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Christ Community Chapel is a church in Hudson, OH, that invites people to reimagine life because of Jesus. Learn more about us at ccchapel.com.
1 John 1:8–10
If we say we have no sin,
we deceive ourselves,
and the truth is not in us.
If we confess our sins, he is faithful
and just to forgive us our sins
and to cleanse us
from all unrighteousness.
If we say we have not sinned,
we make him a liar,
and his word is not in us.
Well, good morning and welcome
to the weekly gathering of Christ
Community Chapel.
My name is Zach. I'm
one of the pastors here.
I'm so glad
that we get to be part of your weekend,
especially if you're here because a friend
or family member is being baptized,
and we're baptizing across
all of our services scheduled to baptize
I think 40
people, might end up being even more.
We're so glad you're here.
Thanks for coming to celebrate with us.
You know, this weekend
we are turning our attention to what
I think is an incredibly important topic
for us
as a culture and as individuals.
You know, the British pastor,
Charles Spurgeon, who was a pastor
in the 19th century, said that
the job of a preacher, the job of someone
like me, was to have the Bible in one hand
and the newspaper in the other.
I love that quote.
I mean, what he was saying is it's my job
to teach the Bible, to teach God's Word.
But of course, I teach it in
a particular time and place.
So, my job is to bring the Bible to bear
on your actual lives
and what's happening in the world.
And when I think of that quote,
the topic that immediately comes to mind
for me is the topic
we're looking at this weekend.
It's the topic of confession. Confession.
Taking responsibility for something.
Taking ownership for something
and admitting what you've done.
And the reason that comes to mind
is because the Bible talks
a lot about confession, and the newspaper
tells me every day just how bad we've
gotten at confession in our society.
If I have to hear one more celebrity
say that they're sorry
if they offended anyone,
which is a way of saying, hey,
I don't think I did anything wrong, but
if you're so weak that you need to hear me
apologize, here you go.
Or what is currently
my favorite is when someone famous posts
something dumb on the internet
and we all get mad about it and they say
there's nothing wrong about it,
it's totally fine.
And then when we're not looking,
they delete it.
We don't really know how to take
ownership, to take responsibility,
to confess.
It's by the way, it's
not just a problem for celebrities.
It's a problem for regular people
like you and I.
My guess is that you have at least one
relationship in your life
that is being damaged by either
your unwillingness
to apologize, or the unwillingness
of someone else to apologize.
We are not very good at confession.
Of course, it's not just
a societal problem or a family problem.
It's a spiritual problem
because the Bible tells us
if we will not confess, we cannot grow
in our relationship with God.
In fact,
we can't even begin
a relationship with God,
which is why I'm glad this weekend
we're dedicating our time together
to confession.
So if you have a Bible, you can open it.
The first John chapter one if you want.
There's a Bible in the back of the pew
in front of you, here in this room
or in the back of the room in East Hall.
Same one I use first John.
Chapter one is on page 970.
Or if you want to follow on the screens,
that's fine too.
Here's an outline I'm going to use
to guide our time together.
Three points. Very simple.
I want to show you that we are lying,
we are hiding, and we don't have to.
Okay, we are lying.
We are hiding and we don't have to.
Let's start with the first one.
We are lying.
I just want to take a second
and acknowledge
if you're here because a family member
is getting baptized,
what a great way for me to start for you.
Hey, thanks so glad I visited your church.
Thanks for telling me.
A liar.
Listen, I'm sure you're wonderful people.
I want you to notice very important.
The pronoun I used here.
I did not say you are a liar.
That would be very rude and offensive.
I said we we are lying.
You're going to see that
all over this passage.
By the way, that the this the writer
saying we have a problem with lying.
Let me show you a verse
eight and verse ten.
You'll see it two different times. Here's
what he says.
If we say we have no sin,
we deceive ourselves.
And the truth is not in us.
Verse ten, if we say we have not sinned,
we make him a liar,
and His word is not in us.
A lot of lying, a lot of deceiving.
Going on with a writer is saying
is that if if we won't
acknowledge our sin before God, it's
because we're lying.
That's because we're lying to ourselves.
Now to understand this,
you have to have a good definition of sin.
You cannot know what he means
about confessing
sin if you don't understand
the biblical word sin.
And my fear is, I don't know your story.
I don't know your religious background.
So that's usually,
for many of us, a loaded word.
And if we misunderstand it,
we can't understand the passage.
I think for many of us,
when we think about sin, we think of it
primarily in legal terms.
