Problems of Confession Part 2

Recap: The Duty and Problems of Confession

0:03 And he says, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet and pray to thy Father who seeth in secret. And I've suggested that all of the various dimensions of prayer, considered as the pieces of the pie, can be gathered under the three general headings, the analogy of the hand, the hand full, coming to God with adoration, praise, and worship, the hand defiled, needing cleansing, confession, acknowledgement of sin, repentance, humiliation, and then we shall consider, God willing, beginning next week, the hand empty, seeking gifts from God for ourselves and for others. And that, of course, will bring within its orbit of concern such matters as intercession, supplication, pleading with God on behalf of our specific needs. Now, thus far, we've established the duty of confession from various portions of the Word of God. Mr. Brown gave you some very helpful material on the substance of confession, namely, that of agreeing with God concerning our sin, and then the occasions of confession, whenever sin is brought to remembrance, we ought then and there to confess those sins to God.

1:27 And now, last week and again today, we're discussing together what I have called the fundamental problems concerning confession of sin. And we had time to discuss two of them last week. The first problem of confession was this. Should we confess our sins and believe our confession to be real if we feel little or no brokenness for the sin confessed?

1:56 And the answer, which we derive from the Word of God, was, yes, we must confess our sins even though we feel little brokenness for those sins, and allow the very sense of our lack of brokenness itself to be confessed as sin and to lead us to brokenness. And then, the second question with which we wrestled, and that took the rest of our time, was, should we, having confessed with some degree of brokenness, believe ourselves to be real, and then confess our sins? And the answer, which we derived from the Word of God, as that word has come to bear upon our own experience, was that we must believe we are forgiven on the basis of the promise of God, but the fact of forgiveness and the sense of restored fellowship are two different things. And though we must in faith believe the promises of God, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive, we must not then be indifferent to this matter of conscious restored communion. The child of God cannot be content with the mere knowledge that his sin is pardoned. He hungers for God, and he is not content until he enters into restored communion with God.

3:23 And we looked at a number of psalms in which this principle is brought out so clearly. Psalm 38 says, Psalm 138, Psalm 130, Psalm 51. And then I gave you a little homework indicating that we would be discussing question number three, the third great problem of confession, and it is this. Should we, upon the remembrance of past sins, long since confessed, confess them again at their fresh remembrance?

Problem 3: Re-confessing Long-Pardoned Sins

3:56 And I'll explain what I mean by that problem. Here's David, he's confessed to God, as we read in Psalm 51, the terrible sin of murder by proxy, the sin of adultery, and all of the sins that flowed out of those two great sins. And then years later, after he's penned Psalm 51, someone in his kingdom commits a similar deed, and by the law of association, his mind is freshly, he's stirred to remember his own sin. And with it comes a fresh sense of shame, a fresh sense of the terribleness of his sin. Should he at that point say, well, I must immediately dismiss all thought of that sin, it's been confessed, it's been repented of, it's under the blood, it's cleansed, I'll have nothing to do with it. Or is it right for him to do as he did when he prayed, remember not against me the sins of my youth? So there's our question.

5:05 What should a believer do when upon the fresh remembrance of past sins long since confessed, there is that awareness of new degrees of guilt and the sense of uncleanness? What should he do? Well some would say, what an intelligent believer will do is simply reaffirm the past forgiveness. He will take a fresh stance of faith and say, no, the sin has been pardoned, it's been cleansed, I refuse to confess it again.

5:41 Others would say, no, we ought to seek a fresh sense of pardon. There ought to be fresh and honest acknowledgement of the renewed sense of guilt. Well who's right? It's now yours.

Biblical Basis for Re-confession: Psalm 25

5:57 The third great problem of confession. Yes Louise? . Uh huh.

6:31 Ok, ok. This is a very long passage. Let's look at that passage. Because it is one of the few passages that speak explicitly to this issue.

6:52 There are some others, as we shall see, that speak indirectly. But here in the twenty-fifth Psalm it points to it. Verse 50. psalm is David's prayer, as the title says, prayer for protection, guidance, and pardon.

7:08 Let's come down now to verse 6. Remember, O Lord, thy tender mercies and thy lovingkindnesses, for they have been ever of old. Remember not the sins of my youth, nor my transgressions. According to thy lovingkindness, remember thou me for thy goodness sake, O Lord. Now, is David confessing to God's sins that he's covered up from the time of his youth? Has he gone all these years deliberately covering those sins in the sense of Proverbs 28, 13, he that covereth his sins shall not prosper? Or is he re-confessing sins already previously confessed? What does the context seem to indicate? All right, we would have to, the onus would

8:10 be upon us to prove that the sins of our youth have been covered up from the time of his youth. We would have to prove that from the date of this psalm backward, David had been in the condition that he was in for that period of a year from the time he committed murder and adultery until Nathan the prophet came and his heart was smitten and he confessed his sin. And I think you'd be hard put to make any such case. So it's obviously a situation where David is confessing anew sins already confessed in the past. All right, someone would want to take the contrary. All right, here's what he's praying. Well, dating the psalms is a difficult thing, John, but it's quite likely that David did not write these psalms in his youth. In other words, he's not.

