PAUL TRIPP

MINISTRIES, INC.

Confession is a Grace

August 7, 2011

Psalm 51:1-10
Well, as we begin this morning, I want to ask you to do two things. The first I want to
ask of you: a moment of personal reflection, and here's my question: Are you
committed to change? No, I don't mean changing your finances or your job, or you'd like
a more durable lawn or a change in your diet. Are you committed to personal change?
You see, we would say this about the gospel: the Gospel teaches us that the power of sin
has been broken by the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, but the presence of sin still
remains and is being progressively eradicated. So, if you wonder what God's agenda for
you is right here, right now, you can say it in a word, change is actively continuing His
work of transformation in you, so your agenda for yourself should be change.
Now that means this: that means you must be committed to something that, for many of
us, is hard. It's confession; confession is the God ordained portal to change. In
confession, I own personal responsibility for my words and behavior without excuse and
without shifting the blame, and what I want to get you to understand this morning is that
confession is a grace.
Not always do we view it as a grace. When God, through another person or through a
circumstance, makes your sin aware to you, are you thankful? When someone confronts
you, do you say, I'm so thankful you confronted me, would you be faithful to do that
again? Some of you are smiling, nervous laughter.
Or do you resist it? Do you find confession as burdensome and shameful and you resist
confession? This is a bit of a confession; I know there've been times when Luella, in
faithfulness, has pointed out a wrong to me, and I would defend myself even when I
knew I was wrong. I knew somewhere in the end of the discussion I was going to say,
You're right! But for whatever period of time, I hold on to my righteousness; I wanted
to be my best lawyer.
I've seen it again and again in marriage counseling; you see a couple that has an angry,
acrimonious, broken relationship, and the husband is quite willing to confess for his
wife, and the wife is quite willing to confess for her husband, but they resist personal
confession, and so, because of that, change doesn't take place in their relationship.
Now, I would like you to do this: carry that question through this message, Am I really a
person who is committed to change?

There's a second thing that I am going to ask you to do: is resist thinking as you're
listening to this message, I'm glad so-and-so is in the room, because this is surely one
of those messages that you'll be tempted to do that. Some of you may even want to do
this at certain points: pray that God would help you to use this beautiful passage as a
mirror into your own heart.
Well, turn if you would to Psalm 51. Psalm 51 exegetes; it explains; it expounds the
fact that confession is a grace; confession is a gift; confession is something we should
celebrate. We know that these, the words of this prayer of confession, were written by
King David after he had been confronted by Nathan the prophet after committing the
sins of adultery and murder. I want to read for you again just the first nine verses, well,
ten verses.
Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your
abundant mercy blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my
iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgression, and my sin is
ever before me. Against You, and You only, have I sinned, and done what is evil
in your sight, so that you may be justified in your words, and blameless in your
judgment. Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, in sin did my mother conceive
me. Behold, You delight in truth in the inward being, and you teach me wisdom
in the secret heart. Purge me with hyssop, and I should be clean; wash me, and I
shall be whiter than snow. Let me hear joy and gladness of the bones that you
have broken rejoice. Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities.
Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.
How is it that confession is a grace? Let me just detail that for you with these beautiful
words by David, verse one, Have mercy on me, oh God, according to your steadfast love,
according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions.
It is a grace to run to the mercy of the Lord. Think about this: the average person on
the street doesn't even recognize God's existence, doesn't even care what God thinks,
doesn't even think in spiritual terms, let alone crave and cry out for the mercy of God.
Brothers and sisters, if there's any moment where you cry for God's mercy, you know that
grace has visited you because we can be so incredibly self-righteous; we can be so scarily
self-reliant; we can be so easily self-satisfied; and when you can't think that there is any
hope for you but the Lord himself, you know that grace is operating inside of you
because it takes grace to get there.
You see, here is how it works: you cant grieve what your heart hasn't seen, and you
cant confess what you havent grieved, and you can't repent of what you havent
confessed, and it's only when your eyes become open to your need, by an act of grace,
that you begin to confess and seek the help of your Savior.

