Open the Bible

Guest (Male): One way to measure your grasp of truth—and we hear the truth every Sunday, we read the truth every time we open the Bible—but one way to measure your grasp of truth is to take an honest look at your prayer life.

Steve Hiller: Welcome to Open the Bible with Pastor Colin Smith. Colin, that's a great encouragement to honestly look at your prayer life because we've been looking at Asaph. He's a leader, a song leader under David, and he experienced a tremendous amount of discouragement. Part of his prayer life was confession: confession of his frustration and, ultimately, confession of sin.

Colin Smith: Yeah, he came to a place where he felt like giving up. He says, "My feet had almost slipped." Here's a man in full-time ministry, and he's going through a crisis of faith—a godly man. This can happen to a mature Christian: suddenly finds that circumstances have led to a place of great, great darkness.

The good news is that God brought him through this. What we're about in this series is finding out how God did that for him so that we can see how God will do it for us. We've seen that God caused him to stop and to think, and then to pray. That's where we've got to in Psalm 73.

He's beginning now to pray because he's seeing his own heart and some of the things that were there that he never saw before because his life is under the light of the word of God in a whole new way. It's very wonderful, and God is turning him around in order to get him established again so that he won't give up, but so that he'll be able to persevere in all the ways in which God is leading him.

Steve Hiller: As you heard a moment ago, we are in Psalm 73 today, really looking at verses 21 through 23. So, I hope you'll join us there as we begin the message "Confess." Here's Pastor Colin.

Colin Smith: This is the third in a series of five messages on the psalm in which a godly man tells us about how God brought him through a great crisis in his life. I want us to remember this especially this morning: that Asaph was a godly man. He was a spiritual leader. He ministered before the ark of the Lord. He was the kind of man to whom every one of us here would have looked up with great honor and respect.

Asaph, remember, didn't just read the scriptures. In the mercy of God and by the inspiration of the spirit, he was allowed to write part of the scriptures under the direct inspiration of the Holy Spirit of God. I cannot imagine a more intimate experience of the spirit than that—to be directly inspired to write a part of the Bible itself. That's the man we're talking about, and I want us to keep that in mind as we come to these verses today. This was a man who walked with God.

But in this psalm, Asaph tells us that there was a time in his life when he almost lost it. That's verse 2: "My feet had almost slipped," he says. I looked at what was happening in the world, I looked at what was happening in my life, I could make no sense of these things, I could no longer see any point in pursuing a godly life. "I almost gave up," he says.

Now, I have to tell you over these weeks, I've just been struck again and again by the relevance of this psalm. All of us go through times like this. It doesn't matter how long you have been a Christian. It doesn't matter how mature you are as a Christian believer. Circumstances will come in your life and they will take you by surprise. Suddenly, you find yourself where Asaph was, and you're struggling with thoughts in your own mind that you never imagined would ever be there.

Some of us here will have been plunged into an Asaph experience even since this series began. And some of us will find ourselves in an Asaph experience that begins before this series ends. The good news is that God knows how to bring you through an Asaph experience. Isn't that good news? This is why we have Psalm 73. Asaph tells us how God brought him through the crisis by taking him through a five-point turn.

The first thing Asaph discovered was that he needed to stop, and we saw this from verse 15. "If I had gone," he's saying in verse 15, "where my thoughts were going, where my inclinations were leading me at that time, I would have let everybody down. I would have betrayed your children," he says to God. He had to make a decision to stop. "I will no longer go down the track of these thoughts." He will no longer follow where his discouraged mind is going.

We saw that the first step to climbing out of a black hole—the first step to turning your life around—is not getting an answer to all your questions, but it is making a decision: stop. And then the second thing we saw last week that Asaph had to do was to think. Verse 17: Asaph said, "I went into the sanctuary." What did he find there? The Ark of God that spoke of God's truth.

He remembered God's truth, he met with God's people, he considered the ultimate outcome of the lives of the wicked and the righteous, and he says, "That turned me around. That gave me a whole new perspective." Now, the title of today's message, as you see, is "Confess." Confess means admitting to God the things that are wrong in your life. Very simply today, we're going to find out how to do that and why it is so important.

As soon as Asaph gets his thinking straight, it's very significant in the psalm that then he begins to pray. That's his testimony. He's telling us very simply that prayer flows out where truth flows in. In fact, one way to measure your grasp of truth—and we hear the truth every Sunday, we read the truth every time we open the Bible—but one way to measure your grasp of truth is to take an honest look at your prayer life. Because where truth is flowing in, prayer will flow out.

