Consequences of Confession

Introduction

I don’t know about y’all, but I sure love our worship. I love the time that we spend together. I love the capable men who have come before me. Not speaking of my own capabilities or lack thereof. I’m obviously not Tony as he’s traveling today. But we’re going to do the same thing that Tony does. We’re going to open God’s word. We’re going to try and leave here with tools to equip us to be a better Christian. That is my goal this morning. I’m giving away the title to the lesson, The Consequences of Confession. I’m not Tony. I don’t try to hide it. And I had to have some alliteration just to keep Tony happy. The consequences of confession. We’re going to talk a little bit this morning about confession, about the mechanism of confession, how it happens, how it begins, how we actually do it, and then what?

And I will say that Bill and Miss Martha and Thad and Ed stepped all over the lesson this morning in class. If you’re here in class, you’ve heard half of this already. So it should be half as long, right? No. Great comments in class that will help to lead us into this discussion. When we think about confession, what do you think about? Well, immediately in my mind, I think, something had to have gone wrong. For confession to happen, there had to be something that went wrong. We made a choice to do something. What do we do about that?

Men especially, I’ll pick on us. We’re really good at building walls. And within those walls, digging holes and burying our problems. And then once the problem is buried, we build a bigger wall and a second wall. And as long as that problem doesn’t creep up too often, we forget about it behind the wall. And if someone asks about it’s behind the wall. It’s in the past. I don’t need to deal with that. How many times have you had the interaction? I walk in the building and I come and I shake a hand. How are you doing this morning? I’m fine. Next person. All right. I’m good. And then I’ve got somewhere to go, so I’m still walking. How many times have you walked up? How’s it going, Harley?

And Harley says, man, I really need help. Still in the front row, you’re getting picked on, sorry. It doesn’t happen very often. And why not?

1. We Don't Like to Be Vulnerable

One thing that, especially as Americans, when we’re right down to the point we’re honest about it, we don’t like to be vulnerable. And if I say that there’s something wrong, then my wall of perfection, and of I’m a I’m a tough guy, and I can handle my own problems, and I don’t really need that much help to do it because I’m a man. Those walls start to crumble. And at their foundations is this idea that I don’t want to be dependent on someone else. I don’t want to feel vulnerable. Whether it’s about how I feel about something, a past action, or something I’m currently doing. Well, why not? Well, when we’re vulnerable, we feel weak. And we like to feel like we’re in control. I like to be the guy in the driver’s seat.

I’m not a very good passenger. I don’t like roller coasters. But if you put me in a fast car with no cops, I can go plenty fast because I have control. I’m not dependent on anyone else. I’m not dependent upon that person holding the wheel or that engineer who built the roller coaster or the $10 an hour guy who tightened the bolt. I don’t want to be dependent. I can do it myself. I’m a self-made man. I pulled myself up from my bootstraps. I built what I have. I did this. And it gives us a sense of control. Vulnerability is the opposite of control. It is saying that I can’t determine the outcome, that I’m not 100% sure what’s going to happen. And I don’t have the steering wheel.

Who likes that feeling? You ever jumped out of an airplane? I have.

It’s important for us as Christians to understand that this vulnerability is necessary. Because you have control over your spiritual destiny. Because of what God has done and the process in which he’s set up and his plan from the beginning that we’re told about, you have control. But can you do it on your own? Those of us who are married have a built-in partner in this life. We chose them, or they chose us. Can you talk to your partner openly? And reach into this realm of vulnerability where I don’t know what the outcome is going to be when I tell my wife that I am struggling with fill in the blank. We’ll fill in the blank with the three biggest issues in America when it comes to addiction.

The number one, and rising quickly and surpassing all others is pornography. Number two is substance abuse.

With the advent of the internet and the simplicity of picking up my phone, and I can get any information or go to anywhere.

Of not just substance abuse, but addiction. It came up more than anything else. There are more articles written recently on the addiction of pornography than anything else. It’s like the addictions to alcohol and the other substances we can put in our bodies, whether it be smoked, injected, inhaled, we’ve known about those for a while. They haven’t been a big issue. So there’s not a lot being written on it right now. And they’re saying that pornography has eclipsed an almost doubled all substance abuse combined. So I’m not talking just to men here.

