I Have Sinned

“I have sinned”

Given in Houston 9/17/2005 as split sermon

Revised, given as full sermon in Kingsport 7/9/2016

Given in Roanoke 3/1/2025 (full sermon version)

Given in London, KY 3/8/2025 

I have sinned.  Given that situation, what is the right thing for me to do now? That is something we need to think about especially as we approach Passover.

Or, is sometimes our attitude by contrast:  I blew it.  What can I do before anyone finds out?  (Maybe the young person, for example, after staying out long after the curfew time his parents set, tries to sneak into the house in hopes that his parents are already asleep.  Maybe one of his parents has cheated on the other and is now desperately trying to suppress all evidence of the affair from reaching his or her spouse.  Maybe the corporate executive who has been embezzling money from his company is now “cooking the books” in an attempt to destroy any evidence of what he has done.)

We all find ourselves in this spot from time to time (Eccl. 7:20 7:20, 1 John 1:10 1:101:10). 

In this sermon I would like to look at Biblical examples of how a number of people handled it when confronted with their sin and what would be the penalty – and what we can learn from these examples about what we should do in these situations (1 Cor. 10:11).  We can simply title this sermon “I Have Sinned.”

What are some incorrect responses when we are confronted with our sin?

Denying the sin (when the charge is actually true)

Becoming angry with the confronter, or the one who is more righteous

“Damage control” – trying to hide the sin, trying to justify the sin, blaming others

Worst, committing another sin to try to cover up the old sin.  This can be simply lying about it and denying the sin (Saul, politicians).

Complaining about the penalty which God imposes

Let us look at a number of Biblical examples of these incorrect responses.

Cain (Gen. 4) – note he gave the wrong type of offering.  How did he manage this?  Did he admit it, ask God’s forgiveness and resolve to give the required type of offerings in the future?  No. He became angry with Abel (“righteous Abel” – Matt. 23:3523:35) – angry to the point of murder.  He then compounded the first sin with a much worse one. When God confronted him, he would not admit the murder but asked sarcastically whether he was his brother’s keeper.  When God prescribed the penalty, Cain did not humbly accept it but complained that it was more than he could bear (remember God was being lenient with him by not putting him to death!)

Now everyone would agree that Cain was a “bad guy.” How about the responses of three Biblical figures who, at least to a certain extent, were “good guys”? 

Asa (2 Chron. 16: 7-10) – when he relied on the Syrians in battle rather than on God, the prophet Hanani corrected him for this.  Even though Asa was a good king (2 Chron. 15:17), he was blinded to the correction for awhile and became angry with Hanani (another sin) and put him in prison (2 Chron. 16:10).

Jehoash (2 Chron. 24) had started out as a good king but had slid into idolatry after the death of his mentor Jehoiada the priest.  When Jehoiada’s son Zechariah corrected him, Jehoash became so angry that he commanded that Zechariah be stoned (verses 20-22).

Uzziah (2 Chron. 26:10) was in general a good king but once he was recorded as letting his pride get the best of him. He usurped the responsibility of the priests by burning incense in the temple.  When the priests corrected him he did not humbly accept this correction but instead became angry with them.  While enraged he became a leper – and remained one for the rest of his life.

Now let’s go to a couple of classic examples on whom I would like to focus, whose responses were very different when their sin was pointed out to them.  As you might expect, I am talking about Saul and David.

Saul (1 Sam. 15) did not heed the command of God (given through the prophet Samuel) to destroy all the Amalekites and their livestock. When Samuel confronted him he first lied, denied the sin and said he had obeyed God (verse 13).  When Samuel asked him about the livestock, he blamed the people (verse 15) (although verse 9 indicated that Saul himself was also involved in sparing Agag and the animals) and tried to justify the act as motivated by sacrifice. When Samuel corrected Saul further Saul again lied (verse 20) and blamed the people (verse 21).  He pretended to repent but again blamed the people (verse 24) and was totally focused on “damage control” and preserving his position, reputation and image (verses 25, 30).  The result was God’s rejection of Saul as king.  So did Saul humbly accept this penalty and resolve to be the best king he could be during whatever time remained in his reign?  No.  Ra13:14ther, he tried to avoid the penalty by committing more sins, in his repeated attempts to kill David, whom God had chosen as Saul’s successor.

In sharp contrast, let us see how Saul’s successor David – a man after God’s own heart (1 Sam.13:14 13:1413:1413:1413:1413:1413:1413:1413:14) – handled a couple of major sins in his life.  After David’s adultery with Bathsheba (2 Sam. 11:4), he was confronted with the knowledge that she was pregnant (verse 5). At first he handled this totally the wrong way.  How was he going to control the damage?  He first brought Uriah home from the battle in hopes that he would have marital relations with his wife and it would not be known that the child was David’s.  But Uriah would not cooperate – even when David got him drunk (verse 13).  The result was that David contrived the battle death of Uriah – in an indirect murder – so he could marry Bathsheba and cover his adultery.  The damage control seemed to work.

But when God sent Nathan to David to shock him away from the path down which he was going (2 Sam. 12), he showed a complete change of attitude.  David realized that in his response to Nathan’s parable, he had condemned himself as worthy of death.  God forgave David on humble repentance and removed the penalty of eternal death. However, as Nathan pointed out, there were still to be many temporary penalties for the sin which David would undergo for the rest of his life.  Did he try to deny or justify his sin?  No! Did he complain about the penalties? Not at all!  His magnificent response is recorded in Psalm 51:3-4.

