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Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: You.
[00:00:01] Speaker B: Hey, thanks so much for listening to this message. My name is Jason and I'm one of the ministers here at the Madison Church of Christ. It's our hope and prayer that the teaching from God's word you hear today will bless your life and draw you closer to him. If you're ever in the Madison, Alabama area, we'd love for you to worship with us on Sundays at 830 or 10:30 a.m. If you have any other questions about the Bible or want to know more about the Madison church, find [email protected] be sure to also check out our Bible study podcast, Madison Church of Christ Bible studies. Thanks again for stopping by.
[00:00:37] Speaker A: Good to see you guys and grateful to be here this morning to share a message from God's word.
I want you to open your heart up. I want you to listen and I want you to hear the message this morning, not because I'm speaking it or because it's important what I have to say, but I want you to take a moment to internalize what God's word has to say. We're going to be talking about something that's not always the most popular. And even as we left this morning from early worship, I found myself feeling the internal burden of what even I am preaching to myself.
And so we're going to be talking about confessional prayer. And with that means that we have to come to terms with who we are and what we're going through in our life. We have to come to terms with the failings that we have. We have to come to terms with the struggles that we face, the sins that we've committed, the rebellion we've had, the section of God altogether at times that we've had. We have to come before God this morning with that kind of attitude in mind. And so I'm encouraging all of us to open our hearts up for that. And I'd like for us to begin this morning in prayer so we can do that. Pray with me.
Father in heaven, thank you so much for everything you do for us, for the blessing that we have in you. Father, there are often times that we realize and recognize that we don't always come to you when we should. That there are times in our life, Father, where we look past the mistakes that we've made and just assume if no one knows, everything will be okay. We know, father, that there are times where we are hold back from things that we know we need to be doing. And father, you've told us that those things are sinful when we know to do what's right, and we refuse to do it. Help us, father, to look deep into our own hearts this morning, to let your word infiltrate it, let it touch us, let it convict us, and let it move us to change this morning. And I pray, father, that everything that's said this morning will be in your will, that it will be spoken in the right spirit, with the right heart, and that you will help me as we try to communicate these truths. And I thank you, father, for all that you do. In Jesus name, amen.
I want to share with you another story that you guys have heard before. I think maybe a couple of years ago, I shared this story, and so I'm going to bring it back up, and I'll kind of speed through it, because I know you're fairly familiar with it, but it helps illustrate a good point that I want to touch on this morning, and that is, years ago, I told you guys that my parents were a part of a visitation program when I was a small child. And when people visited our church and worship the next week, we would go out as a family and go visit those families, spend time with them. And we did that. We went to this apartment complex, and we went into the house of these people who had visited. And while I was in there, I made some ruckus, or apparently I was causing some trouble. So they kicked me outside with another kid in that family, and he and I were to play outside while the parents were talking about spiritual things. And in that process, we started playing follow the leader. He jumped on a table and then jumped off a table. I jumped on the table, and when I went to jump off the table collapsed and broke and fell apart. And, of course, I was cognizant of my guilt, of what just happened. And so I did what any normal kid would do. Instead of confessing, I found a way to get underneath that table, find that broken leg, prop it back up, slide out, and feel like I had accomplished everything right, that everything was good, that I didn't have any more guilt because I had fixed the table. But deep down inside, I knew that that was not right. So we're on our way home after it's all over with, nothing's been said about the table. Nobody could tell that it was all wonky. And so we get in the car, and we're driving home, and you know what happens? I had already felt the guilt of what I'd done, but now I'm feeling the shame of it, right? I'm feeling the, oh, wow. I snuck out of there and got away with this, right? And so my parents say, everything okay back there? They can tell that something's wrong. And I'm like, oh, yeah, everything's fine. Got a little bit further down the road. Is everything okay?