9:14 No, because they weren't sins of his youth. He was probably in his early fifties when he committed those sins. So we're not relating what he's confessing here with the Psalm 51? No, not at all. Not at all. No, the question is, in all likelihood, is David praying at this point in time for sins committed way back in his youth, which all during that time have been unconfessed? And I think it's obvious that the very kind of confession he's doing, the confession that we engage in with reverence. The reference to present and specific sins takes its index from Psalm 51. It's very pointed.

9:53 David is laying his finger upon the sore. He's describing that thing. Here is a general kind of confession. Remember not the sins of my youth. He thinks back to the days of his youth and all of the instances of his waywardness, and he gathers them up together as it were in one bundle and says, Oh, God, don't remember them. I come with a fresh sense of shame that I should have lived for a day, a stranger to grace and to pardon. All right. Now, if we've established, and I hope you're convinced from this passage that here is an explicit directive concerning this, let me read a few comments of McIntyre.

Theological Support for Re-confession: D.M. McIntyre

10:36 And this is not Carl McIntyre. This is D. M. McIntyre, a godly saint of a bygone day who wrote on the subject of prayer. And this is what he says.

10:49 As our hearts grow more tender in the presence of God, the remembrance of former sins which have already been acknowledged and forgiven will from time to time imprint a fresh stain upon the conscience. In such a case, nature itself seems to teach us that we ought anew to implore the pardon and grace of God. For we bend and here's the key word for we bend not before the judgment seat of the divine lawgiver, but before our father to whom we have been reconciled through Christ. A more adequate conception of the offense which we have committed ought surely to be followed by a deeper penitence for the wrong done under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. We shall often be led to pray with the psalmist, remember not against me the sins of my youth, even though these have long since been dealt with and done away. Conviction of sin will naturally prompt to confession. When such promptings are disregarded, the spirit who has wrought

Illustrations of Renewed Confession in Human Relationships

12:09 them in us is grieved. Now let me try to illustrate from human relationships and then move higher to the relationship of the soul with its God. You who are husbands and wives, I think, live constantly with the experience that we're talking about. Some of us look back in the early years of our marriage and with the insight of the maturity that has come in sharing life together and we see certain patterns of insensitivity. Some of us as husbands wonder how our wives could have been so gracious to us in certain areas. We were so stupid and insensitive about what makes a woman tick. We weren't blatantly ignoring their needs, we were just ignorant of what their needs were. Now what happens? Well, as those patterns have been altered in the growth of your relationship,

13:04 every time something reminds you of that past pattern, you instinctively want to say to your wife, honey, forgive me for the way I treated you in that situation. Forgive me for being...

13:17 Well, you've long since... And she's long since said, look, I'm not going to be your wife. I'm not going to be your wife.

13:19 Look, dear, I know you didn't do it maliciously, that's forgiven. But every new remembrance of those past patterns brings a desire to make a fresh acknowledgement of the grief and pain we feel that we should have ever conducted ourselves in that way. Now some of you who can't think of it in the husband-wife relationship, the wife-husband, think of the parent-child relationship. Do you think that the prodigal never thought of his past pattern after he returned home to the father?

13:49 No. Hmm? Do you think that chapter was just torn out and obliterated from his memory? What about some of us who grieved our parents when they prayed for us and yearned for us spiritually and for years we defied that influence of their prayers and their love? After the Lord was pleased to save us and there was the initial confession to our parents of the grief we caused them, is that the last acknowledgement we ever make? Whenever we're in their presence and there is occasion to be in their presence, we're going to be in their presence. We're going to be able to be connected with our parents and share wonderful memories, hanya for our own pleasure. The next thing is to think of the past pattern there is an instinctive desire to acknowledge afresh the shame we feel for the past patterns that broke their hearts. Now that's a natural

14:34 thing in human relationships. Is it not? Is it? Or isn't it? Am I projecting on you some peculiar quirks of my own temperament? No. Alright, if that's true in the ongoing development of the closest of human relationships, how much more will it be true? in the ongoing development of the relationship of the believer to his God.

14:57 For as MacIntyre has said, we are talking now about the relationship of a son to his father.

15:05 And though the returning prodigal may say, I've sinned, O God, against heaven and in thy sight, or I've sinned, Father, against heaven and in thy sight, the longer he lives with his father, the more he realizes what a foul thing it was ever to revolt against his father's laws. He cannot help but flesh out that new understanding of the enormity of his sin with new dimensions of repentance and confession for his sin. You see? And they will be in direct proportion the one to the other.

The Spirit's Role in Deepening Conviction and Repentance

15:40 Now, here's the crux of the issue. Who produces this increasing awareness of the enormity of past sins already established, already forgiven and confessed?

15:54 Will the flesh ever contribute to giving us an increased awareness of the enormity of sin? Yes or no? Will the devil ever contribute to giving us an increased awareness of the enormity of sin? No.

16:09 Whose ministry is it to convict of sin? The Spirit. Let me finish, Ralph, okay? And then we'll come to you.

16:17 Now, if it is the Spirit's ministry, does He ever convict of sin? With any other view other than leading the convicted sinner to repentance and fresh actings of faith in the blood of Christ? You see, conviction is never an end in itself. It is a means to an end.

