6 Steps to Growing More: Confession | Pastor Zach Weihrauch

1 John 1:8–10

1 John 1:8–10

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.

If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar,

and his word is not in us.

Well, good morning and welcome

to the weekly gathering of Christ Community Chapel.

My name is Zach. I'm one of the pastors here.

I'm so glad that we get to be part of your weekend,

especially if you're here because a friend or family member is being baptized,

and we're baptizing across all of our services scheduled to baptize

I think 40 people, might end up being even more.

We're so glad you're here.

Thanks for coming to celebrate with us.

You know, this weekend we are turning our attention to what

I think is an incredibly important topic for us

as a culture and as individuals.

You know, the British pastor, Charles Spurgeon, who was a pastor

in the 19th century, said that the job of a preacher, the job of someone

like me, was to have the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other.

I love that quote.

I mean, what he was saying is it's my job to teach the Bible, to teach God's Word.

But of course, I teach it in a particular time and place.

So, my job is to bring the Bible to bear

on your actual lives and what's happening in the world.

And when I think of that quote, the topic that immediately comes to mind

for me is the topic we're looking at this weekend.

It's the topic of confession. Confession.

Taking responsibility for something.

Taking ownership for something and admitting what you've done.

And the reason that comes to mind

is because the Bible talks a lot about confession, and the newspaper

tells me every day just how bad we've gotten at confession in our society.

If I have to hear one more celebrity

say that they're sorry if they offended anyone,

which is a way of saying, hey, I don't think I did anything wrong, but

if you're so weak that you need to hear me apologize, here you go.

Or what is currently my favorite is when someone famous posts

something dumb on the internet

and we all get mad about it and they say there's nothing wrong about it,

it's totally fine.

And then when we're not looking, they delete it.

We don't really know how to take ownership, to take responsibility,

to confess.

It's by the way, it's not just a problem for celebrities.

It's a problem for regular people like you and I.

My guess is that you have at least one relationship in your life

that is being damaged by either your unwillingness

to apologize, or the unwillingness of someone else to apologize.

We are not very good at confession.

Of course, it's not just a societal problem or a family problem.

It's a spiritual problem because the Bible tells us

if we will not confess, we cannot grow in our relationship with God.

In fact,

we can't even begin a relationship with God,

which is why I'm glad this weekend we're dedicating our time together

to confession.

So if you have a Bible, you can open it.

The first John chapter one if you want.

There's a Bible in the back of the pew

in front of you, here in this room or in the back of the room in East Hall.

Same one I use first John.

Chapter one is on page 970.

Or if you want to follow on the screens, that's fine too.

Here's an outline I'm going to use to guide our time together.

Three points. Very simple.

I want to show you that we are lying,

we are hiding, and we don't have to.

Okay, we are lying.

We are hiding and we don't have to.

Let's start with the first one.

We are lying.

I just want to take a second and acknowledge

if you're here because a family member is getting baptized,

what a great way for me to start for you.

Hey, thanks so glad I visited your church.

Thanks for telling me.

A liar.

Listen, I'm sure you're wonderful people.

I want you to notice very important.

The pronoun I used here.

I did not say you are a liar.

That would be very rude and offensive.

I said we we are lying.

You're going to see that all over this passage.

By the way, that the this the writer saying we have a problem with lying.

Let me show you a verse eight and verse ten.

You'll see it two different times. Here's what he says.

If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves.

And the truth is not in us.

Verse ten, if we say we have not sinned,

we make him a liar, and His word is not in us.

A lot of lying, a lot of deceiving.

Going on with a writer is saying is that if if we won't

acknowledge our sin before God, it's because we're lying.

That's because we're lying to ourselves.

Now to understand this, you have to have a good definition of sin.

You cannot know what he means about confessing

sin if you don't understand the biblical word sin.

And my fear is, I don't know your story.

I don't know your religious background.

So that's usually, for many of us, a loaded word.

And if we misunderstand it, we can't understand the passage.

I think for many of us, when we think about sin, we think of it

primarily in legal terms.

Then what I mean by that is we envision that God has a list of rules,

and that if we break one of those rules, we have sinned.

Sin is doing the don'ts or donating the do's.

It's breaking the rules.

