‘Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us,’ Hebrews 12:1
Choices, we have choices to make! God has provided everything that we need. He has done everything that had to be done, in order for us to be holy and blameless in His sight. God has done what we could not do, yet we have to do something. We have to make choices.
The choice here in this verse is, ‘to lay aside every encumbrance and sin.’ That is everything that gets in our way that hinders our relationship with God. It is not only sin, but I would suggest that it is the things of everyday life that we might worry about. It is actually the worry of those things that we should lay aside. Work, family, money, food, clothes, life! The worry of these things as well as sin.
When we worry about things it entangles us, just as much as sin does. Sin entangles us by making us feel guilty, and ashamed. Unworthy and afraid to be in the presence of God. Some will call this the conviction of the Holy Spirit, It is actually the condemnation of our own hearts. It messes with our minds,and distracts us from the truth of how God views us. It is actually selfishness, we are thinking of ourselves, and our view of God becomes distorted. We get bound up in our own thoughts, unable to understand God’s thoughts.
‘We will know by this that we are of the truth, and will assure our heart before Him in whatever our heart condemns us; for God is greater than our heart and knows all things. Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God;’ 1 John 3:19-21
Entangled in this verse from Hebrews, sounds like trying to run through a field of long grass. It is difficult and we trip and fall. So it is saying run on the path, steer clear of those things that will wrap us up and hinder our progress. It is really impossible to run in a field of long grass up to the thighs. When we sin or worry about things we cannot run the race set before us.
Another way to look at this, Sin and worry become a barrier that stops us seeing ourselves as God sees us. We have been set free from the power of sin and death. Jesus won the victory for us. Through faith in Him God has made us righteous. Just because we mess up every now and then does not mean that we are not righteous.
It is because we are born of the Spirit and have the indwelling of the Spirit, we are able to lay aside every encumbrance and sin. The Spirit gives us the power, and the authority to do this.We should not be beating ourselves up when we make a mess or sin. God says put it aside, and enter into my presence. There are consequences to sin, I think that they become bigger or deeper because we fail to lay aside every sin as quickly as we should.
We have been set free from the power of sin over us, we have the victory through Jesus, sin no longer has dominion over us unless we let it. Lay it aside and run.
The Name of the Lord is a strong tower, the righteous RUN into it and are saved!
This scripture does not say confess your sin but to lay it aside. I would suggest it is like this, When we go into a church meeting we put our sin down outside, and enter in free, because we have been set free. We have to make sure that we do not take it up again on the way out.confessing our sin can be a part of laying it down. For the most when the bible talks about confessing sin, it is talking about confessing to another person, not to God. It is talking about our relationships with each other.
That is laying it aside. When we sin against another person we should ask them for forgiveness, they then have the opportunity to forgive and be forgiven. The Lord has already forgiven every sin even before we commit it. He forgave us the day that Jesus’ life was sacrificed as payment for our sin. That was before we had the chance to confess our sin.
There is only one place in the whole of the Bible that can be interpreted as confessing our sin to God, in 1 John 1, but if taken in context of the whole of the chapter, in fact the whole book, it is talking about our relationships with one another. We are told to repent, turn away from sin, but God does not require us to confess our sin to Him in order to be forgiven.
‘but if we walk in the Light as He Himself is in the Light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.’ 1 John 1:7-9
Here it talks about fellowship with one another as part being cleansed from all sin, and unrighteousness. Jesus taught that we should forgive each other as a part of being forgiven by God. The letter of 1 John is about relationships and having love for each other. Not forgiving is a huge encumbrance that gets in the way of our relationship with God. Jesus told us that the world will know that we are His disciples by the love that we have for each other.
David talks about confessing his sin to the Lord in the psalms and Kings, if we read how this came about in Kings. There is something interesting that nobody that I have heard preaching about this has ever mentioned. David declares that He has sinned against God. The story goes that He committed adultery with Uriah’s wife then had Uriah murdered. David said I have sinned against God! That is one interesting point. He did not declare that he had sinned against any person, only against God. Then he said, “I will confess my sin to God.”
Two things, He sinned against God, and he chose to confess to God. David, once it was pointed out to him what he had done, was remorseful. His heart was condemning him. His heart was broken and contrite. So he confessed his sin against God, to God. As I pointed out before that Jesus taught, if we sin against someone then we should go to that person and confess.
The biggest thing I see in this story of David is this; Nathan revealed to David his sin, and also told David not to worry as God had already forgiven him of the sin. It was after David knew that he was forgiven that he decided that he should confess his sin to God. God’s grace at work under the old covenant. We are under a new covenant, a better covenant with better promises. If David did not have to confess his sin to receive forgiveness, before Chist paid for his sin, nor do we have to go before God to confess in order to be forgiven.
I know that there will be some who will choke at this. Just answer this question, When did God forgive your sin, the sin of the world. It was the day that the penalty was paid. Jesus died on the cross, as that one and only sacrifice to take away the sin of the world. The only sin that has not been forgiven is the sin of rejecting the price that Jesus paid with the shedding of His blood.
Here is a thought, why did David say that he had sinned against God? Could the answer be, because it was told to him that God had forgiven him? God did not say to David go and make restitution for what he had done wrong. David did recognise his sin, then Nathan told David that his sin had been taken away, that David would not die. It is after this that David wrote the psalm 51.
‘The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; A broken and a contrite heart, O God, You will not despise.’ Psalms 51:17
I have heard many preachers expound the need to be broken by God, using this Psalm. It does not say that we have to be broken if we sin and come before God. It was not God that broke David, it was his own heart, his own conscience that made him feel bad in the presence of God. What David is actually saying here, it does not matter how big the sin is, God does not want a blood sacrifice. This is a prophecy about the future redemption through Jesus. David is saying that it does not matter how bad we feel when we fail, God will not turn us away.
When our hearts condemn us, when our consciences tell us that God is not pleased with us, that He will not want to hear from us. That is not the truth, that is the place that we have become broken. That is the point that our hearts are contrite. God says that He will not turn us away. There will be many voices that tell us differently; both from in our head and from others. They are wrong. They will tell you that you have confess, and pour out your heart and beg God to forgive. That is not what the Word of God tells us.
God forgave our sin without us confessing before we were even born. God knew us and knew everything that we would do. He forgave everything when Jesus died. We choose to not sin, live a life of sin. When we do stumble in some way. The Holy Spirit is there to pick us up, dust us off and lead us and teach us the way that we should go.
Charlie
