Fully Repentant

 “Repentance and Confession”

Message @ Jericho Ridge Community Church – Sunday, Nov 8, 2020

Hello, friends. My name is Brad and I’m part of the teaching and leadership team here at Jericho Ridge.  I want to welcome you into this online space together as we launch into our teaching time together. 

I grew up in a small town in northern BC and I can remember becoming aware of different and diverse Christian communities and their practices.  And part of it was linked to the notion of confession.  I began to observe that the word “Confession” meant very different things to different people. 

For example, my Roman Catholic friend, when she used the word ‘confession’, she meant she was going to her physical church building, to sit in a small room and to unburden her soul and the sins she had committed to her priest who would pronounce forgiveness on behalf of God.  It was a sacrament and was treated with reverence.  There was a structure to it (“forgive me father for I have sinned.  It’s been x number of weeks since my last confession..”)

My cousins were Lutheran and when we occasionally we would attend church with them, confession was done prior to communion at the altar.  They would approach, kneel and say something like “Please hear my confession and pronounce forgiveness in order to fulfill God's will. I, a poor sinner, plead guilty before God of all sins. I have lived as if God did not matter and as if I mattered most. My Lord's name I have not honored as I should; my worship and prayers have faltered. I have not let His love have its way with me, and so my love for others has failed. There are those whom I have hurt, and those whom I have failed to help. My thoughts and desires have been spoiled with sin. What troubles me particularly is that...” and then you would fill in the blank with what you wanted to confess.  Then absolution of sin would be offered.  There was a freedom to it.

My Reformed friends almost seemed to revel in the portion of their spiritual lives.  They used terms like “worm” to describe how lowly they felt and they would sing songs and hear sermons about how horrible the weight of sin was and how awful the punishment of God was going to be.  When I questioned them on what I perceived was a lack of emphasis on God’s grace, they noted that by magnifying sin and how serious their personal offences against God were, they were actually more grateful for Grace.  There was a relief to the notion that judgment could be avoided.   

My Anglican friends saw this as a more communal rite of the church.  There was an exhortation to general confession in every gathering and then a form of general confession was said out loud, all together by everyone present followed by assurance of forgiveness and then the sign of the cross.  There was a communal dimension to it. We got to be reminded that ALL have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.   

So you might forgive me if I grew up a tad bit confused about what in the world Christians believed about confession and repentance and how it was to be practiced!  It seemed to me that we largely shared a theology of the necessity of confession but we varied widely in our practice of it.  So what’s a person seeking absolution or the experience of forgiveness to do?    

We are in a series this November at Jericho called “Sorry: learning to forgive” and we began last weekend by exploring the notion of forgiveness being a multi-staged process that involves both turning away and also turning toward. We looked at how God offers us forgiveness.  so today we are going to dig into this at the personal level.  What does it mean to tell God we are sorry?  Do I need to tell another person? Speak it out loud? Do I need to do some form of penitential action that proves I am sorry? 

For guidance we are going to look to the Psalms, particularly Psalm 51, which is perhaps the most commonly used Psalm on this topic.  The text is written by David and it is rooted in his moment of his greatest failure.  Kids, if you want to dig into this, VeggieTales has a great animation entitled King George and the Ducky that you will want to check out. 

The account of David’s transgressions is recorded in 2 Samuel 11-12 but it’s a pretty long list that involves (to keep it PG), lies, assault, forced drunkenness, adultery, and murder to name just a few things by this so-called “man after God’s own heart”.  And after he denies it and then is caught and called out by Nathan the prophet, he writes Psalm 51 which is his personal experience of confession and repentance.  Let’s look together at the text of Psalm 51 as it can help shape our understanding of and three invitations we hear around the confession. 

The first invitation is expressed in the phrase: “Cleanse me”  

Have mercy on me, O God, because of your unfailing love. Because of your great compassion, blot out the stain of my sins. 2 Wash me clean from my guilt. Purify me from my sin. 3 For I recognize my rebellion; it haunts me day and night. 4 Against you, and you alone, have I sinned; I have done what is evil in your sight. You will be proved right in what you say, and your judgment against me is just. 5 For I was born a sinner— yes, from the moment my mother conceived me. 6 But you desire honesty from the womb,[b] teaching me wisdom even there. 7 Purify me from my sins,[c] and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.