Then what I mean by that is we envision
that God has a list of rules,
and that if we break one of those rules,
we have sinned.
Sin is doing the don'ts
or donating the do's.
It's breaking the rules.
And when we think of it
this way, God becomes kind of a cosmic
clipboard holder up in the sky,
just kind of shaking his head at us
and saying, oh, there you go.
He did it again. And did that again.
And keeping score, he here's the problem
with that definition of sin.
It's not that there's no truth to that.
It's just that if that's all you think of,
you're never going
to be very interested in God,
because
who wants to get to know
the great clipboard holder in the sky?
But also if if sin is primarily
about breaking the rules, we will always
find a way to convince ourselves
we're not as bad as we really are.
That's what we do with rules.
We'll say, well, you know,
I didn't really break the rule,
just this kind of partial rule breaking.
I didn't break the spirit of the rule.
You know that guy?
That guy breaks way more rules than me.
Will always find a way of grading
ourselves on, like, a B average.
This is how I feel about getting older,
by the way.
I've realized
there are certain spots in my bathroom
that if I stand, I still look young.
So my wife said to me the other day,
she's like,
why do you always fix your hair
in my mirror?
And it's because I think she did something
intentionally to make the light
at her mirror way better than mine.
And it's making me self-conscious, right?
I'll just cheat the light.
I mean, you know,
as I get older, I'll just keep cheating
the light to make myself feel young.
I'll keep cheating the rule keeping system
to make myself feel like a good person.
Here's the thing, though.
The Bible tells us
that sin is not primarily legal.
It's relational.
Now, here's what I mean by that.
Let me prove this to you by an analogy
and then by a Bible story.
First analogy. You know,
I have five children.
This is going to shock you.
But from time to time
they argue with each other, right?
And they can get heated
and they can get nasty.
I personally, I blame their mother.
You can reach their own opinion, but
and like most dads,
I don't really get involved
until it reaches
a certain volume level. Right.
And when I get involved,
what instantly happens is they each
start blaming each other.
Well, she said this and he did that.
And if he hadn't said this,
then I wouldn't have done that.
And the truth is, I don't know.
I mean, I wasn't, you know, I wasn't
paying attention or I wasn't there.
I don't know who said what first,
but every time that happens,
I'll stop them
and I go, stop, stop, stop, stop.
I don't know who said what, but
but I want you to just look at each other.
Look at your brother.
Look how upset he is.
Look at your sister.
She's crying
like I don't know who said what, but
at some point, doesn't that matter to you?
You see, what I'm saying to them is
you're thinking about this in legal terms,
but we don't primarily
have a legal problem.
We have a relational problem.
So the Bible says sin is not primarily
about breaking God's rules.
It's about breaking our relationship
with God.
Genesis chapter two God makes, the perfect
environment for human flourishing.
It's called the Garden of Eden.
It's at the confluence
of a couple of rivers.
There are fruit trees and animals.
He places Adam and Eve there.
They have each other.
Conditions are perfect
for them to flourish.
And right in the middle of this Paradise,
God puts a tree and he says to Adam
and Eve, look, go nuts, have fun,
enjoy yourselves, build shape, multiply.
He says, just here's
the thing. Don't eat from this tree.
If you eat from this tree,
you're going to die.
I've always thought that was weird,
personally.
Like, why would God put a death tree
in the middle of Paradise?
But it occurs to me
that that tree really wasn't about death,
and it really wasn't about eating.
It was really about trust.
You see, God was saying to Adam and Eve,
listen, what makes this
the perfect environment for human
flourishing is that you trust me.
So every day,
every day, Adam and Eve walked by the tree
and they didn't eat from it.
Every day they made out under the tree
or climb the tree, or took fruit
down from the tree
and made a centerpiece for the table,
but didn't eat it every day.
They were saying to God,
we trust you, we trust you.
And on the day
they finally did eat from the tree,
their problem wasn't
that they had broken a rule.
Their problem was that they were saying to
God, we don't trust you.
We don't think you love us.
We don't think you're good.
We don't think you know best.
And we found someone.
We think who's better than you.
And you see if that's what sin is.
And then we have two problems.
One is, can any of us honestly say
that pretty much on a day to day basis?
We don't struggle with trusting God.
That we don't replace his voice with
the voice of someone or something else.
Of course we do. I do, you do, we? We do.
And you see, the problem is
you can't cheat that, right?
You can't find a way of justifying it
or excusing it.
To not trust God
is to break your relationship with him.
We are all guilty of that.
