Let's Get Real

All right, well, good morning. We’ll go ahead and start finding our way back to our seats here in a second. Y’all are making Donnie proud ’cause every week it’s just a little further back. I appreciate that. Good job, guys, good job.

So we’re now gonna go into our time of congregational prayer. We’ve been doing this for a number of weeks now. Makes a lot of sense that we’ve got a handful of students and some adult chaperones up at Ridgecrest for Mission Fuge right now. If you are not in the know, Mission Fuge is a mission trip that we send students on. Carter, he came on board with us as our student guy a couple months ago and he has bravely taken on the task of taking up Al and my wife, Becca, and a number of our students up to North Carolina. So that’s where they are right now.

We have VBS coming up. We’ve been praying for these two things over the last couple of weeks in particular, but I think this morning, just to give a different kind of angle to the prayer, you know, sitting up there right now in North Carolina at Ridgecrest, there’s a couple hundred students listening to the gospel being preached, a couple hundred students having late night conversations about Jesus and life, a couple hundred students hearing worship being conducted. I mean, it would be like Satan to not let any of those children be saved. In a couple of weeks when we have VBS, we’re going to have a number of kids here on campus hearing the gospel being taught, hearing songs about the gospel being sang, and it would be like Satan for these two things to not grow the kingdom through souls being saved.

So what I want to do right now as we go into our congregational prayer, as we’re praying for our students and also all the students at Infuge, as we pray for our kids and all the kids at VBS, if you just pray specifically that God would use those two things, Infuge and VBS, for kids to be saved. And I’ll wrap this up here in a second. Y’all take it away.

I’m going to be a little bit more about my own journey with you. Father, baptized as a kid, not because I loved You, but because I wanted something from You. Lord, then I got to really meet You as a high schooler because a buddy of mine shared the gospel with me and asked me to believe it. God, I remember going to camp a few months later and You really solidifying and settling some things in my faith with You then. God, I’m begging, begging, Father. These few days of camp, VBS, would bear fruit into eternity. God, I’m going to be honored. You honored the preaching of the gospel. Lord, You say in Romans 1:16 that the gospel, the gospel is the power of God for salvation for everybody, for the Jew first and then to the Gentile. God, last I checked, everybody is either Jew or Gentile in this world, which means Your gospel has the power to save all types of people. God, every student we could send to camp, every child we could welcome here to church. Father, every adult in this room right now, each of our family members and friends and co-workers and neighbors, enemies and acquaintances, God, Your gospel has the power to save. Lord, I pray that You would claim ground through souls, people this morning, that You’d get a hold of me and my words, that You would help me to only say what Your word says and nothing less or nothing more. Please, Father, we love You. Look to You right now. I trust in You. Father, it’s in Your great name that I pray.

Have your Bibles this morning. You go ahead and open them up to Luke chapter 18, and I’ll join you there here in a few minutes. First, though, I need to take you back to a moment that I experienced a couple months ago. I am coming back from Jimmy Dials in Somerville, and I’ve got a pass by Ashley Ridge High School, or as I like to call it, the Audubon of the Southeast. And I am just going. I’m minding my own business. And apparently, I’m going a little faster than I realize or anticipate because just after passing the high school, I see the blue lights come on, and I get pulled over, and the officer comes up to the window and super gruff. Do you have any business going this fast in the school zone? I’m like, gosh, I don’t. And I apologize. I really don’t. And they calmed down after that, wrote me a ticket, said, “We’ll see you in traffic court up in Ridgeville.” And they gave me the date. So I go to traffic court that date, and I sit in a small room, and I take my seat. I sit on a pew, which is ironic. I asked somebody afterwards, “Any reason they use pews in traffic court?” And the guy said, “I don’t know. It just makes sense.” So I take my seat in the pew, and I’m just kind of sitting there waiting for my turn. And just ahead of me, there’s a lady that’s called up to the stand. And this is what she was charged with. This is what her citation was. She had been arrested for driving under the influence with a suspended license for the second time. Oh, man.

