Praying to Confess Our Sins

Listen Online:

Transcript:

Turn with me to Psalm chapter 32 tonight, if you would please. Psalm chapter 32. I want you to think back to your childhoods for just a moment.

If it was anything like mine, or like mine was, didn’t it seem like your parents always, or at least most of the time, knew what you’d done before you told them? Anybody else have that problem growing up? I certainly did.

And because of that, I didn’t get in a whole lot of trouble as a child or even as a teenager because I was scared of my parents finding out and scared of disappointing them. And, you know, Moore is not a small town, certainly not as small as Lindsay, and it’s gotten a lot bigger in the last few years that I’ve been gone. But I’ve noticed I come back, and there at times is still a small-town feel to it because my family has lived there since the mid-60s.

And everywhere I go, even today, everywhere I go, there are people that know my parents, know my grandparents, whether from church or work or from the school, what have you. And when I was in school, I used to joke that if I sneezed at school, my mother would say, bless you, when I walked in the door. I mean, she just knew what was going on.

And I’ve heard people say, you know, I know your mother, behave yourself. Well, now it’s, you know, I know your son, behave yourself. So, does that tell me?

No. But because of that, I was slow to get in trouble because I knew mom and dad were just going to know things. When they didn’t, though, when they didn’t, again, I don’t know if you’re like me, but there was a tendency to try to hide things so they don’t find out.

And when I say hide things, I don’t mean I was going out drinking after school hours or things like that, but maybe I broke a dish or something. My mom’s very attached to her kitchen implements, and I might not want her to find out that I was the one that dropped that plate and broke it. Stuff like that.

Even today, I’d be scared if I broke one of her plates. You know, I don’t necessarily want her to know what I did, because she’s going to be upset with me. And so, you know, try not to let on the things that you don’t want the parents to know.

But at the same time, Michaela, I’m not suggesting you do this with your mom. But you know what? I’ve noticed over the years, those times where there’s a secret, where I’ve done something wrong, I don’t want them to find out about, and they, for whatever reason, didn’t know, and I didn’t tell them, there was always a little bit of a hindrance, a snag in the relationship, because I’m trying to deal with them, and talk to them, go through our daily lives, and it’s not, things aren’t normal, because I’m waiting, you know, thinking, do they know?

Does she know I broke that plate? Does she know? I spilled, as a small child, does she know I spilled the glitter all over the carpet in the den?

And just waiting, what does she know? And what’s going to happen when she finds out? And there’s an awkwardness.

There’s a strain put on the relationship, I guess is the word I’m looking for. There’s a strain put on the relationship when we try to hide the things that we’ve done wrong. And it’s not always the most fun thing to do, but I’ve come to the conclusion in my 28 years of wisdom, that’s a joke, The best thing to do is just to get things out in the open, just to be honest, just to admit what you’ve done and take your lumps, so to speak.

And, you know, growing up, that was always the thing in our house. You’re going to get in more trouble for lying than for whatever you did wrong. Well, we try to do the same thing with God, though, don’t we?

We will act like God doesn’t know what we’ve done wrong. And the fact is, as much as mom and dad always knew what we did wrong, or I should say most of the time knew, God always knows. There’s never a time when God is in doubt saying, did they or didn’t they?

Did he break that dish or was it for the Dacus? You know, who really is at fault here? Because sometimes your kids do something and you don’t know which one did it.

God is never in doubt about what we’ve done or who was the one who did it. And so when we try to hide things from God, when we try to hide our sin from God, instead just being honest with him about what he already knows, the only one we’re really fooling is ourselves. We don’t fool God.

God is not confused about what we’ve done. And when we try to hide the things that he already knows and they’re not hidden from him, I believe we put a strain on that relationship. It’s the same situation with Adam and Eve after they had eaten the fruit.

I always want to say the apple because that’s traditionally what we believe it might have been, but we don’t know. But when they ate the fruit that they weren’t supposed to, they were walking in the garden and heard God’s voice, and they decided to try to hide themselves. Guys, God already knew what they’d done.

And God asks the question, you know, where are you? God already knew where they were. And they said, well, we tried to hide ourselves because we’re naked.

And God said, well, who told you you were naked? And God knew the answer to that. Their eyes had been opened.

He told them what was going to happen. God was never in doubt. I don’t read the Genesis account and see a God who’s confused and limited in his understanding, but grew up through the course of the Bible to where he knew everything.

