FREED | SIN

If you would remain standing for the reading of our teaching text. Tonight's text comes from 1 John 1, 5-10 and 2, 1-2. It says, this is the message we have heard from him and proclaimed to you. That God is light and in him there is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus, his son, cleanses us from all sin. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar and his word is not in us. My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the father, Jesus Christ, the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins, not only ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world. This is the word of the Lord. Good evening, folks. If I have not had the chance to meet you before,

my name is Sam. I have the honor and privilege of getting to be an executive pastor here at Church of the City. And if you can't tell from that teaching text tonight, we're gonna have some fun at church. Before we do that, I just wanna highlight, Pastor John mentioned this past week in the service, we hosted our citywide prayer gathering this past Thursday night in Queens with Wellspring. Some of you guys made the trip overseas to be a part of that. And I just wanna lift up and thank you guys for being a part and believing in being a praying church and the impact that's having on not just our church, but all across the city. Right now, we've got spiritual mothers and fathers linking together from all five boroughs. It really is kind of unprecedented. You know, what's happening here within our church and what's involved in Pray NYC in the prayer room is awesome, but it's been really helping galvanize things behind the scenes. There's people who've been leading churches since the 80s in our city that say, we've never seen anything like this before. And so just wanna commend you guys for leaning in, for pressing in. It feels as if God behind the scenes is really strengthening something in our city, because I believe something good is coming.

The next thing I just wanna put on your radar is, because this summer, Reagan, I mentioned this, things can start happening this summer. I just wanna lift up something for you, especially at this service, but our Center for Vocational Mission is hosting a builder's workshop coming up in June. You can find out about this at cvm.nyc. That'll be in June the 6th. If you have a kingdom venture, a kingdom idea, maybe there's a ministry idea that you feel like God is birthing on you and you need help going from like zero, one, and two, and you wanna work with some people that are like-minded and wanting to see the kingdom influence every sphere of society, that workshop is for you. And so just encourage you to sign up for that. If there's like a kingdom venture inside of you that feel like God is wanting to give birth to, we'd love to help you do that. We only have space for about 100 people at that workshop, so it can actually be helpful for people. I'm not just like a conference environment, so I encourage you guys to check that out. Now we're continuing our series on being freed. Last week, Pastor John talked about being freed from our past, and today I have the honor and privilege about talking about being freed from sin. So just a little frame, a little roadmap for you where we're gonna go.

We're gonna talk about what is sin, two, what sin does to us, and three, how do we actually walk in freedom? Now to frame this, we do not have enough time to get all the way into this. And so spending a lot of time praying for you guys, I really just felt this tremendous desire to just let's have a very pastoral and very practical conversation. Because the reality is, we know probably more than we ever have about some of these issues. Ideas, opinions are a dime a dozen in this space, but in reality, most of us would acknowledge that our lives are more consumed and more controlled by sin than we care to admit. And I just really desire not to inspire you with some new idea you've never heard, but actually help you. Because I do believe a lie has gotten into the church that freedom from sin is not possible. If you have made some kind of like peace treaty in your walk with Jesus, that you're always gonna struggle with this issue, and you're never actually gonna walk in freedom tonight, we are actually gonna break that peace agreement. That is not true. Freedom is your inheritance in Christ Jesus. It is for freedom that Christ has set you free. And so my goal is not really to impress you, I'm not good at that anyway,

but it's really kind of help you figure out I'll walk this out, and really the lens I want you to filter some of this content through is not, you know, what do you think about this? Not necessarily, you know, what your ideas or opinions are on this, but just want you to ask yourself this question, am I walking in freedom? Am I walking in freedom? Because what's amazing to me is I've sat across some very well-educated people, people who have, like, tremendous thoughts, ideas, and opinions on this, and yet, at the same time, they are just as ensnared as anyone I know. Now, I joke that the team put me up for this because I'm just the best at sinning on our team, or maybe it was even my southern accent, so sin just sounds a little bit better, you know? Gotta get that sin out of here, folks. But just to encourage you, because I feel the weight of this, I've felt the weight of this all week, I'm not preaching this at you, I'm journeying on this with you, and if I could highlight that story very briefly, one of my good friends is a Catholic priest in the city, he's a part of a religious order, and part of that order involves an aesthetic, so he's got, you know, the robes, everywhere he goes, he's got robes on him, and so it's kind of fun to hang out with him, because I go to a coffee shop, and, you know, you've got the priest there, and everyone thinks I'm the parishioner with problems,