16:40 The end being to bring us to that fountain open for sin and uncleanness. Now, let me establish this from the Scriptures, and then we'll handle your question, Ralph. I can almost anticipate what it is, but hold off on it, all right? That's why I'm asking.

Biblical Basis for Deepened Loathing of Sin: Ezekiel 36

16:56 I want you to hold off, because I'm 98% sure what it is, and I want to hold off on it, okay? Turn, please, to Ezekiel, chapter 36.

17:08 Ezekiel, chapter 36. In this great chapter concerning the new covenant that God will make with the house of Israel,

17:21 the covenant which, by the way, according to Hebrews 8 and 10,

17:26 sets the framework of gospel blessings. Don't read this as speaking of something to the Jews in the millennium. This has to do with gospel blessings conferred upon the true Israel of God. If you have any question about it, just read Hebrews 8 and Hebrews 10, and that should set your mind to rest.

17:49 All right? Now, notice the way in which God couches the promises of these gospel blessings. Verse 24. I will take you from among the nations, gather you out of all the countries, and bring you into your own land.

18:03 And I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean from all your filthiness, and from all your idols will I cleanse you. A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you, and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart and a flesh, and I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep mine ordinances and do them, and ye shall dwell in the land which I gave to your fathers, and ye shall be my people, and I will be your God. As usual, when God is speaking of gospel blessings in the Old Testament, he does so under the figures that were real to the Old Testament economy. A land and external blessings. And these now, of course, have their spiritual fulfillment in the distinctive blessings of the gospel. Verse 29. And I will save you from all your uncleannesses, and I'll call for the grain and multiply it, and lay no famine upon you.

19:05 I'll multiply the fruit of the tree and the increase of the field, that ye may receive no more the reproach of famine among the nations. Now notice verse 31. God says, After the conferral of these blessings, then shall ye remember your evil ways and your doings that were not good, and ye shall loathe yourselves in your own sight for your iniquities and for your abominations. Now the question is this.

19:36 Did the loathing come primarily in this setting before the conferral of gospel blessings or after? After. You see? Now, does anyone get gospel blessings without true repentance?

19:52 Yes or no? No. So there had to be some degree of grief for their sin before. Repentance is always inseparably joined to faith.

20:03 But the focus of this passage seems to be that it is not until there has been the conferral of the full spectrum of gospel blessings that they will realize the enormity of their sin. How could I have sinned against so gracious a God? You see? Now, that principle applies all down the line in the Christian life.

20:28 You're not a Christian if your heart's never been broken to some degree for your sin. For the Lord only saveth such as be of a broken spirit. And if you've never been broken for your sin, my friend, you're not a Christian. Now, you may be offended at that, but in love I must tell you, if you're not broken for your sin, you're not a Christian.

20:48 But that brokenness, which is part of repentance, like faith, is a grace implanted in the beginnings of God's works in the human heart, but it's a grace that develops. And as long as there is sin in the believer, the grace of repentance must grow and develop as well as the grace of faith until that day when we are confirmed in righteousness and no longer sin, therefore no longer need to repent and faith is turned to sight and we no longer walk by faith, but we shall see Him as He is. So you see, any idea that we simply reject these fresh plowings of our hearts that lead instinctively to renewed confession and repentance is unbiblical, it's unsound psychologically, and no matter how you view the thing, it is simply an unsound position. The result you see then of this fresh brokenness is beautifully stated in Isaiah 57 and verse 15, and I haven't forgotten you, Ralph. Isaiah 57 and verse 15, Thus saith the High and Lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy, I dwell in the high and holy place

22:15 with Him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit to revive the spirit of the humble and to revive the heart of the contrite. God holds conscious communion with none but the contrite, and no person maintains a spirit of contrition without the acknowledgement of present sin and the re-confession of past sin as God brings it to remembrance. All right? Now, Ralph, your question.

Clarifying Questions and the Purpose of Deepened Conviction

22:53 That's all right.

23:15 Yes.

23:17 Right. And I'm going to deal with that under what I'm going to call the abuses of confession in the latter part of our lesson today, and this is one of them, the difference between the ministry of the Spirit, producing a deeper sense of repentance, and the work of an oversensitive conscience which often becomes a playground for the devil to lead us into bondage. And there is a difference, and we want to deal with that. But we want to establish the principle first before we look at its abuse.

23:45 Yes.

23:51 Well, I think we've just... I've tried to answer that, Grove.

23:54 Maybe it hasn't come through. The purpose of the conviction is to give us a more accurate sight of what that sin really was. In other words, the enormity of that sin is only known to whom? Perfectly.

24:07 To God. He allows us to see this much of it in the initial plowing of the heart. Then He allows us to see more and more.

24:19 I mean, the forgiveness is absolute. Right. But it's to give us a deeper sense of the enormity of the sin, which in turn will give us a greater appreciation of the grace of forgiveness, which in turn will make us love the Savior more, which in turn will make us want to serve. So you see, it's again this whole biblical cycle of God indicting the sinner with his sin, the sinner fleeing to the means of forgiveness, and then the sinner being bound more deeply with cords of love and affection to the forgiving God.

