Our Father in heaven, we thank you for how sure we may be of your mercy and. The fact that that certainty comes from your everlasting love, your son, whom you gave in that everlasting love, his perfect obedience, the completeness of his attending sacrifice. And that you give him and these things fully to us through the faith also which you give us. We thank you that you give us repentance with that faith. We pray. That your Holy Spirit would help us now as we look at some of these passages that talk about repentance and your mercy and what it looks like when that repentance is expressed to you and to others. We pray that you would give us healthy biblical experience of this. that we would much enjoy having reconciliation with you. When we need it with one another. Praying for one another and confidence that we may have when it comes out of that reconciliation. Bless your name for all these things. We want to know them better. We want to experience them. We want you to be glorified as our Savior as you give them to us. So help us in our study. Now we pray in Jesus name, Amen. So section six as a whole in the chapter on repentance says. As every man is bound to make private confession of his sins to God, praying for the pardon thereof, upon which and the forsaking of them, he shall find mercy. So he that scandalizes his brother or the church of Christ ought to be willing by a private or public confession and sorrow for his sin to declare his repentance to those that are offended, who are thereupon to be reconciled to him and in love to receive him. We got through the first section last week. And we come to the second part, upon which and the forsaking of them he shall find mercy. So upon his making private confession. To God, which happens by prayer for pardon to God. That when that happens and he is resolved and forsaking his sin, so it's not just words to God, but. A reflection. of the repentance in the heart that the Lord has given him. He shall find mercy. This is the way God responds to us when we come to him through Christ confessing our sin. And resolved against our sin and that becomes the basis. You see that little word so after the footnote M. So he that scandalizes his brother and so forth, that becomes the basis for how we confess to one another and how we ought to respond to one another when we hear confession. And you can remember that perhaps most plainly in the Lord's Prayer. Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. We're not telling God that he needs to be like we are. We're telling him that it is his forgiveness that he has produced in us. That is the fruit of our being in Christ, and we're crying out to him for that for ourselves, even as he has begun. To show the reflection of Jesus in us. So there's kind of that. that balance between the first two footnotes of this section and Westminster Confession 15 and the second two footnotes L and M being between us and God and N and O being between us and one another. So Upon which and the forsaking of them, he shall find mercy. The first footnote we received is or proof text is Proverbs 28 verse 13. He who covers his sins will not prosper, but whoever confesses and forsakes them will have mercy. And so you have again the scripture splitting all of humanity into two groups. Now we know that these two groups may be identified in various ways and it's very important to remember that the group number two, whoever confesses and forsakes them will have mercy, don't become group number two by their confessing or by their forsaking, but by their being joined to the Lord Jesus through faith. So our confessing our sin or our forsaking our sin does not in any way Get the mercy for us. It's Christ who gets the mercy for us And are confessing and forsaking our sin is not in any way that which gets Christ for us The Bible is very clear that is only believing in Jesus that gets Jesus for you but everyone who is in group number two, who believes in Jesus, and through that faith that the Lord gives you in Jesus, he gives you Jesus's righteousness, Jesus's sacrifice, and therefore, your righteousness with God and your forgiveness. Everyone in that group also gets confessing and forsaking sin. That too is a gift of God that comes in his saving work in us. And so all of humanity is split into these two groups. He who covers his sins will not prosper. But whoever confesses and forsakes them will have mercy. Now, one of the difficulties about these two groups is that sometimes those who belong to God through faith in Jesus, you who trust in Christ for forgiveness, and if you trust in Christ for forgiveness, that means you are right with God and there's nothing that can ever undo that. And yet, many of us who are in this group go through times and seasons in which we cover our sin. in which we pretend ourselves to be better than we are before God and before men. Just like Jesus told his disciples that there are when he tells them that if you pull up the tares, you're going to pull up some wheat too. That reminds us that there are wheat who act like tares. And so one of the incentives, one of the things that God, knowing that we are weak, knowing that we have that remaining sin in which we even are tempted to cover our sin, he gives us Proverbs 28 verse 13. And one of the things that Proverbs often does, in God's mercy to us, to help us walk by wisdom and walk in righteousness, it'll set before us very clearly, like the Lord says at the end of Deuteronomy, a way of death and a way of life. And he'll show us the consequences of the sin and the consequences of the righteousness. And he says, he who covers his sins will not prosper, but he, whoever confesses and forsakes them will have mercy. Now that helps us because one of the reasons we're often tempted to cover our sin is because we think that that's going to help us prosper. If I cover this sin, I'm going to look better to people. If I don't admit this sin, if I try and make myself feel justified in this thing that I said or did wrong, my conscience is afflicting me and the word of God is accusing me or exposing me. But if I just keep silent about it before God, it'll just go away and things will be better, will be easier. It's hard to admit how sinful I still am. And God tells us, he who covers his sins will not prosper. This is true sometimes in an earthly sense and always in an eternal sense. And then he sets before us not just the warning that