Confess
Notes
Transcript
I was 21 years old. I was working in the receiving department for my college’s dining services. Part of my job was to drive a golf cart to deliver food between the warehouse, our cafeterias, and the day care that was on the campus. I loved to drive that golf cart. It was a electric and they were miserably slow. However, one golf cart was a little faster. I tried to snag that one every day.
I was pulling away from the loading dock one day. I had food warmers in the back and a couple of trays of brownies, in disposable pans, on the seat next to me, heading to the day care. I was in the fast golf cart, and I was running late. I put the pedal to the metal. Whipped the golf cart around, a burst of wind came up at just the right moment, on just the right angle, and the brownies started to slide out of the cart. I was not going to ruin the brownies for the day care. I let go of the wheel, grabbed the brownies, and heard a loud bang and felt this horrible jolt.
I looked up and I had just crashed my golf cart into a maintenance pickup truck. Strangely, my golf cart had a small scratch, but the pickup had a huge dent right where I had hit it.
I had such a sick feeling in my stomach and I had a choice, keep going or go and talk with the managers. Now, there were cameras all over the place, so option one wasn’t really a good option. I had to go in and confess that I had wrecked a school owned pickup truck with my vehicle.
I walked in with fear and trepidation, chatted with my manager briefly, and headed out to deliver the food while he figured out whose pickup it was. For the next 10 minutes, during that delivery, I was kicking myself, creating all these outcomes of what was going to happen to me and my job because I had carelessly driven my golf cart into a pickup truck.
Well, I came back, and my manager called over to a corner of the kitchen. He looked at me with a twinkle in his eye and told me that the pickup already had that dent. My golf cart had done nothing. But, then he looked at me and said: in the future, remember, brownies are not worth more than safety.
I learned a valuable lesson that day. In driving, in priories, but also in confession.
Over the past month, we have seen that we are powerless in our own strength. We must believe that God is the one whose power can restore us. By faith, we must trust God with our life and will through the grace offered in Jesus Christ. Finally, last week, we identified our sinful nature for which Christ died, so that it can be laid to rest and we can live in freedom. We have a new nature, the gift of the Holy Spirit to help us, lead us, and change us from the inside out.
That process brings up a bunch of emotion as we see ourselves in the mirror for who we are. We survey the sin damage inside us.
But, we cannot just stop there. We have to make an honest admission to ourselves, to God, and to trusted friends. We must be people who confess. Healing comes through confession.
But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.
If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word is not in us.
Pray
A. Confession
A. Confession
But, what is confession.
It is the process of admitting or acknowledging our wrongdoing, faults, or sins, whether to God or another person. It is speaking truth.
Several weeks ago, we discuss how we must believe who God is. But, the week after, we said that believing some facts is not enough, we had to do something about it. We had to make the decision to trust Jesus with our lives and wills, accepting his gift on the cross.
Last week, we talked about making a searching and fearful moral inventory of ourselves. But, that is not enough. It is not enough just to list a bunch of truths.
We must confess.
Confession is not just merely to admit, but it means to say the same about.
There are other religious groups who have muddled the meaning and scope of confession.
They say things like:
“Confession is a sacrament instituted by Jesus Christ in his love and mercy to offer sinners forgiveness for offenses against God and against your sisters and brothers. Confession brings reconciliation between God and the penitent, between the penitent and others, and to the individual penitent.”
They put special meaning and spirituality into the act of confession, saying that we actually earn forgiveness from God through the process of confession. Christ’s love and mercy is not given until we have completed the process of confession. To add insult to injury, sometimes confession is not as not enough, saying that one must perform acts of penance to further earn Christ’s forgiveness.
However, as we discussed several weeks ago, Christ’s forgiveness is not earned. It is a gift.
For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God—children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.
For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast.
Confession does not bring favor with God. Confession does not earn forgiveness. So, what is the purpose of confession?
It is living in truth. And the truth sets us free.
Confession is agreeing with God, speaking the truth of sin and the truth of God.
As one person wrote:
“Each confession of a sin is a profession of faith in Christ—an agreement with God about who he is, what he has done, and who you are because of him. Jesus came to save you from sin. His perfect sacrifice paid the penalty for all of your sins. If, by faith, you have accepted Christ’s payment as enough to cover your sins, God has completely forgiven you and adopted you as his child. It is because of God’s kindness that you are forgiven, accepted, and set apart for his purpose. Your sins do not define you but rather remind you of God’s greatness: his goodness, mercy, and grace through Jesus. With confidence and gratitude, you can approach God knowing that through Jesus, our advocate, we can receive mercy and grace for your sins.”
Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has ascended into heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin. Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.
With confession, we are healed. By speaking the truth, agreeing with God, our sin is not in the dark any more and does not have any power over us.
Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.
John refers to it as walking in the light.
But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.
We walk in the like, so we do not allow anything hidden, no darkness festering. Oh, yeah, no one wants to admit what they are actually like. They do not want to admit what they actually do and what they actually struggle with.
No one wants to admit that their marriage is broken. They do not want to admit their closet addictions. They do not want to admit their lies and hypocrisy. They do not want to admit their lustful thoughts, their laziness, their pride.
But until those are admitted, we are living a lie.
If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.
If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word is not in us.
