Christ Church

Assurance (Covenant Life Together #3)

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INTRODUCTION

Last week you were exhorted to be prepared to give a reason for the hope that is in you. But whenever we give our testimony, we will be cross-examined by somebody, and we will be asked, “How can you be sure . . .?” Perhaps you sometimes ask yourself these questions. And so we come to the matter of assurance.

THE TEXT

“He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in himself: he that believeth not God hath made him a liar; because he believeth not the record that God gave of his Son. And this is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life. These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God” (1 John 5:10–13).

SUMMARY OF THE TEXT

We can see from John 3:32 that the Son of God has the testimony (marturia). When we believe His testimony, we are acknowledging that He speaks the truth (v. 10). And so what is the testimony that He gives? It is both objective and subjective. This is the record (marturia)—God has given us eternal life, and has done so through His Son. Note that God’s testimony lands in our inner life. The objective side of it is that all life in in His Son (v. 12). If you have the Son, you therefore have life. If you do not have the Son, you do not have life. These things were written, not so that we might be tormented with uncertainty, but rather so that we might know (assurance) that we have eternal life, and that we might know this because we believe on the name of the Son of God (v. 13).

TWO EXTREMES

Now if it is true that not every person baptized into the visible church is saved, and that istrue, then the obvious question becomes “how can we tell the difference between those who truly have the testimony, and those who simply say that they do?” It is a most reasonable question, but that has not kept many people from doing many unreasonable things with it.

There are two extremes to avoid—one is to assume that if your baptismal papers are in order, then you are automatically in, as though the kingdom of God were like a purebred line of golden retrievers. The other extreme is to flinch whenever sin is mentioned and question your salvation at every little thing. And often, ecclesiastical professionals will manipulate both tendencies for their own profit. Don’t give way to either temptation.

THAT YOU MAY KNOW

Going back to 1 John 5:13, if we have the Son, if we have eternal life, God wants us to know that we do.

DOUBTS AND QUESTIONS

There is a vast difference between doubts and questions. Doubts can never be answered in principle because they are phrased like this: “What if . . .?” Questions have answers. They can be posed, you follow it out, and you learn something. Here is the difference. Suppose a happily married woman suddenly has a panic attack out of nowhere. “What if my husband is cheating on me?” The only appropriate answer to this is “what if he isn’t?” That is quite different from a wife asking “who is the blonde in the red convertible out front, the one who is honking for you, who is that?” That’s a question.

BIBLICAL MARKS OF REJECTION

 We are not to over-engineer this. In the context of a biblical community, the burden of proof is on the one who insists upon excluding himself. Note two things about a particular way of living “Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these . . . they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God” (Gal. 5:19, 21). It is manifest who will not inherit the kingdom.

BIBLICAL MARKS OF ADOPTION

 We are supposed to make our calling and election sure (2 Pet. 1:10). We are supposed to examine ourselves to see if we are truly in the faith (2 Cor. 13:5). This can be done without morbid introspection. But how? Keep in mind that in all that follows, it is not so much what you look to as the way you look to it. Baptism, Bible, etc.

  • We saw in 1 John 5:13 that we are to believe on the name of Jesus. We are to hold fast to Jesus Christ (Rom. 10:9). This is the foundation of everything else. Do you trust in Jesus?
  • “Hereby know we that we dwell in him, and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit” (1 John 4:13). The Spirit is given as a guarantee (Eph. 1:13-14; 2 Cor. 5:5-6). The Spirit is given to us as an assurance. How do we know we have the Spirit? He grows things (Gal. 5:22-23; Eph. 5:9). He kills things (Rom. 8:13).
  • “We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren. He that loveth not his brother abideth in death” (1 John 3:14). What is your attitude toward those you know love God? Do you want to be with them, or are you repelled by them?
  • “And said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 18:3). Jesus says that a mark of true conversion is humility of mind, becoming like a little child.
  • “As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby: If so be ye have tasted that the Lord is gracious” (1 Pet. 2:2–3). A marked characteristic of life is hunger—in this case, hunger for the Word.
  • “For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God” (1 Cor. 1:18). There are two kinds of people in the world—those who are perishing and to whom the cross makes no sense, and those who are saved, to whom it does.
  • “And hereby we do know that we know him, if we keep his commandments” (1 John 2:3). Here is another explicit statement of how we know. We know because we obey Him.
  • “For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth” (Heb. 12:6). But the previous mark should not be clutched in a false perfectionism. We do still sin. But what happens then is another mark of true conversion.