And when we think of it this way, God becomes kind of a cosmic

clipboard holder up in the sky, just kind of shaking his head at us

and saying, oh, there you go.

He did it again. And did that again.

And keeping score, he here's the problem with that definition of sin.

It's not that there's no truth to that.

It's just that if that's all you think of,

you're never going to be very interested in God,

because

who wants to get to know the great clipboard holder in the sky?

But also if if sin is primarily about breaking the rules, we will always

find a way to convince ourselves we're not as bad as we really are.

That's what we do with rules.

We'll say, well, you know,

I didn't really break the rule, just this kind of partial rule breaking.

I didn't break the spirit of the rule. You know that guy?

That guy breaks way more rules than me.

Will always find a way of grading ourselves on, like, a B average.

This is how I feel about getting older, by the way.

I've realized

there are certain spots in my bathroom that if I stand, I still look young.

So my wife said to me the other day, she's like,

why do you always fix your hair in my mirror?

And it's because I think she did something

intentionally to make the light at her mirror way better than mine.

And it's making me self-conscious, right?

I'll just cheat the light.

I mean, you know,

as I get older, I'll just keep cheating the light to make myself feel young.

I'll keep cheating the rule keeping system to make myself feel like a good person.

Here's the thing, though.

The Bible tells us that sin is not primarily legal.

It's relational.

Now, here's what I mean by that.

Let me prove this to you by an analogy and then by a Bible story.

First analogy. You know, I have five children.

This is going to shock you.

But from time to time they argue with each other, right?

And they can get heated and they can get nasty.

I personally, I blame their mother.

You can reach their own opinion, but

and like most dads, I don't really get involved

until it reaches a certain volume level. Right.

And when I get involved, what instantly happens is they each

start blaming each other.

Well, she said this and he did that.

And if he hadn't said this, then I wouldn't have done that.

And the truth is, I don't know.

I mean, I wasn't, you know, I wasn't paying attention or I wasn't there.

I don't know who said what first, but every time that happens,

I'll stop them and I go, stop, stop, stop, stop.

I don't know who said what, but but I want you to just look at each other.

Look at your brother.

Look how upset he is.

Look at your sister.

She's crying

like I don't know who said what, but at some point, doesn't that matter to you?

You see, what I'm saying to them is you're thinking about this in legal terms,

but we don't primarily have a legal problem.

We have a relational problem.

So the Bible says sin is not primarily about breaking God's rules.

It's about breaking our relationship with God.

Genesis chapter two God makes, the perfect environment for human flourishing.

It's called the Garden of Eden.

It's at the confluence of a couple of rivers.

There are fruit trees and animals.

He places Adam and Eve there.

They have each other.

Conditions are perfect for them to flourish.

And right in the middle of this Paradise, God puts a tree and he says to Adam

and Eve, look, go nuts, have fun, enjoy yourselves, build shape, multiply.

He says, just here's the thing. Don't eat from this tree.

If you eat from this tree, you're going to die.

I've always thought that was weird, personally.

Like, why would God put a death tree in the middle of Paradise?

But it occurs to me

that that tree really wasn't about death, and it really wasn't about eating.

It was really about trust.

You see, God was saying to Adam and Eve, listen, what makes this

the perfect environment for human flourishing is that you trust me.

So every day,

every day, Adam and Eve walked by the tree and they didn't eat from it.

Every day they made out under the tree or climb the tree, or took fruit

down from the tree

and made a centerpiece for the table, but didn't eat it every day.

They were saying to God, we trust you, we trust you.

And on the day they finally did eat from the tree,

their problem wasn't that they had broken a rule.

Their problem was that they were saying to God, we don't trust you.

We don't think you love us. We don't think you're good.

We don't think you know best.

And we found someone.

We think who's better than you.

And you see if that's what sin is.

And then we have two problems.

One is, can any of us honestly say

that pretty much on a day to day basis?

We don't struggle with trusting God.

That we don't replace his voice with the voice of someone or something else.

Of course we do. I do, you do, we? We do.

And you see, the problem is you can't cheat that, right?

You can't find a way of justifying it or excusing it.

To not trust God is to break your relationship with him.

We are all guilty of that.

That's why the writer says, if we say we have not sin, we make him a liar

because God is telling us our relationship with him is broken.

And what are we going to do with that?