Confession, brings things into light. Confession prevents deceit and deception. Confession reminds us of God’s amazing grace and allows us to remember who we really are.
Sometimes the acronym HEAL is useful with confession.
H is honestly confess: Admit the truth about the harm, the hurt, the grief, the sin, the heart defects. The whole gamut.
E is examine the sinful nature: Acknowledge the things we sought for comfort, pleasure, protection, escape, provision. Admit the things our sinful nature protects or values most.
A is Accept Christ’s offering: Agree that Christ suffered to recapture our hearts. He offers us healing and his sacrifice was enough to satisfy God and us. Accept Christ’s rescue of our lives and embrace his righteousness in place of our sins.
L is Leave it with Christ: We release our pride and idols to God to be buried with Christ. We ask God to meet all our needs. We ask for his desires to become our desires. We agree with God that we are his children and that he deserves our love. We ask him to heal our hearts completely.
After the process of confess, as we reflect on God’s amazing grace, we can rejoice in a clean heart.
Listen to what the Psalmist wrote:
Blessed is the one
whose transgressions are forgiven,
whose sins are covered.
Blessed is the one
whose sin the Lord does not count against them
and in whose spirit is no deceit.
When I kept silent,
my bones wasted away
through my groaning all day long.
For day and night
your hand was heavy on 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.
I said, “I will confess
my transgressions to the Lord.”
And you forgave
the guilt of my sin.
Therefore let all the faithful pray to you
while you may be found;
surely the rising of the mighty waters
will not reach them.
Many are the woes of the wicked,
but the Lord’s unfailing love
surrounds the one who trusts in him.
Rejoice in the Lord and be glad, you righteous;
sing, all you who are upright in heart!
B. Confession to Ourselves
B. Confession to Ourselves
So who do we confess to?
First, we confess to ourselves. We must acknowledge the truth about ourselves, who we really are, before we can change.
Ignatius wrote this:
“It is impossible for a man to be freed from the habit of sin before he hates it.”
We must hate our sin, loath, despise it, to admit the atrocity of our heart.
But, we truly do not want to for several reasons. We don’t want to feel the guilt or the shame. However, it is right to grieve the damage of our sin. God grieves sin’s effects. Sin cost the life of Christ. When our sins come to light, God calls us to mourn our rebellion and turn to him for restoration.
However, as many people point out, sometimes we grieve the exposure of our sin rather than our sin itself.
It’s like the kid who apologizes by saying “sorry”. That’s an emotion. That is not an apology.
Tertullian said:
“Some people flee from confession as being an exposure of themselves, or they put it off from day to day. I presume they are more mindful of modesty than of salvation, like those who contract a disease in the more shameful parts of the body and shun making themselves known to the physicians; and thus they perish along with their own bashfulness.”
John writes:
If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.
We don’t need to be ashamed of our of our need for God’s grace, but we get to receive it through Christ as our path to peace.
We confess to ourselves.
C. Confession to God
C. Confession to God
We also confess to God.
As said, we don’t confess in order to earn forgiveness from God. That is already accomplished through the death of Jesus Christ, our sins on his shoulders. Forgiveness we receive by merely trusting in him.
Confession to God is an act of worship to him.
If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word is not in us.
By not confessing, we are declaring a falsehood about God. We are saying that he is a liar.
By confessing, we are telling the truth about God, we are worshiping him.
David wrote, after confessing his sin of adultery to God:
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,
so that sinners will turn back to you.
Deliver me from the guilt of bloodshed, O God,
you who are God my Savior,
and my tongue will sing of your righteousness.
Open my lips, Lord,
and my mouth will declare your praise.
You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it;
you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings.
My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit;
a broken and contrite heart
you, God, will not despise.
When we turn our hearts to God in confession, God takes our broken hearts and he heals them. He brings peace.
A bruised reed he will not break,
and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out.
In faithfulness he will bring forth justice;
We confess to God.
D. Confession to Others
D. Confession to Others
Finally we confess to others.
John writes:
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.
It is easy to read this verse and say: I have confessed to God so I am good.
However, this verse is not talking about confession to God. The grammar of this verse speaks to confession to each other. Confession is not true confession if it remains hidden in our closet, just between us and God. If it remains just between us and God, we are still living as a hypocrite to each other.
James writes this:
Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.
We are called to open up about our sin so that we can be healed from the sin, so that the chains of addiction can be broken.
Who are we to confess to? If we look at the early church, it isn’t a process of stepping into a small closet and speaking to someone behind a curtain. They actually had time, within their small churches, when people would open up and share with their brothers and sisters in Christ their struggles. Our churches have changed and become more public, and we have streaming, so we don’t do that anymore.
The Biblical principle is that we are to open up to a few trusted friends, people who will not condemn us but who can hold us accountable, tell them the truth about ourselves, everything that we discovered from making a fearless moral inventory, ask them to walk with us in the journey of freedom.
That initial moment of bringing sin that was in the dark into the light is freaky scary. But, when we do, there is freedom. Because when sin comes into the light it loses power. The more we talk about the sin that we struggle with, the more we have strength to turn away from that sin.
We have to make an honest admission to ourselves, to God, and to trusted friends.
As we confess, we remember God’s amazing grace. That we do not have to atone for our sins. Jesus did everything. In the freedom that he brings, we can rest in his grace.