THE CONCLUSION OF THE MATTER

What is the conclusion of the matter? We are saved by the grace of God in Christ, plus nothing (Eph. 2:8-9). We are not saved by good works. But we are saved to good works (Eph. 2:10).

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The Man of Sin (2 Thessalonians #3)

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INTRODUCTION

And now we come to the challenging passage, the one I have been warning you about. Who is the man of sin? What temple are we talking about? Who is the one who prevents this from happening? Good questions all.

THE TEXT

“Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gathering together unto him, that ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us, as that the day of Christ is at hand. Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition; Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God. Remember ye not, that, when I was yet with you, I told you these things? And now ye know what withholdeth that he might be revealed in his time. For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way. And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming: Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, and with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness” (2 Thess. 2:1–12)

SUMMARY OF THE TEXT

Paul pleads with the Thessalonians in the name of the Lord’s coming (v. 1), that they not be unsettled through thinking that the final events were happening right then (v. 2). The day of Christ will not come unless the man of sin comes first (v. 3). This man of sin will set himself up in the Temple as God (v. 4). Paul had already explained all this to them (v. 5). Some mysterious power is holding this lawless one back (vv. 6-7). Then the lawless one will be revealed in order to be destroyed by the Final Coming of Christ (v. 8). He will be destroyed despite his ability to work miracles (v. 9). Those who love the truth will be saved in the truth, and those who love the lie will be damned in the lie (vv. 10-12).

THE CHALLENGES

The description here appears to include the Final Coming of Christ, which is still in our future. The coming of the Lord (parousia) could be His coming in judgment on Jerusalem, except that the phrase “our gathering to him” is used. And the man of sin who exalts himself as God will be consumed by the Spirit of the Lord’s mouth and destroyed by the brightness of the Lord’s coming. All this certainly sounds like the final eschaton.

But then what is the temple of God here? The Jewish temple was destroyed in 70 A.D. So if the man of sin set himself up there, then these events would be in the distant past and not a description of the Final Coming. This is one of the reasons why dispensationalists argue that the Temple must be rebuilt. Another argument is that the Temple is the Christian church, and that this false teacher who claims to be God is something like a wicked pope.

A BASIC PATTERN

Realize that Paul is telling the Thessalonians not to think that these events are right on top of them (v. 2). Don’t be unsettled, he says. A number of other things need to happen first. There needs to be an apostasy, a falling away first (v. 3). There needs to be a miracle-working false teacher (v. 9), one who claims to be God (v. 4). He needs to be enthroned in the Temple (v. 4).

At the same time, Paul argues that the spirit of all such things is already at work in his day (v. 7). He says that there is an unnamed external power that is restraining the outbreak of this lawless one (vv. 6-7). He says that the mystery of iniquity is already at work (v. 7), and is pushing against that which restrains it.

So here is my understanding of all this (the third option in the previous message). The events that happened just a decade or so before this, when Caligula attempted to set up a statue of himself in the Temple, was the kind of thing Paul was talking about, but was not the event itself. It was the spirit that was already at work, but was not the final convulsion of mankind’s sin. That is yet in our future, and Paul teaches us that it will run along the same lines. The advance of the kingdom of God is all part of the same long war. It is a protracted conflict, and it is all the same conflict. We are two thousand years after this prediction from Paul, but when Jesus preached to the spirits who were rebellious at the time of Noah (1 Pet. 3:19-20), He was 2400 years after the Flood. And it was all still relevant.

History is a river, not a string of ponds.

GOD-GIVEN DELUSION

The issues are therefore perennial, and they come down to every man and every woman, every boy and every girl. Those who have their pleasure in unrighteousness, and who reject the truth because they did not love it, are going to be sent something that lines up with what they love and hate. This passage says that God will send them a strong delusion so that they should believe a lie. And why is this? It is because they loved the lie. It is because they did not love the truth. Salvation is a function of loving the truth. Damnation is a function of loving a lie, preeminently the lies you tell yourself. Self-deception is the prince of all deception, and so God sends all such a strong delusion. The wrath of God is seen in this, when God gives people over to what they have loved all along.

