Unconfessed Sin – The Devil’s Opportunity!

3/11/07

 

 

Unconfessed sin has a snowball effect.

 

1 Pet. 5:8 Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. ⁹Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that your brothers throughout the world are undergoing the same kind of sufferings.

 

I want to demonstrate through scripture just how this happens.

 

Through scripture we will see that Judas Iscariot had no intention of murdering Jesus--yet he did.

 

Prisons are full of people who had no intention of doing what it was that sent them to prison, but the devil took advantage of opportunities that could have been shut but never were.

 

Society is full of people with shattered lives for the exact same reason.

 

The Bible says that the wages of sin is death.

 

The idea that certain sins are harmless is a lie from the very pit of hell!  That’s exactly what the devil wants you to believe.

 

Judas Iscariot did not set out to be a murderer.  He had a problem with greed that he didn’t do anything about.  It probably seemed harmless to him, not that big of deal.

 

His greed turned him into a thief.

 

Jo. 12:1 Six days before the Passover, Jesus arrived at Bethany, where Lazarus lived, whom Jesus had raised from the dead. ²Here a dinner was given in Jesus’ honor. Martha served, while Lazarus was among those reclining at the table with him. ³Then Mary took about a pint of pure nard, an expensive perfume; she poured it on Jesus’ feet and wiped his feet with her hair. And the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.

⁴But one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, who was later to betray him, objected, ⁵“Why wasn’t this perfume sold and the money given to the poor? It was worth a year’s wages.” ⁶He did not say this because he cared about the poor but because he was a thief; as keeper of the money bag, he used to help himself to what was put into it.  ⁷“Leave her alone,” Jesus replied. “It was intended that she should save this perfume for the day of my burial. ⁸You will always have the poor among you, but you will not always have me.”

 

One unconfessed sin leads to another and the power of sin becomes greater.

 

Mark gives us more insight into the same story….

 

Mk. 14:3 While he was in Bethany, reclining at the table in the home of a man known as Simon the Leper, a woman came with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, made of pure nard. She broke the jar and poured the perfume on his head.

⁴Some of those present were saying indignantly to one another, “Why this waste of perfume? ⁵It could have been sold for more than a year’s wages and the money given to the poor.” And they rebuked her harshly.

⁶“Leave her alone,” said Jesus. “Why are you bothering her? She has done a beautiful thing to me. ⁷The poor you will always have with you, and you can help them any time you want. But you will not always have me. ⁸She did what she could. She poured perfume on my body beforehand to prepare for my burial. ⁹I tell you the truth, wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her.”

 

Judas’ anger gave way to betrayal!

 

¹⁰Then Judas Iscariot, one of the Twelve, went to the chief priests to betray Jesus to them. ¹¹They were delighted to hear this and promised to give him money. So he watched for an opportunity to hand him over.

 

Judas was a liar….

 

Mat. 26:20 When evening came, Jesus was reclining at the table with the Twelve. ²¹And while they were eating, he said, “I tell you the truth, one of you will betray me.”

²²They were very sad and began to say to him one after the other, “Surely not I, Lord?”

²³Jesus replied, “The one who has dipped his hand into the bowl with me will betray me. ²⁴The Son of Man will go just as it is written about him. But woe to that man who betrays the Son of Man! It would be better for him if he had not been born.”

²⁵Then Judas, the one who would betray him, said, “Surely not I, Rabbi?”

Jesus answered, “Yes, it is you.”

 

Judas was devious….

 

Lk. 22:47 While he was still speaking a crowd came up, and the man who was called Judas, one of the Twelve, was leading them. He approached Jesus to kiss him, ⁴⁸but Jesus asked him, “Judas, are you betraying the Son of Man with a kiss?”

 

 

Let’s go back to Mark 14.…

 

Mk. 14:10 Then Judas Iscariot, one of the Twelve, went to the chief priests to betray Jesus to them. ¹¹They were delighted to hear this and promised to give him money. So he watched for an opportunity to hand him over.

 

Remember….

 

1 Pet. 5:8 Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.

 

Lk. 22:1 Now the Feast of Unleavened Bread, called the Passover, was approaching, ²and the chief priests and the teachers of the law were looking for some way to get rid of Jesus, for they were afraid of the people. ³ Then Satan entered Judas, called Iscariot, one of the Twelve. ⁴And Judas went to the chief priests and the officers of the temple guard and discussed with them how he might betray Jesus. ⁵They were delighted and agreed to give him money. ⁶He consented, and watched for an opportunity to hand Jesus over to them when no crowd was present.

 

I’m convinced that Judas came up with a twisted plot.  He would turn over Jesus to the Pharisees, get his reward, Jesus would escape and everything would be fine.  He would be richer, Jesus would be safe, and the Pharisees would be the losers.  Sounded good!

 

Lk. 4:22 All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his lips. “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?” they asked.

²³Jesus said to them, “Surely you will quote this proverb to me: ‘Physician, heal yourself! Do here in your hometown what we have heard that you did in Capernaum.’”

