Principles of Position Lesson 21

All right, lesson 21. Everybody got one? They're back there. The first question should be, why should there be no fear of facing up to each offense and confessing it? That's the one we're working on. If you don't have it, I'll give you a minute to grab one. And no yawning. You don't have to stick up for it.

So we've been talking the last couple of weeks primarily about sins and confession, which I think has been really beneficial to understand a lot of the things that pertain to sins and confession. What a real blessing it is from the Lord that we have the opportunity to in fact do that. So, question number one, why should there be no fear of facing up to each offense and confessing it? Why wouldn't there be any fear? There shouldn't be any fear. What does confession do for you? Fellowship being restored, right. What does it allow you to do before God? Agreeing. What else? This is Courtney's favorite word.

It allows you to rest. before him, and the author of the book said, without guile, our attitude becomes Psalm 139, search me, O God, and know my heart, and try me, and know my thoughts, and see if there's any wicked way in me. That's a cool psalm that has to do with, because a lot of times, and trust me, I know this is a true statement because I know all of you, that there's things in your heart that aren't even exposed to you. You know what I mean?

There's deception in the sin nature that we don't even know about of our own sin nature. And the Lord is very careful to expose that to us, which, as we found out, is a really good thing. Because what it does is it allows us to deal with it. If you live in the dark all the time, you can't deal with the circumstances. of the Lord not only reveals the Lord, but it reveals us and allows us to face up to each offense and to confess it. I think it's a cool thing.

As you live your life, you don't want to have any pretensions about your sinfulness. You want it cleared away. We talk a lot about the beam of judgment. It's a place of rewards and it isn't going to be about sins because the sins have already been taken care of, right? But at the Beamer Rewards, we'll suffer loss because of things we did in our life that weren't, the source of those things was not the Lord Jesus Christ.

Do you want those exposed? Absolutely you do. The great thing about walking in the light is that there isn't any deception. It's right out there in the open. We're freely forgiven. The restoration and the rest that we have before the Lord, there's nothing hidden that could potentially be a barrier between Him and us. And that's great to know. We want our sins clearly revealed so that we can confess them and thereby keep from breaking our all-important fellowship with the Father.

I must admit though, I've had discussions with people about this fellowship and they don't know what I mean. What do I mean by fellowship with the Father? Is it just a big jar of warm fuzzies sitting in your kitchen? It's a real communication and hanging out. Do you expect God to have fellowship with you? I don't want everybody to jump on the answer here. Do you expect God to have fellowship with you? The answer is yes. Do you expect him to have fellowship with you based on your performance? No. It's based on what he's already done.

Now, what gets in the way of that fellowship? My sins. So he's provided us with the means to restore us to fellowship. And when we begin over time to really appreciate the fellowship that we have with the Lord Jesus, either in the Word or just walking around with Him, and something clouds that, we want to get out of there quickly. I don't think so quickly at first, because we're always protecting self. But as time goes on, we really appreciate the fact that anything that is between me and my father can be dealt with whatever is to be done on my side.

And I want him to let me know if there's anything in me that is harming this fellowship in any way. It's like my relationship with Donna. I want to know. I don't want to walk around with a rain cloud over my head for any amount of time. I want to know, because I like the fellowship, I like hanging out. Does that make sense?

So, do you know what, or have you known what fellowship is with Him? That there's a peace and rest with Him, that He loves you, that He's sovereign and He's taking care of circumstances, He's involved with your life, and He's conforming you to Christ. It's really cool, the stuff He's he's doing. So when I first answered this I said, confession and cleansing enable us to rest before God without guile. So the next question is, what does guile mean?

It's a Greek word, dolos, d-o-l-o-s. Deceitful. Deceitful. It's a bait, it's a snare, it's a deceit. And it's subtle. It was a charge made against Paul by his detractors that he was catching people by guile. Are we familiar with guile in our society? Boy, we've just gone through about a year and a half of guile. Oh my goodness.

