Can you say all the beatitudes? You know, of course, the beatitudes of Jesus. He began His famous sermon on the Mount by pronouncing all those blessings: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven; Blessed are they that mourn –; Blessed are the meek –.” Why, even the children in the Primary department of our church school can finish the list of Jesus’ beatitudes.

But did you know that Jesus was not the only one, nor even the first one, to construct a beatitude? Scattered all through the Old Testament are numerous beatitudes. For the average Christian, they are lost. We don’t know them, nor where to find them. Most Old Testament beatitudes come from the Psalms. Indeed, the very first Psalm begins with a beatitude and it is pronounced on an upright man: “Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly.” But since there is no man that sinneth not, there is another beatitude of the Psalter a little further on reserved for true penitence — Psalm 32 — whose every verse rings out the beatitude: “Blessed is the man whose sin is confessed.”

Let us this morning linger for a little while with this least known of the Bible’s lost beatitudes and see what message of helpfulness and encouragement it has for folks like us today — Psalm 32 — “Blessed is that one whose sin is confessed.”

Now, of course, blessed means happy, fortunate. Both Jesus’ beatitudes and the Old Testament beatitudes are pronouncements of approval and announcements of spiritual well-being upon people the world is not at all likely to consider happy or fortunate. “Blessed,” said Jesus, “are they that mourn — Blessed are the poor — Blessed are the persecuted.”  There is something paradoxical and startling about Jesus’ beatitudes. They are calculated to catch his listeners’ attention because they were hurled almost as lunatic lies against the popular prudence of shrewd calculating worldly wisdom. The world says: “Blessed are the rich,” while Jesus says: “Blessed are the poor.” The world says: “Blessed are they that laugh,” but Jesus says: “Blessed are they that mourn.” The world says: “Blessed are they that escape trouble and hurt,” but Jesus says: Blessed are they that are persecuted.” Only as the Master’s meaning slowly sinks in, is their deep truth discernable. Then — the shrewdness of practical morality is shown up as untruth and falsehood.

Such also is the nature of this Old Testament beatitude: “Blessed is the man whose sin is confessed.” On the surface it sounds silly. Confession means to admit guilt — to let the secret out — to say: “Yes, I did it. I know it’s wrong. Punishment is sure to follow. But get it ready. I’m set to take my medicine.”

The fellow who’s come to that point, blessed? Taking off his coat and shirt to bear his back for the licking in store for him? Blessed at such a moment, when he could have held his tongue and escaped the stinging blows and the humiliation of being found out? “Don’t be silly,” says practical, worldly wisdom. And yet, upon deeper study of this ancient beatitude, its truth dawns, and we see how truly blessed is everyone whose sin is confessed.

Psalm 32 was a favorite with St. Augustine. Often he read it with weeping eyes and aching heart. Its message brought comfort and consolation to his burdened soul. During his last illness he had this Psalm painted on the wall over against his sick bed. While he meditated upon its meaning, the aging saint gave utterance to that famous saying of his: “The beginning of knowledge is to know thyself a sinner.” But why? Why is that person who has confessed sin a blessed man or woman? First, blessed is that person whose sin is confessed because only such a one has received the divine forgiveness. Yes, the only sins which are forgiven are confessed sins.

Christian people used to speculate a lot about the unpardonable sin. Some good church people worried themselves sick, fearing they had committed the unpardonable sin and so were damned. Well, what is the unpardonable sin? The sin which can never be forgiven — is it murder, or blasphemy or adultery? Which in the complete catalogue of all the evils that the human heart can conceive and human beings commit is the unpardonable sin? I’ll tell you — for Holy Writ makes it plain: it is the unconfessed sin which is unpardonable — and it alone. Any sin which is confessed and repented of is forgiven. We have God’s own word for it: “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

Oh, the folly of these perverted hearts of ours to assume that unconfessed sin is un-found-out sin and so unpunished sin — that to be undiscovered in our wrong-doing is to go unpunished! Driving down Willowbrook Friday morning, I saw that silent crowd out in the street. Policemen were standing guard in the yard of that little gray, deserted house. Everywhere I looked I saw solemn, grim faces. “What’s happened?” I asked. “Murder,” came the reply. “A woman, dead over a week, has been discovered in that old abandoned house. One of those terrible sex murders.”

