Praying to Confess Our Sins

Listen Online:

Transcript:

Turn with me to Psalm chapter 32. Psalm chapter 32. This morning we are continuing on with the series of lessons that we’ve been in on prayer.

And the third reason why we pray is what we’re going to look at this morning. We’ve answered the question, why is prayer? Prayer is just a conversation with God.

We make it harder than it needs to be, and as a result of that, we treat it more laxly than we need to. Because we think if it’s this hard, if it’s this difficult, if I’ve got to know all this special jargon, if I’ve got to speak in these and thou’s and flowing language, I’ve got to do all these things, I can’t pray right, so I might as well not even try. Ladies and gentlemen, prayer is a conversation with God.

That’s it. And there are people, and you may from time to time here or in other churches, hear people praying in these and thou’s. That’s okay.

That’s what they’re comfortable with. But that doesn’t mean that’s how you have to pray. We pray to God as we talk because it’s a conversation with God.

I feel bad in some of the church. I don’t know if this is possible or not, but at times I feel like I’m annoying to God, if that makes any sense, because I talk to God the way I talk to people. And I have to stop and think about what I’m saying, and I pause in the middle of sentences, change thoughts abruptly.

Folks, we pray to God as we talk because it’s a conversation. Being open and honest sharing with God what He already knows about us. What he already knows that we need.

What he already knows about the places where we fall short. And it’s not been on purpose that we’ve spent so much time in the Psalms to do this, but I think David gives us some of the best examples, other than the Lord Jesus Christ himself, gives us some of the best examples in all of the Bible about what it means to pray and have an open and honest conversation with God. And we’ve been the last couple of weeks talking about why we pray.

And what is prayer? It’s a conversation with God. Why do we pray is a different story.

I came up with about ten different reasons why we pray and promise that I will not give them to you all in one message. But the first reason last week, or the week before I should say, was to honor God. We pray because it honors God.

Just by the very fact of submitting ourselves to God and admitting that He is higher than us and that we need something from Him, just that very act of submission honors God. And sometimes instead of going to God with just our wish list, our grocery list to be filled, We should pray to God with the motivation of honoring Him and asking for things that honor Him. Now, I want to make very clear, because some of you have not been here for this whole series, I am not saying and will not say that it is wrong to ask God for things.

It may be wrong to ask God for certain things. If you ask God for anything you know who is against His will, then that’s wrong. Just asking God for things, asking God to meet your needs especially, is not wrong.

He desires to meet our needs. Sometimes, as selfish as we are, it’s all right to ask God for things we want, but we have no guarantee He’s going to fulfill that wish list. The problem that comes when we always take our wish list to God, and we’re never concerned about anything else in prayer. Ladies and gentlemen, sometimes we need to pray simply because of God.

This morning, we look at the third reason why we pray, which is to confess our sins. We pray to confess our sins, and we see this in Psalm chapter 32, where David again writes. And by the way, the verses will be up on the screen for you.

Now that’s an additional help for you, especially if you’re reading out of a different version and think where is he because it’s a little bit different. Or if you don’t have a Bible, and by the way, if you don’t have a Bible, let us tell you we can get your Bible. Or if you forgot your Bible, it’s up there as a help for you to help you follow along.

But if you have your Bible, I want you to have it open. Can I see your Bible this morning? If it’s not open, please get it open.

Okay? And I don’t say that to be mean, but ladies and gentlemen, anybody can put anything up on a screen. And anybody can tell you anything.

And as a matter of fact, in the case of some TV preachers, they do just put about anything they make up on a screen. Amen. Anybody can make stuff up and tell you it’s the Word of God.

I want you to verify what I say by this book. Amen. Because it’s not true because I say it.

It’s true because it’s in this book. So if you haven’t already, please open your Bibles to Psalm chapter 32. And in verse 1 he says, Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.

