PAUL TRIPP MINISTRIES, INC. Confession is a Grace August 7, 2011 Psalm 51:1-10 Well, as we begin this morning, I want to ask you to do two things. The first I want to ask of you: a moment of personal reflection, and here's my question: Are you committed to change? No, I don't mean changing your finances or your job, or you'd like a more durable lawn or a change in your diet. Are you committed to personal change? You see, we would say this about the gospel: the Gospel teaches us that the power of sin has been broken by the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, but the presence of sin still remains and is being progressively eradicated. So, if you wonder what God's agenda for you is right here, right now, you can say it in a word, change is actively continuing His work of transformation in you, so your agenda for yourself should be change. Now that means this: that means you must be committed to something that, for many of us, is hard. It's confession; confession is the God ordained portal to change. In confession, I own personal responsibility for my words and behavior without excuse and without shifting the blame, and what I want to get you to understand this morning is that confession is a grace. Not always do we view it as a grace. When God, through another person or through a circumstance, makes your sin aware to you, are you thankful? When someone confronts you, do you say, I'm so thankful you confronted me, would you be faithful to do that again? Some of you are smiling, nervous laughter. Or do you resist it? Do you find confession as burdensome and shameful and you resist confession? This is a bit of a confession; I know there've been times when Luella, in faithfulness, has pointed out a wrong to me, and I would defend myself even when I knew I was wrong. I knew somewhere in the end of the discussion I was going to say, You're right! But for whatever period of time, I hold on to my righteousness; I wanted to be my best lawyer. I've seen it again and again in marriage counseling; you see a couple that has an angry, acrimonious, broken relationship, and the husband is quite willing to confess for his wife, and the wife is quite willing to confess for her husband, but they resist personal confession, and so, because of that, change doesn't take place in their relationship. Now, I would like you to do this: carry that question through this message, Am I really a person who is committed to change?
There's a second thing that I am going to ask you to do: is resist thinking as you're listening to this message, I'm glad so-and-so is in the room, because this is surely one of those messages that you'll be tempted to do that. Some of you may even want to do this at certain points: pray that God would help you to use this beautiful passage as a mirror into your own heart. Well, turn if you would to Psalm 51. Psalm 51 exegetes; it explains; it expounds the fact that confession is a grace; confession is a gift; confession is something we should celebrate. We know that these, the words of this prayer of confession, were written by King David after he had been confronted by Nathan the prophet after committing the sins of adultery and murder. I want to read for you again just the first nine verses, well, ten verses. Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgression, and my sin is ever before me. Against You, and You only, have I sinned, and done what is evil in your sight, so that you may be justified in your words, and blameless in your judgment. Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, in sin did my mother conceive me. Behold, You delight in truth in the inward being, and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart. Purge me with hyssop, and I should be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Let me hear joy and gladness of the bones that you have broken rejoice. Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. How is it that confession is a grace? Let me just detail that for you with these beautiful words by David, verse one, Have mercy on me, oh God, according to your steadfast love, according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions. It is a grace to run to the mercy of the Lord. Think about this: the average person on the street doesn't even recognize God's existence, doesn't even care what God thinks, doesn't even think in spiritual terms, let alone crave and cry out for the mercy of God. Brothers and sisters, if there's any moment where you cry for God's mercy, you know that grace has visited you because we can be so incredibly self-righteous; we can be so scarily self-reliant; we can be so easily self-satisfied; and when you can't think that there is any hope for you but the Lord himself, you know that grace is operating inside of you because it takes grace to get there. You see, here is how it works: you can t grieve what your heart hasn't seen, and you can t confess what you haven t grieved, and you can't repent of what you haven t confessed, and it's only when your eyes become open to your need, by an act of grace, that you begin to confess and seek the help of your Savior.
