I. Introduction

A. Illustration - Pastor Joel Osteen writes, A clergyymann was walking down the street when he came to a group of about a dozen boys between 10 and 12 years of age. The boys surrounded an old dog. Concerned that the boys were hurting the animal, the minister went over and asked, "What are you doing with that dog?" One of the boys replied, "This dog is just an old stray. We all want him, but only one of us can take him home. So we've decided whichever one of us can tell the biggest lie gets to keep the dog." The minister was taken aback. "You boys shouldn't have a contest telling lies," he said. "Don't you boys know it's a sin to lie?" Then he launched into a 10-minute sermon about lying. The clergyman ended his speech with, "When I was your age, I never told a lie." There was dead silence for about a minute and just as the minister was beginning to think he'd gotten through to them, the smallest boy gave a deep sigh and said, "All right, give him the dog" (as cited on PreachingToday.com).

B. This morning we’re continuing our series called Trauma Care for the Soul. Last week we talked about how all of the ways God wants to heal our souls involve spiritual disciplines. Today we’re looking at one of the toughest disciplines for us, because it involves something we find very difficult, as that joke illustrates. It involves confession, opening up and admitting repentantly to our sin. This isn’t a matter of performance - it’s a matter of forgiveness.

C. Illustration - David Augsburger wrote, (NEW SLIDE)) Since nothing we intend is ever faultless, and nothing we attempt ever without error, and nothing we achieve without some measure of finitude and fallibility we call humanness, we are saved by forgiveness (as cited on eSermons.com). Our performance can never, ever measure up to God’s standards if we try to earn our way into heaven. That’s why this discipline of confession is so crucial for us. King David understood this concept very clearly. In Psalm 32:1-7 he tell us about how it works.

D. Psalm 32:1-7 from the NIV – (NEW SLIDE) (NEW SLIDE) Blessed is he whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. 2 Blessed is the man whose sin the LORD does not count against him and in whose spirit is no deceit. 3 When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. (NEW SLIDE) 4 For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was sapped as in the heat of summer. 5 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. (NEW SLIDE) 6 Therefore let everyone who is godly pray to you while you may be found; surely when the mighty waters rise, they will not reach him. 7 You are my hiding place; you will protect me from trouble and surround me with songs of deliverance.

II.       Who Do I Confess To?

A.   David understood the negative consequences of refusing to confess his sin. And for us, the negative consequences are the same. When we don’t confess our sin, we literally waste away spiritually and physically. That close friendship with Jesus is gone, there is no sense of the presence of God in our lives, we feel empty. And we begin to lose our energy physically and feel those aching joints a bit more and that nervous, acid stomach. (NEW SLIDE) Over time, the negative consequences of refusing to confess and repent become more and more prominent in our daily lives, and eventually they render us unable to respond to God’s call on our hearts and with physically decimated bodies. David lived with the consequences of unconfessed sin for long enough to realize it was eating him up. So he repented, confessed to God, and God restored him.

B.   God wants to do the same thing for us. (NEW SLIDE) God is the first Person we’ve got to confess to. After all, His opinion matters more than anybody else’s, and only He can bring the healing that our hearts and lives so desperately need. I know I’ve quoted this verse a lot, but it bears repeating. 1 John 1:9 – If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. As 19^th century English philosopher William James wrote, For him who confesses, shams are over, and realities have begun (as cited on PreachingToday.com). (NEW SLIDE) When we confess our sin to God, we’ve decided that we’re done with deceit and that we want to live in the real world once again. When we refuse to confess our sin, we’re living in a dream world in which we believe that the world revolves around our opinions and our desires and that God’s opinions and desires really don’t matter. Living in the real world with God helping us by the power of His Spirit is a whole lot better than any fantasy world we could possibly dream up. Confessing our sin to God, like David did, is the best thing we could ever do.