So that judge looks at her and reads off the initial sentence that was originally given to her. I can’t remember the exact number, but I think it was north of $100,000 that she owed and 30 days in jail. Now, she’s got her significant other. She’s got her parents. And she, when she is called up to the front, makes no excuses. Doesn’t try to get her way out of it. Doesn’t try to justify anything. And the judge says, “How do you plead?” The lady says, “I’m guilty. I did that. I am guilty.” The judge looks at the clerk, looks at the lady, looks at the family. And she says, “You know, I’m not really supposed to do this, but I’m going to do something.” And she reduced that $100,000 fine to $10,000 and 30 days in jail to 10 days. And you could just see the physical response of her family and herself. Just like a weight had been lifted. The family’s in shock. I’m sitting there as a bystander, like eating my popcorn, like what in the world is going on right now? And I’m thinking maybe some of that’s going to come to me too. Mine wasn’t nearly that expensive or anything.

What had happened in that moment? A woman had pled guilty. The woman saw her infraction, not through the eyes of what she wanted, not through the eyes of somebody that would justify it, but through the eyes of the law. And she confessed her wrongdoing. And because of that, she pleads guilty. And in that receives mercy. Confessing her wrong was the bridge to the judge’s mercy. Mercy is not something that in that moment she was entitled to in the least. What she was entitled to was giving a lot of money to the state and spending some time in a nice jail cell. What she was entitled to was punishment. And she was not let off the hook completely. No, she still had to do some time. She still had to pay some cash. But what did happen is she was shown mercy.

Now here’s the thing, friends. Confession is the bridge to mercy. If there is one thing I want you to take away from this morning, it is this. Confession is the bridge to mercy. Mercy.

We have been going through a series over the last month and a half called The Life You’ve Always Wanted. The Life You’ve Always Wanted. This has been a series on spiritual disciplines aimed at helping transform us into something. The hope of this series has been to foster transformation in our lives as we embrace some truths and some practices that will shape us on the inside. Now, typically when pastors get up and they talk about spiritual disciplines, they might say pray. They might say read your Bible. They might say give financially to the church. Those things are good. They’re right. But the hope of this has been to go deeper to get at something a little more central and core to our hearts.

This series is based on some scripture that ought to feel very familiar to you at this point. I’ll read it again. It’s 2 Corinthians 3. It’s what Johnny read this morning. It’s this: “Now, the Lord is the Spirit. And where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. So we all with unveiled faces are looking as in a mirror at the glory of the Lord. And we are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory. This is from the Lord who is the Spirit.”

So the purpose of this series every week has been how can we look at Jesus in a way that makes us look different. That’s our destiny. If you have placed your faith and trust in Jesus Christ, your destiny, God’s will for you is that you, over the course of your life, would keep looking at Jesus in such a way that when people see you, they see Him. So that’s the point of this series. And it all began week one with the promise of transformation, which means transformation can happen for anyone. No person is too far gone for God’s work to make them new, to make them look like Jesus.

Then week two, Al taught on the practice of celebration from Philippians chapter two, ultimately showing us that we can have joy despite any circumstances that we go through because of what Jesus has done for us. So we have this practice of celebrating, even when celebrating doesn’t feel right. I was at a funeral a couple days ago, and I saw a family celebrating. Now they were sad, they were mourning, but they were also celebrating because they had the hope of joy that was deeper than their circumstances.

Week three, I taught on the practice of secrecy from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount where Jesus talks about, hey, when you pray, pray in secret. When you give to the poor, give in secret. Hey, when you fast, make it a secret. Because here’s the deal, God rewards quiet righteousness.

Week four, we looked at Jesus’ own regular habit of getting away to spend time with the Father. And we considered the practice of slowing down, a practice that I confess to you guys I am not great at. We learned that God satisfies hurried hearts.

Then last week, we studied Matthew 20, 20 through 28 to see that serving is the way of the Son. That was that practice, the practice of serving. It is the way of Jesus. Jesus is the ultimate servant that served us, the ultimately needy, and our greatest need, which is our sin. And He took that need on Himself by dying on the cross for us.

Each practice is drawn from the life and the teaching of Jesus to help us look at Him, which would make us look like Him. Which brings us to this morning when I said a few minutes ago, confession. Confession is the bridge to mercy.

Now, why in the world would I talk about confession this morning? At least that’s the response that I got three times this past week. So I like to go to Starbucks to work there. Just sometimes I just need to get out of the office. I need to be able to rub shoulders with some other folks. I need to be able to just kind of be anonymous in a space. And, you know, I like a latte. So it’s nice.