And that moment when God opens your eyes, and you see the depth of your need, is not a moment of tragedy, it s a moment of rescue. It s a beautiful thing. That s God wrapping arms of love around you and saying, I see all of your dirtiness, but come to me, I love you; I paid the price for you. David gets it right. If you see the heinous nature of what David has done, you know that there is no help for him but the Lord. Riches won't help him; kingly power won t help him; politics won't help him; family loyalties won't help him. There is only one place of help; it's the Lord, and when you're confessing that, you're confessing that because grace has visited you. Look at verses two and three; it's a grace to understand the true nature of sin: Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin, for I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. The scary thing for all of us, and I think all of us can confess this, is that sin doesn't always look sinful to us. There are moments where sin looks downright beautiful to us that moment when David is looking down on Bathsheba and beginning to give himself to lust, that moment doesn't seem dangerous to him. He's not feeling the tragedy about of what he is about to do. What he sees is compelling beauty; sin at that moment actually looks pretty; it looks attractive and looks beautiful to him. When you, in an e-mail or a text or a phone call, have just shared gossip with somebody else, slandering the character of somebody else, you don t feel the danger of that moment. You feel the tantalizing power of passing a tale. Sin looks beautiful at that moment. If you re a child about to disobey your parents, you don't see the danger of telling yourself that you're an autonomous human being, and you have the right to do whatever you want to do, knowing that moment you feel the buzz of the power of temporary freedom and temporary independence. Sin looks beautiful to you. If you're cheating on your taxes, you don't see the danger of that sin in that moment. No, your mind is already envisioning what you are going to do with the money that you have retained in your thievery. And so, when God opens my eyes to the sinfulness of sin, when it looks as ugly as it is to me, when it is the disaster that it is to me, you know that grace has visited my heart. David uses three powerful words here that capture the sinfulness of sin. The first word is transgression. Transgression is high-handed rebellion; it's trespassing; it's a willing, knowledgeable, stepping over God's boundaries. In case you don't understand what a transgression is, it s you and me willingly parking in the no parking spot even though we see the sign, and we tell ourselves I'm just going to be a minute.
What you're saying is, I know law, but I don't give a rip about law because my needs are more important to me than anything else in my existence. I will park here, thank you, I am the Lord. Seriously! That s rebellion! It is laying claim to my rulership over my life. Now think how much of your sin is rebellious: husbands, when you yell at your wife, you yell as a rebel because you know that's wrong. Right? Your problem is not ignorance! When you're on the Internet, and you're looking at pictures you shouldn t look at, you re not doing that because you're ignorant! That's an act of clear, focused, intentional rebellion against the authority of God. That s rebel behavior! When you have just eaten yourself into gluttony, you re not doing that because you re ignorant. That s a clear act of rebellion against God! My pleasure, the pleasure of edible flora and fauna is more important to me than the glory of God. It s rebellion! And I think it is dangerous for us, as believers, to think that our rebel days are over; our rebel days are not over; we are still being redeemed from our rebellion. The second word, it s the word iniquity. What's iniquity? Iniquity is the most foundational word for sin; it s moral uncleanness. It captures nature. It's not just that I do wrong things; it's not just that I say wrong things; it's not just that I have wrong reactions to different circumstances. I am wrong; there's something wrong inside of me, and it's the uncleanness that allows me to be a rebel. And so, change has to happen inside of me. That's why I need a Redeemer. When you begin to embrace moral uncleanness, when you begin to embrace it s stuck to you, and you cannot escape it, you ll cry out for a Savior. And, yes, although the power of sin has been broken, that moral uncleanness is still inside of us in some way and is being progressively eradicated by the relentless grace of Jesus Christ. The third word for sin: it is the word sin. And it s said that sin means missing the mark, and that's sort of true, but not really a good definition. If you want to take that picture of a bowman pulling his bow and aiming at a target, it's not just that the arrow misses the target. It's that, with his best aim and the best of his power, the arrow consistently falls short of the target. That's what sin is. If transgression is rebellion, if iniquity is moral impurity, then, sin is inability. Sin leaves me lame; it leaves me crippled. It leaves me now unable to live up to God s standard apart from the gift of divine power. And so, you put these words together, not only do I not want to do God's will often, I can t apart from his rescue. That s the theology, and that's why there's nothing beautiful about sin. Brothers and sisters, sin is the ultimate human disaster: it destroys relationships; it destroys government; it destroys communities; it's destructive at every point. And if you would pray anything this morning, even during this sermon, is pray, Oh, Lord, open my
eyes to the sinfulness of sin. May I no longer see sin as a beautiful thing. Because when you're there, you cry out for change. That s where David was. Verse three: it is a grace to know and feel and experience the pain of conviction. I love the words here: For I know my transgression, and my sin is ever before me. It is a wonderful thing to be haunted by the convicting mercies of the Holy Spirit, a spirit who will not let me go. Now, is that pain an enjoyable thing? Oh no, it s not! But hear the theology here; the Bible tells us that as an act of mercy, God has taken the heart of stone out of us. Now, notice the metaphor: if I have a stone in my hand, and I would press it with all of my might, guess what would happen? Nothing! Because that stone is impenetrable, it's resistant to change. The Bible says that God has taken the heart of stone out of us and has replaced it with a heart of flesh. So that, that now is sensitive to the pokes of the spirit. It's now moldable. That's a beautiful thing and because if you're God's child, you have now that fleshy heart in you, that sensitive heart, you will feel the pain of conviction. Now stay with me because this is important. When you feel that pain of conviction, you only have one of two choices: you will gladly receive that as a good thing; that pain is actually a warning system. It's like the pain in the body. Pain in the body is not nice to experience, but it alerts us that there's some kind of disease system or injury that needs to be dealt with. You know this is probably true for most of us. That s the thing that gets us to the doctor, some kind of physical uncomfortability. And the pain lasts long enough, and it's intense enough, we finally go to the doctor because we realize something is wrong. So when I feel that pain, when I experience that pain of heart, a result of conviction, I only have one of two choices: I immediately, joyfully confess that that thing is wrong, and I place myself once again under the justifying mercies of Christ, and I receive his forgiveness; or, I begin to erect some system of self-justification that makes that wrong acceptable to my conscience. We are very good at doing that. I argue for my righteousness; I defend myself; I recast my history; I try to convince myself that what God says is wrong, isn't so wrong after all. So I would ask you this morning, Are you thankful for the pain of conviction? Are you thankful that there is a relenting Savior who has invaded your life, and he will not relent until his work is done? Look at what it says in verse eight: Let me hear joy and gladness. Are you ready for this? let the bones that you have broken rejoice. That who has broken? Say it! God! Brothers and sisters, God loves you so much that in order to reclaim your heart, He will break your bones. That s not judgment; that s grace!