C.   But oftentimes we feel like, even though we have God’s approval because we’re back in right relationship with Him through confession, we still could never be accepted or approved by anyone else because of our sin. I struggled for years with this. And when I found someone I could trust to confess my sin to, and they still accepted me in spite of it, I felt like the weight of the world was off my shoulders. (NEW SLIDE) I think we’ve got this idea in our heads that, even though we accept others who’ve committed and repented of and confessed all kinds of sins, we’re still unacceptable because our sin is so much worse. We expected much, much more from ourselves. We can believe we stooped so low. And so we keep beating ourselves up and projecting that rejection of ourselves onto others. In reality what we’re doing is both rejecting God’s forgiveness of us and rejecting others before they can reject us. We reject others because all of us have had times when someone we confessed to didn’t have the maturity to receive it and accept us and express God’s grace and love to us. (NEW SLIDE) We’ve got to receive the truth – when we confessed to God and repented, He washed us clean from the sin and it is not standing between us and Him. And any halfway mature Christian should be more than glad to extend to us love and acceptance and grace and mercy because we all fall short and because it’s what God did in our place.

D. Illustration – John Brokhoff, in his book Lent: A Time of Tears, wrote, The great pianist, Paderewski, had a friend whose little girl was going to give a piano recital. Out of respect for his friend, Paderewski accepted the girl's invitation to her recital. When she saw the famous pianist in the audience, she got stage fright, forgot her piece, and broke down in tears. At the close of the concert, Paderewski said nothing to her but went up and tenderly kissed her on the forehead and left. If she had not made the mistake and failed, she would not have received a kiss of love and understanding from the master pianist. Likewise, it is when we stumble and fall into sin and are complete failures that the mercy of God in Christ is experienced in terms of forgiveness (as cited on eSermons.com). (NEW SLIDE) We’ve got to get serious about not only confessing our sins to God and receive His forgiveness, but also about confessing our sins to each other and receiving acceptance and grace and mercy and help in resisting the temptation to sin.

III.    Is There a Right Way to Confess?

A.   Maybe one of our hang-ups about confession is that we’re not sure how to do it. What’s the right way to confess? Is there any wrong way to confess? First, let’s talk about three wrong ways to confess, and then the right way. All three of the wrong ways to confess involve our motives.

B.   (NEW SLIDE) First, God cannot and others should not accept our confession when we do it to make ourselves look good. Sometimes we confess our sin to make ourselves look more righteous or religious than we really are. We know that Scripture tells us that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and so we know that we have to confess. We also know that there is a certain admiration Christians have for folks who have the courage to confess their sins. So when we confess, we think about how much our confession will improve our standing and reputation. If we hadn’t confessed and somebody had found out on their own, our rep would be toast. But since we’ve gone ahead and confessed, we feel like we can bask in the glory of the admiration for the “courageous” act we’ve just done. God will never accept this kind of confession because the motives are all wrong. When we confess, we’ve got to make sure we’re never doing it to make ourselves look good.

C.   (NEW SLIDE) Second, God cannot and others should not accept our confession when we do it to make somebody else feel bad. Sometimes we feel like somebody else isn’t doing their part, so we confess to something minor that will show them how involved we are and how much more they should be involved. I know – it sounds convoluted but we’ve all done it. And then there are those times when we’ve confessed to someone about our bad attitude about something they’ve done. There are times when our heart is in the right place and it’s okay to do that. But it’s never okay to confess to someone about our bad attitude because of something they’ve done when our purpose in confessing is to make them feel badly for what they’ve done to us. If the person we’re confessing to is walking with God and He is convicting their heart, they will feel a godly sorrow over the incident without our help. When we confess, we’ve got to make sure we’re never doing it to make somebody else feel bad.

D. (NEW SLIDE) Third, God cannot and others should not our confession when we confess without repenting. To repent literally means to change our minds about something in such a way that our actions change. If our confession is real, then we will repent of our sin and make the choices necessary to not sin the same way again. Repentance shows God and others that we’re serious about our confession, that we are truly sorrowful for our sin and that we want to live the way God calls us to live. (NEW SLIDE) Our performance may not be perfect, but our intent when we confess has to be to not sin. When we confess, we’ve got to make sure we’re repentant of our sin and intend never to sin that way again.