which is true, you know? And something about the aesthetic, though, it's just like, you know, you're walking the city with him, and you just feel it in the West Village. Well, I've got another friend of mine, the pastor of the city, and he wears this big wooden cross all the time. And a few weeks ago, I was shopping with my wife, and number one, I don't like shopping at all, number two, something very strange was happening, she noticed I was looking at the jewelry section. She was profoundly disappointed when she recognized I wasn't looking at women's jewelry. And she's like, what are you doing? I was like, well, you know, I've got my friend that's a priest, he's always like wearing, you know, robes, and all the friends wear this cross, so I was like, just, you know, I was over here looking to see what kind of like, Christian jewelry there was. You know, I don't want like a, you know, Flavor Flav or anything, I'm not trying to like, be like a diamond-encrusted cross, but you know. And I just, it's like, there's just something about the aesthetic of just like, something like, no one has a doubt this guy's a priest, like you just know he's a man of the cloth. So my wife very graciously said to me, oh, so you want to put Christ on display? I said, yeah, that's it.

Make him more visible? I said, yeah, that's it. So I've got an idea for you, you could just try being nicer to people. So thankfully she came to the 11 o'clock service, fell under the conviction of sin. But folks, I just wanna say this, this is something I think, all jokes aside, it really is something that's destroying people's lives. It really is something, there's a lot of confusion around this subject, there's a lot of confusion about how to walk in freedom. And so my goal really is just to help us to lean in. So before we do that, let's just pray and set our hearts before the Lord. Father, we just thank you that tonight we can approach you boldly and confidently through the broken body and the shed blood of Jesus. Jesus, we thank you, not leave us as orphans, but you gave us the gift of the Holy Spirit. As the Holy Spirit, we just invite you tonight to fill this room. Lord, I thank you that it was your kindness that is intended to lead us into repentance. And so I just invite your gentle kindness into the room. Lord, I ask you would just silence every harsh voice of performance and condemnation in this space, and we just invite your voice, the voice that sounds like many rushing waters, your voice that washes and cleanses,

to come and fill this room. Holy Spirit, we just give you permission to bear down on us. We welcome your leadership into the room. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. All right, so broad stroke here, what is sin? This term appears over 400 times in the Bible. That's the low end, high end, we'll say about 580. It's also intermingled with some other words like transgression, iniquity. It's all throughout scripture, both Old and New Testament. And so I just want you to know that it's all throughout scripture, both Old and New Testament. In Hebrew and in Greek, the primary terms that are used is really this meaning of to miss the mark. It's an archery term. There's a target, we missed it. And so often we hear the word sin. There's other translations in scripture we read, like Proverbs says those that are hasty with their steps miss their way. If you're too quick, you'll miss. And that actually, that word misses his way is actually sin. And so it's about, hey, there's some target out there, something here that we're missing. But it kind of goes beyond that. You've got to do it, you know, you can deep dive all the way through scripture to see this. But the reality is we were made to be image bearers of God,

to represent him to the earth. Romans 3.23. Three says, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. The target, God's glory. The gap, what I'm actually offering. This goes on an internal frame. This goes on an external reality. This is a personal issue. This is also a societal issue. The reality is, you don't have to convince people something is wrong with the world. Like if you cut on the news right now, I think it's really hard to go, yeah, I think this is how it's supposed to be going. And without the appropriate doctrine of sin or understanding of sin and how it distorts and how it disrupts and how like, basically this is not how God intended the world to be. Something entered in that was not supposed to be there. I don't know how you make sense of the world. There's this internal distortion that it creates. There can be an intentional defection from the Lordship of Jesus. Tremendous personal consequences and effects in our lives but also tremendous societal impacts. When the Bible's talking about sin, it's talking about probably six different things happening at the same time. It's layered in so many profound ways.