I spent two days this week in Minneapolis with about 400 other pastors from our denomination talking about the importance of our statement of faith—a very important thing. If you're a member of this church, you will have signed off on the church statement of faith. But you can affirm a creed that God is able to do all things, but actually have very little confidence that he's really able to help you in what you're facing now.

You can sign off on a statement of faith that says that you believe we are all sinners, but have very little awareness of sin actually in your own life right now. Now, that's where Asaph was. But God met him in the sanctuary, and the evidence of it was the prayer that flowed out from him afterwards. Now, as we come to these verses today, this is the toughest part of the whole psalm. So, you need to brace yourself for this. This is brutally honest.

But here's the good news: the kind of honesty that we find here is the honesty that leads to a changed life. "When my heart was grieved," verse 21, "and my spirit was embittered, I was senseless and ignorant; I was a brute beast before you." Now, we'll come to the detail of what Asaph says here in a moment, but let's start with the big picture. This is a confession of sin—a confession of sin, remember, from one of the most godly men who has ever lived.

That teaches us the first thing that we've got to grasp today, which is that confession is a normal part of a healthy Christian life. Confession is a normal part of a healthy Christian life. Now, remember the Apostle John says in the New Testament: "If we confess our sins, God is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness." And John wrote these words to whom? To Christians—to the children of God.

Then he added to Christians: "If we say we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves." In other words, if you cannot see anything in your life right now that you could appropriately confess as sin to God, you are simply not seeing clearly. You're blind. You are not in touch with reality. You've got the blinkers on. If we're walking around thinking that there is no sin within us, we are deceiving ourselves.

So, confessing our sins is not some kind of aberration of the Christian life—not something abnormal, not some sign of dysfunction. It is a normal part of a healthy Christian life. Now, how this confession is to be done, of course, has been a matter of great debate throughout history. Many of us were brought up in a tradition where you were taught to confess your sins to a priest, and there may be some value in that.

But there is no place in the Bible where God says that you must confess your sins to a priest. In the 16th century, there was a great movement to get behind some of the traditions that had piled up in the church over the centuries on top of the Bible and to discover what the Bible actually said about the key points of our faith.

The reformers who led this movement saw that we need to confess our sins to God. They discovered the great truth in the Bible that, in God's eyes, all believers are priests and that Jesus himself is our great high priest. One of these leaders—a man called John Calvin, who was a wise pastor—said that we are to confess our sins to God, but that confessing a particular sin to another person could be helpful.

Especially if, having confessed our sins to God, we are still struggling to find peace in our hearts about it. In that situation, he said, you can go to a pastor. You can tell him, or you can go to another mature Christian and tell them. You should seek some help if, having prayed, you have not yet found peace. Don't just leave it there. Go and get some help until you do. This is the priesthood of all believers.

You can go and get the help of any priest, including the one sitting next to you right now. Okay? And by the way, if someone does come to you and share some burden that's upon their conscience, here's your responsibility: your job, if a person tells you about a sin in their life, a struggle in their life, is to help that person grasp the promises of the gospel in relation to that particular matter.

The ways in which we can help and encourage one another. James says: "Confess your sins to each other so that you may be healed." So, here's what we're saying: that the Bible tells us we are to confess our sins to God. But if you find in a particular situation that you are still struggling to find peace, you are at liberty—not obligation, but liberty—to share that with a pastor or a Christian brother or a sister.

So that he or she may help you apply the promise of the gospel to that particular matter so that you may find peace. No believer should be struggling at length with unresolved issues of guilt. They are to be brought to Christ. If you've not yet found peace, get the help of a brother and sister alongside you to pray it through until you do find peace, because God wants you to confess so that you may know that you are forgiven and live in the liberty and the joy of it.

Steve Hiller: You're listening to Open the Bible with Pastor Colin Smith and a message called "Confess," part of a larger series, *I Almost Gave Up*. It's a series from Psalm 73, which was written by a godly man named Asaph. He was experiencing a troubling spiritual crisis. I mean, here's Asaph trying to serve God, but his life's not going the way that he hoped. Meanwhile, those who had rejected God, they seem to be thriving.

