Tom Groelsema | Confessing Sin

Sunday Evening, October 26, 2025
Given by Dr. Kevin DeYoung | Senior Pastor
Christ Covenant Church

Confessing Sin
Sermon Text: Ezra 9:6-15

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Transcript

Oh God, as we turn to this part of your word that lays out before us Ezra's confession of sin, as we think about our own confession, we pray, God, that we would not fail to remember – that we'd keep in mind through this text, through this sermon – that even though our sins are many, that your mercy is more. And so Lord, lead us to the fount of your grace. Even as we pass through the door of confession, we pray, Father, that we would be drawn to Jesus, to see his love and his mercy. We pray these things in Jesus’ name. Amen. 

Let's turn in our Bibles this morning to Ezra 9. Ezra chapter 9. We're going to begin our reading at verse 3, and then we'll read through the end of the chapter. And if you're visiting with us this morning, we've been working as a congregation through this book. Last Sunday morning, we took the first five verses of chapter 9. We're going to again start in the middle of that, verse 3, but the main part of our text is verses 6-15. Ezra chapter 9. As we read this together, remember that this is God's holy and inspired and infallible word. So begin with me at verse 3:

“As soon as I heard this, I tore my garment and my cloak and pulled hair from my head and beard and sat appalled. Then all who trembled at the words of the God of Israel because of the faithlessness of the returned exiles gathered around me while I sat appalled until the evening sacrifice. And at the evening sacrifice, I rose from my fasting with my garment and my cloak torn and fell upon my knees and spread out my hands to the Lord my God, saying, 

‘Oh my God, I am ashamed and blush to lift my face to you, my God, for our iniquities have risen higher than our heads, and our guilt has mounted up to the heavens. From the days of our fathers to this day, we have been in great guilt. And for our iniquities, we, our kings, and our priests, have been given into the hand of the kings of the lands, to the sword, to captivity, to plundering, and to utter shame as it is today. But now, for a brief moment, favor has been shown by the Lord our God, to leave us a remnant, to give us a secure hold within his holy place, that our God may brighten our eyes and grant us a little reviving in our slavery. For we are slaves. Yet our God has not forsaken us in our slavery, but has extended to us his steadfast love before the kings of Persia to grant us some reviving, to set up the house of our God, to repair its ruins, and to give us protection in Judea and Jerusalem. 

And now, oh our God, what shall we say after this? For we have forsaken your commandments, which you commanded by your servants, the prophets, saying, “The land that you are entering to take possession of it is a land impure with the impurity of the peoples of the lands, with their abominations that have filled it from end to end with their uncleanness. Therefore, do not give your daughters to their sons. Neither take their daughters for your sons, and never seek their peace or prosperity, that you may be strong and eat the good of the land and leave it for an inheritance to your children forever.” 

And after all that has come upon us for our evil deeds, and for our great guilt, seeing that you, our God, have punished us less than our iniquities deserved, and have given us such a remnant as this, shall we break your commands again and intermarry with the peoples who practice these abominations? Would you not be angry with us until you consumed us so that there should be no remnant nor any to escape? Oh Lord, the God of Israel, you are just, for we are left a remnant that has escaped as it is today. Behold, we are before you in our guilt, for none can stand before you because of this.’”

Well, dear people of God, there's a commentator who, writing about the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, said that these two books are a personal memoir. You might know what a memoir is. A memoir is something like an autobiography – a little different because an autobiography captures the entirety of someone's life. A memoir usually is more limited, more focused, concentrating on themes within somebody's life. But a memoir does give us what a particular person has seen, what they have felt, what they have experienced. A memoir is kind of like an open door into somebody's life, and you get to see it down close and personal. And I think it's true – a memoir is what Ezra has been giving us in this book as he describes the return of God's people from exile. So Ezra doesn't capture everything about Ezra's life, but that chapter, that part, of Ezra's life. And so you recall that Ezra has spoken and written about the decree of Cyrus that God's people could return to the land after exile. And then he goes on to tell us about those initial exiles. He gives us their names. He writes in detail about them. He describes the rebuilding of the altar – the temple – and the opposition to that. He tells us that the construction on the temple was finished, and then he comes more to his own life in 458. He describes how he, himself, made the trek from Babylon to Israel to teach God's people. And along with him were the Levites and vessels of gold and silver for the temple. 