And the one who causes delusions to evaporate is a preached Christ. And He is a preached Christ only because He is a crucified Christ, and a buried Christ, and a risen Christ. He is the truth, and He is preached. Do you love Him? If not, then the strong delusion is already resting upon you. If so, then you are loving the truth, by which you are saved.

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Heavier Than Wet Sand

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Introduction

Some sins are out in the open, and everybody in the church knows that they are sins. I am thinking about theft, drunkenness, adultery, and the like. But there are other sins that are harder to identify, and because of this they can even function openly in Christian circles. I am thinking here about things like desire, envy, competition, and ambition. Now there are some situations where some of these are perfectly fine, but they are still dangerous. For example, consider desire—the quarry from which many sins are hewn. This is a word which, thankfully for the writers of rock ballads, rhymes with fire. Perhaps we would be better occupied with that which gives desire that sinful crackle. This is what our spirits’ desires naturally run to, and so what we are investigating is the sin of envy (Jas. 4:1-3, 5-6).

The Text

“A stone is heavy, and the sand weighty; but the fool’s wrath is heavier than them both. Wrath is cruel, and anger is outrageous; but who is able to stand before envy?” (Prov. 27:3-4).

Summary of the Text

The writer of Proverbs begins with an illustration. A heavy stone is hard to pick up (v. 3), and the same thing is true of sand (v. 3). And when a fool gets angry, that is heavier than both or either of them. You should rather have your pick-up truck filled with wet sand than to encounter an angry fool. Then, building on that first thought, since we are now at the next level, wrath is cruel (v. 4). The synonym anger is outrageous (v. 4), but envy carries everything before it. Envy is therefore a formidable sin. It is the full bloom of folly’s rose.

Definitions

Jealousy is to be possessive of what is lawfully your own. Because we are sinners, we sometimes give way to jealousy for wrong causes, or in a wrong manner, but Scripture is clear that jealousy is not inherently sinful. Our God is a jealous God; His name is Jealous (Ex. 20:5; 34:14). Simple greed or covetousness wants what it does not have, and wants to have it without reference to God’s conditions for having it. The thing that it wants may have been seen in a store, a catalog, or a neighbor’s driveway. This sin is tantamount to idolatry (Eph. 5:5), putting a created thing in place of the Creator.

But envy is more than excessive jealousy, and is far more than simply a lazy or idolatrous desire. Envy is a formidable sin, as our text shows, because it combines its own desires for the object (status, money, women, whatever) with a malicious insistence that the other person lose his possession of it. In two places Paul puts malice and envy cheek by jowl (Rom. 1:28-29; Tit. 3:3), and this is no accident. In the Bible, when envy moves, violence and coercion are not far off (Acts. 7:9; 13:45; 17:5; Matt. 27:18). Envy sharpens its teeth every night. We may therefore define envy as a particular kind of willingness to use coercion to deprive someone of what is lawfully his. Of course an envious man may be a coward as well, and so fall under Pope’s condemnation—“willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike.”

The Natural Condition of Man

We see in the letter of James that the spirit within us “lusteth to envy” (Jas. 4:5-6). This is our natural tendency; it is a universal problem. We should see also that a recognition of our complicity in the sin is the way of escape. That recognition is called repentance, and can only be found in Christ. This is because outside of Christ, envy is the natural condition of all mankind. Before we were converted, what were we like? “For we ourselves also were sometimes foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, and hating one another” (Tit. 3:3). That is what we are like. “Being filled with all unrighteousness . . . covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder . . .” (Rom. 1:29).

When we are brought into Christ, this does not grant us automatic immunity to this sin—we must still guard ourselves. We have to reckon ourselves dead to sin and alive to God, and that includes death to this sin. For example, the godly have to be told not to envy sinners (Prov. 3:29-32; 23:17-18). And we have to guard ourselves against sanctimonious envy, the kind Judas tried to display in his false concern for the poor (Mark 14:5,10; John 12:3-6).

