There's No App For Confessing

My name is Matt Brouwer. I'm the youth director here, and I've got the privilege of opening God's word with you this morning. We've been going through a summer series called "There's No App for That." Last week we looked at truth telling. Today we're diving a bit deeper into truth telling about your sin. Honest self disclosure about the things we have done that damage our relationship with God and with others.

As we read our passage I want you to think about this question: Where am I falling short of appropriate honesty about my sin?

Let me read our passage for us. From First John 1:5-10.

This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you. God is light and there is absolutely no darkness in him. If we say we have fellowship with Him and yet we walk in darkness, we are lying and are not practicing the truth. If we walk in the light as He Himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his son cleanses us from all sin. If we say we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar and his word is not in us. — 1 John 1:5-10

Heavenly Father, your word to us in John and first John one today is beautiful. It's a word for your church, and it's a word for us today. Work as you always do, Holy Spirit, to illuminate your scripture and your word to our hearts. In your son's name we pray. Amen.

Fess Up

So this is a phrase I heard several times as a kid. I have a memory of fourth grade where one of the boys in my public school peed all over the bathroom. My teacher was trying to figure out who the culprit was, so we all get lined up in the classroom and the teacher's like, "Hey, who did this?" No one says anything. And then the threat of group punishment came up. You've got to give it to my teacher—it's pretty effective. We start looking at each other down the line: "Hey, did you do it? Hey, fess up to that." Confess, own up to what you did. And eventually the culprit did, and that kid had to be escorted to the bathroom for the next month.

We all know the feeling of causing a problem and struggling to come clean about it. You may have a few funny stories like this one, but what about the not funny ones? I wonder if any of us have a sobering story about not wanting to live in the light. Feeling like you're not able to. What about something you're carrying now? "Man, if they really knew how that went down. If they really knew the real me." Maybe there are things that you've promised yourself that you will never tell anyone.

All these dynamics—inside and outside of us—shame, judgment, hurt, image management—they cause us to hide from other people, to hide from our past, and to hide from reckoning with ourselves. But here's what John helps us see: What if hiding from all of these things are symptoms? They're symptoms of our core issue—hiding ourselves from God. That's what John is setting before his readers and before us today.

We have an unconfessed sin problem. We love to avoid, to bend, and to deny the truth about our sin and brokenness. And we hide, and no wonder we feel isolated. Hiding from the truth breaks fellowship.

So here's my main idea today: When we agree with Jesus about our sin, He delivers fellowship with God and fellowship with others.

We're going to look at this in four movements: the call to agree, the tendency to disagree, the moment of agreement, and then point four, free to agree. I picked this word "agree" because it's a word that's a little bit more accessible to us and it's a helpful close synonym of confess. Confess most literally means to admit with. So fairly broadly, confess means to add your voice in agreement with another's. When it comes to God's voice, it means that when He speaks and says "this is true," we say "yeah, that's true." It's agreeing with God.

So what is the God of complete light in this passage calling me to admit about myself? John's pretty clear a few times in this passage that in order to have fellowship with God, you and I must admit regularly that we sin. The word for sin means to miss the mark. Think about an arrow that doesn't hit the target. So that's where this word comes from. To sin is to commit moral error.

And if you're a Christian or a non-Christian, your natural question might be next: "Well, who gets to say where the bull's eye is?"

Or that there even is one? In Genesis we get this really healthy picture of how God as our creator creates us after his own image to reflect and to represent him. The Christian view about every single human about you is that you do not come into this world without a reason for being. You are created with a mandate. An ultimate purpose. And Jesus' famous summary of God's call in our lives, that bullseye, is to love God and to love your neighbor as yourself.