All these wonderful things that were happening to God's people, and you remember that Ezra put it like this. He says, "The hand of God was on his people.” The Lord was blessing them, and God's people were prospering. But then, like every honest memoir, the stories are not always heroic, are they? There are prodigal parts to everyone's story – low points, failure, sin, and in fact, if those are missing from somebody's story, then we know we're not really hearing the rest of the story, right? We're not hearing it as it really happened in all of its fullness. In fact, we have a word for this: we call it hagiography. Hagiography – the idealing of somebody's story, you know – writing somebody's story so that they always appear like a saint – no failures, no foibles, no troubles. But people of God, that is not the case in Ezra's memoir, because you remember that last week the part of the story that we came to is Ezra comes back to Israel, and a report comes to him, and he discovers that God's people had intermarried with the people of the land. God's holy race had mixed with the nations. There was a failure to faithfully follow the Lord. And it's right at that point that we pick up in Ezra's story, because when this report comes to him, how does he respond? What does he do? What does he say? Well, in our text here, we see him turning to the Lord in confession of sin. And again, this is something deeply personal in Ezra. We see his heart. We see his humility, as he confessed the sins of God's people to the Lord. And his confession is a model for us of how we can go about confessing our sins to God. There are four pieces to this confession of Ezra that I want to look at with you this morning. 

Here's number one: Ezra felt, first of all, the weight of his sin. It's where confession begins. Ezra felt the weight of his sin. Think again with me about this report that comes to him. It's captured in the first three verses of this chapter. The officials come to Ezra, and they say to him, “Ezra, the people of God, the Levites, the officials – they have not separated themselves from the people of the land. They've taken their daughters as wives. They've given their sons as husbands.” And it's not just God's people, but the officials and the chief men – they are the lead offenders. They, too, are intermarrying with the people of Israel. You remember Kevin mentioned to us last Sunday that this was not about interracial marriage. That was not the issue. It was not that God's people were mixing with other cultures, but rather the issue was interreligious marriage – God's covenant people marrying those who did not serve the God of the covenant. Spiritually, God's people were unequally yoked. And Ezra calls it faithlessness. It's a matter of spiritual dimensions, matter of faith. And Ezra responds to this, and he responds with a deep brokenness. It may remind us of what happened as Isaiah saw the holiness of God in Isaiah chapter 6. Isaiah's response to God's holiness is a response about himself. And what he says is, "I'm undone. There is the holiness of God. What? Who am I? What am I? I am undone before God.” And this is where Ezra finds himself. The heavy weight of the heinousness of sin fell on him. Maybe something like what David said in Psalm 51, that we read this morning: “Let the bones that you have broken rejoice.” Sin brought about a crushing of the bones. Isaiah – or Ezra, rather – experienced grief over sin down to his bones. Look how he puts it in verse 3. It says, "I tore my garment and my cloak, I pulled hair from my head and beard and sat appalled when I heard this report." Verses 5 and 6: “I rose from my fasting, with my garment and my cloak torn, and fell on my knees. I spread out my hands to the Lord my God, saying, ‘I am ashamed and blush to lift my face to you.’” 

