Dial In with Jonny Ardavanis - Why Do I Need To Confess My Sin? With Jonny Ardavanis

Episode Date: July 9, 2024

In this episode, Jonny Ardavanis examines David's 51st Psalm and highlights the hallmarks of Biblical confession.Jonny Ardavanis is the Lead Pastor at Stonebridge Bible Church in Franklin, TN and the President of Dial In Ministries. He formerly served as the Dean of Campus Life at The Master’s University and as a Camp Director at Hume Lake Christian Camps. Jonny’s heart is to see people understand and love the Word of God and more so, to love the God of the Word. Jonny is married to Caity Jean and they have two precious daughters.Watch VideosVisit the Website Pre-order Consider the LiliesFollow on InstagramFollow on Twitter

Welcome back everybody. I'm here with Johnny R. DeVanis. My name is Hank Bowen, and this is part three of a three-part series that we've been doing over the last couple of weeks on the pursuit of holiness. So the first episode we walked through was fighting sin. Then we went to renewing of the mind. And now today we're going to talk about maybe the third piece of that triangle or the third leg on that stool. I don't know. I'm mixing my metaphors. The third piece of the triangle. I'm over my skis. But practically that's confession. So we're going to be talking about a rather serious matter. Why don't you set this up for us, I got the ball. Thank you. No, I think confession is a, I told you, just a needed but neglected biblical category,

especially for believers who maybe have asked the question, and we'll answer this, like, why would I confess my sin if I've already been forgiven of all of my sins? It says in Ephesians 1, 7, in him we have redemption, the forgiveness of our sins. It says in Acts 10, 4343 that everyone who believes in Jesus Christ receives forgiveness of sins through his name. And this is a biblical reality that if you're a Christian, all of your sin, past, present, and future has already been forgiven by God. Psalm 103 verse 12, that he removes our transgressions

as far as the east is from the west. And that's one of the main things that jesus christ came to do in his life and his death and his resurrection was to offer you cleansing and forgiveness and redemption from your sins so some people ask why would i confess even if uh i'm already a christian and i think to answer that question i want to frame the story of King David. And I think a lot of people are probably familiar with King David, but I mean, he's a godly man. You know, there's 42 kings, I think, in the Old Testament. There's only one that's referred to as a man after God's own heart.

And that guy's name is David. He writes one third of the Psalter. He is a musician. He's a poet. He's a king, but more than anything, he's identified by his love for the Lord. And yet there is a season in David's life that is riddled with so much sin and deception that it's really hard to quantify. And it's hard to believe how a guy that's identified as a man after God's own heart could sin to such great degrees, but that's the vulnerability of every man. There's

no perfect people. There's only a perfect savior. But there's this story in the old Testament, second Samuel, David is on his roof. Everyone else is at war and it's kind of at the peak of his fame and power. He sees Bathsheba, a woman that's not his wife, bathing on the roof. He calls her to his palace and he sleeps with her. She writes to him after going home and says, I'm pregnant. And David scrambles. At this point, he would have known he's dishonored God. He would have known that this is a violation of the principles of the word of God. But instead of confessing his sin and falling on his face at that point, he strikes a plan. Okay, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to take Uriah, Bathsheba's husband.

I'm going to send him to the front of the battle. Well, first of all, I'm going to call him home and I'm going to try to get him to sleep with his wife so that when she tells everyone she's pregnant, everyone thinks that Uriah is the father. No problem, problem solved. Uriah comes home and decides, no, I'm not gonna sleep with my wife because all the other men are out at battle. I'm not gonna partake in the pleasure of marital intimacy while everyone else is struggling. So what do we see from Uriah? He's a good man.

He's a good guy. So then David goes, okay, so he's not gonna impregnate her. Then what am I gonna do? Oh, I have an idea. I'm gonna send him to the front of the battle where the odds of death are one for one. And this is exactly what happens. He gets the word that Uriah dies at that point. Then he calls Bathsheba to his palace. He takes her as his wife. And

really up until the point of the child's birth, which we'll talk about in a minute, but for about a nine month period, David is living in total rebellion against God, total rebellion, cloaked sin. And the prophet Nathan comes to David, tells him a story and basically relates to him. You are the man that is in deep sin. You're opposing, rejecting, and violating God's word and God's law. And David begins to understand the truth that he was already aware of that. And it says in 1 Chronicles 28, 9, that the Lord searches every heart, understands every single desire. Hebrews 4, 13 says nothing and all of creation is hidden from God's sight. Every single sin that David was trying to cover was laid bare already before the eyes of God.