I broke their table and I burst into tears. And my dad turned the car around and went back to the apartment complex and said, go tell them what you did. And I think I described it. The walk was eternal. It was 10 miles long and the door was 15ft tall. And I was scared of death as I went and knocked on that door. And I told the lady in tears, I broke your table. And she grabbed me and put her arms around me and said, it's okay. That table has always been broken. We just propped the leg up underneath it.
And I remember that as a story to help teach me accountability.
But what I think it helps illustrate, maybe even more, is the difference in guilt and shame. What I want to explain is there's a little bit of difference in these two things. Guilt is what you feel when you yourself have a problem between you and God.
It's God's design for when we make mistakes and we do things that are contrary to his will, that we're impacted by that, that we're touched in our heart, we're pricked, and as a result, we're moved to do something different. Right. In our mind, we recognize there's a disconnect between what I know is right and what I just did. That's a moral fabric that we have inside of us. Shame comes into play when we know we have guilt, but then we start looking at other people and we start going, oh, well, what if they knew about what I did? And so then we go into action and we start trying to work things out and fix things. There actually have been studies done under mris that help us see what happens in the mind when we're experiencing guilt. And it's called the amygdala part of the brain. It deals with emotions and hurt and disappointment in ourselves and inside our mind. What happens when we make a mistake is that lights up that guilt of knowing that what we did was not right. It lights up, and there's a little bit of activity in other places, but mostly it's right there in that amygdala, meaning that we are dealing with it internally. So with guilt, like, you could have an experience of guilt, but you could be working on it with you and God, and you could be praying about that, and no 1 may ever know about it because it's a very personal thing with you and God.
But the difference with shame, as they monitor this with regard to comparing it to guilt, when shame comes into the situation, the amygdala, the part that's dealing with the actual problem, kind of goes quiet in the brain, and then other parts of our brain start lighting up. And you know what that is? It's us trying to figure it out. It's us trying to figure out a way out of it. It's us trying to work things out in our event. What can I say to someone? And who is it that I have to say that to? And I have to have that same story with so so and and so and so and so. Because if those stories have to match up and our mind starts putting together a plot and a plan for us to not have to endure the guilt, that's the shame aspect of it. So it's pretty interesting, isn't it, that when we're just dealing with things between us and God, it's very internal and we're working on things, but when it involves other people, we find ourselves less willing to accept that responsibility and we try to find ways to wiggle out of things. But also, this story reminded me of a couple of other things. And the other one is the reality of a full denial. I experienced this when I broke the table. And I was asked, is anything wrong? I said, no, there was nothing wrong, right? And that's when my guilt became shame. Right? Because now somebody else knows that nothing's wrong. But inside I know that there is. And I'm worried about what my parents might think if they find out. What kind of punishment might I experience if they realize that I have broken the table of these people that we just visited? And then beyond that, some people will do that. And that makes sense, right? The full denial is good because at least in your mind, it doesn't let anybody else know. And so we kind of harbor that, and it's just between us, right, and God. So we just leave that alone. But then there's the full confession. And the full confession means that I relinquish it all. That I get it out in the open, that I share it completely and totally. That I say, yes, I broke their table. Yes, I did all these things. I jumped on the table, it broke, and I gave them the full story and all that, and I fully confessed that. And that's great, right? Because it cleanses our mind. It helps us feel the removal of that guilt and that we've relinquished it over. But I want you to capture something that in my story, there's more to the story in that I just had to confess to my parents. See, I had not done wrong to my parents. I had done wrong to someone else. So it was my responsibility to go to those people and make those things right. My parents were awesome in helping me. How many times do we, as parents, sometimes take that bullet for our kids? We don't give them the opportunity to hold themselves responsible and accountable for what they've done. So I'm thankful that I had those parents. So, typically, people fall in one of those two categories. I mean, those are things that happen. But actually the thing that happens more than anything else is this one, which is actually more counterproductive and hurtful to us than anything else. And that's a partial confession. What I mean by this is we know we did something wrong, so we give a partial confession. And when we've been given the opportunity to make things right, sometimes we will go back and add other layers to it. And so now we're not only dealing with what we did wrong, but we're dealing with the guilt of I didn't tell the whole truth. That's why they say in court that you are to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Right. Well, they've also done studies about this as well, and this is really fascinating to me. They did this test online.
