True Contrite Confession

*The sermon manuscript below was generated from the recording by AI, take it with a grain of salt…

On the commemoration on the, of the 400th birthday anniversary of John Calvin, there was a special conference. This was quite a while ago. And B.B. Warfield gave one of the sort of central addresses. If you haven’t heard of B.B. Warfield, he was a theologian, and he said these words. He said, “The Calvinist is the one who has seen God, and who, having seen God in His glory, is filled, on the one hand, with a sense of his own unworthiness to stand in God’s sight as a creature and much more as a sinner. And on the other hand, with adoring wonder that nevertheless this God is a God who receives sinners.”

Last week I said to you that true wisdom is a true knowledge of God and true knowledge of self, of man. course, those were Calvin’s words, not mine. But they highlight for us a reality we, we must lay hold of firmly, that we began to dig into last week, this reality that it is only in seeing the true God that we are able to truly see ourselves.

And, and last week, in case you weren’t here, last week we thought about this chapter with that lens and we began to see Israel coming with both heartfelt and active contrition. We remember they already began to put sin away by separating themselves with the worldly, worldly people. And whereas previously they had come to God in feasting, now they came to God in affliction and in contrition, confessing their sin, because everything’s beautiful in its season, isn’t it? There is a time to weep and a time to rejoice. And they began by blessing their God, didn’t they? They blessed Him for His character, for who He is, for His creative power, for His covenantal grace, His covenantal deliverance, His covenantal care. His covenantal word, his covenantal inheritance, and his covenantal patience throughout the years.

And in doing so, what we saw was them recognizing that God is always the first mover in grace and favor, isn’t he? He doesn’t move towards us because we have done something to merit his affection or because we are somehow attractive to the divine. But he moves of his own sovereign will in grace and favor towards sinners.

And we acknowledge that the same is true for us, isn’t it? That, that our God has not changed, and that our God has been gracious and merciful and kind to us, that He has given us a rich inheritance. He has lavished us with praise, with glory, with honor in Christ, and He has bestowed covenantal favor upon us, welcoming us and our children to Himself.

And what we must acknowledge is a painful truth for us at times, and that is that as we gaze at the glory and the wonder, wonder of a triune blessed God, we are not. As we behold the beauty and majesty of God, we are forced to look upon ourselves with very different eyes, aren’t we? It’s like holding up the white bedsheet, which you thought was white, to the brand-new white bedsheet. All of a sudden you realize how dark the sheet has become. And so as we gaze into the Lord and see brilliance, we look at ourselves and we see mud. We gaze into the majesty of God and see our filth. We gaze into the goodness of God and see the opposite.

And it’s– it generates something within us, or it should generate something within us. A true knowledge of God leads to a true knowledge of man, but it doesn’t stop there. It leads to true confession, and that’s what we’re gonna see today, true confession.

You know, I always find it very comical if you speak to Catholics about confession, because the Catholics always think that they have the monopoly on confession. You talk to them about confession, and they talk about how splendid it is because they can go to their priest and sit in the little booth and make their confession and acknowledge their sins and walk away feeling, feeling forgiven and, and restored.

Well, brothers and sisters, the Catholic Church does not have the monopoly on true confession, because true confession is found right here in our chapter. And it is something extended graciously to every one of us tonight and every day of our lives.

So what does true confession entail? I, I would say true confession entails what, what I’ve u– what I’ve called a V shape, you know a V? A V-shaped confession. And what I mean by a V-shaped is it starts with God, understanding who God is, and then it descends down, down, down into who we are. And then it moves back up again to God, and we’ll see that.

So firstly, let’s observe this, this downward motion that takes place among the people of God, this downward motion. It begins, and there’s 4 types of confession that these people make before God.

And so in verse 33, th-they say, “You have been righteous in all that has come upon us, for you have dealt faithfully and we have acted wickedly.” What do they confess? “God, you are righteous in all you’ve done, but we are wicked.”

