1610-02P XXX
CONFESSION AND REPENTANCE (2)
(Daniel 9:9-15)
SUBJECT:
F.C.F:
PROPOSITION:
INTRODUCTION:
A. Some time ago a person who works professionally with college student at a Christian college volunteered an observation. He said that he frequently heard students express shame, but that he never heard them speak of guilt. And he emphasized the word “never.” What was he talking about?
“Shame” as he was using the term is completely horizontal, akin to embarrassment. Students often said that they felt ashamed before their peers, as though they did not measure up to some expectation or failed to achieve some subjective standard. “Guilt” in this respect is vertical, a true sense that we have broken God’s righteous, objective law and offended him and so are indebted to him. We didn’t go into the causes of this development, but it’s easy enough to see.
God and his law rest lightly on most professing Christians today. Most have been sold an “easy-believism” in which forgiveness is virtually assumed almost as soon as we sin. In a new spin on the old proverb, “To err is human and to forgive divine,” one young man told me, “My job is to sin and God’s job is to forgive.” So we are inoculated against true guilt before a holy God—“God has to forgive us…it’s his job!”
B. In his inspired confession of sin, Daniel leads us into a different way of thinking and frame of heart. The starting point is not God’s duty to forgive sinners, but his absolute righteousness, the objective standard that exposes the gripping depths of our defection and sin. It teaches us to see the real sinfulness of sin and to admit that much of the misery we experience is of our own making.
As we saw last time, our sin is truly terrible. To rightly confess our sin, we must “agree with God concerning our sin.” We must know our sin and see our sin as God sees it and acknowledge that it is so. It would take some real effort and some divine insight to be able to see our sin as God sees it, and to hate our sin as God hates it. This is not something easy; nor is it a small matter.
C. And we must honestly come to grips with the truth that our sin leads to brokenness. A serious complication of sin is insensitivity to our sin. The Bible employs the image of a callous. The first time we grip the tool our skin is tender, and we hold it gingerly. In time, the skin thickens and desensitizes, and we can grip it with full strength all day and never feel its pinch. So the first time we may venture into some sin it may feel painful, and we may be warned by a tender conscience. But in time, we march right in feeling no guilt whatsoever.
Daniel does not leave us in such a hopeless state when we turn to the Lord. And as with everything else, the way back, the way forward, is to recognize and rely upon the character of God.
I. WE MUST HOPE IN THE MERCY OF GOD.
A. If God were only righteous, we who are unrighteous would have no hope, and we should rightly run and hide, even though there is no hiding from his gaze. But Daniel teaches us to hope in God’s mercy. So, while he began his prayer by acknowledging God’s righteousness in verse 4, he now turns to God’s mercy in verse 9-10: “9 To the Lord our God belong mercy and forgiveness, for we have rebelled against him 10 and have not obeyed the voice of the LORD our God by walking in his laws, which he set before us by his servants the prophets.” The reason he invokes the Lord’s great mercy is because they desperately need it. “We have rebelled; we have not obeyed by walking in his laws.”
There is a double danger when we think about our sin and the mercies of God. If we do not take the time to come to grips with the depths of our sin but race first to God’s mercy and forgiveness, then we will rely upon “cheap grace.” God becomes a mere forgiveness machine, a grace dispensary, and we presume upon the grace of God. When we make little of our sins we also make little of God’s grace.
If, on the other hand, we focus on our sin exclusively and deny God’s mercy, then we will sink into the inertia of despondency. In our day when God and his holy law rest lightly, almost imperceptibly on most professing Christians, the former error of cheap grace is the greater danger than the error of gracelessness, but both rob us of a sincere walk with Christ.
B. In his book, Precious Remedies Against Satan’s Devices, Thomas Brooks discusses what he calls “Device 8.” Satan seeks to entice us into sin by showing us examples of notorious sinners who seem to enjoy a good and carefree and prosperous life. To this he offers the following in rebuttal: “To argue from God’s mercy to sinful liberty—is the devil’s logic—and such logicians do ever walk as upon a mine of gunpowder ready to be blown up! No such soul can ever avert or avoid the wrath of God. This is wickedness at the height—for a man to be very bad, because God is very good. There is not a worse spirit than this in hell. Ah, Lord, does not wrath, yes, the greatest wrath, lie at this man’s door? Are not the strongest chains of darkness prepared for such a soul? To sin against mercy is bestial; no, it is worse. To render good for evil is divine, to render good for good is human, to render evil for evil is brutish; but to render evil for good is devilish; and from this evil deliver my soul, O God.”
Sinners like us must not presume upon God’s mercy, but must humbly hope in God’s mercy.
II. WE MUST CONFESS OUR COVENANT UNFAITHFULNESS.
A. Daniel highlights the seriousness of their sin by confessing their covenant unfaithfulness. The Bible teaches that the Creator of all things only relates to his creatures by way of a covenant. His covenant is his gracious, voluntary binding himself to us through specific promises. As mere, finite creatures, we have no “unalienable rights” before God and he truly owes us nothing. He did not have to make us, and once he did, he is not obligated in any way toward us. He could as easily unmake us if he were so to choose.
But instead God bound himself to us with promises, conditional promises. He would act toward us in a certain manner, and we must act toward him in a certain manner.
B. I need to back up a bit and remind you of the covenant that God first made with Adam. God promised Adam eternal life if he obeyed him, and God gave only one restriction, not to eat of the forbidden tree in the middle of the garden. Remember, God gave maximum privilege and minimum restraint. But if Adam disobeyed, God warned him of the covenant curse of death: spiritual, physical, and eternal. And, of course, Adam did disobey and brought the covenant curse upon himself and upon our whole race who are born “in Adam.”
