Christ Church (Moscow, ID)

Modern conservatives have been shocked to find out that by thoughtlessly sowing their kids into government schools, they’ve reaped a harvest of godless statists. But there is a warning here for us. By and large, recent generations have abdicated their parental duty to educate their children due to disengaged & distant parenting. In a community committed to families providing a Christian education for their children, there’s a lurking danger to think that what happened to a generation of government educated children can’t happen here.

INTRODUCTIONThis psalm begins with a heartfelt lament, and concludes with a savage benediction. This apparent incongruity has been a trouble to many Christians, and so we need to take care as we meditate on, and worship by means of, a psalm like this one.THE TEXT“By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; And they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, sing us one of the songs of Zion. How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land? If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; If I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy. Remember, O Lord, the children of Edom in the day of Jerusalem; Who said, rase it, rase it, even to the foundation thereof. O daughter of Babylon, who art to be destroyed; Happy shall he be, that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us. Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones” (Ps. 137).SUMMARY OF THE TEXTBabylon was situated on a plain, and was criss-crossed by both rivers and canals. Rivers provide one of the most natural metaphors for sorrow and weeping (Lam. 2:18; 3:38), and it was next to the rivers of Babylon that the Israelite exiles sat and wept, remembering Zion (v. 1). Instead of singing, they placed their harps on the willows there (v. 2), those willows being another natural metaphor for weeping. The Israelites had come there to lament, but the Babylonian onlookers demanded a happy song, a song of Zion (v. 3), which the captives refused to do (v. 4). To do something like that would be to forget Jerusalem, and rather than do such a thing, the psalmist would prefer that his right hand forget how to play (v. 5). If he were to do that, forgetting Jerusalem as his chief joy, he would prefer that his tongue stick to the roof of his mouth (v. 6). The psalm then turns to the question of the Lord’s vengeance. Edom was related to Israel, as neighbors and kinsmen, and yet in their hatred, they egged the Babylonians on (v. 7). The next verse comes as a prophecy (“who art to be destroyed”), and it is stated as a strict form of the lex talionis—happy the one who does to Babylon what Babylon did to Judah (v. 8). Happy the one who dashes the infants of Babylon against the rocks (v. 9).A STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEMMany Christians assume that the self-maledictory prayer in vv. 5-6 came true in v. 9—his right hand did forget its cunning, and his mouth did form a grotesque blessing. They believe that the discordant and jarring conclusion of the psalm, after such a beautiful beginning, is truly unfortunate. But this is simply too facile.The psalmist knew what was entailed in the fall of a city, and he knew that to pray for that fall would bring all that it entailed along with it. You cannot pray for the airliner to crash, and then be surprised at the fact that passengers died. This is no less true in modern warfare than in ancient warfare. When Babylon fell, enemy warriors dashed their children to death. But American drone strikes have killed children just as dead.FIRST, AN ACTUAL PROPHECYIn the fifth year of Darius, the Babylonians revolted against him. When he surrounded the city with his massive army, the Babylonians decided that their only hope was to try to hold out through the siege as long as possible. And so they rounded up their own wives, sisters, and children, anyone useless in the war effort, and strangled them. The men were allowed to keep one wife, along with one maid-servant to do the housework. That is what the Babylonians were actually like.NOT AN OLD COVENANT THING We sometimes seek a cheap way out when it comes to questions like this. When we can say something like, “Well, that’s in the Old Testament . . .” and then everyone leaves us alone, there is a temptation to do just that. But it will not suffice.The destruction of Babylon was a type of the coming destruction of Jerusalem. Herod the Great was an Idumean (an Edomite, see v. 7), and he was the one who had the boys around Bethlehem slaughtered. Judah had become a new Egypt (Ex. 1:22), Judah had become a new Babylon.And so it is that the only place in the New Testament where the word Hallelujah is used is when the saints of God in heaven behold the demolition of Babylon (Jerusalem). “And again they said, Alleluia. And her