Yes, it's talking about missing the mark. It's talking about rebelling against our king. About twisting and being distorted out of what we were made for. Slipping off the path. Violating right relationship with God. That's why if you simply reduce sin to a list of behaviors that you should or should not do, you are gonna miss the whole invitation of what Jesus actually offers us in being freed from sin. So there's two frames I wanna offer to you to help frame how you think about this. It's probably different or maybe it's a newer concept to you but very biblical and it really kinda helped me in walking this path of freedom from sin in my life. The first frame is this, is sin is more about relational allegiance than behavioral action. Sin is more about relational allegiance than simply behavioral action. That my actions are actually confessing allegiance to something. So Romans six talks about this. Romans 6.16 says, do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey? Either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness. Jesus himself goes into Matthew 6.24 says,

no one can serve two masters. For either he will hate the one and love the other or he'll be devoted to the one and despise the other. Often when I'm thinking about sin, I'm thinking about covenant fidelity to the Lord. That I want to walk under the lordship of Jesus, confessing my allegiance to him. And when I fracture that, bringing that, saying hey, this is out of alignment with the allegiance I have in my life. The beauty of the cross is Jesus actually breaks the power of sin in our life but we have to walk out the daily sanctification of our sin. The power of sin in our life but we have to walk out the daily sanctification of relational allegiance in our lives. I find this way freer and this just boils down, this has been hitting this all throughout this series, this idea like one of the challenging and complex things about Christianity is there's not some systems or structures that you just like fall right into. There's not just a simple generic list of do this, don't do this, although that would probably make life easier. It misses the fact that we are saved to a person. You know this, relationships are dynamic. Relationships, there's movement to it. What could be sin for me is probably not sin for you. Often the further I've gotten in my walk with Jesus,

I am probably more convinced that I'm more sinful when I first came alive to Jesus because I see subtle relational issues of the heart that he's constantly getting after. I see subtle behaviors that no one else would correct but I know I'm actually giving my allegiance to something I do not want. And that leads to another frame. So if you think about it as a relational allegiance versus just a behavioral action, this framework about guilt and innocence versus honor and shame. Now you guys are smart, you know this. In the Western church, we live in a guilt-innocence framework, this is how culture views the world. This is not a Christian concept, most people in the West, this is how people operate. It's a guilt-innocence framework. The majority of the world operates from an honor and shame framework. Estimates show Ancient Near East obviously was a honor-shame framework and I actually think this is really, really helpful in walking out the process of freedom. So let me just kind of go through this briefly. In the guilt-innocence framework, this is about a legal framework. Honor and shame is a relational framework. The focus in guilt and innocence is, I broke the law. In honor and shame is, I betrayed the relationship.

The question in guilt and innocence is, am I guilty? The question in honor and shame is, am I disgraced? In guilt and innocence, it feels like condemnation. In honor and shame, it feels like humiliation. Guilt and innocence requires an acquittal. Honor and shame requires restoration. The metaphor that's often associated with this is guilt and innocence is a courtroom. How many times have you heard this preached to you that we were all found guilty in the courts of God? Good thing we got a really good lawyer named Jesus. Pay him his retainer. I mean, that's the mindset that most people have. It's like, I messed up. God's really mad. Good thing I, you know, dialed all sevens and got Jesus on. Think about it in a courtroom. The beautiful thing about an honor and shame framework is about a family because, yes, Jesus does, there is a massive peace all throughout Scripture about guilt and innocence. But Jesus also is welcoming you into the family. Yes, there is a verdict given out of the cross if we put our faith and trust in him, we can be free. But the beautiful thing is, he says, no one comes to the father except through me. I want to bring you into the family. And a guilt and innocence framework is punishment is taken, someone must pay the price. Honor and shame is someone must restore the honor. Now, again, this is, I mean, so much is 100% a verdict coming

out of the cross. That language has not gotten into the culture without reason. But I have found an honor and shame framework way more helpful in the sanctification process of becoming free. Because in all honesty, I spent all weekend doing this, just reading every passage so it kind of does a deep dive into sin. And you will, and there's a reason why, it can be quite confusing. Paul to the church in Rome, Romans 6, 7 and 8. You know, in Rome, he's addressing the issue of like, all right, we're sinful. But when we sin, God's grace and mercy is available to us. And so someone has a great idea, hey, should we continue to sin that grace may abound? It's like, if grace and mercy is on tap, I want that tap to flow. So what do I need to do to do that? I just need to do more bad stuff. You know, or even the teaching text tonight, it's like, hey, listen, no one who loves him walks in darkness. But if you don't sin, you're calling God a liar. It's like, wait, wait, which one is it? And I just want to lift up to you, I think this idea of walking out and even the gospel from the lens of Jesus came down from the highest place of honor, entered into the human story. And Jesus, from that place, took on my shame. Now God has elevated and restored him to that place of honor and brings us to that place. And now my life is lived out to bring honor to his name. And so sin is less about I did a wrong thing, he's mad at me.