It’s striking, isn’t it? Because they’ve actually said almost nothing about what they have done through this prayer. If you cast your mind back to last week, they traversed redemptive history, their story, right? They said nothing of what they’ve done wrong, and yet they know the truth, right? Having looked at God and his righteous ways, the only thing they can acknowledge is, “God is righteous and I am wicked.”

True confession must begin here. In the downward motion, a recognition as we look at our rags that we are nothing but wicked.

But they move on. In verse 34, they say, “Our kings, our princes, our priests, and our fathers have not kept your law or paid attention to your commandments and your warnings that you gave them.” They said similarly back in verse 16 through 18 of the chapter, “They and our fathers acted presumptuously and stiffened their neck and did not obey your commandments. They refused to obey and were not mindful of the wonders that you performed among them, that they stiffened their neck and appointed a leader to return to their slavery in Egypt. But you are a God ready to forgive, gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and did not forsake them even when they made for themselves a golden calf and said, ‘This is your God who brought you up out of Egypt,’ and had committed great blasphemies.”

What are they acknowledging here? They’re saying, “God, you’ve been good. God, you’ve been good. You’ve been faithful. But our history is law-breaking. We’ve forgotten your ways. We’ve forgotten your laws. You spoke to us, right? You gave us your commandments, and our forefathers, and we have forsaken them. We have neglected to walk in the path that you set before us.”

It’s not just that we’re generically wicked, right? Yes, we must confess we’re wicked. We have a wicked nature. Our nature is sin. We also must acknowledge we’re sinful in our actions, aren’t we? We’re wicked in what we do. It’s not just that I’ve got a corrupt heart, it’s that the outworking of my corrupt heart is corruption. It’s not just that I have a sinful heart, but that my sinful heart gives birth to sin. And so in all of my life, everywhere I look, I see sin. It’s like the Apostle Paul, “The good that I would do ends in sin.” Have you not found this where you try and do what’s right, and you just do what’s wrong? You’re trying to do what’s right and all of a sudden you realize it’s been your pride motivating you the whole time. Sin is before me.

And then in verse 35, they, they confess even in their own kingdom and amid your great goodness that you gave them, and in the large and rich land that you set before them, they did not serve you or turn from their wicked works.

And have a look back at verse 26. We’ll pick up at 25. “They captured fortified cities in a rich land and took possession of houses full of all good things, cisterns already hewn, vineyards, olive orchards, and fruit trees in abundance. So they ate and were filled and became fat and delighted themselves in your great goodness. Nevertheless, they were disobedient and rebelled against you and cast your law behind their back and killed your prophets who had warned them in order to turn them back to you, and they committed great blasphemies.”

They’re acknowledging what? On one hand, the goodness of God, who has generously bestowed upon them rich, fat, good inheritance, and that they, on the h- other hand, have acted with ingratitude. They have thr– they have taken the gifts and rejected the giver and spent the gifts on the lusts of their flesh. It’s the highest, one of the highest forms of offense, right? When you bestow good things upon a person and they throw it back in your face, or worse, they take it for themselves and have no desire to render gratitude or thanksgiving.

It incenses a parent, doesn’t it? You, you give a present to your child And you, you give them a chocolate bar, something small. You go to the supermarket by yourself, and you come home with a chocolate bar, and you, you give it to your child and you say, “Johnny, I got this for you because I love you.” And they snatch it out of your hand without a word and run off and stick it in their mouth. Aren’t you incensed?

And yet this is what the people of God done– did, didn’t they? The great riches of favor bestowed upon them, and they said, “We’ll take the inheritance, and we’ll turn to Baal. We’ll take the inheritance, and we’ll offer our children to Molech.”

And then in verse 7, sorry, verse 37, I should say. They say, “Its rich yield goes to the kings whom you have set over us because of our sins. They rule over our bodies and over our livestock as they please, and we are in great distress.”

I picked the wrong verse. Verse 30 Let me find it. One second. 36. I’ve lost it. There’s a verse where they say we are, “It is our sin that causes it.” Ah, there it is. Verse, it is 37. Verse half: “Because of our sins,” they acknowledge, “our good things are going to the kings whom you have set over us.”

