02-28-16 – Repent and Confess

Turning Point Wesleyan Church

Pastor Dan

A man borrowed a book from a friend. As he read through it, he was intrigued to find parts of the book underlined with the letters YBH written in the margin. When he returned the book to the owner, he had to ask what the YBH meant.

The owner replied that those were the sections of the book which he basically agreed with. They gave him hints on how to improve himself and they pointed out truths that he wished to incorporate into his own life.

And the letters YBH stood for "Yes, But How?"

Those three letters could be written on the margins of ours souls:

·        "I ought to know how to take better care of myself, but how?"

·        "I know I ought to spend more time in scripture reading and prayer, but how?"

·        "I know I ought to be more sensitive to others, more loving of my spouse,

more understanding of the weaknesses of others,

§  But How?"

These are all good qualities and we know that,

But how can we acquire them?

As Christian people we know of the kind of life we ought to live, and most of us have the best of intentions on doing just that, But How?

And by knowing of this, doesn’t it scare us all some?

Are we not afraid because

we know where the road of “having” just good intentions leads to!

In Luke 13:6-9, Jesus tells a story:

“A man planted a fig tree in his garden and came again and again to see if there was any fruit on it, but he was always disappointed.

Finally, he said to his gardener, ‘I’ve waited three years, and there hasn’t been a single fig! Cut it down. It’s just taking up space in the garden.’

The gardener answered, ‘Sir, give it one more chance. Leave it another year, and I’ll give it special attention and plenty of fertilizer.

If we get figs next year, fine. If not, then you can cut it down.’”

We have just heard Jesus telling us to repent and bear good fruit.

We know what the Christian life requires of us and yet, if we are truly honest with ourselves, we also know how far short we fall.

So the question that confronts us this morning is: "Yes, - But how?"

It's a dilemma that has confronted God's people throughout the ages.

Even Saint Paul found himself trapped. In Romans 7 Paul wrote about this.

It seems to be a fact of life that when he wants to do what is right,

It was not surprising to him that he did what is wrong.

Paul goes on and says that he loves to do God's will so far as his new, redeemed Christian nature was concerned;

But there is something else deep within him.

Down in his lower nature.

That part of him is at war with his mind and it seems too often to win the fights.

And in doing this, it makes him a slave to the sin that is still within him.

Within this, we hear Paul saying that, he wants to be God's willing servant.

But instead he finds himself enslaved to sin.

So you see how it is?

·        In Paul’s New Life, which is being in the redeemed life of Christ. It tells him to do what is right.

·        But the old nature that is still inside him (my sinful human self) just loves to sin.

Oh, what a terrible mess I'm in!

Who will free me from this ‘slavery to sin’?

Thank You God!

It has already been done by Jesus Christ our Lord. He - has - set - me - free!

"Repent," Jesus says.

"Acknowledge your sinfulness."

That's the first step in beginning to live the Christian life.

None of us - are without fault. – Not - One!

And yet, Why is it so difficult for us to admit that?

BUT - Doesn’t life teach us that it is foolish to openly admit our wrongs or our short comings.

If we want to get ahead in this world and to Become Someone Special.

·        And to be Accepted by others,

·        With the First Impressions and all.

·        IS IT NOT generally better?

·        To conceal our shortcomings.

·        To hide our faults.

·        And put on a good front for others to see and for them to judge us from.

Am I Right? –

Oh, Maybe its because we are in church today that you are holding back on agreeing with me.

But what about out there?

Who goes into a job interview and says this boldly to the interviewer?

"I have to tell you the truth.

·        I have a habit of missing work!

·        On Fridays, I don’t work too hard and let’s not even begin to talk about my Mondays.

·        I seem to always gripe about my supervisors and others!

·        I grumble a lot!

·        And I enjoy listening to and spreading office gossip around?"

·        And Oh, one more thing, how long would it take for me to get your job?

Who goes on a date and confesses to the person you are dating:

"Listen.

·        I have to be honest with you. I tend to be difficult to live with!

·        It is extremely difficult for me to make up my mind.

·        I usually always talk about myself!

·        And I can be a real bore at times"!

However imperfect we may be?

We have learned from how life treats us that it is better not to parade our dirty laundry out in the open for all to see.

Yes?

There was once a child who got into trouble in school. While that child was being punished by sitting in the corner, another walked by and said, “To err is human, but to admit what you had done is just plain ol stupid!"