The Invisible Vice

In striking contrast to many other sins, nobody readily admits to being envious. Envy is petty and malicious. Envy is unattractive to just about everybody, and in order to operate openly in the world, it has to sail under false colors. Envy is clandestine; envy is sneaky. To admit to envy is to admit self-consciously to being tiny-souled, beef jerky-hearted, petty, and mean-spirited, and to admit this is dangerously close to repentance. To be out-and-out envious is to be clearly in the wrong.

And so envy often decks itself out with the feathers of admiration, and tends to praise too loudly or too much. One writer said to “watch the eyes of those who bow lowest.” The praise can come from someone who does not yet know his own heart, or it can come from someone who is trying to position himself to get within striking distance. Guard your heart; don’t allow yourself to become an unctuous or oily flatterer.

Envy occupies itself much with matters of justice, and becomes a collector of injustices, both real and imagined. Since envy cannot speak its own name, the closest virtue capable of camouflaging the sin is zeal for justice. And since true Christians should be very much concerned with genuine justice, be sure to run diagnostics on your heart as you do so. This is because our modern political tangles are a veritable festival of envy, everywhere you look. Trying to find envy in our political disputes is like trying to find some beads at the New Orleans Mardi Gras parade.

And envy gets worse as a person’s gifts get greater—when dealing with talent, artistic temperaments, and great intellectual achievements. We sometimes assume that we can “cultivate” our way out of the temptation, which is the reverse of the truth.

Heading It Off

Because we are all a bit naive about this sin, in ourselves and in others, we glibly assume that if God only blesses us a little bit more, that will make it clear to everyone that we are nice people and that there is no reason to envy us. But of course, this only makes everything worse. Should the “neighbor” in the tenth commandment assume that if God only gave him a bigger house and faster car that this would somehow resolve the problems of his green-eyed neighbor next door? Is he serious?

Many of you are at the beginning of your lives, your careers, your accomplishments. And you need to know that when marked success comes to some of you, the poison will start to flow. Even in the church? Yes, even here, but if we take note of our hearts now, if we internalize these truths now, we are laboring for the peace and purity of our congregation—one of the things we are covenanted to in our membership vows. When James takes aim at conflict in the church, he takes aim at envy. So remember that the love of Christ is forever, and envy is transient. Speaking of the earthbound, Solomon says, “Also their love, and their hatred, and their envy, is now perished; neither have they any more a portion for ever in any thing that is done under the sun” (Ecc. 9:5-6).

Gore Vidal once said, “Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies.” In stark contrast, the apostle Paul said, “Love does not envy” (1 Cor. 13: 4).

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Standing on the Promises

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INTRODUCTION

What I want to present here tonight is an introduction or a primer on trusting the Lord for the salvation of your kids. We do not have a bag of tricks or techniques which, if you use, your kids will magically “turn out.” There arecertain parental principles which contain a lot of wisdom, but there is no power at all in parental principles. The trust comes first, and then as an outflow of that trust, the principles can be applied and are efficacious. But unless the Lord is building the house, they labor in vain who build it (Ps. 127:1).

SALVATION BY GRACE

So let me lay the foundation first, reminding you of how you first became a Christian.

“For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them” (Eph. 2:8–10).

“Are ye so foolish? having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh?” (Gal. 3:3)

“Whom we preach, warning every man, and teaching every man in all wisdom; that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus, whereunto I also labour, striving according to his working, which worketh in me mightily” (Col. 1:28-29).

God promises us salvation through Christ, we look to Christ faith (plus nothing else), and we are saved. Not only so, we are taught that we are supposed to walk in Christ the same way we received Him—by grace through faith.

“For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, the just shall live by faith” (Romans 1:17).

SPECIFIC PROMISES WITHIN THE CHRISTIAN LIFE

This is not a talk on prayer, but I would like to use prayer as an illustration. There are two basic kinds of faithful prayer in Scripture. One of the prayer of submissive resignation, the kind of prayer that Jesus offered up in Gethsemane (Luke 22:42).

The other kind of prayer is implied in the stupendous promise that Jesus gives in Mark.

“Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them” (Mark 11:24).

Now we all know that this promise does not mean absolutely everything, but let us agree that it does mean something. And whatever that something is, not all Christians receive it. And the condition there is found in that word believe.