Psychologist. Cognitive psychologist. And the test was simply this. It was a coin flip. You would go online and you would guess how many times you could get correct the coin flip. So you would put in your guess of whether it's going to be heads or tails. You would click the little button and randomly the computer would spin that coin, and it would pop up heads or tails. And then you yourself were supposed to take account of how many times you guessed correctly. Okay. And you were to report that at the end of the test, and you were going to get paid for every correct answer that you got. So people jumped on board, and there were ten questions or ten coin flips, and they did their best to guess the best they could. At the end of that, they asked for people to report it, and they did report it, but what was happening in the background is the computer itself was taking accurate count of whether they were right or wrong.
And so at the end, they asked them pretty simply, how many of these did you get correct? Did you know that 35% of them overestimated the number of times they got right? Yeah. If you're going to get paid for it, might as well shoot the moon. Right. So that's what they did. And so they pulled the information. And a little bit further in the study, they went back to the people and said, okay, you're going to get paid for just how you responded. However many responses you said you got, right, that's what you're going to get paid for. There are going to be no consequences. But we really do want to give you an opportunity. If you think you made a mistake or if you weren't quite honest on those answers, there's not going to be any penalty, no consequence, you're not going to have to turn any money. But if you have, would you be willing to set the record straight? And a lot of them, only 18% of the people actually turned around and gave the correct answer.
And odly enough, nobody underestimated. Isn't that interesting?
The bottom line is in the findings of this study was simply this, that people were willing to say a certain amount of the things that they had done wrong, but they were not willing to completely come clean. And when you think about partial confession, what I want you to recognize is it's guilt upon guilt, right? Because not only are you dealing with what you did wrong, but now because you've been dishonest, you're dealing with a perpetual of that as well. So that makes it very complicated for us. And unfortunately, we're in the majority of the people who do this. We tend to try to, okay, we'll confess because we know that's the right thing to do, but we don't tell everything because we don't want people to feel bad about us. This creates what's called cognitive dissonance. And I know this sounds like a science class, and I really don't mean for it to be, but I want you to understand what's happening in your mind.
You see, when you have a moral standard and you know that something is right or wrong, and you choose to do the thing that's wrong, what happens is in your mind, there is this conflict that takes place. It's a battle, because who you want to be is what you want people to know about you, or that's what you want to be, but what in reality it is. If those two things don't match up, it creates that conflict. And so we battle with that. That's a tough thing for us. And in the middle of all that, because we want people to think what we want them to think of us. Our ego is battling against that. And so you've got this conflict, and you've got what I want people to think about me at war together. And it's kind of like the way I can describe it is dissonance is, in musical terms, it's like this. There are some songs that we sing that have these beautiful chords that are all throughout. But there may be one part toward the end of the song, or maybe at the end of a line where it goes a little bit dissonance. It means it's not quite clear, it's not resolved, and then all of a sudden it resolves. We just sang a song last week called mighty to save, and the song goes, he is mighty to save, and then it stops there. And everything in me wants to go, mighty to save. I want to resolve it because the chord doesn't sound exactly right. It doesn't feel like the end of the song. It feels like there's more to be had. And I've heard people say that's why it was written that way. But I find myself just wanting it to drift down into that comfortable cord to finish things off. And that's really what's happening in our mind, is we want things to blend together, we want things to be resolved. But because we have this conflict in us, it's not going to happen. It's exactly what Paul was describing in romans seven when he says, so the trouble is not the law, for it is spiritual and good. And I want to remind us that everything that God has given us in his word is perfect. It is the moral standard. It is the guideline by which we do every single thing in our life. It's not that God's word is confusing or hard to follow. No, it's the standard. The problem, as he says, the trouble is with me, for I am all too human and a slave to sin. He says, I don't really understand myself, for I want to do what's right, but I don't do it. And instead I do what I hate. But if I know that what I'm doing is wrong, this shows that I agree that the law is good. Do you see the battle that's going on? In fact, he goes on to say, who's going to deliver me from this, this burden that I feel when I know what I want to be and what I want people to think about me? But I know who I am. And that problem is something that's difficult for us to deal with because we have a conflict inside. So failure is ego threatening. When we make those mistakes, it takes us down a notch. And if we do that too much, what it causes us to do is to tune out to the mistakes that we're making it just means that we get more and more comfortable with making those mistakes, and we drift further and further away from God. So what's the problem?