In the Christian accounting of things, hitting the mark is doing this perfectly. So when a Christian confesses sin, he or she is agreeing with God's assessment of them that they do not love God and they do not love their neighbor as they should. We're all getting failing grades on this moral report card. But the call to agree with God is not done there. This is not just a general admission of being imperfect. Christians must come to this radical understanding that their natural way of being without God is wrong and it contributes to damage with God and with others. And so rightfully before a God of justice and of light this deserves a verdict on your life as guilty. You're on the hook for the things that you do that lead to death and ever growing distance from God and other people. You realize this and you say, I need help. This active turning from sin and plea for help from God is repentance.

Why We Struggle to Confess

Okay. So this is what God calls us to agree with about ourselves. But what's the challenge when it comes to confessing? Like for Christians, why do we tend to disagree with God and deny our sin?

Reason one, we're dismissive of our sin. We're prideful. We downplay the seriousness of our sin. This is the it's actually not so wrong because of this. Right? The little self justification machine that's just going in all of us. This is the it's not such a big deal category.

Reason number two, we run from facing responsibility. In this category, we may understand that sin is a real problem in our lives and that it hurts others, but we just hate facing up to the pain of it. So we hurt people. We know it, but we just try to move on. This is the would love for this not to catch up to me category. I'll confess sin generally, but God can we not talk specifics?

Reason number three why we disagree with God is that image management matters more than truth telling for us. Instead of God's opinion ruling your life, people's opinion rules your life. Welcome to middle school. Welcome often to my life. So in this category, we start trying to manage everyone's opinion of us. And inevitably anything that I can hide to keep your opinion high of me, I will hide. Image management wins the battle over truth telling.

Understanding God's Character

Okay. So what actually cuts through these tendencies? What leads to the moment of agreement? I wanna submit to you that it is not about better understanding the command to confess sin, but rather better understanding the character of God.

When God approaches us he does not sound like a demanding boss, like a strict judge. He does not sound like an ashamed parent. He doesn't sound like an uninvolved parent. No. God sounds like the father in Luke 15. The picture of God that Jesus gives us in Luke 15, in the parable of the prodigal son, is the key to practicing truth with God about our sin. The father in the story is desperate to have his lost son back. He runs out to meet the son who had renounced him and hated him and completely written him off. And the father embraces him and says to everyone, rejoice because this son of mine was dead and is alive again. He was lost and is found.

Y'all, God is omniscient and knows your heart fully. Nothing is hidden from him. He could point out all of your sins. But that truth only gets us halfway to confession. We become a people of true confession when we stop viewing God two dimensionally as a law giver, as an unimpressed boss, and start viewing him three dimensionally as the one who rejoices to meet us at our lowest.

Y'all the other two parables in Luke 15 that Jesus pairs with the prodigal son story to illustrate God's heart toward wayward sinners are search mission parables. They are about rejoicing when finding lost things. It's the parable of the lost sheep and the parable of the lost coin. I heard a Christian speaker once say, we all come into this world looking for someone who is looking for us. Jesus Christ came to this earth not primarily to point out your sins, but to find you and to take your sins. And then in this life, there is an invitation to come to him and say, God, this happened. I failed. Do you have this one, Jesus? Did you know this one was coming too? Like this new sin in my life? And in that regular act of confession, we're reminded that Jesus says to you, yes. I died for that one too, and that one, and that one. Deeply known by Jesus and yet forgiven. That truth frees us from the vicious cycle of hiding our sin because we're fearful of what others may think of us and what God may think of us. No.

The verdict is in. All of the voices that may condemn you go silent because of the work of Jesus. The one who sees all of your sin forgives all of your sin. And the fear and shame that causes you to hide your sin and the logic that causes you to hide your sin is completely overturned by the cross.

That leads to the last point. Free to agree. When you know Christ as your savior, what does the Christian look like? What does the Christian life look like in regards to your sin? What's that new relationship?

When God deals with your sin, he deals with it emphatically all at once at the cross. But the experience in our lives of how he deals with it, we kind of get that in stages. The guilt—I've got three words for you. The guilt connected with our sin is wiped away. Gone. God then also cripples the power of sin in your life. It no longer rules you, though it is present. And then finally, God has promised that for Christians he will eradicate the presence of sin in your life forever when he returns.

