Admitting

(upbeat music) Welcome to Gospel and Life. In a world that leaves us exhausted, distracted, and searching for meaning, Jesus gives us the Lord's Prayer as a guide to true connection with God. Join us today as Tim Keller shows us why the Lord's Prayer isn't just a ritual to recite, but a pathway to deeper communion with God. (upbeat music) - Honour as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sin. Here ends the reading of God's word. We're in a series on the Lord's Prayer. We're continuing the series on the Lord's Prayer. And it won't be over today either. The Lord's Prayer is Jesus' model for prayer. And it's a wonder. It's a wonder. I am a cautious person. Those of you who know me realize that I've got a cynical streak in me, that I've got to always keep under control. I don't tend to believe in large claims. I don't tend to believe testimonies. Got a cynical streak in me. And yet I can say to you now, without any reservations at all, that all of the answers to all of your problems when they're rightly understood are here. They're all in here. The answer is to all of your problems. If you rightly understand them or in the Lord's Prayer, if you would simply do what Jesus tells you to do here, that's it. That's the answer. And that's from a cynic. Think of the wonder of that. Here, just because every week we're looking at a particular aspect of prayer, it's helpful occasionally, or at least in the beginning to always give ourselves an overview and look at the theme. We said last week and I'll repeat this. Prayer is a healing process in which the heart is brought back into its true orbit. That is to center on and worship and glorify God. If a satellite goes out of its true orbit, it might get too close to the atmosphere and begin to burn up. Or it might come too close to the sun and begin to burn up. And the Bible says, literally, that's the reason all of us are burning out if we are. We're burning out if we center on anything besides him. If we center on anything or on our ego, we burn out. But prayer is healing the heart, bringing it back into its true orbit, or put another way. Prayer, the Lord's Prayer is a vision of a whole new life and it will not work for you until you see it as such. Did you hear that? The Lord's Prayer is actually a vision for a whole new kind of life. And it will not work for you until you see it as such. What is that vision? Well, the vision goes like this. That you and I would have a life of such full-hearted response to the heavenly love of God, the fatherly love of God, that we would live, first of all, in complete peace because we totally trust in him for a daily bread or daily needs. And secondly, we would also live with happy submission, glad anticipation. And we would jointly see God's loving purpose in everything that happens to us. So I will be done, which we'll look at next week. And we would know tremendous freedom and power because our conscience will always be totally clear. And all relationships would be perfect because we are not only feeling forgiving by God, but we are forgiving. A life of absolute peace, a life of tremendous clarity, a life of total power and freedom, a life of high beauty, that's the vision of Lord's Prayer, a life that revolves around God. So the Lord's Prayer is not just a little how to, it is a how to manual on prayer, but it's a vision of a whole new life. So we come back to the central thing. Since prayer essentially is centering on God, it's essentially adoration. And we said, everything starts with adoration and everything has to be understood as flowing out of it. When you ask for things, when you confess your sins, when you do anything else in prayer, it has to flow out of adoration. It, we said that it's so important to see that. I know personally that I have to constantly pull myself up. I've got to do this all the time. I run into God and I sit down and I start to say, God, you've got to help me. And I run right away to request and ask, asking instead of doing what Jesus says in the prayer, which is to sit down and to collect yourself. And then say, oh Lord, I remember and I rejoice in your fatherly love and your heavenly power. And I realize now and I rejoice in the fact that you are more want to give me things than I am to ask for them. You are, as the angel in prayer book says, he has want to give us more than we desire or deserve and he has the power to do that. And as you adore, then you turn and you actually feel like you feel the fear and anxiety and resentment draining out your back. Like somebody came in and lanced the boil or lanced a sore. You feel the press just coming out. As you say, Lord, forgive me for forgetting your wisdom. Forgive me for getting your power. And then you begin to just let your needs be known with quiet power. The Lord's prayer is a process that if you obey it, if you discipline yourself according to it, you pass into a whole new way of life. Now, I think I mentioned last week that basically, you can think of prayer in terms of three a's. That is, adoration or praise. Admitting or a confession of sin, repentance. And asking, which is petition or request. And even though the outline and the bulletin looks like I was going to hit on admitting and asking, I can't get to asking today. We have to get to it next week. And today we're going to talk about admitting. But let me reiterate in the beginning. And I'll come back to it at the end. If your repentance, if your admitting doesn't flow out of adoration, if