No, God knew exactly the, you know, it’s kind of like I’ve heard lawyers on crime shows say, you know, the defense lawyer says, never ask a question you don’t already know the answer to. God was asking questions he already knew the answer to. They weren’t able to hide their sins, but it put a strain on their relationship, because where they had walked in perfect fellowship with God before that, now they’re starting to hide things from God, and the relationship drifts.

We need to be honest with God. As I’ve said before, He already knows what we’ve sinned. He already knows what we’ve done.

We’re not hiding Him. We’re not confusing Him. And sometimes it’s not even that we try to say, well, God, I didn’t do that.

We just change the words a little bit. We get sort of political with it. We change the words and the meanings a little bit.

Well, even when we pray to God, forgive me for this mistake I made. No, it’s not a mistake. It’s sin.

God, forgive me for this momentary lapse in judgment. No, it’s sin. God, forgive me because I slipped up.

No, you sin. Well, you might have slipped up too, but you sin. And I don’t say you as in you.

I say you as in all of us. We have this tendency to go to God and try to whitewash what we’ve done, and we want to sugarcoat it and call it everything but sin. We started last week talking about some of the reasons for prayer, and I started off by kind of going through and explaining that one of the best reasons why we can pray and should pray is because it honors God.

Tonight, I want to talk about praying because we need to confess our sins. And that just boils down to everything. You know, I’ve given away the message, I guess, in the beginning, but every bit of it boils down to we just need to be honest with God about what he already knows.

We’ve already sinned. God can deal with that sin. God can forgive that sin because of what Jesus Christ did.

but we just need to be honest with him. Don’t compound the sin by lying to God about it. So we go to Psalm chapter 32, where David is writing, and we start in verse 1, and he said, Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.

Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputed not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile. Now this word blessed that we see so many times in the Bible has several shades of meaning to it that I think it’s hard for any one English word to convey. There are some of the newer translations that translate this word, especially in the Sermon on the Mount, to happy.

Well, that’s an aspect of it that we don’t often think about. And I think it’s a good aspect of the word. I think in and of itself, happy doesn’t convey what the Bible is saying.

But to be blessed, blessed means to have found God’s favor. And yes, there’s some happiness in that. There’s some joy.

There’s peace. You know, so many shades of meaning that I think if we could go back to the original languages and understand what they were talking about, the English just doesn’t always quite convey everything that the original text tried to say. But this state of finding favor with God and the happiness that goes along with that, he said, it is for those whose transgressions are forgiven.

Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity, in whose spirit there is no guile. He doesn’t say here, blessed is the man who has not sinned, because that would be imaginary.

There’s no such thing. We’ve all sinned. We’ve all transgressed.

We’ve all committed iniquity. But what he’s saying here is whose transgression is forgiven. To find forgiveness on the other side.

And we find forgiveness in confession. And again, that word here, just to be clear when we’re talking about to confess our sins tonight, I’m not talking about to me or to anybody else, any church leader. You know, if you want to come talk with me about what you’ve done, it may make me uncomfortable, but I’ll listen and try to advise you according to what the Bible says.

But you’re not going to be forgiven by confessing to me or any other church leader. Okay? We confess to the Lord.

But when we go to the Lord and confess of what we’ve done, there’s forgiveness with God. The transgression is forgiven whose sin is covered. And it’s like as a child, there was always that fear, that anxiety.

What is going to happen when the hammer falls, when mom and dad find out what I did? And then more often than not, if I was just honest with them about what I did, yeah, it was painful in the moment, like ripping off the band-aid. But when they got mad for a minute, and then they forgave me, and we moved on, there was a peace, there was a relief in that.

And I think that’s exactly what it’s talking about here. Yes, it’s a fearful thing to go to holy God and say, I have sinned against you. But the forgiveness and the reconciliation that comes as a result of that is a blessed thing.

It’s something that we shouldn’t take lightly. He said, blessed is the man whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. And incidentally, our sin is only covered by the blood of Jesus Christ. Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity.

Blessed is the person who God doesn’t take that sin and credit it to your account. Accounting terms are used at times throughout the Bible, and I’m glad because being a banker’s son, it kind of makes sense to me, more so than some of the farm imagery that I have to go look up and say, what is he talking about? But it’s almost as though we all have an account book with God, and we are so far in the red because of our sin that we will never dig ourselves out of a hole.

It’s kind of like the government deficit. We could put every bit of tax money toward paying off the debt, and none of us will ever see it accomplished in our lifetime because we are so far in the hole. Well, each of our accounts with God is so far in the red, there is not a thing we can do to dig ourselves out of the hole.