And I think this is it. When it boils down to it is simply this.
Unfortunately, when we have conflicts of what other people may think versus what God may think, it seems to me that often we fear mankind and what they may think of us over the God who is going to and is so ready to open his heart up and forgive us. So we hold on to people who we share sin in common with, but we don't pour it out to God, who is the one who is saying, oh, all you got to do is just bring it to me. I want to forgive you. I'm begging for you to make things right. In fact, that's the whole reason Jesus was sent, so that we would have that special blessing of forgiveness that God provides for us. So we're not looking for the one who is willing to take the sin away. We're looking more to the people that we share in common sin, and we value their thoughts more than we do God's. And that becomes a real problem for us because it leads to self justification. And what that means is I find new ways to rationalize what I'm doing. I find ways to say that my behavior and the things that I've done are okay because there's a reason behind why I did it. Well, the reason I fell into that temptation was because I had a weak moment and I lost my mind a little bit. But it's okay because God doesn't hold me accountable for things that I was just not in the right place. And we find all kinds of way to rationalize the things that we're doing in our life, and they're not wholesome or helpful for us. But have you ever been around someone that is always justifying why they did what they did?
Those kind of people are very tough to be around. They're sort of self absorbed. They don't listen. They don't think they could ever be wrong.
They're not trustworthy. It's hard to be close to them. It's the kind of people that you go, well, they say these things, but then I watch their character and who they're surrounded by and the behavior that I witness on my own and what they're saying and what they're living just they don't seem to marry up. And so that's a person that's really difficult to trust. So self justification takes us to that place.
So this morning as I said, it's not one of the more popular sermons to preach about. But I want us to be reminded of the reality of sin. And we know what sin does. It takes us away from God.
Isaiah, chapter 59, verses one and two, tells us that it separates us from God. And we know that. But the problem is that sometimes we're not all that open about the reality of our own personal sin. We know that sin exists.
But this guy says, this Thomas Carlisle, he says, the greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none. The idea that I just go about my life and I just assume that what I'm doing is okay, that I don't stop and judge my behavior against God's word, and that I'm not necessarily aware of that. But romans three says to us, everyone sinned. Everyone's fallen short of God's glorious standard. And it is a glorious standard.
And he's put it out there for us to follow it and to let it be our God. But he also knows, folks, that every one of us are going to be guilty because we are human. I mean, in the garden, when God gave them one rule, it was just a matter of time, wasn't it? Before Satan and his temptations came into the picture. And they were drawn away by their own lust and desires. And that led to sin. And sin entered the world. And I'm not suggesting in any way that we adopted the sin of Adam and Eve. But what I am telling you is that we are just like them in that we are the kind of people who are looking for ways to get around what we know we should do so we can do what we want to do. And that really describes all of us. And it's not me putting anybody down. It's me, too. It's all of us. We're always trying to find that way of us navigating around this and rationalizing what we're doing. But everyone sin and come short of that glory of God. So while that's tough, I want to be reminded that eternal life comes through Jesus Christ. And he came to die for our sins, so we don't have to hold on to those forever. And that is a beautiful thing. But you can't learn from your mistakes if you're not willing to acknowledge that you have those mistakes. This is why this confessional prayer, this idea of bringing things before God, pouring out our heart, is difficult, because sometimes we don't want to acknowledge that we have these kinds of sins in our life. I was talking to a dear brother friend of mine who is in our audience.