And what this means is that there are Christians who have believed to the salvation of their souls who have not believed to the answering of whatever request it was. This is a promise in microcosm, but it functions the same way that the universal promise of salvation functions. Faith is the catalyst that activates the promise.

THE OLD TESTAMENT PROBLEM

Many of these promises are found in the Old Testament, but we need to take care with this. Whatever lessons you take away from the Old Testament, the sterling example of multiple generations of faithfulness building on ever-increasing faithfulness is likely not one of them. And so we tend to assume that God over-promised and under-delivered in the OT, but this is radically false. God did not abandon His promises when we came to the New Testament. God began fulfilling them when we came to the New Testament.

For example:

“But the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear him, and his righteousness unto children’s children; To such as keep his covenant, and to those that remember his commandments to do them” (Psalm 103:17–18).

This is a most glorious promise, and notice how our Lord’s mother refers to it in her wonderful Magnificat.

“For he hath regarded the low estate of his handmaiden: For, behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed. For he that is mighty hath done to me great things; And holy is his name. And his mercy is on them that fear him from generation to generation” (Luke 1:48–50).

The new covenant is not the era where God abrogates His promises concerning our children. It is the time when the sun comes up—it is when He begins to fulfill them all.

A CLUSTER OF PROMISES & PREDICTIONS

What I have now is a cluster of promises and predictions that I would like to just blow through, commenting here and there, and then coming back to point some things out if we have time.

“The children of thy servants shall continue, and their seed shall be established before thee” (Psalm 102:28).

“Thou shalt not bow down thyself unto them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me, and shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me and keep my commandments” (Deuteronomy 5:9–10).

“Know therefore that the Lord thy God, he is God, the faithful God, which keepeth covenant and mercy with them that love him and keep his commandments to a thousand generations” (Deuteronomy 7:9).

“And God said unto Abraham, Thou shalt keep my covenant therefore, thou, and thy seed after thee in their generations” (Genesis 17:9).

“For the promise, that he should be the heir of the world, was not to Abraham, or to his seed, through the law, but through the righteousness of faith” (Romans 4:13).

“And David my servant shall be king over them; and they all shall have one shepherd: they shall also walk in my judgments, and observe my statutes, and do them. And they shall dwell in the land that I have given unto Jacob my servant, wherein your fathers have dwelt; and they shall dwell therein, even they, and their children, and their children’s children for ever: and my servant David shall be their prince for ever. Moreover I will make a covenant of peace with them; it shall be an everlasting covenant with them: and I will place them, and multiply them, and will set my sanctuary in the midst of them for evermore” (Ezekiel 37:24–26).

“They shall not labour in vain, nor bring forth for trouble; For they are the seed of the blessed of the Lord, and their offspring with them” (Isaiah 65:23)

“As for me, this is my covenant with them, saith the Lord; My spirit that is upon thee, and my words which I have put in thy mouth, shall not depart out of thy mouth, nor out of the mouth of thy seed, nor out of the mouth of thy seed’s seed, saith the Lord, from henceforth and for ever” (Isaiah 59:21)

“And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord” (Ephesians 6:4)

“For the promise is unto you, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call” (Acts 2:39).

GRACE IS ATTRACTIVE

Hard legalism is never attractive. Panicked insecurity is not attractive either. What you need to do is have a seat on the couch, and have your kids line up in front of you. And then you would say something like this: “Children, as you know, your mother and I are going to Heaven. What I wanted to do here is let you know that you are coming too.”

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Confession of Sin (Covenant Life Together #2)

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INTRODUCTION

Confession of sin is a basic activity that all Christians need to understand and practice. It is the most fundamental form of spiritual housekeeping. There is no way for us to maintain covenant life together without this sort of understanding being woven into the fabric of our community.

