Humility To Confess, Faith To Change
I.
2 Timothy 2:23-26-In some
situations repentance is the only remedy
A. Is it true that some
people are their own worst enemy?
1.
Oppose-To place one’s self in
opposition to (anti)
2.
When you are engaged in
wrong behavior and not walking in the light that you have and you won’t change
you are your biggest problem and you have placed yourself in opposition against
yourself
a. When you won’t repent
(change) you have become your biggest problem, NOT the devil
b. Saul (1 Samuel 15), Moses
(Deuteronomy 3), Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5)-Their biggest problem is not the
wrong they didn’t, it was not the enemy, their biggest problem was themselves
(their refusal to repent); nobody was opposing them more than they were
opposing them
c. When God gives you light
and moves on you to do something and you won’t repent and do it, you’re not
just opposing Him, you are opposing yourself because anything that He would
tell you to do is in your best interest to do
3.
You can’t pray that
opposition off, you can’t resist that opposition off; the only way to overcome
self-opposition is to repent and to change
B. It’s the nature of the
flesh to want to do anything, but change
1.
That’s
why we like to hear about the power of prayer, the power of faith, and speaking
the Word and if we tap the fullness of those things we’ll walk in victory and
that certainly is true, but you can do all of those things and if you won’t
repent and follow the direction of the Lord none of that stuff matters
2.
Maybe you don’t need to
pray, maybe you don’t need another confession, maybe you need to repent and do
what the Lord has told you to do – THE FLESH DOESN’T LIKE THAT
3.
Maybe you’ve perfected
talking about God’s love and grace so that you don’t have to talk about
repentance/changing and actually doing what He says; Grace is good and the love
of God is awesome, but God still expects you to change when He says change and he
expects you to walk in the light you have and do what he tells you to do
4.
Revelation
9:20-21-The world is coming down around their ears and their biggest problem is
not the plagues or the destruction or the economy or the storm; the biggest
problem is a refusal to repent
C. If one would acknowledge
the truth & repent they would recover themselves out of the snare of the
devil
1.
Recover themselves-To return to soberness
a. When you won’t repent,
you are opposing yourself, and operating with an unsound mind
2.
Snare-Trap, noose, whatever
brings peril, loss, destruction; an unrepentant heart bring peril, destruction
a. The devil’s snare is to produce an unrepentant heart (a heart
that won’t change)
b. A failure to repent is
what brings peril, loss, and destruction
3.
Captive-Capture, Take Alive, To
catch
a. You’re alive, you’re
living, but your in the enemy’s cage
b. His will is coming to
pass at your life
4.
In this state repentance
is the only remedy
a. God won’t make you repent
and to be freed you have to repent and that’s why the verse uses the phrase to
“recover yourself”; God can’t recover you, He can’t free you if you won’t
repent
b. We love to tell ourselves
that prayer is the answer or I need to speak the word more or I need to sow
this or do that and sometimes those thing are the answers, but in many
situations repentance is the only remedy; that
would be you acknowledging the truth and changing and doing what God told you
to do
II.
Repentance requires two
things; 1) Humility to confess it 2) Faith To change it
A. It takes humility to
confess sin
1.
Proverbs
6:17- Pride is all about making itself look greater or magnifying itself
a. 17-Proud-To exalt oneself or magnify one’s self
1)
Arrogance-Giving
one’s self an undue degree of importance; inflated claims of rank or value
2)
Exaltation-To
raise with pride; To make undue pretentions (facades) to power, rank, or
estimation;
3)
Lifting
Up, Height, Rising up-(Stiff neck lifts up, bowed neck
goes down)
b. Pride wants to look good
and be great and high and lofty in the minds and opinions of others
c. When you’ve missed it
that doesn’t make you look good so rather than just acknowledging it and
confessing it pride will try to cover it so that it doesn’t look bad
2.
Repentance
requires the acknowledgment of the truth and acknowledging the truth requires
humility-2 Timothy 2:26
a. It takes humility to deal
with truth and reality because sometimes the truth makes you look bad
1)
If
the truth makes pride look bad, then pride doesn’t want to acknowledge
it/confess it
b. The truth is if you need
to repent, then you have done or are doing something that’s not right
1)
To
repent you have to be willing to humble yourself and acknowledge the truth that
what you have done was not right
2)
It
takes humility to acknowledge that you missed it and didn’t walk in the light
you had and didn’t do what you knew you should do
c. 1 Kings 21:25-29-He’s
repenting, but God calls it humbling himself; this truth is making him look
bad, but he’s acknowledging it and that takes humility
1)
To
acknowledge the truth that you’re wrong you’re not being lifted up and exalting
and magnifying yourself you’re doing the opposite
3.
