Whispers to God – Pt. 3

Well, thank you, Joanna. I looked
over there, and I was expecting Sophia, and I saw somebody else
sitting at the piano. You have a familiar sound. You sound just like a pianist
we used to have. Her big sister, Rachel. So Barry’s presentation, I would
almost look at this as a, many of you have built campfires,
and most of us, you know, you really struggle to get the thing
going. But what I sense from Barry’s commitment, his see-through
on this whole project, is I begin to see the fire kindling. And we do pray. This is 30 years
in the making to create a missions liaison that really stirs the
hearts of God’s people. And it is a passion of mine. And so thank you, Barry, for
your faithfulness. And we just ask that God would
continue to bless your efforts. And Isaac, I’ll just tell you, that is not normally how we treat
people. It is not a… hazing. At the end of the day,
it still is God’s Word, and you did a remarkable job. If God’s
people would open their Bibles to the book of James, James chapter 5. We’ve been in
this passage for several weeks, and today, Lord willing, we draw
to a close. We are looking at prayer and
really answering the statement that
Paul made that we do not know how to pray. That’s the provision
that James has given us here. It is It is really one of many
provisions to instruct us how to pray. The Lord himself was
concerned to teach his disciples to pray in the disciples prayer. But James, in a very real way,
lays before us as God’s people a paradigm, if you will, a means
of instructing us about prayer and the ways, the manners of
prayer, the forms, if you will, And we’ve already looked at several,
but I want to go back to the passage and take it in full as
we bleed into these last few forms of prayer. Verse 13, Is
anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praises. Is anyone
among you sick? Let him call for the elders of
the church and let them pray over him, anointing him with
oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith
will restore the one who is sick and the Lord will raise him up.
And if he has committed sins, they will be forgiven him. Therefore,
confess your sins to one another and pray for one another so that
you may be healed. The effective prayer of a righteous
man can accomplish much. Elijah was a man with a nature
like ours, and he prayed earnestly that it might not rain. And it
did not rain on the earth for three years and six months. And
he prayed again and the sky poured rain and the earth produced its
fruit. What I suggested to you several
weeks ago is that there are really four different shapes of prayer
here in this passage, and they all kind of overlap one another. And so you’ve already seen my
approach to this, that we have to go in, and then sometimes
we go back in even to the same verse to glean new elements of
prayer. The first thing that we looked
at is circumstantial prayer. There are different kinds of
prayer for different circumstances. Look at verse 13. Suffering was
a circumstance that we’re all familiar with, maybe all too
familiar with, but there is a kind of prayer, there is a form of
prayer for suffering. A much less frequent sentiment
is joyfulness or cheerfulness. But if we are cheerful, if we
are in a happy state, there is really a form, a different form
designed for that condition. And it is praise. But there’s
a third circumstance, and that third circumstance leads into
the next form of prayer. The third circumstance is sickness,
and we’re not supposed to just cower in our bedrooms when we’re
sick, but there is an occasion for a new and different kind
of prayer called intercessory prayer. And with that, James
enters into a lengthy discussion, perhaps one of the most lengthy
in all of this study, where he begins to address how we pray
when we are sick. And like so many of the occasions
of life, we hit the wall oftentimes when we are sick. We don’t even
know how to pray anymore. And so James issues a new form
of prayer for us, we are to call for help. We’re to call the elders
of the church, and they will come and pray over the sick one. And so we begin to look at intercessory
prayer. We did that last Lord’s Day,
and we see it in verse 14. Call for the elders, they will
pray over him. We see it in verse 15, that the
prayer Offered in faith will restore the one who is sick.
We see it again in verse 16. Pray for one another. Intercessory prayer is a crucial
component to learning how to pray. But we noticed here several
weeks ago that prayer is the word prayer is literally used
in every single verse of this section. We saw it in verse 13,
let him pray. We see it in verse 14, let them
pray. We see it in verse 15, the prayer
offered in faith. We see it in verse 16, pray for
one another. We see it at the end of verse
16, the effective prayer of a righteous man. We see it in verse 17, where
Elijah prayed, and again in verse 18, where it says he prayed again. Prayer is a key part of the Christian
life. And if we walked in two weeks
ago and we did not know how to pray, James offered us help,
but if we walk out by the end of the day today and we say we
do not know how to pray, shame on us because James has offered
us much help here. Today we come to a different
form of prayer, a new and different form. We’ve looked at circumstantial
prayer, prayer for suffering, prayer when we’re cheerful, prayer
when we’re sick. We’ve looked at intersessional
prayer, calling to the elders, calling for others to come alongside
us and to pray with us as we lift up our prayers in faith.
