Those Three Little Words

You have been just in all that has come upon us, for you have dealt faithfully
and we have acted wickedly. (Nehemiah 9:33)

          There is a sports columnist in our local paper who, as many of you might know, delights in deviling us fans about our teams. He’s always needling us and getting in jabs here and there purely out of devilishness.

          That’s why we fans took such delight in his recent admission of a factual error.

          As a former journalist, I can attest to the importance of getting the facts correct. I also can attest to the importance of admitting – quickly – when you’re incorrect.

          Oh, but how difficult it must have been for the columnist to admit his error! Even he got a laugh out of it, closing that “confessional” column, “Although this is one of the most painful lines I have ever had to write, I stand corrected.”

          Those can be three of the toughest words for you and me to utter: “I was wrong.”

          But there are three more words that are even more difficult for you and me to say from the heart to our Lord: “I have sinned.”

          God’s people – allowed to return to Judah after decades of punishment for sin in exile – had rebuilt the wall of Jerusalem, and last week we noted their attention to the Scriptures and their celebration of God’s grace. While the completion of that wall under Nehemiah’s guidance was an occasion for great rejoicing, there was another matter with which God’s people had to reckon: their own sin.

          This morning, as we examine Nehemiah 9 and the great confession of sin by the returnees to Jerusalem, we’ll explore the necessity of confession, their preparations for confession, the content of their confession and the blessing from their confession.

          It’s not easy to search your heart and life according to God’s truth. It’s even harder to say those three words from your heart: “I have sinned.”

          Confession of sin before God, though, is a necessary step to spiritual revival in your life and mine.

          The entirety of chapter 9 underscores, first, the necessity of confession of your sin before the Lord.

          Both testaments stress the holiness of the Lord God – and consequently His refusal to entertain our sinfulness. The Lord, we are told, “is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity.” The Father could not even bear to look at His precious Son as Jesus bore our guilt on the cross: this is how seriously God takes His own holiness. And if you and I are to enjoy fellowship with Him, we must heed His call in that oft-misused verse from Chronicles: “If my people … humble themselves, pray, seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I … will forgive their sin.” (The verse is speaking of believers on Christ, not of the United States!)

          This is the reason we begin each service of worship in this church with a confession of sin. Unless you and I confess our guilt in breaking God’s perfect law and ask for His pardoning grace in Jesus Christ, we cannot enter into His holy presence.

          You and I dwell in a culture of approved self-delusion when it comes to sin. In fact, most folks deny the existence of sin and explain away their adulteries, thefts and murders with a host of crafty excuses.

          You and I can renovate all the churches we want, stock the pews with all the people we can muster and run all the soup kitchens we like. But unless you have confessed your sin before God and begged His grace in Christ, God is not pleased with your work, and you can have no real joy.

          Mindful of the necessity of confession of sin, observe secondly the preparations God’s people made for this great confession.

          Their assembly earlier that month was to hear the Word and to celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles (really, to celebrate God’s redeeming work in the life of Israel). As such, the leaders encouraged God’s people to celebrate and not to mourn their sins. Now that the festival had passed, the time was right to confess their iniquities to the Lord and to seek His healing.

          The people took the appropriate outward steps to begin the process of repentance: they wore sackcloth, covered themselves in ashes and fasted in anticipation of the day. All of those actions represented a step back from the usual merriment of life (eating, drinking and the like) in order to assess their spiritual lives and to confess sins before God. You’ll note the Jews’ unusual act of separating themselves from the non-pure Jews among them; this action in part revealed their sense of guilt for intermarriage and also set them apart as a privileged people who sinfully had disdained those great spiritual advantages and were owning up to it.

          The Levites led the people in confession, much as your pastors ought to lead you today in confessing your sin to the Lord. As in their day, it is our duty to minister the truth of God to you – as humbling as that truth might sometimes be. The ministers also read the Word to God’s people for what amounted to three hours, which was vital in the process of repentance. You’ll note the people’s confession, later in chapter 9, that they and their fathers had done wrong, earning God’s righteous punishment. But note that God’s convicting Word as well as painful circumstances drove His people to confess their sins to Him.

