A friend of mine visited a church once where the congregation was given very strict instructions about how to prepare themselves for corporate worship. Most of us give very little attention to this, and then when the worship service begins our minds are occupied with everything that we’ve left undone, or the things we’re worried about in the coming week, or maybe the careless comment someone made to us just a few minutes ago. We often find it difficult to turn our hearts to worship, and yet we don’t do much to prepare ourselves. So this church gave very explicit instructions. The people were to enter the sanctuary and sit in silence, meditating on their sinfulness. This church was trying to do a good thing. It’s a good idea to give some attention to preparing our hearts for worship, but I think this approach, sitting in silence, meditating on our sinfulness, puts too much emphasis on ourselves. We need to be more absorbed with God and less focused on ourselves.
When our sinfulness becomes the main thing, the central thing about our spirituality, our emphasis has gotten off track. It’s easy to find examples of this in the history of the Church. But then, many churches react against this and go to the other extreme. They associate confession with morbid introspection, so they avoid it altogether, at least in the context of worship. They argue that Christian worship is about celebration and rejoicing, which is certainly true to a large extent. But they go even further and conclude that corporate confession has no place at all in worship. They may agree on the necessity of private confession, to obtain forgiveness, but they wouldn’t consider including confession as a part of corporate worship, because somehow this seems out of place. If it doesn’t turn people off, at least it’s likely to drag them down and depress them. Worship is a time to be celebrating the wonderful things Jesus has done, not confessing our own failure. So, there are two problems that arise when we talk about confession in the church today: 1) we think of it as primarily a private thing, to be done as the need arises in our own lives; 2) we often struggle with the seeming inconsistency between a spirit of joy and celebration, on the one hand, and the kind of morbid, introspective attitude we associate with corporate confession of sin. This passage in Nehemiah is a good one for getting a more balanced picture of corporate confession.
First, their confession grows out of worship. We saw in the last sermon that their failure is not the first thing. The starting point is not their unfaithfulness, but the faithfulness of God. They were listening to the reading of the Law, which caused them to grieve; how could they have been so unfaithful to such a gracious God? So they began weeping, and the leaders instructed them to stop. “This isn’t the time for mourning,” they said. “This is the time for celebrating the great things God has done in coming to our rescue.” So the people had given themselves to celebrating, giving thanks to God and worshiping Him.
But the point was not to lay aside the need for corporate confession. The leaders weren’t saying, “well, you know, it’s true that we’ve been guilty of sin in the past, but God has done great things for us and we’re only going to think about that from now on; we’re going to put all our stress on the positive.” The leaders weren’t saying “don’t gather to confess your sins;” they were saying, “this isn’t the right time.” But now, at the beginning of chapter 9, the right time has come. “On the twenty-fourth day of the same month, the Israelites gathered together, wearing sackcloth and having dust on their heads.... They stood in their places and confessed their sins and the wickedness of their fathers.”
They don’t begin with themselves and their failures. They begin with God, celebrating who He is and what He has done for His people, which naturally leads to a greater awareness of their own sins. So, having given themselves to worship and thanksgiving, now they gather together for confession. But even now, in chapter 9, the emphasis is on worship. They’re not just confessing their sins. They spend a quarter of the day (about three hours) in reading from the Law, as we saw them doing in the last chapter. And they spend another quarter of the day “in confession and in worshiping the Lord their God.” They’re gathering together to confess their sins, but the main emphasis isn’t on their failure. They’re keeping the focus on God by listening to His Word and spending time in worship and praise, as well as confession. They’re not wallowing in guilt and self-condemnation. They’re confessing and worshiping.
Second, their confession is rooted in the character of God. The central assumption of this prayer, in many ways the key verse in this chapter, is stated in verse 17: “But you are a forgiving God, gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love.” That’s what gives them the courage to approach Him confessing their sins. They know that He is gracious and compassionate. One of the things that can prevent us from confessing our sins is fear. If we expect God to be angry and unapproachable, if we think He’s just waiting to crush us, of course we won’t be eager to confess our sins.
A.W. Tozer said “Nothing twists and deforms the soul more than low or unworthy conception of God” (“God is Easy to Live With,” in The Root of the Righteous, p. 13). Thinking of God as a hard taskmaster who delights in finding fault with us twists and deforms our souls. We may confess our sins to such a God, but we never get beyond confession. We’re never sure that we’ve listed everything. There’s always a feeling that we haven’t gotten it right, that God is still holding something against us.
