All right, we are still working through the Peacemaker book. If you have a copy of it, great. It is a fantastic resource. Hope that you have enjoyed reading it and have been convicted many, many times, I'm sure. If you take your Bible and turn to 2 Corinthians 7, we're going to spend a few minutes looking at something that is really tricky, which is How do you know the difference between repentance and just sad you got caught, right? Are you sad for your sin, or are you sad you got caught? And the Bible talks about this, and it describes it in two different categories. And the Bible calls it, or Paul here, in describing it to the Corinthian church, calls it godly sorrow. Which one is on the left here? Do I have worldly sorrow? Yes. So he calls it worldly sorrow. Try to keep it. and godly sorrow. So it's important to recognize there's a difference between these two, that when someone comes weeping and wailing about their sin, that doesn't necessarily mean that they're genuinely repentant. That is not equivalent. What is the difference between these two? Well, and I think that a lot of us will identify with this, because I think we've all been on both sides of this, probably. Or at least we've all been on the worldly side. Hopefully we've been also godly sorrowfully as well. But look at 2 Corinthians 7, look at 9 and 10. 2 Corinthians chapter 7, verses 9 and 10, he says, now I rejoice, not that you were made sorry, but that your sorrow led to repentance. For you were made sorry in a godly manner. that you might suffer loss from us in nothing. For godly sorrow produces repentance leading to salvation, not to be regretted. But the sorrow of the world, or worldly sorrow, produces death. If you keep reading, I'm going to read through the rest of this. He doesn't actually deal with this in the book, but I think it's helpful. He says in verse 11, for observe this very thing that you sorrowed in a godly manner. And this is the signs of godly sorrow biblically. He says, notice what diligence it produced in you, what clearing of yourselves, what indignation, what fear, what vehement desire, what zeal, what vindication, and all things you prove yourselves to be clear in the matter. The first key identifier of someone who has worldly sorrow rather than godly sorrow is, how I said at the beginning, is sad you were caught, okay? You're upset, the sorrow kicks in right when you're caught, okay? You're sad you're caught, doing wrong. What's the opposite? What is the godly sorrow version of this? Why is someone godly sorrow? Why is someone full of godly sorrow? Not because they were caught, but because what? Because they sinned. Because they offended God. Yes, they offended God. Notice the difference in focus here. What is this focused on? Me, right? Self. I got caught. What is this focused on? Who is this focused on? God, right? So I am sad that I have offended God, not that I just got caught. Secondly, sad because you must suffer consequences, right? My reference point right now is children, right? Because I have kids. And it's like, no, not that, anything but that and the wailing. And it kicks into high gear. They're fine until you tell them the consequences. And it's like, no, no. And this is a serious problem, right? You're sad, but then you're really sad that you're losing something. You're really sad about the consequences of your behavior, your sin. Whereas, on the other side, sincerely regretting you did morally wrong, whether or not you suffer consequences. Okay? You should be grieved in your heart when you sin, even if nothing bad comes from it. Nothing bad, as in no consequences are necessary, should bother you, right? Grief, godly sorrow. We keep going here. Because your thinking doesn't change, this is kind of, if you could even draw a line here, I didn't do it in your sheet, but we're dealing now with kind of the root of worldly sorrow and godly sorrow. He says, because thinking doesn't change, the sinner's grief or bad feelings eventually wear off and he will return to his bad behavior. Okay, so worldly sorrow does not involve lasting change because the person, it's feeling-based. And what happens with feelings is eventually they wear off, and no longer are you sad, and you return to the behavior with the added goal of not getting caught again. Okay, because what brought the sorrow? Not the sin. What brought the sorrow was what? getting caught. So now you just have a more technical way of doing your sin to keep from getting caught, right? So that's worldly sorrow. Whereas godly sorrow is not always accompanied by intense feelings. Okay, this is where it can be a little bit tricky because as a parent or if you're working with someone and they're not emotionally responding. I'm sorry, I skipped one. Go back up one. It involves a change of heart. It involves a change of heart, which is possible only when you see your offense as an offense against God. 2 Chronicles 6, 37-39 speaks of sinning against God. We're not going to turn there