| “HONEST TO GOD” Luke 18:9-14; Acts 5:1-11 Olivet Covenant Presbyterian Church, Philadelphia, PA © Rev. Linda Jaymes, 4/18/10 (Second in a series: “Steps to Spiritual Renewal”) |
In this post-Easter season we are looking at some of the steps we can take toward spiritual renewal. Last week I said that
the most important step is recognizing that we are empty and hungry for God; that something is missing or even wrong in our
lives. Today we’ll be looking at the second step toward spiritual renewal, and that is our willingness to admit or confess that
what is wrong in our lives is us!
Confession of guilt and sin—the acknowledgment that we have done wrong or not done right—is something most of us
would probably rather avoid. Or we will reluctantly admit to some minor infractions, yet remain blind to deep-seated sins like
willfulness, pride and selfishness. It is very hard to face the reality of our sinfulness, and to be completely honest with God.
We would rather behave like the man who wrote the following letter to the IRS:
“To Whom It May Concern:
Enclosed you will find a check for $150. I cheated on my income tax return last year and have not been able to sleep since.
If I still have trouble sleeping I will send you the rest.”
Even though we may accept on an intellectual level the truth that “confession is good for the soul,” we don’t really want to
go all the way with it. We don’t take it very seriously until our sleep is interrupted or something even worse brings us to face
the truth about ourselves. We are much more comfortable discussing imperfections, weaknesses, mistakes, and errors in
judgment. Those terms are socially acceptable, and almost everyone identifies with them. But an outright acknowledgment of
guilt before a holy God—a 100-percent acceptance of responsibility for wrong-doing—goes against the grain. Yet this kind of
honesty is the first step to the freedom from sin and guilt that God longs to give us and has provided for us in Jesus Christ.
When we don’t honestly confess our sins to God, we can’t truly appreciate what the Crucifixion and Resurrection are all
about. Without genuine confession of sin, we don’t understand the magnitude of what it means that Jesus took our sin on
Himself and in exchange traded back to us his righteousness with God.
In today’s parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector, Jesus was trying to get his own followers to understand the
importance of humble, “honest to God” confession. He wasn’t preaching to Pharisees here, but to the choir—his own
disciples. He recognized that even believers, perhaps especially believers, could become so comfortable in their religion that
they might begin to think that their righteousness hinged on their own behavior, instead of on God’s mercy. And so we have
this rather brief but vivid story of two men who went up to the temple to pray: a Pharisee, or religious leader, and a tax
collector. Maybe the parable would have greater impact on us if we updated the characters a bit. For our purposes, let’s say
that a vacationing preacher and a drug dealer went to church one Sunday to worship God. Now the preacher sat up near the
front, very comfortable in a church setting. But the drug dealer could hardly bring himself to sit in the last pew. And in the
time of silence during the pastoral prayer, this is what the preacher was thinking and praying to himself:
“O Lord, thank you so much that I’m not anything like all the corrupt politicians or violent criminals in this city. As
you well know, I have been an outstanding member of my community and have done my part in the struggle against all
kinds of evil. I have also been very generous in my giving to worthy causes both inside and outside the church.”
The drug dealer’s thoughts, on the other hand, were very different. He prayed:
“O God, I can’t even bear to look at the cross in the front of the sanctuary or at anyone else, for that matter. All I can
think about is what a lousy excuse I am for a human being. O God, I’m so ashamed of myself and on top of that, I’m so
embarrassed because here I am—a hardened criminal—and I can’t stop crying! O God! Have mercy on my soul!”
Now the preacher was not a bad man. And the drug dealer was not a good one. Yet when God heard their prayers, He
was not pleased with the preacher. In fact, God was pretty annoyed. The preacher’s prayers were just plain unacceptable; he
had missed the whole point. But God was pleased with the drug dealer’s prayer and his honest confession. God extended
mercy to that miserable man, and accepted him just as if he were a decent and honorable human being. You see, the mistake
that the preacher made was in comparing himself to those around him. We can always find someone whose behavior is worse
than ours, and then use that person to justify ourselves in God’s eyes. But that’s not the way God sees it. That’s why the drug
dealer received God’s grace. He didn’t compare himself to anyone else; he just saw himself honestly in all his sin and
degradation. When he measured that reality—not against human standards but against the holiness of God—he knew there was
nothing to do but beat his breast and throw himself on God’s mercy.
That parable reminds us that honest to God confession is necessary to bring us closer to God and put us in a place where
we can receive and actually experience God’s forgiveness, as well as all of the freedom and new life that goes along with it. It’
s something like the story told of Frederick the Great, King of Prussia, who visited a prison and talked with each of the
inmates. What they told him were endless tales of their innocence, of misunderstood motives, and of exploitation by others.