And that moment when God opens your eyes, and you see the depth of your need, is not
a moment of tragedy, its a moment of rescue. Its a beautiful thing. Thats God
wrapping arms of love around you and saying, I see all of your dirtiness, but come to
me, I love you; I paid the price for you.
David gets it right. If you see the heinous nature of what David has done, you know that
there is no help for him but the Lord. Riches won't help him; kingly power wont help
him; politics won't help him; family loyalties won't help him. There is only one place of
help; it's the Lord, and when you're confessing that, you're confessing that because grace
has visited you.
Look at verses two and three; it's a grace to understand the true nature of sin: Wash me
thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin, for I know my transgressions,
and my sin is ever before me.
The scary thing for all of us, and I think all of us can confess this, is that sin doesn't
always look sinful to us. There are moments where sin looks downright beautiful to
usthat moment when David is looking down on Bathsheba and beginning to give
himself to lust, that moment doesn't seem dangerous to him. He's not feeling the
tragedy about of what he is about to do.
What he sees is compelling beauty; sin at that moment actually looks pretty; it looks
attractive and looks beautiful to him. When you, in an e-mail or a text or a phone call,
have just shared gossip with somebody else, slandering the character of somebody else,
you dont feel the danger of that moment. You feel the tantalizing power of passing a
tale. Sin looks beautiful at that moment.
If youre a child about to disobey your parents, you don't see the danger of telling
yourself that you're an autonomous human being, and you have the right to do whatever
you want to do, knowing that moment you feel the buzz of the power of temporary
freedom and temporary independence. Sin looks beautiful to you.
If you're cheating on your taxes, you don't see the danger of that sin in that moment.
No, your mind is already envisioning what you are going to do with the money that you
have retained in your thievery. And so, when God opens my eyes to the sinfulness of sin,
when it looks as ugly as it is to me, when it is the disaster that it is to me, you know that
grace has visited my heart.
David uses three powerful words here that capture the sinfulness of sin. The first word is
transgression. Transgression is high-handed rebellion; it's trespassing; it's a willing,
knowledgeable, stepping over God's boundaries. In case you don't understand what a
transgression is, its you and me willingly parking in the no parking spot even though
we see the sign, and we tell ourselves I'm just going to be a minute.

What you're saying is, I know law, but I don't give a rip about law because my needs are
more important to me than anything else in my existence. I will park here, thank you, I
am the Lord. Seriously! Thats rebellion! It is laying claim to my rulership over my
life.
Now think how much of your sin is rebellious: husbands, when you yell at your wife, you
yell as a rebel because you know that's wrong. Right? Your problem is not ignorance!
When you're on the Internet, and you're looking at pictures you shouldnt look at, youre
not doing that because you're ignorant! That's an act of clear, focused, intentional
rebellion against the authority of God. Thats rebel behavior!
When you have just eaten yourself into gluttony, youre not doing that because youre
ignorant. Thats a clear act of rebellion against God! My pleasure, the pleasure of edible
flora and fauna is more important to me than the glory of God. Its rebellion! And I
think it is dangerous for us, as believers, to think that our rebel days are over; our rebel
days are not over; we are still being redeemed from our rebellion.
The second word, its the word iniquity. What's iniquity? Iniquity is the most
foundational word for sin; its moral uncleanness. It captures nature. It's not just that I
do wrong things; it's not just that I say wrong things; it's not just that I have wrong
reactions to different circumstances. I am wrong; there's something wrong inside of me,
and it's the uncleanness that allows me to be a rebel.
And so, change has to happen inside of me. That's why I need a Redeemer. When you
begin to embrace moral uncleanness, when you begin to embrace its stuck to you, and
you cannot escape it, youll cry out for a Savior. And, yes, although the power of sin has
been broken, that moral uncleanness is still inside of us in some way and is being
progressively eradicated by the relentless grace of Jesus Christ.
The third word for sin: it is the word sin. And its said that sin means missing the
mark, and that's sort of true, but not really a good definition. If you want to take that
picture of a bowman pulling his bow and aiming at a target, it's not just that the arrow
misses the target. It's that, with his best aim and the best of his power, the arrow
consistently falls short of the target. That's what sin is.
If transgression is rebellion, if iniquity is moral impurity, then, sin is inability. Sin leaves
me lame; it leaves me crippled. It leaves me now unable to live up to Gods standard
apart from the gift of divine power. And so, you put these words together, not only do I
not want to do God's will often, I cant apart from his rescue. Thats the theology, and
that's why there's nothing beautiful about sin.
Brothers and sisters, sin is the ultimate human disaster: it destroys relationships; it
destroys government; it destroys communities; it's destructive at every point. And if you
would pray anything this morning, even during this sermon, is pray, Oh, Lord, open my