And he comes in Psalm 51 in the aftermath of all of this, after the son that had been conceived in Bathsheba's womb dies as part of the Lord's discipline. He comes in Psalm 51 and it's a Psalm of confession. And what confession is for a believer, and we'll explain this more as we go, confession is to agree with God regarding his assessment of what sin is. It's just to recognize sin in light of God's view of our sin. But David comes in Psalm 51, and it says in like the superscript for the choir director, a

Psalm of David when Nathan the prophet came to him after he had gone into Bathsheba. I have just five hallmarks of confession as we walk our way through the Psalm and you can kind of stop me at any point. But the first one would be an appeal for grace and compassion. David says, be gracious to me, O God, according to your loving kindness, according to the greatness of your compassion, blot out my transgression, wash me thoroughly from my iniquity

and cleanse me from my sin. There's three times in these opening two verses that David is appealing to the grace of God. And he's actually ransacking his vocabulary, calling sin by all these different names. He's saying, be gracious to me, O God, according to your loving kindness, according to the greatness of your compassion,

blot out my transgressions, wash me from my iniquity, cleanse me from my sin. He's just saying, what I've done is, if you think about a transgression is when he goes too far and David had. Iniquity is rebellion and that's what he had. And sin is an offense to God and that's what he's beginning to recognize.

And he knows that God rightly punishes sin. So here's what David is not doing. David is not coming to God with this overly gallivanting spirit. Well, God's just going to forgive me. No big deal. People that confess their sins and use the grace of God like a credit card are abusing what grace is. David is appealing to the grace of God. He's not demanding cleansing. He doesn't run away from God. He runs to God, but he's not coming to God appealing to his own goodness. He's not saying, God, you know me. This is a mistake.

I've written 50 of the Psalms. I'm a man after your own heart. I've defeated your enemies. He's not appealing to any of the Psalms. I'm a man after your own heart. I've defeated your enemies. He's not appealing to any of his own goodness. He consistently appeals to the goodness of God. David is not saying, God, forgive me because I'm not so bad and I've not done as bad as other people. He's saying, God, please forgive me

because you're so gracious. And I think we often get this wrong. We try to diminish and minimize our sin He's saying, God, please forgive me because you're so gracious. And I think we often get this wrong. We try to diminish and minimize our sin so that our sin is palatable in the eyes of God. Therefore, his forgiveness of our sin is rational in our mind. But true confession is always appealing to grace, not by minimizing our badness, but by magnifying God's goodness. Yeah, so it's an open-handed acceptance of where we've fallen short. This is what I'm hearing you say. And then it's an appeal to his grace and just the compassionate nature of God. Is that right?

Yeah. We're appealing to the character of God. And I just mean by that confession is always humble because when you're appealing for grace, you're appealing for something that you cannot give yourself. And so it's necessarily broken. And we'll talk about that more. So that would be the first one, appealing for grace. The second would be a craving for total cleansing. In verse two, again, David says, wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. In verse seven, David says, purify me with hyssop and I shall be clean. Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow. Hyssop was a branch used by the priest to really sprinkle blood on a house that had been diseased. And it was used to declare

that house or individual in some cases clean. And this is what David is asking for. He's not just asking for forgiveness. He doesn't just want a spring cleaning. He wants total cleansing from his sin. Everything that is defiled within his heart, he wants God to go in and purify. And I think even in verse nine, he's going to say, hide your face from my sin, blot out my iniquities. So he's saying wash me. Then he's going to say, purify me. Then he's going to say, blot out all my iniquities. David is not, this is a key component of confession. David is not clinging on to any remnants of his sin. He wants sin to be abandoned

and he wants God to go in and totally purify his motive, his affections. At this point, David has begun to see sin for what it really is. And he's not trying to, you know, there's, I think the Puritans used to say, a lot of us treat our sin like Moses's mother did with Moses in the weeds.