Another major sin in David’s life was the military census in 1 Chron. 21.  Joab tried to dissuade David (an example of good advice coming from a bad person), but David commanded the census anyway.  When God confronted him through a prophet, however, he acknowledged that he had sinned greatly and humbly accepted the penalty.  He further showed his integrity in verse 17 when he called for the penalty to be on himself – for he was the one who had sinned – and not the innocent people of Israel as a whole.

Even when David had merely cut off a corner of Saul’s robe (1 Sam. 24:5), his conscience troubled him for lifting his hand against God’s anointed – even when that person was trying to kill him!

It is interesting to contrast David’s responses with the finger-pointing we often see among politicians when there is a scandal, or a failure of government to do its job.  We often see an outpouring of “damage control” from officials of both parties on all sides of the political spectrum.  It would also be very encouraging to see more officials step up to the plate and admit “I am guilty” rather than finger-pointing.  

A constructive example was how Johnson and Johnson handled the Tylenol tampering case decades ago.  A number of people died because someone had bought some Tylenol capsules, added cyanide, and slipped the bottles back into stores. Johnson and Johnson did not try to minimize the problem.  It admitted that it was guilty of not making its products sufficiently tamper-resistant. It pulled all the Tylenol from stores (at great cost) for several weeks until new tamper-resistant packaging could be produced.  As a result the Tylenol brand continued to thrive and does so to this day.

Also Moses showed an excellent example of dealing with his own sin at Meribah (Num. 20:8-12, 27:14; Deut. 3:243:24, 27, 34:1). 

Some concepts promoted in on-the-job training courses actually have a strong Biblical basis.  An area that was very popular a few years ago, and still is in many companies, is that of quality courses – the idea of zero defects, quality as conformance to requirements, fixing and eliminating nonconformances, etc. The concepts of quality management have a very strong analogy to how we should handle sin in our lives.  It would be instructive to cover quality principles in the light of being confronted with sin.

“Quality” is how we should live – in conformance to requirements.  The requirements are those spelled out in God’s Law.  If we find a principle of God’s Law getting in the way of something we want to do, we must stop the plan to engage in the forbidden practice – and we must also work on our minds and ask God to help us eliminate the desire to perform the sinful act.

From time to time we will sin.  We will have nonconformances to requirements.  These are not acceptable.  We must not compromise with sin.  The only acceptable standard is “zero defects.” (Matt. 5:48)

When a nonconformance to requirements has occurred, first we must fix it.  No amount of planning to prevent future nonconformances can cancel the fact that a nonconformance already exists.  For a defective manufactured product, we repair it.  But in the case of sin, we cannot perform the repair.  Only God can do this – by applying the Passover sacrifice of His Son Jesus Christ when we go to Him and repent of the sin.  God “fixes” our nonconformance.

But it is not the point of quality to continue having the same nonconformance time after time and to have to have it fixed over and over again (cf. Rom. 6:1-2, 13, 15).  We must set in motion a plan to reduce the incidence of this sin with the ultimate goal of bringing it down to zero.  We know we can’t totally eliminate sin from our lives – just as we cannot successfully eliminate every trace of leaven from our houses -- but we also know we must not compromise with sin, just as we must make a good-faith effort to deleaven our houses.  We must never give up our struggle against sin.  Sometimes the idea of a “fishbone” diagram that is promoted in quality courses is useful in this.  What were the root causes of our sin?  What were the events and stimuli that led us to respond in a sinful manner?  Against what do we particularly need to be on guard in the future?  (Contrast alcohol, anger).

Let’s go back to Saul.  He had a major nonconformance to requirements.  Did he fix it?  No.  Nothing indicates any kind of sincere repentance.  Why did he sin?  In his own words, he feared the people (1 Sam. 15:2415:24) apparently more than he feared God.   Perhaps he was greedy also (verse 9) although this was not clearly stated.  Did he try to put together a plan to reduce the likelihood of later sins?  There is certainly no evidence of this from his future behavior.  In contrast, David deeply repented both times and begged God to “fix” the nonconformance.  And it is reasonable to suspect that he put together in his mind a plan to minimize the likelihood of future sin.  He is never recorded as again becoming involved with another man’s wife or taking a military census.  (1 Kings 15:5)

In summary, when we find that we have committed a sin, or are confronted with one, it is our choice as to how we will react. We should not react in any of the following ways:

Denying the sin (when the charge is actually true)

Becoming angry with the confronter, or with one who has not committed the sin

“Damage control” – trying to hide the sin, trying to preserve our image, trying to justify the sin, blaming others

Worst, committing another sin to try to cover up the old sin.  This can be simply lying about it and denying the sin (Saul, politicians).

Complaining about a temporary penalty which God imposes (since God normally does not communicate with us directly, we would not normally know what this penalty is, but the general principle could apply to complaining in our lives generally – Phil. 4:11; also 1 Cor. 10:10 warns against grumbling).

Rather we should:

Not compromise with sin – have goal of “zero defects” – strive for quality

When we have committed sin, repent and go to God to “fix” the problem by applying the sacrifice of Jesus Christ

Search out the root causes that led to the sin to help us be less likely to sin in similar situations in the future

If we do these things, we will have used this sin incident as a learning opportunity to teach us a valuable lesson which will help us all our lives – to lessen future sins and to be useful to teach others in whatever position God will want to use us in the Millennium and beyond.