your asking doesn't flow out of adoration, you're stuck. In fact, you're worse than stuck. If your repentance doesn't flow out of adoration of the Father, it will not only not deal with your guilt, it will make it worse. Do you hear me? If your repentance doesn't flow out of adoration of the Father, it will not just not deal with your guilt, it will make it worse. And if your requests do not flow out of adoration of the Father, they will not only not deal with your anxiety, they'll make it worse. Because when you pray to God for your needs, that's supposed to get rid of anxiety. And when you confess you're supposed to get rid of your guilt. But I know from experiences so to you that praying over your sins can make you feel more guilty. And praying about your needs can make you feel more anxious. Why? Because we don't fit into the Lord's prayer, which is the perfect and ultimate and infallible model for this new kind of life and for prayer itself. And today, we will only talk about admitting confession, repentance, and how Jesus Christ, in the context of the Lord's prayer, tells us we should do it. And I just want to show you that Jesus teaches an awful lot in the Lord's prayer about repenting and about confessing your sins before God. The first thing, listen, let's deal with it on these headings. Number one, why do it? The reason for repentance. I know they're not the headings in the Lord, and I changed my mind. I'm sorry, okay? Repentance. Why? What's the reason for it? Surely some people out there thought they're reflective of the people would say, isn't telling people to confess their sins and repent of their sins every time they pray? Isn't that dangerous? Isn't that emotionally and psychologically dangerous? Aren't people already weighed down with their own guilt? Aren't people already full of self-loathing and self-hatred? Isn't this just going to make it worse to tell people they have to go to God and confess their sins all the time? Well, let me ask you. Let me ask you. You're thinking people. You are. We ask you. How else do you deal with guilt? Guilt is unavoidable, and I would like to propose to you that there is no way to deal with guilt except to go to God and be religious. There is no other way other than religion to deal with guilt, no way. There is no other way to deal inside religion with guilt except repentance, no way. A pastor friend of mine once was absolutely astonished when a psychiatrist approached him and asked him to go into practice together in the counseling. And my pastor friend said, "Why? I have no training in counseling at all." No, this is a psychiatrist. He was not a Christian, and he said he wasn't a Christian. No, then he wasn't religious. And that really amazed the pastor. So, why? Why would you want me? And here's what he said, quote, "I'm finding that many, if not most of my patients, need a priest more than they need a doctor because what they're dealing with is guilt, and they're all tied up over moral issues and God." Now, here's why he had to say that. He was smart and right. The key to dealing with guilt is to determine the difference between true guilt and false guilt, right? That would have to be it. Because you see, if guilt is false guilt, then you argue with the person. You say, cut it out. There's nothing wrong with what's going on here. You argue with the person, and you argue lovingly with the person. And you show them that they're not feeling guilty in inappropriate ways, and they shouldn't do that. You say, you argue. But if it's true guilt, you say, well, you're going to have to confess up to that. You're going to have to own up to that, own that. And you're going to have to deal with that, and you're going to have to confess that and be cleansed. So, the whole key is guilt, is guilt, true or false. Now, here's the question. At nobody, by the way, nobody believes that all guilt is false. Nobody with a brain in their head would dare say all guilt is false guilt. All guilt feelings are false guilt. Because nobody wants to say that nobody could do anything wrong. If there's no such thing as a wrong action. So, granting that, how do you decide? How do you scientifically determine the validity of guilt or the invalidity? If that's the key to dealing with guilt, the only if the key is to determine whether it's valid or not, how do you do that scientifically? The answer is, it's impossible. Now, scientists in the world will tell you that there's any way to determine whether guilt is true or not. That's not what science does. You're into the area of morality. You're into the area of religion. You're into the area of God. Whoops. How do we get there? When this particular counselor admits that guilt is one of the main problems we've got. When a leading -- ahead of a leading British mental institution was quoted as saying, "If I could assure all of my patients of complete forgiveness, I could send 50% of them home." And yet, they also realize that the key to dealing with guilt is to determine whether it's true or false, whether it's real or imagined, and there's no scientific way to do that. What are we doing here? The answer is, there's no way to deal with this unavoidable problem in our lives unless we go face-to-face with God. Because you see, ultimately, a psychology will tell you this. Those things which you deny control you. Those things that you deny and keep down and hide control you. And this is all confession and repentance is. It's admitting. It's making real. It's to end