Not Trusting Fig Leaves

Psalm 32:1–11 ESV

Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit. 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. Selah 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. Selah Therefore let everyone who is godly offer prayer to you at a time when you may be found; surely in the rush of great waters, they shall not reach him. You are a hiding place for me; you preserve me from trouble; you surround me with shouts of deliverance. Selah I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you with my eye upon you. Be not like a horse or a mule, without understanding, which must be curbed with bit and bridle, or it will not stay near you. Many are the sorrows of the wicked, but steadfast love surrounds the one who trusts in the Lord. Be glad in the Lord, and rejoice, O righteous, and shout for joy, all you upright in heart!

Scripture: Psalm 32:1-11

Belgic Confession Lesson: Article 23

Sermon Title: Not Trusting Fig Leaves

           Last time, our article was about the righteousness of faith. We had the general overview of how salvation comes to us. Tonight, we have moved into the subject of the justification of sinners. It’s not a big shift, and, again, this likely isn’t new ground to us, but digging in can provide us with refreshment and reminders. In our walk with God, maybe there’s something we’ve forgotten or have not made much use of. Let’s not forget that God can point our hearts even more toward him and experiencing his love and grace.

As we get into the message, there’s going to be two key themes. The first is our work in forgiveness, we will explore what that means. And the second will be looking at the title of this message, what does it mean to not trust fig leaves?

Brothers and sisters in Christ, in the accomplishment of a believer’s forgiveness, we contribute nothing. You and I are 100 percent dependent on God and 0 percent sufficient in justifying ourselves. Hopefully that’s not earth-shattering, and it’s what you’ve heard from your pastors here in these congregations and others that you’ve heard or watched on TV or listened to on the radio. When it comes to forgiveness it is all God’s grace, as we heard last time sola gratia. 

           As Reformed Christians, we know that. It’s firmly fixed in our minds. We cling to truths like those that we find in the first two verses of Psalm 32, “Blessed is he whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord does not count against him and in whose spirit is no deceit.” The apostle Paul builds on those words in Romans 4 as he reflected on Abraham’s life and the sign of circumcision. Paul teaches that Abraham’s faith was credited to him as righteousness before he was circumcised. Circumcision was “a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised.” Romans 4 verses 23 to 25 say, “The words ‘it was credited to him’ were written not for him alone, but also for us, to whom God will credit righteousness—for us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification.”   

           I’m probably sounding like a broken record to those of you from Corsica today as I keep going back to Romans and addressing matters of salvation and justification. But this is where we are and there’s no message more important. Forgiveness is all because of, all rooted in, stemming from and accomplished completely by God in Jesus Christ. Just as I said this morning, when he died on the cross of Calvary, he took upon himself the punishment of our sins. When he rose to life, he conquered death and we are promised resurrection to eternal life one day. An eternal life to which we have been justified and have a reconciled relationship with God because of Jesus.

Yet I think a number of us, a number of Christians, still wrestle at times with this—with how forgiveness happens exactly. We might be okay with saying that we can’t earn our salvation. We get that part. We can never do enough good works to save ourselves. But we might wonder, what about the work of confession? Could that be considered a work that is expected of us?

Hear again from Psalm 32 verses 3 through 5, “When I kept silent,” so the psalmist is saying, not confessing, maybe not admitting his guilt, “my bones wasted away…For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was sapped as in the heat of summer. Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity.” Recognizing that he is to blame for this burden, he confesses, he practices repentance. We’re told at the end of verse 5, “And you forgave the guilt of my sin.” It seems the psalmist’s confession is the cause of God’s forgiveness.  

We don’t have a problem with the practice of confession, but isn’t confessing a “work” that we do? This is the point which some believers struggle with. We’ve been taught from very early on that forgiveness and salvation are completely the work of God; that’s the clear direction of the Bible and our confessions, but aren’t there things that we do? The answer is “Yes and No.” 

If we go back to the second paragraph of Article 23, this is what is says, “And the same apostle [talking about Paul] says that we are ‘justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.’ And therefore we cling to this foundation, which is firm forever, giving all glory to God, humbling ourselves, and recognizing ourselves as we are; not claiming a thing for ourselves or our merits and leaning and resting on the sole obedience of Christ crucified, which is ours when we believe in him.”

 A moment ago, I said, yes, there are things we do in the process of forgiveness. Reformed teaching has room for that. We give glory to God, we humble ourselves, we recognize who we are. In that summary, we do participate in forgiveness insofar as we confess our sins and our sinfulness. We look at ourselves, our lives, and see that things are not as they should be. We do a work in that we recognize there’s a problem, we have a problem, and we bring it to the only one who can fix these types of problems.

But I also said, no, we don’t do a work. We are saved by grace, we are justified, declared righteous, through faith apart from works. Now we are shifting to very specifically, what is required for forgiveness? Yes, confession like we see in Psalms 32 and 51 and others has a place. It is an exercise in faith. But our confession is not what accomplishes the mercy, the grace, the forgiveness. When God provides a hiding place, a protection from trouble, and surrounds us with songs of deliverance as verse 7 declared, it is he alone who does the work. 