It’s an issue everywhere. It’s an issue within these walls. How many of us can step out and say, that’s my issue? In the past, it was my issue. With help, we’re beyond that. There are men here who have said, I need help, who have let go. Having someone else to talk to confide in, and to help you down the road with any addiction. 67% more likely. You are 67% more likely to overcome if you have someone to hold you accountable, whether it’s a spouse, whether it’s a good friend, one of the elders, a parent, anyone who you can trust, speak openly with, which is not easy. We’re gonna talk about that a little more, and who will guide you to the path of overcoming will take you two thirds more likely of being done forever.

2. What Do You Do With the Shame?

Remember that as we talk a little further. So when we talk about that, and I tell you that I’ve had problems in the past, am I proud of those? What’s the opposite of pride?

It’s shame. Forgot to click there. It’s shame. Who likes to be ashamed? No one’s gonna raise their hand. No one likes to feel bad. No one likes to look back and say, that’s my mistake. I own it. As Christians, when we talk about confession, which is essential for salvation, you must, you must own your problems. Proper shame when you look at something and it does not reflect positively upon you, upon your status as a Christian, upon how Christ would have you to live. And I’ll love Tony’s his remark that we should be an icon or a symbol that reflects what Christ is. If we tarnish that, we should be ashamed. But what do you do with that? What do you do with the shame that you feel?

The John 8 reference is to the one that Ed brought up in class this morning. It’s the woman who was caught in adultery, and they brought her before Jesus and the elders. And Jesus begins to write in the sand, and like Ed said, we don’t know what he wrote in the sand. We can assume a few things, and let’s assume, just for our purposes this morning, that Jesus was writing in the sand, and he says, He who’s without sin, let him cast the first stone. They’re talking about stoning this adulterous woman. And he begins to write in the sand. Let’s assume that he starts to write transactions in the sand. And they are specific to the men who are sitting in there. How do you think they felt?

Jesus knew their heart. These may be things that they had never told anyone. They got up and they walked away. Because they knew they could not judge this woman while they were in a sinful state. And out of their shame, they got up and they walked away. Now you feel shame. It’s not a fun place to be. No one likes to be there. So the question, now what? What do you do with it? I understand I’ve done something I shouldn’t. And it reflects poorly upon me, and I don’t feel good about it. Now, is this where men we are ladies too? Is this where we dig the hole and we bury it and we start building walls? And as long as no one else knows about it, then I’ll be okay.

And if someone gets close, I’ll build a bigger wall. I’ll pour some more dirt in the hole. You can do that. You can go on the rest of your life, and you can have sin from your past or your current that you wall off and no one knows about. The problem is that God knows your heart. And he is seeing all these things. And so while everyone in this building, or your parents or your friends, or anyone else in this world may not know what you’ve done, it’s still an issue. So now what? Let’s turn over to James, chapter 1. This verse was brought up in class also. I told y’all, y’all got half of it already. Let’s read James 1:23 through 25.

And think, now what? Beginning in verse 23, for if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he’s like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law of liberty and perseveres, being not a hearer who forgets, but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing. I like the fact that he says he looks intently in the mirror. He didn’t walk by and keep on going. He stood there and he studied himself. He took the time to take in what he looked like and understand who he was. He saw the problem. He saw that he shouldn’t be happy with it.

And he walked away and he dug his hole, and he buried it, and built a wall, and kept on going. And he was a hearer and not a doer. When it comes to being a hearer and a doer, someone who can look into the mirror and see yourself who you truly are, and understand that who you are needs to align with who Christ is so that you can go to heaven one day. And if when you look in the mirror and you’re not there, don’t dig a hole and bury it. Take the steps to start putting things on the right path. This is where you get to confrontation. Anytime you bring up something that you’ve done wrong, whether it’s against that particular person or someone else, or it’s just a sin between you and heaven.

There’s a confrontation in your head on should I talk about this? What am I going to do about this? And what are the consequences when I make this known? This is the fork in the road moment. You come to a fork in the road, I’m gonna tell you, Yogi Barra was right. You take it. Be humble enough to understand that this isn’t all about you and your image. And understand that we want to go to heaven. We want to serve properly. We want to do it right. And carrying around or walking around in the area where there’s all these holes in walls, you can’t do it. It doesn’t work. We’re not talking just about temporary consequences of if I go to Blake and tell him, you know, I’m sorry, but when we did that job at your house, I really way overcharge you for the plants.