Sin is, man, I just dishonored the name that saved me. This is where passages like 2 Corinthians 7.14 or 2 Chronicles, if my people called by my name, would humble themselves. It's like we get to re-represent him to the earth. And an honor and shame framework, I think, is a lot healthier lens to view versus guilt and innocence. Because as I'll say this, this is how you know you have a primary guilt and innocence framework. You ask a lot of questions basically like, how much can I do before it's called sin? You know, it's like, can I do this? How about this? This is perpetual, like we're trying to figure out where the line is. And I don't want to sound judgmental, but no, we're actually just missing the person in all of that. Lines make it easy and clear. Relationships are a little bit messy, but there's so much beauty in understanding what he's done for us. And man, living our life to bring honor to his name. So I hope those little frameworks can help you a little bit. I'm thinking about a relational allegiance versus just behavioral modification. And then understanding sanctification from an honor and shame principle, because then it just helps me like, Lord, I want to bring honor to your name and I've dishonored your name. Now, let's get into, very briefly, what sin does. I don't feel like I've got to spend a lot of time here, because you could argue with me, but no one, I think we all feel the weight of this. The damage that sin has done in our own lives, through our lives, around us, in us, it is tremendous. So the first thing sin does is it separates us.

Shouldn't surprise anybody. It separates us from God and from other people. The primary way I watch this play out in believers' lives, just going to say very pastoral here, is you think your sin is preventing you from encountering him, and I just want to say, if you follow the testimony of Scripture, God loves to meet you in the middle of your mess. Like, there's some people like, God can't look on sin. I just say, hey, that's really not true because number one, Jesus was called a friend of sinners. Number two, in the garden, it was God who showed back up for the walk. It was Adam and Eve who were hiding. The primary thing sin does in your life is it separates you from God. God is still looking after you. He's coming for you. He wants you. It also separates us from others. You guys have had these moments in relationships with people when something entered in, something bad, betrayal, distrust, and that relationship's just quite, really never the same again. Sin separates. The next thing sin does is sin stains. Sin stains. This is where honor and shame, I think, actually helps more than just innocent and guilt because innocent and guilt, I can tell you that, hey, at Jesus, at the cross,

he declared you innocent, but yet you still know, why do I feel so unclean and so dirty? We know that sin has a staining power to it. You can find people that agree with you. You can find people that tell you it's okay, but at the end of the day, you just have this feeling that, man, something inside of me is not the way it's supposed to be. You watch how this happens. People have such a desire to be clean. If you, you know the statistics here. I'm not trying to be harsh, but it is just the reality we're dealing with. I think right now the statistic is one in three women are sexually abused before the age of 18, one in four men, and you look at what someone else's sin does to the soul of another human, and it is just tremendous damage because this is the challenge that we feel with sin. It's not just a sin I commit. All kinds of sin can be sin that was committed to me, and it creates this feeling of unworth. I've pastored people through this for years, and just the sense of like unworth that happens in their life is really, really tremendous, and it separates, it stains. Sin also sensitizes. What it does is sin begins to shift your appetites.

You are designed and made for a longing for God, and at the end of the day, and at the end of the day, what sin begins to do is it begins to numb you from the things of God, and it begins to entice you into the things of the flesh. Slavery in the Old Testament for the Jewish people was primarily marked by their God being their appetites, their God being their belly. What sin does to distort what it is you were made for, what it is you were supposed to long for, what it is you're supposed to actually have an appetite for is tremendous. It deceives you and distorts you. Basically, it promises you satisfaction and fulfillment, but then yet it comes empty and short. So it separates, stains, sensitizes. Sin also steals. This is so important to know, sin steals. At the end of the day, there's an adversary out there who's coming for your life. He's looking to steal, kill, and destroy, and sin is the open door for him to have access into your life. Primarily, when you read lists of sins in the New Testament where it's got like the long list that we can all find ourselves in, there'll be a line that says, no one who practices these things will inherit the kingdom of God.

