“Tired of Hiding: The Freedom That Comes When You Stop” (Prov 28:13; James 5:16) September 6, 2026

Alright, good morning church. May the peace of the Lord be with you.

And also with you.

If you're new this morning, I'd like to welcome you to our community.

It's great that you are here with us this morning, worshipping God.

If you'd like to connect over a cup of coffee or a meal with me and my family, we would love to do that with you. Just fill out a connect form.

And that will give me the opportunity to be able to reach out, fill out, to see if you are available to get together and connect, get to know each other a little bit better.

If you have been with us for a while, you know that we have started a brand new series on community, specifically Christian community.

And we've looked at what community is about, the different aspects of the kind of community that God is calling and inviting us to become.

So today we want to look at the aspects of confession and prayer in community from two passages in Proverbs 28 and James chapter 5.

James 5 · chapter mention

Our main text this morning will be from Proverbs 28, but we will allude to James 5 as well.

Now over the last couple of weeks, as we are looking at these various aspects of community life within the body of Christ, we looked at how we are wired and made for community, where we are one body and every member and every part of that body matters.

As God's community, love is the defining mark of the people of God.

And as a community, as we saw two Sundays ago, we are called to carry each other's burdens.

And so this morning we want to look at one of the more challenging and exposing practices of community, confession.

If the call to bear one another's burdens requires us to get close to each other, then confession asks us of something even more demanding, opening up our inner lives to another person.

It is by far the most vulnerable and the most costly thing that we can do as a community.

Now most of us carry around things inside our hearts at church that we would never ever disclose or name out loud to another person.

We all have, for lack of a better word, secrets in our lives.

The person we present publicly and to everyone else here in this room and the one that we hide from everyone else, there's kind of a dichotomy, there's two people here at play.

The one that carries around what we have done or that has been done to us.

So most of us, if not all of us, have become very good at hiding, experts, managing that part of us, and most of us are also tired as a result of it.

It is exhausting to not just carry these secrets around that we have, but to keep these secrets hidden in our lives from others.

Managing the story, keeping the right versions in line, it is costly to keep all of it continually hidden, but also to keep it all intact.

And so the church sometimes can make confession a difficult thing.

In some church communities, shame is used to motivate or where the expectation of spiritual performance is high and the grace for failure and brokenness is low.

In places like this, confession can be quite dangerous as it can lead to judgment, relational distance, communal rejection and isolation.

It is hard to step into the light and it's easier to remain in the dark.

It's easier to keep things hidden in our lives.

But I want us to consider this more in the question of our secrecy or the things that we hide.

What if the things that we hide, what if the secrets we're managing are the very thing that is keeping us from wholeness and healing?

What if trying to hide our secrets is actually costing us more than disclosing them or bringing them into the light?

What if God has designed the church to be the very place where we can step into the light and confess?

And so we want to begin with Proverbs 28 where it says, "Whoever conceals their sins does not prosper, but the one who confesses and renounces finds mercy." The word that we want to focus here is the word conceal.

Conceal in the Hebrew word kasa means to cover.

This covering could mean covering to protect something or covering something shameful.

So for example, in Genesis chapter 9, when Noah was drunk, both his sons Shem and Japheth covered their father's nakedness.

Genesis 9 · chapter mention

This was to cover their father's shame.

But here in Proverbs 28, it's used negatively, referring to covering our sin, hiding from our sin.

And this is not talking about people who have sinned but just haven't found the right time to confess.

Proverbs 28 is speaking about people who know full well what they are hiding, what they have done, what the secret is.

And they're working intentionally and deliberately to hide this and preventing it from being brought into the light.

So this covering in Proverbs 28 is about the person who is intentionally working to actively hide their sin and the cost of what that does to our entire personhood, our entire being, right?

How it affects us emotionally and spiritually and mentally, physiologically, physically even.

But it is easier to get to a place where we come to understand or accept the word cover as something only negative.

The Bible uses this word cover in a myriad of ways, positive as well.

For example, in Psalm 85, the psalmist writes, "You forgave the iniquity of your people and covered all their sins." Or what about Proverbs chapter 10, which says love covers, kassa, right?

Proverbs 10 · chapter mention

Over a multitude of wrongs.

In other words, God's covering is one of the most beautiful acts of the Old Testament in all of scripture, where we experience mercy from God through His act of intentionally and purposefully covering us from our sin.

If not for God's covering, we would experience damnation and judgment.