E.What about the right way to confess? James 4:4-10 says, You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. 5 Or do you think Scripture says without reason that the spirit he caused to live in us envies intensely? 6 But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says: “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” 7 Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8 Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9 Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. 10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up. There is one word to describe the right way to confess – humbly. When we come before Him in humility and with a heart that is sincerely sorry for what we’ve done, God will accept our confession and forgive us and purify us from the unrighteousness of our sin. We may still have to deal with the consequences of sin but God will reward our humble attitude and help us through the process. (NEW SLIDE) Humility says, “it’s not about me, it’s about God and what I’ve done to offend Him.” When we confess our sin to God with humble and sincere hearts, He will accept our confession and forgive us.

F. The same holds true for when we confess our sin to others. We’ve got to be humble and sincere when we make that kind of confession, whether to one person or to a whole group, as is sometimes necessary. Christian History magazine says that Repentance was an involved process in the early church. Sin was seen not as a personal matter but as something that destroyed the unity of the church. Penitents fasted and prayed for the forgiveness of their sins, appeared before the church to make public confession, and were barred from the Lord's Supper until they gave evidence of a change of heart and were absolved (as cited on PreachingToday.com). We don’t have that kind of system in force today, but the principle holds true. (NEW SLIDE) When we sin, it affects everybody in our sphere of influence. But it affects the Body of Christ even more because when we cause a rift in our relationship with God we weaken the whole Body and hurt its witness. Humble and sincere confession heals that rift with God and strengthens and helps heal the Body of Christ. We have an awful lot to lose when we refuse to confess our sins. We have an awful lot more to gain when we choose to confess. We need God to hear our humble confessions and forgive us. We also need each other to hear our humble confessions and accept us. And to help us keep our commitment to resist the temptation to sin.

G. Illustration – Gregg Lewis, author of The Power of a Promise Kept, wrote, Married for 16 years and with two great kids, Kurt Stansell seems to have it all together. He has a successful investment counseling business, and he's a founding elder at his church. And he's a sex addict. Kurt's the first to admit it. For years, Kurt struggled with pornography. It started with magazines, but eventually turned into visits to Triple-X theaters and strip joints. Kurt kept repeating a cycle of guilt and remorse, then prayer and repentance, only to find himself back at it again. Eventually, Kurt found an accountability partner named Stan. At first, Kurt held back, being less than honest about his problem. But when he finally confessed, telling Stan the whole truth, Kurt immediately felt a weight lifted from his shoulders. He was on the road to victory. "I began to understand what shame does," Kurt says. "When we Christians try to hide something in the darkness, we give Satan incredible license to work in our lives. So, the more open I could be, the less of a hold Satan seemed to have" (as cited on PreachingToday.com).

H. Will we choose to confess and break Satan’s hold on us? Or will we choose to hold it in and strengthen Satan’s hold on us? I know it’s hard to do, but we all have a deep need to confess and to be forgiven and accepted. (NEW SLIDE) When we choose to confess, our hearts and lives will be transformed by the forgiving power of the blood of Jesus. Our church will be transformed too, and we’ll be enabled to become the Body of believers Christ is calling us to become. The stakes are too high to choose not to confess our sins. Confessing them frees the power of God to work in our lives and our church. Let’s make the choice to become a body of confessors!

IV. Conclusion

A.   Please bow your heads and close your eyes out of respect for each other’s privacy. What’s God been speaking to your heart this morning? Do you struggle with confessing your sins to God and/or to others? Let’s spend a few quiet moments listening to the Holy Spirit whisper to our hearts.

B.   What’s God been speaking to your heart? If the desire of your heart today is to surrender to God’s call to confess your sins to Him and to someone you can trust, then raise your hand as a sign of that surrender, and I’ll pray for you. Let’s pray.