And he came up to me one Sunday morning after worship and said, can I ask you a question? And I said, sure.
And this is a man I deeply respect.
He said, when was the last time you heard us ask God for forgiveness of our sins?
And I said, well, we talk about. He said, no, you preach about it. But in our prayers here at Madison, when was the last time that we had someone stir up our hearts about giving over their sins to God, asking God to forgive us of our rebellion and our sinful ways and those kinds of things? And I had to stop and think for a moment.
I felt like surely we had. But I began paying attention more, and it began to kind of hit me a little bit that we may make a passing remark about that. But his point was this. Is it possible that we have grown so far away from acknowledging our sin that we may live in such a way that we don't really see sin?
That's a tough thing to deal with, right? It's a harder thing for us to be reminded of. It's burdensome. It makes us feel bad. We don't want that. But in reality, shouldn't we be asking God for forgiveness? If Jesus is the way we get that forgiveness, then surely we ought to find ourselves more willing to share the things that are going wrong in our life so we can find that forgiveness and find that good standing. But we can't learn if we're not willing to acknowledge those things. One John one eight says it this way. If we claim we have no sin, we're only fooling ourselves and not living in the truth.
It's acknowledged. God is saying to all of us, you're a sinner, I'm a sinner. We're all sinners. We should all stand up and say it together. We won't. But I'm just saying every one of us should acknowledge that we have sin in our life. We have messed up.
We have fallen away. Whether we intended to, or whether we just followed a temptation and slipped into something we shouldn't have done, that's still sin. It's the kind of thing that takes us away from God. And so all of us have got to come to the reality of that. And what is the spiritual impact? There's lots of passages I'm going to give you. Just a couple here. Oh, God, it is you who knows my folly and my wrongs are not hidden from you. Psalm 69, verse five. And I am full of anxiety because of my sin. When was the last time we felt the anxiety? The worry of us not being right with God, uncomfortable with the reality that I'm not in good standing with God again, this is tough for us. But here at Madison, we have to find that safety net. We have to find that place of refuge here, this room filled with people that love us and that want us to do what's right. We got to find the ability to open up our hearts to each other and confess the things that are going on in our lives. In psalm 32, there's a beautiful passage here, and we just sang from psalm 51, creating me a clean heart. O God, cast me not away from your presence and take not your holy spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of my salvation and renew a right spirit within me. That's a beautiful psalm. But if you go to psalm 32, you're going to find out exactly how David felt after he had been found guilty of sin with Bathsheba.
And he opens up his heart and he shares with us the feelings that he had inside, the grief and the burden that he was. So as he's writing this psalm, and he's already expressed his appreciation to God for what God has done for him and forgiving him of these things, but this is how he felt. He said, I refused to confess my sin. My body wasted away, and I groaned all day long, day and night. Your hand of discipline was heavy on me. Oh, that just sounds so oppressive, doesn't it? It just sounds tough. But how many of us have done things in our life that we feel the burden of it? You feel the heavy weight of it. I think that's why in Hebrews 13, when after this whole chapter of, or actually Hebrews chapter twelve, the whole chapter of faithful people, people who had been great examples and witnesses to the things of God and how they had all lived their life faithfully said, because we have this great cloud of witnesses in front of us, let us lay aside the encumbrance, the sin, the weight that so easily ensnares us and holds us down. And let us run with patience the race that is set before us. Looking to Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, what he's saying is, hey, you got all these great examples. They've all battled through sin. None of those people are perfect. But because they trusted in God, he was with them and he gave them things. So you, too, have to lay off those burdens and those things that are in your life. So David is saying, my strength evaporated like water in the summer heat, just feeling the oppression of his own sin.
I want to ask us, have we felt the burden of our sin, or have we hardened our heart to the point where we're not touched by those things anymore? Well, what's the spiritual remedy? It's pretty simple. The next verse says this.