And here's a question.

If we all know we struggle to trust God, and we all know that were guilty of that,

then why do we have such a hard time saying it?

Why do we spend so much time trying to convince ourselves

or other people that we're good with God, or that that we're doing just fine?

Why do we go to our grave saying, I'm sure I'm going to get into heaven

because I'm a good person, whatever that means.

Why are we working so hard to pretend we're in a better place with God?

Well, that's my second point. It's not just that we're lying.

Listen, we're hiding.

We're hiding.

You know, when Adam and Eve do eat from the tree, God shows up in the garden.

And this is what happens.

Genesis chapter three, verse ten says this.

And he said, he here is Adam.

He said, I heard the sound of you in the garden.

And I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself.

You know,

the Bible doesn't tell us what fruit was on the tree in the Garden of Eden.

But for me, when I use my imagination, I always imagine it's pomegranate.

Okay. Here's why.

Have you ever gotten pomegranate on your skin?

You might as well die.

It's never coming off right.

And I just imagined Adam eating from the tree,

and he's got pomegranate all over his face.

And he and Eve hear God coming, and Eve's like, wipe it off, wipe it off.

And he's like, I'm trying to wipe it off.

You wipe it off.

You know, they're licking their hands, they're rubbing and they can't get it off.

And so they hear God coming.

So they hide in the bushes because what are they going to say?

They've got pomegranate all over their face.

Adam says, I heard you coming. And I hid.

And then he says this, and he's being literal, but also metaphorical.

He said, I knew I was naked and I hid myself.

Listen, have you ever had a relationship that is broken and it's your fault?

Like, you know, you

did the thing you said, the thing you it's your fault.

No excuses, no justification.

And have you ever had the experience of working through whether or not

you're going to tell the other person?

If you have, then you know there's no better way

to describe that than you feel instantly

naked,

vulnerable.

Pomegranate

all over your face.

You see, Adam hides from God for the same reason we hide from each other.

It's the same reason we make excuses.

We can't take ownership.

We blame other people because when we know it is our fault,

we're afraid that if we say that bad things are going to happen.

In fact, I think we're afraid of two things.

Try these on. See what you think.

I think we're afraid of retribution and rejection.

You know what I mean?

Retribution is we're afraid if we were to come clean to the other person,

if we were to take responsibility, that we would get their anger back.

They would hurt us back.

They would say things we don't want to hear.

They would yell. They would punch the wall.

They would throw something.

The closer you are to someone, the more they know just the thing to say

to destroy you. We're afraid of that.

So we hide.

And even if we're not afraid of that.

And usually it's both.

And we're also afraid of rejection.

We're afraid if I own this, it's going to be the end of this relationship,

the end of this partnership, the end of this friendship.

This is going to cost me that person.

And so we lie.

We make excuses and we hide because we don't want to get hurt.

Have you felt that

if it's true on a human level, how much more on a spiritual level?

In fact, many of us are hiding from God.

Coming up with our own moral grading system.

Avoiding him, avoiding prayer, avoiding coming to church.

Avoiding any interaction with God

because we're so sure that if we were to actually come into his

presence, pomegranate all over our face, naked and vulnerable, guilty,

responsible, we would get his anger and we would get his rejection.

Of course, the reason

we think that usually is because there's some religious person in our life

who has told us that

I have this all the time for people to go pastor,

even if there is a God, he doesn't want someone like me.

What are they saying? I'm hiding in the bushes.

I don't want to come out.

Have you experienced that?

Well, of course that begs the question, doesn't it?

What if.

That isn't what you would get from God.

In fact, that's actually my third point.

Not just we're lying and we're hiding, but the third point we don't have to.

The writer in First John chapter one nine says one of the most it's

one of the most beautiful things you'll find in the whole Bible.

Okay, here's what he says.

First John chapter one, verse nine.

He says this if we confess our sins.

He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins

and to cleanse us from all unrighteous.

He says, if we would confess,

if we would come out of the bushes, stop making excuses.

Stop blaming other people, stop cheating the light.

If we would come out naked pomegranate all over our face

and stand in God's presence, if we would just confess, he says,

we would get forgiveness.

But he doesn't just say forgiveness.

He says, listen, he is faithful and just to forgive us.

Why does he pick those two words?