I mean, does anybody tell you the truth? If they did, we don't know it. If they did, you wouldn't be able to tell it because, yeah, I mean, we're almost to the Roman society and the Greek society where you admire people who really are good liars. And you know the old joke about how can you tell when a lawyer is lying? His lips are moving. And that's all of our legislators. That's right. You're like me, aren't you glad this is over, the phone's not going to ring, all this junk mail.

So guile is a very interesting thing because guile is the hallmark of the sin nature. Do you know that? Have you ever experienced that in your own life, that your sin nature is really sneaky? Really sneaky, and will defend itself at any cost. and will rationalize its defense mechanism so that, you know, I'm not guilty.

There's some other reason for some situation. As an example, I've got to use political examples. They've been so good this week. Hillary Clinton lost. You know who she blamed? Comey. She blamed the head of the FBI. Nothing to do with the fact that she was a crummy candidate. I mean, don't we all do that? Okay, now let's have equal time. Equal time for Trump. He never told you. Oh, yeah, he never did. None of them ever do. They just don't. And he may not build that wall. That was just kind of a, you know, saying that a country should be protected. He's going to build a new yard.

You know what's interesting about Giles being part of the sin nature that I'm realizing is that we believe that. If our sin nature is blaming somebody else, we truly believe that. That we're right. Yeah. It's not like we're making it up to cover ourselves. We truly believe that. And unless you have the Lord to shine that light and strip it down to what it really is, we don't know. It's not that we haven't been warned.

Paul says, set your mind on things above. Why? Oh, that's why. I don't know if you see it, and I understand what Don is saying, and I'm going to remember that the next time we have an argument. You really believe that, don't you? But isn't that the deal? When you get in an argument with somebody, what's the game? The game is I got my rights and I'm going to defend them. I'm going to win. I don't care. I'm not taking any prisoners. You're all going to die. I'm going to win. And you don't care if it's the truth or not. You're just in it to win.

And that should demonstrate to us how the sin nature really functions. And it can do it aggressively like in an argument or it does it subtly. It excuses our sins. We may have a seared conscience which excuses our behavior. Well, I had a right to do that because something else. No, you don't.

By the way, when we all get to glory, who's got the rights? The rights. Do you have any rights in heaven? What do you think? Do you have any rights when you go to heaven? I have the right to approach God. Who's got all the rights in heaven? Christ. Christ does. And so you can do what he can do because you have his righteousness. But it isn't your rights. He's got them all.

Well, we won't have a sin nature to mess us up. Well, you won't have to worry about it when you get there. And so, it's cool. The sin nature is the thing that demands its rights. Whether they be legitimate or not, it doesn't matter if they're legitimate. I got my rights. I mean, that's what wars are fought over. My rights against your rights. That's really what it's about. And it doesn't matter whether either one of us are factual or the truth or certainly biblically true, I still have my rights. And that's as the Constitution says I do.

Guile is a very interesting word because if it's looked at, it exposes guile and deception are the hallmarks of the world system. You notice that deception is Everything that's involved in the world in some way or another is deceiving. The Lord Jesus called Satan a liar and a murderer from the beginning. Everything is based on that.

So you don't have to be a doubting Thomas about the things of the Lord, but about the things of the world, that's the subterfuge. enter into this sinful behavior, that would be a wonderful reward that you will really like. So you go for it. What happens? Find out that, oops, well, it wasn't so great after all. It took away the one thing that I cherished the most, which was fellowship with my father, guile. So I quoted Psalm 139, 23 and 24.

Is that a legitimate teaching? Is it a legitimate teaching in us about the value of confession? Tell me why. It says, search me, O God, and know my heart, my anxious thoughts. And that's okay for us as believers? What do you think? Not a trick question, I'm being serious. Yeah, it is. I think it is. I think it's perfectly legitimate to go to the Lord and say, look, if there's anything between you and me, and I, whatever you would have me do about it, and put in these words, search me, oh God, and know my heart. Right? Yeah. It's 139. Yeah, it's 139. Oh no, don't tell me that I printed the wrong ones. You made a mistake. Another one. I made two mistakes in this. I thought I corrected it on the ones that you just picked up. Is it 139? Yeah. Mine was 129. Yeah, so it should be 139. And there's another one coming up that you can bust me about too. Yeah, I think it's perfectly legitimate.

