Unconfessed Sin - Brandon Scalf

The Necessity of Confession in the Christian Life

Martin Luther, if you're Reformed, you know who he is, has said a lot of very helpful and a lot of very true things. A sentence you may not readily recognize is something from he wrote by way of encouraging people to confess their sins, in which he wrote, when I admonish you to confession, he says, I am admonishing you to be a Christian.

Now, of course, there are some things that we would disagree with as it pertains to the type of confession that he is speaking of, particularly because in many ways, he still fell prey to some of the Catholic system of his day but the truth remains the same.

Confession is a necessary part of the Christian life. To keep your sin buried, that is to not confess it, is like taking a spiritual knife as it were and driving it into your own heart. It is severing you from the Christian life.

It is keeping you from vitality, from intimacy with God and so on. And as we will see in this Psalm, which we are not given a specific scenario that David is talking about, but it's going to show us that, man, confession is needed if we are to have any sort of hope of moving forward with any hope at all.

And so if you would, please stand with me for the honoring and reading of God's holy and fallible and all sufficient word. Psalm chapter six and we will begin in verse one. O Yahweh, do not reprove me in your anger, nor discipline me in your wrath.

Be gracious to me, O Yahweh, for I am pining away. Heal me, O Yahweh, for my bones are dismayed and my soul is greatly dismayed.

But you, O Yahweh, how long?

Return, O Yahweh, rescue my soul. Save me because of your loving kindness, for there is no remembrance of you in death. And she all who will give you thanks. I am weary with my sighing. Every night I make my bed swim.

I flood my couch with my tears. My eye has wasted away with grief. It has become old because of all of my adversaries. Depart from me, all you workers of iniquity, for Yahweh has heard the sound of my weeping.

Yahweh has heard my supplication. Yahweh receives my prayer. All my enemies will be ashamed and greatly dismayed. They shall turn back and they will suddenly be ashamed. Grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever, amen.

Amen, go ahead and have a seat. As we come to the fifth Psalm, we kind of get out of this pattern of evening morning Psalms, and we come to the first penitential Psalm. That is a Psalm of penitence. And that is one of confession.

And it's not like Psalm 51 in that it is very explicit in a type of confession. As a matter of fact, there is no mention of an actual confession happening here. There's just proof of it. And what I mean by that is when you get to verses eight and following, we see a complete shift in David's disposition, and we see a complete shift in the way in which he believes God is responding to him.

And therefore there must have been a shift in his heart. But we will get to that in just a moment. This Psalm here, Psalm six, has a superscription in it, which is theoretically part of the text, depending on the Psalm.

But it is important that we read them nonetheless. Now, chapter and verse numbers are supplied by people who came up with the Bible reading system, but the superscriptions are part of the Bible. And so it says, for the choir director with stringed instruments, according to the Shemineth, a Psalm of David.

Now, this Shemineth is something that is new to us. We haven't seen it up to this point. We've seen a Psalm and a Psalm of David, but what is this word here? Well, there's a lot of debate as to what it is.

The term literally means an eighth. An eighth of what? Well, we don't exactly know the answer to that, but it's most likely reflecting either a type of eight-stringed instrument or a particular instrument tuning.

So maybe it's an eighth step down from where they would normally play. So it is one that is essentially, if the commentators are correct, a Psalm that is to be read or sung with kind of a somber disposition.

At the end of the day,.

We can't be certain as to what is being said there. Just know that it is supposed to be looked at differently than the Psalms in the book thus far. What's interesting as well is this is one of, like I said, many penitential Psalms, and these penitential Psalms, a group of them, this, Psalm 32, and so on, were used in the early church as Psalms that they would sing during Ash Wednesday.

And as we get here, even though it's much different in tone and even in texture, as we will come to see, it really is a continuation of the other Psalms as well. What you will find interesting as we look at the Psalm is that there is a lot of Psalm 2 language being employed.

And what you're going to see here is David is actually praying. Remember in Psalm 2, we had David praying that God would do justice to his enemies, that he would show forth his anger toward them and that he would terrify them in their fury and so on and so forth.

And David is turning around here and borrowing that same language and essentially saying, as he's confessed, or talking about his holding in of his sin, his not confessing, he's asking the Lord not to treat him as he deserves, not to treat him as he has prayed that he would treat his enemies.