Blessed is the man to whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no God. Now what he’s saying here, sometimes we see this word, blessed, it’s one of those words, one of those church words that we use, and we have an idea of what it means, but try to define it, and we come up short. I still have not arrived at just a good definition for what it means to bless.

But a lot of times they get close to what it means by saying happy, and I’ll even put it in some translations, in the Beatitudes. Happy are the poor in spirit, happy are the meek. There is happiness and there’s joy in God’s blessings.

It is good for us, if I can say it that way. When he says, blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven. It is good for us when our transgressions are forgiven.

All the times that we’ve disobeyed God, it’s good for us that he’s forgiven us. It would be bad news for us if God chose not to forgive. Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.

And what they were talking about in the Old Testament was they would go through these animal sacrifices. And the Bible tells us that without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sins. And they would go into the temple, and they would bring these animals, and they would kill the animals, and they would take the blood, and they would sprinkle it in various places for a covering.

and it was said that that was a covering for sin, but it was not an all-sufficient covering because they had to come and do it again later as a covering for sin. But when Jesus Christ died on the cross as the perfect sacrifice, He did what the blood of bulls and goats never could accomplish. The Bible says that He paid for our sins once and for all.

And because of that, we’re covered by the righteousness of Christ. We don’t have any righteousness of our own. As a matter of fact, I got saved 20-some-odd years ago. I was a sinner then.

I’m still a sinner now. In Jesus Christ, I have his righteousness. But I’m just a sinner, ladies and gentlemen.

I’m just a sinner getting into heaven on the righteousness of Christ. Because my sins are covered by his blood, not by my efforts. And it’s good for us. It’s a good thing for us, ladies and gentlemen, when our transgressions are forgiven, when our sins come.

Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no God. It’s good for us. It’s a good thing for us when the Lord doesn’t impute iniquity.

When God doesn’t take the sin that we’ve committed and charge it to our account, basically. And you know what? I’ve got lots of sin, and so do you.

We sin because we’re born sinners, and we can’t help it. That’s our nature. Now, when we become Christians, the Holy Spirit gives us the ability to fight against that And to do better than we did before, but ladies and gentlemen, we’re still sinners.

But you know what? When we sin as believers, and this morning as I’m talking about prayer of confession, I’m primarily talking to those in the congregation who have trusted Jesus Christ as their Savior. Now there is a way this applies to those of you who may not have this morning.

But primarily I’m speaking to those who’ve already trusted Christ as their Savior. When we trusted Christ, our sins, I believe, past, present, and future were paid for on the cross. The Bible says He paid it all once for all.

and when we sin because Jesus Christ has paid for that because when he died on the cross he said it was paid in full when he said it’s finished it was paid in full that sin is not credited to our account that debt has been paid you know what that’s a good thing because I couldn’t pay that debt on my own in either region David talks about about his sins in the past and he says when I kept silence my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long for day and night And in this he talks about the burden of bearing your sin, the burden of carrying that and not dealing with it. And I don’t know if any of you have ever kept secrets for a period of time, something that you don’t want to tell a loved one, but something you really should be honest about, really should confess, but you just hold the secret and sign it just eats away at you.

And maybe some of you have been through times in your Christian life where you’ve sinned against God and you realize it, but you just got ready to confess it. And we carry the burden of that sin and we feel like it eats away us. And he says when he kept silence, that is when he did not go and confess his sins to the Lord, he says, my bones waxed old.

It was as though his bones grew old. It was as though his sin was destroying him from the inside out. Ladies and gentlemen, when we walk around with sin unconfessed and undealt with, it’s destructive, and it destroys us from the inside out.

He says, for day and night thy hand was heavy upon me. I don’t know that this means God just came down on him in judgment, or if it was the fact that he realized he’d fallen short of the standard of a holy God, and he realized things are not right between me and God. He says, my moisture has turned into the drought of summer.

So that which was supposed to be refreshing, that which was supposed to bring him joy and renewal was just gone. And if you’ve ever been in one of those situations where you know you’ve sinned against God, but you just don’t want to confess it, you don’t want to deal with it, maybe you don’t want to stop. Folks, it eats away at us, it robs us of our joy, it robs us of everything good in our personal life.