the denial, it's to admit those things, which if you do not admit, are going to control you forever, and then go to the only possible person that could deal with it and that's God. The only possible person. You can't deal with yourself. A good counselor can make it -- a good counselor can bring it up and make it helpful for you to see. But then in the end, they can't actually determine its validity unless you immediately jump out of the area of scientific psychology in the area of religion. You know, I think I may have mentioned this before, Becky Pippert in her book tells about how she was auditing a classic Harvard University in the School of Counseling. And a professor was saying, here's how you help a man. He was giving a case study. Here's how you help a man. Surface the fact that he's angry at all as all get out about his mother. That he hates his mother. He's hostile to his mother. He's angry at her. And he feels guilty for the way he's treated her. And he shows how you can surface that. And then somebody, I think Becky Pippert herself, we Christian writer, raised their hand and says, okay, what if he comes back and says, oh, the doctor? This was very helpful to see that. And that's very lightning and very important. And yet, I still -- it doesn't seem to be helpful. I need more help. Because now that I see how angry I am at her, how do I forgive her? And now that I see how guilty I am for what I've done, and she won't forgive me, how do I overcome the guilt? In other words, how do I forgive? And how do I be forgiving? And the professor said, there's no way I know what to say. In fact, the professor literally said to Becky, I said, I would say to that man lots of luck. And then what happened when all the students started saying, but I thought the whole purpose of counseling was to give people a cure. And the professor came around and said, listen, there's only so far you can go. And what we've done is very helpful. But in the end, if you're looking for a changed heart, he said, and I'm quoting, you're looking in the wrong department. It's true. That's fair. So the question is, why repent? Is it unhealthy? Absolutely not. You know, Charles Chaplin, in the one -- one of his great silent films, there's this great place where he's a prisoner. So he's got a ball and a chain on his foot, his leg, and he is shipwrecked on an island. And he says, here's my chance to escape. What is he going to do? But he has to deal with a ball and a chain. So the first thing you see him doing is you see him telling jokes to it. Tells a lot of jokes and tries to get it laughing. And then he tries to run away and immediately wham, falls down because, you know, the ball won't let him go. So he comes on back and says, this time he'll fool it. So you see him, you know, he can just imagine Charles sort of whistling and acting like maybe if he's not watching. Maybe I can fool him. And then suddenly he runs and of course wham falls down immediately because the ball won't budge. Then finally we see him burying the ball. He just takes a sand and he just starts to bury it and he puts it down so he can't see it. Says that will do it. And then he tries to run away and wham falls down again. And it's only after this very funny and excellent little scene. At the end of it, he suddenly starts to realize, I can't escape. I'm going to have to be rescued. I can't escape and he starts to look for a ship. And listen, I see, do you see yourself in that? You see you can spend a lot of time blaming other people for your problems and your sin. They might go through another phase in which you justify and rationalize it. They might go through another phase in which you analyze it, another phase in which you deny it. But in the end, unless you go to the only one who can deal with it, and now unless this won't work, even though it's helpful, it only goes so far, ignoring it certainly won't work and denying it. Until you go to the only one who can deal with it, you're still chained to it. The only escape is rescue in Greek. It's means salvation, deliverance. Why repent? Because there's absolutely no other way, emotionally or spiritually, to get freedom. And I prove that I hope as much as I possibly could. There it is. Now, number one, number two. Jesus Christ teaches us here also the motivation for repentance. Now, the word motivation has in it a little word from which we get the word motor. And I would suggest to you that we have to ask ourselves what drives your repentance? What is the motor? What is the dynamic? What is the thing that drives your repentance? The reason we ask that is because Paul, in 2 Corinthians 7, says this, "Godly repentance leads to deliverance and leads no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death." This is a frightening verse. Do you know why? Paul tells us there's two ways to do repenting over your sin. And there's a certain way that brings freedom and brings healing and brings sweetness and brings zeal in increased strength. And there's another way to be sorrowful about your wrongdoing that actually leads to psychological and maybe even physical death. And they look alike. How do you know whether when you repent or when you are repenting, how do you know whether it's healthy, spiritual liberating, or whether it's just a function of, an expression of, an unhealthy, self-patriot, an overactive conscience that's full of unrealistic and unfair, and unnecessary standards that have been put in there by your parents or by your peer-group or