We see this from the very beginning of the Psalm. Psalm 1 says, O Yahweh, do not reprove me in your anger. If you turn back to Psalm chapter 2, he says, he who sits in the heavens laughs, the Lord mocks them and he speaks to them in his anger and terrifies them in his fury saying, but as for me, I have installed my king upon Zion, my holy mountain, nor discipline me in your wrath.

The entire Psalm in Psalm 2 is about God displaying his wrath towards those who would not kiss the sun. So when we look at this Psalm, we are looking at a man crying out, telling us and showing us what it's like to live a life where we do not confess our sin to God.

And it's not pretty. And he's praying for grace in light of us. So why is it important that we confess our sin? Well, one, the Bible tells us to. In Proverbs 28, 13, the author writes, likely Solomon, he who conceals his transgressions will not prosper, but he who confesses and forsakes them will receive compassion.

He who conceals his transgressions will not prosper, but he who confesses and forsakes them will receive compassion. Now, I want you to look with me here. The first thing that I want you to see, and I really only have two points.

I want us to examine unconfessed sin and what that does to the believer and what confessed sin does and how the believer is changed and transformed by that. So let's look firstly through the lens of what Dave is experiencing here.

And remember, I said, we don't know the exact situation. We don't know if it has anything to do with Bathsheba as in Psalm 51, which is made very apparent. We don't know if it's another situation. We don't know if it's just normal everyday Christian sin, but what we do know is it's unconfessed sin.

And whether it's quote unquote small or whether it's gigantic, unconfessed sin will eat you alive. And so the first thing that I want you to see as we're thinking about unconfessed sin is unconfessed sin removes, at least from the vantage point of the one who is participating, as it were, in unconfessed sin, God's pleasure.

It removes God's pleasure. So unconfessed sin removes God pleasure. Look with me. Oh Yahweh, do not reprove me in your anger, David says, nor discipline me in your wrath. Once again, oh Yahweh, do not reprove me in your anger nor discipline me in your wrath.

You see, one of the things that the Christian needs is not only favor, not only grace to be saved from Satan's sin, death and hell, but actual pleasure of the Father. This is why it's such good news, right?

When Jesus is baptized in Matthew, in the Gospels, and the Father says, this is my son with whom I am well pleased. It is the Christian's desire to please, to be pleasing to their father. Just like the children in this room, children, you love, right, to please your father.

You like to see a smile come from his face, and you like for him to be pleased with you. How many of you children, if you wanna raise your hand here, when you paint a beautiful picture, or you do something awesome with some Play-Doh, or some clay, or whatever the case may be, and you bring it to your father, how many of you love that feeling when he says, good job?

How many of you love that feeling, right, exactly? How many of you love that feeling when you see the pleasure of your father in those moments? That's the truth for any Christian looking to their heavenly father.

And right here, David is saying that he does not want to be angering, and he does not want his father to discipline him in his wrath. Now, let's pause here for a second, because it's imperative for us to understand what's being said here.

Because David understands something that a lot of us oftentimes forget, and that is that discipline is a good thing, but discipline in wrath is a very bad thing, okay? So there's two things happening here, right?

He doesn't want wrath, he wants faith, he wants favor, but he is not afraid of discipline in the traditional sense, just in the sense of his wrath that is promised to the enemies of God. In other words, what he is saying is, not only do I not feel your pleasure, but I don't want to feel your disdain, I don't want to feel your wrath, I don't want to feel your anger in such a way that it feels like I'm your enemy, right?

Because if we go to Hebrews chapter 12, we learn that for the Christian, discipline is great. Discipline is something that, though painful, we welcome. Turn with me, if you would, to Hebrews chapter 12.

In Hebrews chapter 12, there's this very, I guess you could say famous, although I don't know how famous it is, it's not on coffee mugs or t-shirts and they're not selling out of posters that say it at Mardels, for example.

But it is one section of scripture that really helps us to understand that discipline is good. Discipline is amazing, if we think about it the right way, though it might be painful. In Hebrews chapter 12, starting in verse four, the author of Hebrews, likely Luke, recording a sermon preached by the apostle Paul, he says, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood and you're striving against sin.

And you have forgotten the exhortation which is addressed to you as sons. My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor faint when you are reproved by him. For those whom the Lord loves, he disciplines, right?

So discipline equals love, even if we don't feel like it. And he, and this is not a coffee cup verse, like I said, he flogs every son whom he receives. So if you're not being disciplined, the Bible seems to be making the case that you're not a son of God.

Why?

Because he disciplines us, as it will go on to say, for our good that we might share in Christ's holiness. So David is not praying here that God would remove discipline from him, but that he would be disciplined in God's wrath, right?

