Confessing and Clean

INTRO

Good morning you can open your Bible to 1 John 1 and we will be covering verses 8-10 and it is on page 1,850 in the Bibles around you.

We continue on in the book of 1John and it has only been a couple weeks but I thought it would be a good time to refresh our minds with what has been taugh already through1 John in the short 7 verses that we have covered.

1-2: Jesus, who is fully God and fully man, is real. He is from the beginning and the eternal life.

3-4: We can have fellowship with Jesus just like John had. And this fellowship brings joy!

5-6: John proclaims what he heard from Jesus, that God is light and in Him is no darkness. If we say we are in the light but walk in darkness we lie.

7: When we walk in the light, we have fellowship with God and others. Jesus cleanses us from ALL sin

So with this little refresher, let’s turn to the Lord this morning to not only help us remember these truths but to hear what he has for us this morning.

PRAY

BODY

Let’s have the people of God read the word of God this morning. Ready?

English Standard Version Chapter 1

8 If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. 9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 10 If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.

Every action has an equal or opposite reaction. This is Newton’s 3rd law and here we see three actions that happen and the reaction of our actions. Some actions are dark, some are light. Even though it might seem monotonous I have us writing out the reaction in our notes and then we will discuss what this looks like in our personal lives.

1. If we say we have no sin= Deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.

John is combatting the idea that Gnosticism was pushing that you and I are inherintly good. There was an inner light in each person and if you seek long enough and are spiritual enough you will find it and therefore find salvation and life. And people would start to believe this in the church instead of the truth that Jesus to seek and save us from our sin. So that means Jesus coming was either pointless, or only for the people who actually have sin, OR for everyone, the whole world. But when we deny the fact that all have sinned, that our core problem is this inner darkness that needs to be transformed by something outside of us, then we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.

So those who were buying into gnostic Christianity were believing that repentance was not needed because that would mean there is something wrong with me. But what were Jesus’ first message? Repent for the kingdom of God is coming. Repent sounds like we need to change our ways, to turn away from the sinful, selfish way that we keep acting on.

So what does this look like for us today? Can we believers, who know the doctrine of sinful nature, fall for a lie like this? I think we can unfortunately. Because “If we say” that we are a good moral person, or a religious person, or I’m a faithful church attender, but have no confession and repentance in our lives, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us. Say that again.

Did you know that over 15,000 self help books are published each year? And that is not even counting social media influences who are trying to help us to be a better “You.”

And yet look at the state of our world, the self help does not seem to be working. Why? Because self is not where we will find freedom. And the reason why I share all of this is because my concern for us, for living Rock church, is that we may be giving more time to these books, influencers, and ideas than we are the Word of God. I don’t have any evidence for this, and I’m not accusing or condemning anyone here. It just concerns me, more than anything else in this church, that we continue to have the Word of God pushed to the side rather than it being our compass, focus and source for truth. Because if the truth is not in us, we are open for more deception than we realize. What this looks like will be different for each person here, but my desire for all of us is that we would not be deceived, and in order to do this, we need the truth. Because when we know the truth, the truth will set us free.

The second action and reaction is…

2. If we confess our sins= He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

I know that is a lot to write down but it is probably the most important thing you hear this morning and write down. So when the truth is revealed to us that we need a savior and that God has sent us a savior, the evidence will be confession. Going back to my chair analogy from last week, we can sit in our sin, hide our sin, or confess our sins so that we can walk in the light as he is in the light. And when we are in the light as he is in the light it means we have Christ’s righteousness.

I wish I could say this and we all could just get this. When we confess our sins to God and to others, because both are affected, God forgives us and cleanses us from all unrighteousness. But not just because we confess it. He forgives us and cleanses us from all unrighteousness because he is faithful and just.

But how does he do this? Why is it God’s faithfulness and justice the thing that does this? Shouldn’t it be his love and mercy? Should it be something like his grace and his kindness?

No because this points us to the cross, the sacrifice of Jesus. Through God’s faithfulness and justice seen on the cross, we are not crushed, because Christ was. We are forgiven because God’s faithfulness to us was stronger than our sinfulness. We are not cleansed because we say something, but because Christ did something. Because of the death of Jesus we are clean, and righteous. Why? Because he was made dirty and sinful. His payment was sufficient for us to walk clean. This is so important to get because if we think that this should lead us into more sin because “I can just confess it later and he will forgive me” then we have totally missed the point. We are minimizing and trivializing the crucifixtion of the son of God.

Jesus is the faithfulness of God. Jesus took the justice of God so that we don’t have to. This is the Gospel that sets us free, that keeps us from deception, and that shows us a way to live that is walking in the light and truth.

3.If we say we have not sinned= We make Him a liar and His word is not in us.

Didn’t John just say that? Yup, but he is making sure we all get the point. If you keep telling yourself that you have not sinned, that there is not need for a savior to come and live a perfect life, die a gruesome death and be raise again, then you make God a liar. And what’s even worse, we need to remember this, John is writing to believers! People in church were saying this and they may have even been saying that they knew the scripture, the word! But John is saying, nope, you are out of fellowship with God, not walking in the light and the word is not in you if you think that you are perfect.

The letter of James tells us that the Word is a mirror. And if we hear the Word but don’t do the word we deceive ourselves. A sure tell sign to the Word workingin our life is not knowing it but doing it. And I don’t know about you but the more I come to the Word, the more I realize areas of my life that are not always in sync with it. Like the one that I was reflecting on the other day is in James 3 where it says this:

English Standard Version Chapter 3

13 Who is wise and understanding among you? By his good conduct let him show his works in the meekness of wisdom. 14 But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth. 15 This is not the wisdom that comes down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. 16 For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice. 17 But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere. 18 And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.

So true wisdom is not having an opinion about everything and then stating it. It is pure, peaceable, gentle, and open to reason. Usually if I’m honest, the selfish ambitions, jealousy are the things that creep up fast and I can think because it is so prevalent, it has to be right. But James says, not that is earthly and demonic. That is darkness and not light.

When people hear sin, repentance and confession, most of the time it conjures up imagery of sadness, maybe even darkness and people with signs that are angry. I hope that is not what you are hearing and seeing in this. If we confess, meaning tell the truth about what is going on in our lives, we are made clean! We are fully forgiven. We are made righteous. That sounds like good news to me! And it is all because he is faithful and just. He is faithful to his promises. And he is a jut God who sent His son to take the wrath and punishment for all out sin so we don’t have to.

And what a joy it is to have this message before we have communion this morning.

ENDING

If you have never taken communion with us we only as two things. 1)That you are a believer, a follower of Jesus. 2) That you take time to do what we just talked about-confess your sin, believe that what he has done through his life, death and resurreciton is enough to forgive you and you don’t need to live in darkness, deception, and call God a liar.