by your culture? How do you know, in other words, whether your repentance is liberating, you are killing you? And the answer, Jesus Christ tells us is, it flows out of adoration. Real repentance comes after our Father who art in heaven, how would be thy name? If I came to them, come, I will be done, aren't there? There isn't heaven. You do not get the confession until you are firmly, until you are grasping until you're looking at the dying love of Jesus Christ. Who enables us to not see God as it's just a king, but as a Father. As 2025 comes to a close, it should come as no surprise that we have great hope for the year ahead. Because of what God is doing to bring people to faith and to renew Christians through the Gospel teaching and resources you help us provide on our podcast, YouTube channel, radio broadcast, quarterly journal, and website, and soon through our translation project. We are grateful that so many of you are partnering with us to spread the message of Christ's love. Thank you. God continues to provide opportunities for us to expand the ways we share the Gospel. In 2026, we anticipate adding new international radio broadcasts and additional online ministry partnerships, publishing new books, and beginning to make Dr. Keller's sermons available in other languages. So, as we close out the year, we invite you to prayerfully consider making a year end gift to Gospel in life. The year end gifts we receive are a vital part of how we will prepare for ministry in 2026. Your support allows us to share the story of the Gospel with people in over 200 countries, and we are deeply grateful for your participation in this mission. To make a year end gift, visit gospelonlife.com/give, that's gospelonlife.com/give. And please pray that we would steward your gifts well, and that through the ministry of Gospel in life, many new people will find the hope and joy of knowing Christ as Savior. Thank you for partnering with us to share the love of Christ with a world that needs Him, because the Gospel truly changes everything. Now, here's Dr. Keller with the remainder of today's message. Let me put it this way. Some years ago, Stephen Scharnock, a great minister, wrote this 350 years ago, so I'm going to paraphrase it and get a lot of the archaic language out of it. He tries to explain the difference between what he would call legalistic repentance or conviction of sin and godly. And listen to this, a legalistic conviction of sin arises from a consideration of God's justice, but godly repentance flows cheaply from a sense of God's love. A legalistic repentant cries out, "I have provoked the sovereign God who can tear up the rocks in the trees." But the godly repentant cries, "I have spurned a loving goodness which is as sweet and as tender as the dropping of the dew." "I have turned on a God who was a tender father." You see, "Oh, this is my heart made of coal iron or marble to treat him like this. Godly repentance finds his misery coming from the mercy of God." What a fool says the godly repentant to his heart to rush into a river of brimstone through a sea of goodness that turned from such a sweet fountain to rake in the mud puddles. If you hear that, he says, "Godly repentance is moved by a sight of a tender loving Heavenly Father." In other words, real repentance has to come from rejoicing in the goodness, the acceptance, and the love of God when you look at what he's done for you. And when you look at his love, that makes you feel bad about your sin, yeah, but in a cleansing way because it's the very certainty of his love that drives your repentance. It's the very fact of his acceptance and of his love that makes you say, "How can I do this to someone like that?" Instead of it making you feel worse about yourself, it makes you hate the habit. It makes you hate the wrongdoing. It makes you want to get rid of it for his sake. There is a big difference, and that's the reason why Shauna can say, you see, a legalistic conviction of sin arises cheaply from a sense of God's love, from a sense of God's justice. I hope the sovereign God who can tear up the rocks and the trees, but a Godly repentance says, "I have spurned the love of the Father." You see, when you look, I can put it like this. I can put it like this. I'll tell you how I deal with my own heart, how I have to do. You look at Jesus dying, and you see on the one hand, that's serious. That shows that what I have done wrong is serious, that God would not have gone to that length. The films that I'm doing that are wrong are really wrong, but at the very same moment I say, the very act of dying on the cross at the same moment that it shows me how serious my sin is. Also, guarantees and shows me without a doubt that he accepts and loves me. And you know, that's a hard thing for the human ego to accept. The human ego wants to say, "Look, if I've done well, then I don't mind you accepting me, but if I've done poorly, I want you to just walk all over me." That's the way your ego works, because you were born under a covenant of works, the Bible says, you were born in a situation where you know intrinsically we ought to do right. The gospel comes and says, "Yes, what you've done is wrong, and I love, and I accept you." And the ego doesn't like that, and it has to be shown that. I have to look at the cross, and I see here's Jesus dying. Why did Jesus die so poorly? I often think about that. If you did die poorly, there's a lot of people that went to the stake, they went to the firing