²⁴“I tell you the truth,” he continued, “no prophet is accepted in his hometown. ²⁵I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah’s time, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and there was a severe famine throughout the land. ²⁶Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow in Zarephath in the region of Sidon. ²⁷And there were many in Israel with leprosy in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed—only Naaman the Syrian.”

²⁸All the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this. ²⁹They got up, drove him out of the town, and took him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built, in order to throw him down the cliff. ³⁰ But he walked right through the crowd and went on his way.

 

Jo. 8:54 Jesus replied, “If I glorify myself, my glory means nothing. My Father, whom you claim as your God, is the one who glorifies me. ⁵⁵Though you do not know him, I know him. If I said I did not, I would be a liar like you, but I do know him and keep his word. ⁵⁶Your father Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day; he saw it and was glad.”

⁵⁷“You are not yet fifty years old,” the Jews said to him, “and you have seen Abraham!”

⁵⁸“I tell you the truth,” Jesus answered, “before Abraham was born, I am!” ⁵⁹At this, they picked up stones to stone him, but Jesus hid himself, slipping away from the temple grounds.

 

Jo. 10:31 Again the Jews picked up stones to stone him, ³²but Jesus said to them, “I have shown you many great miracles from the Father. For which of these do you stone me?”

³³“We are not stoning you for any of these,” replied the Jews, “but for blasphemy, because you, a mere man, claim to be God.”

³⁴Jesus answered them, “Is it not written in your Law, ‘I have said you are gods’? ³⁵If he called them ‘gods,’ to whom the word of God came—and the Scripture cannot be broken—³⁶what about the one whom the Father set apart as his very own and sent into the world? Why then do you accuse me of blasphemy because I said, ‘I am God’s Son’? ³⁷Do not believe me unless I do what my Father does. ³⁸But if I do it, even though you do not believe me, believe the miracles, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me, and I in the Father.” ³⁹ Again they tried to seize him, but he escaped their grasp.

 

Things didn’t go as planned!

 

Mat. 27:3 When Judas, who had betrayed him, saw that Jesus was condemned, he was seized with remorse and returned the thirty silver coins to the chief priests and the elders. ⁴“I have sinned,” he said, “for I have betrayed innocent blood.”

“What is that to us?” they replied. “That’s your responsibility.”

⁵So Judas threw the money into the temple and left. Then he went away and hanged himself.

 

Things never go as planned when sin is left unconfessed.  It might seem great for quite a while, but it never ends great!

 

Does the story of Judas prove that everyone who has unconfessed sin will eventually become a murderer?  No.

 

But everyone who has unconfessed sin will loose.

 

 

Even godly people can become trapped by sin.  If you give the enemy an inch, he will take a mile!

 

Many believe that Psalms 32 was written in conjunction with Psalms 51.

 

Ps. 32:1 Blessed is he

whose transgressions are forgiven,

whose sins are covered.

² Blessed is the man

whose sin the LORD does not count against him

and in whose spirit is no deceit.

³ When I kept silent,

my bones wasted away

through my groaning all day long.

⁴ For day and night

your hand was heavy upon me;

my strength was sapped

as in the heat of summer.

Selah

⁵ Then I acknowledged my sin to you

and did not cover up my iniquity.

I said, “I will confess

my transgressions to the LORD”—

and you forgave

the guilt of my sin.

   

Fatal Addiction

 

Ted Bundy's Final Interview.  Ted Bundy, an infamous serial killer, granted an interview to psychologist James Dobson just before he was executed on January 24, 1989. In that interview, he described the agony of his addiction to pornography. Bundy goes back to his roots, explaining the development of his compulsive behavior. He reveals his addiction to hard-core pornography and how it fueled the terrible crimes he committed.

 

Bundy, a good-looking, intelligent law student, learned to lure women into his car by various forms of deception. He would put a cast on his arm or leg, then walk across a university campus carrying several books. When he saw an interesting coed standing or walking alone, he’d “accidentally” drop the books near her. The girl would help him gather them and take them to his car. Then he would entice her or push her into the vehicle where she was taken captive. After he had molested the girl and the rage of passion had passed, she would be killed and Bundy would dump her body in a region where it would not be found for months. This went on for years.

By the time he was apprehended, Bundy had killed at least twenty-eight young women and girls in acts too horrible to contemplate. He was finally convicted and sentenced to death for killing a twelve-year-old girl and dumping her body in a pigsty. After more than ten years of appeals and legal maneuvering, a judge gave the order for Bundy’s execution. That week, he asked an attorney to call James Dobson and requested that he come to Florida State Prison for a final interview.

 

JCD: For the record, you are guilty of killing many women and girls.

Ted: Yes, that’s true.

JCD: How did it happen? Take me back. What are the antecedents of the behavior that we’ve seen? You were raised in what you consider to be a healthy home. You were not physically, sexually or emotionally abused.