eyes to the sinfulness of sin. May I no longer see sin as a beautiful thing. Because
when you're there, you cry out for change.
Thats where David was. Verse three: it is a grace to know and feel and experience the
pain of conviction. I love the words here: For I know my transgression, and my sin is
ever before me. It is a wonderful thing to be haunted by the convicting mercies of the
Holy Spirit, a spirit who will not let me go.
Now, is that pain an enjoyable thing? Oh no, its not! But hear the theology here; the
Bible tells us that as an act of mercy, God has taken the heart of stone out of us. Now,
notice the metaphor: if I have a stone in my hand, and I would press it with all of my
might, guess what would happen? Nothing! Because that stone is impenetrable, it's
resistant to change.
The Bible says that God has taken the heart of stone out of us and has replaced it with a
heart of flesh. So that, that now is sensitive to the pokes of the spirit. It's now
moldable. That's a beautiful thing and because if you're God's child, you have now that
fleshy heart in you, that sensitive heart, you will feel the pain of conviction.
Now stay with me because this is important. When you feel that pain of conviction, you
only have one of two choices: you will gladly receive that as a good thing; that pain is
actually a warning system. It's like the pain in the body. Pain in the body is not nice to
experience, but it alerts us that there's some kind of disease system or injury that needs
to be dealt with. You know this is probably true for most of us. Thats the thing that
gets us to the doctor, some kind of physical uncomfortability. And the pain lasts long
enough, and it's intense enough, we finally go to the doctor because we realize
something is wrong.
So when I feel that pain, when I experience that pain of heart, a result of conviction, I
only have one of two choices: I immediately, joyfully confess that that thing is wrong,
and I place myself once again under the justifying mercies of Christ, and I receive his
forgiveness; or, I begin to erect some system of self-justification that makes that wrong
acceptable to my conscience.
We are very good at doing that. I argue for my righteousness; I defend myself; I recast
my history; I try to convince myself that what God says is wrong, isn't so wrong after all.
So I would ask you this morning, Are you thankful for the pain of conviction? Are you
thankful that there is a relenting Savior who has invaded your life, and he will not relent
until his work is done?
Look at what it says in verse eight: Let me hear joy and gladness. Are you ready for
this? let the bones that you have broken rejoice. That who has broken? Say it!
God! Brothers and sisters, God loves you so much that in order to reclaim your heart,
He will break your bones. Thats not judgment; thats grace!