Finally, I confessed all my sins to you and stopped trying to hide my guilt. I said to myself, I will confess my rebellion to the Lord.
And what that brought is spiritual relief.
You ever had one of those watershed moments where you just had to pour it out?
I have been so blessed to be a youth minister and to a lot of people who are in this audience and also to be able to go and enjoy some of the retreats and camps that I see, these teenagers.
And if you've been on one of these christian camp experiences, or if you've been on one of their retreats and all weekend long, or all week long, you're getting biblical messages that touch your heart, that prick you, and you've got all these walls built up when you first get there. But as God's word does, it has an impact on your heart and on your life. And as you experience this over and over again, and as the week goes on, you get softer and softer. And then there's this moment. There's this moment where one kid has the courage to step up and go forward and just say, I am a mess.
And when they do, what happens is five people jump up to their rescue and they're there to support them and to love on them. And then, you know what? There's five more people that come forward, and you look up and everyone on the. It's a big blob of people, and they're all crying and confessing. They're all saying, I've made mistakes. I want forgiveness. I want a fresh start. I want a new opportunity. And they come, and it's just the most beautiful thing in the world to see God's people do what God's people should do. And we see that in these youth retreats, and we see it at Bible camp, and we see it at places where someone has the courage to do that, and it incites the ability of other people to be able to do the same thing, to confess. But we don't often see it in this room.
And I can't explain it because it's often the same people.
We're all the same people with the same struggles, but we don't see that moment where people relinquish and give over that control.
And they say, I need help. And the moment they say it, not only does God forgive them, but they're surrounded by the support that they need. That's a picture of the church, and that's why we need to confess our sins. There's spiritual relief. David said this. After I confess these things, you forgave me and my guilt is gone. You ever wanted a fresh start?
You've been working at a place, maybe where things were tough and difficult and you had struggles to make it every day, but you forced yourself to get to that job and do your thing and try to have the right attitude. And you're saying, God, help me through this. But ultimately you get to a spot where this is not working. I have to have a full fundamental change and you relocate to another business. And even though those things didn't disappear, you got this fresh start. And it was with new environment and new attitude and new opportunities and those kinds of things that's similar. It's not the same thing, but in the same way, this is what God is saying is when you come to me and you pour these things out, I give you that fresh start.
John said it this way. My dear children, I'm writing this to you so that you will not sin.
All of these instructions are meant to give you insight into the mind of God and how to follow him and trust him. So I'm sending you these words so you won't sin. But if anyone does sin, and we know everyone will, we have an advocate who pleads our case before the father.
He is Jesus Christ, the one who is truly righteous.
You get that you're not righteous, but Jesus is. And he's the one who takes your file and he brings it to court and he stands up to represent you.
And the case is based not on what you've done, but your surrender to him and giving it over to him and trusting, and he pleads your case and says, all of these sins that you've ever committed, my blood is covering every one of them.
And so we stand before the judge and the judge says, acquitted, not because of our goodness, but because we dared confess those things to the one who could forgive us.
And why is he perfect? He is the only righteous sacrifice for full atonement. He's the only one.
But he's good enough for not only you, but for all sins, for all time.
So here's what happens when we feel guilt. And I think this is something that we all probably recognize, if we really stop and think about it, is that satan convinces us that all is lost. Like if you were to confess your sin, if you were to share with people what they don't know about you. If you were to give that over to them and say it out loud in front of these people, you know what's going to happen? You're going to lose all your friends. You're going to lose everybody that's ever been around you. You're not going to be supported. You're going to lose it all. You're going to lose your reputation. You're going to lose your friends. You're going to lose relationships with people here in the church. You're going to just have, it's all going to fall apart. So here's what you need to do. Satan says to you, hide. And that's exactly what adam and eve did right in the garden.