Here we see he first thing necessary for us to walk out the road of saying we are sorry or receiving forgiveness is that you have to admit or acknowledge that what you have done is wrong.  Verse 3 – I recognize my rebellion.  Verse 4 - Your judgement against me is just. Intriguingly, in his sin with Bathsheba, David is at first, completely unwilling to do this.  So God sends someone, the prophet Nathan, into his life who calls him out on it.  Who points out to him that he is dirty and in need of a good cleansing.    

Think about it this way.  We have a dog, Poppy.  She is our little rescue dog and she loves to roll in things at the park.  Smelly things.  Dank, fish guts at the beach. Garbage left beside the path. She comes home stinking to high heaven.  But the goofy thing about it is that it doesn’t seem to bother her one bit!  She would be perfectly happy to go about her life smelling like a garbage can.  But since she lives with us, we know that she is defiled.  It may not be immediately apparent visually, but your nose tells you immediately.  This dog needs a bath!  We can recognize her defilement before she can sometimes. 

The same thing is true for you and I when we get involved in sin.   We may not be yet ready to admit or acknowledge that we are in places where we are defiling ourselves.  I know I am a master of self-deception and I can convince myself of things like “It’s not gossiping – it’s just sharing information I heard about that person with others who happen to feel the same way I do!” or “It’s just a little bit of money or product that I snuck away – my company is so large it isn’t going to make a difference!”

Friends, when we tell refuse to be honest with ourselves, with others and ultimately with God, we are not walking out the path of life.  The road to forgiveness always begins with repentance. 

This is why David starts with a recognition of a need for God’s mercy.  In verse 2, he says “wash me” – clean me up!  Remove my guilt. Purify me.  In verse 7 he uses the language of cleansing with hyssop branches.  This comes from the book of Exodus and the deliverance God wrought for the ancient Israelites on the night of the Passover.  They were instructed to take a hyssop branch and apply the blood of the Passover lamb to their doorposts as a way of signifying that the penalty for their sins had been paid.  Hyssop branches were also used in ancient rituals of purification.   

The one clarifying note, however, we should make here, is that there have been those who interpreted the language of white as snow to signify a connection with skin colour.  This is not the case at all.  Written by a middle eastern person, David, with dark skin, this is not a pigment superiority statement and should never be used to justify white superiority or privilege. 

David then moves into the second thing he wants from God in his prayer of confession: “Restore Me”

Oh, give me back my joy again; you have broken me— now let me rejoice. 9 Don’t keep looking at my sins. Remove the stain of my guilt. 10 Create in me a clean heart, O God. Renew a loyal spirit within me. 11 Do not banish me from your presence, and don’t take your Holy Spirit[d] from me. 12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and make me willing to obey you.” 

As we dig in here, we have to clear up a few misconceptions so that we do not hear what David is not saying.  When David says “against you and you only have I sinned” he is not saying that somehow, he does not feel he sinned against Bathsheba when he inappropriately used his power and position as king to coerce and force her into his harem.  He is not saying that he did not sin against her husband Uriah when he wrote a letter sending Uriah to the front lines of battle knowing he would die at the hands of the enemy archers.  David is simply getting to the place where he agrees that sins against other people are also offences against the Almighty who made everyone in God image. 

Let me point out a particular example: You might tell yourself “it’s just some innocent online fun – a few clicks, a few images.  Who is it hurting?”  Friend, the exploitation of women and young people is rampant in our culture today and is fueled by “a few little clicks”.  Lest you think it is just a sin against God, it is also impacting your marriage, your relationships with other humans who you slide more easily into commodification of.  Sin has real consequences, we’ll talk more about that next weekend.   

The other thing David that we need to address that David is not saying is that someone the Holy Spirit disappears and will not come again if you sin.  In I Sam 16:14, David as a young man sees and knows that Saul, the king previous to him, sinned against God and God indicated that God’s Spirit was going to depart from Saul.  So David is writing this poetic refrain from an Old Testament, Old covenant prospect out of that place – he is expressing a genuine desire for God not to do the same thing to him that God did to Saul.