But God graciously offered a second covenant, a covenant of grace. God promised that he would send the Seed of the woman who would conquer our enemy for us. In time it was further revealed that this Seed of the woman would accomplish two great works for us. First, he would fulfill that first covenant of works which Adam violated. He would do so for us, as our representative, and his obedience would count for us as well. This Seed of the woman would also suffer the death penalty for us, so that we could be released from it and forgiven. And the New Testament reveals that Jesus, the incarnate Son of God was that Seed of the woman who lived a perfect life for us and won the right to eternal life, and who also died on the cross and endured the wrath of God which we deserve for us. And the only condition we must fulfill is that we trust in Christ, turning to him in faith and turning from our sins.
C. In the Old Testament God gave a living illustration and expression of this covenant of grace in the nation of Israel. He saved them from slavery and death in Egypt and gave them his covenant law through Moses. They could express their faith in him by keeping his law. If they kept faith with God, then he would shower them with covenant blessings. But if they broke faith with him through disobedience and going after other gods, then he would discipline them with his covenant curses. All that was so that we could understand what Daniel was saying in verses 11-14. Daniel confesses that they were not covenant keepers but covenant breakers and had rightly suffered the discipline of God’s covenant curses.
“11 All Israel has transgressed your law and turned aside, refusing to obey your voice. And the curse and oath that are written in the Law of Moses the servant of God have been poured out upon us, because we have sinned against him. 12 He has confirmed his words, which he spoke against us and against our rulers who ruled us, by bringing upon us a great calamity. For under the whole heaven there has not been done anything like what has been done against Jerusalem. 13 As it is written in the Law of Moses, all this calamity has come upon us; yet we have not entreated the favor of the LORD our God, turning from our iniquities and gaining insight by your truth. 14 Therefore the LORD has kept ready the calamity and has brought it upon us, for the LORD our God is righteous in all the works that he has done, and we have not obeyed his voice.” When Jesus came and gave his life for us, he instituted the new covenant. We see clearly that he was doing so because in the so-called “beatitudes” which are found at the beginning of his Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7, we find the promised covenant blessings if we will remain faithful to him, and the rest of the Sermon details the stipulations, the terms of obedience by which we demonstrate our faith in him. It’s even clearer in the so-called Sermon on the Plain in Luke 6, because there he begins with both blessings for faithfulness and curses or woes for unfaithfulness, just like we find in the covenant of Moses in the Old Testament.
D. The point is that coming to terms with our sinfulness and confessing our sins must be done from a covenantal perspective. When we initially come to faith in Christ we confess that we have not kept the terms of the covenant of works, and so we are rightly condemned for our violation of that covenant. We acknowledge that God our Maker had every right to require obedience from us and that we have not complied, but have repeatedly violated his covenant.
After we come to faith in Christ, though, we must continually confess that we have violated his covenant of grace. Our chief sin is that we have failed to trust Christ by keeping his Word, that we have sought after other gods, thinking that these false gods would somehow bring happiness or satisfaction. You can see the similarity between the Christian’s unfaithfulness and the unfaithfulness and disobedience of the Israelite. God has already saved us by his grace, but we have failed to act in consistency and conformity to his will.
This is demonstrated by an interesting phenomenon that we find in the book of Hebrews, namely that “unbelief” and “disobedience” are used as almost perfect synonyms. Disobedience is the result of unbelief, and unbelief invariably expresses itself in disobedience.
So if we would “agree with God” concerning our sin, if we would understand our sin as God sees it and come to terms with its sinfulness, we would confess not only mere acts of disobedience, but also the unbelief, the lack of trust in Christ that is invariably at the root of those acts of disobedience. This unbelief is a serious violation of covenant faithfulness.
III. WE MUST REPENT OF OUR SIN AND WICKEDNESS.
A. The sobering seriousness of our sin is exposed by the light of God’s faithfulness and grace. That’s what Daniel confesses in verse 15: “15 And now, O Lord our God, who brought your people out of the land of Egypt with a mighty hand, and have made a name for yourself, as at this day, we have sinned, we have done wickedly.”
Daniel refers to God’s great act of salvation by which he graciously rescued his people in covenant faithfulness to his promises: “O Lord our God, who brought your people out of the land of Egypt with a mighty hand….” God has been utterly faithful and kind to them, saving them from certain death in Egypt. We look to the cross where God saved us through his Son, they looked to the exodus, where God saved them by his mighty hand and made a name for himself, greatly and deeply impressing the watching world.
B. Yet, Daniel confesses, they failed to act in keeping with God’s goodness, and their sin only appears more sinful against the holy backdrop of God’s goodness to them. And so have we. Christ has graciously given his life for us. There is nothing comparable to the self-giving love of Christ on the cross. And so, when we confess our sin and repent of it, we must always do so in view of the cross, our unfaithfulness in stark contrast to his grace and favor.
CONCLUSION
There’s an old story of a mother who came home to find the house in flames and her daughter trapped inside. The mother raced into the home, wrapped her daughter in blankets, carrying her to safety. But in the process the mother was horribly burned and scarred for life. This family moved during the daughter’s teenage years, and when the daughter was at some school function, trying to impress her new friends, her mother walked in. The girl’s friends gasped and exclaimed, “Who is that?” And the girl replied, “I don’t know, but she sure is ugly!”
The Lord Jesus still bears the scars he received at Calvary taking the penalty for our sins. He was utterly gracious, kind, and faithful as the covenant keeper. When we consider our sins, we must confess them in light of his covenant faithfulness and our covenant unfaithfulness.
J
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