His response was very similar to the way that people in the Bible responded when a loved one died. Job in Job 1:20, when he's reacting to the death of his children, the scriptures say, "Job arose, he tore his robe, he shaved his beard, and he fell on the ground.” His children are dead, and how does he respond? He tears his clothes, shaves his beard, falls to the ground – the very same things that Ezra did. Of course, Ezra is not mourning because of the death of a family member, but he's mourning because of sin before the Lord. It's like a death – is overcome with sorrow, humiliated before God. He falls down before God in penitence, kneeling – a sign of his contrition. And not all of us can do that, right? Some of us can't kneel down in prayer and get up again. But kneeling does reflect a humility of the heart. And in fact, kneeling can also stimulate humility in the heart. He spread out his hands to God – of course a sign of him praying to the Lord, but think about this. Spread hands are empty hands. They're not hands that are together, holding on, clinging to something. They're empty. They're spread open. And here, Ezra stands before God, holding nothing, giving nothing to God at all, having nothing to give him. Someone said one time, "We have nothing to give the Lord but the sins that we commit." That's all you and I have to bring to God is the sins that we commit, and that's what Ezra is doing. And he's so ashamed of his sin that he can hardly dare even approach the Lord. He said, "I blush to lift my face to you, oh God." 

People of God, do you sense the pathos in Ezra, the deep emotion as the weight of the sins of God's people rested upon him? And as he comes before the Lord, there's nothing flat here, there's nothing cerebral, or simply cerebral, about his confession. This is something like – isn't it? – like the publican, the tax collector, as he stands before God in the New Testament, standing far off, not even being able to lift his eyes to heaven, but beating his breast: “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.” Friends, this is where confession of sin starts, with a deep conviction of sin and heartfelt sorrow over it. It's going to be expressed in different ways for different people. The emotional register that each of us has isn't the same. This is not a prescription for how we ought to feel the weight of our sin, but it is a description. But at the very least, it says, do you feel it? How much do you sense it? How much does sin weigh upon you? Is it easy for you just to come before God and just lay your sins out? Or you say, "Lord, I can't even hardly lift my eyes to look to you when I think about all that I have done today or this week." How much does our sin burden us? Do we recognize the depth of our rebellion, the heaviness of our guilt, the sense of the threat of hell because we are sinners? Do we see the cost to Christ? 

Secondly, Ezra recognized the offense of sin. We might call it the direction of sin. Where's the offense? Where does it flow? Is it horizontal? Is it vertical? Ezra, here in this confession, recognized, and we must too, that first and foremost, sin is an offense against God more than anything else. Could ask a question here, and our text answers it: how does Ezra – how did he learn to feel the weight of sin? Where did the conviction come from? And the answer that’s given here is it was from the word of God. If you saw this in verse 4, it says, "All who trembled at the words of the God of Israel because of the faithfulness of the returned exiles gathered around Ezra as he sat appalled and made his confession.” Verse 14 in our text tells us that God's people had broken the commands of God that had been spoken or commanded by the prophets. God's people had God's word, and it was God's word that had been spoken by the prophets to them that said you are to remain separate from the peoples of the land. You’re not to intermarry with them. And so here Ezra is, and others, trembling before the word. It was the law of God. It was the word of God that brought this conviction of sin. And indeed, that is what God's word does. In Reformed faith, it is often talked about how God's law can be used, and we talk sometimes about three uses of the law: that God's law convicts of sin and therefore drives us to Christ; that God's law restrains evil; and God's law reveals what pleases God. 

Well, here's that first use of the law, convicting of sin. And some have described God's law in this light as being like a mirror – get up in the morning, and I look in the mirror, and I remember when my kids were younger – this will probably be really weird to you all, but sometimes my kids, when I was younger – I'd be sitting in a chair, and my kids would kind of, like, trace where I was balding. It's weird, right? Weird. And I would, you know, I'd tease them and say, "No, no, come on. It’s not that far back. Come on. I'm not that bald.” And then I get up in the morning, and what do I do? I look in the mirror and say they're right! We can believe all kinds of things about ourself, and we look in the mirror, and it tells the truth, doesn't it? It tells the truth about our hairline; it tells the truth about our weight; it tells the truth about the freckles that we have on our face, or whatever. And this is what God's law is like. It's like a mirror. I look into the law of God. I look into the word of God. And it – and I see myself. And I see that I do covet, and I do steal, and I am an adulterer, and I do not love God as I ought. And it's important, because so often we can get comfortable with sin. It just sort of becomes natural to us, and then we see ourselves as we truly are in the light of God's holy word and his holy standards. And you see, because God's word does this – because it's the word of God that exposes us, the word of God that reveals the depth of our sin – then we understand that sin ultimately is an offense against God. If it's God's word that exposes us, then we realize that sin is ultimately offense against him, the one who has given us his word. 