It is interesting to me that in his confession, David doesn’t go into the details of what happened (although he may have done so in private prayer). That isn’t most important. What is most important is his acknowledgment that his relationship with God (as well as his relationship with others) has been damaged by the sin.  He needs restoration.  Again, this requies that we tell ourselves the truth. 

In his work Letters to My Children, Daniel Taylor makes this observation: “In recent years our society has tried to solve problems by having people simply repeat over and over to themselves, ‘You are okay. You are a good person. You are beautiful as you are.’ But our spirits know this is a bunch of baloney. We know there is a lot of ugliness in us and that something radical must be done about it. There is only one person whose affirmation can take that ugliness away and that is the person who made us and knows how we work. God does not affirm or ignore our ugliness, as the world would have us do. Instead he offers us forgiveness for it.” The wonderful news of the gospel is that God has made a way for you and I to experience restoration. 

Let’s look at the final of our three invitations that David – the first one, “cleanse me”, the second “restore me” and the final movement “use me”

Let’s read Psalm 51:13-19

Then I will teach your ways to rebels, and they will return to you. 14 Forgive me for shedding blood, O God who saves; then I will joyfully sing of your forgiveness. 15 Unseal my lips, O Lord, that my mouth may praise you. 16 You do not desire a sacrifice, or I would offer one. You do not want a burnt offering. 17 The sacrifice you desire is a broken spirit. You will not reject a broken and repentant heart, O God. 18 Look with favor on Zion and help her; rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. 19 Then you will be pleased with sacrifices offered in the right spirit— with burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings. Then bulls will again be sacrificed on your altar.

David wanted to regain his ministry and lead his people. He especially wanted to make careful preparations for the building of the temple. David did much good, he served the Lord faithfully.  But he also had to live with the consequences of his actions.  We’ll talk more about that next week. 

David longs to be used again by God to build the temple.  But God says “no” to David.  David recognizes that because of his sin, certain things are off the table for him.  It’s interesting that Solomon, the child eventually born to Bathsheba, was chosen to be David’s successor and the one to supervise the temple construction.

This is powerful evidence of God’s grace at work.  That the very offspring that comes out of David’s greatest failure is the very person God uses to complete the temple is a testimony of how God restores all things. 

So friends, as we move into a time of communion, let me invite you to take a moment to engage in self-reflection.  Not the navel gazing variety. But the kind of sober self-examination that leads us to confession.

Psalm 139 is a good place to start.  I’ve been starting my days with it this week.  I take a few moments and get quiet and then I read the words of the text: “: “Search me, O God. Search my heart. Search my thoughts. And if you find anything in there that I have done wrong, please show me.”

And then, I take out a pen and paper and I trust God’s Spirit to do just that.  I treat ymy day like it is a movie and play it back. Start with the beginning and very carefully think through the events of the day. I break my day down into three blocks: morning to noon. Noon to six p.m. Six to 9 p.m. For each block ask yourself three questions: Where have I sinned? What have I done right? What duty have I neglected?

Again, this is not for the purpose of making you feel bad.  But this practice of examen, of exploring our conscience to see where we are out of alignment with God and allowing God to bring us gently back. 

Richard Foster says, “In the examen of conscience we are inviting the Lord to search our hearts to the depths. Far from being dreadful, this is scrutiny of love. … There is therefore no need to repress, suppress or sublimate any of God's truth about ourselves. Full, total self-knowledge is the bread by which we are sustained. A yes to life means an honest recognition of our own evil, but it is also a yes to God, who in the midst of our evil sustains us and draws us into His righteousness”

As we move to the communion experience, I invite you to again explore those three questions: where have I sinned?  What have I done right? What duty have I neglected? 

On the night he was betrayed – take. Eat.  This

Cup – same.

Let’s respond to God in worship. 

Benediction:

Today’s benediction comes from the Liturgy of the Reformed Church in America and is rooted in Colossians 1:10-14:

I charge you, Jericho, “Live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and giving joyful thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of his holy people in the kingdom of light. For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

Believe this Gospel of forgiveness and go forth to live in peace. Amen’”