But there’s an interesting twist here. In verses 14 and 15, The individual is sick. He calls
to the elders. The elders come and they’re praying
over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord.
And then look at verse 15. And the prayer offered in faith
will restore the one who is sick and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins,
they will be forgiven him. That is some prayer. Suddenly, here in this section
of scripture, a very uncomfortable subject is set forth, the relationship
between sin and sickness, that there is at least a possible
connection is discomforting, isn’t it? It’s unsettling to
know that sin can have physical manifestation in our life. We
can get sick from sin. It’s uncomfortable, isn’t it?
We tend to think of a hard line of separation between those two
things, between sin and sickness. We know that sin has consequences,
the scriptures tell us so, and we know that there exists in
our fallen world sickness and disease of all sorts. We know. from the teaching of
scripture, that there are at least these four elements that
come to us as a result of the fall, that we are inherently
sinful, we are temporally vexed, as long as we’re here on earth,
we’re physically dying and we’re spiritually dead. But the entire
time that we are left here on earth, we are vexed, we are cursed. And all the while, We are living
out a terminal disease. We’re physically dying. But to tie those two things together,
to connect them, sin and sickness, is a very troubling thought,
isn’t it? Because it sounds to us, in a
sense, like the very foundation of the health and wealth movement.
Are you sick? You must have sinned. But James
here acknowledges the connection without even a pause, without
even an explanation. The elders have come, they’re
praying for the one who is sick, there is a promise of recovery,
and suddenly, without any warning at all, James links these two
realities without any explanation. If he has committed sins, they
will be forgiven him. In addition to the uncomfortable
relationship between those two things, that there may very well
be an actual connection, there is also the problem of the man’s
sins seemingly being forgiven because of the prayer of others.
And we know. from the totality of biblical
teaching on that very subject, that sin is only forgiven when
it is repented of before the Lord in personal prayer. In other words, no person praying
for you on your behalf before the throne of glorious grace
is ever going to remove your sin if you don’t repent of it. The only reasonable explanation
here is that James is presuming that knowledge among his flock
when he says these things. He’s not suddenly suggesting,
even for a moment here, that any amount of prayer on behalf
of another person can remove their sin. That sinful, heretical idea is
essentially the foundation of the idea of purgatory. James isn’t suggesting that at
all. In fact, James is proceeding
on the assumption that the man is a repentant man. The man desires
to get well, he is in the process of repenting of his sin, and
by means of the help of the shepherds by his bedside, he begins to
recover. No amount of prayer on anybody’s
behalf is ever going to remove their sin if they are not repentant. We’re clear on that one. But
there’s another big challenge here, isn’t there? What about
the other matter? What about this connection that
perhaps we didn’t even realize, or if we did, we’d forgotten
about, this connection between sin and sickness? We’d like to
forget that one, wouldn’t we? James doesn’t elaborate here,
but he does suggest that the two things are related. Sin may
very well lead to sickness. James isn’t for a moment building
some kind of absolute case here that sickness of any kind is
traceable to sin or an episode of sin or a pattern of sin. He isn’t saying that it’s traceable
every single time. It’s not always the case. That
kind of thing is not provable. It’s wrong and it’s sinful in
itself. To begin to look down our noses
at anyone who is ailing and to begin to jump to a very judgmental
conclusion that the cause is sin. It may well be, but we don’t
know. Only God knows that. And so James,
is shepherding a church, an almost exclusively Jewish convert church
filled with people who had been steeped in Jewish law and Jewish
tradition, but they had been steeped in this very Jewish idea
that sin and sickness were inextricably linked. Jewish teachers very
unjustly even tried to tie different sicknesses directly to different
and particular sins. And so judgment came very easy. When someone got sick, you knew
exactly what the cause was. Except for leprosy. Leprosy was
tied to about a dozen different sins. You could get leprosy just
by looking sideways at your parent. And so the idea, even though
possible, became abused over time. This idea of the relationship
between sin and sickness is a real possibility, but the whole concept
got abused over time. It was only a generally accurate
assumption that sin could lead to sickness. Look at Job’s life,
for example. There’s nothing that ties Job
back to some sinful episode that prompted God to open the floodgates
of trial in his life, including physical suffering. God had a completely different
purpose for the trials that came into Job’s life. Same thing with
a man born blind in John chapter nine, right? Even Jesus own followers. Men who certainly had access
to more information by that point, and yet still found themselves
uttering a very Jewish sounding query, who sinned? This man or his parents? That
he should be born blind. Jesus’ answer was neither. It’s
not always the case. We know that there is a general
principle of scripture. It’s one of the purposes of sickness
and frustration and the fact that we are vexed here on this
earth. Listen to Romans chapter eight. You know the passage.