that's that's harmful to you to try and hide or pretend away your sins, but he also sets before us the blessing that comes. with confessing, but whoever confesses and forsakes them will have mercy. And sometimes you know that that's true and you're coming to God to confess and forsake your sin, but you even recognize in your own heart a desire, a fleshly desire from your remaining fleshliness to kind of keep a little bit of the sin. And so we even can ask God to improve our confessing and our forsaking, which are themselves imperfect, and say, Lord, you have given me Jesus because you desire to give me mercy. He has earned mercy. This is one of the ways in the paths of mercy to confess and forsake sin. Help me hate my sin more. Help me be quicker to admit it before you. Help me when my sin is against others to be quicker, to admit it, confess it to them, to ask them for forgiveness. So it's a very kind of short and compact verse, but when you think about what the Holy Spirit is doing in giving us this verse, you can see how the the prospect of mercy and the promise of mercy and the prospect of not prospering and the guarantee that you will not prosper helps us to leave off covering sin and instead confess it to God. The second verse that they give us is 1 John 1 verse 9. We've included 1 John 1 verse 8 to get just a little bit more of the context there. If we say that we have no sin, and again, you can see the parallel between the first part there, he who covers us in will not prosper. And if you can remember back to last week, and most of you surely can because it's one of your favorite Psalms to request and sing. Um, when I kept silent, my bones aged and so forth. And, uh, in Psalm 32, uh, trying to cover or deceive ourselves about our sin. Uh, the first John one, eight, if we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. Uh, notice that this is John who, um, was probably voted by the disciples in where we have just been in Luke recently, least likely to be the betrayer. and he had his head on Jesus' chest. And in another one of the Gospels, when they wanted to directly ask which one it was, John was the one that they picked to say, Lord, who is it there at the Last Supper? And this is John now after the death and resurrection of Jesus. probably sometime into his growth in grace, even as an apostle by the Holy Spirit. not having begun, as he says in his own gospel, the disciple whom Jesus loves. But he says, if we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. So, whom is John including? in what he says here in 1 John 1 verse 8 and 9. He's including himself in all of these things, isn't he? So there's no point in our Christian life in which we're going to outgrow in this life or be done with the facts in 1 John 1 verses 8 and 9. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. So probably should have included a little bit more of the context so that we could see Where the Apostle right here in the same section says that it is the blood of Christ that cleanses us from all unrighteousness Yes, David Yeah, there are several things that are a problem with that. One of which is a lot of the things that are confessed when people are doing that are things that are not necessarily sins. Um, a lot of them are sins. A lot of them, a lot of them aren't. So God alone, uh, defines what sin is, but we are, uh, to confess, uh, the condition of our, our hearts and the specific things that come out of that condition. Uh, and in scripture, uh, you have, um, Some things that look like what people who are pushing that and modeling that are talking about, confessing sins of past generations. But in scripture, it always includes present actions of the same kind, and therefore, it's a recognition that you are getting as you deserve, and that you are not better than your fathers. which is, if you think about it, exactly opposite what many of those who are kind of in this wokeness that you're talking about are doing. They're confessing the sins of their fathers as this, and it's a competing, it's not Christianity, it's a parallel religion. But in the religion of wokeness, One of the ways that you atone for your original sin of being however privileged you might be is by showing you are so much better than your fathers by confessing their sin. So it's actually an exact opposite spirit of what scripture teaches us to do with respect to our fathers and their sin when confessing our own sin. So Daniel, for instance, who is one of those servants of God in Scripture of whom the least negative is written, includes himself in the the shame, the confusion of face, the sinfulness. He recognizes that it's not just his fathers, but he himself who has deserved and those who are in his generation who have deserved because to God alone. belongs both righteousness and forgiveness. So there's, I'm not sure where else, maybe in the previous section where we talked about not just a general general repentance, but specific repentance, specifically that we, that we would deal with that. But that's when we're thinking about repenting and confessing. I understand why you had asked that question because a lot of what we see and hear in the broader church And children if you hadn't seen or heard any of this just thank God for that. It means It means your parents are keeping you away from the poison for a little bit longer But the poison is out there and you need to learn how to deal with it Yes Oh, yeah, yeah, we've heard it in the ARP the the PCA is definitely Yeah Yes All right, I won't talk about the PCA as an entire church, but within the PCA, there's a large contingent that do the repenting and confessing that belongs to the false religion that's in competition with Christianity. And even other NAPARC denominations now are recognizing things that have been said by those in the PCA and said, oh, that's a great example for all of us. Yeah, and if you're not aware of that, It seems like a fool's errand to look for more things to feel guilty for when the Apostle John late in his walk with Christ is still writing the kinds of things that we have in 1 John 1 verses 8 and 9. Yes, when you're talking about kind of the woke confession for personal freedom from guilt before God, which is what most people are going after when they participate in that. There is, and this would need to be something that we talk about in another context, but There is in God's dealing with nations and