Three times this week, I got to have a pretty meaningful conversation with three different people. The first one, I just sat down at my little desk, put my earbuds in. And then the guy beside me says, what you working on? And I’m like, okay, all right. He’s being the extrovert. For once, I’ve been extroverted on. And this guy looks at me and says, what are you working on? And I had just started working on this sermon. I don’t know this guy’s name. I don’t know what he does. I don’t know what he believes. I said, I’m a pastor and I’m working on a sermon for my church. He says, fascinating. What’s that on? Confession. He says, churches never talk about confession.

What I learned about this guy is that he’s a former divinity student. He attended a really well-known seminary over in Alabama. He had full ride, super intelligent, totally renounced the faith. Doesn’t believe any of it anymore. Doesn’t call himself a professing Christian. Totally walked away from all of it. So former divinity student.

And then I get to have a conversation with one of the new employees at Starbucks. I’m cultivating some relationships with the managers. I’m trying to just make some gospel inroads so that I can share the truth and hope and life and Jesus with them. And one of them introduces me to a new staff member of theirs and says, hey, Jeremy’s a pastor. And again, I’m like, man, bummer. It’s just not a great lead for me in conversations.

So I’m there at Starbucks later in the week. And that new person says, hey, what you working on? I’m like, goodness gracious, what is happening? And then I say, I’m working on a sermon for my church. And they said, what’s the sermon on? I’m like, it’s on confession. And this person also says churches never talk about confession.

Now, this person is an ordained pastor in the Assemblies of God denomination. Believes Jesus, views their job the same way I view mine, just trying to spread the love and fame of Jesus a little further. Totally orthodox in everything they believe. It’s like, wow, okay, that was really encouraging. And then finally, I’m realizing God’s just got something up His sleeve for me.

I’m at Starbucks the last time. So I’ve gone three times this week. I’ve had three conversations every day. I get home from work, and Becca’s like, what did you do today? And I just explode on her about these conversations.

I’m sitting there, and I’m working on something, and this retiree looks at me. He doesn’t know the first thing about me. He doesn’t know my name, anything. He says, now, don’t you work too hard. You go home at two. You play with your family, son. I’m like, okay. And then he says, what do you do? And I said, I’m a pastor. And he says, what you working on? A sermon for my church. What’s the sermon on? It’s on confession, sir.

The gentleman is a Unitarian. If you’re not very familiar, that means he believes everybody is going to heaven regardless of what they believe about Jesus. So that’s him.

Three times this week, I talked with folks about confession. Three times this week from three different perspectives on Jesus, they all said churches never talk about confession. Why is that? Why do y’all think that is? Why do we not talk about confession in the church?

Man, if you’re like me, confession’s awkward. You don’t love how it makes you have to be vulnerable. You don’t love that confession forces us to reveal stuff that we’d rather keep private. In particular, church, I think, is a hard place for confession because we don’t want the people in the pew to know the dark, hard stuff about our hearts. If we’re just being honest, this is an incredibly difficult place for us to open up about our weaknesses and our failures. At least it has been for me.

But here’s the thing. We actually all need confession just like we need a drink. I love La Croix. Anybody else a fan? I got one fan. What’s your flavor? Grapefruit. I’ve got watermelon right here. Anybody else like a La Croix every now and then? Yeah. What’s your flavor? Razzleberry. Okay. Limoncello. I can’t say I’m down with the limoncello, but I can say I love these things. Do you like La Croix? Sparkling water. There’s a little bit of pressure in this can. Boy, I’m thirsty.

We all need confession from time to time. Because I think what happens in our lives is we get to a place where so much stuff just bottles up. Pressure just builds. And we get to this place where we know, I just got to let a little bit of this pressure out, but I’m nervous. And we know we need to share something. We know that we need to open up with somebody. And sometimes whenever we open up just a little bit, the whole thing just explodes. Or we don’t open up and we don’t get to enjoy what was originally given to us.

You hear this thing going crazy. I’m not going to open this up. This is not the setting for me to ruin any AV equipment, but I think you guys understand. God has intended for us to enjoy something that if we just don’t [inaudible] ourselves to is that we try to confess later. There’s just so much stuff built up. We don’t even know where to begin.

Now see, this isn’t original to me. This is actually original to Jesus. If you will, just catch me in Luke chapter 18. That’s where we’re going to be this morning.