Ted: No. And that’s part of the tragedy of this whole situation. I grew up in a wonderful home with two dedicated and loving parents, as one of 5 brothers and sisters. We, as children, were the focus of my parent’s lives. We regularly attended church. My parents did not drink or smoke or gamble. There was no physical abuse or fighting in the home. I’m not saying it was “Leave it to Beaver”, but it was a fine, solid Christian home. I hope no one will try to take the easy way out of this and accuse my family of contributing to this. I know, and I’m trying to tell you as honestly as I know how, what happened.

As a young boy of 12 or 13, I encountered, outside the home, in the local grocery and drug stores, soft-core pornography. Young boys explore the sideways and byways of their neighborhoods, and in our neighborhood, people would dump the garbage. From time to time, we would come across books of a harder nature - more graphic. This also included detective magazines, etc., and I want to emphasize this. The most damaging kind of pornography - and I’m talking from hard, real, personal experience - is that that involves violence and sexual violence. The wedding of those two forces - as I know only too well - brings about behavior that is too terrible to describe.

JCD: Walk me through that. What was going on in your mind at that time?

Ted: Before we go any further, it is important to me that people believe what I’m saying. I’m not blaming pornography. I’m not saying it caused me to go out and do certain things. I take full responsibility for all the things that I’ve done. That’s not the question here. The issue is how this kind of literature contributed and helped mold and shape the kinds of violent behavior.

JCD: It fueled your fantasies.

Ted: In the beginning, it fuels this kind of thought process. Then, at a certain time, it is instrumental in crystallizing it, making it into something that is almost a separate entity inside.

JCD: You had gone about as far as you could go in your own fantasy life, with printed material, photos, videos, etc., and then there was the urge to take that step over to a physical event.

Ted: I was a normal person. I had good friends. I led a normal life, except for this one, small but very potent and destructive segment that I kept very secret and close to myself.

Ted: Once you become addicted to it, and I look at this as a kind of addiction, you look for more potent, more explicit, more graphic kinds of material. Like an addiction, you keep craving something which is harder and gives you a greater sense of excitement, until you reach the point where the pornography only goes so far - that jumping off point where you begin to think maybe actually doing it will give you that which is just beyond reading about it and looking at it.

JCD: How long did you stay at that point before you actually assaulted someone?

Ted: A couple of years. I was dealing with very strong inhibitions against criminal and violent behavior. That had been conditioned and bred into me from my neighborhood, environment, church, and schools.

I knew it was wrong to think about it, and certainly, to do it was wrong. I was on the edge, and the last vestiges of restraint were being tested constantly, and assailed through the kind of fantasy life that was fueled, largely, by pornography….

 

Does this mean that if you look at pornography, you will end up a Ted Bundy?  No, but some will.

 

If you take a beer will end up an alcoholic?  No, but some will.

 

If you smoke a joint does it mean you will end up hooked on heroin or meth?  No, but some will.

 

There is a certain part of society that wants you to believe that if you have an addiction, it’s a disease.

 

 

Bill O’Reilly in his book “Cultural Warrior” writes the following….

 

“Susie lived with her uneducated mother and stepfather in a trailer home. Every Sunday, beginning when the girl was six years old, her mother’s friend from high school, a laborer by the name of Mark Hulett, then thirty, would baby-sit for a few hours. This arrangement went on for about four years, until Susie was ten. And during that time, Hulett repeatedly raped the little girl.”

 

“As the confessed child rapist, Mark Hulett, stood before Judge Edward Cashman, some in the courtroom were expecting the criminal to get the maximum sentence: life. Instead, Cashman handed down a sentence of sixty days to ten years in state prison—and all but sixty days of the sentence was suspended.”

 

“Noah Hoffenburg, editorial director of the Bennington Banner, summarized the Vermont media position when he wrote: “We can see sexual predation as the disease itself; and make every attempt, as Judge Cashman did, to get to the source of the illness, thereby preventing the devastation of sexual assault in the future.” So, according to many in the Vermont media, child rape is an illness—not to be punished, but to be treated. Believe me, this kind of insane thinking is very, very common in the secular-progressive movement. In fact, there’s even a name for it: “restorative justice.” During my investigation of Judge Cashman, I found that he actually taught a course on “restorative justice” at the National Judicial College, which advertises itself as “the nation’s top judicial training institution.” In other words, Cashman is a huge proponent of this madness, which encourages the legal system to find a way to “reintegrate offenders into society.” The “restorative” crowd does not believe in retribution for crimes; they believe in “repairing harm” for both the victim and the offender. That is to say, society has a responsibility not only to the person who is harmed but also to the person doing the harm. Criminals need to be “nurtured.”

 

Most all addictions are rooted in sin.  The confession of sin, the power of prayer and the transformed life can break any and all addictions!

 

Sin destroys your life.

Sin destroys your family.

Sin destroys your hopes.

Sin destroys relationships.

Sin destroys your potential.

 

1 Jo. 1:8 If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. ⁹If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. ¹⁰If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word has no place in our lives.