And yet he said here, blessed is the man unto whom the Lord does not impute iniquity. Blessed is the man that God doesn’t take that sin and put it further in the negative column. Blessed is the man who God does not count his sins against him.

Yeah, that’s, you know what, that’s a great thing. That is a wonderful, that is a joyful thing. When we can look at the account, and just as Jesus said at the end of his crucifixion, it is finished, that’s another accounting term.

The Greek word is tetelestai, meaning paid in full. The slate has been wiped clean, the account has been zeroed out, and from there on, God chooses not to account any sin to our account. We no longer go in the red because of what Jesus Christ did.

I think we forget sometimes what an incredible relief that is, that God would choose to do things that way. He says in verse 3, when I kept silence, my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day. There is fear and anxiety, and it wears us out when we try to keep secrets.

I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to keep secrets from other people, but it’s exhausting. How much more work is it to try to keep secrets from a God who knows the sin we’re going to commit before we even commit it? And he says here, my bones waxed old.

some of you may have felt that way at times I have felt that way at times and spiritually speaking it is that same kind of just exhaustion just feeling of being worn out when we don’t deal with the sins in our lives when we keep our silence rather than confess and be honest with God he says for day and night thy hand was heavy upon me my moisture is turned into the drought of summer day and night God’s hand was heavy upon him I don’t think that means God was necessarily smiting David all that time, that God was punishing David all of that time. But David, everything God did was a reminder there to David that you’re not right with God. That’s why we do something wrong and we can’t sleep.

That’s why things are really bad and eating away at us and we can’t eat or we can’t focus on what we’re doing because the weight of it is heavy on us. Well, knowing he sinned against God, everything God did was a reminder that, hey, you’re not right with me here. And my moisture is turned into the drought of summer.

There’s a lot of imagery used in the Bible as well about gardens and really things that I would say are jungles. You know, huge plants, well-watered, fruitful things, and it being able to be turned into a desert just like that. That’s what he’s saying here.

My life has gone from paradise to desert because I have not been honest with God. Verse 5 really is the key to this passage. He says, I acknowledge my sin unto thee, and mine iniquity have I not hid.

I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord, and thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin, Selah. So he’s not saying here in verses 3 and 4 how awful his life has been, even though in verse 5 he confessed his sin to the Lord. I believe there’s a turning point here between verses 4 and 5, where in verses 3 and 4, he’s been keeping the secret.

He’s been at least trying to keep a secret from God and saying, oh, no, no, I didn’t do that. We’re just not going to talk about it. And in verse 5, there’s a turning point where he says, you know what, I need to confess.

I need to get right with God. And then everything changes. He says in verse 6, For this shall everyone that is godly pray unto thee in a time when thou mayest be found.

He said, every person who is yours should pray for this very purpose while there’s time to do so. Surely in the floods of great waters they shall not come nigh unto him. And what I understand that to mean, in the floods of great waters they shall not come nigh unto him, is that if we are just waiting, there’s something to be said for God using circumstances to get our attention.

He’s done that with me. He did that with ancient Israel. That’s why God sent them into 70 years of captivity.

Part of it was to punish them, I think, a little bit. But the biggest part of it was to get their attention and remind them of their need for God. There’s something to be said for God using negative circumstances to get our attention and draw us back to him.

But so many times people will cry out to God when they get into a tight spot and say, God, I’m your servant. I’ll do anything. You’ll just help me out of this jam.

And more often than not, once God gets them out of the jam, we’re done here. So what he’s saying is, in verse 6, what I understand this to mean, Everyone who’s one of yours should pray and deal with the sin early, should come to God for that very purpose and prayer early, while you may yet be found, because in the floods of great waters, in these times of difficulty, they shall not come nigh unto thee. Because too often those who wait for difficulty to be drawn to God, that closeness to God is very fleeting, because the feeling in the heart goes away.

He says in verse 7, Thou art my hiding place, Thou shalt preserve me from trouble. Thou shalt compass me about with songs of deliverance. Okay, because of what God has done in forgiving him, David says, you are my hiding place.

And David knew a lot about the need for hiding places. I mean, we look at King David as this super spiritual guy, his sins, I almost said indiscretions, trying to sugarcoat it, his sins notwithstanding. King David was, he was a man after God’s own heart.

And because of that, we look at him as a super spiritual guy who had this wonderful life. I wouldn’t have wanted King David’s life for all the money he had. Most of his life, somebody was trying to kill him.

Do you realize that? First, it was King Saul. Well, before that, it was Goliath wanted to kill him.