It's about an issue of inheritance. God has promised you things. There are things that he desires to give you in your life. In a life perpetually walking in sin, refusing to walk in the gift of repentance, will rob you and short-circuit you of the inheritance Christ Jesus has for you. It also steals people of intimacy. Pastor, only something that's so profound, a huge thing happening among young people, mainly because of how pervasive pornography has become, is people are struggling with intimacy in their marriage because sin has distorted what they think sex is supposed to be like. They have a fake image of what this is supposed to be like, and so they can't actually experience the real gift of intimacy because their brain has been rewired. It's literally robbing people of intimacy, one of the best gifts that God has to give to us. Steals. Last thing I just wanna mention, there's a lot more here, but sin also spreads. There's a spreading impact. What is so profound is how subtle and how small it is initially. We don't have to make any acknowledgements. We know that almost every sphere of society is influenced with the consequences and the ramifications of sin.

I think it was just last year that there was a big scandal within the NYPD that some of the top brass, there was like a sexual scandal involved, involving employees. It's like, man, this is where justice is supposed to flow, yet we're having this. You see this in politics, you see this in the church. But what's really interesting, if you've ever sat down with someone who really has, like their life has blown up through sin, it's like, hey, how did you, I've sat down with pastors before, you've ended up here, tell me how it started. And no one I know is waking up thinking, yeah, I just decided to blow my life up today. It's just a small, subtle lie. It's just a small, subtle thing that got in that we'll left unchecked, began to spread into their body. It spreads generationally. One of the things that happens a lot in prayer spaces is generational sin patterns come out in people's lives. I mentioned this earlier in the year, I really, really wish that what happened in my life was just about my life, but actually impacts you, what you do impacts me, how we live impacts the world. Romans 5.12 says, therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, so death spread to all men because all sinned. The reality is we feel the consequences of sin in us,

we feel the consequences of sin around us, we feel the consequences of sin through us. But the good news is we can be free from it. If I could come against any lie today, it is the fact that you can walk in freedom from sin. I wanna give you some hope. The good news is that through Jesus, what was separated can be reconciled, what was stained can be cleansed, mindsets and appetites can be renewed by the power of the Holy Spirit, what was lost can be restored. There's good news on offer. Now, what I wanna do is shift in very practical terms, all right, what do I do? Because if you're like me, we've mentioned, Reagan mentioned today, it's like, hey, we live to be a living experiment to close the gap to what we read about in the Bible and what happens in our everyday life. And I don't know if there's a more profound gap in my life than what I read about in scripture and then what's actually happening in my life on a consistent basis. And so my desire is to help you pastorally. If we were sitting at a coffee table and you're saying, hey, I'm struggling with sin, here's three things I would tell you to do. The first one is this, is you need to be a pastor. The second one is this, is you need community.

You will not find freedom alone. You will not sustain freedom alone. You need people in your life to walk with you. And it says we have this there, we have core listed there. We have something in our church that if you don't know about, you need to know about it. And it would be our desire that everyone is involved in this in some way, shape or form, but it's called core communities. There's a QR code, we'll send it out in the email, in the newsletter. Or bi-weekly, and this is self-organized. And one of the core practices of it, there's more than this, but it's just confessing sin. Folks, we have to normalize, for whatever reason the last few hundred years, confession in the Protestant church has just like fallen apart. We need to normalize confession once again. You need to have people in your life from which you have no secrets. This research is out there, I think it's actually one of the things that's so powerful about 12-step communities, like Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, those spaces, is they have found that it's not just an addiction issue we have in society, like if it's just an addiction, then we should be able to solve that with sobriety, but it's actually a connection issue we have.