24:57 And that's always God's way to deepen our sense of allegiance to Him. It is never upon legal grounds, but always upon evangelical or gospel grounds. So when God's arrows come to my heart, the end God has in view is always tying me more closely to His heart in love and in confidence. All right?

25:20 Yes, Paul? The same as confession. To me, that's not confession. Confession was the first thing.

25:39 The acknowledgement and reaffirming, yes, that I did sin. I don't think we can call that a confession. It's a new confession. Well, isn't it?

25:52 Isn't it agreeing with God about that sin? It's just that my agreement has taken on new dimensions, has it not? Let's go back to the husband-wife relationship. It does in terms of my appreciation of it.

26:05 See, that's what we're talking about. It's my new appreciation of it. It doesn't mean that three syllables in God's record book are still there and the deeper confession blots out one in five years. No, no.

26:18 No. Because we go back to the initial problem. If I am justified, and justification takes past, present, and future, sin, we must remember we're talking now about the matter of a son with his father. Now, when as a husband, I say to my wife, dear, every time I think of this or that or the other, and I don't want anybody here who's a stranger who doesn't know my wife and me and our relationship.

26:39 I've never been a wife-beater or anything else. I'm not talking about those things. I'm talking about things that are far more subtle and lie beneath the surface in terms of my own failures and inadequacies as a husband. But every time I come with that fresh acknowledgement, what is her joy and delight as a wife?

26:59 To reaffirm that that's long since been forgiven. But in that very acknowledgement, there is a movement of her heart to me and a fresh expression of her heart to me which I lay hold of, which deepens our relationship. You see? So we're talking now about the father in the chamber, the son in the chamber of his father, not the criminal in the chamber of the judge.

27:21 And so, he's holding the chamber of the judge. And that's the point that MacIntyre makes very well. I think, Paul Clarke, did you have your hand raised? Dr. Luther, when you go to this 95th thesis, thesis number one is something like this. When our Lord Jesus Christ said, Repent, he intended that the whole life of a Christian should be a life of repentance. Yes. And I could underscore that with a wonderful quote from Spurgeon who said, Repentance, to be sincere, must be perpetual.

The Balance of Confession and Forgiveness

27:58 True repentance is not the work of the moment, but the disposition of a lifetime until repentance is no longer needed. And that will never be until sin is dealt with completely, and that's not until the Lord takes us to himself. Yes, Greg? I was thinking about what Noel Brown had said concerning what confession was.

28:28 And it was something that you reiterated again this morning, that it was agreement with what God said about that sin. Now, if that's true, then when God brings past sins to our minds, sins that we did either before we were converted or after we were converted, and when we do again, he shows us more of the ugliness of those sins and we again experience the shame, etc. And we tell him, Yes, Lord, that was a terrible thing to do and I see it was worse now, it was sin against you, which was something I didn't see then, for example. There's something else that he's also said about that sin, if we've confessed it, that I would think we ought to agree with immediately and not necessarily have it be something that would come in the back door later as sort of a subtle subconscious psychological effect to lead us to holiness. And that would be that he's also said if you confess your sins, that he's faithful and just to forgive us. And right then, right then, I would think, that we could also agree to what he said about that sin, right in the very light where we feel the increased shame and the increased sense of awfulness for that sin, we could also sense the, right in that very confession, the increased sense of the love of Christ to forgive it and to cleanse us from it so that we wouldn't have to,

29:54 I would think that it would be wrong not to agree with what he's also said in our confession that he has forgiven it. Right. It would be unbelief. Just as it would be quenching the spirit not to give that fresh acknowledgement of the grief at the sight of it, so it would be wicked unbelief not to believe that that sin is put away when God has said it.

30:16 Just as it would be terrible for me as a husband not to embrace my wife's word reaffirming her past pardon. You see, you go back to that human relationship. You see, if I don't have confidence in her pardon, what's that going to do in my relationship? It's going to bring alienation.

30:33 You see? And the only thing that cements more intimately the relationship and the communion is, on the one hand, the fresh acknowledgement sealed with the fresh appropriation or affirmation, whatever term you want to use, of the word of pardon. That's a good point. And it goes far to deal with what we're going to call one of the first problems of confession.

30:58 Yes, John, then we come over here. One thing that's hit me with these three questions that we have here is that in many of these experimental answers to these specific questions, there's not really a black and white case as there is, say, with the mind truth in using it in that word. Where we have, is God God? Yes.

31:18 Is Jesus Christ God? Yes. These are black and white truths. And is God Jesus Christ man? Yes.

31:23 But when it comes to how do you explain that experimentally, it becomes an area of grave. Right? As I wrestled through this particular question, I can only think of the two terms which I used as things to stick in my mind, so please don't laugh at them. But it was the heavenly legality and the earthly reality of these things.

31:42 You've got the heavenly legality where God says, yes, your sins are forgiven. Such passages come as reason together, though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. And other passages to the covenant people have gone like that. God in his legality in heaven has completely forgiven us.

