Confession and Freedom

May I ask you a personal question?  Are you weighed down by guilt today?  Is there some specific sin hindering your relationship with God and you want nothing more than to be rid of it?  Perhaps you’ve had a long relationship with the Lord Jesus, but you are holding something that needs to be confessed.  There needs to be reconciliation between you and God, perhaps between you and a friend or a loved one as well.

I’d like to take a moment to meditate on the glorious freedom that comes to us when we confess our sin and come clean about how we’ve offended a holy God.  A classic example of such humble confession is found in Jonah 2 where we get to peer into someone’s prayer closet, that place where we get alone with Christ and pour our hearts out to Him.  In Jonah’s case it just happens to be in the belly of a fish in the heart of the sea! If God had not seen fit to put this into the canon of Scripture, I would almost think it inappropriate for us to read this, because it’s so personal. But God has put it here so that we can learn from the experience of Jonah – even from his own sin!   Listen to his words and be encouraged:

Jonah 2:1-4  Then Jonah prayed to the LORD his God from the belly of the fish,  ² saying, "I called out to the LORD, out of my distress, and he answered me; out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my voice.  ³ For you cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the flood surrounded me; all your waves and your billows passed over me.  ⁴ Then I said, 'I am driven away from your sight; Yet I shall look again upon your holy temple.

Jonah knows he is in the depths literally, in the sea, but also because of his sin he is far away from God.  That is what sin is like, even in the temporal experience of the believer.  It is not that the believer is cast away permanently.  No, Jonah even knows this in his hint of hope in verse four: “Yet I shall look again upon your holy temple.”  If you believe in Jesus, the experience of hindered fellowship with God is painful and dark, but God’s heavy hand upon you is never anger.  Rather it is the loving discipline of a Father who is calling you back to Him in humble repentance.  God will not let you go! 

Now look at Jonah’s clear words of repentance:

Jonah 2:7-9  ⁷ When my life was fainting away, I remembered the LORD, and my prayer came to you, into your holy temple.  ⁸ Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love.  ⁹ But I with the voice of thanksgiving will sacrifice to you; what I have vowed I will pay. Salvation belongs to the LORD!"

Jonah remembers the Lord!  It is not that he has forgotten Him altogether, but then again this is exactly what the irrationality of sin does to us:  we forget God!  His holiness, His mercy, His faithfulness and goodness are forgotten so we can engage in our sin.  But God graciously sent the trial of the fish into Jonah’s life to arrest his conscience and bring him back as a loving shepherd.  Is God perhaps pursuing you in some way too, not letting you go headlong into hard-heartedness?  In the end, Jonah recognizes that he has been guilty of idolatry (v. 8).  But now he turns back in thankful worship, (“But I with the voice of thanksgiving will sacrifice to you,” v.9) and obedience (“What I have vowed I will pay.” v.9).  The joyful conclusion, “Salvation belongs to the Lord!” is a powerful sign that Jonah is again right with God.   

Now read the words of the 17^th-18^th century pastor Matthew Henry, who sums up the power of confession:

“It is very difficult to bring sinful man humbly to accept free mercy, with a full confession of his sins and self-condemnation. But the true and only way to peace of conscience, is, to confess our sins that they may be forgiven; to declare them that we may be justified. Although repentance and confession do not merit the pardon of transgression, they are needful to the real enjoyment of forgiving mercy. And what tongue can tell the happiness of that hour, when the soul, oppressed by sin, is enabled freely to pour forth its sorrows before God, and to take hold of His covenanted mercy in Christ Jesus! Those that would speed in prayer must seek the Lord, when, by His providence, He calls them to seek Him, and, by His Spirit, stirs them up to seek Him.  In a time of finding, when the heart is softened with grief, and burdened with guilt; when all human refuge fails; when no rest can be found to the troubled mind, then it is that God applies the healing balm by His Spirit.”                       

It doesn’t matter how far you think you’ve strayed; if God can hear the prayer of Jonah from the depths of the ocean in the belly of a fish, He can hear you now.  Jonah’s prayer of repentance shows us how far down the spiral of sin we can go, but never out of the reach of our Savior.  Jonah was given grace and freedom when he trusted God and repented of his sin; you can receive the same, whether you come for the first time, or you are a saint of many years.  Don’t delay!  Go to God in humble repentance and you will find freedom.

In His grace,

Pastor David