Fourth thing: its a grace to know that all sin is vertical. Notice what David says in verse
four: Against you, and you only, have I sinned, and done what is evil in your sight, so
that you may be justified in your words, and blameless in your judgment. One of the
ways that we minimize sin is we tend to view it as only being horizontal, and maybe
you're confused by the words here that David says, It's against you, when you only, have
I sinned.
Oh, he is not minimizing the sin against Bathsheba, and the sin against Uriah, and the
sin against his own family, and the sin against Israel. But, he is saying this: It is
impossible for sin to ever only be horizontal; every sin is an act against the glory of God;
every sin forgets His existence; every sin quests for His thrown; every sin replaces God
with some idle that I want more than Him; every sin is an affront to the relationship with
God for which I was created.
Now, understand what's going on here. You and I were not created for our own glory; we
werent created to write for ourselves the narrative of our own pleasure; we werent
created for the success of our own purposes in ways that mark us out from all the rest of
creation. Uniquely, we were created and given the capacity to live for the glory of God.
Sin has broken that desire and broken that capacity.
Whenever I think of the God-ward nature of our entire life, that nothing belongs to me,
that everything I do is meant to be done with a self-conscious God-wardness, I think of
this moment years ago when I was a kindergarten teacher. I was a kindergarten teacher
for four years. I used to say, It was four of the longest years of my life, and they were
actually four very wonderful years because I was finally with a group of people I could
relate to.
And about six months into the year, one of the mothers of the children in the class said
that she wanted to have a birthday party for her daughter, using the classroom. Well, I
had no problem with that, I said, as long as you invite all the children in the class.
Thats fine. That afternoon, I occupied the children while she turned that classroom
into a birthday kingdom. And we went into the classroom then, and we're sitting on this
long table. And at the end of the table was the position for birthday girl, and there was,
in front of her, this inordinate pile of gifts, a lavish pile of gifts.
Everyone else around the table had a Ziploc bag of party favors, two Tootsie Rolls, two
pieces of gum, a lolly pop, and a plastic whistle. The purpose of party favors is to
remind you it's not your birthday. And at the end of the table, directly across from party
girl, sat little Johnny, and he began to look at his bag of party favors, not totaling $.89,
and her inordinate pile of gifts, and he began to harrumph.
Finally, one mother had about enough of Johnny's harrumphing, and she walked down
the length of the table; she turned his chair toward her; she knelt down on her knees and
looked him in the face and waxed theologically. She said, Johnny, hear what I'm about
to say. It's not your party!

Like we do, Johnny got it wrong! Listen! You will never understand your humanity; you'll
never understand your need of a Savior; you will never understand the call to confession
unless you understand this: you were born into a universe that, by its very nature, is a
celebration of Another. And sin causes me to live for myself and chafe against that thing
that is central, not just to my spirituality, but to my humanity. Every human being was
given breath for the sole purpose of the glory and pleasure of God.
And all sin, because of that, is not only an affront to his nature; its a denial of my
identity. Its a grace when I get that; its only grace that gets me; its only grace that
opens my eyes to God's glory in my identity. Its also a grace to begin to embrace the
humbling truth that your problem with sin is internal, not external.
Look at what David says, what a humble, sweet confession: Behold, I was brought forth
in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me. What a humbling confession! You
know were so tempted to look outside of ourselves for the logic for our iniquity. You
don't know my children; you don't know my husband; you don't know my wife; you
havent experienced my finances; you don't know my family of origin; you don't know;
you don't know; you don't know; you don't know; you don't know; you don't know; you
don't know.
Its self-atoning externalism is what it is. David says something that I would pray all of
us would embrace. He says this, Long before the first experience, long before I was in
the first situation, long before I was in the first location, long before I had the first
relationship, I was a sinner; I was born a sinner; I was shaped in iniquity. This problem
came into this world with me.
Brothers and sisters, you walk your biggest problem into your relationships; you walk it
there. You walk your biggest problem into your situations; you walk it there. You walk
your biggest problem into your locations; you walk it there. As an act of grace when I
finally say, Lord, its me; it's me; it's me; if I lived in a perfect world, amongst perfect
people, I would still have this problem because I came into the world with it.
Brothers and sisters, when you're there, grace has visited your heart because everything
inside me wants to say, It's not me; it's not me; if only I had; (fill in the blank) I would
be a different person. You see it immediately in Genesis 3, don't you? God approaches
Adam and Eve; what are the first words out of Adams mouth? This woman! Grace
draws me to understand that I came into the world this problem.
That means this: I have no capacity whatsoever in myself to escape it. My only hope is
the mercy and loving-kindness of the Lord; I have no other hope. Thats why we sing,
On Christ the solid rock, I stand; all other ground is sinking sand. There is no savior
but Jesus.
Finally, it's a grace to cry out for a new heart. You know, this is really the summary of all
that weve said: when you know that you have no hope but the mercy of the Lord, when