As a matter of fact, I think that as the Spirit of God reveals Christ to us through His Word, this becomes more and more of an attitude that we have that we don't want anything between us and Him. Absolutely nothing. We would like to have that kind of relationship with our kids, where they would trust us so much that they would not want to have anything between my love for them But that's assuming that you're all terrific parents. I think some people can be terrific parents and their children still will not respond like we think they should. Gordon is the only one that sits there with his two kids next to him. We talked last week about how easy it is in our society to be deceitful. How are you doing Joe? He's doing good, is he? Is he really? I mean, but if he isn't, I don't want to hear a chapter and verse. But we do. Hey, how's it going? Things fine? I'm doing great. Are you really?

I thought about that in great detail in the past, and I decided there is no way I can just give a straight honest answer because they're not going to stand around to hear it and won't want to hear it. I give them what they can take. And usually not much.

I hear what you're saying. I've known Christians over my lifetime that have a pat answer. Remember Ed Sundine's pat answer? Ed, how are you doing? Oh, that's good. That's what he said every time. I'm grateful. That's a great answer, you know. But was he really? Was he really? If he knew Ed, he was. He really was. He really believed it. And you know, the thing is, so we developed these little responses.

Because we know they don't want to hear chapter and verse if I'm not having a good day, right? It's like, what time is it? Have you got an hour? I can tell you how I made this watch. You don't want that. But the society, the world society is built on deception.

You know? You meet some friends that you haven't seen in a while. Hey, how's it been going? Oh, great. I was talking to a lady last night. And I said to her, how are you doing? She said, I'm doing really good. And after about the fourth sentence, she started to say, well, you know, I got this issue.

Which one of those was a lie? Not that you go around checking people's veracity, but it's the way the sin nature in the world works. It just works that way. Deception and lying is part of the deal. So, to go to the Lord, in honesty and say, Lord, search me. Find out if there's anything in me that my thoughts or my heart does not write with you. Anything that's hurtful in me and lead me in an everlasting way. In other words, I would say, lead me in confession so that I can fix it. whatever my side of the equation is, so I can walk with you in absolute and total honesty about who you say I am.

Isn't that cool? I think it's really neat. And we're taught, I wrote down, we're faithfully taught the lesson not to attempt to hide our and refrain from confession. I remember when I grew up, I went to Catholic grade school. I'm trying to think if it was second grade or third grade when you do First Communion. Second grade. And back in those days, they taught you how to go to confession, right? So how old are you in the second grade? Seven and eight. So they prep you over the weeks and they tell you that kind of thing and then you actually go in and go to the priest and you tell him your sins.

I didn't have any sins. I faked it. I faked a couple of things and said I'll try that. I didn't know. You lied about it? I lied about it. At seven years old, I'm lying about my sins. Your first intention was to lie. And then when I got older, then I was doing the other thing.

I don't know if I ought to tell them all of this. Could you ask him if he was grading on the curve? I had a priest one time tell me he wouldn't forgive me because he recognized my voice. And I was back in there telling him the same stuff every week. Well, you're probably not sorry. I probably won't give you what they call absolution." And I thought, well I'm craftier than this guy.

I just walked out of that box and went into the next one. I've told you that I used to come in, when I was in college we had hours, we had to be in at 1.30. And there was a guy who would check you in and sometimes a priest who lived in the dorm would be sitting there. The guys would come in and they'd take one look at the priest and they'd start confession right there. They'd say, bless me, Father, for I have sinned. The priest would go, go to bed. All done out of fear. This is done out of a love for the Lord and a relationship. So, will guilt and chastisement do a thorough work in us regards sin and confession. Psalm 32, 3 and 4, I think I got that one right. Here's Psalm 32, 3 and 4.

When I kept silent about my sin, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night my hand was heavy upon me. Well, I'm going to ask this question anyway. It's probably too personal. Have you ever had a sin that just hung with you a long time and you never got it right? You never took it to the Lord and there was always this sort of hammer hanging over you? I guess I'm the only one. No, I'm sure we all have. I'm going to include everybody.