And that was the experience of David as one who knew about his sin, who felt the weight of it, and still didn’t want to confess. Because he said he kept silence. Now in this, I am not saying either that you can lose your salvation.

I know a lot of churches teach that. That’s okay. Everybody has the right to be wrong.

I thought at one point, one of it was possible. Because I thought, I know I’ve been taught all my life, security of the believer, once you’re truly saved, now I’m not saying once you make a profession, everything’s okay. A lot of people make false professions, unfortunately.

But once you’ve truly been born again, you cannot be lost, is what I grew up being taught. And I thought, but it’s not enough just that I’ve been taught this. I need to find it out for my stop.

And I began looking through the scriptures, seeing what God said about it. And there were some scriptures that looked as though they’re saying you can lose your salvation. I thought, what if that’s the case?

That was a miserable, miserable thought. But I thought, if that’s the truth, then that’s why I need to believe it. But the longer I studied it, I realized that’s not what those passages of the Bible are saying.

There are some very hard passages that look like they say you can lose your salvation. That’s not what they’re saying. Because that would contradict the very easy, clear passages that make it abundantly clear as far as I’m concerned.

That once we belong to Christ, we cannot unbelong to Christ. There is nothing that can separate us from the love of God as Christ Jesus. No man can plug us out. I’m not saying we lose our salvation when I say this sin destroys everything.

The sin does not destroy the relationship between God and a child of God, but I believe it can destroy the fellowship. And if you think, what is he talking about that doesn’t make sense, I can give you the example of the relationship between a parent and child or between a husband and wife. Folks, there have been times that I have, I try to think of a parent-child relationship, but my mother will tell you, I mean, not that I was perfect, I did things wrong, I sinned as a child.

We sat down and tried to brainstorm about the one, the most rebellious thing I did as a child. We couldn’t come up with anything. I was scared of all of that.

But I was wrong, I would say. But in the relationship between husband and wife, I have said and done stupid things in the past. Am I not Christian? She’s shaking her head yes back there.

I have said and done stupid things. And I have said and done things that have hurt her feelings. I have said and done things that have damaged the fellowship between us.

And those who are married know what I’m talking about. that fellowship could be damaged when we say or do stupid things. That doesn’t mean I’m not her husband anymore.

It doesn’t mean she’s not my wife anymore, but it means she doesn’t want to talk to me right now. It means I can’t just go in there and walk in there and hold her hand or start talking like everything’s just fine because everything is not fine. There’s this problem between us.

And from what the Bible teaches, that’s what I understand the relationship sometimes between God and the child of God to be like. That just because I sinned, folks, my salvation was not dependent on my good works in the beginning. It’s not dependent on my good works to keep it.

But I am a child of God because Jesus Christ died for me to pay for my sins and make that relationship with God available. And the Bible says, to as many as received Him, meaning Jesus Christ, to Him gave He the power to be called the children of God. And God adopts us into His family.

I see nowhere in the Bible where I stop being a child of God because I’ve sinned. Now, as a child of God, I should try not to sin. But what I see in the Bible is that when I sin, sometimes the fellowship is damaged between me and God.

And things need to be made right. And he says here in verse 5, I acknowledge my sin unto thee, and mine iniquity have I not hid. So he’s going from in verse 3 saying, I kept silence, to in verse 5 saying, I acknowledge my sin.

You think this came as a surprise to God? When David walked in and said, Hi, God, I don’t really mean walked in, but when David came to God and said, Hey, I’ve sinned, you think God said, Really? Anybody think that?

God already knew David had sinned. This is what I don’t understand about us. This is what I don’t understand about me.

Why can’t we be honest with God about our sins? He already knows. I can try to hide my sin from God, but it does no good.

He already knows. He said, I acknowledge my sin unto thee. Confession really is just agreeing with God about what he calls sin and about what he already knows.