3. Confession: You Gotta Name It

And I feel like I stole from you and I did it wrong. Now Blake got a deal on the plants, okay? But that’s that’s a temporary thing. Blake and I can work that out, I can deal with him. These things have eternal consequences. And so when we’re trying to serve and we’re trying to mirror Christ, let’s not forget the eternal consequence of our actions, confession. Here we are. So this was in the title of the lesson here. Daniel, it took you 11 minutes and you got there. Once you understand that your shame was going to lead you to action, that you’re going to be big enough and responsible enough, and is enough of an adult to own your actions, you need to do what Martha said.

You gotta name it. You don’t say, I’m struggling with sin. Can you help me? What’s your answer to that? I’d love to help you. What is it? I’m dealing with issues at work. Okay, we’re halfway there. I’m dealing with anger. That’s great. I’m dealing with anger with my spouse because of this. Now we’re there. I’m dealing with anger because of this. Now we have a problem. Maybe it’s something different. Maybe. Let’s go back to our, let’s go back to pornography because it’s such a rampant epidemic. This is my struggle. Well, what is it? Well, I’m doing things I shouldn’t. Well, that’s how much more value can you get? I’m doing things I shouldn’t. No. I have a problem with this. I have a problem with pornography.

And it happens at this time. And now you’ve named it. You gave it a name. So now you can start your war. You don’t go out and fight a battle against everybody. You don’t go out and fight a battle against sin. You go out and you fight a battle against this sin. So you can win the war against sin. You fight the battle against your substance abuse, against your anger issue, against your gossip issue. And if you start winning little battles and bringing someone along who you can say, man, I really need help with this. And that person can go and say, Yeah, you do. And I think we look at this together. Let’s get a plan together and talk to me next week. Because I need to know that you’re still doing well.

4. What If You're That Other Person?

And if you’re not, we’re going to get back together. And we’re going to drag you along. If we have to drag you out of sin, we’ll drag you out of sin. But you know what? You’re not going to crawl your way out of sin on your own. And if you haven’t named it, you don’t even know where you’re trying to crawl out of. Having that other person. I’m not going to say it’s essential. But it’s 67% more effective. What if you’re that other person? Just real quickly, let’s flip the flip the script. Someone comes to you and says, Daniel, I’m having a problem with stealing. Okay. Let’s boil it down. What kind of person should you be? You need to be approachable. That’s not easy for all of us.

Some of us like to stand on the edge and be over here. And everything else happens, and we sneak out the door. Someone calls and you look at it like, whoo. Man, this could be a long and involved conversation, and I just don’t have time for it right now. Just let it rain. No, you need to be the person who can save someone else, who is willing to open up, who is willing to take on that challenge with someone else and help them, guide them, drag them if you have to out of sin and back into the way. Let’s turn over to 1 Thessalonians chapter 5. Let’s read this passage real quickly.

Oops, that’s 1 Corinthians. If you turn over to 1 Thessalonians chapter 5, we’ll begin in verse 11. There’s not five.

There are. I double-checked everything. You bet there’s five. I’m in a different Bible than I had last night. Let’s look at verse 11 together. Therefore, encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing. Paul thought it important enough to talk about this. Let’s go on through verse 14. We ask you, brothers, to respect those who labor among you and are over you, and in the Lord, admonish you. Esteem them very highly, because in love they do their work. Be at peace among yourselves. We here we go. We urge you, brothers, admonish the idle. Encourage the faint-hearted. Help the weak, and be patient with all of them. So on the flip side, verse 14 is where you need to be. Encourage the weak.

Encourage the faint-hearted. Pardon me. Encourage the faint-hearted. Help the weak. And be patient with all of them. So if someone comes to you and says, I need help, here you are. Encourage the weak. Build them up. Let’s give them some tools to stop digging holes and building walls. Encourage the faint hearted. Help the weak. And be patient with them all. Now, look, real quickly. How’s your patience? When we look at it, we need to be looking at the end game. And when we start talking about pulling people out of sin, we’re not going to do it in a week. It may not be a month. It may be a lifetime. People with substance abuse or who have chemical issues that work with dependence, it’s a lifetime.