Now I think the heart of confession is more than just rehearsing details. I think the heart of confession, what Jesus wants for us, is to open up about the why we do things. So that means not just giving a grocery list of items. I lied. I raised my voice. But it’s getting into the story of the moment. Hey, I didn’t trust you with the truth, so I concealed. Or hey, your comments threatened how I view myself, so I lashed out at you.

The temptation of confession is to just let a little bit out as superficially as possible to say, I did it. But what I think God wants for us is more like telling a story at a family meal. You sit back and you give details, you give motivation, you give twists and turns and feelings of the plot, because God wants your heart. He wants all of you. He wants to have you to Himself. And He knows when the pressure builds up, that is not good for us.

So read with me. This is Luke 18, verses 9 through 14. Jesus says this: He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and looked down on everyone else. Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee was standing and praying like this about himself: God, I thank you that I’m not like other people, greedy, unrighteous, adulterous, or even tax collector. Fast twice a week. Hey, I even give a tenth of everything I get. But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even raise his eyes to heaven, but kept striking his chest and saying, God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Tell you, this one went down to his house justified rather than the other, because everyone who exalts himself will be humbled. But the one who humbles himself will be what, church?

Now, you have to get the setting of this parable. Jesus has a target audience. He normally has a mixed audience. Normally, when Jesus is speaking, there’s a mixed group of people around Him. You’ve got the religious teachers, the Pharisees. You’ve got their kind of clerks, the scribes. You’ve got their lawyers. But you also have the people that are down and out. You’ve got the tax collectors, the sinners. Jesus was known to eat and drink and spend time with prostitutes. And the folks that we wouldn’t normally think are the religious type. But verse 9 explicitly tells us that He is not looking at them. He’s not looking at the people that know that they are guilty. He’s looking at the folks that don’t think they’re guilty at all. And He is addressing them with this parable.

That’s because we all have a natural bent towards what we call in the church self-righteousness. Self-righteousness is that bent, it’s that motivation, it’s that thing in our hearts that says, I, through my performance, can make God love me. I, through my goodness, can make Jesus feel good about me. I, through what I have done, don’t owe a debt to God at all. Every person in the world has that bent. Every religion in the world is a means to satisfying self-righteousness. For some folks in America and in the South, we use the religion of Christianity. We say, I will sing songs. I will give money. I will attend church. I will read my Bible. I will pray with my kids. I might even send them to Christian school. I might even go on a mission trip. I might even tell somebody about Jesus. Because that makes God love me a little bit more. Or you go over to Southeast Asia, where Becca and I gave two years of our lives, where they are following the religion of Islam. And they say, I will fast one month every year. I will pray five times every day. I will recite these prayers because it will make Allah love me more. And I will not have to go to hell quite as long.

It doesn’t matter where you’re from. Every person in this world has a bent toward thinking that we can make God love us just a little bit more through what we do for Him. And if you lean into that, it naturally makes you look down on the others. Those people that know that they are not that religious. That’s who Jesus is talking to here. He speaks straight to them. And then He tells this parable. This parable has only got two characters in it. It’s got two men. It’s got a Pharisee and a tax collector.

Now, see, you have to understand these two guys may have came from the same neighborhood, but they are wildly different. The Pharisee would have been the religious of the religious. Now, see, Jewish boys starting at like age three go to mandatory school for the Old Testament. So starting at age three, they’re memorizing large chunks of the Bible. They’re memorizing their essential like law codes. They are committing to memory the Proverbs and all the stories of David and Solomon, all the exploits. They’re remembering these things. And there’s different levels that you progress to. Kindergarten, middle school, high school. You get the picture. A Pharisee is someone that’s gone through all of that, has learned enough, has been commissioned to teach that to other folks. The Pharisees, they were the religious of the religious. They were the good of the good. They were the righteous of the righteous versus a tax collector.

Now, you see, at the time, Israel is being occupied by Rome. Rome, massive empire, massive enterprise, got to get funded somehow, right? Now, Rome is smart. They would not bring in Romans to collect taxes. They would convince locals to do them for them. So a tax collector was seen as a sellout. That was somebody from the neighborhood that said, you know what? I am going to supply. I’m going to fund. I am going to help the conquerors. That’s what a tax collector was.