Well, or you had a relationship that was with someone that was broken because you were the idiot and you didn't do anything about it. Because either you were preserving yourself or you were fearful or whatever and it lingered and you knew you were wrong. You ever have one of those? You never have, huh?

I did something that my boss wouldn't have liked at work. I really needed to confess to my boss, but I thought, you know, what would the repercussions be? And I didn't ever do it, but that laid on me for months and months and months. That's a really good example. Everybody hear that example? No, I didn't. She did something that she knew her boss wouldn't approve of, but she wouldn't go to her boss and talk about it because, say it again. The repercussions could have been too great. Maybe she'd have lost her job. Or whatever.

You guys ever done that? You guys are sneaky. Worry is another one that just... Sure is. So do you think that God uses this sort of worry and guilt and chastisement as a benefit to us? How does he do that? I thought we'll come back to him, to... I don't know. What do you think about that?

In other words, like you said it was on your heart months and months and months. Yeah, I think it... basically it hurt me. Sure. Sure. It ruined me. Yeah. How'd you ever resolve it? I couldn't sleep well. Couldn't sleep. I couldn't. just ruined my life. You know, it's really interesting. I talk to a lot of people that have trouble sleeping. Do you? And I think it all goes back to that kind of thing. There are things in their life that when it gets quiet and the lights go out, they start invading their mind and they can't sleep because they're unreconciled issues.

And I think that your sin nature, along with a little help from our boy Bilzy, wants to remind you of those as often as he can. Was that sin really forgiven? Did God really take care of that? You didn't hide that from him, did you? Well, maybe I did. Maybe I did.

So, one of the manifestations, I think, of that kind of thing is people don't sleep very well. Because they say, well, gee, I can't shut my mind up. Well, what are they worried about? Some people worry about income or circumstances, but a lot of it is being found out. Or just sinfulness.

You know the Lord knows. How do you tell the difference? This is a question from a month and a half ago. How can you tell the difference between the conviction of the Spirit and the accusations of Satan? Real simple. One point up, one point down. What? One points up, one points down. Satan always points to condemn you. The Spirit of God points you to Christ.

Well, I don't have trouble when I go to bed at night. It's when I wake up. No, now that's not a joke. I know, it's not. And then if I... I have to train myself now. I'm still trying to... Get out of bed before, you know, all these things come back to me. Did you hurt their feelings? Did you say the wrong thing? You know, all this. And of course, there are many other things in my past that I'm certainly not proud of. But, you know, that's basically, it's in the morning. And I think I have to just get out of bed. I think it's Satan. Turn on the radio. Make some noise. Same.

So is Wanda and I the only two that go through this kind of thing? Are what? Are we the only two that go through this kind of thing? Or have experiences? Oh, the 25 year old over there is going. Well, I mean, let's say in business that you weren't exactly honest with somebody, or you did sort of a sneaky thing on them to your own advantage. The first thing you're going to do is run and tell them, right? No way.

So the point being is that as we grow in the knowledge and grace of the Lord Jesus, especially the grace, and the fact that he loves us. There's nothing we keep from him. We lay it right out in front of him. And it also has a residual effect in your relationship with other believers. Because if I think that I've done something to harm you, I'm going to go to you and talk about it. Get the elephant in the room out. And I'm not going to have this protection mechanism going on, because what is there to protect? The one that we're trying to protect was the one that was crucified. See that? And so I remember one time I was talking to Miles Stanford about how a Christian businessman operates and functions and I was concerned that I would be so transparent that no one would ever do any business with me.

He said, no, it's totally the other way around. He said that you get really good at what you do because you're open and honest and transparent about it and you don't keep anything, especially if you're a salesman. You don't, you know, a little shade here and a little shade, you don't do that anymore. And people begin to learn that they better not ask you a question because you're going to tell them the right truth, you know.