Because fatherly discipline leads to goodness, right? This is why parents should never discipline their children out of anger, because that's out of a wrathful place, not a place that seeks the good of those who he loves.

And so he is praying that the wrath promised to his enemies would dissipate and that he would again feel, at least this is his hope, the pleasure of his father, the pleasure of his father. Secondly, I want you to see that unconfessed sin dries up physical strength.

Unconfessed sin dries up physical strength. So not only does unconfessed sin cause us to, if we lay around with it too long, God's pleasure, but it dries up our physical vitality. He goes on to say, be gracious to me, O Yahweh, I am pining away.

Heal me, O Yahweh, for my bones are dismayed. These two sentences here, this one verse, verse two, is talking about David's inner turmoil that is causing him to be physically and completely and utterly dismantled.

Now, how many of you maybe have ever felt this way before? That when things were going rough, when things were going hard, when enemies seem to be all around you, and you know that you are not sinless, but that you are sinful, and even in the situations where you've attempted to act godly, you haven't acted godly enough, you don't feel the pleasure of God, you begin to, especially when you look at the fact that there are all these other things that we're going to get to, you feel physically and utterly drained.

It just completely wallops you, so to speak. You maybe wake up in the morning and you don't have energy, you don't want to do this, you don't want to do that, you don't, you know, your bones are hurting.

You know, maybe it's not as physical as, you know, getting in a fight with Mike Tyson, but there's just something going on, right, with your body. Well, certainly, the physical or the spiritual plays into the physical.

I mean, you can ask Charles Spurgeon or Martin Lloyd-Jones, they talked about this at length. You didn't know it, but your superheroes had issues. Right, Charles Spurgeon had great bouts of anxiety and depression.

There's a book on it called Spurgeon's Sorrows by Zach Eswine that is very good. Martin Lloyd-Jones wrote a book on spiritual depression because he saw it as such a big need in the church that people were not confessing their sin.

As a matter of fact, spiritual confession is, spiritual depression is written in a large measure to commentate on Psalm 6. And so the reality is when we are thrust into a depression ignited by unconfessed sin in particular, it's gonna begin to eat away at us.

On the inside and on the outside. Not just from enemies looking in, but the enemy within wreaking all sorts of havoc. The third thing that I want you to see is that unconfessed sin withdraws peace. Unconfessed sin withdraws peace.

Verse three says, and my soul is greatly dismayed, but you, O Yahweh, how long?

How long?

You see here, David is not this confident David that we just saw in Psalms past. If you could even say those were confidence in himself. But here for sure, he's completely undone. He says, how long, O Yahweh?

My soul is greatly dismayed. Now, for those of you who might be visitors, you keep hearing this word Yahweh. And to a lot of people who do not regularly hear that word, they are confused by it. But the word Yahweh is in every single Bible that is taken at least from the manuscripts that have made up the KJV and the NIV, the ESV, and so on.

It just may not actually say the words Yahweh. You see, every time you see the word Lord in the Old Testament, especially when it's an L-O-R-D in all caps, that's Yahweh. But the Jewish people, when they wrote their manuscripts, they changed it to the Hebrew word Adonai, but they made sure that it was all caps so it would signal back to God's covenant name, which is Yahweh.

And actually, what's in the manuscripts is something called the Tetragrammaton. It's Y-H-W-H for you English-speaking people out there. And we have, through scholarship and study and years, we have come to believe that that word is Yahweh.

People in the past thought it was, or at least agreed together that it was Jehovah. So if you've ever heard the word Jehovah, which is in the King James, that was their attempt at Yahweh. So, you know, some people still prefer Jehovah over Yahweh.

We just call those people wrong. We love them, but it is Yahweh nonetheless. And so he's crying out to Yahweh because his peace has been withdrawn. And he is crying out, how long, oh Yahweh?

How long?

In other words, how long am I gonna have to deal with this? Or how long is it gonna take you to undo this turmoil, either out there or out here? Now I say out there or in here, definitely it's in here in terms of this psalm, but it's used 16 other times throughout the psalms, and it is huge, has huge implications.

There's always the psalmist crying out to the Lord, asking him how long he's going to let something happen, namely how long he's gonna let the psalmist suffer, how long he's going to not destroy his enemies, how long he's gonna let his glory kind of be veiled behind the fact that these seemingly evil people are, you know, doing well and he's not.