Everyone had an excuse or someone else to blame for their sad story. Except one. The king stopped at the cell of this one
convict who had remained silent. "What’s your story?" asked King Frederick. "I suppose you are an innocent victim too?"
But the man replied, "No, sir, I'm not. I'm guilty and deserve my punishment." Quite understandably, the man’s frankness
and honesty in regard to his guilt really took the king by surprise. But the king’s surprise was nothing compared to everyone
else’s when the king turned to the warden and said, "Hurry up and release this rascal before he corrupts all these fine
“innocent” people in here!" Sadly, we aren’t all that different from those criminals in denial. When we refuse to make an
honest confession before God, we continue to carry the weight of our sin on our own backs, until it drags us down and
eventually kills us. But the more we open up and confess our sins honestly to God, the more we experience the infinite mercy
God extends toward sinners, a mercy far greater than King Frederick’s mercy toward that convict.
Both scripture and life experience give us numerous examples of the benefit of honest confession, as well as the danger of
refusing to admit our sins. Earlier we prayed together Psalm 51, which was King David’s honest to God prayer of confession
after his affair with Bathsheba and his murder of her husband. If you know the story of King David, you know that despite his
horrible sins, he went on to become one of Israel’s greatest Kings. A big part of what made David great was his willingness to
own up to his sins and return to God again and again, repenting and asking for forgiveness and cleansing. I always wonder
why our own political leaders don’t learn from David’s example. None of us can get through life without sinning, but it is
amazing how many try to get through life without admitting their sins. In Chuck Colson's book, Born Again, which is about
his experiences during Watergate, Colson targets one of President Nixon's problems: the fact that he could never admit he was
wrong about anything. In fact, Colson said that even when Nixon obviously had a cold—nose running, face red, coughing and
sneezing, all the symptoms of a cold—he would never admit it.
Not every problem and illness in life stems from unconfessed sin, but studies have shown that many Christians get sick
physically and emotionally because they are not facing their sins. In his book Pastoral Psychiatry, Dr. John S. Bonnell tells of
four such instances: A university student who experienced drumming noises in his head, blurred vision, and dizziness; a
woman who suffered from neuritis; a medical student struggling with mental disorders and a man who lived with persistent
indigestion. In each instance, relief came when the patient finally broke down and confessed to sins that were hidden away.
Regardless of whether we have health problems or not, it seems clear that regular and genuine confession of sin, not only to
God but when appropriate, to one another, can do marvels for both body and soul.
We also heard this morning the story of the severe justice meted out in the early days of the Church when two believers
did not take the honest approach to God and one another. The sin of Ananias and Sapphira was twofold: first, like that
Pharisee in Luke’s parable, they wanted to look good in the eyes of the faith community. So they pledged the money from the
sale of a piece of property to the church. But they were also selfish and dishonest. After the property was sold, they didn’t
give the whole amount as they had promised. They kept back part of it, or to translate the Greek literally, they embezzled some
of the money for themselves. It needs to be said here that they had not been forced to sell the property in the first place.
Contrary to some misinterpretations of early Christianity, believers were not required to sell everything and hand it over to the
Church. Life in the early Church was not a form of communism and no one was under compulsion to do anything. Only in
the church in Jerusalem do we read about those occasional and completely voluntary instances when some sold land or goods
in order to help the church. That was the case with Ananias and Sapphira.
But as we can see in this story, their sin and dishonesty about it caught up with them in a terrible way. When Ananias
brought the money to the Apostles and laid it at their feet, Peter knew, apparently by the power of the Holy Spirit, that Ananias
was misrepresenting himself before the church, and even worse, before God. The money belonged to Ananias, to do with as
he pleased. But because he pretended to give all of it, when in fact he was holding some back, Peter confronted him and
accused him of lying to the Holy Spirit and to God. And when Ananias heard this, he fell down and died. We don’t know if
God struck him dead or if the weight of his own guilt or even shock was what killed him, but we do know that his dishonesty,
one way or another, led to his physical death. There is nothing to indicate that he lost his salvation, but he certainly lost his life.
And three hours later, when his wife Sapphira came in, the same fate happened to her for sharing with her husband in that
dishonest act.
We might wonder why God was so swift to deliver judgment in this case. Poor Ananias didn’t even have an opportunity
to confess to what he had done. It’s possible that his wife Sapphira did admit their guilt to Peter, although it is not completely
clear from the words of the text. But even if that was a confession on her part, evidently it was too late in coming.