So when we cover ourselves in this negative sense, where we intentionally hide our sins from others, where we prevent the truth about ourselves from being brought into God's light, this kind of kassa, this kind of covering produces the opposite of what God actually intends for us.

It does not produce a life that flourishes.

Listen to what the rest of the Proverbs says here in chapter 28, "Whoever conceal their sins does not prosper." And so we need to ask the question, what does it mean for a person who is intentionally hiding their sin?

What does it mean for that person not to prosper?

And there's a version that was read by Raoul, right?

Where it says that person does not succeed.

Now, I do think that our world or even within the church world today, we don't necessarily take sin as seriously as maybe we should.

We talk about it, but how we handle sin in our own lives, what is also in the community, reveals our attitude towards it or about it.

God deals with sin very seriously, so seriously that it cost him his son.

God deals with our sin so seriously because it robs us of the life and relationship that God wants to give us with him.

Now, the word prosper here, as I mentioned earlier, can be interpreted as succeed, but I think that term succeed can be a little misleading.

It often leads people to view success in terms of financial success.

And that's not what Proverbs 28 is actually referring to.

The word prosper is better understood in relationship to an abundant life, which is what Jesus came to give us, to give the world.

He says in the Gospel of John, Jesus, "I came that they may have life and have it abundantly." So we need to ask the question, what then is an abundant life?

Is the abundant life what so many Americans call the American dream?

Make lots of money, own a home, own a car, maybe two, go on multiple vacations a year, live in the dream.

In short, the American dream is to have economic success, prosperity and live a comfortable life.

But is this what Jesus means when he says, "I have come to give you life and life to its fullest.

I have come to give you an abundant life." Is this what he's referring to?

Well, no.

Jesus is not saying that materialistic wealth is wrong.

It's not wrong to be rich.

But if a person believes that materialistic wealth is where abundant life lays, then they are mistaken.

If that's what we believe, then we are wrong.

Abundant life is experienced in Christ.

Abundance comes from meaning through Christ.

Abundance comes from the purpose in Christ.

True abundance comes from joyfulness with Christ.

True abundance comes from the spiritual fruit of abiding in Christ.

See, the abundance of love and joy and peace and patience, kindness, and the fruit of the Spirit, this is the abundant life that Jesus speaks of.

So when a person intentionally covers and hides their sin, they do not prosper, they do not flourish.

There is no abundance of life.

They cannot experience the fullness of the abundant life in Christ.

Now think about some of the practical outcomes of hiding our sin or hiding stuff in our lives.

It takes a lot of energy to hide from people.

It takes a lot of energy to try to stay ahead of potentially being exposed.

It drains our energy because we're preoccupied with how to manage our cover story or our story.

In time, this takes a toll on us emotionally, spiritually, mentally.

In other words, it's exhausting.

Hiding from our sins also creates shallow relationships.

The person who is perpetually hiding their sin or secrets or themselves can never ever go deep with others because going deep requires being open about life.

It requires being authentic and honest about what they're going through.

You see, close relationships require relational intimacy.

And if we're keeping secrets and hiding our sin and hiding ourselves, we're always going to be afraid of getting close to another for fear that we would be exposed.

You see, unconfessed sin, and that's what we're talking about.

Actively hiding in our sin has an effect on our spiritual life with God.

It has an effect on our relationship with God.

Over time, unconfessed sin can create a spiritual wall between us and God, which then dulls our ability to experience God's presence in our lives.

It's a little bit like leprosy.

Leprosy is a disease, I mean today fully treatable, but if left untreated, you can over time lose the ability to feel pain or any sort of touch, any sort of heat or cold, anything in our bodies.

And spiritual leprosy acts in the same way.

Sin is like leprosy where if left untreated, over time it can cause us to lose the ability to experience the presence and the touch of God in our lives and in our hearts.

You see, the tenderness of our hearts becomes hardened like a rock, because that's what unconfessed sin does.

And we lose the sensitivity of the Holy Spirit.

A life without the presence of God and without the presence of the Holy Spirit is not an abundant life.

It is not a life that prospers.

So then what do we do with unconfessed, intentionally hidden sin in our lives?

Well, let's continue looking at what Proverbs 28 says.

He says, "But the one who confesses and renounces them," our sins, "finds mercy." There are two outcomes here in Proverbs 28.

The one who hides their sin intentionally and does not bring it to the light, and the one who confesses and renounces their sin and finds mercy.

These two statements are linked by this beautiful three-letter word, "but." The person who hides does not prosper, but if they confess and renounce, they will find mercy.