Naturally, there would have been a huge division between the religious of the religious amongst the Jews and the tax collectors from the Jews, but not really seen as Jewish anymore. And Jesus puts them squarely in this parable. He says that these two guys, the Pharisee, the tax collector, they’re in the same place. They’re both in the temple. They both want to be accepted by God. They’re both in a place of worship, but they have two wildly different postures, right?

Look back at it with me. Verse 11, you got the Pharisee. He’s standing. He’s praying. He’s comparing. You get the sense that the guy is kind of talking good about himself, right? God, I thank you that I’m not like other people. Oh man, what a prayer that is. You might as well just stop right there. God, I thank you I’m not like other people. Greedy, unrighteous, adulterers, this tax collector. I fast twice a week. I give a tenth of everything I get.

What’s in your mind about this guy? How do you picture him? He might be at the front of the temple standing up praying like this. God, thank you that I was able to share Jesus at Starbucks last week. Lord, thank you that I put some money in the offering plate. I think that’s the image we’re supposed to get.

And then in verse 13, it’s wildly different. The tax collector standing far off. He wouldn’t even raise his eyes to heaven, but kept striking his chest. You get the idea that he’s in the corner in the back. You get the idea that he would not be caught up front talking about how good he is because he’s way in the back because he knows how bad he is. Two men in the same place with wildly different postures.

In verse 13, the tax collector, he is the one that I think has the appropriate posture toward God. I’d say it like this. Being in touch with your sin always pushes you down and back. Here’s what I mean. When you recognize how high and holy and pure God is and you see that you’re none of those things, it naturally pushes you like this. And no one like this wants to be the center of attention. So you just ease on back. And you’re just trying to get out of the way because you know people don’t need to be seeing you.

So you have these two guys. They’re in the same place. They both want the same thing from God. They both want to be accepted by God. But two wildly different postures because they have two different confidences.

Look, verse 11 and 12, the Pharisee, what’s he doing? He’s confessing other people’s sin and his goodness. He’s confessing other sin. He says, I’m not greedy like them. I’m not a tax collector like him. I’m not unrighteous like them. I’m not an adulterer like them. He’s confessing other people’s junk. And then he’s talking about how good he is. All of this guy’s confidence is in himself. Look at all I’ve done for you. Look at me versus the tax collector.

He won’t even look up to heaven. His head’s down and he says, what? God have mercy on me. What? A sinner. The tax collector, his confidence is not in himself. It’s not in his good doings. It’s not in his family. It’s not in his money. His confidence is purely in God’s mercy.

Because the two men have different comparisons. The Pharisee is comparing himself with others. He is saying, I’m not like them. And that’s where he draws all of his confidence and strength from, this comparison. The tax collector is comparing himself with God. He says, God have mercy on me. The tax collector is recognizing something about himself. He says, I am the down and out. I am the dirty. I am not the righteous or the good or the pure or the clean. I’m none of those things. Only you are. God have mercy on me.

John Ortberg in his book, The Life You’ve Always Wanted, says it this way. We have to see our sin through new eyes. We need to see our sins through the eyes of those against whom we have sinned. So often, the reason that we do not confess our sin to God, the reason that the can of our life Keeps getting shaken up, it keeps getting disturbed, and the pressure keeps mounting, is because we call them little white lies. Or we brush it off and say, “It’s okay. It didn’t hurt anybody.” Or we just say, “Oh man, God knows my heart.”

Y’all, this is an incredibly difficult sermon to prepare for. I do not really feel like I should be here. I feel like I should be there. Someone else is supposed to be up here. This whole week, as I’ve been trying to find the words to share with y’all, I feel like God’s just been pounding my heart. So I don’t stand in front of you as somebody that’s got it all together. I really don’t. I hope I say that enough for y’all. I hope I say enough that I don’t trust in my own righteousness. I don’t trust in my goodness. I am deeply acquainted with how bad I am.

I stand here as the way C.S. Lewis said it. I’m a beggar trying to point other beggars to where the food is. It’s not in ourselves. It’s not in our religion. It’s not in our goodness. The food of life is in the mercy of God. And the way you tap into that mercy is through confession. Confession is the bridge to mercy.