dealing with churches, the idea in scripture of sins against his name, where as a corporate entity, there needs to be repentance. We had, if you're moving through 2 Samuel, we just had this past week with Saul's sin against the Gibeonites being a sin as a king, and therefore, Anyway, I was just about to get into the thing that I said would take a lot of time. I think it would take a lot of time to untangle those things. But absolutely, if we're talking about the mercy that you personally receive from God as a forgiven person, If you start along the road of equating or including in your confession this kind of confession of the general sinfulness of everyone, then the counterpart to that of Christ's atonement becomes blurred, becomes general, not specific for his sheep. But he laid down his life for his sheep. And when you are laying hold of him as one who desires him as an atoned for sheep, you need to lay hold of him as a personally having sinned and needed that personal atonement for your sin. Sheep for whom Christ died. So the Apostle John is including himself. And like I said, this is actually one of the things that is helpful for me as far as not needing to embrace the Woke-ianity alternative to true Christianity is, I have plenty of my own sin, even remaining sin, in my life to confess and to rejoice over how God has invested his own character in forgiving me by what he has done in Christ. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just. to forgive our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. I want you to notice that the apostle here includes doxology in the middle of the promise. Doxology, the glorifying of God, the praise of God. He'd just say if we confess our sins, he will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. There's a couple things going on here. The first is that God himself has invested the display of his own character in our salvation, his glorious first. Our salvation is second, something that he has decided to glorify himself in. So he's made promises of salvation, and in Jesus, all of those promises have their yes and amen. And he who declares himself just is offering forgiveness to sinners. How can he do that? Because Jesus himself has not only paid for the guilt of our sins, but he also is righteous. And he is our righteousness before God. When you believe in Jesus, You are counted before God as righteous as Jesus, because Jesus becomes not only your atonement, but your righteousness. So the apostle here says, this is how sure both your forgiveness and the current work of God's cleansing you, which shall be completed in the day of Christ. This is how sure your forgiveness and cleansing are. God has invested the glory of his faithfulness and the glory of his just mess in forgiving you and in cleansing you. So God, of course, keeps all his words. If he had just said, if we confess our sins, he will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from unrighteousness. We ought to be sure we ought to believe him. It would be absolutely true. But God, knowing the weakness of our faith and desiring to glorify his own character, bolsters us. He gives us that greater cause for confidence in his forgiveness and in his cleansing by saying, this is one of the ways God is pleased to show himself faithful. This is one of the ways that God is pleased to show himself just by forgiving you according to his promises. He's faithful. By forgiving you and cleansing you according to his promises, he's faithful by forgiving and cleansing you according to his justice, because that is the only right response to what Christ has done for those for whom Christ has died. And so the faithfulness and justice of God both demand that you forget, be forgiven and be cleansed and are glorified in you being forgiven and being cleansed. So you can see how well that works. A proof text is only a proof text if it proves what it's attempting. And if you look at what that's upon which and the forsaking of them, he, that is the man whom God has brought to repentance and confession of his sins to God, shall find mercy. It's absolutely certain, isn't it? As you lay hold of Jesus, the righteous one who died for sinners like you. And you realize that God is the one who has brought you to this repentance. And so God has given this righteous one for you personally, individually. God has invested the glory of his faithfulness in forgiving you and cleansing you. God has invested the glory of his justice in forgiving you. and in cleansing you, there can be nothing more certain than that you shall find mercy when you come to God with spirit given confession of your sin. Praise God, I think. It's, uh, yeah, we're way too far along to, uh, introduce the next section, but, uh, any more questions or thoughts from that section? We did have a question from Psalm 51 last week, but, uh, the person who had it isn't here. So we're gonna, uh, save, uh, answering and dealing with it, uh, for when they're back. All right, let's pray. Our Father in heaven, we confess that. Even among our sins is the sin of lacking confidence in things that you have promised. Like forgiveness in Christ and. Cleansing by him. And how much quicker we would be. To confess our sins to you if we were more confident in your forgiveness and in your cleansing. And so we thank you and praise you for these two passages that you have given us to consider this morning and we pray that your spirit would stir up our confidence in your forgiveness and our confidence in your cleansing. We praise you that you both have invested the glory of your faithfulness and your justice in forgiving us and cleansing us and that you have here told us about it in this context. So help us when we tremble at the greatness of our guilt or the greatness of our remaining sin to remember that you are glorifying yourself as faithful and just and to be quick and free and coming to you to confess and knowing that you are being glorified, faithful and just, forgiving us our sins and cleansing us from all unrighteousness. We pray that even now as we come into the public worship, it would be with this confidence that we who in ourselves are unimaginably unworthy to draw near to you are in Christ unimaginably worthy because he is our worthiness. And so be glorified for your faithfulness, for your justice, for all of who you are as we come now as a redeemed people to offer public worship. We ask in his name. Amen.