31:58 But in the earthly reality of it, where we're living here still with remains of corruption and sin in us, with conscience, with heart, with recoil, with recall, with memory, with feelings, with emotions, which are scarred by sin, those scar tissues are still there and as these things are brought to remembrance again, we have to confess the increased measure of that sin. Not the original sin dealing in its ugliness and going back to describe it again to God, because I don't believe he wants us to do that, but it's the confession of that increased measure as we've used words not specifically associated with the sin, as I've tried to watch you on that, but you've used words such as loathsome, that's affiliation with the sin, the increased measure of wickedness toward God on that area. And that was all wrapped up in this earthly reality of trying to confess the sin which God has forgiven in his heavenly legality of it. And as we are a total man involved with all of these things, there's a total wrestling which will continue to go on as part of our sanctification rather than something which will come instantaneous now like a glorification in each area of sin. You got what he's saying?

33:15 That's absolutely vital, John, and I think using those little memory crutches are not silly. They help you to remember it, they'll help the rest of us as well. And John has given us all four or five very vital lines of truth. Let me try to pick them out and tell you what you've said to us, John.

33:33 All right? You first of all have made the distinction between the objective that is external and outside of us and the subjective that is internal and a very real part of us. When you preach to people's eyes you notice if they're squinting because the sun is in their eyes. That's what prompted me to do that.

33:57 Now that distinction must be understood at every part of the Christian life. But John has made a second affirmation that we are not to ignore the reality of the experimental because of our knowledge of the objective, because of the heavenly legality. And the problem we have is down here we're dealing with minds that are twisted and scarred by sin, a heart that has the remains of corruption, and all of these things complicate the issue. We have our temperaments.

34:27 Some of us by temperament are melancholic, introspective, hypersensitive. Well, the grace of God doesn't wrench you loose from your basic temperamental structure and make you something else. Some of us by temperament are very outgoing, confident, self-assured, good self-image, all the rest. Well, you see, all of those factors are poured into the hopper when we're talking about the issue we're dealing with now.

34:53 And that's why, unlike what John has mentioned, an objective confessional truth, Jesus Christ is very God of very God, Jesus Christ is very man of very man, whoso confesseth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God. There's the objective. But when we come to this matter of confession, the measure of it, the degree of it, we have all of these other things in the picture so that we do not come up with a wonderful fixed box of little things. And we must then try to get the broad principles understand them in their biblical relationship and then, in the course of God's dealings with us, in the increasing understanding of truth in our own temperament and the rest, we will know how all of these things flow together in their operation in our own lives. And that's why you must beware of any manual, any booklet, any pamphlet that says, X number of simple steps to live the Christian life. Seven steps to true confession. Seven steps to easy wit.

36:03 Throw all of that stuff out the window and burn it. Because it is a denial. Now that's a strong statement. Don't throw it all out.

36:12 Once in a while you may find something, but don't submit yourself to it. That was a rash statement. That was rash. Don't throw it all out, but read with caution and remember that anything that tries to put these things in a little box like this is doomed to bring frustration if you take it seriously.

36:32 So these distinctions must be made and constantly kept before us. Very good point. And then he made the point that oft times the remembrance of past sin will not be to reiterate the sin specifically as we find in Psalm 51. We don't find David going back and praying Psalm 51 again for those sins.

36:52 Although he may say, Lord, remember not against me all of the foulness connected with that period in my life. You see? And he just looks upon it with a fresh self-loathing. And that's the interesting focus of Ezekiel 36.

37:07 He says, You shall loathe yourselves. You shall loathe yourselves. There's that increasing awareness of the principle of sin, not so much the specific act of sin. All right.

The Preventive Ministry of the Spirit and Reviewing Past Sins

37:21 Then someone else had a hand raised. He said, Yes. Then we'll come to you, Paul. Please.

37:41 All right. Very good. There is a preventive ministry of the Spirit bringing before us the bitterness of the sin with fresh awareness helps to put a barrier to that sin. It's amazing how in a short time we forget the bitterness of sin.

37:57 So that when that same sin presents itself, all we see the next time is its sweetness. And we have the ability to cauterize the remembrance of its bitterness. You see, you can never as a Christian, you can never willfully walk into a path of sin if at that moment your mind is consciously holding before it the bitterness and the gall that sin will bring. We conveniently put all that aside and the one thing that we hold before our mind is the pleasure that sin will bring.

38:31 Right? Yes. Paul and then...

38:36 I just want to illustrate that one. Yes. Very good. Yes.

38:40 That's right. Yes. Here they are down in Egypt groaning and complaining to God, will He ever bring us out? And then God brings them out and they say, man, we really had it good back in Egypt.

38:49 We were able to go around with stinky breath all the time. Leeks, onions, and garlics. They must have had some kind of a perverted proclivity for foul breath. They wanted the leeks, the garlics, and the garlics, and the onions.

39:00 Any one of which is enough in itself, but all three together. So, that's what it is. That's what it is. That's what it is.

39:08 That's what it is. That's what it is. That's what it is. That's a good point, Don.

39:13 Very good point. Yes. Paul?

39:59 It's a good point. In verse 11, he's confessing present sin in Psalm 25. For thy name's sake, O Lord, pardon mine iniquity, for it is great. Now, it would be interesting to do a study on the difference between verse 7, remember not, and then verse 11, pardon.