smoke rose up for ever and ever” (Rev. 19:3).NOT A BAD EXAMPLEThis psalm, and other psalms like it, are not included in Scripture so that we would see the sin involved in them, and shy away from the “bad example.” This is a place where even the great C.S. Lewis swings and misses. He grants the “uncharity of the poets,” and says that they “are indeed devilish.”The problem with this is that Christians are commanded to sing these psalms, all of them (Eph. 5:19; Col. 3:16). We are instructed to sing these psalms when we are “merry” (Jas. 5:13). The psalms are quoted in the New Testament very frequently, and the imprecatory psalms are not excluded from these quotations (Acts 1:20; Ps. 109:8ff). And all of this is urged upon us with no warning label whatever.Neither can we pretend that the ethic of love for your enemy was a New Testament innovation (Ex. 23:4,5; Prov. 24:17; Prov. 25:21). But at the same time, we are told that we can have a Bible passage in mind, and be able to refer to it when asked, and yet still not know “what spirit we are of” (Luke 9:55). So take as your example the way David spoke of the enemies of God (Ps. 139:21), and also the way that he spoke of and behaved toward his own personal enemies (2 Sam. 1:19; 1 Sam. 24:5).NOT FIXED BY DISTANCESometimes we try to address things like this by creating an artificial distance, doing this with years, with jokes, or with context. An old Scots psalter rendered the psalm this way:Blessed shall the trooper beComes riding on his naggie,Who takes his wee bairns by the taes,And dings them on the craigie.For an example of context, some of you have seen video footage from the war in Ukraine, where a column of Russian tanks is being taken out by Javelin missiles—and it looks to you like a video game. But what you are seeing is husbands, sons, and brothers dying. THE BRATS OF BABYLON We really do want God to rise up and scatter His enemies (Ps. 68:1). But God has two ways of doing this. He can destroy His enemies with old school means, in which they are simply annihilated. He can also destroy His enemies by transforming them into friends. That is how he destroyed His one-time enemy, the man called Saul of Tarsus.“And whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be broken: but on whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder” (Matthew 21:44).I saw a meme online that illustrated this quite pointedly. It said that when the apostle Paul entered into Heaven, he was greeted with the applause of those he had martyred. So Christ is the stone, and if we fall on Him in repentance, we will be gloriously broken. But if He falls on us, then we will be crushed. So as Christians, our prayers of imprecation should be Christocentric. And you can test the condition of your spirit in this way.If you are praying for your enemy to be destroyed, and God gloriously converts him, and your initial response is “no, not that way,” then that should be cause for self-examination. But Christ is the Rock either way.

INTRODUCTIONThe Bible teaches that our bodies are temples, houses that God intends to live in (1 Cor. 6:19). And the Church is a holy house, a temple built out of God’s people, filled with the Holy Spirit, and together we are also the Body of Christ (Eph. 2:15-22, 1 Cor. 3:9-17, 12:12-27, 1 Pet. 2:5). In Adam, mankind is a sin-diseased house that God cannot dwell in, but the promise of the gospel that God began to display to Israel in the wilderness, is that God intends to make His people holy houses again, and together the Church will be a glorious temple-city where God will dwell forever (Rev. 21:1-3ff). As foreign as it may seem, the ceremonial requirements of the OT law for infected houses and bodily discharges proclaimed this reality of sin and uncleanness, and the promise of the gospel that God will dwell with us and make all things new (Rev. 21:1-5).THE TEXT“When ye be come into the land of Canaan, which I give to you for a possession, and I put the plague of leprosy in a house of the land of your possession…” (Lev. 14:33-15:33).SUMMARY OF THE TEXTWe pick up our study finishing chapter 14 where we are told that not only bodies can have “leprosy” but also houses (14:34). This clearly indicates that what is meant by “leprosy” in Scripture is a far broader category than modern day Hansen’s disease. When this plague is suspected, the owner of the house is to summon the priest, the house is to be emptied (to keep everything from being declared ceremonially unclean), and the priest is to examine the plague, wait seven days and re-inspect (14:35-39). If the plague has spread, the portion of the house infected is to be broken out and replaced, the entire house is to be scraped, and plastered (14:40-42). If the plague returns, and the priest confirms, the house is to be destroyed (14:43-45). Anyone who goes into the house while it is closed