It's people want to be fully known and fully seen, but yet we live in a society that wars against that in tremendous ways. There's something about a small group of people in your life who know everything about you and the freedom you can stand when that is the case. Listen, I don't claim to walk in perfection by any means, but there's not a thing you can find out about my life that there's three people who don't know everything about that thing already. And consistently, it's like, oh, you want to come at me? Well, that's wonderful, because you can go talk to them, because they've been processing this with me and us and trying to figure out next steps along the way. And I mentioned these are self-organized, because if I just put you with some random stuff, if I just put you with some random strangers like, confess your sin, you'd be like, it's been a tough week. Oh, if we believe this, James 5, 16, therefore. Confess your sins to one another and pray for one another that you may be healed. Oh man, there's forgiveness in Jesus, but do you know the healing power of community? Do you know the wonderful invitation to be cleansed and healed? I believe if we actually leaned into that

and believed that, it would shift how we live in a significant way. The next thing, so you gotta do it in community. The next invitation I have for you is you need to break early. Break early, sin has a little cycle. You've never heard this before in the Bible, I'm gonna lift it up, James chapter one, verses 14 and 15. But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire, when it's conceived, gives birth to sin, and sin, when it's fully grown, gives forth death. So you see a little pattern here, and I just wanna lift this up to you. Desire gives birth to temptation. Temptation gives birth to sin. Sin gives birth to death. If there is any part of your theology that thinks God is trying to suppress your desires, you are massively incorrect. God actually gave you those desires. God is not trying to suppress your desires. He's actually trying to satisfy your desires. And that desire, unchecked and channeled in the wrong place, can lead us into the place of temptation. But one of the things I wanna note is, both of these things are not even into the sin category yet, according to James. But hey, you can have a desire, not a bad thing.

Hey, you can walk into temptation, it happens. Then when it hits sin phase, is when there's like, now we're into something. If that left unchecked, gives birth to death. What I want to beg and implore you is, you can break that cycle and break that chain anywhere you want to along the line. Most people do not confess in our society until they are in sin or death phase. And what I want to implore you and invite you to do is, learn how to start confessing desires and temptation early. Just say, hey, I'm wrestling with this. For example, the majority of things I'm confessing are this is exactly what it looks like. Years ago, a friend of mine was in my life and I just said, hey man, here's the deal. There's some things I need to tell you. I don't need you to counsel me or coach me. I just have this thought and this idea that's way in the back of my mind. It's way out of line of who I wanna be. It's way out of line of what God wants to do, but I can't ignore the fact that it is over there. And so what I need to do is this thing that's in the shadows I just need to bring it to you and tell it to you so it loses its power over me. Because sin loses, like sin has its power in secret. When it's brought to the light, it loses all power. And so rather than waiting until it's like this thought, it's just creeping, it's creeping, it's creeping,

and then oh man, I slipped into something. I'm just trying to say, hey, I've got this desire over here and I know if this gets unchecked, it's gonna cause some damage in my life. I would tell you Christian maturity is not never struggling with these things. Christian maturity is just getting desires and temptations out before they start destroying your life. Break the cycle early. That's wonderful if you got friends that you're constantly confessing to, but start confessing ahead of time. Let people know you're struggling. It is an okay thing. I'd also just encourage you in this space, get into this a bit more, but learning how to receive confession, we're just bad at this. We're always trying to coach, trying to counsel, we're trying to like, you know, it's like, I just need to confess to somebody, I don't need to have a 45 minute care conversation. Like I just need to get this out, I need to get this to the light. And then it's like, well, we try, it's like, dude, I don't need self-help but Jesus sprinkled on top of it. I just need to get this into the light. Here's what, when someone's confessing something to me, I always will just say this,

hey, is there anything else you need to say that you didn't tell me? Because often even when we're bringing things to light, we can still do it in a little bit of a way that hides a little wiggle room for death to creep in. And then two, I'll just say, well, the blood of Jesus cleanses you, let's pray together. And just simply approach the throne of grace on their behalf and just ask the Holy Spirit, but according to your word, we've been forgiven and cleansing is an offer. And so Holy Spirit, I'll just invite you right now to cleanse them. Break early. The last one is this, and I've hit it already, but confession is a gift. Somewhere in innocent and guilt culture, this framework is just like, confession is a bad thing, I've done a bad thing, I'm like, I'm bad, God's mad, and I need to do something about it. Versus actually the invitation to what confession really is. So let me give you a couple thoughts here. Number one, you should confess frequently. Folks, if you're only confessing sin like once every few months, you're probably ensnared by it. Like I don't know about you, but man, I struggle a lot more than that.