Guilt, power, and presence. So if you get this good news in your bones, it will change how you talk about your sin with other people. Let's look at these one at a time.

Freedom to Agree with God About the Guilt of Your Sin

What does freedom to agree with God about the guilt of your sin look like? Three things.

First, own before God and before others that you have and you do incur tremendous guilt in your relationships because of sin. Jesus uses the monetary illustration of debt to talk about this several times in the gospels. I have racked up debts with God and debts with other people. Recognize your debts. Talk to God about them. And talk to other people about them. Recognize them with the people that you have sinned against.

Two. I'm taking this a little bit from Jesus' parable on the unforgiving servant in Matthew 18. Number two is ask for mercy and patience from God. In Christ, you know what the answer is. You are forgiven. Then lean into reconciliation and renewed fellowship with God. That's our passage. That's walking in the light.

Three, ask for mercy and patience from others. When you confess to a person and acknowledge your wrongdoing toward them or reveal your wrongdoing toward them if they don't know about it already, that's a vulnerable step. Acknowledging sin is the first step in mending something broken in relationship. And then the question: will you forgive me? How about this question? Can you be patient with me as I seek to grow in this? That's vulnerable.

Jesus gets really serious about this in Matthew five. He says:

If anyone is coming before God to give a gift at the altar, if at that moment you remember that somebody has something against you, leave your gift there. Stop immediately and go be reconciled with that person. Your gift will still be there. Come back to it and then offer your gift to God.

God holds up to us how our fellowship with him has everything to do with our fellowship and working through our debts with other people. Since you're intimately connected.

The Power of Sin in Your Life

What about the power of sin in your life? For those Christians who the Bible says are free from slavery to sin, here's a summary of Paul's explanation of this in Romans six and Romans seven.

Sin once ruled my life. In Christ, sin no longer rules my life. It has been dethroned. But sin is still a character in my life. The way Paul talks about slavery to sin is that we are unable not to follow the voice of sin in our life. We are unable not to do the demands of sin, to fall into sin. But in Christ, though that voice is still in my life, I do not have to listen to that voice. I am free from slavery to sin. And in fact, it's a voice that I must declare war on. We practice slowly and imperfectly following the new ruler, Jesus, and burying the old one.

So in Christ, this is what we get to tell sin. It's like Emperor's New Groove. This is the scene—if you remember if you've seen it—where Kuzco is firing Izma from her terrible rule over the kingdom. He says, "Oh, by the way, you're fired." Fired? What do you mean fired? He says, "How do I put this? You're being let go. Your department's being downsized. You're part of an outplacement. We're going in a different direction. We're not picking up your option. Take your pick. I got more."

Do you get it? Proclaiming Christ's victory over sin means sin doesn't run the place anymore. But of course, Izma does continue to be present and cause some issues in the rest of the movie.

This is how to talk about the crippled power of sin in your life. For the Christian, when you feel it and when you don't, this is true of you: sin is not in the driver's seat. It is real, but it is no longer controlling the destination of your life.

The Presence of Sin in Our Lives

Lastly, number three. How do Christians that are free to agree with God talk about the presence of sin in their lives? Call it out. I'm a sinner. I commit sins. Both.

I'm a sinner. I commit sins. But secondly, this is connected to the lessening power of sin. Sin being dethroned in your life. The Christian gets to see themselves in a Shakespearean comedy. So a Shakespearean comedy, those are the ones that end well. A tragedy are the ones that don't end well. So sin which once ruled your life is now relegated to a temporary bad character in the story. Now this doesn't lessen the weight of sin, but it puts it in the right story. Proclaim that.

Thirdly, expect to see sin crop up in places you didn't expect, like Yzma. Don't be surprised. Let me lean into this balance quickly. Scripture teaches that your new life with Christ as a Christian is marked by genuine desire to please God and to grow in the fruit of the spirit. You should expect to see signs of life in your growth and following Jesus. In love, in joy, in peace, patience. But make no mistake. Sin is deeply rooted in you and in me. It's not just surface level. Do not be surprised when the Holy Spirit helps you discover new idols or deeper idols in your heart over the course of a lifetime.

