How to Be Blessed
Part Four
Our theme of obtaining God’s blessing continues this morning as we continue to remind ourselves that the Bible is a book about getting blessed.
. For the purposes of our study, our personal definition of being blessed is threefold:
1) To be especially happy and content
2) To have inner peace within
3) To be confident and fulfilled
Jesus said that he came to bring us life and life more abundant. In contrast, he refers to “the thief” (Satan?) whose only purpose is to steal and destroy. If we are to find God’s blessing we need to find where the thief is gaining access to our lives. We need to find the areas where he is trying to remove our joy, our faith, our peace, our confidence, and to break our relationship with God.
This week, we begin our study in Psalm 32, where the Psalmist testifies of his personal experience of confessing his own personal sin and receiving forgiveness. He begins by saying “Blessed is the man whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.”
Do you see the Psalmist testimony for what it is? He declares that He was unhappy, stressed, sleepless, and even in physical discomfort because of his refusal to confess his sin. He had felt God’s hand upon him. He had been unhappy and disturbed. If you read that passage carefully you might recognize symptoms of what we call “depression.”
I believe that a lot of the depression we see in our society today stems from our refusal to confess and forsake our sin. We stubbornly press on in our sadness and knowing we are out of God’s will. We attempt to shift the blame for our unhappiness onto God Himself. We blame God because we have lost our joy.
I have to confess that I’ve been here. I was so down, so discouraged, in physical, emotional and spiritual pain. I spent a year and a half hurting and angry at God and everyone around me. Then, I finally had to confess that the reason for all of my pain was that I had attempted to depart from the path that God had called me. At that moment, my joy began to return. When I cried out to God in honest confession, He began to restore my joy. I was able to come into the church the following Sunday and state boldly, “I’ve got my joy back!” I know exactly what the Psalmist is talking about.
When we remain silent, God’s Holy Spirit continues to convict us, to press us, to speak to us about our sin. It brings us discomfort. It removes us from the path of God’s blessing. It gives us the opposite of happiness. It steals our peace. It keeps us from being confident and feeling fulfilled. In essence, our refusal to confess our sin gives us the opposite of blessing.
In other words, a place that the devil enters our lives and begins to steal our joy and peace is through our stubborn refusal to confess our sin. If he can convince us we don’t need to confess it then he can steal our joy. He can keep us from finding God’s blessing.
Do you note that after the Psalmist confesses his sin he is prepared to teach others? It is only after we deal with our own personal sin that we can begin to minister in the lives of others.
James writes to his readers that there is a need to confess our faults one to another. (James 5:16) Why? Well, remember that the context of James is that one group felt that they were spiritually superior to another. If we are open and honest about our sin we will have a tough time becoming proud and arrogant. It is difficult to maintain an aura of supposed spiritual superiority when we are open and honest about our shortcomings. I don’t believe that James wants believers to share every dark detail of their sin life, but believers must be honest about sin.
We also have the example of the Apostle Paul who said in I Timothy 1:15… he declared, “I am the chief of sinners!” He didn’t say, “I used to be a real bad sinner.” He used the present tense. He was noting that he was still struggling with sin. In Philippians 3:12 he declares boldly that he recognizes he has NOT already attained perfection, but is still struggling to become the man God has called him to be.
12 Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. 13 Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. Philippians 3:12-14
Let us read from I John 1.
5 This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. 6 If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth. 7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all[ sin.8 If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. 9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. 10 If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word is not in us.
Confession is essential in order to overcome sin. A church is a lot like a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. If you’ve ever been to a meeting (or viewed a portrayal of a meeting on television or in movies) you know that people get up in front and say “Hello, I’m ________ and I’m an alcoholic” or “I’ve got a problem with drinking!” They come to get help and the first step is admission of the problem. You and I should come into God’s house with an attitude that I’m a sinner seeking to overcome. The church is supposed to be a hospital for people with the disease of sin, of which we are all afflicted. It is not a museum for saints. We aren’t going to put Brother Marty behind glass or rope off Brother Ian. We need to be open and honest about our problem with sin.
Second, look at the promise of more than forgiveness offered. If we confess, Jesus cleans us up. Why? We aren’t really able to get ourselves out of the problem of sin.
Some years ago, My wife and I were driving around in my brand new pickup truck. We were just out for an afternoon drive and I decided to go down a dirt road in hopes of getting closer to some trains so that I might photograph them. The dirt on the road became looser and sandy. I decided that I should turn around and I went to turn around. I made the mistake of stopping and soon was stuck in the sand. I tried to dig us out, I even put the lid of a brand new icebox under the tire to get traction, resulting in nothing more than a big tire burn across the top of the plastic lid. Fortunately, some dune buggy riders came along and helped us get the truck out.
That wasn’t good enough for me, though. Some years later, I tried another dirt road and ended up stuck up the side of a hill out in the desert. Once again, help came along and pulled us out.
Wouldn’t it have been foolish if we had said to those people, “no thanks, I’ll get myself out!”
Sin is something we cannot overcome on our own. Sin is something we need Christ to cleanse. He cannot accomplish that cleansing until we admit we need help. We must admit to the Lord that we have sinned and need his help cleansing us from that unrighteousness.
When we confess our sin, God begins to work in our lives and begins to help us overcome. When we ignore our sin we are just fooling ourselves. We cannot be forgiven OR cleansed until we admit our sin.
In order to return to the blessing of God, we must be open and honest about our sin, with God and with each other.