But here he's certainly dismayed over how silent he feels God is. Now who's been there? Who's felt like, especially in the, as the medieval theologians would have called it, the dark night of the soul, when you have been hit and hit and hit and hit?

How often do we find ourselves there? How long is the Lord going to let us live? I mean, can you feel him right here? How long do I have to feel like you are looking the other way? Children, would you look at me for just a second?

And I wanna repeat something to you that I think I'm stealing from Pastor Corey a couple weeks ago, but it was good and it's stuck in here. And so I'm gonna repeat it and it fits here. Do you remember when we feel like God is not listening to us, do you remember who is not listening?

Or if we feel like God is forgetting us, who's the one who's forgot? It's us, right? It's us. We are the ones who forget. We are the ones who look away, but that doesn't change the fact that we feel like God has turned the other way at times.

And this is what David is expressing. He feels like God is looking the other way. He feels like God is not listening, that he has been forgot about, and he has all of his peace that he should have that surpasses all understanding because he has not confessed his sin.

I mean, why would he, and you might be asking yourself, how do you even know he's talking about unconfessed sin? How do you even know he's talking about sin to begin with? Well, because David is showing us that he believes himself to be in need of reproof, verse one, in need of discipline.

Just not the discipline, he's just asking that God would not give it to him. He's asking that God would be gracious to him, verse two. And he's asking him how long it's going to be before he answers him.

And then in verse four, which is the next thing I want you to see, unconfessed sin robs your intimacy with God. He says, return. So like I just said, he feels like God is somewhere else doing something else, looking somewhere else.

And he says, oh, Yahweh, rescue my soul. Save me because of your loving kindness. So he says, return, oh, Yahweh, come back to me. Rescue my soul. Save me because of your loving kindness. Now, I want to pause here and I want you to look at this word, loving kindness.

I want you to think about this. In the ESV, it's steadfast love. But as good as that translation is, I don't think it gets at the heart of the matter because it's not effectual enough. It doesn't capture this idea of a kindness that's being extended to you because of the love that God has.

And it's a covenantal word. It's a covenantal word. And so he is saying, not based on anything I have done, God, am I playing with you to overcome our intimacy gap? It's because of your covenantal love that you have promised to keep with those who love you, your covenant people, Israel, me, David, your chosen servant because of your loving kindness, return to me.

Because of your loving kindness, save me. You see, David understands who God is. He's done his Bible studies. He's stayed in the Bible reading plan. He's done what he needs to do so that he doesn't just have more information.

But when times get hard, he can look to God and remember he's a loving God who keeps loving kindness for generations. And of course, he's steadfast in that, but that sounds so mechanical. God is loving and he's kind.

And even in David's unconfessed sin, he's acknowledging that very reality. Children, would you look at me one more time?

Maybe.

Did you know that even when you are in sin, God still loves you? He doesn't just hate his people when they fall on their face. He loves them and he's inviting you, he's invited David to return to him.

He didn't, he's not the one who walked away. And so remember that. When you sin, it's a time to come to God, which is what David is doing. It's not a time to run away from God. The next thing that I want you to see is unconfessed sin promises death.

It promises death. Look with me here at verse five. David continues on and says, "'For there is no remembrance of you in death, and she all who will give you thinks.'". You see, David understood something and that is what?

Well, first of all, of course, we all die. But secondly, sin has the potential to cause us to die quicker. Now that's not a promise, but it is biblical.

And what I mean by that.

Is there are plenty of stories in the Bible where people often had their earthly lives cut short because of their sin. For example, let's think of Judas. He hung himself after betraying the Lord Jesus Christ.

Or we could think a less sinister, potentially, situation in Acts five with Ananias and Sapphira.

Wow.

Where they lied to the elders, but actually the elders said they lied to the Holy Spirit about what they had in their possession, namely their field and how much they sold it for. Or in James 5 .20, the brother of Jesus says, "'Let him know that he who turns a sinner from the error of his way will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.'".

There's some sort of connection between sin and death. And of course, David here understands this on a very real level because he's at war. And he thinks, well, I'm already in a very dangerous situation.

All God's gotta do is, you know, look the other way and I'm horse meat. But David begins to plead with him. He begins to, as if he could, reason with him, much like Moses did in the Old Testament. Remember when the Israelites crossed the Red Sea, for example.

When the Israelites crossed the Red Sea, they get over there on the other side and they start worshiping this golden calf and God gets really upset that they're worshiping this idol. And what does God do?