How ironic it is then, that Jesus tells us to Repent.

Repent means to:

·        Regret what you have done.

·        To apologize for the wrong doing.

·        To pay atonement for what you have done.

·        To truly be sorry and to ask for forgiveness.

·        And to actually feel remorse for doing it.

But is this how we look at it?

§  Don’t we expect to receive support and understanding from Our God?

§  Does He not love us?

§  And by the way, how much can He really expect from me anyway?

§  Right? We are only human.

But instead of Jesus saying it is OK to sin, He tells us to:

·        Disclose the evil within us.

·        And to admit that we have failed.

The apostle John tells us the same thing very clearly when he writes, "If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us."

1 John 1:8.

Whoever we are,

In whatever we do,

We all share one thing in common and that is that we are sinful.

Saint Augustine once wrote, "Whatever we are, we are not what we ought to be."

And Mark Twain, in his sense of humor, tells us "Man was made at the end of the week, when God was tired."

Repent, - Jesus says!

for that's the FIRST STEP in the Christian life.

Confess your sins before God!

and receive God's forgiveness.

In that sense, confession is good for the soul.

And here I am talking about TRUE Confession.

Often we might find ourselves with a kind of confession which is in Truth just a shallow admission which is really says,

"Sure I've sinned. But Lord, Who hasn't?"

True Confession always begins with a

Heartfelt Remorse.

With a True feeling of failure of living:

·        Up to God's Love

·        And our true desire to reform.

"Blessed are those who mourn," Jesus said this in (Matthew 5:4).

Part of what Jesus is telling us in this verse is:

·        That we are called to feel the pain of our guilty conscience.

·        And to grieve, Grieve in the awareness that we have failed!

·        We have Failed to live up to the expectations of God and as well as to those who are around us.

Confession is good for the soul -- yes, we know that.

§  - But How

§  How can we develop a true sense of heartfelt remorse for our sinfulness

And a real desire to change our ways?

But isn’t this the Truth?

·        Most of us are willing to confess our sins as long as we don't have to change the way we live.

·        We are willing to admit to a blemish, a small problem or two in our morals but it is nothing that is too serious.

Most of the time, we can AND WE DO, just hide what is wrong and all is good.

RIGHT?

·        None of us wants to admit that OUR Sinfulness may require some way more serious stuff.

Maybe even something that is painful!

·        After all:

o   Don’t we like to think that God is only interested in making us happy?

o   And that God is happy with us just being us?

o   And really, Doesn’t God only want to make us happy with who we are, with ourselves?

o   Something like - “He made me this way so I am how He designed me to be.

o   Why should we try to change that?”

o   Who am I anyway? HE is God and I am just me. So who am I to try to change things?

We think this way because most of us have never ever - even considered sin to be as serious as it really is.

Here is an example of this.

When translating the Bible into a certain African dialect, the translators were stumped. See, this particular language had no suitable term for “sin”. Apparently, the people who spoke that language lacked the concept or understanding of sin. The closest word that the translators could come up with was a word which meant “something that was bad to eat”. 

For many of us that's the extent of it.

·        Sin is a matter of taste.

·        So what if "we are what we eat"?

·        So what is the Big Deal?

·        Taste is an individual matter and nobody has the right to tell anyone what to like or not like.

·        And then, IF sin is just a matter of taste, then it most certainly doesn't require the Radical Solution of Repentance. Right?!?

·        It's easy for us to conclude that we are not really that bad after all because when we look around, don’t we compare ourselves to others. And there are plenty of people worse than us.

But the Truth of our moral and spiritual condition becomes evident only when we compare ourselves to Jesus.

In that light, in the light of Jesus’ life, our lives look just awful!

But just a moment,

§  I am sure that there is at least one of us here who is thinking.

§  What about those people who do things that are just terrible?

§  Like the guy on this past Thursday.

§  Killing someone in Newton and then moving on to Hesston.

§  What about them?

And you are right. What about them?

There are always going to be those who will be really terrible.

They do the:

·        Grisly crimes,

·        Sins of passion

·        and the terrible violence.

Sure, there are always going to those type of people.

But, I ask for you to ask yourself what about:

·        Our neglect of the poor.

·        Our passive acceptance of injustice toward others.

·        Our silence in the face of hurtful gossip.