Look at verse 14. Jesus pops out of the parable, and He summarizes it, and He says this: “I tell you, this one, the tax collector, went down to his house justified rather than the other, the Pharisee.” Because why? “Everyone who humbles himself will be—sorry, everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”

These two men that were very different, but in the same place wanting the same thing, God’s mercy, had two incredibly different results. One left justified. One stayed in his guilt. That word justified, it is a declaration of innocence. It’s going to the courthouse and standing in front of the traffic judge and saying, “I am guilty.” And that judge saying, “Uh-uh, you are innocent.”

To be justified before a holy God means God has taken the ledger of sin and trespass that we have done against Him, and He wipes it clean. And He says, “Uh-uh. You may have committed those things, but that’s not how I view you. I declare you to be righteous. I declare you to be innocent. I declare you to be pure and clean and holy and good.”

This man, the tax collector, he had sinned. And God dealt with that sin by saying, “You are forgiven.” He left justified, not the man that claimed any confidence in his self-righteousness, because the tax collector exposed his sin versus hiding it. The tax collector is able to walk away free because he saw that he was a slave to sin. He walked away forgiven because he knew that he had something to be forgiven of.

Jesus says that confessing we are sinners, confessing our sin to God, that’s how you receive mercy. Not through hiding your sin, not through trying to stockpile your goodness or your righteousness. It is through confessing.

Jesus gives this great promise: “Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.” Anyone ever seen that live? I’m a huge college football fan, so I can’t wait for late August, early September to come back around so I can watch my NC State Wolfpack, which I know is the team of the town down here in South Carolina. I know you’re probably Carolina fans, right? I knew that one. I’m smart enough for that.

Every year, every week in college football, you’re going to see some 19, 20, 21-year-old, and he’s going to exalt himself. Oh, he’s going to score a touchdown. He’s going to do the craziest celebration in the world. He’s either going to be humbled then by a referee saying that’s a flagrant, or on the next play, he’s just going to get drilled. That’s how it happens. In life, when you exalt yourself, you will be humbled.

Or you take a guy like Tony Dungy. I talked about him a couple weeks ago on Father’s Day. That was an incredibly humble man. Never put himself in the limelight, even though he was a head football coach of two professional teams. Made it all the way even to a Super Bowl. That man continually humbled himself, but God exalted him. That is what happens with the Lord. When we exalt ourselves based off of our goodness, when we say, “Look how high and how great I am. Look at all that I’ve done. Look at all the bad things I haven’t done.” God humbles that person. But It’s the person that says, “Lord, I am like nothing before you. God, you love me, and you’ve created me, and you want me. But God, I have sinned against you. God, I don’t deserve any goodness. I don’t deserve any kindness.” That’s the person that God exalts. That’s the person that the Lord lifts up. That is the one that receives God’s mercy. Confession is the bridge to mercy. It’s not through hiding.

The very first people ever dealt with this. If you were to turn all the way left in your Bibles and go to the book of Genesis, you would see Genesis 1 and 2. God created us to live in a perfect relationship with Himself. A relationship filled with harmony. A relationship that would be filled with trust and intimacy and vulnerability. A relationship that would be unbroken through our foolishness. One where God would be able to walk with people every day.

Imagine how rich that was for Adam and Eve to be able to walk with God through the garden. Imagine how incredible it was for those very first people to be able to enjoy the type of relationship with God that you and I can only barely dream of, that we get glimpses of here in this life. They have that every moment of every day. For how long? We don’t know.

And then one day, it all comes crashing down. It’s the chaos that VBS is going to study. Everything is created good. And then chaos comes in because the serpent, Satan, tempts them. And they sin against God. They break His one and only rule: don’t take the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. That apparently is the fruit that they take. And they eat it.

God knows something’s happened. Nothing escapes the eyes of the Lord, by the way. He knows every single thing in our lives. So they fall into sin. God approaches Adam and Eve. Do you know what they do? Do they expose their sin or do they hide it? You know the answer. What do they do? They hide it. They try to make clothes for themselves out of fig leaves.

God says, “Adam, what’s going on, man?” And he says, “Uh-uh, it wasn’t me. It was the wife you gave me.” Ultimate cop-out. That’s ridiculous. Goes to Eve then. Humors Adam, says, “Eve, what’s going on, sweetheart?” “It’s the serpent’s fault. I didn’t do it.”

I wonder, what would today look like if they had owned up to it? I think sin would still be in the world. It had already been thrust on us. But maybe confession wouldn’t be so hard. You see, the very first people were caught in sin and they chose to hide it instead, which created all sorts of chaos for them. And it does for us too.