Like I've got a hotline to a few of my friends, like, hey man, just get this out. You need to do it frequently. You need to do it consistently. Often, what will happen? Happen, a way we can hide is we'll confess in parts to certain people. I'll tell them a little bit, I'll tell them a little bit, I'll tell them a little bit, and then no one knows the whole thing, and I can still remain in hiding, and I actually, unfortunately, remain unhealed. Oh, I'm not the only one that struggles with that. Consistently, frequently, this is a real challenging one, but just confess specifically. General confession will lead you to general freedom. Specific confession will lead you to specific freedom. The enemy loves to live in generalities, practically. Rather than saying, hey, I've been struggling, and I wanna confess, I've been struggling with lust this week, it's more along the lines of, hey, I slipped and I looked at pornography. Here's the search engine on my phone so you can actually see what I looked at. That brings a different sense of gravity to it. It also invites a different sense of being known into it. Confess fully, bring it all to the light, and then I just want us to live here for a second as I want you to confess confidently. Oh, man, this is where I could just live the rest of the night, oh, confessing confidently.

Somewhere we separated confession of sin from holding fast to the confession of Jesus Christ as Lord. I wanna tell you they're one and the same thing. The book of Hebrews says, hold fast to the confession. Let me tell you the good news. Jesus came and Jesus defeated sin, Satan, death, and hell. What you're confessing, he's already broken the power to it. And so, this is not just like, I'm bad, God's mad, I've gotta bring this out so I can be good again. It's like, no, no, he already entered into this mess. He's already come into this place, and I'm just confessing the fact that Jesus, you are Lord, you've conquered sin, Satan, death, and hell, and so I'm bringing this to the light right now so you can break his grip and power over my life. There should be a confidence. You know, people talk about they can't deal with the hypocrisy in the church. I think when the church is being like hypocrites, it's probably the truest form of who we are. To get in the door, you have to admit I'm not good enough. The issue is we wait until it's way far down the line that it actually gets dealt with. There's something where we get this shame bubble all of our lives that we don't just walk in and just begin to confess things freely and confidently. With the awareness, it's not your behavior that gives you boldness to the throne room. Hebrews 4 says this, for we do not have a high priest

who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one in whom every respect has been tempted as we are, yet he's without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find help in our time of need. I just love that we approach a throne of grace. I love that all throughout Scripture, when God's revealing himself in the Old Testament, he's seated in the mercy seat. The Lord, the Lord, gracious and compassionate, not slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. I just love the gentle invitation to actually believe who God actually is. This teaching text that we read tonight, John is writing to the church. He says, I'm writing these things to you, to you so that you may not sin. You can live a life without sin and it actually is possible. I'm writing to these things to you so that you may not sin, but if anyone does sin, I love that caveat. Hey, but just in case, just in case you get ensnared, just in case something happens, you get entangled somewhere along the journey, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus, the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins. I just wanna tell you tonight, if I've been talking and you just feel the weight of shame and condemnation, that's not at all what I wanna invite you to. I wanna invite you into the permission

and knowledge of knowing Him. But if any of you does sin, oh, we have an advocate with the Father. Oh, and Jesus just didn't come to represent us to the Father, He came to represent the Father fully to us. You know, I wanted to get really practical and give you three things of like, hey, you need to do this with people, don't do it alone. You need to break the cycle, you need to live in the light. And really understanding confession is a gift, because you just gotta understand, God is a good God. He gives us good gifts. Confession is a gift that just gets us back into right alignment with who He is. And so please don't. I think this could easily be taken as like this behavior modification tips and tricks. The practical stuff has gotta be lensed through the view of knowing God. He who knew no sin became sin and met us in that place. Tonight, if you're wrestling with something, you're ensnared in something, I promise you God is a lot closer than you think he is. What has transformed my life is in seasons when I'm struggling in times of sin. Seasons when I feel like, man, I could not be further separated from God. I've had encounters with the Holy Spirit where in that place of absolute shame, in that place of absolute condemnation,