But here's a mark of a Christian that trusts God with the dark parts of their life. When those new sins come up, you bring them into the light with others. Not only because you know that you should, but because you expect God to display his power over even that too. Our weakness, our brokenness, and our failures often become the places that we experience God the most, if we're honest about them.

One Anothering and Healing

Okay. What are the one anothering implications of all of this? Y'all, there is no app for healing wounds. And there is no doubt that the sins that we do and the sins that have been done to us have caused deep emotional, psychological, spiritual, and maybe even physical wounds. We carry so much by ourselves. We carry emotions that we don't understand. We hold grudges against people we can't fully even articulate. Maybe it's just me, but we carry a voice inside our head that says, you're not enough. Your failures define you. We have so many wounds, unexamined memories, and faulty beliefs that we are operating out of on a daily basis.

If we are going to be a people that experience healing, we have to start sharing. How many friends do you have that could tell you your life story back to you? That could tell you the things that you find the most joy in? Could tell you the things that you fear the most? What things you believe to be the most true about yourself. If you can share memories with a friend, you're pretty close. If you can share honest emotions with a friend, you're even closer. If you can share the sins and the darker things that you keep closest in your life with even one person and that person does not walk away from you, you have experienced a small fraction of what it is to be known and loved by God.

CTK, I want you to think of one person in your life that is permitted to examine your sins and your story with you. I mean your whole story. Think about the memories that you keep so close that no one knows or the ones that you're desperately trying to forget and never will. Will you open your life up to a trusted person and say examine my heart. Read this chapter. Help me know myself. Help me talk about this chapter. I don't know how. And teach me how in the world God could possibly deal with this one. And by their mere presence, they will begin to teach you.

And let me flip the question. Are you a person that demonstrates curiosity, care, and faithfulness to a few people in this life such that they are willing to come to you as a safe person that they view as completely in their corner, that they can tell the real stuff. I pray that you have two people like this. One in Raleigh and one not in Raleigh. I pray that God is shaping you and me to be people like this. This is friendship. Some of us move through life too fast and too busy to have vulnerable friendships. Slow down. Offer to swap stories with a friend and open up a mutual searching out of each other's hearts. Can you help me understand myself? Join a huddle group. Join a community group. Have accountability in your life. Let someone speak into the details of your life.

And here's what happens when a good Christian friend knows you like this. They are able to be with you in your sins and your story and remind you to agree with God about who you are. And this is not just a sinner. Praise God. Because God sets you in a new story. His story about your life. And the whole story that God longs for you to agree with and live out of every day doesn't start and end with sin. It goes like this. Image of God. Worthy of dignity. Made to reflect and represent God. Sinner. In Christ, cleansed and forgiven, made holy, worthy of intimacy with the God of the universe, a partner with God forever. This is the story that you are living in.

I've heard it put like this before. Be restored by being restoried every morning. This is a team sport.

Can we be people that are hungry to know our own hearts? That trust God enough to walk in the light and examine what's really there. We can only face the depth of our sin and our story if we believe that there is good news for those who do. And by God's grace, there is. This is the good news of being a sinner. Sinners, through Christ, get fellowship with God.

Closing Prayer

Dear Lord, you long for intimacy with us. You long to know us deeply. And you set your love upon sinners, and you start a work in us, and you start a story in us, that is beautiful. Help us to be able to talk about the guilt of our sin with people truly and intentionally and with the right people. Help us to talk correctly about the power of sin in our life. How it is not in the driver's seat. And help us to talk about the presence of sin in our lives. Owning it, but putting it in the story of where this is all going. The Shakespearean comedy where the bad guy loses.

Lord, we love you. Help us examine our hearts with the God that doesn't turn away from us, that does not turn his face away from us, but wants to be with us forever.