We remove it, but we know exactly where to go find it. And David's like, no, I don't want that. I want you to clean house you know refiners fire yeah he's he's craving restoration total uh renewal and complete covering keep going so those we've we've covered two of the five he's appealing for grace number one secondly he's craving for cleansing and then third dav David, just a hallmark of confession is he has an understanding of the seriousness of sin. In verse three, he says, for I know my transgressions and my sin is ever before me. So he understands, I guess, the extensiveness of sin. He says it's

ever before me. David isn't saying, hey, this is a minor slip up on an otherwise perfect track record. David says, no, I'm a sinner. I am not a sinner because I sin. I sin because I'm a sinner at my very core. We're going to see this in a minute, but David understands the extensiveness of sin. Then he's going to understand really the direction of sin in verse four against you. And you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight. This is interesting, right? David says against you only have I sinned. Who has David sinned against? Well, he sinned against Bathsheba because he brought her to the palace and slept with her. He sinned against Uriah because he murdered him. He sinned against Joab by involving him in his conspiracy. He sinned against the entire nation because he's polluted the palace, the king who's supposed to be a broker between

God and his people. But here's what David is getting at. David understands that sin is always ultimately vertical before it's horizontal. He understands that sin is more than anything an offense before God. And so he understands sin's extensiveness. It's always before me. He understands sin's direction. And then he understands really the pervasiveness of sin in verse five. He says, behold, I was brought forth in iniquity and in sin my mother conceived me. David is understanding. He gets it. Sin's not what I do. It's who I am. Expound on that point a little bit more. So I think for the person, that might be actually a relatively new concept.

So the Christian may understand my personal iniquity before God. I know I have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. But actually speak just for a second. Maybe clarify the positional reality that all of us are actually born into sin. Maybe I'll phrase it in a question. Is everyone born into sin? You said we're not sinners because we sin, but we're sinners because we're sinners. We sin because we're sinners. Okay. Yeah. Clarify that more just for a second. Yeah. It's just the idea that there's no such thing as a person who's born a

Christian. There's also no such thing as a person that is born morally neutral. Ephesians 2.1 says that we are dead in our trespasses and sins. It says in Ephesians 2.3 that we are children of wrath, even as the rest. The rest of what? The rest of mankind. Romans 10.13 says that there is no one righteous, not even one. All of them. Isaiah 53, verse 6, all of us like sheep have gone astray. Each of us have gone our own way.

Why the all, all, every, every, you know, Romans 3, 23, for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Why do all sin and fall short of the glory of God? Because we're all born sinners. And so that's a biblical reality. We, again, yeah, we're not morally neutral. God doesn't come to save people that have gone the wrong road or gone down the wrong road or have taken a wrong turn.

He comes to save people who are at their very core, radically depraved, totally corrupt. That's not to say that they've all sinned to the capacity they could have sinned, but that sin infiltrates who they are to the very core. So that's the pervasiveness of sin. And David is beginning to understand this. And in fact, a guy like David may have been the guy that is finally beginning to understand

that verse for the first time. Because if you've grown up, you've never done any of the big sins, you can begin to think, no, I'm otherwise pretty good. And then I have some slip ups and some, but the Bible says, no, you're not fundamentally good. You're fundamentally wretched and uh david is beginning to understand that who i am at a very core apart from god is depraved so there's an understanding of the seriousness of sin it's extensiveness it's direction it's

pervasiveness and then number four here there's a desire for transformation this is a key thing that I don't think a lot of people think through, that confession and repentance. It's not just saying to God, you're sorry. It's asking and pleading with him to change you. David says in verse 10, create in me a clean heart, O God, renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me away from your presence. Don't take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy your presence. Don't take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and sustain me with a willing spirit. David's saying, I don't wanna just be forgiven.

I want a clean heart. I don't want this dirty heart anymore. I want a steadfast spirit. I don't want a duplicitous, wavering, isolating spirit anymore. Sin is not worth it to me. So he's saying, don't take your Holy Spirit from me. And here's kind of the interesting thing. He says, restore to me the joy of your salvation.