And that's what Ezra says here in this confession. He says in verse 6, "Our iniquities have risen higher than our heads. Our guilt has mounted up to the heavens." I don't think he's only speaking there in one sense about the volume of our sin, but he's also speaking there about the direction of our sin. Our sins testify against us “before your holy throne which is in the heavens.” That's where the offense lies. Or verse 10: “Oh our God, what shall we say after this? We have forsaken your commandments.” Or verse 14: “Shall we break your commandments again and intermarry with the peoples?” Back to Psalm 51 that we looked at earlier in the service – you know, that psalm was written after David committed adultery with Bathsheba. And there's that interesting little line in the psalm, verse 4, where David says to God, "Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment. Against you, you only have I sinned." And we say, "What, David? Really? You just murdered a man. Isn't that sin against Uriah? You committed adultery with Bathsheba – isn't that sin against Bathsheba? What are you talking about when you say against you, God, you only, have I sinned? There's all these other folks that you've sinned against. And we understand that David isn't saying, "Well, it's only God – all these these folks are excluded – but what David is saying to us in that psalm is ultimately, ultimately where is the offense? Yes, against others, but ultimately the offense of sin is against our holy God. That's what our understanding and confession of sin needs to reflect, people of God. When we're confessing our sins, recognize that sin is a failure to worship. It is a failure to worship the God that we have been created to serve, to give him glory, to give him the worship that he deserves. Ezra recognized the direction of his sin. 

Third, Ezra acknowledged the guilt of his sin. So he owned his sin and the sins of his people. He didn't make excuses, didn't shift blame, didn't downplay his sin. He says in verse 7, “We have been in great guilt.” He's not minimizing it, not picturing it as something being small, something marginal. He understood the depth of his sin. He said in verse 10, “We have forsaken your commands. We have not listened. We have resisted your word.” The last verse, verse 15: “We are before you in our guilt.” The guilt is ours. It belongs to us. In this prayer that Ezra prays, we see, of course, both a personal and a corporate confession. So Ezra isn't just praying about his own sin, but he's actually praying about the sins of God's people in general, at large. And so he can make the shift in verses 6 and 7 from I, “oh my God, I am ashamed and blush” to saying “we, oh Lord, have been in great guilt.” These are our iniquities that we have committed. You remember Jesus taught us to pray like that, didn't he? So in the Lord's prayer, when we're confessing our sins to God, Jesus casts it in a corporate fashion: “forgive us our sins as we forgive others” or “forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” We have our own sins to confess to God, but especially when we gather, we need to confess our sins corporately to the Lord. And friends, this gives us a rationale, a reason, why when we gather for worship so often on Sunday mornings especially, almost invariably, right? What do we do? We gather, and we confess our sins to God. And then we hear his assurance of pardon. 

This might be new to you. Maybe you're coming – have come recently – from a church background where, you know, the liturgy was you sing three or four songs, and maybe a prayer, and then you go into the sermon. But this whole thing about stopping to confess sins, maybe that's something that's kind of foreign to you. And we see an example of it here, don't we, in Ezra – God's people together. Ezra is the one whose prayer we're let in on. But here he is, praying on behalf of the people of God. And what, you see, what corporate confession does – just like personal confession, but here, especially in our worship service, what corporate confession does – is it places us within the flow of the gospel, of our own experience of the gospel, that there's a point in our life where we've confessed our sins to God so that we might receive his forgiveness and grace and know his pardon. And doing that, yes at the very beginning of our Christian life, but doing that regularly, doing that daily. 