off will only be unclean until they have washed and waited until evening (14:46-47). If after seven days the plague has not spread, the priest will declare it clean, and he shall perform the same cleansing ritual with the two birds as was done with the cleansed leper (14:48-57, cf. 14:1-7).Finally, chapter 15 describes the uncleanness that occurs with any kind of bodily discharge, including sexual intercourse, and menstruation (15:1-33). What the unclean person touches becomes unclean, including people (15:4-11), until the person or the object washes with water and evening comes (15:10-12, 16-18, 21). As long as a woman has a flow of blood she is unclean, even if the flow of blood lasts longer than usual (15:25), as it did with the woman in the gospels (Mk. 5:25ff). When the discharge or bleeding ends, they must wait seven days from its ending, wash their clothes, bathe, and offer a sacrifice on the eighth day (15:13-15, 28-30).GOD IS LORD OF ALLThe first thing to underline in all of this is that God is Lord of everything. We do not serve a pagan deity of the water or the land or the sun or the harvest. We serve the God who created all things, and is therefore Lord of all things. He is Lord of our houses, and He is Lord of our bodies and all of their functions. Secondly, sin has infected everything. Sin and the curse of sin has crept into everything: thorns, weeds, sickness, pain, and death come from the Fall (Gen. 3:16-19). And God is determined to heal it all, restore it all, to make all things new, to wipe away every tear (Rev. 21:4-5): houses, bodies, families, and nations.WHAT COMES OUT OF A MANPart of the message of this passage for Israel was that when they would build houses in Canaan, sin would not have disappeared (Lev. 14:34). After the Flood, God had washed everything clean, but Noah and Ham sinned again right on schedule (Gen. 9:21-25), indicating that sin goes deeper than mere externals. Sin is inside of us, and it can get inside our homes and families, like a mold or a mildew or gangrene. Our bodies are defiled temples because of sin, and God taught Israel to remember this particularly as discharges and blood came out of their bodies. Jesus famously taught what this pointed to: It is not what goes into a man that defiles him but what comes out: evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, thefts, lies (Mt. 15:11-20). You need a clean heart (Ps. 51:10).HOUSES DEFILEDThis defiled house came to picture Israel: “Son of man, when the house of Israel lived in their own land, they defiled it by their ways and their deeds. Their ways before me were like the uncleanness of a woman in her menstrual impurity” (Ez. 38:17). So it doesn’t seem like an accident that when Jesus entered the temple on Palm Sunday and “looked around” at everything (Mk. 11:11), returned to overturn the tables and not allow anyone to walk through the temple, calling it a den of thieves (Mk. 11:15-16), and then upon a third visit, He declared that not one stone would be left upon another (Mk. 13:2). He’s mimicking the priestly inspection and declaring the house unclean and in need of destruction. This same principle applies to all governments today: families, churches, and nations. Failure to honor father and mother and marriage vows cannot result in blessing (Eph. 5:22-6:3), Jesus promises to remove lampstands from particular churches who do not repent of their sins (Rev. 2-3), and Jesus reigns over the nations with a rod of iron, dashing the wicked to pieces like potters vessels (Rev. 2:27, Ps. 2:6-12).CONCLUSION: AS FOR ME & MY HOUSEThe overarching picture of people as bodies and houses is an image of covenant life. We are bound together. We are bound together in marriages and families; we are bound together in the church; and we are bound together in cities and nations. It is certainly possible to be a busybody, and we really must mind our own business (1 Thess. 4:11). But what we do effects those around us; what they do impacts us. What a husband is doing effects his wife as his own body (Eph. 5:28-30). One part of the body cannot say it does not affect anyone else (1 Cor. 12). Achan sinned in his heart and in his tent, and he troubled all of Israel (Josh. 7:25).This is because we are bound by covenantal bonds. This means that we are bound together by oaths and promises before God, and as we keep our promises, He blesses us, but if we break our promises He will curse us: a man reaps what he sows (Gal. 6:7-8). The covenants of family and nation are not salvific, but they are sanctifying. We are not saved by our families or nations, but Christ calls us to love our neighbors and as we grow in that, we grow in Christ. But our covenant in the Church is with Christ our head, and so it is a saving covenant, as we trust in Him. And the central thing we are trusting Him for is cleansing by His blood.

