Confession - ANB W3, D4 - 3.21.13

Thursday, March 21                                                               Confession

Ezra 10.1-17

I don’t know of you remember the song by Tracy Byrd from several years ago called “The First Step is the Two-Step”. If not, you’re not missing much. The song is about a guy who sees this girl in a honky-tonk and wants to pursue some semblance of a relationship with her. The line he uses is “How’s a guy like me supposed to know you?” Her response is that “the first step is the two-step” and later “first things first, let’s two-step then we’ll talk.” The drive of this passage from Ezra has brought this song to my mind for several days now. Here we have a people who are wanting to be used by God and wanting to have purified relationships with God, but there is something missing. They have not taken that first step. Richard Owen Roberts wrote an incredible book that sums this idea up neatly in the title. It’s called Repentance: The First Word of the Gospel. John the Baptist, Jeremiah, Isaiah, and all of the other prophets came preaching repentance, the turning away from sin. This was the first step in Israel’s two-step with God.

Ezra paints the picture of absolute brokenness over the sin of the people. He knew that God had sent him and his officials to be the spiritual guides for the people in Israel and purify their worship. But, because of their sin of intermarriage and the subsequent turning from the worship of God, the task could not be complete. Notice again the corporate guilt over the sin. Verse one tells us that Ezra, himself, makes confession for the sin. Ezra was still in Babylon when these sins were being committed. He was the student of the Word of God and a scribe, not one of the fallen priests in Israel, yet he felt the weight of their sin upon his shoulders and he made confession. And his confession sparked the confession of the people. Confession is the outward action of repentance. You cannot repent for that which you have not confessed. Again, the first step in the two step process.

Shecaniah is the first of many to follow, confessing both individual and corporate sin. In him we see both steps of the process come to being. In verse two he admits his sin and the sin of Israel in the intermarriage that has taken place and then in verse three verbalizes repentance. He confesses, then he turns away from the sin. Shecaniah’s example becomes the model that Ezra and the council of the Levites follow in exhorting the people of Israel to make confession and repent of their sin. When the charge was brought to the people (v. 10), they did not deny what they had done and they did not deny that it was a sin before the living God. They responded, “That’s right! As you have said, so it is our duty to do…for we have transgressed greatly in this matter” (v. 12-13). How beautiful it is when the people of God recognize their sin and turn from it.

As we will start to see tomorrow, once the people of Israel had made full confession of their sin and turned from it completely, God did something amazing in their land. The city of Jerusalem was restored. For the last sixty years these returned exiles lived in a city that was only a mere shadow of its former glory. They dwelt in a state of separation of God that was evidenced in the state of Jerusalem. Once they repented of their ways, for neglecting the commands of God and substituting something foreign for the proper worship of God, He restored their land. Imagine what would happen at Hopewell if our people would fully confess their sins and repent. Just think of what God could (and will) do with a people who have purified themselves before Him. This starts with our individual confession, progresses to our corporate confession, and then to our accountability to one another before God. I will not go into our need for the development a culture of confession in our church community, I did that yesterday. What I will do is ask you to look hard at the spirit of confession represented in Ezra 10 and compare it to our practices today. Are we willing to allow confession become part of our normal worship experience? Are we willing to let God purify us together for the sake of His kingdom?

Prayer:

God, I confess to you my sin. I confess to you that I am a sinner. I confess to you that my church is full of sin. Purify us. Make us into your likeness in Christ. Lord, help us to repent, to turn away from the sin which ensnares us. Give us the heart of the Gospel so that we stand unified against sin.