40:33 And it could well be that there's that distinction. He believes the past sins and the present sins are pardoned. He doesn't pray for fresh pardon, but there is that fresh remembrance of the sin and the affirmation of past pardon, but then he pleads for pardon for present sin. Yes?

40:51 The verse confesses and according to the present tense, and Matthew Henry in commenting on the verse says that the more we confess our sins and bring them before Christ, the evil cures for us more influences whereby those sins are more and more mortified as we bring them into confession. Yes. We continually confess He is faithful and just to forgive and to cleanse from all unrighteousness. All right, may, yes, go ahead, Ken.

41:31 In a situation where the past sins have come to mind so either spontaneously or the spirit has brought them to mind, but my question is, suppose, for example, we decide to have a season of confession. Humiliation before God. Should we, as believers, review our past and actively stir up the remembrance of past sins for this purpose? Good question.

41:58 You all got it? And I would say the answer to that question, Mr. Williams' question is, should we say there's a time when we feel unusual hardness of heart? Should we set aside an hour to do nothing but review our past deflections from God's law and our past declensions and actings of repentance?

42:20 Well, I'd like to throw that open for discussion, but I'm sure I won't be able to get to what I have here, so I'll take the liberty of answering your question if I may, please, Ken. I would say, first of all, here's where it's so important to know yourself. There are some of you here that's the last prescription I'd ever give you, because I know I'd be six months sorting you out in personal pastoral counsel if you ever did that. Everything about you is such that that's a very dangerous thing for you to do.

42:54 There are some of you who have enough remembrance of the past in your day-by-day Christian lives that to have any concentrated dose of it would probably kill you. So for such people I'd say, don't go looking for them. If they come, take them, but don't look for them. And there are others of you I would feel I were doing you a service spiritually.

43:18 If I could get you to look upon your past, because temperament and the general disciplines of life and all of these things are such as to lead into a path not of morbid introspection but a path of insensitivity. So I think the answer to that question, Ken, is basically whether or not that's a good prescription for that particular patient. I would not give it out as general medicine, as just a little extra vitamin C during cold season. I'd be very, yeah, that's a matter of what the old writers would call of casuistry.

43:57 That's a matter for cases of conscience. That's a pastoral problem. Yes, Cynthia? Yes, the greatest of all faults is to be conscious of none.

Abuses of Confession: Morbid Introspection

44:17 That's a good, very good point. Very good. All right, may I take leave to hurry on in the last 15 minutes that we had to deal with just a few of the abuses raised against you? That's not particularly true, he's he's not on this list, doesn't seem very deep enough, his confession is sincere enough, his grief is genuine, and all of the rest. The person who by temperament, who by inadequate views of doctrine, has not laid hold of the glorious truth of justification. I will not discuss with a Christian who is having problems with a nagging conscience, I will not deal with that problem until I first of all examine if he has some understanding of the biblical doctrine of justification by faith. Now Dr.

45:31 Martin Lloyd-Jones in his book Spiritual Depression has an excellent treatment of this very fact that most people have problems, if they have chronic problems with spiritual depression, it's rooted in one of two things. Either they do not understand the doctrine of justification by faith, or two, they don't understand their own temperament. And he starts in that area and my book is always out. I'm doing pastoral work for me, in fact it's out now and I had someone come asking for it and I had to refer them to someone else, because it deals with this perspective very well. So we must beware of that abuse of morbid introspection. Well how can we tell if I'm falling into the trap of morbid introspection? Well the signs are these. I'm preoccupied with conviction instead of being led to the end of conviction. If I'm preoccupied with conviction, my eyes are upon my own eyes. I'm preoccupied with conviction instead of

46:29 my own heart. If I am using conviction or allowing conviction to have its God-intended course, my preoccupation will not be my own heart, it will be God's provisions for me in Jesus Christ and the glorious reality of His forgiveness. Now the person who's morbidly introspective is one about whom there is nothing of the fragrance of Christ. Now before some little two-bit Christians come along and say, well you know, David Brainerd, morbidly introspective. Henry Martin, boy if anything will get me upset. It's little two-bit Christians reading the biography of David Brainerd and then very piously and pompously saying morbid introspection. Well David Brainerd may have had some problems with hypersensitivity. Some of that was no doubt due to the fact he was a bachelor and didn't have a wife to help get his eyes on other things. But listen, everything about his autobiography and his biography by, I mean his biography and the remains is collated by the fact that he was a bachelor by Jonathan Edwards, breathes of the fragrance of Christ. That's the test.