Sinners want us to rush along in their conspiracy to shed-blood. This is one of the tell-tale signs Solomon gives us of foolish men (Pro. 1:10-12). Sinners are also selfish cowards, who want to save their own skin (Pro. 22:13, Num. 13:32-33). Christians, regardless of the season, regardless of the news, worship the Risen Christ. This makes us bold in battle, stubborn in our determination to fight only for righteous causes, and fervent in prayer that the swords might be bent into plows.

INTRODUCTIONThis psalm rotates around the hesed of God, coming back to it every other line. This word hesed can be translated any number of different ways—kindness, faithfulness, covenant loyalty, tender-mercies, and the like. The AV supplies the verb endureth every other line, but that is not in the original. The line literally is “for his hesed forever.”THE TEXT“O give thanks unto the Lord; for he is good: For his mercy endureth for ever. O give thanks unto the God of gods: For his mercy endureth for ever. O give thanks to the Lord of lords: For his mercy endureth for ever . . .” (Psalm 136:1–26).SUMMARY OF THE TEXTSo we have in this psalm a litany of gratitude, and each of them is ascribed to the hesed of God. What we are going to see here then is how wide-ranging that beneficence of God actually is.The first is a summons to thank God for the goodness of God (v. 1). Give thanks to the God over all gods (v. 2). Give thanks to the Lord over all lords (v. 3). God alone is the God of wonders (v. 4). He created the heavens in His wisdom (v. 5), and He spread the earth out over the waters (v. 6). He made the great lights (v. 7), meaning the sun to rule by day (v. 8), and the moon and stars for the night (v. 9).God struck the firstborn of Egypt out of hesed (v. 10), and delivered Israel from Egypt in consequence (v. 11), with an outstretched arm as an act of strength (v. 12). He split the Red Sea in two (v. 13), making Israel to pass safely through (v. 14), but drowning Pharaoh and his army there (v. 15). He led Israel in the wilderness (v. 16). He struck great kings (v. 17). He slaughtered famous kings (v. 18). Sihon of the Amorites was done (v. 19), and Og, king of Bashan was another (v. 20). God took land away from them and gave to Israel for a heritage (v. 21), even a heritage for Israel his servant (v. 22). He remembered our low estate (v. 23), and redeems us from our enemies (v. 24).God feeds all the living (v. 25), and we conclude by thanking Him again, thanking the God of heaven (v. 26).THREE CATEGORIES OF HESEDThe first category of God’s hesed is found in the fact that He is the Creator God, and this means that He is the God over all creation (vv. 1-9). The second category is revealed in God’s political providence (vv. 10-24). And the last category is found in the fact that the God of Heaven is the God of ongoing providence—we live in a created order that feeds us (vv. 25-26).GOD TAKES SIDESThe middle of this psalm makes it absolutely plain that God takes sides. His hesed, His mercy, is seen how He absolutely destroyed the Egyptians. He killed the firstborn of Egypt because of His hesed (v. 10), and He drowned Pharaoh and his army for the same reason (v. 15). God fed Israel from the sky during their time in the wilderness, but that wandering in the wilderness was bookended by two instances of national judgment. Egypt was that era’s superpower, and when God’s hesed toward Israel was done with them, they were little more than a smoking crater. Then on the other end of the forty years, God dispatched Sihon and Og both, and they were described as great and famous kings (vv. 17-18).God took their land away, and bestowed it on Israel for their own heritage. This was no injustice to them because it was not taken away from them because Israel needed it now. It was taken from them because their iniquity had finally ripened. What had God said to Abraham centuries before? “But in the fourth generation they shall come hither again: for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full” (Gen. 15:16).“For only Og king of Bashan remained of the remnant of giants; behold, his bedstead was a bedstead of iron; is it not in Rabbath of the children of Ammon? nine cubits was the length thereof, and four cubits the breadth of it, after the cubit of a man” (Deut. 3:11).