Why not say God is merciful and kind,

sweet and caring, warm and friendly?

Why does he pick the word faithful and just?

You know why?

Because those two words speak directly to our fear

of retribution and rejection.

Here's what I mean.

Retribution is the fear that if I take ownership,

you're going to be angry with me.

But I almost need you to be angry with me.

You know what I mean?

You ever you ever confess something to someone, and they kind of

just push it off, like, oh, don't worry about it.

There's something in you that goes, no, no, no no no no no.

I get mad like like yell, get angry if we understand.

If I've done something, the only real path to forgiveness is through your anger.

If I don't get your anger, I don't feel like we've really dealt with it.

I don't want you to sweep it under the rug.

I want to get rid of it.

In our relationship, when the writer says

that God is just to forgive, what he's saying is that it's not.

When we come to God

naked pomegranate on our face that God says, don't worry about it.

Forget it.

Get over it.

Let it go.

No, no, no, that would be too thin. That wouldn't be helpful.

Instead, what he says is that God forgives us, but he forgives us with justice.

Not opposed to justice. With justice.

How does he do that?

Through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

You see,

Jesus, who lived a perfect life, a an obedient life,

a sinless life goes to the cross not to pay for his own sin,

but to pay for mine, to pay for all the sins of God's people

so that God the Son on the cross has placed on him all of my trust.

Breaking with God and God the Father pours out his anger and wrath in judgment

onto Jesus so that Jesus's dying words are it is finished.

What is finished?

The anger, the wrath, the justice, so that when we come to God

out of the bushes

with pomegranate on our face and we say, God, I'm tired of hiding.

I'm tired of cheating the light, making excuses.

Our relationship is broken and it is my fault.

And and God says, well, I'll forgive you.

We said, no, no, you don't forgive me.

Get mad, throw something, get angry.

Someone's got to pay.

Jesus holds up a nail scarred hand and says,

I'll do it.

So sweeping under the rug.

He takes it for us.

The writer also says that God is faithful to forgive,

and what that means is that God keeps his promises.

And what has God promised?

Well, that everybody who comes to him on the basis of the life, death,

and resurrection of Jesus will be forgiven.

And everyone who goes to God and says, God, I'm a good person, mostly God.

If I had just had a better childhood, God if I hadn't had that

negative religious experience,

does not get forgiveness.

Everyone who stays in the bushes

trying to wipe their face off

misses out, but everyone who comes out of the bush

is everyone who says, God, I have nothing except for this that you have told me

you'll forgive me in Jesus receives a forgiveness that is faithful in just.

Do you know what this means?

What this means is you don't have to hide.

You don't have to make excuses.

You don't have to rationalize.

You can come out naked, vulnerable, guilty, pomegranate all over your life

and you can be forgiven.

But brothers and sisters in Christ,

this is not for us a one time thing,

as though we never go back to the bushes,

as though we never have pomegranate on our face.

Confession for us is a daily thing.

We go to God with our sin.

The Bible says God's mercies are new every morning.

Why would they need to be except for so also is my guilt.

I go to God every day in my nakedness and my guilt, my responsibility,

and I receive faithful and just forgiveness in the name of Jesus.

How many of us have been stuck spiritually for months?

No prayer, no time with the Lord because we're so sure we face his anger.

We face his rejection.

No friends, brothers and sisters, it has been faced by Jesus.

Come out of the bushes.

Confess your sin.

Receive forgiveness.

By the way, this is one way that Christians can change our world.

Why can't we be the first to take ownership?

Why can't we be the ones in our families, or our companies or neighborhoods

or online who can actually say, you know what, you're right, I'm wrong.

You're right. I broke our relationship.

I said the thing I shouldn't have because whatever someone can rightfully accuse us

of, even if we're guilty, we can be forgiven.

In a world of excuses and a world of blame shifting,

let us be the ones

who show the glory of a forgiving God

and the confession of our own sins.

Let me pray for us.

Father God, thank you so much for these verses.

Thank you for the invitation to come out of the bushes.

It is not easy to believe

we know how we treat people

when they sin against us.

And so we project onto you, God, through the glory of Jesus

and the power and presence of your Holy Spirit.

Will you call us like Adam,

out of the bushes and into your forgiveness?

In Jesus name we pray. Amen.