Apparently, these severe consequences were necessary to shape the thinking and practices of the early Church, and to
encourage honesty and purity of behavior. Clearly, dishonesty and deceiving ourselves and brothers and sisters in Christ always
leads to negative consequences. Those consequences can sometimes include death, or at least the death of our relationships
and life together. Both individually and as a church our life of faith depends on the power and presence of the Holy Spirit. But
when we refuse to confess our sins, we break trust with God and with one another and something always dies.
One of the sins that those outside the church often accuse the church of is hypocrisy, so blatantly demonstrated in the
actions of Ananias and Sapphira, and I always respond by telling these folks that walking through the doors of a church won’t
make anyone perfect. Nevertheless, Christians should be careful to do everything possible to prove these folks wrong by being
open and honest and willing to take responsibility for our sins—regardless of their magnitude. In fact, sometimes it’s the small
sins that propel us toward a slippery slope of even greater sin. If we ignore the trivial sins, before long all sin seems trivial and
we develop something like cataracts on our spiritual eyes, preventing us from seeing the truth. But scripture promises that if
we will confess our sins, God is faithful and just and will forgive our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. And how
much might we further the cause of Christ if the world could see us confessing our sins and owning up to our hypocrisy?
How much healthier would we be both individually and as a church? How much greater would be the glory that we could bring
to God?
They say that when Oliver Cromwell, 17th century English statesman, asked the court painter to do his portrait, the artist
thought he would please Cromwell by not painting the warts that disfigured his face. But when the painting was finished and
shown to Cromwell, he shouted, “Take it away and paint me warts and all.” Cromwell had no false or inflated opinion of
what he was really like. And as Christians, neither should we. Spiritually speaking, the great sin is not in having warts, but in
hiding them. No one is without sin, no not one—except Jesus—and He has provided the way for us to be forgiven of every
sin, if only we will trust in Him and confess and receive his forgiveness.
If we’re longing for the spiritual food that will satisfy our greater hunger, our hunger for God, and we really want to take
that next step toward spiritual renewal, then honest to God confession of sin is a good place to start. And don’t worry that
what you have to confess will shock God or cause Him to disown you. It’s not as if God doesn’t already know every one of
our sins. The amazing thing is that He sees us warts and all, and loves us anyway. Still, He doesn’t want to leave us in that
condition. He wants to remove the warts and replace them with healthy, new skin. All we have to do is come humbly before
Him and admit that we have been and done wrong. If we confess our sins, He will wash our guilt away. That’s his promise in
Jesus Christ. Honest it is. Honest to God.
Let us pray.
the most important step is recognizing that we are empty and hungry for God; that something is missing or even wrong in our
lives. Today we’ll be looking at the second step toward spiritual renewal, and that is our willingness to admit or confess that
what is wrong in our lives is us!
Confession of guilt and sin—the acknowledgment that we have done wrong or not done right—is something most of us
would probably rather avoid. Or we will reluctantly admit to some minor infractions, yet remain blind to deep-seated sins like
willfulness, pride and selfishness. It is very hard to face the reality of our sinfulness, and to be completely honest with God.
We would rather behave like the man who wrote the following letter to the IRS:
“To Whom It May Concern:
Enclosed you will find a check for $150. I cheated on my income tax return last year and have not been able to sleep since.
If I still have trouble sleeping I will send you the rest.”
Even though we may accept on an intellectual level the truth that “confession is good for the soul,” we don’t really want to
go all the way with it. We don’t take it very seriously until our sleep is interrupted or something even worse brings us to face
the truth about ourselves. We are much more comfortable discussing imperfections, weaknesses, mistakes, and errors in
judgment. Those terms are socially acceptable, and almost everyone identifies with them. But an outright acknowledgment of
guilt before a holy God—a 100-percent acceptance of responsibility for wrong-doing—goes against the grain. Yet this kind of
honesty is the first step to the freedom from sin and guilt that God longs to give us and has provided for us in Jesus Christ.
When we don’t honestly confess our sins to God, we can’t truly appreciate what the Crucifixion and Resurrection are all
about. Without genuine confession of sin, we don’t understand the magnitude of what it means that Jesus took our sin on
Himself and in exchange traded back to us his righteousness with God.