Because of our sins. God, you gave us gifts. We’re now losing them because of our sins. It is our rebellion. It’s not your fault that we are being oppressed by foreign nations. It’s not that God has been faithless that, that they are suffering. They recognize it’s our sin that caused this situation. We’re surrounded by enemies. The promised land has shrunken drastically, and none of it’s God’s fault. It’s ours.

And what this 4fold confession is pointing to is a very important lesson for us, brothers and sisters. As we look at the true knowledge of God and we see ourselves, it’s a recognition that ultimately God is in the right, and I am not. It’s a humiliating reality. It’s a humbling recognition of what I truly am and what I truly do. It’s, it’s a recognition of what G.K. Chesterton understood. think I’ve told you this illustration before. There was once a invitation in the newspaper, I think it was in London, for people to submit articles as to what’s wrong with England, and G.K. Chesterton wrote in and said, “I am.” That was all he said, “I am.”

humbling thing to be able to say that, isn’t it? It’s very easy to point the finger at others, isn’t it? This is one of the reasons, this is one of the reasons we love really big sinners. And I think, what, what do you mean we love really big sinners? What I mean by that is we love when we see someone else doing something really evil. Do you know why? Because it makes me feel better about myself. When we see someone abusing their children, we think to ourselves subtly, we pat ourselves on the back and we say, “Well, I’m not that much of a bad parent.” When we see someone else sent to prison for adulterous sin, we think to ourselves, “Oh, my sin’s not that bad. I could be much worse.”

We love to compare ourselves to those around us, but true confession is never content with the comparison to others. It is only content with a comparison to the holiness of God, to look to His standard and say, “How do I look?”

That’s a humbling reality, isn’t it? To look at the perfection of God like Isaiah did, and then look at self. What’s the only outcome? “Woe is me, for I am undone.”

But here’s the thing we have to realize, brothers and sisters. This is not the unbelieving pagan world speaking. This is not the unregenerate world speaking, is it? It’s the church speaking, and it’s Isaiah the prophet speaking. And what we have to realize tonight, brothers and sisters, that it ought to be us speaking.

Let’s be honest. There is far too much pride in our hearts, so that we cannot bring ourselves to our knees to bow down and say, “It’s me. It’s me. I’m the problem.” I know it’s true of me, and I’m fairly confident I’m not the only one in the room.

True confession is a recognizing of my utter worthlessness before God, that there is nothing in me that is commendable in and of myself.

And you know what? If we ended here, we would be perfectly correct and filled with perfect despair, wouldn’t we? And that’s why the downward descent into confession is never enough.

Think of Martin Luther. No one confessed his sins as well as Martin Luther, they would say. He would spend hours in the confession booth, pouring out every little thing, and after spending hours, he would walk away and all of a sudden remember something he forgot, or remember that he didn’t quite confess something totally accurately, and he would run back into the booth. He so exasperated the confessors that they begged him to leave them alone as he looked at every minute aspect of his life and looked for sin everywhere, and all he ended up with was what? Despair hopelessness and shallow, empty, hopeless death. There was no hope for Martin Luther in that moment.

And yet I said this is a V moment, a V movement. It’s not just down, but it’s back up. It must come back up. True confession must soar to the heights of the glory of God and descend into the depths of the pit, of the mire of who we are, and then it must look up again. It must not stay. It must ascend again. It must look up to the mercy of God, to the grace of God, and that’s exactly what these people do.

Have a look at verse 32. Observe this upward movement. It’s 2 parts. Firstly, it’s, it’s crying for God’s mercy. Therefore, our great God, our great, mighty, awesome God, who keeps covenant and steadfast love, and here it is, “Let not all the hardship seem little.” You know, that’s the only request in this entire chapter. “Let not it seem small to you,” which is another way of saying what? “Look on us with mercy.”

You notice that there’s no strong-arming here, is there? They don’t say, “God, forgive us so we can do great things for you.” They don’t say, “Forgive us so we can render praise to you.” They don’t say, “Forgive us because we’re your people, and you must forgive us because we’ve earned it, because we’re back in the pro-” No, they just say, “Have mercy on me, a sinner.”