So this is important. Had David lost his salvation? No. Because why? Well, you can't lose your salvation, but what had David lost? His joy. He's lost the joy of salvation. He's lost the, really the, the subjective experience of the Christian life. Meaning that if you're a Christian, there's nothing you can ever do that can make you be unadopted. God's not going to put you back for adoption. You've already been blood bought, right? But there is a reality that we can lose the joy of knowing God. And David is really, he's broken over this. He desires transformation. Even if you look at verse 17, David says,

the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. He's just saying, hey, the sacrifices that God is really after here is not just an animal sacrifice to him to prove that I'm sorry. The sacrifices of God is true brokenness. I see sin for what it is. I'm broken and contrite, which means my heart is in a humble state. And it's a remorse here that leads to true repentance. Paul in 2 Corinthians 7 talks about remorse that leads to nothing.

People cry over their sin, they wail and they weep. I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry. And Paul just says, hey, God doesn't care if you weep and wail, if you don't change. And David is saying here, my contrition, true brokenness is coupled by my desire to be transformed. I want a new heart. I want you new heart.

I want you to renew, because he had it at one time, a steadfast spirit within me. He's just saying, God, make me love you like I used to. And it makes me think about our conversation just a couple episodes ago, back when we started with fighting sin. It seems like the fundamental promise of the temptation of sin is that it's

going to bring us some sense of joy or some sense of fulfillment that we're lacking in the present moment. And yet, David in Psalm 51 is unpacking the consequences of his temporary fulfillment of the pleasure he was seeking on the roof when he looks at Bathsheba has wrought devastation in his life very practically. And then to your point, it's robbing him of a much deeper, meaningful joy that he has in his unity with the Lord that sin's gotten in the way of. And so back to your point, the confession is giving us the transformation to be renewed back into that right union with God. Is that right? Yeah, and I think the quote is, sin will take you further than you ever anticipated. It'll keep you longer than you ever wanted to stay, and it'll affect more people

than you ever thought it would affect. And King David is beginning to understand that. He's also beginning to understand that sin never delivers on its promises. So at this point, David is empty. In Psalm 32, he says, when I kept silent about my sin, he says, my body felt like it was breaking. Like there are physical consequences for spiritual rebellion. He says, I felt like I thought I was

being drained by the fever heat of summer. So far from sin delivering the superior satisfaction, sin is sapping, it's draining, it's not invigorating, it's enervating, it's depleting. And David's just like, what I want more than anything at this point is for God to renew a steadfast spirit within me and to give me back the joy that I once had when I was walking with him. So that's the fourth hallmark. And the fifth would be a determination to praise God.

And I say this because sometimes people confess their sins and they try to prove to God how sorry they are by hanging their head and beating their breasts. And there is a right place for a contrition. That's what David says. But David understands that confession, especially for a child of God, always ends in thanksgiving.

Because if we keep our sin center stage, there's no one that gets the glory. But the glory in the aftermath of confession is always directed at God because we get to thank him that 1 John 1 9 says, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us of our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. So there's a determination to praise. In verse 12, or actually in verse 14, he says, deliver me from my blood guiltiness, oh God, the God of my salvation. Then my tongue will joyfully sing of your righteousness.

Then he's gonna say in verse 15, open my lips, oh Lord, that my mouth may declare your praise. Then he's gonna say in verse 18, by your favor, do good to Zion, build the walls of Jerusalem. Then you will delight in righteous sacrifices and burnt offerings and whole burnt offering.

He's just saying, God, because of your forgiveness, I want you to use me as a vessel to declare your grace to the world around me. You know, it's amazing just in light of David's life that David is still identified as a hero in the bible and uh i'm always thankful for that you know abraham lied moses was a murderer elijah was depressed and suicidal david committed adultery and murdered noah was a drunk at that part after the flood and it just is a reminder,

there's no perfect heroes. There's only a perfect savior. And David is determined in the aftermath of confessing his sin to not wallow in shame, but to stand up and rejoice that God is a forgiving and gracious God. And that's why David can say in Psalm 103, bless the Lord on my soul and forget none of his benefits. What's the greatest benefits? And he just says, who forgives us of all of our iniquities. I mean, I think David was grateful, don't you? Yeah, absolutely. Can we talk maybe tactically for one second? So everything you've described to this point has been vertical in orientation. And to your point earlier, even in the text in Psalm 51, David clearly states that first and foremost,