Fourth thing: it s a grace to know that all sin is vertical. Notice what David says in verse four: Against you, and you only, have I sinned, and done what is evil in your sight, so that you may be justified in your words, and blameless in your judgment. One of the ways that we minimize sin is we tend to view it as only being horizontal, and maybe you're confused by the words here that David says, It's against you, when you only, have I sinned. Oh, he is not minimizing the sin against Bathsheba, and the sin against Uriah, and the sin against his own family, and the sin against Israel. But, he is saying this: It is impossible for sin to ever only be horizontal; every sin is an act against the glory of God; every sin forgets His existence; every sin quests for His thrown; every sin replaces God with some idle that I want more than Him; every sin is an affront to the relationship with God for which I was created. Now, understand what's going on here. You and I were not created for our own glory; we weren t created to write for ourselves the narrative of our own pleasure; we weren t created for the success of our own purposes in ways that mark us out from all the rest of creation. Uniquely, we were created and given the capacity to live for the glory of God. Sin has broken that desire and broken that capacity. Whenever I think of the God-ward nature of our entire life, that nothing belongs to me, that everything I do is meant to be done with a self-conscious God-wardness, I think of this moment years ago when I was a kindergarten teacher. I was a kindergarten teacher for four years. I used to say, It was four of the longest years of my life, and they were actually four very wonderful years because I was finally with a group of people I could relate to. And about six months into the year, one of the mothers of the children in the class said that she wanted to have a birthday party for her daughter, using the classroom. Well, I had no problem with that, I said, as long as you invite all the children in the class. That s fine. That afternoon, I occupied the children while she turned that classroom into a birthday kingdom. And we went into the classroom then, and we're sitting on this long table. And at the end of the table was the position for birthday girl, and there was, in front of her, this inordinate pile of gifts, a lavish pile of gifts. Everyone else around the table had a Ziploc bag of party favors, two Tootsie Rolls, two pieces of gum, a lolly pop, and a plastic whistle. The purpose of party favors is to remind you it's not your birthday. And at the end of the table, directly across from party girl, sat little Johnny, and he began to look at his bag of party favors, not totaling $.89, and her inordinate pile of gifts, and he began to harrumph. Finally, one mother had about enough of Johnny's harrumphing, and she walked down the length of the table; she turned his chair toward her; she knelt down on her knees and looked him in the face and waxed theologically. She said, Johnny, hear what I'm about to say. It's not your party!