When you look at people who’ve gone through some of the 12-step programs that we know that are out there, they continue to go to meetings. There was an elder at a church we attended who still went to AA meetings. He had a problem with alcohol, and he would tell you that.

An elder in the church going to AA meetings. And you’re like, what are you doing going to AA meetings? I’m trying to help other people. That’s what it says. Encourage the faint-hearted.

5. You're on the Road to Repentance

Well, yeah, you can. It might just take two months. It might take three. But stay the course. Because a time will come where you can overcome. The steps to recovery don’t happen without confession. You can go through the beginning and feel vulnerable and feel the shame and bury it and get nowhere. You’ll never get anywhere. The reason that confession is talked about in the Bible is because it’s important. Because when we confess and when we name it and we say, I have this problem, and you wrap your arms around it and you own it and say, I’m getting rid of this problem, then you’re on the road. Are you done? No. You’re on the road. On the road to what? On the road to being a better Christian?

Yes. You’re on the road to repentance. Confession and repentance are two totally different things. One is naming the problem. I have a problem. The other is saying, this is what I’m going to do about it. Here’s where I’m going, and I’m never doing that again. And I’m going to walk this way instead of that way. And I’m going to drag myself, and I might have two or three other people help drag me away from this, and I’m not going to do that anymore. Because you can go through the whole steps of confession, wrap your arms around your problem, and then build a tent and live in your problem. And never do anything about it. People do it all the time. I have a problem. Here’s my folding chair.

I’m sitting right here. I don’t have enough shame and I don’t have enough courage to do anything about it. So I’m just going to sit right here in my problem and I’m going to live here. Hopefully, you have someone who comes up to you and says, Hey Daniel, get out of your chair. You have a problem. Let’s try and walk this way. And then it’s incumbent upon you to make that fork in the road decision. What am I going to do? But true repentance shows in our actions. It’s not the folding chair in your problem. You’re making changes. Maybe you have that person help you make changes. They hold you accountable for what you need to do. There’s a couple of relatively common verses we talk about, like Matthew 3 and 8, when John the Baptist is baptizing for repentance.

He’s saying, and the fruits of your repentance will be known. Your life will change. You’re not going to be the same. And that’s a good thing. But if your life doesn’t change, nothing changed. This was for nothing. Let’s turn over to 2 Corinthians. 2 Corinthians chapter 7. Let’s pick up in verse 9.

If you remember, a little context. 1 Corinthians Paul writes and says, Hey, there’s sin among you. Y’all got to do something about this. Sound like what we’ve been talking about? Hey, you got a problem. You’re camping out in it. You’re sitting in your lawn chair right in the middle of the problem, doing nothing about it. You got to do something about this. And when he wrote, we know from this letter from what we’re about to read that it affected them and it grieved them, is what it says. They felt shame and grief because they’re sitting and just living in their problem. 2 Corinthians chapter 7, let’s begin in verse 9. As it is, I rejoice, not because you were grieved, but because you were grieved into repenting.

For you felt godly grief, so that you suffered no loss through us. For godly grief produces repentance that leads to salvation without regret. Whereas worldly grief produces death. For we see the earnestness in this godly grief has produced in you. But what also the eagerness to clear yourselves of what indignation, what fear, what longing, what zeal, and what punishment. At every point, you have proved yourselves innocent in the matter. Paul called them on the carpet. Y’all got this problem. Here’s what you need to do about it. They didn’t just say, yeah, got a problem. You should probably deal with that. What are you doing next week? Hey, honey, we have time in the schedule to deal with this problem later. No, it says they addressed it with what zeal and fear they approached their problem and they dealt with it.

6. Reconciliation: We Become One Again

And Paul says, I’m not sad. I’m not sad that I made you angry, that you felt shame and grief. I’m really happy. Because when I called you on the carpet and said, You’ve got to fix this thing, you did something about it. And when they did something about it was godly grief unto repentance, because they changed it. They weren’t happy to just sit there, but they moved on. The great thing about repentance is what happens right after. When you start to change, and you had this problem, especially if it’s a personal problem, if it’s an issue between me and Harley, then what? Maybe it’s an issue that took you out of the church and you’ve come back. Maybe it’s an issue where it’s reflecting poorly upon the church, and you want to come back, and you’re gonna change.