In fact, we might ask ourselves sometimes, you know, why does Jesus teach us to pray for this? Forgive us our debts as we've forgiven our debtors. If the cross has happened and we're already forgiven, why keep praying it? And friends, the answer is not because our sin destroys our union with Christ. It's not as if we sin, and okay, now I'm unsaved, and I better pray the prayer so I get saved again, and back and forth we go in the Christian life. It doesn't destroy our union with Christ, but it does impair our communion with Christ. The intimacy that we might know with God is stretched or strained. This relationship renewal – coming back to the Lord and saying, "I've sinned. I've broken your commands. I want to be in deeper communion with you, Lord.” And when we gather here for public worship and we confess our sins together, we're doing the same as a people. We're being directed again to the cross, and to Christ, as our only hope. We're pushing open the door, as it were, to the very reason why we even gather for worship, because we have a gracious God, and we confess our sins, seeking his pardon and his grace. so that we might be restored in relationship with him. 

Friends, when we're acknowledging our guilt, as I said before, we need to own our sin. And it's also important for us at times to be specific about our sin. In other words, confession of sin ought not to be sort of like a dump truck, and the dump truck backs up and dumps a big pile. There you go, God, just forgive all these sins. Just a pile of sin. Forgive my sin. We may do that sometimes, but confession of sin ought to be like picking the rocks out of the pile. Forgive me for my pride. Forgive me for my lust. Forgive me, God, for hatred of my neighbor, the anger that built up in me and exploded against my husband or wife. John Newton had written a letter – he's famous for his letters. There's one letter that he wrote called “Blemishes in Christian Character,” where Newton gives sins, blemishes that we find in our life, he gives them names. So he writes about a man named Austerus. Says he has a – Austerus has a deep knowledge of spiritual things, divine things, but he fails to be compassionate and humble. Instead of being meek and lowly like Christ, he is harsh. There's a cynical air about him. He writes about Humanus – generous, benevolent, unselfish, yet he has an unbridled tongue. Newton says, "You should entrust him with a secret – you thereby put it in the possession of the public.” You tell him something, and it's everywhere. I just mention this because what Newton is doing is – you see what he's doing – he's naming sin. And that's important in our confession. Just confessing this big pile of sins to God, but we name them. We know them. We're specific about them. The Westminster Confession of Faith says, "Men ought not to content themselves with a general repentance, but it is every man's duty to endeavor to repent of his particular sins particularly.” Repent, confess particular sins particularly. Ezra acknowledged the guilt of his sin, and so must we. 

And finally, Ezra found hope in the grace of God in spite of sin. Friends, did you notice how this passage ends? It actually ends where it started, and that is with confession of sin and an acknowledgment of God's justice. In other words, there's no plea for forgiveness or mercy in Ezra's prayer, at least not an outright saying, "God, cancel our sin." But the passage ends with confession, and then comes the period at the end. And I think that, if we're honest, that this prayer of Ezra makes us long for more. We're saying there's got to be something else. There's got to be more. Just stopping with confession? I mean, imagine our worship service and we're led in a prayer of confession, and then there's a period – no assurance of pardon. There's got to be something else. There's got to be something else. 

Why does Ezra stop where he does? Well, we know it's not because Ezra didn't believe in forgiveness. He did. You just remember the story as it's unfolded for us, and Ezra – when those first exiles come to the Promised Land – what's the very first thing that they build, even before the temple? They build an altar, right? They had sinned. They had been in exile. They had broken God's command. They had been sent away. We need an altar, because atonement needs to be made. Sacrifices need to be offered. Ezra believed in forgiveness. I think the reason why he doesn't plead for it here at the end of the prayer is because he was so overwhelmed by his sense of guilt that he couldn't just move on and appear to make light of his sin. You know, let's just get that confession out of the way. Just get it past and move on. And he's not willing to do that. And yet in the middle of his prayer, there are numerous glimpses and recognitions of God's grace. 