I acknowledge my sin unto thee, and mine iniquity am I not hidden. God was always there saying, this is sin. And God’s spirit convicts the believer and says, this is sin, this is not right.

God already knew it. David doesn’t say, I informed you I sinned. He said, I acknowledge my sin.

What God already knew, he acknowledged, and he stopped trying to hide. He stopped trying to hide behind the I’m a good person act. He stopped trying to hide behind calling it something else.

Sometimes we want to call it an error of judgment. Sometimes we want to call it bad choices. Sometimes we want to call it peer pressure.

Folks, sin is sin. And we need to not hide behind cute little euphemisms and justify what God only wants. I acknowledge my sin unto thee.

Am I iniquity? Am I not yet? I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord.

And he says, and thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin. He went to God and he admitted what God already knew. He called sin, sin, and yet we serve a God who is so wonderfully merciful that in spite of this sin, says God forgave.

God forgave the iniquity of his sin. Verse 6, for this shall everyone that is godly pray unto thee in a time when thou mayest be found. Surely in the plagues and great waters they shall not come nigh unto him.

And what he’s saying, what he’s saying is that all of God’s people, those who are Godless, should pray unto God at a time that he may be found. Now, God doesn’t hide, ladies and gentlemen. God doesn’t go away and go on vacation.

God doesn’t run from us. But I liken this to what the Bible says about our conscience being seared with an iron. And if you’ve ever burned your hand with an iron, you realize sometimes you can burn it, you can sear that flesh, and it hurts.

But as far as touching it, the nerves, you know, the nerves are kind of dead. I’ll get that. And you don’t feel anything anymore.

And sometimes we can sin so much. And the Spirit of God is convicting, convicting, convicting and telling us that sin, that sin, you need to fix that. You need to get right with God that we become known to it.

We become immune to it. It’s almost as though the voice of the Spirit of God saying that’s sin. You need to get that right with God.

He gets fainter and fainter. It’s not because God’s moving, but because we’re numbing, we’re searing our conscience. And when he says, everyone should pray to God in a time when he may be found, I don’t believe he’s saying God eventually is going to walk away from his children.

I think he’s saying before we get so far, God, we don’t even hear the Spirit of God calling out to us, saying, confess your sins. So while we still can hear the voice of God, while God still can be found, For this shall everyone who is godly pray. He says in verse 6.

Surely in the floods of great waters, they shall not come nigh unto you. And ultimately what he says here is those here in verse 6 who pray the floods of great waters, you know the world can do to us as it chooses. And we still can’t be shaken from our foundation.

He says the floods can rise, the floods of great waters shall not come nigh unto you. They shall not hurt us. If we’re in a right relationship with God, a lot can go wrong in our lives and we’ve still got the most important thing where it needs to be.

He says in verse 7 thou, speaking again to God thou art my hiding place thou shalt preserve me from trouble thou shalt compass me about with songs and deliveries so not only does God forgive God is a refuge for his children God is a refuge we can turn to when we’re damaged over the sins in our lives when we’re broken because we realize that we have failed them He’s a refuge we can turn to. He not only offers forgiveness, but He offers comfort and He offers healing. He says, Thou shalt preserve me from trouble, and thou shalt compass me about with songs of deliverance.

Surround Him with songs of deliverance. It’s an incredible image that God would surround us with songs of deliverance, with reminders of what He has set us free from, of what’s been forgiven for us. And He goes on to speak further, but we’re going to leave off there.

In this, he talks about his sin, and he realizes the destructiveness of his sin, and realizes he needs to pray to God and confess his sin. I’ve talked some about why so many people are discouraged with their prayers, why so many Christians feel like it’s just not working when we try to pray to God. And I’ve said it’s not that God doesn’t hear us.