Truth
and light are the same: Sometimes light/truth shows a reality about us that’s
not too positive and it takes humility to be in the light-(John
9:5, John 14:6-Jesus was the light and the truth)
a. It takes humility to let
the line shine and show you reality (b/c reality might make you look bad)
1)
Humility
will own reality and face it head on - Yep,
that’s pretty much me. I did it,
it’s my fault, and there are no excuses for it. That’s what I did, I knew it was wrong
when I did it.”
2)
Humility confesses sin
(reality), Pride covers it (reality)
b. Humility wants to get it
right (if it’s wrong); pride wants to be right (pride wants the way it’s doing
it to be right because to say it’s wrong would make it look bad)-John 3:19-20
1)
The
guy who is doing evil and doesn’t want to repent hates the light and doesn’t
come to the light because they light will show him and everybody else that he’s
wrong and shine that reality
a) The reality is if pride
is wrong it doesn’t even want to know it’s wrong
2)
Pride
hates the light because in the light it can’t pretend to be right and deceive
others into believing it’s right
3)
Humility
wants to get it right so it loves the light even though the light might shine
on a reality that makes it look bad
a) If you’re more interested
in getting it right than being right you’ll love the light
b) Humility loves the light
because it wants to get it right; Pride loves the night because it wants to be
right (So if I stay in the dark I won’t see I’m wrong)
c) Humility runs to the
light and says Lord shine it on me
d) Pride blinds you humility
brightens you
4.
Jeremiah
13:1-15-This refusal to repent and heed the correction of the Lord, God calls
it pride
a. 9-The have a pride
problem
b. 11-Pride won’t hear,
Pride won’t repent
c. 14-This is coming because
they wouldn’t repent
d. They won’t humble
themselves and repent and acknowledge that they are wrong, but rather in their
pride they are going to lie to themselves and to the Lord that what they are
doing is not wrong
e. Psalm 119:21-The proud
don’t do what God says; they don’t repent when they are wrong because pride
thinks it knows better than God
5.
Humility
will acknowledge the truth and repent; Pride will believe lies and not repent
a. Pride deals in lies and
deception, Humility deals in truth and reality
1)
Honest
and Humility and Repentance all go together
a) What did you do? Sinned
– Why did you do it? Flesh – Who’s fault was
it? Mine
b) It takes humility to answer
these questions honestly, when being honest makes you look bad
b. Lying and pride and
covering and not repenting all go together (See Saul 1 Samuel 15)
1)
1
John 2:16-Pride is a pretender and it only likes reality if reality makes it
look good; If reality makes pride look bad it will create a false reality-Psalm
119:69, Obadiah 3
2)
Rather
than acknowledge reality and repent pride wants to cover it, hide it, justify
it, explain it so anything to avoid dealing with the reality that makes it look
bad
6.
The truth is the truth
and you can cover stuff and justify stuff and make excuses, but underneath all
that there lies the truth that hasn’t changed and there lies the truth that you
won’t confront
a. Proverbs 16:18-Pride goes
before the destruction because before you were destroyed you had chances to
repent, but in pride you covered it, you wouldn’t repent, you wouldn’t change
b. Before destruction there was covering; before perishing there
was hiding; light shined and you ran from it and didn’t change before you were
destroyed
B. It takes faith to
change/repent and miss perishing
1.
It’s not enough to just
acknowledge it (confess it) you have to forsake it (change)
a. It takes humility to confess, it takes faith to change it
b. Some people are willing to confess it and own it, but they
don’t have the faith to change it; they have the humility to say it’s wrong and
I confess it, but they don’t have the faith to say I can change
2.
You
got to believe that by God’s grace and help you can make the change, you can
get it right and do what you need to do
a. Philippians 4:13-You can
do all things through Christ who strengthens you
b. Ephesians 6:10-You’re
strong in the Lord and in the power of his might
c. Luke 10:27-With God all
things are possible
d. Genesis 18:14-Is anything
too hard for the Lord?
e. Numbers 11:23-Is the
Lord’s hand ever waxed short?
f.
1
Corinthians 10:13-If it’s in the ring with you then you can beat it
3.
If
God is moving on your heart to make a change, then he’s willing to supply all
the grace you need to make the change
a. When he told you to do
it, He authorized you to do it and if He authorized you to do it then he
empowered you to do it
b. You have to receive the
empowering ability of his grace
c. It’s Jesus’ grace that
you have to work with; You have God’s spirit, God’s word, God’s faith, God’s
grace, God’s love, God’s strength, God’s power and you can do it
d. Jude 24, Zechariah
4:6-It’s not my might or by power, but he his spirit
4.
It’s never too late to
repent, It’s never too hard to change
a. The enemy will try to
tell you that you can confess it and acknowledge it, but you will never change