squad, there are people who went singing hymns. They went rejoicing. You see Jesus doing that? You see Jesus say, "Oh, I'm just praising the Lord on the way to the cross." You see Him rejoicing? Absolutely not. You see Him in a bloody sweat. You see Him blood coming out of His pores. You see Him wrestling on the ground. You see Him say, "Lord, if there's any way you can get me out of this, please do it." Because He had a death that no one else ever faced. All of God's eternal punishment, not just for me, but for all of us, and for all of us, rested on Him at once. For thousands and millions of people and billions of people, rested on Him at once, and not just spread out over all of eternity, but all compressed and put on His back at one moment. And whatever it was was so incredibly painful and so staggering that the mind of the second person's eternity almost cracked under it, and why did He do that? He did it to make me holy because He knew the only way I'd ever be happy is if I was holy because I was built to obey God. And He is that committed to making me holy, and this is how I repay Him. The fact that I haven't prayed this week, this is how I repay Him, the fact that I haven't been telling the truth this week, this is how I repay Him, the fact that I'm not being patient this week, this is how I repay Him. Does that make me want to move away from Him? Does it make me want to kick myself? It makes me want to go right to Him and say, "Lord, how could I have been so foolish as to spurn your love?" And don't you see therefore why the only people who can actually repent and get cleansing and deal with their guilt are people who have received Jesus Christ as Savior? Because if you come to God, not sure you belong to Him, not sure you live up to standards, if you come to Him like that, and you start to confess your sins, it will really destroy you. Because your whole way of thinking about yourself, your whole self image is based on you not being too bad a person. That's how you're even able to function emotionally in the world is because you say, "Well, I've got this or that bad, but basically I'm better than an awful lot of other people." And when you start to look at your sins, to even admit them, you begin to feel your life ebbing away and it destroys you. R.C. Sproul, pastor and also a writer, tells a story about a woman who came to Him and said, "Dr. Sproul, I have a real problem." I keep asking God forgiveness and asking God for forgiveness and asking God for forgiveness. And I just don't feel forgiven. He looked at her and he said, "Well, your problem probably is you're not actually asking God for forgiveness for the right sin, the main sin." She said, "What is that?" He said, "You haven't asked forgiveness for your pride." Now, I don't know how tender He was when He said that to her, "I'm going to try to be tender to you." He was right, probably. I don't know the woman, I just read about this, but probably she was reacting to grace because most of us like our forgiveness, the old-fashioned Smith Barney way, we want to earn it. And when we say, "I can't forgive myself what we mean is I haven't lived up to standards and I'm going to sit here and take myself and punish myself, I don't want anybody to take that off of me." I don't like the fact that I need bleeding charity. And as a result, you say, "I can't forgive myself. It looks like spiritual humility. It's absolutely arrogance, R.C.'s right." And the only way, therefore, that you're able, actually, to ever have your repentant brain cleansing is if you have accepted Christ the Savior and you've given up the whole idea of trying on your own to be good enough, to live up to standards, to have God accept you, to have the world accept you, to have you accept yourself. And you've never actually said nothing in my hands I bring simply to thy cloths I cling, I completely rely on your grace, I completely rely on Lord Jesus Christ on what you did for me and across. If you do that, repentance will kill you. And you've got no alternative, but to hide your sins from yourself. Or when you repent, you'll just feel worse and worse and worse. It's not better. You see that? If your boss comes to you and says, "You broke a rule." And as a result, I'm canceling your raise. I'm busting you down to a lower rank and you may not have your contract renewed. You better do well. And so you say, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, but your sorrow is driven by fear of consequences. It's driven by anger and self hatred. Why did you do that? You fool, you say to yourself. You might even be angry at your boss for not being more forgiving or being unfair in some way. But if a father comes to you and says, "Son, daughter, you've disobeyed me. That doesn't change my love for you one wit. You know what I've done for you in the past and I will continue to do for you in the future. But I want you to repent because I want you to come and embrace me. I want to get rid of the distance between us. When will that happen?" And you say, "I'm sorry, father." And what's happening is your sorrow is driven by something completely different. It's driven by love. It's driven by grateful joy. It's driven by grace. The motor for real repentance. The kind of repentance that liberates us instead of killing is what? It's knowing God is fathered through the Lord Jesus Christ because He's your Savior. It's adoration to the dying love of God. Now, Jesus Christ gives us a test, a real acid test, as to whether or not you