Now, the word we want to focus on here is the word "confess." The way that we tend to understand confession is an admission of doing something wrong.

We come into the light and we admit the wrong or the sin that we have committed.

Now, the word "confess" here is the Hebrew word "yadah," and this word actually has two meanings to the word.

It does carry the meaning of making an admission of sin to publicly confess, but it also carries the meaning of expressing praise and thanksgiving.

So how do we make sense of this word?

How does confession relate to praise and giving thanks?

To confess is to make a full admission of what we have done wrong, right?

Without making excuses, without offering any sort of reasons.

So for example, I have a younger sister, so anybody who knows me knows I have a younger sister.

She serves at another church here in Vancouver.

When we were kids, we used to fight a lot.

Anybody here is an older sibling?

Okay, so you would know what I'm about to tell you here.

What about what I'm about to share?

So my sister, my younger sister would often, how do I put this, kindly, irritate me.

Okay?

She was so sneaky and she was so smart, much smarter than me.

So she would often pinch me at the right times when mom and dad were not looking, and it would frustrate me to the point where I would punch her back or pinch her like a thousand times harder than she pinched me.

And then it would make her cry, and then she would go to mom and dad, and then I would get into trouble.

Now, was I justified in pinching and punching my sister?

I mean, there could be an argument made that I was justified for doing that.

No, I'm just kidding.

There's no reason for me to pinch and punch her back.

Well, I had no good reason.

But you know what I told my parents when they confronted me with what I did to my sister?

What do you think I said?

She pinched me. Okay.

Well, there's another reason.

It's her fault. Yeah.

There's one that I, there's one that you probably use when you're a kid.

If you're an older sibling, she started it.

She started it.

She pinched me first.

I offered my excuses for my behavior and response to her.

I didn't simply confess my mistake and own it.

I had to give my parents a reason for why I did it.

You see, church, that's what it means to make a full confession.

No excuses.

We own it 100%.

It's on me.

So when we confess our sins to God, our confessions bring us to recognize who we are confessing to.

God.

The creator of the universe as we know it, the one who painted the vast canvas of and put the stars in the sky, the one who has no beginning and no end.

Our confession breaks down the walls of hostility between us and God.

It then leads us to a place where we recognize what our sin has done to us, to others, and to God.

We are then led to a place where we surrender, where we recognize who God is, His holiness, His authority, His presence, His power.

We are then led to a place of surrender and worship of God for His mercy, His compassion, His kindness, His grace over us.

It leads us to a place of worship.

It leads us to a place of praise.

And so our confession to God is also our praise to Him.

But confession is only one part of a two-part step.

The other step in Proverbs 28 is renouncing.

And now this word in Hebrew means to abandon, to forsake, to leave behind.

In other words, confession is good, but it is not enough.

Confession brings our sin to the light, but there needs to be a turning around from our sin, not just bringing it into the presence of God.

There needs to be a pattern, a movement, a moving away from sin and a pattern of moving towards loving and faithful obedience to God.

And so the benefit to the person who has confessed and renounced their sin is that they find mercy.

Now most of us will understand mercy as not getting what we do deserve, right?

So mercy can be understood in that sense here in Proverbs 28, but it also means to be compassionate and to love deeply.

And so most of us will understand this and come to expect that the other side of confession will be condemnation, ridicule, judgment.

Because most of us here in this room, if not all of us, have not had a healthy Christ-like example or experience of what awaits us on the other side of confession, which is why we are so afraid of this.

But Proverbs 28 gives us the kind of response that waits for us on the other side of confession when we also leave behind our sin.

We find mercy.

We find the Father in the story of the prodigal son who sees his son from far away and runs to his lost son.

Now at that time in culture, fathers do not run.

Running was undignified. It was childish.

At the time, men wore robes, and they had to lift up their robes to expose their legs if they ran.

And this was considered disgraceful. It was embarrassing in that time in culture.

But that's the kind of response that we receive from God.

His mercy causes him to run towards us undignified.

It is a love so deep that it moves the heart of God to embrace us when we have confessed our sin and wrongdoing.

What we find in God's mercy is God's love.

So how does all of this relate to James 5?

The command to the community in James 5 is to confess our sins to one another.

It's not just confession to God, but it's confession to another person.

So naturally there's going to be resistance, right?

And objection to this.

Why are the scriptures inviting us to do this?

Isn't confession before God and to him alone enough?

Well, yes and no.

You see, yes in that it is enough to confess to God and to him alone.

When we confess our sins to him, God will forgive us and we are made right.

