Slide 1 The story is told of a prominent Washington DC area priest who was honored one evening for his ministry and service. One of his parishioners, a prominent politician was to serve as the emcee for the evening but was unavoidably detained.
So a fill-in was arranged and began to heap honor after honor upon the humble priest. Finally the priest was able to speak and he said, ‘The seal of the confessional can never be broken and therefore I can only hint of my impressions since coming to Washington twenty-five years ago.’
‘At first, he said, ‘I thought that I had come to a terrible place as the first man who entered the confessional confessed to graft and corruption. But as time went on, I knew that I had become a part of a great community and it has been an honor to serve you.’
About that time the politician arrived at the dinner and rushed to the front to apologize for the delay and said, ‘I’ll never forget the first day our honored guest arrived at this parish. In fact, I had the honor of being the first to go to his confessional.’
What is confession to you? A place? A religious habit? Something that you do on the fly? Something that is a part of Communion Sunday?
There are two things that I want us to remember today about confession and this is the first thing:
Slide 2 Without confession there is no forgiveness of sins.
Let’s spend a few moments thinking about this important aspect of prayer by watching and hearing the following passages of scripture being read aloud.
(Slide 3 Video Clip from ‘Making Prayer A Second Language’ on Confession)
Slide 4 We are spending this month learning and re-learning an important second language, the language of prayer. Last Sunday we were reminded that adoration is a very important part of prayer because adoration of who God is assures us of what God does and that is life change through a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
And today we focus on how that personal relationship with Jesus is made possible through the important act of confession.
Can you remember being so dirty that you would have given anything for a good and hot shower or bath? Can you remember the wonderful feeling of clean when you did get that hot shower or bath?
Confession is like a good hot bath or shower… it removes the dirt and grime from our souls. It removes our sins and shortcomings. It frees us up with an inner peace and joy that comes from having our sins forgiven.
In our main text for today we read very plainly, ‘But if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us and to cleanse us from every wrong.’
We need to have some important background to this verse because it helps us to more clearly understand, believe, and practice the truth that this verse contains. By the time John wrote this book, probably between 85 and 90 AD, Jerusalem had been destroyed 15 to 20 years earlier and Pentecost had taken place 60 years ago. So Christianity had been in existence for a generation or so and it was facing several challenges from various groups about key beliefs. To counteract the incorrect teachings of these groups John wrote this letter to remind the Christian church of the basics of the faith.
One of the truths had to do with the reality of sin. Some groups denied that there was sin in humanity and therefore no need confess it. But in 1 John 1:6 and following we read, ‘So we are lying if we say we have fellowship with God but go on living in spiritual darkness. We are not living in the truth. But if we are living in the light of God’s presence, just as Christ is, then we have fellowship with each other, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, cleanses us from every sin.
If we say we have no sin, we are only fooling ourselves and refusing to accept the truth. But if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us and to cleanse us from every wrong. If we claim we have not sinned, we are calling God a liar and showing that his word has no place in our hearts.’
If there is not such a thing as sin, then what do we call, among other things, domestic violence, abortion, murder, cheating, and child abuse?’ Again I remind us this morning we only look at our local paper to see the effects and results of living contrary to what God has intended.
Sin is more than wrong behavior or bad language or ‘whatever you want to call it by filling in the blank.’ We need to see beyond our narrow definitions of sin to the wider and more Biblical view of sin as both an act and an attitude of rebellion against God. This rebelliousness, this self-will, is what has gotten the human race in difficulty.
I believe that it is very safe to say that this rebellion has economic, political, social, and educational implications. Our rebelliousness and our selfishness have created the conditions that our families, our country, our world, and ourselves live in. But more than any thing else, this rebellion, sin, has created a problem between ourselves and God and only the confession, the admitting of, our sin, our rebellion to God and our repentance of that sin can begin to change our circumstances as it changes our heart.
So if we say there is not sin, we are in the dark about reality! Confession of our sins and repenting or turning away from that sin and believing that Jesus Christ has made possible our forgiveness and therefore accepting that forgiveness is what makes a personal relationship with God through Christ a reality.
What is your status in this regard? Where are you with Jesus Christ this morning?
Slide 5 Confession in prayer creates the climate by which true life change can take place.
Have you ever hurt someone you love? I have and you have. A careless (or a well-chosen) word or act creates great pain in the other person’s heart.
Sometimes we recognize it immediately and we make amends for the hurt we have caused. At other times we don’t immediately recognize what we have done but one day the gravity of our situation finally dawns on us and either we are at a loss to know what to do or we go and patch up the situation or we try to assuage our guilt with a belief that the other person will forgive and forget.
How do we ‘do’ confession in the right way? What makes for good confession? It begins with the right attitude that we bring to our time of confession.
Slide 6 David Mains makes this clear when he says, ‘There needs to be an awareness of the seriousness of the offense. All sin is anathema to God.’ In other words God hates the sin, but he loves us.
I really wonder these days if we are too flippant about confession. It almost seems that we say a weak ‘imsorry’ instead of a having a deep, deep regret over what we have done. I just wonder, especially with myself sometimes, if I am truly sorry for my sin or I am truly sorry that I got caught. Good confession begins with an attitude of humility that we have deeply hurt our creator and redeemer God.
Slide 7 Another point made by Mains with regards to confession is that it ‘should be accompanied by a deep appreciation for the length to which God went to make forgiveness possible.’