47:40 And I'm convinced that the reason our own generation has just swept David Brainerd's biography aside is simply because he entered into a realm of sensitivity about sin that few of us know anything about. But that it was evangelical for the most part is evidenced by the centrality of Christ. You see? That's the first thing to help you to discern whether or not you're being morbidly introspective. And the second thing to help you to discern whether or not you're being morbidly introspective or whether this is true evangelical repentance and mourning and grieving for sin. What does it lead you to? Does it lead you to look in or outward upon the Lord Jesus? Secondly, and it flows out of this, does it gender a spirit of pride or of genuine humility? You see, morbid introspection, it's a funny thing,

Abuses of Confession: Morbid Curiosity and Scrupulosity

48:34 will generally express itself in a subtle form. It's a form of pride. I'm more broken than others. Whereas true repentance will always be productive of true humility, which makes me think the best of others and the worst of myself. Now, there is another abuse. And that's the abuse of morbid curiosity. And this applies more in the realm of what we might call corporate confession of sin. And I feel I should mention it, though, as I interpret it. And I feel I should mention it, though, as I interpret it. And I feel I should mention it, though, as I interpret it. And I feel I should mention it, though, as I interpret it. And I feel I should mention it, though, as I interpret it. And I feel I should mention it, though. That's a duty that is very little acknowledged in our day. But that verse is as plain as

49:37 any verse in the Bible. Confess your not faults. The translators of the authorized version were so fearful that some Roman Catholic might think they gave them some pew that they said, confess your faults one to another. Hamartia is translated everywhere else in the Bible as sin.

49:56 Confess your sins one to another and pray one for another that you may be healed. Now there is a biblical doctrine of confession to one another. But like anything else, this can be abused and it has been abused and instead of giving the kind of general confession in public prayer concerning those sins that it's proper to confess in mixed groups, people have begun to go into the kind of suggested details that only awaken curiosity in others and feed a spirit of morbid curiosity and they become like a gathering of Romish priests whose ears are drooling in the confessional for some juicy sin to be told by some sensitive conscience on the other side of the black veil. Well, this is an abuse of the biblical doctrine of confession and we must not fall prey to it. And then the third abuse is that of being overly scrupulous about the, I don't know what to call it, about the ingredients of our confession.

51:06 God doesn't say if we sincerely confess our sins, if we wholeheartedly confess our sins, He simply says if we confess our sins. It's just like the person who's so concerned to know whether he has sincere faith, genuine faith, that he never really believes on the Lord Jesus Christ. You're to be preoccupied with the object of faith, not the thing itself. You see?

51:31 Now the same way with confession. If we confess our sins, where is our focus to be? He is faithful and just to forgive and to cleanse. You see, the whole focus of 1 John 1.9 is not on our confession, but on our confession. But upon the faithfulness of the forgiving and cleansing God. And that's where your focus ought to be when you confess your sins. It ought to be on the nature and character of the forgiving and the cleansing God.

51:57 All right, now I'm sure there are other abuses, but these were some that came to my mind that I thought I should mention. And we've got about seven or eight minutes now. Yes, Grove? On this matter of confessing sins one to another, I'd like you to comment perhaps on what people get rid of the conscience of that sin.

52:18 Because I have confessed it to some third party. Yeah. And I wondered if you had...

52:25 Oh, I'd say that's just the Roman Catholic in everyone's heart by nature that we want, as it were, some kind of human expression of absolution that will help us to, as it were, to believe that we have divine absolution. Of course, Lutheran theology is strong here. You read Lenski, the astute Lutheran commentator. And of course, they're very strong on this matter of...

52:50 It's not Romish, in essence, but it's sort of first cousin once removed of the necessity of the verbalization by another human being of the word of pardon. Whosoever sins ye remit, they are remitted. Whosoever sins ye retain, they are retained. And I think wherever I've seen this, Grove, it's really been an oversensitive person who generally has not really laid hold of the reality of God's commitment to forgive.

53:20 That's expressed in his word. And it becomes a sort of crutch, just like the person who won't believe unless he sees signs. Well, he's got to have this verbal sign of forgiveness from a human being, a fellow creature, before he'll believe in the forgiveness from the Heavenly Father. Now, that's an element of truth that enters into this whole thing.

53:41 Often, when I've had people come to me who've been guilty of some kind of gross sin, and they've been struggling with getting it out, and finally they pull the plug, and they break... they break down, and they acknowledge the sin, and I tell them often, I say, look, don't tell me anymore.

53:55 I don't want to go to gory details. You've told me enough. I know the area. And then they look at me.

53:59 And I say, well, what do you want me to do? Do you want me to kick you? Do you want me to spit on you? Do you want me to get a belt out and whip you?

54:03 What do you want? Have you acknowledged the sin? Well, yes. Well, you aren't going to hate me?

54:10 I say, well, no. Why should I hate you? I'm a sinner. Well, you're not going to tell the other elders and discipline...

54:17 I say, look, have you dealt with the sin? Yes. Have you repented? Yes.

54:21 Have you made... Well, God's put the sin away.

54:24 Well, you want some penance? You want me to be a Romish priest? You see, that element is in the human heart, as we're going to see this morning in the first exposition on Ephesians 2, 8-10. The human heart, at every point, is opposed to free grace.

54:41 It hates free grace. It wants to add something to what God, in grace, has done and says He will do. So I would say, generally speaking, that's a weakness. It's really a form of unbelief.

54:55 Sometimes it, again, indicates an emotional weakness that needs to be supported and strengthened at another level. It could be a variety of things. And I would not want to make any generalization because in pastoral counseling, I found, again, there are many different strands entering into this. Bill?

