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Mar 17, 2024

A Sinner’s Prayer

A Sinner’s Prayer

Passage: Psalms

Speaker: Patrick Lafferty

Series: Practice the Presence - Prayer

Keywords: joy, forgiveness, understanding, blessed, transgression, steadfast love

Isn’t it curious that one thing we might most fear is precisely the way into new freedom? I’m talking about the confession of sin. Psalm 32 is a sinner’s prayer, highlighting the path from the place of sorrow and inner strife to the place of gladness. As we cannot repent of the struggle with suffering without letting prayer be part, so, we cannot repent of sin without the same.

Readings & Scriptures

PREPARATION: Psalm 103:1-5

LEADER: Bless the LORD, O my soul,
and all that is within me,
bless his holy name!
Bless the LORD, O my soul,
and forget not all his benefits,

ALL: who forgives all your iniquity,
who heals all your diseases,

LEADER: who redeems your life from the pit,
who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy,

ALL: who satisfies you with good
so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.

AFFIRMATION OF FAITH/CREEDAL STATEMENT/SCRIPTURE READING: Westminster Confession of Faith 15.3, 5 (Chad Van Dixhoorn modernized translation)

LEADER: Christian, what do you believe about repentance?

ALL: Although repentance is not to be relied on as any payment for penalty for sin, or any cause of the pardon of sin (which is God’s free act of grace in Christ); yet repentance is so necessary for all sinners, that no one may expect pardon without it. . . . No one should be satisfied with a general repentance; rather, it is everyone’s duty to repent of each particular sin, particularly.

CENTRAL TEXT: Psalm 32

Psa. 32:1 Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven,
whose sin is covered.
2 Blessed is the man against whom the LORD counts no iniquity,
and in whose spirit there is no deceit.

Psa. 32:3 For 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 dried up as by the heat of summer. Selah

Psa. 32:5 I acknowledged my sin to you,
and I did not cover my iniquity;
I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the LORD,”
and you forgave the iniquity of my sin. Selah

Psa. 32:6 Therefore let everyone who is godly
offer prayer to you at a time when you may be found;
surely in the rush of great waters,
they shall not reach him.
7 You are a hiding place for me;
you preserve me from trouble;
you surround me with shouts of deliverance. Selah

Psa. 32:8 I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go;
I will counsel you with my eye upon you.
9 Be not like a horse or a mule, without understanding,
which must be curbed with bit and bridle,
or it will not stay near you.

Psa. 32:10 Many are the sorrows of the wicked,
but steadfast love surrounds the one who trusts in the LORD.
11 Be glad in the LORD, and rejoice, O righteous,
and shout for joy, all you upright in heart! 

CONFESSION OF SIN:
LEADER: Let us confess our sin.

ALL: We all stumble and fall. Like sheep, we wander and stray. And like our forebears, when the light of Your holiness shines upon us, we hide in shame and react with blame. We ought not presume upon your grace, but we may rest in it–even lay claim to it, just as you lay claim to us in your Son. Grant us courage to face what we prefer not to see, to confess as far down as we can see it, and then–oh, then–to know the gladness and blessedness of one who has your forgiveness, freely offered.

ABSOLUTION OF PARDON: 1 Timothy 1:15-17
LEADER: The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost. But I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life. To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.

BENEDICTION: Jude 24, 25
LEADER: Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, 25 to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever..

ALL: Amen

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

  1. Last sin you remember confessing to someone? (please, if it was murder, stop here and report to the local authorities) What was that like? Follow-up: had you before that prayed that confession to the Lord? Why or why not? (“never thought to” is an acceptable answer)
  2. Let’s get to the heart of the sermon: why would a prayer of repentance from sin to the Lord be of value to any corresponding repentance that would be toward another person? Think of as many reasons as you can?
  3. Why would starting that prayer with the, as we called it, “glory” of God’s wondrous willingness to forgive sin be essential and helpful to the rest of your prayer?
  4. Respond to this objection to one aspect of the Psalm (and the sermon): the “agony” of not confessing our sin is just misplaced guilt. The sooner you 
  5. Why is the utmost specificity of what you’re confessing to the Lord be necessary? (Why might our dusty but relevant Confession of faith insist we “repent of each particular sin, particularly” (Westminster Confession of Faith, 15.5)
  6. Why do we tend to put off this kind of confession–whether to God or to another? What from the imagery you find in vv. 6, 7 provides a motivation for the “urgency” we spoke of in the sermon?
  7. What is true of the gospel that allows us not only not to fear our sin, but also not to fear confessing it?

ILLUSTRATIONS:  

 

 

QUOTES: 

  •  Probably the most cringe thing you can do is going to church. There, you show up regularly to join a group of others you didn’t choose, and some of whom are probably old, or weird, or awkward, or otherwise uncool. The purpose of showing up is prayer: again, the opposite of cool, because to pray is to declare, openly, that you are not completely self-contained.   There is no way in the world to make going to church cool, and the most cringe thing of all is trying. Here’s the thing though: data consistently show that the happiest people — those who feel that their lives are most filled with purpose and fulfillment — are not necessarily those with kids — it’s those who go to church. Those, in other words, who are not just to be indifferent to cool, but actively anti-cool. The first step to a happy and fulfilled life, it appears, is cringemaxxing.   There are, no doubt, a great many reasons for this. But I am convinced that whatever your relationship to religious worship, a central reason why religious attendance is associated with happiness is that in order to make that commitment you need already to have abandoned the pursuit of cool. Perhaps, for committed non-believers, there are other ways to do so. But for those who believe, why reinvent the wheel? And, unsurprisingly, when you abandon an anti-loyalty, anti-dependence, anti-friendship social edict that privileges the judgemental gaze of the other over an honest assessment of their own needs, the result seems to be a nicer life. . . .A culture that valorises “cool” sets us up to fail as social beings — and then sells us myriad forms of “self-care” to make up the shortfall.  Mary Harrington

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