right now, but you can look at it later if you want. You see the sin ultimately as a sin against God, not just as a sin against the other person. So you're talking about here a change of heart is the key. And if you have a change of heart, that may or may not be accompanied by intense feelings. There is a change of thinking, which would lead to a change of behavior, but it may or may not be a change. You may or may not have this massive response, like tears. In fact, do you remember the song, is it Rock of Ages? where he says, yeah, but he says, in fact, did somebody find that? I should have written this down. I really, really like this Augustus Toplady, I think is the name of the guy who wrote it, who is English, if I'm not mistaken. Rock of Ages. I should have looked this up. I'm sorry. 392, OK, if you want to look there, you can. But he says this in this poem he's talking about, because at this time when he's writing this song, there was a huge emphasis on emotions in worship, where people, it's like, if you're not crying at the altar, are you really worshipping God? And in our culture today, if you're not waving and dancing, are you really worshipping? And what he says here, he says, Second stanza, not the labors of my hands can fulfill thy law's demands. Could my zeal, no respite, no. Could my tears forever flow. These for sin cannot atone. Thou must save, and thou alone. He's saying it's not about your emotions. It's not about your feelings. It's about what God did for you. So same thing here. Godly sorrow is connected not necessarily to feelings. It can be, but it is connected to a change of heart or of repentance. Repentance at its core is a change of thinking. It's a change of heart. It's a change of mind that should result in some sort of change of behavior as well. Any questions on this godly sorrow versus worldly sorrow? I have some other, as you're thinking about questions, one of the things I often tell people who are wondering if the person they're talking to is expressing worldly sorrow or godly sorrow, is I ask them, have they told you anything you don't already know? Right? In repentance. Let's say you catch your kid doing something. They shouldn't be doing. You come downstairs, they're on the computer, they're looking at something they shouldn't be looking at on the computer. And you say, what were you doing? Oh, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. I shouldn't have been doing that. Yes, you shouldn't have been doing that. Well, you know. You talk about it and you say, OK, I'm so sorry that I looked at that one thing. OK, have you ever looked at any other things? Oh, no. It's the first time ever. OK? So the chances of that being true are next to nothing. that you just happen to walk in on your child and the very first time they did something wrong? No. I mean, when someone is godly sorrowful, they are sad that they've offended God, there's also a sense of unworthiness over here. Unworthiness, right? Where you say, I'm not worthy. I am so full of sorrow. Yeah, what did I do? There's a roach. Oh. He's gone. The people watching online really missed the show there. OK. Yes, ma'am. And similar to what you said about consequences, another thing that is a key that I think when that tells you someone's not repentant is when they try to negotiate. Yeah. When people try to negotiate the consequences, when they say, well, OK, but I, or no, no, no, I'm not going to do that. Or when someone is truly repentant, they say, whatever. Like, I'll do whatever it takes to be right, because, I'm sad that I made God, that I offended God, and they're really wanting to get things right. And so there is, if you look at the rest of 2 Corinthians 7, he talks about diligence, clearing, indignation, fear, zeal, vindication, clearing of your name. That happens when someone has a clear conscience. They want to give you, I mean, I've talked to people who repent and they repent of more than what you knew about. And that's when you start, okay, now I know that they're being serious because I didn't know about that, I didn't know about that, I didn't know about that, and they're telling me all this stuff I didn't know about, which is great because then they're showing that they're really clearing the deck. They're not just telling you just what you know. So our goal is not to be detectives. I want to make that clear. Our goal is not to be Sherlock Holmes. Your goal is not to solve all the crimes. Your goal is to help people be reconciled to God. So let's keep going. We mentioned this. We started out with this last week. What are some token statements that are not confessions, such as, I'm sorry if I hurt you? That's saying that's your fault. Right? It's your fault that you're hurt. It's not my fault. I'm sorry. If I hurt you, it's possible that I didn't hurt you. Let's just forget the past. Let's move past without any kind of reconciliation. I suppose I could have done a better job. I guess it's not all your fault. I'm sorry