For us as believers living on this side of Jesus’ life, we are able to say that not only does God save people from sin with a Messiah in a general way as was true in the Old Testament, but it was completely with what Jesus did in his life and existence. The whole picture of his obedient life, of his perfection yet by the action of being crucified was declared guilty, his dying, and his rising again. It’s those works and those events that he experienced and directly participated in that merit forgiveness. So ultimately, it’s not our works or a work of ours that get us forgiveness, though we do participate by confession. That’s our first point tonight. 

Now we pick up the reason for this message’s title, “not trusting fig leaves.” We go back to Article 23 again, to the third paragraph. “[Our leaning and resting on the sole obedience of Christ crucified] is enough to cover all our sins and to make us confident, freeing the conscience from the fear, dread, and terror of God’s approach, without doing what our first parents, Adam and Eve, did, who trembled as they tried to cover themselves with fig leaves.”

I got into this point a little bit this morning as well. I don’t think it’s out of the ordinary for believers to go through periods in their lives or to live their entire lives in fear of God. Fear as I’m using it here is not just wholehearted respect and reverence, but being so afraid. An insecurity about the judgment of God on them and their sins, which creates and sustains an overwhelming sense of terror when it comes to guilt over sin. So, time spent in prayer or confession as we have been talking about, time spent in God’s word and maybe coming into contact with passages that pinpoint their struggles, they become not just disappointed about their sins but they might become fearful regarding God and their salvation. 

Genesis 3 is what Guido de Brès is referencing, and so this is what we find there. After Adam and Eve had eaten from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, we are told their eyes were opened, “and they realized they were naked; so, they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves. Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the cool of the day, and they hid from [him].” When asked where they were, Adam tells God he was hiding because he was afraid. He was afraid because he was naked. Adam and assumedly Eve were afraid of God because of this shame over their sin and their physical exposure. 

Putting fig leaves over themselves was not hiding enough, they had to try and hide their location as well. They tried to trust these things as cover-ups to what they had done wrong. I looked up this week what a fig leaf looks like, and some of you maybe saw it on Facebook.  It has kind of three rounded parts with the center one sticking out the farthest. Some of them appear to be the size of most leaves that we see around here, about the size of the hand or a little bigger, but some are much larger, closer to the size of this sheet of paper. If that’s what Adam and Eve were using, it might make more sense why they would pick those leaves specifically. They cover more, you don’t need to sew as many together.

But the point here is not the size of the leaves or anything like that; the point is recognizing that there is nothing that we can provide which could truly cover up our sin or the guilt that we experience. And while that’s the case, even though we can’t deal with the mess of sin ourselves, by faith, we need not live in such “fear, dread, and terror of God” finding us out.

I’ve had conversations with some of you and other people too that might say, “Well, what about Hebrews 10 verse 31, which says, “It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God?” What about that? That seems to be a fear-striking image of God? Or what about a couple chapters later, Hebrews 12 verse 29, “For our ‘God is a consuming fire,’” which quotes Deuteronomy 4 verse 24, which also reminds us that our God is “a jealous God?”

What I’m trying to say and what I believe the Belgic Confession is trying to say is not that our God cannot be scary or cannot show anger and wrath and jealousy, but these fearful expressions of God are not against those of us who are saved. We, whose sins have been covered by grace through faith, have been blessed in such a way that our approach to God is not with hopeless fear and trembling. Our approach and attitude is as Hebrews 10 verses 19 through 23 tell us, “Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful.” For the believer, for the redeemed sinner, this is the image of God for us, even in our sin and misery—“He who promised is faithful.”

We trust not in fig leaves, not in hiding places, not in cover ups of any kind. Those might quite often seem to be the right response and what we turn to first when we sin. Yet our God knows us. Nothing is hidden from him, he knows our sins, our secret sins, our hidden thoughts. He knows the lies we tell and we believe, the gossip we whisper, and yet he invites us to draw near in sincerity that our guilt may be cleansed and our sins washed away. What a beautiful and incredible picture and reminder of that which God has done for us—of his mercy and compassion. 

As you’ve heard this message, my hope and intent is not that you go away with a softer God, a God who seems any less deserving of respect, of holiness, of awe. Rather may it be that our God is so incredible that while he deserves to be justly viewed with power and jealousy, he is also approachable through his redemptive character. So, let us flee from sin, and not readily or regularly pursue those things that cause us to stumble and that do merit the punishment of God. But when we do sin, may we turn to our Savior, knowing he will listen and promises to forgive. 

“Many are the woes of the wicked, but the Lord’s unfailing love surrounds the man who trusts in him. Rejoice in the Lord and be glad, you righteous; sing, all you who are upright in heart! Amen.