But aren't there some circumstances where if you were honest with someone, if they asked your opinion, If you shared with them honestly what you thought, you would harm them more by doing that? What do you think about that? It needs to be given in love. Yeah. But sometimes people aren't ready to hear what you would tell them if you just cut to the bare facts. So your opinion is a good one, that I should judge those circumstances based on what the results might be with them. Yeah, to me that's what matters.

I may harm them. It's their reception. Can they take it? Will they grow from it? And if they're not there, I can't afford to give it out. Okay, what about if you know you're going to offend them, but they're not going to sin? How would you know that? Good question. How would you know that? Well, one way you'd know it is do it.

Mike, I thought it was interesting last week when you said that Miles had said to you about going to one person, don't do it because that person is too fragile. Too fragile, that's right. And he certainly had a better judgment about that person than I did, because I was ready to get in their face. Because he was blaming somebody else for something I did.

How do you do that? On Tuesday, we're in Romans 14, and we're talking about being judgmental towards your brother, and a strong believer and a weak believer. And Paul says, You have to understand that Christ died for him too. Well, and the premise that you're talking about early on about guile, that's part of our sin nature. So my opinion is always going to be the best one.

It is. Right? No, you're right. You're absolutely right. It is. My opinion always counts. It's more important than yours. Yeah, that's right. That's the way the old man operates. So when someone asks you an opinion... Do you think that she's got a relevant point that someone may need to be corrected? Are you the one that does it? Or they come to you and ask you a question about some incident and you know that if you answer truthfully that they're not going to take it right and it's going to harm them. What do you think about that kind of thing? Do you need to go through things like that and judge whether you should talk to them or not? Just have a thought. Sometimes there are neutral areas where you might have an opinion and it can hurt them. Whether you go into those kind of neutral zones and pick apart pieces, that's one thing.

But where there's the authority in scripture that applies to us in this age, then if you can turn the conversation to not what I think, but the authority of what the scripture says about a matter, then it's not you offending them, it's them being offended by truth potentially, and that is a That's a relationship between them and the Lord that, or a fellowship issue, that can be resolved and that you may have helped bring to light. So if you do it graciously and out of love, truthing in love, but bringing it back to that authority of the scripture as opposed to, this is how I'm thinking about your problem. You know, that's terrific because that's really the issue. You know, let's see what the scripture has to say. Al was a good one for that. He was great for that.

It's also the factor that the scriptures exhort us not so much to be giving our opinions as to be ready to give an answer for the hope that is in us. Assuming there is hope. We have that hope, but we're not believers. Well, there are times that I haven't gone to somebody because I knew that I wasn't acting scripturally.

I was angry. or I had my rights violated and I was going to fix it. So it's a very interesting thing. Courtney and I, when we were teaching the grace class, there was an interesting thing about, I'm not to cause my brother to stumble, right? I'm not to cause you to be the occasion of my brother's sinning. That's scriptural. But how about if I say something to you and you're offended? Is there a difference in that? And what's the difference?

Paul says he had the liberty to do anything. But he would modify his liberty for the benefit of his brother. And he used the example of eating meat as a sacrifice to idols. He could eat it. He could eat BLTs all day long. But if his Jewish brother was sitting there who was a believer, he would not do it. He wasn't going to be an occasion to cause his brother to stumble. But what if he just said something that offended him? And it didn't cause them to stumble necessarily, but they were offended. Can you do that? Why? Who decides to be offended? The one who you say it to. They're the ones that are offended. Maybe you should explain the difference between offense and stumbling. Stumbling is causing them to sin. Sin.

And how would that cause your Jewish friend to sin if you ate a DLP in front of him? Well, probably in a contemporary society, alcohol would be a better example. If I knew you had an issue with alcohol and I was free to drink alcohol and I knew you weren't in a position, say I'm an elder and I'm not going to drink in front of you, I'm not going to drink in front of my kids, I won't do it. Because I don't want to cause you to think, well gee, he thinks it's okay to drink, I think I will.