And so, Asaph's confused. He's about ready to throw in the towel on his faith, and maybe you've been there. I think many of us have been there at one time or another. But the great news is God can turn us around, and that's what we're seeing in this series, *I Almost Gave Up*. If you ever miss a broadcast in the series, come and listen online. Our website is openthebible.org.

Open the Bible is a listener-supported ministry. It's your generosity that allows us to bring you Pastor Colin's teaching. As you give a gift of any amount this month, we want to send you three copies of our very first graphic novel inspired by Pastor Colin's book, *Heaven, How I Got Here: The Story of the Thief on the Cross*, plus one copy of the original book. Colin, who is this graphic novel for?

Colin Smith: Well, I'm super excited about this graphic novel. It is a brilliantly illustrated 48-page story. It's got clear and compelling dialogue, and it's designed to reach younger people and for anyone who thinks of themselves as being a visual learner. It tells the story of the thief on the cross, which is really a story that I think everyone needs to know.

It teaches us that entrance into heaven doesn't depend on a person's performance in the Christian life. I think that's something that everybody needs to grasp, but especially younger people who have grown up in church and yet may not have grasped the heart of the gospel and may be tempted to turn away.

I hope that we can get it into the hands of as many younger people and visual learners as possible so that people will understand the marvelous news of God's grace. Jesus opened heaven for the thief on the cross. If he could do that for the thief on the cross, he could do that for any person. There is hope for every person in Jesus Christ.

So, who's a young person in your life who needs to understand the grace of God? We'd love for you to be the means of getting the story of God's grace into their hands, and who knows what God will do as a result.

Steve Hiller: Well, we want to send you three copies of *Heaven, How I Got Here: The Story of the Thief on the Cross*, the graphic novel version, plus a copy of the original book as our way of saying thank you for your financial support. You can give online at openthebible.org or call 1-877-OPEN-365. That's 1-877-673-6365, or openthebible.org. Back to the message. Here's Pastor Colin.

Colin Smith: Now, I have to tell you that the confession of sin today hardly seems to appear on the radar for many Christians. It is astonishing when you look at history: that throughout the history of the church, Catholics have confessed their sins to the priest, Protestants have confessed their sinfulness in public and in private to God. But honestly, it seems that in many spheres, confessing our sins is just disappearing from worship altogether.

We celebrate God, we celebrate ourselves—we do not confess. And if we do not confess, we will not change. That is not New Testament Christianity. The whole point of the gospel is that it changes a person. It never leaves you as you were. The Apostle Paul says to Christians in 2 Corinthians chapter 13 and verse 5: "Examine yourselves. Examine yourselves. Test yourselves," he says to believers.

I think it was Socrates, wasn't it, who said, "The unexamined life is not worth living"? He was right. Now, you see, this is what Asaph does in these verses before us today, and it's a wonderful example. When his mind was straightened out by the truth, what does he do next? He's able to see what's been going on inside his soul, and that leads him to confession.

You see, before God turned on the light in his head, he was in the darkness. He didn't even know the muck that was going on in his own soul. He couldn't see it clearly. But when the light goes on, now he is in a position to confess because he can see clearly. So, confession obviously, then, is not a sign of some dysfunction in the Christian life.

It is a normal part of a healthy Christian life. It is the evidence that you can see. And if you're not confessing, it probably means you're very blind. Now, here's the second thing: confession exposes what's hidden in your heart. The first thing was confession is a normal part of a healthy Christian life. Second, confession exposes what's hidden in your heart.

Here we look a little more detail at what Asaph actually says in his confession. Verse 21: "When my heart was grieved." Now, these verses then open up what was happening in Asaph's heart. Remember, the heart of a godly man: what had been happening in that heart before he came into the sanctuary and God turned on the light in his mind? These things had been hidden even from Asaph himself.

He didn't understand, godly man though he was, what was going on inside his own soul. He was not self-aware. But when he came into the presence of God, God turned on the light, and he saw things in himself that he had not seen before. That was why he was able to make this confession. Now, the confession he makes is searching and profoundly helpful.

"When my heart was grieved." Now, when your heart is grieved, there are some sins to which you will be especially prone, and you need to be aware of what they are. We're going to find them and see them clearly in these verses. When things don't go your way, the sins of Asaph will be crouching at your door. Now, notice the three sins, therefore, that Asaph confesses so that you can be on your guard against them, especially at times when your heart is grieved because they're going to be near to us at these times.