Unconfessed Sins and God's Revelation

55:14 Well, what happens with a person that has committed sins that have never been confessed and they have been forgiven? How do we open it? Well, there again, Bill, that's why we can't absolutize in these matters. Because there are times when we've walked in the integrity of our conscience for weeks or years and then God brought something to remembrance that happened years ago. Right?

56:06 Well, I find great help in Philippians chapter 3. Let's look at that for a moment. I think it speaks to this issue. And then I'll try to articulate, if I can, in a couple of minutes, Bill, what I think is the essential principle that applies here.

56:25 Philippians chapter 3. The Apostle is speaking of this singleness of spiritual desire and pursuit after Christ. Verse 13 of Philippians 3. I count not myself to have laid hold.

56:39 One thing I do, forgetting the things that are behind, pressing on. Verse 14. I press to the goal of the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. Let us, therefore, as many as are perfect or mature, be thus minded, now notice the next verse, part of the verse, and if in anything ye are otherwise minded, this also God shall reveal unto you, only whereunto we have attained by the same rule let us walk.

57:09 Here's a wonderful promise, Bill, that if my face is set toward laying hold of that for which Christ has laid hold of me, even though there may be some areas of darkness that due to the limitations of my sinful remembrance, I don't see, I can trust God to reveal those things. Now, they do not become an issue of controversy as far as the breaking of my communion with God.

57:36 They've been revealed and once they are, now a new responsibility is laid upon me and if the light that is in me becomes darkness, how great is the darkness. Also, it doesn't mean that I sit back passively saying, oh, well, I'll do nothing to open the channel for God to reveal it. I must be praying constantly, search me, oh God, and know my heart. See if there be any wicked way in me.

57:59 Now, David acknowledges there may be ways that he doesn't yet see. And he says, Lord, see if there be any wicked way in me. He opened the psalm by saying, Lord, Thou hast searched me and known me. He closes the psalm by saying, search me and know me.

58:13 You see? So, I think that principle has been a great help to me, Bill, that as we seek to use the means of grace, the preaching of the Word, the fellowship of the people of God, seeking to rub shoulders with those, who are pressing on in godliness so that the conscience is kept sensitive. We can trust that God will bring these things to remembrance and we need not feel if God brings a sin to remembrance in January that just wasn't even before our consciences way back last June, that that invalidates all the so-called communion we thought we had from June to January.

58:49 We should let that very thing remind us of how sinful we are. That we could have done something so opposite, so obvious to us now as being sin, but not at the time. Let that humble us afresh at how limited is our understanding of sin. And then a second thing that's been a help to me is 1 John 1.9, a phrase that's often overlooked. If we confess our sins, the sins of which we are aware, God is faithful and just to forgive us and to cleanse us, not just from the sins that we confess and are aware of, but what does the verse say? To cleanse us from all unrighteousness. That's the first thing we need to do.

59:28 And so our access to God is secured by the perfect mediation of Jesus Christ, which many times goes beyond the areas that I'm consciously aware of. The same way He's keeping me even when I'm not consciously trusting Him to keep me. And that's a wonderful truth that the measure of God's working in me is not in direct proportion to my repentance, my faith, my...

59:54 That's the curse of the whole deeper, among other things, is that God only works in you in direct proportion as you reckon and obey Him, as you trust Him. Well, if I didn't have a salvation that far outstripped my faith and my repentance, I'd have packed in a long time ago. I don't know about you, but I would have. Does that help, Bill? Yes. Jerry? Yes.

Returning to Foundational Truths for Ongoing Struggle

60:54 You see, what Mr. O'Donnell is asking is, what do we do? So here's the person who...

61:01 That would apply to someone they'd think I was talking to even though I didn't look at them. Let me pick something that I, as far as I know, doesn't apply. All right. Let me take a very silly thing.

61:14 Here's a person who bites his nails. And he's really been convicted about his biting his nails. You know, and he's got an addictive habit, an advantage of biting his nails. And he knows it's a form of bondage.

61:26 He knows it's not a good testimony. It gives the impression to people that he's nervous as a Christian rejoicing in the Lord and trusting in the Lord. Well, he's confessed his sin. But every time he looks down at his bleeding fingers, he's discouraged and reminded that he still hasn't conquered.

61:44 What does he do? That's the question. Well, I think if I may just speak to it briefly because our time is gone, it's here that he must come back again to the foundational objective truths. I am accepted in the Beloved.

62:00 And God accepted me when He knew I would still go on biting my nails for ten years. Yeah, did He know I would still bite my nails when He justified me? Put on me the robe of righteousness? Did He know that?

62:15 Or did this take Him by surprise? Yes or no? And you say that's ridiculous. Well, we're ridiculous in the way we react to things.

62:24 Did God know about every failure and stumbling and falling that I would experience as a believer from the time He justified me? For Christ's sake. And I need to come back to that foundation and from that foundation then begin to work my way forward in the dealing with this. But the moment I relinquish that foundation I'm in a sea with no rudder, no compass, no stars to shoot with my sextant.

62:51 I've had it. So I would say, Jerry, that that is the moment I relinquish that foundation I'm in a sea with no rudder, no compass,