Then there’s that reconciliation part. Where when you have an issue with someone, you’re separated. There’s always a wall there. I can have an issue with Steve, and I can still shake his hand and say, I’m doing fine. No problem. But there’s a barrier. Reconciliation is where we come back and we become one again. You see it with marriages, especially. We’re not perfect in our marriage. Julianne and I are doing a marriage class for the fifth time. It’s not because we’re broken, it’s because we’re changing the oil. You know, you maintain your car, it keeps running, you maintain your marriage, it keeps running. An issue is going to come up in your marriage. If you’re newlyweds, may not have come up yet, but it will. And you will feel separated from your spouse.

But what do you do about it? You want to land back at reconciliation. And marriage is a good allegory for the church. It’s used at least twice in the New Testament to talk about Christ as the church as the bride of Christ. Can we be separated from Christ as a group or as individually? You bet. Read the chapter, read the letters to the churches in Revelation. You bet you’re going to be separated. But can you come back? You bet. What’s better than coming back, mending the problem, fixing it, moving on, and getting a hug. When it comes to within the church, we’re meant to work like a body. 1 Corinthians 12 gives us, you know, we’re not all the same. We do different things.

Some are the hands, some are the eye, some are the foot. But when we all work together, we can accomplish our purpose. Every now and then the hand runs off and has a problem. If the hand comes back and wants to be part of the body again, you say, Nope, you forsook me once. I only need one hand. No. I want my hand back so that we can do our work. I want you back. I want you walking the way to heaven with me. I want you helping me getting there. Let’s do it as a group. In Ephesians 4, he’s talking about how we’re one body and we should be able to build one another up. Well, if we’re separated from each other, and all of our interactions are fine, good, yeah, I’m going to Linda Acapulco for lunch.

They’re all superficial. And the body’s disjointed. And we don’t know who we are. And we can’t accomplish the work that we need to accomplish. But when we’re reconciled, when we’re all brought back together in the way that we should be, and we can get sin out, and we can help each other along the road to heaven and drag each other out of sin and say, you probably shouldn’t go there because I’ve been there before, and it’s not good at the end, and you have the ability and the courage and the willingness to say that’s how we’re supposed to function. So we go through this from the beginning of I don’t want to feel vulnerable, I’m going to build my walls. To man, I’m so ashamed.

Maybe I need to let my wall down and tell somebody to saying it and naming it, to getting help, to moving on, to repentance, to change for the better, to walking the right way, and then to becoming whole again, to becoming a one body, to working together and not sitting in your campchair over there in your sin. I love this quote. It comes from the marriage class. The walls we build around us don’t only keep out the sadness, but they keep out the joy. If I wallow in my sin with my walls around me, I’m keeping out all the joy. My sin might be fun. It might be one of those that I really enjoy. I like it. But true joy is found outside your walls.

Conclusion

So my question this morning. How many walls do you have built? Do you need to start disassembling some blocks on the wall? Do you need to start letting someone in to help you? Because let’s be honest, people, our focus needs to be eternal. We’ve got plenty of things here to keep us busy, but our eyes need to be on the prize. We need to be working on not only our relationships with each other, but that ultimate vertical relationship with God. So what kind of walls do you have? Are you going to live behind your walls? Are you going to sit there and be content to be a lesser individual? To not be your full potential? Are you going to watch someone sit there and not reach out to hell?

In the end, will your shame have you build walls to keep everyone else? Everyone else out so that you have no opportunity for heaven. That’s my question. Do you have walls that are keeping you out of heaven? Because we’re here to tear them down. That’s why we’re here as a group today. Because we want to go to heaven. And if you have walls that are keeping you out, whether it be sin you need help with, maybe you haven’t started. Maybe you’ve got a wall that’s built up because you’re like, man, if I confess Christ, I have to do that repentance thing. And that wall, I’m comfortable in here because I don’t have to change. Let me tell you, the change is worth it. You want true joy?

It’s living outside that wall. It’s living in the body of Christ. Who needs to live in the body of Christ? Do you need help? Do you need to take that step of confession, whether publicly or privately? Do you need to confess Christ for the first time and say, I want to put him on? I want to be in the body. We’re here. There’s water. There’s nothing, no wall that’s going to hinder you from being baptized except what’s in your head. If you’re ready to overcome that, if you’re ready to move forward with your life as a Christian, please, we’re here. Come forward as we stand and sing.