“Rise ye up, take your journey, and pass over the river Arnon: behold, I have given into thine hand Sihon the Amorite, king of Heshbon, and his land: begin to possess it, and contend with him in battle” (Deut. 2:24).The conquest of Canaan was in large measure an exercise in giant-killing, with the final stages of that warfare being accomplished by David (1 Sam. 17:49) and his men (2 Sam. 21:19).But where did these giants come from? How did they make it past the Flood, which was God’s judgment on the whole Nephilim project? The most reasonable answer appears to be that the DNA of giants was preserved on the ark through Ham’s wife, the mother of all the Canaanites, and Canaan is where the giants all were.CREATION CORNERSTONEThis psalm foregrounds the doctrine of creation, and the goodness of God as revealed in creation. All attempts at evolutionary explanations are attempts (at their best) to background it, to place it at a great distance from us. The more remote it is, the easier it is to take all these things for granted. One of the great blessings of believing in a young earth creation is that we are confronted with the goodness of God. He fashioned the heavens and the earth, and we can see His exquisite design in all that He has made. For example, when the moon covers the sun in an eclipse, it looks like someone stacking a couple of quarters—like a key fitting in a lock.We are taught in Romans that the two great impulses of the unbelieving heart are the impulse to deny God’s sovereignty (Rom. 1:21), and to deny our responsibility to be thankful to Him (Rom. 1:21). The invitation issued in this psalm confronts both of these unbelieving impulses.

INTRODUCTIONPart of what the leprosy laws proclaim to us is that the central, highest calling of man is to worship his maker. Worship is central. Worship moves the world. When God restores men and women to worship, He is restoring their humanity, which in turn, by His grace, restores the world. Christ is saving the world by drawing the world to worship.THE TEXT“This shall the law of the leper in the day of his cleansing: he shall be brought unto the priest…” (Lev. 13-14)SUMMARY OF THE TEXTA number of skin diseases and blemishes are described, requiring the priests to examine and reexamine over time to determine whether an Israelite was clean or unclean (13:1-44). If the person is determined to be unclean in an ongoing way, he was declared “utterly unclean,” and he was required to be quarantined outside the camp (13:44-46). Garments could also be infected by plague, and these needed to be examined and tested (13:47-59). For cleansing, two living birds were chosen: one was killed in an earthen vessel over water, the other was dipped together with cedar wood, scarlet, and hyssop in the blood of the bird that was killed; it would be sprinkled on the one being cleansed and then the living bird would be released (13:1-7). The cleansed leper was completely shaved and washed and brought back into the camp, but waited for seven days, before being shaved and washed again (13:8-10). On the eighth day, three lambs were chosen, one for a trespass offering, one for a sin offering, and one for an ascension offering: some of the blood of the trespass offering was put on the right ear, the right hand, and the right big toe of the one being cleansed (14:11-14). And the same thing was done with oil (14:15-20). Finally, provisions were made for those who could not afford the lambs (14:21-32).CLEANSING FOR WORSHIPRemember that the designations for “clean/unclean” primarily designate who could draw near to God in worship. The clearest indication of this is the fact that the cleansing of the lepers almost exactly mirrors the ordination of the priests (cf. Lev. 8), particularly the seven days and the blood on the earlobes, thumbs, and big toes (Lev. 14:14). God was certainly using this ceremonial code to teach Israel about basic hygiene and health, but the primary point was that God is the source of all life and health and blessing. “Who forgiveth all thine iniquities; who healeth all thy diseases” (Psa. 103:3). This means we ought rather to obey God than do what seems right to us. Remember Naaman the Syrian leper who was