The Church of Eleven22 - S02E08 - Confess Your Sins to One Another

Episode Date: May 31, 2021

Confession matters. When you're confessing your sins to one another, you're not confessing so that you may be forgiven, you're confessing that you HAVE BEEN forgiven. Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working. - James 5:16

Welcome to Deepen with Pastor Joby Martin. The Church of 1122 is a movement for all people to discover and deepen a relationship with Jesus Christ. And we're praying this message helps you deepen your relationship with him. Now let's dive in. Hey, church family, welcome to deepen. If you got your Bible, we're going to end up in James Chapter 5. But just as a recap from the sermon this weekend, we talked about the woman at the well. John chapter 4 verses 1 to 45.

and you'll remember, this is a woman who had been through it. She had had a bunch of husbands, the guy that she was living with now was not her husband. She was hanging out at the well during midday because she didn't want to be around people. And Jesus encounters her and meets her right where she is, which is really good news for us. Is it not? Man, even if you're an outcast in society or the church or whatever, then you're not outside. of the reach of the loving arms of Jesus Christ. So he sits down with her, and they had this conversation,

and Jesus is trying to talk to her about spiritual things, and she's trying to dodge it with theological questions. Like, where are we going to worship? That mountain or your mountain, you know, and arguing about Jacob's Well and all this kind of stuff. And then Jesus offers her eternal life, and she kind of misses it. You know, he says, I want to give you living water. and then he takes her to the point in the conversation where she seems to be interested.

And again, I talked about this weekend. And then Jesus does the craziest thing is, listen, in my evangelism training, what you do when you get somebody to that point where they answer your question with, what must do I do to have eternal life? Can I please have some of that living water? Then you close the deal right there. You pray the prayer, you ask them to admit that they're a sinner in need of a Savior, believe that when Christ died on the cross, that counted for them,

and then confess Christ as Lord and Savior. And then you could fill in all the discipleship later. That's not what Jesus does. Right in the moment where it looks like he's about to close the deal on her eternal life, he starts digging around in the deepest, darkest places of her life. He says, go get your husband. Now, this could derail the whole conversation because it's the reason she's avoiding people

to be at the well at this point. I'm sure this is what she's embarrassed about. This is what she's regrets. And you know what? The things that you and I are most embarrassed of in our life, those are the things that Jesus came to die on the cross for. I think what Jesus is exhibiting at the well is this. The fake is doing just fine.

But if you want a real relationship with me, I need you to bring the real you to me. And he opens up the door for her to step through and confess her deepest, darkest sins and secrets. Which leads me to the one another we're going to look at in our time today. James chapter 5 verse 16 says this, confess your sins to one another. Now, I know a bunch of you grew up Catholic, so you have grown up with confession.

The reason that we don't have confession in the Protestant church is because the Bible says that we don't need a human priest to carry our prayers to God, but that Jesus Christ, once and for all, is the great high priest, and because he is our great high priest, and he lives in us when he died on the cross, the curtain tore between the presence of God and the people of God, and now, through the blood of Jesus Christ, we don't need an advocate to go before God on our behalf because Jesus is our advocate. Therefore, any of us, any of us who are in Christ, are a part of what is known as the priesthood of believers. So I'm not a priest that carries your prayers to God. I'm a preacher that shares the Word of God with you so that you can have your own

conversations with God. And one of the things, though, that I think that Protestants have often done is in an effort maybe to be not Catholic, in some instances, they've thrown out the baby with the bath border, and confession might be one of them. And the reason I say that is because James 516, confess your sins to one another. So let me give you the context of where this comes. Remember also, James is the brother of Jesus, and he writes these words, James chapter 5, is anyone among you suffering? So you already see here that James is going to have an understanding that when the church reads this text, there are going to be people all over the map. That every single weekend, sitting in church services, there are suffering people.

I think it's similar to Jesus talking to the woman at the well, because he knew that on the surface she was trying to act like everything was okay, but deep down in her heart, everything wasn't okay. And so is anyone among you suffering? Let me just ask that question. Is anyone among you watching right now suffering? And it could be relational suffering. It could be financial suffering.

It could be physical suffering. One of the hardest ones for the believer, for the Christian. It could be mental suffering. Did you know that the mental health impact that this COVID pandemic and subsequent lockdowns has had, particularly on our younger generations, between 14 and 34, the number of suicides has almost tripled. The number of depression cases has more than doubled. There's a lot of suffering going on in our world right now. And so what the Bible that's going to instruct us to do is not to hide it, but to bring it. Is anyone among you,

you suffering. And if your answer is yes, he says, let him pray. Let him pray. So if you're suffering, you bring that to the Lord immediately. Then he says, is anyone cheerful. Well, thank God this is in here. Because hopefully every time we show up together with the saints at church, it's not just a big suffering fest, that'd be terrible.

But there are also people that are cheerful, that God is blessing you right now in specific ways, that His grace is upon you in a tangible way because he's a good daddy. He loves good gifts to his kids. And if that's you, you don't need to hide that either. And so he says, then let him sing praise. So there's all kind of folks in all kind of different stages of life.

Then he says, is anyone among you sick? And again, this for sure could be physical sickness, but it could also be mental sickness. It also could be heart sickness, relational sickness. The Bible says, hope deferred makes the heart sick. I think I'd rather have a sick body than a sick heart. Because there's a lot of people that look out at circumstances today and they look at them and they think, man, this is hopeless. And anybody that feels like they're in a hopeless situation, they have a sick

heart. All right, James, what do we do if somebody among us is sick? He says, let him call for the elders of the church and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. So by the way, at our church, this is what we do. And I'm going to be honest, I grew up Southern Baptist, and I had never been to a healing service or an anointing service in our church, okay? Maybe I just missed those because I didn't go all the time. I don't know. But part of the reason we do healing and anointing services here at 1122

is because we are people of the book and we're just going to do what the book says. And so James just, he just makes it clear. Anybody's sick? anybody's suffering? We're going to get some prayer warriors. We're going to get some men of authority. We're going to anoint with oil. Oil was a picture of the spirit of God being upon someone.