And it could be very harmful to you. I won't eat meat offered to idols because I think there's some relevance in a piece of meat that was offered to an idol and it might sear my conscience. I'm not going to do that. Now if I said I don't like something you do and you get offended by it, it could be anything. To me the thing about offense is I think generally offense is an expression of anger. Or fear. And so you could be causing them to sin. Could be. But they made the decision to do it. I wasn't the immediate cause of it. Usually if the anger is unfounded because they haven't really thought it through.

I'll give you a good example with Wanda. Wanda got a book from somebody to read and recommend it and I somehow intercepted it and I read it. Somehow you took it by the hand. So I read it and took some notes and I had Vern read it and see what he had to say about it and I gave it back to her and all I said was, we can't recommend this.

Well the person that gave it to her was sitting right there when I said that. I'm sure I offended her. I'm absolutely sure I did. Have you apologized? No, I didn't. No, I didn't. Because you see it as the truth and it's okay that she was offended because she needs to wake up and look at what's in the book. Well, you can tell her that. I wasn't going to tell her that. Well, is that the premise? Yeah, that's right. But then the scripture says the cross is an offense. That's right. Sure is.

And going back to JD's point, when you say, well let's see what scripture has to say, you're more than likely going to offend the person you're dealing with, the Word of God is going to offend them. Because the cross is offensive. It says to the sin nature, you're irrelevant. And if you're a believer who doesn't understand identification, how dare you tell me I'm irrelevant?

How dare you tell me that? Well, you've been crucified. No, I haven't. I'm right here. That kind of thing. So, the Word of God is very interesting in terms, like what it says in Hebrews, how powerful it is and it's living. It's alive and it's like a two-edged sword. It can divide the soul from the spirit. Wow. The soul from the spirit. The bone from the marrow. So, the Word of God is really the way to go when you have to deal with a circumstance like that. You have to spend time and find the scriptures and kind of make sure that, and then, if the Lord would lead you, to talk to Him about it.

Now, you may find that in the middle of that, they're not going anywhere. I mean, their hair's up on their back and they're pushing away. You don't know. When you come up someone that you have a liberty with and they do not, and they ask you a reason why you're doing it, to me that's a consideration.

I've got to have a reason. And so taking the scriptures and showing them that reason is using the the scriptures, being God's perspective on it, and just asking, what do you think about that? And let the Holy Spirit work it out. Yeah. I sat with some people a year and a half ago, a young couple, and they were not married and living together, and I said, I know this is probably going to offend you, but one of you has got to move. and showed them in the scripture. One of you has to move. And I know initially I probably offended both of them, but guess what? One of them did move.

Yeah, I think this goes back to, at least my looking at it, is that all things, you know, if it forces you to go to the scripture, Is that what God intended? For that person, it's both people. And it's the all things. He allowed you to do that. And I think there's wisdom that if you have doubt about saying something, it's that Holy Spirit directing you not to say anything. He's going to show you, and all things are going to be used. All things. And I think that's the important part. I think also when you do something... Stupidity yesterday on my part, which Erica witnessed. Oh no. It was...

About sleeping and that, you know. Mine is that once it's done, and you confess, you really confess, Do you let it go, or do you let it always direct you? You can confess, but are you holding it back that, you know, yeah, but, yeah, but. And I slept very well last night, even after the stupidity that I did, because I truly confessed that I was stupid. going on and I let it go because I think he all things he let me do that for my growth my growth you know so I think there's just a lot of things that you know that guile and guilt and all that stuff you know go to confession we agree but then we still hold it back Well, we've got to close, and that was the second bell, right?

The great thing about 1 John 1.9 is that we confess our sins, God is faithful just to forgive us our sins, but then the next part, to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Courtney can sleep. I'm cleansed from all unrighteousness, all of it. And when Christ died on the cross to pay the penalty for your sins, he also took care of the guilt He took care of the guilt, and then when you were crucified with Christ, what is there left of the old man that should influence us? Positionally, nothing. Let's close.

Father, how we thank you for your word. We thank you for the ability to freely open and discuss your truth and practical circumstances in our life regarding sin and confession. We're so thankful that you have made it this way so that we can rectify any loss of fellowship with you immediately and abide and walk with you on a permanent basis. We thank you, we pray in your son's precious name. Amen.