·        Our failure to give True Reverence to God as we ought to.

When we look at our lives

In the Light of Jesus' Love,

Even in our SUNDAY’S Best –

Our righteousness is, as the Scriptures tell us in Isaiah 64:6, we are like "filthy rags."

Side note: Now I don’t mean to upset or offend anyone but for us to grasp the full meaning of what the Bible is telling us, we must understand what it is saying.

A translation from the original text, the word ‘Filthy’ is a translation of the Hebrew word “iddah”, which literally means “the bodily fluids from a woman’s menstrual cycle.”

And the word ‘rags’ is a translation of “begged” meaning “a rag or a garment.”

Therefore, God is telling us, even in our super duper bests, without Him we are considered by God as repugnant as a soiled feminine hygiene product.

Confession is good for the soul!

We know that.

That is the first step in

Beginning to live the Christian life.

And the acknowledgment that without God

We are incomplete.

Sin is not a matter of taste!

·        It is us sampling the forbidden fruit!

·        It is us taking poison into our lives, and the only antidote for sin is Repentance!

§  We Need to repent of our sinfulness!

§  We Need to receive God's forgiveness!

§  And we Need to produce the fruit that God desires from us.

We Need the spiritual strength and renewal that Confession can give us.

Remember, Jesus is not demanding anything that

We cannot produce.

§  Jesus doesn't ask the fig tree to produce apples.

§  Jesus doesn't expect the fig tree to grow tall and strong as an oak tree.

§  Jesus doesn’t demand the fig tree to smell like a cedar tree.

He is only asking it to be what it is.

§  To be a FIG TREE

§  To do what it ought to.

§  And to produce figs.

You and I have different gifts.

·        Some of us have wonderful singing voices.

·        Some are artists.

·        Others are good with numbers.

·        And while others are good with people.

Each of us has our own unique gifts.

God personally gave them to you.

And the B-E-A-Utiful Miracle that happens is that through Repentance and Forgiveness, those special gifts that we all have are released for the good of God and for the good of others who are around us.

When we:

§  Acknowledge our sinfulness

§  And Receive God's forgiveness,

o   God Releases us from the power of sin.

Does that make sense to you?

God releases us from the Power of Sin!

And it is only when we are free from sin,

·        that is when we have the possibility

·        to become who God has created us to be –

·        children of God, young and old,

·        each able to produce the fruits of faith.

Remember Saint Paul's words are in Romans 7:24-25 - "Oh, what a miserable person I am! Who will free me from this life that is dominated by sin and death?

Thank God! The answer is in Jesus Christ our Lord. So you see how it is: In my mind I really want to obey God’s law, but because of my sinful nature I am a slave to sin.”

That's the key to our dilemma, and the answer to our question, "Yes, but how?"

The key to living the life "worthy of our calling"

·        as children of God

·        is to remember that God has already set us free!

§  In Christ Jesus we are free!

§  We are free to be who God has made us to be!

§  It is up to us to get on with it!

§  We only need to allow Christ to live in us and take control of our lives.

Sometimes we think that when we give up control of our lives to Christ, we are no longer in control.

But just the opposite is true.

When we turn our lives over to God,

§  And allow Christ to direct us,

§  Then and only then do we become truly in control of ourselves.

Jesus' parable of the fig tree calls us to take Responsibility for ourselves.

And – AND God gives us the key.

§  Repent, Jesus says.

§  Confess your sins and allow the power of God to live within you.

§  Allow God to enable us to live as we ought.

§  Let Jesus take possession of us and live in him.

When we text on our cell phones and we hit send, how many times have we later gone back and read what we have sent.

How many times did we not send what we wanted to say?

And what was sent really didn’t make any sense?

That is what Paul is trying to tell us.

Just as we text and make errors, that is what happens in real life when we are walking strong with the Lord.

We will still make mistakes.

§  But when our hearts and minds are tied to the Spirit of Christ,

§  When we have been released from sin by Repentance and Forgiveness,

§  When we hold steady the example of Jesus in our lives, our hearts and our minds,

§  That is when we will be in the melody of God's Love.

§  BUT The Key begins with Repentance and Forgiveness.

§  For within that we receive the Release we need!

§  That is when we are filled with the power of forgiveness.

§  That is when we find the answer to the question that haunts us, "Yes, but how?"

§  That is, of course, In Jesus' Name.

Amen.