That’s the picture of the tax collector, isn’t it? As the Pharisee stands and says, “Thank you, Lord, that I’m not like this tax collector. Thank you that I’m so holy and pious and wonderful. Thank you that I tithe and I do good works and I pray and I stand with my head held high,” and the tax collector can’t even bring himself to lift up his face, but beats his chest in a true upward movement and says, “Have mercy on me, a sinner.”

The ultimate upward movement from sorrow and despair is a pleading upon the mercy of God.

And you’ve got to remember, we don’t read of it in Nehemiah, but back on the 15th of this month, they celebrated Yom Kippur. And on the day of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, do you remember what they did? They would, they would take 2 goats. And one of those goats would be sacrificed for the sin of the people, and the other goat, they would lay their hand on it. The high priest would lay his hand upon the head on behalf of all of the people of God, and he would confess all of his sins upon that goat, and the goat would be sent into the wilderness, and it would carry the sins of God’s people out into the wilderness.

And you can’t help but wonder if that’s fresh in their mind as they look to God in confession. The blood of the covenant. The blood of the covenant, Lord, that’s what we’re pleading on. Not our righteousness, not our goodness, but the blood of the covenant. That is our hope.

It’s, it’s like Solomon’s prayer. You remember Solomon’s prayer at the dedication of the temple. He says, “Lord, if your people rebel against you, and they’re carried away into a far, far land away, and you discipline them, and they look to you and pray, hear and forgive.” And that’s exactly what they’re

And so they lay hold of the blood of the covenant on one hand, and the promise of God in the other hand, and they just say, “Lord, look upon us. See what’s taken place.”

isn’t this what we’re meant to do? Do we not plead the blood of the covenant? A- as we’re down in the pits of the recognition, the humbling recognition of all that we are in our sin, we look to the blood of Christ, we look to the sacrifice of Christ, we look to Golgotha, we come to the cross with a burden upon our back, and we say, “Lord, get rid of it. Have mercy. Wash me. Make me clean.” And we plead upon the blood of Christ as the writer to the Hebrews says, “that speaks a better word than the blood Abel.”

It’s by the blood of Christ that we plead for covenantal mercy. Why? Well, the same reason Israel did, because of the promises of

Because at cross of Christ, a fountain was opened, wasn’t it? Deep and wide. A fountain was opened so that any who would call upon Christ and plead upon the covenantal mercy of God alone would receive forgiveness for their sins.

We bank on the promises of first John one, that any who would confess their sins would be cleansed of all unrighteousness. Not some, but all unrighteousness.

And so we sit in the depths of despair and sin, and we look to the cross of Calvary, and we say, “God, be merciful upon me, a sinner.”

It’s not aimless. It’s not without hope, brothers and sisters. It’s with full assurance. We come in filthy rags, but we come boldly because of the cross of Jesus Christ, because of His sacrifice, because of all grace, mercy, and love that is rooted and founded in the great captain of our salvation.

And so there is no more despair. There is no more condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. And so the, the very depths of despair that we sank into are now replaced with a glorious upward movement back to the mercy of God and a bold assurance that outstrips the depths of despair.

But there’s a second part to this upward movement, and we see it in verse 38. “Because of all this, we make a firm covenant in writing,” and it goes all the way through chapter 10. You see these names, and then you see this covenant laid forth where they set apart all sorts of different things. Take a look at verse 38 for 32, for example. “We take on ourselves the obligation to give yearly a third part of the shekel for the service of the house of our God, for the showbread, the regular grain offerings, the regular burnt offerings, the Sabbaths,” et cetera, et cetera. they set up a covenant.

Why? Why do they set this covenant up? Because true confession always entails change. Always. There is no true confession and repentance without a change of heart and action. Otherwise, your confession is empty and hollow. It’s meaningless.

I mean, you know what it’s like, parents, when one of your children says sorry, and you know full well they’re not sorry, and you know full well they intend to do it again. And what do they do? They turn around, and they do it again. Are they sorry? Is this confession? Is this repentance? No, it’s not.