In today’s parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector, Jesus was trying to get his own followers to understand the
importance of humble, “honest to God” confession. He wasn’t preaching to Pharisees here, but to the choir—his own
disciples. He recognized that even believers, perhaps especially believers, could become so comfortable in their religion that
they might begin to think that their righteousness hinged on their own behavior, instead of on God’s mercy. And so we have
this rather brief but vivid story of two men who went up to the temple to pray: a Pharisee, or religious leader, and a tax
collector. Maybe the parable would have greater impact on us if we updated the characters a bit. For our purposes, let’s say
that a vacationing preacher and a drug dealer went to church one Sunday to worship God. Now the preacher sat up near the
front, very comfortable in a church setting. But the drug dealer could hardly bring himself to sit in the last pew. And in the
time of silence during the pastoral prayer, this is what the preacher was thinking and praying to himself:
“O Lord, thank you so much that I’m not anything like all the corrupt politicians or violent criminals in this city. As
you well know, I have been an outstanding member of my community and have done my part in the struggle against all
kinds of evil. I have also been very generous in my giving to worthy causes both inside and outside the church.”
The drug dealer’s thoughts, on the other hand, were very different. He prayed:
“O God, I can’t even bear to look at the cross in the front of the sanctuary or at anyone else, for that matter. All I can
think about is what a lousy excuse I am for a human being. O God, I’m so ashamed of myself and on top of that, I’m so
embarrassed because here I am—a hardened criminal—and I can’t stop crying! O God! Have mercy on my soul!”
Now the preacher was not a bad man. And the drug dealer was not a good one. Yet when God heard their prayers, He
was not pleased with the preacher. In fact, God was pretty annoyed. The preacher’s prayers were just plain unacceptable; he
had missed the whole point. But God was pleased with the drug dealer’s prayer and his honest confession. God extended
mercy to that miserable man, and accepted him just as if he were a decent and honorable human being. You see, the mistake
that the preacher made was in comparing himself to those around him. We can always find someone whose behavior is worse
than ours, and then use that person to justify ourselves in God’s eyes. But that’s not the way God sees it. That’s why the drug
dealer received God’s grace. He didn’t compare himself to anyone else; he just saw himself honestly in all his sin and
degradation. When he measured that reality—not against human standards but against the holiness of God—he knew there was
nothing to do but beat his breast and throw himself on God’s mercy.
That parable reminds us that honest to God confession is necessary to bring us closer to God and put us in a place where
we can receive and actually experience God’s forgiveness, as well as all of the freedom and new life that goes along with it. It’
s something like the story told of Frederick the Great, King of Prussia, who visited a prison and talked with each of the
inmates. What they told him were endless tales of their innocence, of misunderstood motives, and of exploitation by others.
Everyone had an excuse or someone else to blame for their sad story. Except one. The king stopped at the cell of this one
convict who had remained silent. "What’s your story?" asked King Frederick. "I suppose you are an innocent victim too?"
But the man replied, "No, sir, I'm not. I'm guilty and deserve my punishment." Quite understandably, the man’s frankness
and honesty in regard to his guilt really took the king by surprise. But the king’s surprise was nothing compared to everyone
else’s when the king turned to the warden and said, "Hurry up and release this rascal before he corrupts all these fine
“innocent” people in here!" Sadly, we aren’t all that different from those criminals in denial. When we refuse to make an
honest confession before God, we continue to carry the weight of our sin on our own backs, until it drags us down and
eventually kills us. But the more we open up and confess our sins honestly to God, the more we experience the infinite mercy
God extends toward sinners, a mercy far greater than King Frederick’s mercy toward that convict.
Both scripture and life experience give us numerous examples of the benefit of honest confession, as well as the danger of
refusing to admit our sins. Earlier we prayed together Psalm 51, which was King David’s honest to God prayer of confession
after his affair with Bathsheba and his murder of her husband. If you know the story of King David, you know that despite his
horrible sins, he went on to become one of Israel’s greatest Kings. A big part of what made David great was his willingness to
own up to his sins and return to God again and again, repenting and asking for forgiveness and cleansing. I always wonder
why our own political leaders don’t learn from David’s example. None of us can get through life without sinning, but it is
amazing how many try to get through life without admitting their sins. In Chuck Colson's book, Born Again, which is about
his experiences during Watergate, Colson targets one of President Nixon's problems: the fact that he could never admit he was
wrong about anything. In fact, Colson said that even when Nixon obviously had a cold—nose running, face red, coughing and
sneezing, all the symptoms of a cold—he would never admit it.
Not every problem and illness in life stems from unconfessed sin, but studies have shown that many Christians get sick
physically and emotionally because they are not facing their sins. In his book Pastoral Psychiatry, Dr. John S. Bonnell tells of
four such instances: A university student who experienced drumming noises in his head, blurred vision, and dizziness; a
woman who suffered from neuritis; a medical student struggling with mental disorders and a man who lived with persistent
indigestion. In each instance, relief came when the patient finally broke down and confessed to sins that were hidden away.
Regardless of whether we have health problems or not, it seems clear that regular and genuine confession of sin, not only to
God but when appropriate, to one another, can do marvels for both body and soul.