really have been forgiven. You really have repented. You know what the acid test is? You will be forgiving. You'll be forgiven. Jesus Christ says, "If you do not forgive, you won't be forgiven." Now, that doesn't mean God's looking down and saying, "Well, here's nice people over here, and I will." They earned my forgiveness. That's not what he means. What Jesus is saying is, "If you have stopped forgiving, you stop repenting." Jesus says, "I will forgive anyone who repents, but people who don't forgive show they stop repenting and therefore they get no forgiveness." Did you follow that? Look, here for some strange reason, tonight you would find out that some distant relative you didn't even know exists, died, and has left you $10 million. And a friend of yours calls up five minutes later and says, "Hey, you know that $20 I went through yesterday. I'm really sorry I haven't paid back. I'll give it back to you tomorrow." If you have any kind of part, if you have any kind of normal human process that's going on down there, you'll say, "I don't care about your $20." Forget the $20. Who cares what the $20? Do you know what happened to me? Because any person who has come into unlooked for absolutely spontaneous, unearned, great as well becomes generous. And Jesus Christ says, "Here now I can tell whether you've ever really been rich in mercy. You're forgiving. You say to people, "I am not going to hold this against you." You say to people, "I am not going to hold this against you. I'm not going to constantly make people you liable for what you've done to me. I'm not going to withhold my affection from you. I'm not going to stand back away from you. I'm going to absorb the cost. I am going to forgive." That's the only way God can know whether you're rich in mercy. And it's one of the ways in which you can know whether you receive this mercy. In conclusion, let me just tell you three quick ways to repent and then we're done. Quickies. Number one, notice that Jesus Christ says, "Death." Not just "Death." Do not sit down and say, "Oh Lord, Jesus Christ, forgive me for all my sins." Amen. And think that that's going to clean you out. Think that that's going to bring any of the freedom and sweetness that Paul talks about. No. You want to hear something? Here's a little bit of advice from Jimmy Carter. Jimmy Carter who teaches Sunday school and obviously teaches Sunday school very well says this, "If all I can do is find it." I know I have to find it first. Yes. Jimmy Carter says, "Don't say, "Lord, forgive all my sins. I don't believe it works unless you're willing to be specific." Say, "God, today I was not kind to my spouse. God, in this business transaction, I cheated. God, today I didn't pray. God, today I told two lies and I misled a few people. God, today I had a chance to forgive somebody who hurt me and I didn't. God, today I think I have used my money selfishly. Enumerate them, call them by name and under these circumstances all sins are wiped away." Jimmy Carter said that. He says, "Don't just say, "Forgive me for my sin. Forgive me for my debts, specific." So the first thing is this was a second little pointer. Make sure you understand that your repentance doesn't start until you take all the responsibility. Repentance doesn't start until you stop your blame shifting and really call sins by the real name. You know why I tend to want here for us to say, "Forgive us our debts." Instead of giving us our trespasses, debts is a better translation. Because a trespass is something that's sort of active and active breaking into a forbidden area. But a debt is just a failure to give someone what you owe. It's a failure to meet your responsibilities and what are your responsibilities to a God who's created you and keeps you alive every second on whom you are dependent for every dimension of your being. When you owe a God like that, everything. And so the sense of responsibility is you do not really ask God for forgiveness until you stop shifting the blame. If you say, "Well, Lord, forgive me, but boy, you should have seen how I was treated." If you have a log on your shoulder and the other part of it's on the ground, just try to throw that log off. It'll probably hurt you. If you want to throw a log, you've got to put the whole weight of it on your shoulder and then you can eat it. And if you want to get rid of your sins, you've got to put them all on your back and then they can come off. My wife and I rented a movie called "Dad" with Jack Lemon, Ted Danson, a fairly recent movie. And the best part of the movie, the height of it, is where Ted Danson's now adults unasked him this. Why was making money always more important to you than mom and me? And Danson looks at him and says, "Because I thought that's what a man was. I thought a man had to get out there and earn a supportive family. I thought that's what a man did and I was wrong." And then suddenly he realizes what he's doing. And he looks down and he says, "No, no, no." He says, "Because it made me feel powerful and being with my family did not. And I wanted to go out there and feel powerful. Please be forgiving." And at that moment, you see, he unmasked the sin. He didn't blame the shift. He didn't say, "Well, yeah, I did that, but you know, I learned that from my culture. What a man is." No, he called it by name. He took full responsibility. At that moment, there's reconciliation and transformation between he and his son. Now, don't say, "Oh Lord, forgive me for the fact that I worry