But on the other hand, jesus says, no, bring it here. Like, bring all your junk, bring everything that you're burdened by. Bring all of your mistakes, bring it all. Just come to me and lay it at my feet, and I'll give you rescue. I'll give you peace of mind. I'll give you that comfort, and I'll give you that fresh start. That confession is needed so you can be healed. So do that. Don't hold back. How awesome is it that the one who died for you and paid the price, you, sin is also the one who says no? Come on. Come on. It's the picture that we see in luke, chapter 15 of that father waiting for the prodigal son to come home. He says, hey, I confess, I've been terrible. I'm not even worthy to be called your son anymore. And he says, I'll tell you what, go get the ring and the robe and kill the fatted calf. Let's celebrate, because what was lost is now found. And that's where we find ourselves at times right in need of that rescue, that safety net, that beautiful forgiveness. And jesus promises it when we just confess.
Proverbs 20 813. People who conceal their sins will not prosper, but if they confess and turn from them, they will receive mercy. One john, chapter one, verse nine. It continues on. But if we confess our sins, he's faithful and just to forgive us from all wickedness, right? All sin in our life. What a powerful thing to know that I can come to him, I could confess those things, and he is faithful and just faithful. What does that mean? It means I can count on him every single time he is just. That means I can count on him every single time to do the right thing every single time. God is faithful. He is just to do what? To clear your conscience?
Wow.
I want a fresh start, don't you?
But for some reason we have a problem with this. And what is it?
Here is what David said in psalm 32 before he mentioned how he felt in his sin.
He said, what joy for those whose disobedience is forgiven, whose sin is put out of sight.
Yes, what joy for those whose record the Lord has cleared of guilt, whose lives are lived in complete honesty.
That's why it says in James 516, confess your faults or your sins to one another and pray for one another so that you may be healed.
Confession of sin I love this. Wednesday night, Chris Phillips came forward and he said simply this. And those of you who are here, you saw it. He said, I'm not spending enough time with God. I have not kept God as a priority. I have not prayed to God enough. I have not read enough about what I need to do. I've not been a good husband. I've not been the best father I could be. And he just said, in general, I just got my priorities out of order and I just need to return back to God and know that he's there for me. And so he confessed this in front of all of us. And I looked up and there were tons of people surrounding him when it was over with.
Confession of sin in the presence of others is applying and celebrating the gospel together. What do I mean by that?
The gospel is simply this. In my sinful state, in my rebellion, in my disobedience, while I was in that circumstance, Jesus came and died for me.
And because of that, when I surrender to him and I confess him before men, and when I'm baptized into Christ and his blood washes away my sins, I have this beautiful relationship with him. And then I have this relationship with him that allows me the opportunity to come back before him and say I've messed up again and he forgives me again and again and again.
And that is a blessing that we can enjoy together.
And we're never more celebrating the gospel when we say together. That's why he came to die for us, because we couldn't be perfect together, and we won't be perfect, and we won't live our life without mistakes. The gospel says, I can keep trusting in him and he will keep forgiving me of my sins. But admission also should lead to admission. And what I mean by that is when someone comes forward and they admit something that's wrong in their life, it should lead to an open door to us as well, an open door for us to reach out to them, to love them, to support them and to give them what they need. It should be an opportunity for us to bring them into our family, bring them into our influence, and give them the love and the support and encouragement that they need. So admission should lead to admission as well. And that's one of those things that we've got to create this safety net here at Madison. In closing, I want to wrap up with this one quick story in Ezra, chapter nine and ten. What's happening is the Israelites have been off in babylonian captivity, and the king there has allowed them to come back and to start their life over in Jerusalem. But along the way, Ezra realizes that the people will be no better off if they come as they are and they don't change. And they're not challenged to be any different, because, see, they had been contrary to what God wanted them to do. They had been taken in pagan practices, and they had married into other relationships of people who were pagans, and they had adopted some of those thinking. And so the fact that God was merciful and allowed them to come back to Jerusalem was wonderful. But if they did not change who they were, they were just going to be taken back into captivity, or God was going to bring his judgment in some other way. So they had to be changing. And so Ezra, as he's leading everybody, and he's leading them in prayer and bringing them over toward Jerusalem, he stops and he prays. He says, our sins are higher than our heads, and our guilt has reached to the heavens. We have forsaken the commands you gave through your servants, the prophets. He's burdened by this. He's bothered, and so he's telling everybody, hey, we've got to get things right. Well, he gets there. In Ezra, chapter ten, verse one, it says, he prayed and made confession, weeping and casting himself down before the house of God. The idea is that he kept throwing himself down over and over again, and he's wailing and he's crying at the top of his lungs, and he's lifting up the confessions of the people. It's not even his sins, but it's the sins of the people that have caused them to be taken away. And he wants so badly for us to be right with God. And so, literally, he's lifting up their prayers, their confessions up to God. And it's burdening him so much that he's falling down over and over. He's screaming and yelling and praying this out to God. And what happens is people notice, and they're moved by that level of sincerity and that desire to be right with God. And so a great assembly of women and men and children gathered to him, and they all wept bitterly together.