It’s not that God’s not there. God is there, and God is willing to hear his children, but I think a lot of times we’re not doing it right. And we’ll come to God with this grocery list, asking it to be filled, and we wonder why are none of these things happening, or sometimes why do I feel like my prayers go no further than the ceiling, because we’re sort of counterfeit communicating with God.

Instead of having an open, honest conversation about our needs, physical and spiritual, we’re dancing around the real issues and talking to Him about everything but what needs to be dealt with. Sometimes it’s good for us to go to God in prayer with express purpose, confessing our sins. Sometimes we need to go back to God and deal with the sins that are there.

As children of God, I’m not saying we have to get saved over again. Not what I’m talking about. What I’m saying is we need to fix the fellowship that’s supposed to go on and go along with the relationship.

Now this morning, a few things to understand about these prayers of confession. And I am not talking about confession to a priest. I’m not talking about confession unless you’re talking about Jesus as your high priest. I’m not talking necessarily about confessing our faults one to another. What I’m talking about is sometimes getting on our faces before God and acknowledging our sins, confessing our sins.

The first thing is that prayer or confession acknowledges our sins. I mean, that almost sounds so basic, why even say it? But again, a lot of times we go to God and we think, I’m going to deal with this, and we dance around it and we refuse to call it sin.

We say, God, please forgive me for my bad choice. God, or even God, forgive me for my sins, but we try to make excuses for it. God, please forgive me.

I shouldn’t have yelled at her that way, but you know the family I came from, you know, the temporary. I’m just using that as an example. I don’t really have a family of the other story.

We all have things that we try to make excuses for with God. When we sin, we need to acknowledge that we’ve sinned in the story. And I don’t want you to think I’m jumping on you about this because I’m probably the world’s worst. I like to play the semantics games.

and the words of God that was in error and judgment. No, it was sin. It was sin on my part.

And you know what? Maybe there’s a reason that led to it, but I need to not make excuses. Not try to justify sin before God.

The only thing that can justify our sins is the blood of Christ that covers those sins. My excuses don’t make it okay. My reasons don’t make it okay.

If I’ve sinned, I’ve sinned and I need to admit it. He says, I acknowledge my sin in verse 5. It says, I acknowledge my sin.

He admitted to God what God already did. Do any of us think God is temporarily confused by these phrases we use in error and judgment of a staining and accident? God’s not confused by that.

Or do we think God’s confused by us trying to justify it? He said, well, it’s only a little bit. It’s only a little bit of sin.

I only sinned a little bit. It could have been much worse. God is not confused by that.

I need to stop and we need to stop trying to play games with God. We need to acknowledge our sin against Him. We need to own it, as I’ve heard people say.

Not in a sense that we’re proud of it, but we need to admit it and take responsibility. And I also hear people say, man up. Or woman up, as the case may be.

And acknowledge our sin with the Lord. It’s time to be honest with God. So, you may hear this over and over.

I have a feeling you will, because I’m discovering, as I do this study myself, in preparation for teaching you all on it. So much of prayer is just about honesty with God. Not hiding behind the rituals and praises, but just being honest with God.

So we don’t try to excuse or justify our actions. We don’t try to sugarcoat it. We call it sin.

We admit that it’s our sin, that it’s our fault. We all should agree that the sin has no place in our lives. Now I’m a sinner, saved by grace.

And God understands that. God even says if we stay firm without sin, we’re liars. You know what?

That doesn’t give me an excuse to wallow in love. It doesn’t give me an excuse. As a child of God, the sin has no place in my life, and when it’s found, it needs to be plucked out by the words and thrown away.

And we admit to God what it is, but it’s ours, and it has no place. Second of all, prayer of confession admits our unworthiness before God. Prayer of confession admits our unworthiness before God.

Sometimes, sometimes we expect God to do things for us. sometimes we expect God to overlook things because we’re just so wonderful. We’re just such good people.

Oh, God won’t hold that against me. I know that’s not what we say we believe. I know that’s not what we teach.

But sometimes we fall into the trap, I think, of thinking, God won’t hold that against me because I’m a good person. We know that’s not true. We know the Bible teaches we’ve all sinned against God.