initially offended by the prophet’s instruction to bathe in a dirty Jordan River seven times (2 Kgs. 5:10). If we live in a land full of idolatry and perversion, failing to worship the Living God in the beauty of holiness, how can we be surprised if we are struck with diseases (cf. Dt. 28:60)? If Jesus says we ought be baptized, then we ought to be baptized. If He tells us to sing the Psalms, we ought to sing the Psalms. If He tells us to share bread and wine with joy, we ought to obey Him. Worship and its efficacy are God’s prerogative, not ours.JESUS REVERSES THE CURSEOne of the great lessons of the purity codes of Israel was that under the Old Covenant, the curse of sin was infectious. In the New Covenant, sin can still be very deadly (2 Cor. 6:17); bitterness still defiles many (Heb. 12:15). But because of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus, grace and healing have become more infectious. Where sin had abounded, grace abounds still more (Rom. 5:20). This is demonstrated when Jesus touches lepers or is touched by the unclean, and instead of Jesus becoming unclean, the unclean are cleansed: “And Jesus, moved with compassion, put forth his hand, and touched him, and saith unto him, ‘I will; be thou clean’” (Mk. 1:41, cf. Mk. 3:10). Remember the woman with the flow of blood who touched Jesus, but instead of making Him (or his garment) unclean, power went out from Him and cleansed her (Mk. 5:28-30). This is because Jesus is the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world: “He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed” (Is. 53:5).CONCLUSIONSQuarantines for the sick are biblical, but quarantines for the healthy are wicked. We see in these texts that God made the world such that there are visible indicators of infection and disease. The scientific ramifications for Leviticus 13 are tremendous. While there is much that we still do not understand, and there will no doubt be deep mysteries into the resurrection, the world is rational and knowable because God is rational and knowable, not random or capricious.The heart of true worship is gratitude. Remember the Samaritan leper who was cleansed and came back and worshiped Jesus (Lk. 17:16). Our reasons for gratitude are manifold: gratitude for health and medicine, all of creation and beauty, answered prayers and our families, and every detail that points to our cleansing and redemption in the blood of Jesus. Jesus died that we might be sprinkled and set free. Jesus died that we might be sprinkled and drawn near to the Living God with His blessing on our lives, so that all things might be made new.

We do not bring our children along through this service with the end goal simply being keeping them quiet by all means possible – even if it feels that way sometimes. They are with us because we want our children to grow up in the Lord, worshiping him with all the saints from their earliest memories.

INTRODUCTIONThe aim of this sermon is to remind you all that there is absolutely no one who can condemn you. And that message of “no condemnation” has a purpose. The purpose is not merely to leave you feeling happy, though happy it should leave you. The purpose is to increase your joy and confidence so that you would be bolstered in your conquering.THE TEXT“What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us? He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things? Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifieth. Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, ‘For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.’ Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:31–39).NO ONE TO CONDEMNThe passage tells us that there is no one to condemn us. But that does not mean that there is any shortage of those who will try to condemn us. And these attempts come in various forms and from many directions.DO MORE THAN CONQUERBeing justified, we are then more than conquerors. We not only conquer. We do more than conquer. The conquering is extensive, which means that the things which need to be conquered are extensive.IT IS CHRISTColossians 1:17 says that by Christ all things consist. Christ holds all things together. And your justification is one of those things that Christ holds together.