Let me just point out to you a few words or phrases from this prayer, if you see these in verses 8 and 9. Ezra speaks about a remnant. Lord, you brought back a remnant. A remnant, of course, is just a small group, but a remnant in scripture is always a sign of hope. God, you have not forsaken us. God, you have not just turned away from us. There's a remnant. He talks about a secure hold. You might see in the ESV that another word for secure hold – the Hebrew word for that – is nail or tent pin, like a tent peg. In other words, God, you have granted stability to us in this land, like the tent peg has been driven into the ground – solid, secure. Lord, you've done all this to brighten our eyes, he says, verse 8. Their eyes had grown dim, right? Their sin, their exile – but Lord, you're bringing light to our eyes again, they're brightening up. He talks about revival, giving us a little revival – reviving – in our slavery, renewed energy, renewed hope in God. And then, don't miss it – verse 9: “Lord, you have extended to us your steadfast love.” The promises that you have made to our forefathers, that we would be your people, that you would be our God, they're still true. Your promises have not failed. And so, here we are with repaired ruins, with repaired walls. You see, people of God, I think what was happening here for Ezra is all these little glimpses of God's grace, all these acknowledgments of the tokens of his grace – these are the things that actually helped him to confess his sin to God. God's grace had been shown. And that's why in verse 10, he says, "Now, oh our God, what shall we say after this?” After you've shown us all this grace, what should we say? After we have seen all these glimpses of your grace, this is what actually leads us to confess. This is what gives us the strength to confess, the honesty to confess. You see, people of God, confession doesn't deny grace. Confession isn't opposed to God's grace. Confession isn't, you know, this awful thing we got to do, and wonderful grace is over here. It's not like that at all. Confession is prompted by grace, and confession leads to grace. I've called these things glimpses of grace, because that's exactly what they were for Ezra and God's people. They were just little, tiny appetizers. He can say for a brief moment – verse 8 – for a brief moment God's favor is upon us. Or, “You have granted us a little reviving in our slavery.” We've just gotten little bits and pieces. Praise God, there's more to come. Because you see what these glimpses do. These glimpses help us to look forward. These glimpses help us to go down in the centuries to when it would be that we wouldn't just get a glimpse of God's grace, but we'd be given the full panorama of his grace in the Lord Jesus Christ. 

Ezra can say at the very end of this prayer, "Oh God, you are just, for we are left a remnant that has escaped as it is today.” And he can speak about the grace of God. And people of God, where is that place? Where is that place where the justice of God and the grace of God sweetly kiss? It's at the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, isn't it? It's at Calvary. And you see, that's why we could stand upon the promise that was in our service this morning. This promise – people of God, you need to hear this promise, because all this talk about confession – we cannot miss this, that if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. “Oh Lord,” says the psalmist, “if you should mark iniquities, who can stand? But with you there is forgiveness. Therefore, you are feared.” What does confession lead to for God's people? What does it lead to for you and I? When we confess, God says, "I hear. I see. And I will graciously pardon you for the sake of my Son.” 

Maybe this morning this would be the very first time that you confess your sins to God and look to Christ. And God is saying to you this morning, if it's the very first time, just come, confess them, acknowledge them, recognize them, see the offense against my holy majesty, and cling to Jesus, and you will be forgiven. Most of us here this morning, it's probably the thousandth, the five thousandth, the fifty-thousandth time we've said, "Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner." And God says the same: “You're forgiven. You're forgiven for the sake of my Son.” You see, Ezra and we can mourn for sin, but it is Christ alone who can pay for sin. Mourn your sin, and let Christ pay for it in full. Let's pray together. 

Father in heaven, we thank you for the example that Ezra gives us this morning of how to go about confession, but we thank you for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ. Just as you were gracious to your people, giving them little glimpses, giving them little tastes of your grace – to us you've given the fullness of it in Christ Jesus, your Son. And so forgive us and cleanse us. Lord, help us to daily confess our sins before you and then to receive your pardoning grace in Jesus’ name. Amen.