Those in need of change were moved, catch this. Not by some strong edict or a hard line, but they were moved by witnessing a man in tearful prayer.
And isn't it amazing how that changes things?
Because verse two says this, shekhaniah, another guy said, hey, we have broken faith with our God. We've married foreign women from the people of the land, but now there is hope for Israel in spite of us. Yes, the situation is bad, but we can turn this around. We can make better decisions. We can hold ourselves accountable. So what happened in this public confession, this heartfelt confession, what I want you to see is that one person having the courage to do what was right began to have an impact.
And I like that ripple effect of a drop of water, how it changes the whole complexity of the water around it, how it just moves everything. And that began to open up the hearts of those who had closed their hearts. And you know what? Public confession has a way of doing that. When you see someone respond, don't you find yourself sometimes going, man, I could be up there saying the same thing.
It has a way of motivating us, doesn't it? So they wanted to know what to do. Ezra said, confess your sin to the Lord, not to me, but to the Lord, the God of your ancestors, and do what he commands. Separate yourselves from the people of the land and from the pagan women. And when they did this, they recognized, it's going to be hard. In Ezra, it says that they were like, hey, this is going to take a long time. This is not like a light switch. This is not one of those moments where we can just say, it's done and it's over with. No, this is going to be a process. And what I want you to recognize is this. True repentance is a process that is first driven by confession, but then it's perpetuated by that desire and that discipline to make a change in your life.
And so that's where we find ourselves today.
I want to share with you just a few action steps, and then we'll wrap it up.
First thing is this. Make restoration your focus.
Desire nothing more than to be right with God.
Forget what other people think.
Forget how to make you look. Forget what people might say in the background.
Put God first above everything else. Decide right now to make restoration with God the most important thing. Second thing is, be honest about where you are spiritually.
Can you do that?
Can you do one of those really deep looks in the mirror that reveals who you are, what your focus is, what your priorities are, where maybe what God is saying to you is not something that you've been fully committing yourself to.
And once you've done that, confess so that you may be healed.
How many broken table stories do you have in your life of those moments where you made the mistake? Your initial thought was to deny it, but eventually you came around to come and clean.
And in the process, as I think about that story of the table, when I did make that confession and go to that lady who had broken her table, she was a beautiful picture of God in that she already knew that the mess was there.
It was just up to me to confess it so she could put her arms around me and say, it's okay. I already knew that was broken.
Don't you know that God already knows that you're broken?
Don't you know that he recognizes you can't be perfect?
And don't you know that he loves you and that he's so ready to wrap his arms around you and to forgive you of all the sins in your life and the rebellion. But he's also there to pick up your spirit just when you need encouragement, and so is this church family this morning. If you have a need, be that person that triggers the ripple effect. Be that person that does not care what other people think, but you just want to give it over to God and be right. Let's do that. While we stand and sing.
