text by which church discipline is to be enacted?

This is a text that deals with the topic specifically of church discipline. In fact, if you were to go into the filing cabinet and pull out the church's constitution and a topic of church discipline, this church's constitution specifically says church discipline is to be handled according to this passage of Scripture.

So this is a big deal. So, if your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. Notice, pastor's not involved. If he listens to you, you've gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses.

Notice, pastor is still not involved. If one of you sins against another and the person comes to me and says, pastor, so-and-so sinned against me and they need to repent, I'm going to basically say, why are you talking to me?

Matthew 18 makes it clear, I'm not involved at this point. Go and talk to your brother or your sister. Tell them their sin. Call them to repentance. And keep in mind, the context immediately before this is the parable of the lost sheep.

This is the means by which Christ goes and hunts for his lost sheep. So if he doesn't listen to two or three witnesses, if he still refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. If he refuses to listen to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.

Truly I say to you, here it is, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven. Whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Binding, loosing. Forgiving, not forgiving. This is another way of talking about the office of the keys.

And again, notice there's two of them. Binding and loosing. So I point this out by way of a couple of things. I want to remind you of the vows that I took when I was installed here at Kongsvinger. I'd like to read you a portion of them.

Pastor Lyons asked me, Will you faithfully instruct both the young and the old in the chief articles of the Christian doctrine? Will you forgive the sins of those who repent? And will you promise never to divulge the sins confessed to you?

Remember that?

It's part of my vows to be your pastor. I had to promise that I would forgive the sins of those who repent. Now the binding key requires me to retain the sins of those who persist in sin and refuse to repent.

That is a severe thing. Because Jesus makes it clear that when the church exercises the office of the keys and somebody's sins are bound, if they go to their grave in impenitence,.

They go to hell.

God has remembered their sins. It's a big deal. Not to be exercised lightly. Not to be exercised with due diligence. Does that make sense? But that's the seriousness that we're talking about when we're dealing with church discipline.

It's a matter of eternal life or eternal death. And it should be handled as such. And so you got the idea of just how serious our sin is and how much of a gift it is that God has opened our eyes to our own sinful condition so that we truly, in penitent faith, confess that we are sinners and hear the glorious words of the pastor saying, I forgive you all of your sins, knowing that it's not him that's doing the forgiving because it will have already been forgiven on into the future as well.

That's God doing it. And so these are comforting words for us. And remember our story. Let me reference it back. Remember the Old Testament text that I read to you regarding the story of King David. And King David, we know about his murder.

We know about his adultery. Oh, and he can even throw in another crime. He got Uriah drunk. No one ever talks about that. But that was part of the whole package, right? But remember that when Nathan the prophet confronted David, David confessed his sins.

Let me read it again. I have sinned against the Lord, David said. Nathan replied, listen to this, the Lord has taken away your sin. Nathan pronounced absolution. Now, since the Old Testament is full of types and shadows, see if you pick this one up.

You're not going to die, but because by doing this you have made the enemies of the Lord show utter contempt. The son that is born to you will die. And Nathan had gone home. The Lord struck the child that Uriah's wife had born to David, and he became ill and he died.

The son of David died for the sins of David. Do you see the connection now? And that points us to the son of David, Jesus Christ, who ultimately did die for the sins of David and the sins of me and the sins of you.

He died for all of our sins. And what a glorious and compassionate God that we have. And that psalm that we read tonight, Psalm 51, no sooner had Nathan the prophet left the palace than David went to his desk and took out his pen and took out his parchment and penned these amazing words.

Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love, according to your great compassion, blot out my transgressions. Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. And God did. He blotted out all of David's transgressions, and he did that on the cross by canceling the record of death that stood against him.

Let me read to close tonight a little segment from just a wonderful devotional book by Johann Gerhardt entitled Meditations on Divine Mercy. In this chapter, he talks about how contrition, contrition which is sorrow for sin, convinces us of the seriousness of sin.

Gerhardt writes, O holy God, just judge, my heart is contrite and humble. My spirit is sad and afflicted because of my sins. I'm overwhelmed with anxiety and weighed down. I've lost all my courage, and my eyes are dark with depression.

I'm overwhelmed, and I begin to weep. My spirit is full of anxiety, and I forget to eat. Have you ever been that heart sick about your own sin?

I have.

My heart is wounded, and a fountain of tears pours forth, the blood of a wounded heart. Great way to talk about tears, tears of the blood of a wounded heart. Who can discern one's errors? Who understands the pain of heart surrounded by failures and faults?

My parched and contrite soul thirsts for you, the font of life. O Christ, nourish me with the dew, the spirit of grace. My anguished heart groans for you. O true joy, give to me peace and quiet of conscience, so justified by faith I might have peace with God.

My heart condemns me, but you, God, are stronger than my heart. Absolve me. My conscience accuses me, but you, who affix the handwriting of conscience to the cross, you acquitted me. I offer to you, my God, my contrite and humble heart as a most grateful sacrifice.

I offer to you my groans, messengers of true and real sorrow over sin. I offer to you my tears, abundant witnesses of earnest sorrow. I despair of myself. In you, hope is repaired. Of myself, I fail. In you, I am restored.

In me, there is only anguish. In you, I find joy once again. I am weary and heavy laden. You restore me and give rest to my soul. The deep calls out of the deep, and the depth of my misery calls out to the depth of your mercy.

From the depths, I cry out to you. Cast my sins into the depths of the sea. There is no soundness in my flesh because of your wrath. There is no peace in my bones because of my sin. My sins overwhelm me, and they are like a great weight that becomes ever more burdensome as it is carried.

Heal my soul, O heavenly physician, or death will swallow me. Take the weight of sins away from me, you who bore that weight on the cross, or I will lose hope under this unbearable burden. Have mercy on me, font of grace and mercy.

And the answer from God's word is I forgive you all of your sins. That is how a burdened conscience is unburdened. And these words do not come from me, they come from God. Which means there isn't an authority higher that anyone can appeal to in order to overturn that verdict.

The gavel has landed, and the verdict has come back. You are forgiven. In the name of Jesus. Amen.

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