The Israelites, here in Nehemiah 9, are confessing their sins, but they’re not wallowing in self condemnation. They confess their sins, but they’re able to get beyond confession. They’re able to worship and give thanks, because they know that God is good. Tozer has a good definition of God’s goodness: “The goodness of God is that which disposes Him to be kind, cordial, benevolent, and full of good will toward men. He is tenderhearted and of quick sympathy, and His unfailing attitude toward all moral beings is open, frank, and friendly. By His nature He is inclined to bestow blessedness and He takes holy pleasure in the happiness of His people.... The goodness of God is the drive behind all the blessings He daily bestows upon us” (A.W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy, p. 88). God takes holy pleasure in the happiness of His people. That’s the foundation for approaching Him to receive grace and mercy. We can be assured that He is waiting to receive us.
We see the same idea in Psalm 130. The psalm begins, “Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord.” The psalmist is in trouble, in need of mercy. Then this: “If you, O Lord, kept a record of sins, O Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness, therefore you are feared” (Psalm 130:3-4). We can cry out for mercy, because we know God is gracious and merciful. A little later, in verse 7, the psalmist says, “with the Lord is unfailing love, and with him is full redemption.” He cares about us when we are in the depths, even if we are there through our own fault. We’re often harsh with one another. We say things like, “you got yourself into this mess; it’s your job to find a way out.” But God doesn’t deal with us in this way. He lovingly comes to our rescue when we’ve gotten ourselves into trouble.
God has come to our rescue because He loves us: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16, NLT). Or this, from Romans 5: “When we were utterly helpless, Christ came at just the right time and died for us sinners.... But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners” (Romans 5:6, 8, NLT). God didn’t provide a way of forgiveness because He made an abstract decision that this was the proper and benevolent thing to do. Have you ever been helped by people who did it coldly and distantly, out of a sense of doing “the right thing?” They may not like you very much, but they believe it’s the right, moral thing, to do. God forgives our sins because He loves us. The Israelites’ confession is rooted in the certainty that God is “gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love.” Much of the chapter is occupied with remembering, in God’s presence, all the times He’s proven this to be true. Despite their unfaithfulness, He’s been gracious and merciful again and again.
The third thing is that their confession is corporate in the largest sense. They’re confessing their sins as a body: “In all that has happened to us, you have been just; you have acted faithfully, while we did wrong.” They’ve seen the truth about themselves, so they humble themselves before God. They’re confessing corporately; there’s no one standing outside the camp, saying, “well, I don’t need to take part in this; I’m not guilty like the rest of these people.” They’re all guilty and in need of grace. They’re not all guilty of the same sins, but they are all sinners. So they confess together as a body. It’s not just that they’re a group of individuals who are all guilty of sin; they, as a body, have sinned against God.
And because they’re confessing their sins as a body, they also confess the sins of their ancestors. They didn’t get where they are on their own. They’re guilty of sin, but they’re also suffering the consequences of the sins of their ancestors. Notice their attitude about this. There’s no sense of superiority. They’re not saying, “these people have really gotten us into a bind; it’s a shame our ancestors were such lousy people. We’ve gotten beyond that sort of thing now.” They recognize their own sinfulness and guilt, so they realize they’re not in a place to sneer at anyone else. They’re sinners themselves, but they haven’t sinned on their own. They’re part of a sinful community that stretches back in time. So, as part of that community, they confess the sins of the whole body, past and present.
Confession of sin is not morbid. It’s based on the truth of our sinfulness, but it’s also rooted in the character of God, who is “gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love.” Listen to what the psalmist says, in Psalm 32, about how he felt before he confessed his sin: “when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me, my strength was sapped as in the heat of summer.” He was depressed, loaded down with the weight of his guilt. And then he says, “Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity. I said ‘I will confess my transgressions to the Lord’ – and you forgave the guilt of my sin.” Confession relieved him of his burden. Confession was the thing that delivered him from his morbid outlook on life. Why? Because God is ready to forgive. He is “gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love.”
When we listen to God’s Word and are convicted of our guilt, as the Israelites were, we can be assured that God is inviting us to come to Him for mercy and grace. When Satan accuses us, he says things like, “God’s never going to forgive you for this; you may as well just throw in the towel.” His accusations lead us away from God. But the conviction of the Holy Spirit always carries an invitation; it leads us to God, not away from Him. It’s holding onto our sins that gets us into trouble, trying to stay away from God, rather than confessing our guilt. Coming into His presence and admitting the truth relieves us of the burden. When the Word of God convicts us of our sin, we can know that God is waiting to grant us forgiveness: “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are – yet without sin. Let us, then, approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need” (Hebrews 4:15-16).
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