He says, I'm gonna consume them. I'm gonna destroy them. And Moses says, well, if you do that, you will make everybody think you're silly, essentially. They will say, look at this great God who brought these people out of Egypt and then let them die in the wilderness.

But if you keep them alive, you continue to sustain them, your glory will be put on display and everybody will know how great you truly are. And he relents. And David here is saying, if I die, who will give you thanks?

Who will praise you? There will be no remembrance of you. I'm the one who cares about you, God. I'm the one who praises you. I'm the one who writes all of these songs down about you. I am the one who promotes your name and your goodness and your likeness in everything that's happening.

At the very least, he's saying, if you meet me in your wrath and you kill me early, there will at least be one less pair of lips.

To praise your name.

Now I want us to pause here and think about what that's all about. Is that how you see your life? Like if you were presented with death, for example, whatever the case may be, would your first response be, I don't know.

And what about my children? Or what about my parents? Or what about all these assets?

Or what about this?

Or what about that? Or would it be, I won't be able to praise God anymore. I won't be able to make much of his name anymore. That's David's heart posture. And it's put in this book that is written by God himself.

It's the Anustos, right? God breathed according to 2 Timothy 3, 16 and 17. And so it must be something that we take seriously. Like, is that the heart posture that we ought to have? Well, I think so, right?

We are to do all things, whether we eat or we drink, what for the glory of God, right? Romans 12 tells us that our spiritual service of worship is to live like a living sacrifice. That means worshiping God all the time with our entire lives.

And so the question becomes, do we think this way? Do we think, no, we need more breaths in our lungs, not so that we can give our kids more kisses, give them more presents, not so that we can do this, that, and the other, but so that we might praise God, that we might worship God, that we might make much of God to our children, to our parents, to our coworkers, to you fill in the blank.

And lastly and finally, it almost seems like a regression, but it's not really. Unconfessed sin keeps you from sleep. It keeps you from sleep. Look with me at verse six here. I am weary with my sighing, David says.

Every night I make my bed swim. What poetic language. I flood my couch with tears. My eyes, my eye has wasted away with grief and it has become old because of all of my adversaries. Now, if you look at that last part, it has become old because of my adversaries.

It becomes quite clear that throughout the night, the thought about his foes, who were God's instrument of discipline, caused him to continually sigh, weep, fill his bed with tears. I mean, like make his bed swim so much he's crying.

Well, David, that's not very manly.

I'd love to hear you tell David that to his face. David was completely broken and he felt God's presence as if it weren't there because of his unconfessed sin. I'm gonna keep coming back to that. In another Psalm, David will say that his bones wasted away because of his unconfessed sin.

He was up all night and it's the same here and it's important. No sleep, it's a bad thing. It's a bad thing physically and spiritually. The commentator I was reading said this about the need to sleep and what David's getting at here.

He says, for most sufferers, it is in the long watches of the night when silence and loneliness increase and the warmth of human companionship is absent, that pain and grief reached their darkest point.

So if you remember in Psalms, in Psalm 5 in particular, he says that he wakes up early in the morning and orders his prayer to eagerly watch for God to do. But here he's up all night, not eagerly watching what God would do, but watching himself.

You see what unconfessed sin does to you? It turns your gaze away from the God who is and the God who loves and the God who has saved and focuses it on yourself. You start navel gazing and you start thinking, woe is me and not hallelujah, God almighty, mighty to be praised.

And you're alone and you start getting attacked by your own thoughts and accusations and you turn in on yourself. One theologian said of sin, especially of the unconfessed nature, is that it's the self eating the self.

You can't live with unconfessed sin to God and expect for everything to go greatly. You're going to suffer, right? Unconfessed sin will remove God's pleasure from you. It will dry you up physically, it will withdraw your peace, it will rob your intimacy, it promises you death and it will keep you from sleep.

So why don't we confess?

Why don't you confess?

Well, if anybody found out who we really are, hey, well, God knows who you are, whether you confess it or not. Confession is not for God, at least in one sense. We also think, well, we can't confess our sin to God because then we'll be unhappy with ourselves.

Well, no, there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Gerald Spurgeon says it like this, to confess sin, it does not spoiler happiness. The unhappiness is in the not making of the confession.

Is that not what this Psalm is teaching us? It eats you alive. It makes you feel like you're isolated. It makes God feel far away. It makes your problems seem really big and Him really small. But what happens when we are faithful to confess our sin?

Well, that is the next section, which is what confessed sin looks like. Verses eight through 10 show us what it looks like when we live confessed lives, confessed lives. So what does confessed sin do?