We also heard this morning the story of the severe justice meted out in the early days of the Church when two believers
did not take the honest approach to God and one another. The sin of Ananias and Sapphira was twofold: first, like that
Pharisee in Luke’s parable, they wanted to look good in the eyes of the faith community. So they pledged the money from the
sale of a piece of property to the church. But they were also selfish and dishonest. After the property was sold, they didn’t
give the whole amount as they had promised. They kept back part of it, or to translate the Greek literally, they embezzled some
of the money for themselves. It needs to be said here that they had not been forced to sell the property in the first place.
Contrary to some misinterpretations of early Christianity, believers were not required to sell everything and hand it over to the
Church. Life in the early Church was not a form of communism and no one was under compulsion to do anything. Only in
the church in Jerusalem do we read about those occasional and completely voluntary instances when some sold land or goods
in order to help the church. That was the case with Ananias and Sapphira.
But as we can see in this story, their sin and dishonesty about it caught up with them in a terrible way. When Ananias
brought the money to the Apostles and laid it at their feet, Peter knew, apparently by the power of the Holy Spirit, that Ananias
was misrepresenting himself before the church, and even worse, before God. The money belonged to Ananias, to do with as
he pleased. But because he pretended to give all of it, when in fact he was holding some back, Peter confronted him and
accused him of lying to the Holy Spirit and to God. And when Ananias heard this, he fell down and died. We don’t know if
God struck him dead or if the weight of his own guilt or even shock was what killed him, but we do know that his dishonesty,
one way or another, led to his physical death. There is nothing to indicate that he lost his salvation, but he certainly lost his life.
And three hours later, when his wife Sapphira came in, the same fate happened to her for sharing with her husband in that
dishonest act.
We might wonder why God was so swift to deliver judgment in this case. Poor Ananias didn’t even have an opportunity
to confess to what he had done. It’s possible that his wife Sapphira did admit their guilt to Peter, although it is not completely
clear from the words of the text. But even if that was a confession on her part, evidently it was too late in coming.
Apparently, these severe consequences were necessary to shape the thinking and practices of the early Church, and to
encourage honesty and purity of behavior. Clearly, dishonesty and deceiving ourselves and brothers and sisters in Christ always
leads to negative consequences. Those consequences can sometimes include death, or at least the death of our relationships
and life together. Both individually and as a church our life of faith depends on the power and presence of the Holy Spirit. But
when we refuse to confess our sins, we break trust with God and with one another and something always dies.
One of the sins that those outside the church often accuse the church of is hypocrisy, so blatantly demonstrated in the
actions of Ananias and Sapphira, and I always respond by telling these folks that walking through the doors of a church won’t
make anyone perfect. Nevertheless, Christians should be careful to do everything possible to prove these folks wrong by being
open and honest and willing to take responsibility for our sins—regardless of their magnitude. In fact, sometimes it’s the small
sins that propel us toward a slippery slope of even greater sin. If we ignore the trivial sins, before long all sin seems trivial and
we develop something like cataracts on our spiritual eyes, preventing us from seeing the truth. But scripture promises that if
we will confess our sins, God is faithful and just and will forgive our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. And how
much might we further the cause of Christ if the world could see us confessing our sins and owning up to our hypocrisy?
How much healthier would we be both individually and as a church? How much greater would be the glory that we could bring
to God?
They say that when Oliver Cromwell, 17th century English statesman, asked the court painter to do his portrait, the artist
thought he would please Cromwell by not painting the warts that disfigured his face. But when the painting was finished and
shown to Cromwell, he shouted, “Take it away and paint me warts and all.” Cromwell had no false or inflated opinion of
what he was really like. And as Christians, neither should we. Spiritually speaking, the great sin is not in having warts, but in
hiding them. No one is without sin, no not one—except Jesus—and He has provided the way for us to be forgiven of every
sin, if only we will trust in Him and confess and receive his forgiveness.
If we’re longing for the spiritual food that will satisfy our greater hunger, our hunger for God, and we really want to take
that next step toward spiritual renewal, then honest to God confession of sin is a good place to start. And don’t worry that
what you have to confess will shock God or cause Him to disown you. It’s not as if God doesn’t already know every one of
our sins. The amazing thing is that He sees us warts and all, and loves us anyway. Still, He doesn’t want to leave us in that
condition. He wants to remove the warts and replace them with healthy, new skin. All we have to do is come humbly before
Him and admit that we have been and done wrong. If we confess our sins, He will wash our guilt away. That’s his promise in
Jesus Christ. Honest it is. Honest to God.
Let us pray.