That's why the writer says, if we say
we have not sin, we make him a liar
because God is telling us
our relationship with him is broken.
And what are we going to do with that?
And here's a question.
If we all know we struggle to trust God,
and we all know that were guilty of that,
then why do we have such a hard time
saying it?
Why do we spend so much time
trying to convince ourselves
or other people that we're good with God,
or that that we're doing just fine?
Why do we go to our grave saying,
I'm sure I'm going to get into heaven
because I'm a good person,
whatever that means.
Why are we working so hard to pretend
we're in a better place with God?
Well, that's my second point. It's
not just that we're lying.
Listen, we're hiding.
We're hiding.
You know, when Adam and Eve do eat
from the tree, God shows up in the garden.
And this is what happens.
Genesis chapter three, verse
ten says this.
And he said, he here is Adam.
He said,
I heard the sound of you in the garden.
And I was afraid because I was naked
and I hid myself.
You know,
the Bible doesn't tell us what fruit
was on the tree in the Garden of Eden.
But for me, when I use my imagination,
I always imagine it's pomegranate.
Okay. Here's why.
Have you ever gotten pomegranate
on your skin?
You might as well die.
It's never coming off right.
And I just imagined Adam
eating from the tree,
and he's got pomegranate
all over his face.
And he and Eve hear God coming,
and Eve's like, wipe it off, wipe it off.
And he's like, I'm trying to wipe it off.
You wipe it off.
You know, they're licking their hands,
they're rubbing and they can't get it off.
And so they hear God coming.
So they hide in the bushes
because what are they going to say?
They've got pomegranate
all over their face.
Adam says, I heard you coming. And I hid.
And then he says this, and he's
being literal, but also metaphorical.
He said, I knew I was naked
and I hid myself.
Listen, have you ever had a relationship
that is broken and it's your fault?
Like, you know, you
did the thing
you said, the thing you it's your fault.
No excuses, no justification.
And have you ever had the experience
of working through whether or not
you're going to tell the other person?
If you have,
then you know there's no better way
to describe that than you feel instantly
naked,
vulnerable.
Pomegranate
all over your face.
You see, Adam hides from God for
the same reason we hide from each other.
It's the same reason we make excuses.
We can't take ownership.
We blame other people
because when we know it is our fault,
we're afraid that if we say that bad
things are going to happen.
In fact,
I think we're afraid of two things.
Try these on. See what you think.
I think we're afraid
of retribution and rejection.
You know what I mean?
Retribution is we're afraid if we were
to come clean to the other person,
if we were to take responsibility,
that we would get their anger back.
They would hurt us back.
They would say things
we don't want to hear.
They would yell.
They would punch the wall.
They would throw something.
The closer you are to someone,
the more they know just the thing to say
to destroy you. We're afraid of that.
So we hide.
And even if we're not afraid of that.
And usually it's both.
And we're also afraid of rejection.
We're afraid if I own this, it's
going to be the end of this relationship,
the end of this partnership,
the end of this friendship.
This is going to cost me that person.
And so we lie.
We make excuses and we hide
because we don't want to get hurt.
Have you felt that
if it's true on a human level,
how much more on a spiritual level?
In fact, many of us are hiding from God.
Coming up with our own moral
grading system.
Avoiding him, avoiding
prayer, avoiding coming to church.
Avoiding any interaction with God
because we're so sure
that if we were to actually come into his
presence, pomegranate all over our face,
naked and vulnerable, guilty,
responsible, we would get his anger
and we would get his rejection.
Of course, the reason
we think that usually is because
there's some religious person in our life
who has told us that
I have this
all the time for people to go pastor,
even if there is a God,
he doesn't want someone like me.
What are they saying?
I'm hiding in the bushes.
I don't want to come out.
Have you experienced that?
Well, of course
that begs the question, doesn't it?
What if.
That isn't what you would get from God.
In fact, that's actually my third point.
Not just we're lying and we're hiding,
but the third point we don't have to.
The writer in First John chapter
one nine says one of the most it's
one of the most beautiful things
you'll find in the whole Bible.
Okay, here's what he says.
First John chapter one, verse nine.
He says this if we confess our sins.
He is faithful
and just to forgive us our sins
and to cleanse us from all unrighteous.
He says, if we would confess,
if we would come out of the bushes,
stop making excuses.
Stop blaming
other people, stop cheating the light.
If we would come out
naked pomegranate all over our face
and stand in God's presence,
if we would just confess, he says,
we would get forgiveness.
But he doesn't just say forgiveness.