Confessed Sin Restores Confidence Before God and Men

The first thing that I want you to see when we're looking at confessed sin is that confessed sin, really according to this text, has one point, it promotes competence. It promotes competence. And what I don't mean by that is competence in one's ability to do some cool stuff or to overcome sin ourselves.

But confessed sin promotes competence before men and in God. It promotes competence before men and in God. You see here in verse eight, God made Himself known to David once again and restored his competence.

And this had immediate results. Once again, we do not see him actually repent of his sin and confess his sin, but we see the effects of it. Depart from me, all you workers of iniquity, David says. For, right, very important word, for, Yahweh has heard the sound of my weeping.

Right?

So now David no longer feels like God is not listening. He's no longer feeling like he's not being heard. He says what he says to men, depart from me, all you workers of iniquity, why? Because Yahweh has heard the sound of my weeping.

He's paying attention. He's heard my supplications, it says in verse nine. And he has received my prayer. So the first thing it says is that he has competence before men. David has suddenly here turned into a bold lion, telling his enemies to essentially back off, rebuking those who had threatened his life.

And why? Because the Lord heard his weeping and the weeping surely involved the confession of a sin. And now he acknowledged God with godly sorrow. All my enemies will be ashamed, he says in verse 10, and greatly dismayed.

They shall turn back, they will be suddenly ashamed. So he stands and he's got confidence before men and he tells them to depart from him. And he sees that these are iniquitous people. Now this is important to consider because oftentimes as Christians, when we function in unconfessed sin, for example,.

We're very sheepish.

We're always thinking we're gonna get found out. We're never feeling forgiven. We're never feeling any of these things. And we can't have confidence that we're under God's favor. We can't be assured. As a matter of fact, I had some like antinomian people get really upset at me on the internet the other day for this.

But Joe Beakey said, if you are engaged in unrepentant sin and unconfessed sin, then it's extremely hard for you to have assurance of your faith. And if you don't have the deep sense of your assurance as it pertains to salvation and your faith, then you're certainly not gonna have confidence when you're standing, for example, preaching at the Gay Pride Festival or standing up for what godly people should do at the abortion mills.

You can't be a Christian genuinely and not feel just completely embarrassed that you're out there opening your mouth on behalf of the Lord. And you've just got this unconfessed sin just right back here.

And you're not talking to God about it. You're not repenting of it. But when you have confessed that sin to God, you have repented of it. And you can walk boldly, remembering that there is no condemnation for those of you who are in Christ Jesus.

What a boldness.

What a beauty. But more than that, it's not about men, although that's helpful. It's really about God, your confidence in God. He says here, for, right? Purpose, Yahweh has heard the sound of weeping.

Yahweh has heard my supplication. Yahweh receives my prayer. You see, he understands who God is. And he understands that God is in the business of forgiving his children. Just as it is man's nature to sin, it is God's nature to forgive those who repent.

Now, as we back up, we think about where we are now at in the flow of redemptive history. David here didn't have the beauties of the New Testament to look at. He had types and shadows, and certainly his faith was in the Lord Jesus Christ.

And that's why he could come to God the way he has come to him, feeling disconnected and yet pleading with him not to treat him the way in which he knows he's deserving of being treated. But here on this side of the New Testament fence, as it were, we have a much clearer picture.

And we have a clear picture of who Jesus is and how he has not only paid for our sin but made it possible for us to confess. We need to consider 1 John 1, 9 with me. John says, if we, speaking to Christians here, confess our sins, he, that is Jesus, is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

I wanna read that again, because it will hit you like a rock going 140 miles an hour. If we confess our sins, 1 John 1, 9 says, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

You see, one reason, another reason that we confess our sin is because Jesus forgives confessors of sin. And he cleanses them of their defilement. He cleanses them of their sinfulness and unrighteousness.

And where they were dirty, he cleansed them. And he does so on the basis of two confessions. One, that he is Lord and Savior, and that you are a sinner and you need that Savior. J .C. Ryle says, men will never come to Jesus and stay with Jesus and live for Jesus unless they really know why they are to come and what is their need.

Those whom the Spirit draws to Jesus are those whom the Spirit has convinced of sin and they confess it. Through conviction of sin, men may seem to come to Jesus and follow him for a season, but they will soon fall away and return to the world.

In other words, confession is rooted in a recognition of who God is and who you are apart from him. This is why Martin Luther said at the beginning, when I admonish you to confession, I am admonishing you to be a Christian.