THE TEXT

“If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us” (1 John 1:8-10)

SUMMARY OF THE TEXT

If we decide to lie to ourselves, then obviously the truth is not in us (v. 8). One of the lies we like to tell ourselves is the lie that our current condition is “normal,” and that we have no sin. Or at least we have no sin to speak of. John tells us that this is self-deception, period. And if we lie in this way, we are making God into a liar (because He says we have sinned), and His word is obviously not in us—a lie is (v. 10). The meat of this sandwich is in verse 9, but these two pieces of bread make it a sandwich. Don’t kid yourself, John is saying—we all need to hear this. In the ninth verse, John gives us a conditional statement. If we confess our sins, God will do something. The word for confess is homologeo, and literally means “to speak the same thing.” If we say the same thing about our sin that God says about it (i.e. that it is sin), then God will do what He promises. What is that? God will be faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and He will cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

TWO HOUSES

Imagine two mothers with a robust family—six kids each, let’s say. One home is bombed all the time and the other is spotless. The difference between the two homes is not that in the second home nothing is ever spilled, or knocked over, or left on the coffee table. The difference between the home that is trashed and the home that isn’t is the difference between leaving things there “for the present,” and picking them up right away.

Given God’s promise above, we need to recognize what this means. The promise is good on Monday mornings, and Thursday afternoons. The promise is good in May, and good in October. That means there is never a legitimate reason for refusing to deal with it now. The vacuum cleaner is never broken, never at the shop, never too far away, never too hard to operate. The word is near you, in your heart and in your mouth. “God, what I just said . . . that was sin.” That is confession. And God’s promise is fulfilled at that moment.

TANGLEFOOT

The writer to the Hebrews describes what sin does when you leave it unattended. It starts to trip you up—it starts to really get in the way. “Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us . . .” (Heb. 12:1). Sin clutters, sin gets in the way, sin weighs you down, sin gets tangled around your feet. Set it aside we are told, and then run the race. You can’t run the race with a two-hundred-pound backpack on. You cannot run the race with snarls of rope tangled around your feet. Stop trying to be good with unconfessed sin in your life. It just makes you more irritable than you already are. John tells us how to get untangled. Don’t try to do that and run at the same time. Get completely untangled, take off the backpack, and then run.

CLUTTER AND BACKLOG

Let’s change the image. Suppose you haven’t cleaned the garage for twenty years, and you are overwhelmed at the very thought of trying to straighten it out. Every time you go open the door, you just stare helplessly for about five minutes, and then go back inside. All you can think of to do is pray for a fire. Now suppose that is what your pile of unconfessed sin looks like. You are tempted to think that you have to remember everything that is in there first, and then set about cleaning it up.

But you don’t have to remember the sins you don’t remember—just confess the ones you do remember. The ones you stuffed just inside the garage door just last week. Don’t try to remember what is at the bottom of the pile; just look at what is on the top of the pile. If you deal with the sin you know about honestly, then God will cleanse you from all unrighteousness. The confessing is your job; the cleansing is His.

HONESTY

The central virtue here that of honesty. No blowing smoke at God. No spin control. No attempts to make yourself the flawed hero in this tragic affair. We saw that homologeo means to speak the same. If God calls it adultery, don’t you call it an affair or indiscretion. If God calls it grumbling and complaining, don’t you call it realism. If God calls it theft, don’t you call it shrewd business practice. As the Puritans might have put it, had they only thought of it, bs and honest confession accord not well together.

A FEW PRACTICAL CONSIDERATIONS

This is not meant to sound flippant. Sin is a ravening wolf, and has destroyed many things. If you have held back from confessing your sins because you know that to do so could threaten your marriage, or cost you your job, or get you expelled from college, you really do have a significant practical problem. I am not saying you should charge off and start confessing your sin like a loose cannon on deck. But you should decide today to deal with it honestly, and depending on how tangled up it is, get counsel and help today in putting things right. Commit yourself now. Busting yourself is the best thing you can do to rebuild trust with those you may have wronged.

And last, allow me to consider your feelings. You may feel like a hesitant cliff-diver, toes curled over the edge, and here I am poking you in the back with a stick. There are any number of things you might want to do—anything but jump. You might rationalize. “What I did wasn’t really wrong.” You might excuse. “What I did was not started by me.” You might postpone. “In my honest opinion, the best day for jumping will be sometime tomorrow afternoon.” You might blame somebody else, anybody else. “I think they should be here jumping, not me.” You might use vague terms to try jumping sideways along the cliff edge. “I think that, generally speaking, I have certainly sinned in some ways.”

It is easy to dismiss this kind of emphasis as morbid introspectionism, but actually it is the opposite. If you confess your sins, and lay aside the weight of that backpack, you never have to think about it again. Now, with it unconfessed, you think about it frequently.

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