Who did it? No one knows. The murderer has not confessed. He’s keeping his secret tightly guarded to escape arrest and punishment. But is he escaping? Is he? Though he travel a thousand miles away from the scene of his crime; though he fill his nights and days with activities that most delight his heart, he cannot get away from his crime. Like a scarlet letter he will carry it with him everywhere he goes — in his every conscious moment, if he possesses a shred of sanity — to brand every waking hour; and even his sleep will be haunted by interminable nightmares enacting and re-enacting and improvising in ghoulish gore every possible and impossible phase of his atrocious crime.

“Out, out, damn spot,” cries Lady MacBeth as her horror-filled eyes keep beholding the blood on those hands a thousand washings have never cleansed in her sight. The only way to release? Paradoxically, by confession — by getting it up and out in the view of God. Peace for the soul can only come when confession is made, even though the physical punishment to be exacted take life itself.

Hear King David in this 32nd Psalm talking about how he felt before and after confession. “The Psalm is generally thought to have been composed by David after his adultery with Bathsheba and the murder of Uriah, her husband. For almost a year, he stubbornly refused to acknowledge his sin, in spite of the accusing voice of conscience, and it may be, the admonition of sickness; until the prophet’s message struck home to his heart and opened the fountain of penitential tears.” (Kirkpatrick)

Hear what David says as he looked back upon his sufferings before confession while he glumly concealed his sin: “When I kept silence my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long. For day and night Thy hand was heavy on me.” Though David refused to acknowledge his sin to God, God did not leave him alone. He was miserable in spirit and body.

His spiritual misery began to spread and show up in physical ailments. His bones ached — he ran a temperature and his life ebbed away. He was suffering from what the psychiatrists would call an “unresolved conflict.” But when at long last confession was made, God gave relief. Body and soul were restored. With joy, David cries: “Blessed is the man whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.” But all this blessedness of relief and beatitude of mental and spiritual peace came by way of confession. Only when he was ready to humble himself and confess his sin unto God, could he receive the healing, divine forgiveness.

But what about us? What are our unconfessed sins which we need to face up to and confess as sin to ourselves and to God? It may not be murder or adultery with us, as it was with King David, but what about greed, stinginess, selfish indulgence? What about our personal part in our present national agony over our unconfessed sin of living beyond our means — of loading on the backs of our children and grandchildren a horrendous national debt — because we will not confess, and will not let our national leaders confess, our sins of selfish indulgence, and so find a way to the blessing of relief and peace of mind and soul?

Then again, blessed is the person whose sin is confessed, because only such a one is in a position and a mood to praise God and serve Him. Only he who is conscious of having received great benefactions and mercy is ready and able to express gratitude in word and deed. Only such a one can truly celebrate Thanksgiving.

Dr. Ralph Sockman has said that all mankind may be divided into just two groups — those who go through life with a debtor complex and those who have a creditor complex. Some folks feel that the world owes them a living. The universe is forever in debt to them. They are always expecting someone to slight them — or beat them out of their just deserts. These are the folks for whom, no matter what they have, no matter what is done for them, it is not enough and not good enough. They are perennially dissatisfied, malcontent, miserable.

On the other hand, there are the folks who have an entirely different slant on life. They live with a debtor complex. Their spirits are obsessed with a sense of overwhelming gratitude for all life’s underserved favors and unexpected mercies which have been showered on them. They feel that the good God and all His ministering saints have invested so much in them that the most they could ever do in loving service would never repay all they owe. And they go through life with joy in their hearts, and help in their hands, singing:

“Were the whole realm of nature mine,

That were a present far too small.

Love so amazing so divine,

Demands my life, my love, my all.”

How account for the blessedness of the one group and the misery of the other? Just here: one has confessed to his God his sin, his lack, his unpayable debt, and the other has not. So one is ready to love and praise and serve God and the other is not. Blessed is the person whose sin is confessed for such a one alone is in a position and a mood to praise and serve his God. He and he only enters into the divine destiny his eternal Creator has prepared for him from the foundation of the world.

The blessedness of confession is seen ultimately — not just in the transformed relationships of the one who confesses his sin — but in his inner sense of peace. Yes, blessed is the one whose sin is confessed, because that one alone has renewal of life and strength. It is not work, but worry which kills men and women before their time. It is not labors and burdens in life which wear us out, but our anxieties and remorse. We need renewal of spirit more than all else, but we cannot be renewed without confession, without humble contrition.

Listen: “They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength: they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.” Create within me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.”