He says, listen,
he is faithful and just to forgive us.
Why does he pick those two words?
Why not say God is merciful and kind,
sweet and caring, warm and friendly?
Why does he pick the word
faithful and just?
You know why?
Because those two words
speak directly to our fear
of retribution and rejection.
Here's what I mean.
Retribution is the fear
that if I take ownership,
you're going to be angry with me.
But I almost need you to be angry with me.
You know what I mean?
You ever you ever confess
something to someone, and they kind of
just push it
off, like, oh, don't worry about it.
There's something in you that goes,
no, no, no no no no no.
I get mad like like yell, get angry
if we understand.
If I've done something, the only real path
to forgiveness is through your anger.
If I don't get your anger, I don't feel
like we've really dealt with it.
I don't want you to sweep it
under the rug.
I want to get rid of it.
In our relationship, when the writer says
that God is just to forgive,
what he's saying is that it's not.
When we come to God
naked pomegranate on our face
that God says, don't worry about it.
Forget it.
Get over it.
Let it go.
No, no, no, that would be too thin.
That wouldn't be helpful.
Instead, what he says is that God forgives
us, but he forgives us with justice.
Not opposed to justice. With justice.
How does he do that?
Through the life, death
and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
You see,
Jesus, who lived a perfect life, a
an obedient life,
a sinless life goes to the cross
not to pay for his own sin,
but to pay for mine, to pay
for all the sins of God's people
so that God the Son on the cross
has placed on him all of my trust.
Breaking with God and God the Father pours
out his anger and wrath in judgment
onto Jesus so that Jesus's dying words are
it is finished.
What is finished?
The anger, the wrath, the justice,
so that when we come to God
out of the bushes
with pomegranate on our face
and we say, God, I'm tired of hiding.
I'm tired of cheating the light,
making excuses.
Our relationship is broken
and it is my fault.
And and God says, well, I'll forgive you.
We said, no, no, you don't forgive me.
Get mad, throw something, get angry.
Someone's got to pay.
Jesus holds up
a nail scarred hand and says,
I'll do it.
So sweeping under the rug.
He takes it for us.
The writer
also says that God is faithful to forgive,
and what that means is
that God keeps his promises.
And what has God promised?
Well, that everybody who comes to him
on the basis of the life, death,
and resurrection of Jesus
will be forgiven.
And everyone who goes to God and says,
God, I'm a good person, mostly God.
If I had just had a better childhood, God
if I hadn't had that
negative religious experience,
does not get forgiveness.
Everyone who stays in the bushes
trying to wipe their face off
misses out,
but everyone who comes out of the bush
is everyone who says, God, I have nothing
except for this that you have told me
you'll forgive me in Jesus receives
a forgiveness that is faithful in just.
Do you know what this means?
What this means is you don't have to hide.
You don't have to make excuses.
You don't have to rationalize.
You can come out naked, vulnerable,
guilty, pomegranate all over your life
and you can be forgiven.
But brothers and sisters in Christ,
this is not for us a one time thing,
as though we never go back to the bushes,
as though we never have pomegranate
on our face.
Confession for us is a daily thing.
We go to God with our sin.
The Bible says God's
mercies are new every morning.
Why would they need to be except for
so also is my guilt.
I go to God every day in my nakedness
and my guilt, my responsibility,
and I receive faithful
and just forgiveness in the name of Jesus.
How many of us have been stuck
spiritually for months?
No prayer, no time with the Lord
because we're so sure we face his anger.
We face his rejection.
No friends, brothers and sisters,
it has been faced by Jesus.
Come out of the bushes.
Confess your sin.
Receive forgiveness.
By the way, this is one way
that Christians can change our world.
Why can't
we be the first to take ownership?
Why can't we be the ones in our families,
or our companies or neighborhoods
or online who can actually say,
you know what, you're right, I'm wrong.
You're right. I broke our relationship.
I said the thing I shouldn't have because
whatever someone can rightfully accuse us
of, even if we're guilty,
we can be forgiven.
In a world of excuses
and a world of blame shifting,
let us be the ones
who show the glory of a forgiving God
and the confession of our own sins.
Let me pray for us.
Father God,
thank you so much for these verses.
Thank you for the invitation
to come out of the bushes.
It is not easy to believe
we know how we treat people
when they sin against us.
And so we project onto you, God,
through the glory of Jesus
and the power
and presence of your Holy Spirit.
Will you call us like Adam,
out of the bushes
and into your forgiveness?
In Jesus name we pray. Amen.