Then King Saul is after him for years and years. Then when he finally comes to the throne, there’s a civil war that breaks out for something like seven years. It’s either seven or three.

I always forget the timeline there. Then his own son wants to kill him. I mean, it’s just, you know, some lifetimes it doesn’t pay to get out of bed.

That’s how I feel about King David. He knew something about needing a hiding place. And he said God was his hiding place.

God was a place he could turn for refuge. God would preserve him from trouble. And you will compass me about the songs of deliverance.

That word compass means to encircle, that God would be in a circle around him, probably not in a literal way, but God would compass him about. God would surround him with songs of deliverance. Deliverance meaning to be set free from the struggles and the difficulties that he faced as a result of his sin.

God didn’t get him out of all the consequences, but I can look through King David’s life and say, God could have doled out much worse consequences than he did. And so if I could be compassed about with anything, I want it to be God singing songs of deliverance about me. But all of this came about, this joy that he had in knowing that God would preserve him and be his hiding place, it all came about because of what happened in verse 5 where David said, you know what, I need to get right with God.

Now David was already one of God’s people, but there were times when David said, I just need to get right with God again because I’ve not been where I needed to be. And I submit to you that the confession of our sins is one of the most important reasons why we should pray. Now we go to God with our grocery lists all the time and that’s all right.

God wants us to ask him for the things that we need, but we shouldn’t neglect to go to God and make sure we have an honest relationship with him. From God’s standpoint, it’s always honest. God has never lied to anybody, and he’s not about to start. And God knows everything that’s going on with us.

But we need to be honest with God. And so just to share a few things with you out of verse 5. He says here, I acknowledge my sin unto thee, and mine iniquity have I not hid.

Finally, because see, for a while he did try to hide his iniquity. But he got to a point where he said, I’m not going to hide it anymore. So at this point when he’s writing verse 5, he says everything is all out in the open.

And so the first thing we need to understand tonight about this prayer of confession, prayer of confession acknowledges our sins. He acknowledged his sin to God, his iniquity he didn’t hide. And so when we confess, we need to be honest with God about our sins.

It sounds strange to say we need to be honest with him about what he already knows. But from our standpoint, we don’t act like he knows it. When we confess our sins, we don’t go to God and try to excuse our actions or justify our actions.

We agree with God about what he says. We call sin, sin. God says things are sin, and I’ve already hit on this point, but God calls it sin, and we call it indiscretion.

God calls it sin, we call it a bad choice. God calls it sin, we call it an alternative lifestyle. God calls it sin, we call it I messed up.

Whatever we want to call it to try to make it just a little bit better. We need to agree with God. and call it sin.

And by the way, I’m talking about in our own lives. Now, we need to be honest with the world outside here about what sin is. Guys, let the cleansing start in the house of God.

Let it start in our own lives. Let me call out sin in my own heart first and foremost and confess it to God. Call sin, sin.

When I’ve sinned, I need to call it that and agree with God. And not only agreeing with Him about what it is, but folks, we also need to acknowledge that as God’s people, it has no place in our lives. The sin that we recognize and have participated in that we’re confessing, we’re not just saying, God, I’ve sinned.

Okay, I’m good now. I’ve confessed. God, I’ve sinned against you and it’s wrong and it has no place in my life.

There’s no place for it there. And I’m not saying here that we will never sin. God, I fully believe God understands that we’ve sinned today.

We confess it. We reconcile to Him. And you know what?

We’re going to get up and we’re going to sin again tomorrow. but that doesn’t mean we should accept that fact and just say well I’m a sinner so that’s what I’m going to do we should be striving to do better each day knowing we’ll never be completely clean on this side of eternity but it’s sort of like with my children I know they’re going to get filthy again tomorrow does that mean I don’t give them the bath tonight no I clean them up today knowing full well I’m going to need to clean them up tomorrow we go to God and we get right with him today knowing we’re going to need to go back and confess tomorrow and say you know what that sin in my life has no place there. And I agree with you about what it is.

I agree about what to call it. I agree that it’s wrong and God, would you help me to get it out? And I believe He will strengthen us in that area.

The prayer of confession acknowledges our sins. Again, not just what they are, but that they have no place in a Christian life. Second of all, prayer of confession admits our unworthiness before God.

And He said again in verse 5, I said I will confess my transgressions of the Lord. Now when we go to God and confess, we’re humbling ourselves before a holy God. We should never allow ourselves to forget that as loving as He is and as familiar as He ought to be to us, that He is still a holy God.