He says, I will confess, in verse 5, he says, I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord. You know why it was to the Lord that he went to confess his transgressions? because it was God he’d sinned against. And I may sin against you.

I may say something bad about you or to you. I may hurt your feelings. I may sin against you, ladies and gentlemen, but it’s ultimately against God that I’ve sinned.

If you lie to me, you’ve sinned against me, but you know ultimately you’ve sinned against God. That’s why David, in another place, admits against thee, in Psalm 51, against thee and thee only have I sinned and done this even with my son. Yes, David had sinned against others.

David had sinned against Bathsheba. David had sinned against her husband by having him killed. David had sinned against his family, his kingdom.

Everybody had trusted in him. David had sinned against a lot of people, but he said, ultimately what matters is that against God, and God only I have sinned. Regardless of whoever else we’ve sinned against, we have sinned against God.

And we’re unworthy before him. I have to be reminded, and I think it’s a good reminder for all of us when we get too weak for our riches, that we are all sinful creatures. The Bible says that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

It reminds me, as he says this, that I will confess my transgressions as the Lord. It made me think about the prodigal son. Most of you will know that story.

He came back to his father, and Jesus tells the story of the prodigal son after leaving his father and taking half his inheritance, or his whole portion of the inheritance, which basically was, in essence, their culture, say to his father, I just assume you were dead. And taking the money that his father had spent his whole life putting together to provide for his son, and took it and spent it on riotous living by false. Pardon me.

And he realized how far he had fallen, and he came back to his father, and in Luke 15, he says, Father, I have sinned against heaven and in thy sight, and have no more worthy to be called thy son. Now, of course, we know the rest of the story. The father doesn’t even hear him.

When he comes back and says, I’m sorry, the father and runs out and puts a robe on him and a ring on his fingers and has the bad day for the fatted calf. He had the fatted calf killed so they could celebrate that his son was back. And we need to understand that we’re God’s children and that he loves us.

But let us never fall into the trap of thinking that has something to do with how we’re going. Sometimes when I’ve sinned against God, I really am burdened by that sin. I feel the weight of it and feel sorry for it.

I feel like the prodigal son. I feel like going to God and saying, I have no more right to be called your son. But God’s response to that is just like the father of the prodigal son.

It has nothing to do with his rights. It has nothing to do with what he deserved. It has everything to do with the grace of the father.

We need to humble ourselves before God and realize that it’s not just a sin here and a sin there that we have to confess. We should confess to God that we are sinners. We may have to feel bad all the time, but we need to be reminded, we need to remember constantly that our position with God has nothing to do with our goodness.

has everything to do with Hisness. That we are His children because He’s good and He’s God. He’s merciful.

And admit that we’re sinners before God. Third part this morning, prayer of confession. And a prayer of confession, there’s a request for forgiveness and reconciliation.

What point is it if we think the whole purpose of confession is to pray to God and tell Him about our sins just so we can say out loud what we did? We’re just so God can laugh at us. Folks, there’s no reason in going and telling my wife what I’ve done if I’ve done something.

If I accidentally ran over her shoes with a lawnmower or something, just saying hypothetically. Amen. What’s the point in going and telling my wife what I’ve done if I’m just saying it so it can be out there?

It’s just hanging in the universe. No, we go and confess what we’ve done because we’re seeking forgiveness. Because we’re seeking forgiveness, because we realize something is not right in the fellowship between us and the Father.

And we ask forgiveness. He says in a very joyful praise at the end of verse 5, And thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin. Folks, we go to God to confess, because we need to get that sin out from between us.

Now, in an eternal sense of being His children and going to heaven, that sin is already covered by the blood of Christ. Amen. sometimes we just need to get the things out the open so that they don’t hinder the fellowship between us sometimes we need to go to God for the express purpose of clearing the air and being honest about what we’ve done where we’ve sinned against Him and asking for His forgiveness