Renewal of spirit, refreshment of soul, strength of spirit — this is what people thirst for — whether we know it or not. This is the true fountain of youth which may be surely found to enable us to bear our burdens and do our work. But it can come — this renewal of a right spirit — this renewal of strength — it can be granted by the good Lord only to those of His children who will confess their sins and wait for His cleansing, healing power. God cannot give His richest blessings of spiritual sustenance and power to those who have broken off relations with Him by their sin. The only way to reestablish the contact with divine and eternal strength is by humble confession.

We’ve been watching these last few days the ancient, yet ever new, wonder of spring’s renewal of winter’s worn and drab world. How does it come? This stripping off of the old and putting on of the new in beauty and strength? All this glory of golden shrubs and bursting buds and the emerald green of tender new grass — how does it come? By man’s watering and digging and spreading fertilizer? No. It comes by a change of climate, with which man has nothing to do, and God has everything.

Once, speaking of his own father, a son said: “The old man’s a tough one. He hates to admit he’s ever wrong. He thinks that shows weakness.” Can’t we see that this is one of life’s paradoxes? The strength in weakness? Our strength is never renewed until we wait upon the Lord in humble confession. He changes our spiritual climate in which the strength of God can be supplied to renew us.

Once a friend, who is somewhat of a philosopher, observed in my presence that “Science has reached the stage of development where it can measure the exact number and intensity of vibrations given off when a man butts his head into a stone wall; but,” says my friend, “science has contrived no way of keeping a man from butting his head into a stone wall.”

Exactly, science never has and it never will, for that’s not the province of science; but the saints of God have found a way to save people from the follies of self-destruction and the inner emptiness of spiritual frustration. Enter in at the little wicket gate where sin’s shame and guilt are freely confessed and claimed as one’s own that they may be taken absolutely away by the grace of God in Christ. Blessed is the one whose sin is confessed. Have we found this beatitude of life in all its wonder and glory, or is it still lost to us?

 

PASTORAL PRAYER

O God and Father of us all, in whom we live and from whom in vain we try to flee, grant us now in this sanctuary a saving experience of inner quiet, serenity and peace. We have been restless and busy in a noisy, troubled world. We have heard and seen and experienced things that shake the foundations of our security. We come seeking spiritual stability and strength. Remind us now of those things that we ought never to forget.

Recall to us our blessings that we may be grateful: parents, children, friends; happy homes; opportunities to learn in school and college and university; graduation and vacation time; a great heritage, out of a noble past, bought by the sacrifice of courageous patriots; resources of beauty and truth that enrich us — and Christ overall, blessed forever. Recall to us, O God, all sources of spiritual wealth and power, that we may be thankful.

But remind us of our sins, too, Lord, that we may be penitent. Here in this holy place may we know your righteous presence and feel the light of your judgment on our lives revealing the darkness in them. Deliver us now from unworthy evasions and excuses. Recall to us our resentments, ill-tempers and infidelities that have destroyed the beauty and joy of our dearest relationships; recall to us our racial bigotry and discrimination that have wrecked our schools and mis-directed our children; recall to us our slow skid into moral ambiguity that threatens now our very national survival. O chasten us with a sincere penitence, that your forgiving love may empower us to amendment of our lives.

Remind us, Lord, of the hope of the world that we may not be overborne by its confusion and disaster. Lord God, Omnipotent, the beginning and the end, King of Kings, and Lord of Lords, you shall reign forever and forever. You still are God. Therefore no evil can permanently stand, and no lie can finally triumph. The kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of Christ, and He shall deliver us from our perverted search for that evil anonymity of secretly taking advantage of each other and playing dirty tricks on each other, and begin to experience the glory of that anonymity He brings us in doing good for each other and never letting our right hand know what the left hand does. Renew our faith, O Lord, in the eternal purposes of our Heavenly Father as revealed unto mankind in Christ Jesus our Lord, Amen.

 

PRAYER OF DEDICATION

Almighty God, you give your children life, and breath, and all things. What shall we render unto you for all your benefits toward us? We will take your cup of salvation and call upon your name, and give you gifts which you have given us, sealed with our love, as they were first sealed with your love, in Jesus name, Amen.

• Scripture Reference: Psalms 32:1-22 • Secondary Scripture References: n/a • Subject : Confession of sin; 639 • Special Topic: n/a • Series: n/a • Occasion: n/a • First Preached: 3/11/1951 • Last Preached: 11/22/1987 • Rating: 3 • Book/Author References: , Dr. Ralph Sockman