When we hide our sin, it’s like the can of our lives just keeps getting shaken up. And the pressure just keeps mounting until we don’t know how to deal with it. So we lash out at somebody or we lash out at ourselves or we lash out at God. We just do something to try to relieve some of the pressure in here because the pain of our lives is pushing up against the walls of our hearts and our minds because we know something’s wrong and we don’t have the courage or the humility to get it out of us.

And that’s what God wants for you. See, Jesus Christ came to take all of our hidden shame and sin on Himself. Jesus Christ came so that we could be fully accepted and embraced by a holy, loving Father that made you for Himself. Jesus Christ came to accept your sin and the punishment of that sin on His own shoulders on the cross. The one who never had anything to confess to God ever. The one who never had anything to hide from His Father. The one who spent untold hours in communication with God saying, “Lord, I am feeling this. God, I need Your help. Lord, be with me.”

Jesus never had anything wrong ever to unearth or expose, but instead was exposed for us naked on the cross where He suffered the wrath of God for our sin, not His, for our sin, so that anybody who would trust in that can be forgiven by God so that we can enjoy a relationship of vulnerability and unhiddenness with God where we could say, “You know what? I’ve got some junk that I have thrust into the world through my own sin. Here’s what it is.”

There is a reason that I confess my sin to y’all. I think it makes us a Better church when I have to expose the crud of my life to you, when I don’t hide the stuff that’s going on in my heart. I had a conversation with one of our church members a month ago. We had had a time of prayer together and afterwards he said, “Jeremy, thank you, but man, I don’t need that. You don’t know me any of that. It’s not my business to know any of that stuff.” I said, “Man, I kind of think it is your business to know because when I keep hiding stuff is when stuff’s going to get off the tracks for us as a church.” That doesn’t mean I’m going to go to the Facebook page and make a bullet list of everything I’ve thought about or not thought about, but it does mean that I’m going to continue to confess and open up to y’all, and my invitation for you is that you would do it with one another.

John Ortberg says this: “I believe that what many of us are searching for is not simply another message reassuring us that God forgives freely. As wonderful as that is, that information alone is not enough to enable people to grow in their experience of God’s liberating forgiveness. Many of us struggle at this point, not so much with understanding the message of forgiveness, but with living in the reality of it.”

I think everybody in this room can say that God forgives and He has grace for me and God accepts me. But how many of us in this room walk in the experience of forgiveness? Here’s a different way to ask it. If you are married, there’s a difference between knowing my spouse will forgive me for when I raise my voice at them, my spouse will forgive me when I’m unkind to them, my spouse will forgive me for being selfish against them. Knowing that versus saying, “Hey, Becca, I’m so sorry for not believing the best about you. Hey, Becca, I am so sorry for being impatient with you.” And I have to trust her to forgive me. One is knowing it can’t happen. The other is experiencing it. And God wants the same thing for you because no confession means no forgiveness. No confession means no freedom. And no confession means no amazing grace.

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now I’m found. Was blind, but now I see. T’was grace that taught my heart to fear, and grace my fears relieved. How precious did that grace appear the hour I first believed. Is grace amazing to you? You will have a direct correlation, a direct experience of how amazing God’s grace is when you tell God why you don’t deserve it. None of us deserves it. None of us deserves mercy, but here’s the deal. Like I’ve been saying, confession is the bridge to mercy.

Now this moment, I’m gonna invite you into, this will be the first time some of y’all have done this. Donna, do you mind joining me up here? God wants something for you. He wants you to experience forgiveness. And He wants you to walk in the proof of confession and what confession can offer you. I wanna invite you, if you have something in your life, you’ve never confessed to another person or you’ve never confessed to God, you come to me. If you’re a lady, you’re a little more comfortable with Donna, then you come to her. We’re not gonna should on you saying, “You should do this, you should do that.” We’re not gonna tell you what to do. We’re just gonna pray with you. Claim God’s forgiveness and His mercy over you.

Let’s go ahead and do this. Let’s go ahead and stand. The rest of the congregation will sing amazing grace over you. If this is the morning where you want to confess, you want to be liberated, you wanna relieve the pressure of the can of your life, then just come forward to me or Miss Donna.