INTRODUCTIONOne very common problem that Christians have in their Christian lives is the problem of spiritual clutter. Many Christians don’t know what to do with various unresolved sins and problems, and so they do nothing. Over time these problems accumulate, and before long there is a real mess.You have seen this phenomenon in various places, have you not? It happens in closets, it happens in your junk drawer, it happens in your home’s designated fright room, it happens at the back of your garage, it happens when your garden fills up with weeds, and so on. Why wouldn’t it happen in your spiritual life? It certainly will if you let it.“Let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us” (Hebrews 12:1).So one of the first things that Christians should learn is this. They need to learn to deal with the sin . . . of not really dealing with sin. If we are told to lay aside every weight, then it would be a sin not to. If we are told to deal with the sin that “so easily besets” us, then it would be a sin not to.ON NOT KIDDING YOURSELFSo the first thing to realize is that confession of sin is an ongoing necessity. I described the problem as being one of spiritual clutter, but the thing about clutter is that you get used to it as it accumulates. You begin by thinking that perhaps your life is “a little untidy,” and then move on to excuse the fact that it looks like a bomb went off in your conscience, and by the end of the process your conscience looks and smells like a closet at the crazy cat lady’s house.So ongoing and regular confession of sin is a necessity for everyone. What must you do if you want a garden filled with weeds? What you need to do is absolutely . . . nothing. Just let it ride.We know that sin can accumulate in this way because of the way Scripture speaks of it. If we just go on in our own fashion, we will get used to how disheveled we are. But if we look into the looking glass of Scripture, we will there see our true condition. We don’t learn that true condition by means of morbid introspection—we learn our true condition through faithful and submissive Bible reading.As James puts it:“But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed” (James 1:25).No one should ever simply assume that he is “doing fine” simply because the roof hasn’t fallen in yet.“If thou, Lord, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand?” (Psalm 130:3).Scripture tells us our true condition.“If they sin against thee, (for there is no man which sinneth not,) and thou be angry with them . . .” (2 Chronicles 6:36; Job 4:18-19)And the apostle John sums it up.“If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us . . . If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us” (1 John 1:8, 10).Suppose someone is learning how to do maintenance on his car, and he is told to change his air filter every 12 to 15,000 miles. Suppose he were to raise the earnest question of whether he still would have to do this if the filter hadn’t gotten dirty. The problem with this young man is that he doesn’t know what kind of a world he is living in.WHAT TO DOThe way to deal with the effects of such accumulated guilt through sinning is by means of confession.“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).This is a glorious promise, so let us take a moment to consider it carefully. In this verse, we are described a certain way, and then we are to do something. In addition, God is described as being a certain way, and then He does something.We are described as sinful (we cannot confess sins unless we actually have some). So we are described as sinful, and what we are told to do is confess. God is described as being faithful and just, and what He does is forgive our sins, and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. We are sinful, and He is righteous. We do the confessing, and He does the cleansing.So what is it to “to confess”? The Greek word that is rendered here as confess is homologeo, a very interesting compound word. The first part, homo, is the Greek for same. The logeo is a verb that means to speak. Consequently, homologeo means “to speak the same thing,” or putting it another way, to acknowledge.If Scripture calls it a lie, and you call it mild prevarication, that is not confession. If Scripture calls it adultery, and you call it infatuation, that is not confession. If Scripture calls it theft, and you call it requisitioning, that is not confession. The reason it is not confession is that it is dishonest.So the central issue in confession of sin is honesty.“He that covereth his sins shall not prosper: But whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy” (Proverbs 28:13).A paraphrase of this therefore would be that people who are dishonest about the way they are living are people who will not flourish, who will not prosper. The alternative is what is promised to the honest—honest confession and honest forsaking results in mercy. This mercy means that God is blessing that man.THE BLESSING OF FORGIVENESS“Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile” (Psalm 32:1–2).Forgiven transgression is the blessing of God. To have sin covered is the blessing of God. To not have iniquity imputed to you when it easily could have been imputed to you is the blessing of God.But not that descriptor—“in whose spirit there is no guile.” Honesty before God is the ticket. And even there, remember that if God were to mark iniquities in our confessions no one could stand.“My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous: And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world” (1 John 2:1–2).This is why, at the end of the day, all our sins must be confessed in Jesus’ name.

A return to faithful and biblically ordered worship of the God of Abraham is our nation’s only hope.