you took it that way. Yeah, I'm sorry you're not sophisticated enough to understand my sense of humor or my, you know, that kind of, it's basically an accusation against you. It's almost like, it feels like, it sounds like an apology at first, but really it's a dagger. These things are not appropriate for Christians to participate in. In the book he gives us a lot of areas where it's easy to sin. I'm just going to kind of walk through some of these. I didn't put this on the list because on your sheet, but like these are some areas where it's very easy for us to sin, such as our tongue. He says using your tongue as a weapon when you grumble, When you use reckless words, when you speak falsehoods, when you gossip, when you slander, worthless talk, all these things are areas where it's very easy for us to sin. This is not on your sheet, sorry. I just, I left it off because I didn't feel like you needed more sins listed on your sheet. Another way it's easy to sin is to control others. Think about Laban and his controlling attitude in the book of Genesis. If you're going to be reading the Bible through in a year, which I encourage you to do, you'll be coming up on Laban's story pretty quickly and his attempts to control, breaking your word or lying, failing to respect authority, forgetting the golden rule, Matthew 7, serving sinful desires such as improper desire for pleasure, pride, a desire to always be right, love of money or possessions, fear of man, et cetera. So we need to be careful in how we can send with our, these are areas that we have to be aware of that we might have to ask forgiveness for. So let's talk about confession. This is really, really good because I think confession is a misunderstood, and an underappreciated or actually underdeveloped, we have an underdeveloped sense of what we're talking about when we say confession. I was talking with a couple one time at my office who had been married for probably about six or seven years. And there had been some unreconciled issues with them. And so I asked them, I said, have you ever dealt with this? They said, yeah. I said, well, have you dealt with all these things? Oh, yeah, we dealt with them. I said, walk me through this. What does it look like when you say you dealt with it? Well, I say, I'm sorry. And he says, no problem. Or he says, I'm sorry. And she says, OK. And I said, OK. And I actually opened up this book. I said, I want you to see, here's an extensive way to deal with what confession really looks like. The first A, there's seven A's here. The first A is address everyone involved. We need to walk through all of these. Address everyone involved. So that means if you've sinned against God and someone else, who do you have to address? God and someone else. If you've sinned against your spouse and God, can you just ask God to forgive you? Or do you also have to ask your spouse to forgive you? You have to ask both. Anyone who's involved. If your kids are in the car when you blow up at your wife, who has to be addressed? Everyone. Now, if they're not involved, do they have to be addressed? No, not necessarily. You need to address all the people who are involved in the situation. The second thing is to avoid if, but, or maybe. Avoid the words if, but, or maybe. And these are all hedge words. If you go back, I'm sorry, I skipped over one little thing here. I started to get into it, but I forgot. When you talk about addressing everyone involved, there are two kinds of sins here. There are heart sins, and there are social sins. Heart sins are sins against God, like pride. Even anger towards someone can be a heart sin. So for example, if I'm angry, if I'm bitter towards Clint, like I just, I'm really jealous of something that he has, and I just, I'm bitter towards him. That is a heart sin that I have towards God. I actually don't need to go to him and ask him to forgive me for being jealous of his watch or something. Because he doesn't even know about it. It's completely in my mind. It's a heart sin. It's between me and God. I am being ungrateful for what God has given me when I'm jealous of someone else. He's not involved in his sin. If I lie to his face, now he's involved. That's a social sin. I now have to ask his forgiveness. But see, this is where that's helpful, because if you are If you are a man and you're lusting after a woman, what is that? It's a heart sin. It is inappropriate for you to go to that woman and ask her to forgive you for lusting after her. You laugh. But I've had people, I know, this happened one time in a youth group. One of the kids went, not lusting, but one of the boys went and asked one of the other kids to forgive him for not liking them and for being bitter against them. And the other kid was like, I had no idea. So when you're addressing everyone involved, recognize that if the person is not involved, like if it's a heart sin just between you and God, you don't need to bring that person into it. It can actually create problems. If