Number one: "My spirit was bitter." That's his first confession. "My heart was grieved and my spirit embittered." Now, it may be that "my heart was grieved" and "my spirit was embittered" are actually two ways of saying the same thing. That is often the pattern in Hebrew poetry. But we all know that you can have a grieved heart without a bitter spirit.

So, I'm suggesting that the first sin that Asaph confesses here is a bitter spirit. "Lord, I see now what's been happening. I became bitter. There were things in my life that made no sense to me, and what happened was I was soured towards you and soured towards other people. I saw how you were blessing others more than me, and it churned away at me.

Self-pity came in. I began to feel sorry for myself. My spirit was embittered. I didn't see it before, Lord, but now I've come into the sanctuary and you've turned on the light in your presence, I sure see it now. And this is my confession: my spirit was bitter."

Second: "My heart ruled my head." Look at this: "When my heart was grieved, I was senseless and ignorant." Now, these two words, "senseless" and "ignorant," are words about the mind. So, you see what he's saying: "When my heart was grieved, when my emotions were stirred up, everything I knew and believed about you, oh Lord, seemed to just fly out the window."

Now, you know how this happens. You've got your faith, and then you hit some crisis, and when the emotions get going, and somehow your heart rules your head, and everything you ever said you believed about God suddenly seems to fly out the window. "I started thinking like an unbeliever thinks. I started to talk to my friends in gloomy terms as if there was no God, no help, no hope, no future.

What was I thinking about? I was senseless. I was ignorant. I let my heart rule my head when my heart was grieved." And then look at the third thing. Remember the sins to which we're especially prone at times when we're grieved: "I was acting on impulse." "When my heart was grieved, I was like a brute beast before you."

Now, what does that mean? Well, the point about a brute beast is that, of course, the animals act on impulse. One of the great gifts that God has given to men and to women is the gift of reason: logic, reflection, analysis. These gifts are not given to the animals. The animals act on impulse. And Asaph says, "This is what I was doing. I was not acting on reason. I was acting on impulse."

"When my heart was grieved, I was just being pushed around by the impulses of bitterness and of unbelief and of despair. No wonder my feet had almost slipped." That is why you and I have to submit all our instincts to what? The word of God. So that we can discern and discover what impulses I need to fight against and what impulses I need to follow.

Steve Hiller: Great insight today from Pastor Colin Smith. This is a message entitled "Confess," and it's part of a larger series, *I Almost Gave Up*. It's a series from Psalm 73, which was written by a godly man named Asaph. He was experiencing a troubling spiritual crisis. I mean, here's Asaph trying to serve God, but his life's not going the way that he hoped.

Meanwhile, those who had rejected God, they seem to be thriving. And so, Asaph's confused. He's about ready to throw in the towel on his faith, and maybe you've been there. I think many of us have been there at one time or another. But the great news is God can turn us around, and that's what we're seeing in this series, *I Almost Gave Up*.

If you want to get a copy of this series for yourself, ask about it when you call us at 1-877-OPEN-365. That's 1-877-673-6365, or you'll find ordering information online at openthebible.org.

Colin Smith: Well, it's Friday and the weekend's coming. And I want to encourage you to get to church on Sunday. If you live in the Chicago area and you don't have a church home, I'd love for you to join us at The Orchard. There are six locations in the northwest suburbs. For more information, go to theorchard.church. That's theorchard.church.

Steve Hiller: Well, thank you, Colin. And thanks for listening. I'm Steve Hiller, and I hope you'll join us next time. This program is a listener-supported production of Open the Bible.

Colin Smith: This is Pastor Colin. And I love the story of the thief on the cross because it's the best story we have to help people understand grace. You know, many people have the idea that if a person was to get into heaven, they'd get there by living a good enough life. Well, the thief on the cross hadn't lived a good life, and he wasn't in a position to start living a good life either. But Jesus said to him, "Today you will be with me in paradise."

Well, if the thief could get into heaven, so can everyone you know and will ever meet. *Heaven, How I Got Here* is a compelling 60-minute film in which Stephen Baldwin portrays the thief on the cross in a one-person play. We've seen God use this film to help many trust in Jesus as the thief did. So, who is there in your life who needs to understand grace? For more information or to watch this film for free, visit openthebible.org/heaven. That's openthebible.org/heaven.