I don’t know that human words have ever done justice to His holiness, but I think Isaiah chapter 6 being the inspired word of God comes as close as anything. When Isaiah got a vision of the Lord and the angels around him were singing, holy, holy, holy, and Isaiah just fell apart, just fell apart, just a trembling mess at the sight of a holy God. We’ve got to remember that we’re going to a holy God.

He’s not just our best friend. Now, he should be our closest friend. But we’re not just going to our best friend.

We are going before a holy God and we’re humbling ourselves. And we’re admitting that when we’ve sinned, it’s been against him. David said in another place in Psalm chapter 51, against thee and thee only have I sinned and done this evil in thy sight.

Sometimes our sins may be against other people. Ultimately, they are against a holy God. And he’s the one we deal with.

Because of our sin, we’re unworthy even to approach God. It amazes me that God could have just written us off and said, you know what, you’re filth. And I’m going to have nothing more to do with you.

And you know what, he would have been completely justified in doing so. In our unworthiness, we have no right to even approach him. And yet, because of his love and mercy, he sent Christ to die for us, that we could be forgiven.

And now, in spite of the fact that we continue to sin, he tells us to come boldly before the throne of grace that we may have mercy. Just to clarify, though, I don’t think coming boldly before the throne of grace means we march in like we own the place. There still should be a humility involved in going to God and admitting our unworthiness before him.

we ought to have the same attitude when we go to God in confession as the prodigal son not at the very beginning when he goes out to live his wicked lifestyle we shouldn’t come into God and say I’ve sinned I’m sorry what are you going to do about it we should come in with the attitude he had at the end where the where the prodigal son is recorded in Luke chapter 15 is saying father I have sinned against heaven and in thy sight and am no more worthy to be called by son and that’s some humility right there. That the man would go back to his father and say, you know what, I am no longer worthy to be called your son. He threw himself on his father’s mercy and said, can I be a servant here?

And of course, we know how the story ends. The father took his ring off and put it on him and gave him fine clothes and said, we’re going to kill the fatted calf. And they had a celebration because the father, as a picture of our heavenly father, was merciful to him beyond what he deserved.

But I think that’s the proper attitude that we go to God with in confession, that we humble ourselves and we admit that we are unworthy before Him and then let Him in His grace and mercy pick us up back to where we need to be. Third of all this evening, prayer of confession asks for forgiveness and reconciliation. We’re not going to God in confession just to give Him a list of the things that we’ve done so we can feel bad about ourselves.

We do need to feel bad about our sins. You know, whatever happened to, as a society, as individuals in that society, whatever happened to feeling a little good old-fashioned shame about where we’ve sinned against God instead of parading it out in the streets and on TV and everywhere else. When we sin against God, it ought to be a shameful thing.

And I’m saying that as a sinner myself. I ought to be ashamed of myself when I’ve sinned against God and I’m not always as ashamed as I ought to be. But we don’t go to God in confession just so we can humble ourselves and feel ashamed and feel low and then go on the rest of the time feeling low and ashamed and unworthy.

Because confession is not simply the act of telling God how wicked we are just for the fun of it. When we go to God in confession, we’re actually seeking God’s forgiveness so that we can be reconciled to him, so that the relationship can be fixed. We’re seeking for the fellowship to be made right because it says in the end of verse 5 here, and thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin.

You see, in this prayer of confession, there was a breakthrough. We weren’t just going to God and saying, I’m wicked, I’m horrible, I’ve sinned, I’ve done this, I’ve done this, I’ve done this, I’ve not done this. and God says, okay, I’m glad you see it that way.

No, God forgave the sin. The relationship was made stronger as a result of this confession and this honesty and this getting things out in the open and agreeing with God about what God already knows to be the case. We do so much damage, not necessarily to our relationship because he’s still our father and we’re still his children, but more so to the fellowship.

We do so much damage to the fellowship that we have with God when we fail to confess our sins. and we ought to spend time in prayer daily, weekly, regularly. We ought to spend time in prayer with God confessing the sins.

Again, not just so that we feel sufficiently bad about ourselves but so that we can get to what’s on the other side. Because as painful as our sins are and as painful as they are to admit what is on the other side is worth the pain of that confession and the pain of that admission. What is on the other side is a restored fellowship with God that I maintain is even strong than it was before.

And we don’t need to go out and sin just so we have something to confess so we can have a stronger relationship forged. Guys, when we have sin, let’s not keep it to ourselves and call it things it’s not. We need to go to God in prayer and confess our sins and get real and get honest with God about what He already knows to be true.

Powered by atecplugins.com