you're going around saying, forgive me for hating you last week. I didn't even know you hated me last week. That's creating additional issues. So secondly, avoid if, but, and maybe. This shifts the blame to the victims of your sin. No confession. means when you say, if you don't confess, I'm sorry, let me look at my notes one second here. Oh, if you put the word but at the end of a sentence, what you're doing is you're canceling out everything that comes before it. So don't use the words if, if you, or maybe this, you're just, you're blaming it on them. Thirdly, admit specifically. Admit specifically. This is not confession. I mentioned this last time. Forgive me for everything. What does that even mean? It can mean anything, really. It can mean anything. So if you say forgive me for everything or forgive me for all the things I've done to you, that's not specific. You need to be specific, because the person who you're asking to forgive you needs to know what you're asking to forgive. The more detailed you are in your confessions, the more likely a positive response will follow. So you need to be able to deal with both your attitudes and your actions. So admit specifically. Don't just admit generally. Let's keep going. You need to acknowledge the hurt. Acknowledge the hurt, say, I know how this must have made you feel. Show you understand how you made that person feel by your sin. Number five is accept the consequences. And this is going back to what we said earlier. When a person is not confessing the right way, they'll hedge or they'll try to negotiate the consequences. And they don't like the consequences. A person who is confessing will accept whatever consequences are appropriate. Next, alter your behavior. If you'll notice, this is important. Change. Make decisions to change what you're doing. Explain how you plan to change your behavior. So talk about your attitude. Talk about your character. So with God's help, I plan to have a specific goal, an objective. You might even ask for a suggestion from the person on how they think you should handle it or how they think you should do a better job next time. And lastly, you ask for forgiveness. And you allow for time. You allow for time. Because sometimes you might be ready to ask for forgiveness. The person you're asking to forgive you might need to process what you're asking them for a little while. And so you need to give them time to forgive you. And you can even say something like, look, I know I'm asking for forgiveness. I know it's a big request. And I know you might need some time to process this. But I'm going to give you time. I'm not demanding that you forgive me right now. So this is how it looks. Look at this. Address everyone involved. So husband, wife, say it's my wife. Say, Jenna, I'm very sorry. It was my fault. I take responsibility. I like to add in here, I sinned against you by fill in the blank. This is the admit specifically. I sinned against you by being sinfully angry. I know this must have made you feel hurt and belittled by my anger or whatever. I accept the consequences of this decision. Next time this happens, I plan to pray and ask God to give me grace, and I plan to speak with grace instead of anger. Would you please forgive me for my sinful behavior?" That's a hugely different strategy than just saying, hey, my bad. Or, hey, I'm sorry about that. Whoops. Maybe you shouldn't be so micromanage-y so I wouldn't lose my temper, right? Jenna, you had your hand up. I was just going to say, in addition to giving them time to forgive you, because sometimes, especially in the case where it's a hidden sin, they are just not finding out about it. And you've known about it for years or whatever. So they're just now. kind of, like you said, processing. But I think at the end of this, if they grant forgiveness, that is biblical reconciliation. That doesn't mean that things will just be warm and fuzzy or go back to normal. I think that, going back to your feelings comment, that biblical reconciliation is following this, asking for forgiveness and granting it, it doesn't always mean that sometimes one of the consequences is you're not going to have the same kind of relationship. Yeah, and we'll actually get into that more as the book goes on. We go on to talk about that last stage, go and be reconciled. So excellent point. But I want to go back to what you said at the beginning, which is that there are often, we call them timetables. We say you're on a different time frame. Timelines, thank you. There are different timelines often in this process. So let's say you have been inappropriately using money for your house, right? You've been taking money from the bank account without telling your spouse, and you've been spending it on something that she didn't approve of, and then all of a sudden, she discovers it. Or, let's make it the best possible. Let's say you become convicted by the Holy Spirit, and you go confess this to her. She doesn't discover it. You confess