Like we do, Johnny got it wrong! Listen! You will never understand your humanity; you'll never understand your need of a Savior; you will never understand the call to confession unless you understand this: you were born into a universe that, by its very nature, is a celebration of Another. And sin causes me to live for myself and chafe against that thing that is central, not just to my spirituality, but to my humanity. Every human being was given breath for the sole purpose of the glory and pleasure of God. And all sin, because of that, is not only an affront to his nature; it s a denial of my identity. It s a grace when I get that; it s only grace that gets me; it s only grace that opens my eyes to God's glory in my identity. It s also a grace to begin to embrace the humbling truth that your problem with sin is internal, not external. Look at what David says, what a humble, sweet confession: Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me. What a humbling confession! You know we re so tempted to look outside of ourselves for the logic for our iniquity. You don't know my children; you don't know my husband; you don't know my wife; you haven t experienced my finances; you don't know my family of origin; you don't know; you don't know; you don't know; you don't know; you don't know; you don't know; you don't know. It s self-atoning externalism is what it is. David says something that I would pray all of us would embrace. He says this, Long before the first experience, long before I was in the first situation, long before I was in the first location, long before I had the first relationship, I was a sinner; I was born a sinner; I was shaped in iniquity. This problem came into this world with me. Brothers and sisters, you walk your biggest problem into your relationships; you walk it there. You walk your biggest problem into your situations; you walk it there. You walk your biggest problem into your locations; you walk it there. As an act of grace when I finally say, Lord, it s me; it's me; it's me; if I lived in a perfect world, amongst perfect people, I would still have this problem because I came into the world with it. Brothers and sisters, when you're there, grace has visited your heart because everything inside me wants to say, It's not me; it's not me; if only I had; (fill in the blank) I would be a different person. You see it immediately in Genesis 3, don't you? God approaches Adam and Eve; what are the first words out of Adam s mouth? This woman! Grace draws me to understand that I came into the world this problem. That means this: I have no capacity whatsoever in myself to escape it. My only hope is the mercy and loving-kindness of the Lord; I have no other hope. That s why we sing, On Christ the solid rock, I stand; all other ground is sinking sand. There is no savior but Jesus. Finally, it's a grace to cry out for a new heart. You know, this is really the summary of all that we ve said: when you know that you have no hope but the mercy of the Lord, when
you understand the sinfulness of sin, when you recognize the pain of conviction, when you know that all sin is God-ward, when you know your problem is inside of you, not outside of you, then there is only one thing that you can cry out for, Oh, God, please give me a new heart; please renew my heart. You see what that recognizes is: that the center of my problem, my struggle with sin is not my behavior and not my location; the center is my heart. Now know the language here; it is important. The heart is that summary term for the inner man. The Bible uses many terms for the inner man: mind, emotion, spirit, soul, will. They are all collected in one, big, basket term used in hundreds of passages of Scripture, and when you're reading the Bible, you come across the word heart. I ve said this before, I'll continue. When you read the word heart, you should fill in the causal core of your personhood. So David is saying, My problem exists at the very core of what makes me tick, the very core of my emotions, the very core of my desires, the very core of my thoughts, the very core of my motivation. And so, God, there is nothing, there is nothing else that would help me, but that you would give me a new heart. Isn't it wonderful that the bright golden promise of the new covenant is: I will give them a new heart? There are still places for all of us where our hearts yet need renewal. It's not you that s my problem; it s not my past that s my problem; it s not the harsh realities of a sinful world that s my problem; it's my heart. And, Lord, I offer my heart to you, and I say, Won't you do with the heart of this man what only what you can do? Psalm 51 and all of its confession is really prophetic because, as King David prays these beautiful words of confession that so picture the grace of confession, His words cry out for another King, the Son of David who would come, the Son of David, the Lord Jesus who would face all the temptations that David faced, but without sin so He would be the perfectly acceptable sacrifice, so He would satisfy the father's anger, so that His righteousness would be given over to our account, so we could stand before God as righteous, though we are not, so that we would receive forgiveness, so that we would receive His adoption and acceptance, so that we would receive life that is eternal. Now this is what this means, oh please hear this: it means when I feel the pain of conviction; it means that when God uses a situation or another individual to point out my sin, I need no longer wallow in guilt; I need no longer hide in shame; I need no longer fear being known because the blood of Jesus has covered it all. And I can run into the presence of a holy God, and I can once again receive His forgiveness and His empowerment and someday His deliverance. Every time, when the Spirit of God works conviction into my heart and I rise to defend myself, I'm committing an act of Gospel irrationality because it's impossible for anything to ever be exposed that hasn't already been covered by the Son of David, the Savior, King Jesus.
Are you committed to change? Are you? If you re committed to change, then you will see confession as a grace. God is opening your eyes; God is bringing the pain of conviction. He is helping you to see the sinfulness of sin, not because he would turn his back on you, not because he's judging you, but because he's pulling you close and saying, Won't you continue to experience only what I alone can give you? Grace! Let s pray: Lord, I would confess to you, this morning that I don't always see those moments of conviction and those moments of confession as moments of grace. There are times when, rather than running to you, I run to my own defense. Lord, help us to embrace this magnificent story of redemption and forgiveness and unrelenting grace, that you trouble us not because you despise us, but because you love us. You open our eyes, and you open our hearts so that we would receive more of your salvation. Thank you that you will not give up; you will not quit; you will not walk away; you will stay on task until we have been completely delivered from sin. Praise you! Thank you for the grace of confession. In Jesus name, Amen. 2011 Paul Tripp Ministries www.paultripp.com