you understand the sinfulness of sin, when you recognize the pain of conviction, when
you know that all sin is God-ward, when you know your problem is inside of you, not
outside of you, then there is only one thing that you can cry out for, Oh, God, please
give me a new heart; please renew my heart.
You see what that recognizes is: that the center of my problem, my struggle with sin is
not my behavior and not my location; the center is my heart. Now know the language
here; it is important. The heart is that summary term for the inner man. The Bible uses
many terms for the inner man: mind, emotion, spirit, soul, will. They are all collected in
one, big, basket term used in hundreds of passages of Scripture, and when you're
reading the Bible, you come across the word heart.
Ive said this before, I'll continue. When you read the word heart, you should fill in the
causal core of your personhood. So David is saying, My problem exists at the very core
of what makes me tick, the very core of my emotions, the very core of my desires, the
very core of my thoughts, the very core of my motivation. And so, God, there is nothing,
there is nothing else that would help me, but that you would give me a new heart.
Isn't it wonderful that the bright golden promise of the new covenant is: I will give them
a new heart? There are still places for all of us where our hearts yet need renewal. It's
not you thats my problem; its not my past thats my problem; its not the harsh realities
of a sinful world thats my problem; it's my heart. And, Lord, I offer my heart to you, and
I say, Won't you do with the heart of this man what only what you can do?
Psalm 51 and all of its confession is really prophetic because, as King David prays these
beautiful words of confession that so picture the grace of confession, His words cry out
for another King, the Son of David who would come, the Son of David, the Lord Jesus
who would face all the temptations that David faced, but without sinso He would be
the perfectly acceptable sacrifice, so He would satisfy the father's anger, so that His
righteousness would be given over to our account, so we could stand before God as
righteous, though we are not, so that we would receive forgiveness, so that we would
receive His adoption and acceptance, so that we would receive life that is eternal.
Now this is what this means, oh please hear this: it means when I feel the pain of
conviction; it means that when God uses a situation or another individual to point out my
sin, I need no longer wallow in guilt; I need no longer hide in shame; I need no longer
fear being known because the blood of Jesus has covered it all. And I can run into the
presence of a holy God, and I can once again receive His forgiveness and His
empowerment and someday His deliverance.
Every time, when the Spirit of God works conviction into my heart and I rise to defend
myself, I'm committing an act of Gospel irrationality because it's impossible for anything
to ever be exposed that hasn't already been covered by the Son of David, the Savior,
King Jesus.

Are you committed to change? Are you? If youre committed to change, then you will
see confession as a grace. God is opening your eyes; God is bringing the pain of
conviction. He is helping you to see the sinfulness of sin, not because he would turn his
back on you, not because he's judging you, but because he's pulling you close and
saying, Won't you continue to experience only what I alone can give you? Grace!
Lets pray: Lord, I would confess to you, this morning that I don't always see those
moments of conviction and those moments of confession as moments of grace. There
are times when, rather than running to you, I run to my own defense. Lord, help us to
embrace this magnificent story of redemption and forgiveness and unrelenting grace,
that you trouble us not because you despise us, but because you love us. You open our
eyes, and you open our hearts so that we would receive more of your salvation. Thank you
that you will not give up; you will not quit; you will not walk away; you will stay on task
until we have been completely delivered from sin. Praise you! Thank you for the grace
of confession. In Jesus name, Amen.

2011 Paul Tripp Ministries

www.paultripp.com