Jesus's title, Messiah, means the anointed one. And because he was anointed to go to the cross on our behalf and take our place, and because by his stripes we are healed, then as a picture of us being grafted into him, we take that oil and we put it on the head. of the suffering and the sick, and then we pray. Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church.

Let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. This is how we know that our healing is in the cross, because our forgiveness is found in the cross. He says, therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another that you may be healed.

Now, when you are confessing your sins to one another, you're not confessing that you may be forgiven, you are confessing that you have been forgiven. This is key, man, this is key. And oftentimes this can be a misinterpretation or a misunderstanding of why confession matters. We don't confess our sins so that then God will forgive us of our confessed sins. No, no, no, no.

We were forgiven the moment you surrendered your life to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. You were forgiven once and for all and forever from all the sins of the past, the sins you currently deal with, and even your unsigned sins that are coming in the future. Why? Because to tell us, it is finished, paid in full, once and for all, all of your sins. Well, if that's the case, then why are you coming? confessing. And here's why, because healing is connected to the confession of sins. Our healing is connected to the gospel. And here's what I mean. Here's why confession matters.

One is gross things grow in the dark. And there may be some unconfessed things that you've never told anyone to. And you need to confess them. You need to say them out loud. There are power in your words. And Jesus, Jesus has already been to the cross to pay for it. And you know, the thing that you're trying to hide away. And I am just telling you, if there's anything that you are embarrassed of or ashamed of, the enemy is going to continuously use those things to whisper lies of condemnation. And a part of what we do when we confess our sin is we line ourselves up with Romans 8.1, therefore now there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. And so when the enemy tries to bring up your sin, you look back at him and you go, you know what, it's actually worse than

you thought. And I confess, I am a sin. in need of a Savior. Gross things grow in the dark. Secondly, people can't really love you if they don't really know you. And we have been called into community. And so how in the world does your disciple group know how to pray for you if you're not honest with them about what you're struggling with? Which leads me to this, do you have a place or a people that you can confess your sins to? because when you have that kind of community, when you know that you have nothing to hide and they love you anyway,

because Christ loves us, there is freedom in that place, and that leads to healing. In Christ, you were already healed. In Christ, you were already forgiven. So, walk in it. The reason we confess, it reminds us of our need for the gospel.

The reason that we confess, It invites other people into our life for help. The reason that we confess our sins to one another is we bring our sins into the light where it can be dealt with. And this is the key to disarming the enemy with his lies and deceptions. And then, I love the way James ends this. He says, the prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working. The prayer of a righteous person.

Are you a righteous person? Now, if you say no, and you claim Christ as your Savior, then you need to understand this theological term called imputed righteousness. When the Bible says the prayer of a righteous person, it does not mean a person that only always does right things. It means a person that has a right standing before God. And when you surrendered your life to Christ, he took all of your sin, and our sin was imputed to him at the cross, and his perfect life, his right standing with God, was imputed. His righteousness was imputed or credited or counted to us.

That means that when James says the prayer of a righteous person has great power, it's talking about the prayer of anybody that is a person who's surrendered to Jesus. And then he gives an example. Elijah, Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth. And then he prayed again, and heaven gave rain, and the earth bore its fruit. that Elijah's just a dude, man.

I know he's an Old Testament prophet, and he could do miracles, but his nature was like your nature. He got angry and he got sad, and he was insecure, and all the things. He was a sinner just like you and I. And yet, and yet, because of his faith in God, that he, who was just a regular guy,

he prayed and he turned off the spigot from heaven from three and a half years and it didn't rain. And then one day he prayed and he turned it back on. And what James wants us to know is that if Elijah could do that, then God could use you to do things you can never imagine. Like, confess your sins to one another that you may be healed. Now listen, I know a bunch of you folks listen to this kind of casually. You're working out, you're running, you're driving your car, whatever. On this one, and I don't often give homework.

On this one, I want you to take some serious time with the Lord. In just a minute, I'm going to pray for us, and I want you to start. stay in that posture of prayer. And is there anything in your life? Some secrets, some sin, something you're embarrassed of, something that the enemy continuously uses to condemn you. And if you would say, yeah, yeah, here's the thing I haven't told anybody. This sin that I've just been holding on to because I'm so ashamed of it.

Like Jesus says, go get your husband. Meaning I want to talk about that thing that you are most embarrassed of, and you bring that to Jesus. and a part of the way you bring it to Jesus is you confess your sins to one another that we may be healed. Let's pray. God, I ask for healing.

I mean miraculous, life-changing, chain-breaking, shackled-dropping, spirit-filled, down to the soul level. Therefore, now there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, kind of healing.

Lord, I pray that we could have the bold, to confess our sins to one another because our sins don't define us. Our Savior defines us through and through. And God, I pray in advance for the freedom that will be experienced in your people when we look not to our past to define us, but we look to your cross. We pray it in Jesus' name. Amen. Thank you for joining us for Deepen with Pastor Jobi Martin. If you're looking for additional resources to help you further deepen your relationship with you. Jesus Christ, visit co.22.com slash resources. We're praying this message you heard today helps you experience God in a unique and fresh way. And as always, be free.