We are not just made right with him, but we are cleansed of all unrighteousness.

But the power of hidden and secretive sin is broken when it is confessed in the presence of another brother or sister.

This aspect of healing, wholeness, restoration just cannot be done when confession is made to God and in private.

And I understand how challenging this is.

But let me give us three kind of practical ways for why confession to each other is important.

First, confession creates accountability.

When a person struggling with sin confesses their sin to God alone, the person is still very much alone in their journey.

But when sin is confessed with another person, there can be encouragement and support and prayer.

So an opportunity to extend, it's also an opportunity for the person on the receiving end of the confession to extend mercy, kindness, and grace.

It creates space in people's lives to allow others to lift them up when they are discouraged and disheartened and down.

Secondly, confession in community is the means by which God offers us his grace.

The church, the community of God's people is the means by which healing comes.

God has designed the church to be the channel of his grace to his people.

And last, isolation is what continues to empower shame.

Shame flourishes in isolation. It flourishes in darkness.

The person who confesses their sin brings their sin or whatever they're struggling with to light.

The presence of another person knows the secret, knows the sin, and then still accepts and loves the brother or sister.

That response breaks the power of shame in isolation.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German pastor, once wrote these words about the relationship between community, sin, and confession.

He says, "He who is alone with sin is utterly alone." In confession, the breakthrough to community takes place.

Sin demands to have a man by himself or a woman.

It withdraws them from community.

The more isolated a person is, the more destructive will be the power of sin over him and the more deeply he becomes involved in it.

The more disastrous is his isolation.

Sin wants to remain unknown. It shuns the light. In the darkness of the unexpressed, it poisons the whole being of a person.

And this can happen even in the midst of community.

If a Christian is in the fellowship of confession with a brother or sister, he or she will never be alone again anywhere.

And Bonhoeffer is correct. A community that does not practice mutual relational confession becomes a community of performance.

Where everyone manages their polished version of their lives.

But in reality, we are far more alone in our actual struggles than as if there were no community at all.

It is in the confession before God and to another person where the culture of performance and management can be broken.

So what should we do?

Well, James calls us to pray for one another so that we might receive healing.

The prayer here is a prayer that stands with someone else.

A prayer that intercedes, a prayer that advocates for the person who has confessed.

When we have received a confession from another brother or sister, we have the opportunity, Church, and the privilege of being specific in our prayers over them.

And when we pray specifically over a person, we will naturally follow up and check in with that person that we are praying for.

When we engage in prayer, we are invested in that individual for their well-being, for the hope that they flourish.

It also helps us as the person praying to remain with that person.

Prayer helps us carry the burdens that other people may be carrying.

They don't carry alone. We are now carrying with them.

When we intercede and advocate for another brother or sister, we are living out Galatians 6, which we looked at two Sundays ago, to carry one another's heaviness in our lives.

As we pray for one another, we are praying for healing.

There can be spiritual healing, meaning that our relationship with God is restored through the practices of confession and prayer and repentance.

There can be relational and communal healing, and that a person's place in the body, in the community has been restored.

And there can be physical healing, where a person is physically brought into wholeness.

You see, Church, healing is the work of God done through the community, through the community's practice of confession and prayer.

It is not the Church's job to produce healing.

It is the Church's responsibility to create a culture and an environment where God's people can confess and pray faithfully.

Proverbs 28 tells us that the person who confesses and renounces finds mercy.

James 5 tells us that mercy now arrives in the community of God's people, the Church.

Mercy arrives in the very specific practice of confession and prayer.

So what do we do with a passage like this in Proverbs 28 and James 5?

My invitation this morning, two things.

First invitation is, "Name what you are struggling before God." It could be a sin, could be doubt, could be a heaviness that you have been carrying for a while.

It could be a wound.

It could be grief.

Whatever it is, be honest before God with what is there in your heart.

The second is to identify one person in this community here today that you trust enough to be able to share with them, that you would be able to confess.

This is a person that is available, this is a person that is trustworthy, this is a person that is spiritually mature and grounded.

Identify that person and then go and confess it to them.

And don't just confess, but then go and ask for prayer.

Proverbs 28 says, "The person who hides does not prosper." James 5 shows us what it looks like when a church stops hiding from each other.

Not a community of people with nothing to hide, but people who have decided that the mercy of God on the other side of confession is worth the cost of bringing whatever we are hiding from one another into the light.

So let us claim that promise of confession and prayer and the benefit or the result, the outcome of that here this morning.