Christ himself met me there. It's not been the high places of Christianity, the apexes of when things are going well in my life, it's actually been in the lowest places. In those lowest places when it feels like darkness is ensnaring me, that I just have this still, small voice begin to whisper to me. And so more than any of this, sin will get you to start focusing inwards and I want to invite you that you need to start shifting your focus upwards. It is the kindness of God that is intended to lead us unto repentance. And so before we go into response tonight, I want to invite you, if you would, just to stand. And I just felt before we go into our normal response, it was actually important for us to begin to sing. Just very gently, because so often we hear words like this and we start turning inward, we start self-evaluating our life, but the beauty of what worship is and why we worship is because Jesus Christ came. That Jesus came, he conquered sin, Satan, death, and hell. The perfect love of the Father begins to cast out all fear. And the psalmist tells us that God is enthroned in the praise of his people. Now I can sit here tonight and tell you how nice God is and tell you how kind God is,

or you could just meet him yourself. And so I want to invite you, if you're in a space and you just need to like, man, I need to meet the kindness of God, we're just going to very gently begin to sing before we go into further response. And so we just invite you right now, Holy Spirit, to fill the room. Father, we just pray your loving kindness will begin to wash over the room. Lord, we hear the invitation in Isaiah 6, in Isaiah chapter one, verse six, we say, though your sins are like scarlet, I'll make them white as snow. Though your garments are red like crimson, I'll make them white as wool. Though your garments are red like crimson, I'll make them white as wool. Just as he simply begins to sing, just invite you to begin to sing over the room as well. He's enthroned upon the praise of his people, the Lord, the Lord, gracious and compassionate. Open your mouth and believe it. ♪ Jesus Christ, you are my one desire ♪ ♪ Lord, hear my only cry ♪ ♪ To know you all my life ♪ ♪ Your love so deep is washing over me ♪ ♪ Your face is all I seek ♪ ♪ You are my everything ♪ ♪ Jesus Christ, you are my one desire ♪

♪ Lord, hear my only cry ♪ ♪ To know you all my life ♪ Father, we just thank you you're here. Holy Spirit, we just invite you to increase your presence in the room right now. So take a few seconds to wait upon the Lord. Holy Spirit, we just give you permission to speak over the room, individually, but also corporately. Just take a few seconds here to wait upon the Lord. Father, Holy Spirit's highlighting three things in the room, three invitations I wanna offer you to this time of response. The first one is this, is there's just something that's been lurking in the shadows that you need to bring to the light tonight. It's not about walking in perfection, it's about walking in the light. There's some seed of a thing, you just need to bring it to light tonight. Our prayer counselors will be up here in just a moment. The second thing is this, is you feel separated from God. If it's the first time you've ever had this awareness, you've been trying to close the gap yourself, and that you just need to recognize that Jesus Christ came and died so that you could be reconciled. You yourself have no hope of reconciliation, but through the cross, we get brought into the family. If you feel separated from God, you need to surrender your life

to the finished work of the cross, to Jesus, I'd love to invite you to do that tonight. And the last thing I just wanna mention, and it's specific for this service tonight, Some of the shadows, you feel separated. Then I just really felt as I was praying during worship on the front end, man, you just feel the staining impact of sin in your life. Like sin has stained you. This idea of feeling clean feels so foreign to you, you don't even know what to do with it. And I wanna tell you that He's here to cleanse us. He's here to wash us. The gentle washing of the word. And so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna pray for us, invite our prayer counselors to go ahead and start making their way down to the front. We're gonna continue in a moment of response and worship, but also if we can pray for you in any one of these areas, or if there's anything else in your life, as I'm talking, something is coming to light. Just invite you to do not today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your heart. There's an invitation to respond. God opposes the proud, He gives grace to the humble. So Father, we just offer you this place and this room tonight. Holy Spirit, we just give you permission. We invite the spirit of wisdom and revelation and the knowledge of who you are to bring light

and life to the room tonight. Father, I just pray right now, anything lurking in the shadows, we just give you permission to bear down in full light upon us. Lord, I just pray that the gentle washing of your word would come into the room tonight. Lord, we just thank you for the cleansing flow and the cleansing power of the blood of Jesus. We just hold fast to the confession that Jesus Christ is Lord. Conquer sin, Satan, death, and hell. We just thank you for the invitation to approach you confidently, not perfectly, but that throne of grace with boldness and confidence. Oh, we just thank you for your love. Father, I just pray, Holy Spirit, would you shed the Father's love abroad in the room tonight to help sons and daughters walk out of this place free. In Jesus' name, I just invite you guys to lean in to respond.