it. This is real repentance and confession. You walk through the whole process. You've been doing this for a year. You've drained thousands of dollars from your bank account. You confess this to her, you ask her to forgive you. She is hit with this information for the very first time. And you have been living with this for a year. So give her a little bit of time to process what you've just told her before you demand her forgive you right away. Because here's what happens sometimes as a person, as a sinner, confesses and is like, forgive me. And the person is like, I'm struggling to forgive you. And they're like, ha, see, I'm in the right now, and you're in the wrong. Feels good to be righteous. So you need to allow time. That's the process for this. Does that make sense? Do we need to clarify anything here? Any other questions or thoughts? Yeah, go ahead. Right, right. You've done your spot. Yeah, you've done your part. Yeah, and so actually that leads me really well into the next part, which is why do we even, what's the reason for our confession? Why do we confess? We make, we must confess our sins to one another in order to serve each other, not to make ourselves feel better or to get a burden off my chest. Okay, we do this to serve each other and to love each other. We confess for the right reasons. And what Duane's asking is just like, what if you ask and she or he or whoever you're asking to forgive you, needs a little bit of time, are you then to be wallowing in guilt or are you to be like in this limbo of, no, you've done your job. You have confessed the sin and it's up to them now to respond the right way. And go back even to what Jenna was saying a minute ago, it might mean that there are consequences that permanently alter your relationship. or your responsibilities. You might go to a boss and say, I've been siphoning off money from the company for a year, and now I want to confess this to you, and you will get fired. But you can still be forgiven and fired, right? You have consequences, but you've done the right thing. And so, yeah. So I think a key, especially in a marriage relationship, you get into things like sexual sin. Forgiveness can be asked when given, but rebuilding trust is a whole other level of reconciliation that don't happen instantaneously. Correct. And that kind of goes, what I was saying to Jenna earlier is that there's their whole go and be reconciled portion that's coming in the book later on. We talks about, about that, but like restoration and reconciliation are, I don't, I don't know if they're exactly the same. I think reconciliation can happen. Restoration takes time, right? So even what's amazing is, um, I was actually talking with Terry Hyman about this not too long ago. The story of Joseph has this little, there's an interesting thing that happens where Joseph and his brothers meet and are reconciled, but then there's all this like, this additional stuff that happens after that, where it's almost like he's testing them and then they get finally restored at the end. Like they're finally really restored at the end. And there's, it's just interesting. I don't know if that's a perfect test case for it, but there is true that restoration and reconciliation are not that you can be reconciled and there's still building that needs to take place. Deposits in the trust account that need to take place. Yes. I'm not sure there's a biblical, that we are biblically even allowed to command someone else to forgive us. We are commanded to forgive, but nowhere does it say that you need to make sure that person forgives you. That's on them. So I don't think it's even right to say, well, you've got to forgive me. I just don't think that's even a, Right, but people do it, right? People do it. They think, oh, I've asked forgiveness, and now you've got to forgive me, and I'm on my high horse. Oh, you know, I feel nice and righteous right now. I mean, I've done it. Have you ever done it? I've done it. Just to be honest, I've done that before. Yeah, it's a very common thing. And then you think, well, You know, she's not forgiving me or he's not forgiving me, so I'm good. We're really need to recognize that you've hurt them. And I think acknowledging the hurt, sometimes people, it just takes them a minute. And it's always great to see reconciliation happen. It should happen. But that's a good point. You can't command someone to forgive you, just like a husband can't command his wife to submit. His wife is supposed to submit herself to her husband. Marilyn, you were going to say something? I was just going to say something. On the other side, if you were the person who someone has gotten up the courage to do all the steps and it may not feel as serious to you. Take it as seriously as they're presenting. Oh yeah. Hypothetically speaking Micah may disobey at his grandparents house and we've gone through the talk and all this and he's ready to As for forgiveness and all, it makes them so uncomfortable. And it's