Are we truly grateful for the forgiveness of our sins? Quite frankly I fear that all we are interested in these days is ‘fire insurance.’ In other words we want to have enough salvation to get us into heaven and keep us out of hell.
But how much salvation is enough to stay out of hell? May be this humorous illustration helps us understand the importance of life after death.
Bill Gates suddenly dies and finds himself face to face with God. God stands over him and says, "Well Bill, I’m really confused on this one. It’s a tough decision. I’m not sure whether to send you to Heaven or Hell. After all, you helped society enormously by putting a computer in almost every home in America, yet you also created that ghastly Windows ’95 among other indiscretions. I believe I’ll do something I’ve never done before; I’ll let you decide where you want to go."
Bill pushed up his glasses, looked up at God and replied, "Could you briefly explain the difference between the two?" Looking slightly puzzled, God said, "Better yet, why don’t I let you visit both places briefly, then you can make your decision. Which do you choose to see first, Heaven or Hell?"
Bill played with his pocket protector for a moment, then looked back at God and said, "I think I’ll try Hell first." So, with a flash of lightning and a cloud of smoke, Bill Gates went to Hell.
When he materialized in Hell, Bill looked around. It was beautiful and clean, a bit warm, with sandy beaches and tall mountains, clear skies, pristine water, and beautiful women frolicking about. A smile came across Bill’s face as he took in a deep breath of the clean air. "This is great," he thought, "if this is Hell, I can’t wait to see heaven."
Within seconds of his thought, another flash of lightning and a cloud of smoke appeared, and Bill was off to Heaven. Heaven was a place high above the clouds, where angels were drifting about playing their harps and singing in a beautiful chorus. It was a very nice place, Bill thought, but not as enticing as Hell. Bill looked up, yelled for God, told him his decision and was sent to Hell for eternity.
Time passed, and God decided to check on the late billionaire to see how he was progressing in Hell. When he got there, he found Bill Gates shackled to a wall in a dark cave amid bone thin men and tongues of fire, being burned and tortured by demons.
"So, how is everything going?" God asked. Bill responded with a cracking voice filled with anguish and disappointment, "This is awful! It’s nothing like the Hell I visited the first time!! I can’t believe this is happening! What happened to the other place...with the beaches and the mountains and the beautiful women?" "That was the demo," replied God.
This life we live now will come to end. Either we will die or Christ will return before we die. But we will face judgment either way. Is all of our pursuits and adventures and successes worth loosing our souls over?
Do we truly appreciate Christ’s sacrifice on our behalf?
Slide 8 A third thing that Mains reminds us about confession is that we ‘should always express the intent to end the practices that are obviously outside the will of God. Said differently, true confession involves turning one’s back on the given offense, plus a serious commitment to walk God’s way in the future.’ I have quoted Patrick Morley on this point before and it bears repeating. He says, and I am paraphrasing here, ‘we add Christ to our lives but fail to subtract sin.’
This is where the second thing I want us to remember comes in.
Slide 9 Without thorough repentance forgiveness’ hold is unsure.
I don’t claim to know how much repentance is needed before God acts on our behalf. Nor do I claim to know your heart.
But, based on my reading of scripture, especially Luke 18:9-14 where Jesus makes clear, in the story of the Pharisee and Tax Collector and their Temple confession, we get an idea of what God is pleased with in confession. “I tell you, this sinner, not the Pharisee, returned home justified before God. For the proud will be humbled, but the humble will be honored.”
By thorough I mean thoroughly honest about our role, actions, and attitudes as well as the seriousness of our sins. What Jesus noticed in the confession of the Tax Collector was an honest and humble assessment of his spiritual condition.
It is interesting to note that Luke begins this segment with the phrase, ‘Jesus told this story to some who had great self-confidence and scorned everyone else.’
True confession requires us to let go of our selfishness and our pettiness and recognize that we have an inner attitude, an inner bent, toward evil and what is wrong that we can only have changed by God and not our own self effort. It was the attitude of the Pharisee that prevented him from really receiving the forgiveness that God wanted to give him as well.
Confession is a vital and necessary part of prayer. I encourage you today to make confession a daily part of your prayer language. I believe that the language of confession, as difficult as it is to speak sometimes; I believe that it is a liberating language.
It is a foreign language. I don’t hear the language of ‘I was wrong’ or ‘I’m sorry’ spoken too often these days. What I hear, even in myself, is the language of ‘it’s their fault’ or ‘I didn’t do it!’
I conclude with the story of a young nun once claimed to have had a vision of Jesus. Her bishop decided to test her truthfulness and ordered that the next time she had a vision she should ask Christ what the bishop’s primary sin had been before he became a bishop.
Some months later the nun returned and the bishop asked if she had asked Christ the question, to which she affirmed that she had. "And what did he say?" the bishop asked, apprehensively.
"Christ said..." and the nun paused a moment... "He said, ‘I don’t remember. ’"
Slide 10 We have a God who not only forgives but forgets! But that forgiveness is only possible when we confess (admit the truth about) our sins and we repent (make the determination to stop) of them. God then forgives us and makes right with Him!
How is your relationship to the Lord this morning? Do you need to do some confession? The altar is open for prayer, respond as you need to. Amen.
Mains’ quote is taken from his sermon on confession that is part of the ‘Prayer as Second Language’ series available from sermonview.com
The opening illustration is from 1001 Humorous Illustrations by Michael Hodgin
The Bill Gates illustration is from beliefnet.com
The Nun illustration is from sermoncentral.com
Power Points for this sermon and this sermon series are not available due to copy write issues.