the sin was grievous to God and he wants to be restored to God. Maybe just talk for a minute on, is there a place and a time that we're to be called to be confessing to one another? Is there any thoughts that you would help calibrate confession amongst brothers or confession amongst family members in the family of God? Yeah, well, you know, biblically speaking in James 5.16, it says to confess your sins to

one another so you may be healed. I think in that passage, it's referring to people that even were sinning to such degrees that there was physical manifestations of spiritual rebellion. But there is a place for confession to one another, especially if you sin directly towards that person, right? Like you should ask for forgiveness. That's why Ephesians 4.32 says, be kind to one another, forgiving one another, even as Christ has forgiven you. But there's another place for confessing to one another

in the Christian life. And I think it's because of this, that when you confess your sin to someone else, you're basically dragging that sin into the light, right? And I think a lot of times that idea is synonymous with accountability, but really it's confessing is to say, hey, I struggle with this. This is the reality of my life. And what that person does, not that they're offering you ultimate forgiveness, but when

you confess your sin to someone, they get to be a champion and extension of God's grace and love to you. And they get to remind you that Jesus Christ paid for that sin, that you're dead to sin. They get to remind you of your union with Christ and say, you're no longer under the dominion of Satan or of your sin. You're dead to that. And then they're in the fight with you. And so I think there is definitely, biblically speaking, of course, a place for confessing your sins to one another. Your sin is ultimately before God, and you can be forgiven by God and not be forgiven by someone else. But the reason that confession is so important from a vertical perspective, and then consequently also a horizontal perspective, is because it always ends in a celebration of the

grace of God. That's what the body of Christ does, is they can help you see your sin for what it is. They can help you understand that it's dangerous and not satisfying. And then they can say in Champion, 1 John 1, 9, if you confess your sins, God is faithful and righteous to forgive you of your sin and to cleanse you from all unrighteousness. And you can have that verse memorized

and doubt it in your heart. And so then they can turn it back onto you and say, friend, God is faithful and righteous and your sin is cleansed. And the sin that I'm so quick to forget or fail to believe is what the body of Christ gets to compound and cement within my heart and mind. Yeah's it's such good news right fundamentally i mean i think i i'm sure you can relate but personally i just i'm reflecting as you're talking on different parts and portions of my own life where i've read through that psalm in just contrite broken spirit over brokenness in my own life and the amazing news of the gospel of the cross is that there's actually a response to that confession. And so to your point, maybe just summarize, and you can put a bow on the

conversation, that the cross's role or Jesus's role in confession is actually giving us confidence and restoration as opposed to giving us some kind of free license to think that going on sinning or holding sin lightly in light of the cross and in light of the cross is actually the reason what I'm hearing you say the cross is the reason we go back and we ask for forgiveness over and over again with some degree of confidence. You know there's so much truth in that you know obviously Romans 6 Paul says shall we continue to sin so that grace may abound may it never be and people are why would I confess my sins if Jesus already paid for them? And you would just say, no, no, the cross is not the reason you don't ask. The cross provides you with the

confidence that when you do ask, the answer will be forgiven by Jesus Christ and paid in blood 2000 years ago. And so part of it is just confession is, is obedience. We are to confess our sins. So if you're asking why, the Bible says so would be one of the answers. One of the other answers would be so that you can be receptive of the cleansing of your conscience and that even the believer still has this element

of a violated and pricked conscience where they know they've grieved God. And that's even why in Hebrews, it says that God not only forgives us of our sin, he also has the power to cleanse our conscience. And David had this on his conscience. He was going to bed at night with this on his conscience. That's why he says he was being drained because he was living two lives at one time. He felt the duplicitous nature of his life. And so, yeah, we cling to the cross in our confession and we say, thank you and amen, Jesus, that you forgive me. Why? Because in him, there's redemption,

the forgiveness of our sins, because he died for us, he rose for us. And I'm so thankful for that reality. So. Yeah, I think that's a good place to end it. I mean, I appreciate you walking us through over the last few weeks, even the three different elements of the pursuit of holiness. I think it's an often overlooked portion of the Christian life. Yeah. No, thank you, Hank.

And thank you for sitting down. We'll pick this up in future weeks, but appreciate you, brother. Yeah, absolutely. Always good to be on.