like, it's okay. And then they stand there like, you know, he's expecting something different. That's okay, because we've already told him it's not okay. But, you know, it's just being sensitive as believers. Of course, I'm a believer, so it's just different for them. But being sensitive to the person coming to you that they've gotten up this courage and the grace of God to come to you and extending that forgiveness, even though it makes you feel uncomfortable that maybe you didn't know this one little thing happened or whatever. Yeah, I think that's a really great place we're going to wrap this up on this point, which is that if you are on the receiving side, if someone is confessing sin to you, Take them seriously. Don't discount them. Don't, don't, it will make you feel uncomfortable at times. So to go back to my story, what we, we, we helped this, this one couple that was, you know, had been married and, and we, I asked him, have you ever asked forgiveness of each other? And they said, I said, no, not really. I don't think so. Maybe, maybe once, maybe twice. And I thought, man, we do that all the time. You don't want to make it a ritual, like going through the steps. You can sense the steps are, OK, click in the step four. Now into accept responsibility. Here we go. Now it's time to alter my behavior. Once you go, oh, there it is. We don't want to make it like a ritual. But it ought to be regular. I think you ought, if you can seriously think about your, I think a lot of you are married here. If you think about your relationship with your spouse, Maybe your relationship is just perfect, like you just glide by and you don't ever have any conflicts, but if you are more normal, then you have conflicts with your spouse, and you need to get in that. You probably sin against your spouse more than you realize, and so here's the thing. Would you go to your spouse and say, hey, are there any things I've done to you that have I sinned against you recently that I'm not aware of that I need to ask your forgiveness for? And I don't know, it'd be interesting to ask. And if they say yes, you need to be restored to them. Now, they should have come to you and said, this is a sin, but not everybody has that courage to do that. And you open yourself up and be vulnerable like that and really seriously confess sin, it will help your relationship. Because that's how you get restored. I see it all the time with our children even, I'm going way over, I'm sorry. When you allow them, when you teach them how to do this, when you teach your kids how to ask forgiveness the proper way, it is so good because they recognize, okay, this is how, now we get restored relationship, now we're good, now our relationship is back where it needs to be and it's not just this, don't worry about it, sweep it under the rug, no big deal, forget about it kind of stuff. It's real reconciliation. Yes, ma'am. This is what you said, but we're looking at it from a standpoint of people have gone through the teaching. They've been taught on both sides how to respond biblically. But usually when we're dealing with people, there may be a party that has not been through the church teaching of how, or biblical teaching of how. So in the case of children particularly, If there's nothing, I don't think, wrong with going to the adult before the child ever comes and saying, this is the response, biblically, that we would like for you to use, because we're teaching. I mean, they may just say, oh, it's OK, because they don't know. They don't know, yeah. Yeah, that's true. And there's different ways you can handle this. And I don't know what y'all do, but I think it's a great idea to say, hey, this is what we're trying to teach our kids. So when we come, don't be surprised. Don't be like, oh, this is not a big deal. It is a big deal to our heart. So just be like, OK, just roll with it. Roll with it. It reminds me of a time my parents, I think my mom, brought us to the manager of the store because we broke something at Bilo. I remember I think I was brought to the manager one time, the manager. I was scared to death. Who is the manager? I didn't know, but it sounds so official. And this whole, I just wanted to show you that this young man broke this coupon dispenser on aisle four. And he's sitting there, OK, trying to cover up his laughter. And I'm like shaking in my boots that there is the manager looking down at me. It made a difference. I haven't touched coupon dispensers ever since. I'll let him go. Don't want to break one accidentally. Let's pray and we'll close. Father, we ask you to give us your grace as we seek to be reconciled with each other and to confess properly. Help us to walk in love and in truth and help us to have good relationships, not to cover sin, but to confess it and to do so with open heart. Grieve that we've offended you and Lord, I pray. Thank you that you give us forgiveness through Jesus Christ and through his shed blood on the cross. Give us a wonderful night.