True confession involves a resolve, not perfection, but a resolve to sin no more. And so they set up this covenant, and they say, “Lord, we’re gonna follow you. We’re gonna do it right. We’re gonna honor you. We’re gonna strive by the Spirit of God. We’re gonna covenant ourselves to be faithful now.”

We’re leaving what lies behind, and we’re pressing on to the upward call of Christ.

Why? Because so often we confess our sin and then, like a dog, what do we do? We return to our vomit, don’t we? Tell me I’m wrong, brothers and sisters. Tell me that your life isn’t riddled with stories of you waking up and saying, “I’m not doing it again,” and you do it again, don’t you? I know it because I do it.

And true repentance means putting sin to death once and for all. As John Owen would famously say, “Be killing sin, or it will

Brothers and sisters, do not miss the warning of second Corinthians 6. Do not presume upon the grace of God.

You know, there are, there are a plethora of people, I have no doubt that there are a plethora of people in hell who have said throughout their life, “It’s okay because God’s grace will cover my sin.” And they gave themselves to sin, and they gave themselves to sin, and they gave themselves to sin, and they died in their sin, and there was no turning back. There was no true repentance. There was just a false confession.

Brothers and sisters, hell is filled, hell is filled with false confessors. And you must ask the question, am I truly repentant? Am I presuming on God’s grace, or am I striving covenantally under the mercy of God, not attempting to earn it, but having received the mercy and grace of God, striving to be made into the image of Christ, striving to put on godliness?

And if this is true for them, brothers and sisters, how much more for us this side of the cross? I mean, what did they have to look to? Dead goats? Dead lambs? Dead bulls? Animals? While we sing in Psalm 50, “I don’t need to drink the blood of goats.” Did you pick that up as we sung those words? I don’t need the blood of bulls. I’m a spirit, right? God doesn’t need animals. We have seen the Lord of Glory crucified. We have seen the outpouring of the wrath of God upon sin. Shouldn’t we all the more seek to covenantal ourse– covenant ourselves to God in all faithfulness?

Isn’t this what changed everything for Martin Luther? The recognition that God would make him righteous strove him to godliness all the more, and so too for you and me.

And here’s the thing, brothers and sisters, and, and I really want you to lay hold of this. T-the more you press higher and deeper into this V confession, the greater it will yield. The more you behold the glory of God, the deeper you descend into the ugliness of your sin, the higher you will press into the mercy of Christ. And the more you will pursue the holiness of God.

Don’t settle for cheap confession. I’m pleading with you, don’t settle for cheap knock-offs. Press into the reality of who God is, and see the filth of yourself, and behold the mercy of God. You must, you must be like Charles Simeon. Maybe you haven’t heard of Charles Simeon. Charles Simeon’s is a minister, well, he was. Charles Simeon was not a particularly good man all the time. He had many faults that were seen frequently. He wrote these words: “I have had deep and abundant cause for humiliation.” Let me say that again. “I have had deep and abundant cause for humiliation.”

Can you say those Can you say, “I have deep and abundant cause for humiliation, but, but I have never ceased to wash myself in that fountain that was opened for sin and uncleanness, or to cast myself upon the tender mercy of my reconciled God.”

I, I once listened to a recorded message of John Piper doing a biographical sketch on Charles Simeon, and he says, “One of the things you have to know about Charles Simeon is that he plumbed, and he never ceased to plumb into the utter depths of his sinfulness and brokenness.” And psychologists and counselors look at this and they say, “That’s not what’s gonna help. You need to think positive thoughts. You need to think good things.” And Simeon says, “No, I need to see the very bottom of the well so that I might soar into the mercy of God all the higher.”

And that must be true of us.

And so there’s 3 very simple uses, brothers and sisters, and I’m just gonna state these. You must know your God and His mercy. You must know your God. You must know yourself and your sin. And you must confess and repent and resolve to walk covenantally with your God.

May God grant us the grace and the eyes of faith to do so.

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