          Clearly the people had made some preparations for this day, and the reading of the Word drove them to utter repentance. But the process of confession really began when Nehemiah challenged their spiritual indifference to the crumbled wall in chapter 2, and the Spirit drove God’s people to confess their sins fully before Him.

          Will you and I spend time allowing God’s Spirit to search us as we read the Word? And when the Spirit convicts you, will you truly and earnestly repent of your sins?

          Third, we’re wise to examine the content of their confession, for in many ways it serves as a template for you and me in the church today.

          This great confession, which spans verses 6 through 37, begins with a statement of praise to God the Creator. Really, that’s where all of us begin as humans: observing the hand of God in the created realm and noting our own creatureliness. Of course, as St. Paul asserts in Romans 1, the sin-warped human mind rejects the knowledge of the true God and fashions idols to worship from the creation (such as human intelligence, pop “spirituality,” science, et cetera). The Lord as our Creator deserves your total service and mine, and because you and I fail to offer Him that service, we immediately are guilty of sin.

          The confession then recounts the elective, gracious, revelatory and redeeming grace of God toward His undeserving people Israel. He called Abraham from the nations to be the father of the faithful; He delivered His people from bondage in Egypt; He gave them – and them only – His holy law at Sinai; He provided for them in the wilderness; He defeated their enemies in Canaan; He let them dwell in a rich and pleasant land; and time and again He forgave them when they cried to Him in their sin. In short, God had poured out undeserved mercies on a continually rebellious, ungrateful people – all because of His hesed, or covenant mercy.

          Verses 31 and 33, though, form the crux of this prayer of confession. Verse 31 posits the basis for even praying such a prayer: while He rightfully could cast away all sinners, yet for His great mercy’s sake the Lord forgives the penitent. And verse 33 gets to the heart of confession: the Lord is right in all His judgments – painful though they might be – and we are wrong in our lawlessness. You can confess your sins and expect forgiveness in Christ because God is a compassionate God who doesn’t cast you away – yet you must confess His uprightness and your own sin if you are to truly be repentant.

          In a sense, verse 33 expresses the exact opposite perspective of sin. Sin doubts God’s goodness, stresses our own supposed “rightness” in acting as we do, and refuses to see wrong in breaking God’s law (as when you covet or lie). True confession that leads to forgiveness in Christ owns up to our own self-deception and perversity and freely admits God’s righteousness.

          The confession ends powerfully at verse 37 by admitting the sorry state of the Hebrew people. Because of our violation of God’s law and our repeated hard-heartedness to Him, you and I have gotten spiritually (and sometimes physically) what we deserve. And when we are in sin, you and I are miserable.

          There is a great humbling involved in confessing your sin to the Lord – yet there follows great blessing in honestly confessing your sin.

          In Psalm 32 David expresses the heaviness of spirit he endured as he tried to deny the reality of his sin, yet he then proclaims the freedom and joy he knew once he laid out his guilt before God. St. John writes in his first epistle that if you and I confess our sin, the Lord is faithful and just to forgive us our sin. This forgiveness always brings with it a fresh vision of the greatness and infinite goodness of the covenant-keeping God who loves you eternally in Christ. It makes real life possible, and it opens up the otherwise-unimaginable possibility -- reality! – that the Lord will use you to teach sinners His ways.

          The whole process of repentance goes against the grain of modern life for you and me. The fact is, we hate admitting we’re wrong.

          Especially to the Lord.

          It gets uncomfortable to hear His Word read and preached when that Word casts a glaring spotlight on your pet sins and cherished idols. Those thoughts, words and habits you have condoned for so long might well be sinful in the light of God’s searching truth and Spirit, and you’re afraid to abandon them.

          It takes faith to repent – faith that God’s Word is true, and faith to follow Him where His truth will lead you. Even if it’s down the searching, humbling, but ultimately blessed road of repentance.

          Longing for revival, let us pray for just this sort of faith in our merciful God.