too much." Call it by name. Say, "Lord, I think that I do a better job of running my life than you. I have a better plan for history than you, all wise, almighty. Start calling it by name and you laugh at yourself at certain points. And it'll just like you started doing that, breaks the spell, take responsibility." And then lastly, don't forget that you're confessing your sins to a father. If you go and just feel crushed under the weight of your sins, you're forgetting, this is a father. Luke 15 tells us what it means to go to a father. It means to go confident of forgiveness. If you say, "I just feel too small and too wicked for God to forgive me," that is arrogance. Do you really think your sins are any match for his mercy? Really? Are they that big? When the father, when the prodigal son in Luke 15 comes back to see the father, don't you see what happens to the father? The fathers love us even when we sin. And fathers don't stop being fathers. And fathers can't wait to receive us back. And fathers even interrupt the confession. Now, the prodigal son comes back to start to try to do his confession and his father won't even let him finish. He's already on him, he's already hugging him, he's already kissing him. So he's saying, "Bring out the road, bring out the ring, bring out the fatty cat, let's have a banquet." You don't see the father saying, "Oh my gosh, here's my prodigal son." He looks awful. I'm so mad at him. Well, I'll pull yourself together. It's your duty to love him. No. Because the father's love is uproarious. The father's love is invincible. And the father's love is not based on your perfection or your beauty. It's based on his perfection and his beauty. It doesn't spring from what you are, it springs from what he is, and that's perfect. My appeal, dear friends, where are you? Are you in a situation that there's a lot of bitterness in your life? You say, "I've tried it to confess it could be in many of your cases. I'm talking to my fellow believers here. It could be that you need a look. Are you sure you're really confessing your sins or you've just driven by fear? Are you confessing your sins or you've just full of self-pity instead of saying, "It's you that I have dishonored and hurt." Are you just sitting around thinking about the mess you've gotten yourself into? Are you being specific? Are you looking at his mercy? Are you remembering he's your father? Repentance is bitter, sweet. It starts out bitter, but as you drink it down, and as you throw the cross in, it becomes sweet. There's this one place in the Lord of the Rings where Tolkien says, "And their hearts, wounded with sweet words, overflowed, and their joy was like swords, and they passed and fought out the regions, repained in the light flowed together, and tears of the very wine of blessedness." You know, only a Christian can know how great and sweet tears can taste. That sort of statement makes no sense to you unless you know repentance. Real repentance, humble yourself under his mighty hand, and he will exalt you in due time. And there's some of you maybe who have never repented who are here today. That is, you may have said your prayers, you might have done formal repentance, you might have engaged in self-pity or regret, you might have been hating yourself because you haven't lived up the standard, but you've never actually repented of your real sin, which is never having repented. Your real sin, which is never having gone and said, "The real sin is my desire to be in charge of my own life, and my desire to rip up the standards, and I don't want your grace, and I don't want your charity, and that's the reason my repentance is killing me instead of healing me." "O Lord, I want to make you my master, I want to receive you as Savior, come into my life." The Bible says, "The day you do that, that's called repentance unto life, and you'll know what it means to have God say to you and your heart. Go, your faith has healed you." Let us pray. Our Father, now we ask that you would lead everybody here to repent, and some of us, some of us need to be led into a true kind of repentance, not a self-congregation, but rather a going to God, going to you, and seeing your fatherly love, and in confidence of that, and seeing your love for us, and shedding the things that are in our lives, if we go to you like that, and ask for forgiveness, and consider what you've done for us, it will clean us out. A lot of us, Father, are just too busy hating ourselves, too busy trying to be our own Savior, too busy trying to earn our forgiveness, the Smith Barney Way Father, help us to repent a right. So we can say, "Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors, and Father, there's some here who may have never repented, grant them repentance unto life, the greatest gift of all." And we pray that in Jesus name. Amen. Thanks for listening to Tim Keller on the Gospel and Life Podcast. If you'd like to see more people encouraged by the Gospel Center teaching and resources of this ministry, we invite you to consider becoming a Gospel and Life monthly partner. Your partnership allows us to reach people all over the world with the life giving power of Christ's love. To learn more, just visit gospelandlife.com/partner. That website again is gospelandlife.com/partner. Today's sermon was recorded in 1990. The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel and Life Podcast were recorded between 1989 and 2017, while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.