The creation was subjected to futility. I’ll come back to that thought.
The creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but
because of him who subjected it. This is God’s doing. In hope
that the creation itself will be set free from its slavery
to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children
of God. Let me read between the lines for you, if I may. Let’s
ponder that passage for a second. When it says the creation was
subjected to futility, what he’s talking about is that second
curse that we inherited from Adam and Eve, that we are temporally
vexed. As long as we’re here on the
face of the earth, we’re going to have trial, sweat of the brow,
pain in childbirth, and on it goes. And it says the creation was
subjected to futility. God put them under futility. God put them under the sweat
of the brow. God put them under the field
full of weeds. God put them in a field filled
with insects and vermin. God put them in a situation where
there was pain in childbirth and strife between husband and
wife. God put them there. He subjected
them to futility. They didn’t ask for it. And truth
be told, they didn’t want it. The creation was not subjected
willingly. But because of him, because of
God himself, who subjected creation in hope, huh? God put them in
this crucible, God put them in this vexed, cursed world. In hope. In hope that the creation
itself will also be set free from its slavery to corruption.
Into the freedom of the glory of the children of God, God subjected
it in hope that they might look up to God and repent of their
sin. We know the principle is there
in Scripture. But to begin to tie the flu to
the sin that I committed last week. We know that we inherited even
the curse of death from our garden representatives, Adam and Eve.
And so the idea that sickness. A much more temporary curse.
That sickness can be the cause of sin. Jesus himself suggested
the very same idea to the poor man lying by the pool of Bethesda,
whom Jesus Christ comes and graciously heals. And then tells him this. Behold,
you have become well. Do not sin anymore so that nothing
worse happens to you. Was his physical condition caused
by sin? It’s certainly the suggestion. We have this as an Old Testament
statement. God said in Exodus 15, 26, if
you will give earnest heed to the voice of the Lord your God
and do what is right in his sight and give ear to his commandments
and keep all of his statutes, Just a little bit of a challenge
for the Israelites. If you will do these things,
I will put none of the diseases on you which I put on the Egyptians. That’s an uncomfortable realization,
isn’t it? Psalm 32, which Psalm we just
read several weeks ago, I believe there was even a comment made
about it. When I kept silent about my sin, my body wasted away. It may not
have been caused by sin, but my refusal to confess it, my
refusal to own it, my refusal to repent of it, leads to the
destruction of my flesh. Matthew 9, Jesus likewise, in
another particular situation, man crippled, lying on a bed,
where Jesus said to him in Matthew 9 verse 2, take courage, your
sins are forgiven. That as he healed him, he admonished
him in his sin. Is sin and sickness related?
It certainly can be. And I can’t even count the times,
how many times I have urged God’s people as we are partaking of
communion, that that is a dangerous hour. That is a dangerous moment. To partake of the Lord’s table
unworthily is to eat and drink judgment to your flesh. And Paul concludes there in 1
Corinthians 11, for this reason, many among you are weak. and
sick and a number sleep. And he isn’t talking about a
Sunday afternoon nap. Like alcoholism and liver disease,
lung cancer and smoking. It is plain biblical teaching.
That suffering which attends so much sickness is a direct
result of our sin. And that sin must be repented
of. So the recovery may come. What James implies here is that
a Christian suffering with some sickness should take occasion.
He should pause. He should examine his life. You
should look up to God as. Paul commanded. Those in Athens,
they should look to him. when they should examine their
life. Psalm 139 says it this way. Search me, O God, and know
my heart. Try me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there be any hurtful way
in me and lead me in the everlasting way. If you’re on your sickbed,
what a great opportunity you’ve been given. What a mercy of God. And upon the discovery of any
sin by means of the Holy Spirit and his word in your life, we
must flee and quickly to the throne of grace for confession.
To unburden our heart there before the Lord, if you’ve ever been
ill or sick for a protracted period of time, you know well
the reality of that. Daytime TV isn’t worth watching
anyway. And as you lay there whiling
away the hours, when you’re not sleeping, you can’t do almost
anything else. You’re too weak to even get up
and walk down the hallway. But you can pray. And there are
special occasions. These are gifts of God, special
occasions of significant time of prayer. Sometimes even the
common cold can be God’s way of just slowing us down for a
few days. But a more serious season of
sin is really a gift of God of another kind. It’s a season of
prayer. Look at the passage. I mean,
this is just astounding. If he’s committed sins, at the
very end of verse 15, if he has committed sins, they will be
forgiven him. What an incredible promise this is. And you know
the promise. But look at this. Everything
to this point has been somewhat hypothetical. Maybe, maybe not. There might be sin. Sin might
be the root cause of this sickness. We don’t know, but it’s possible.
But here James closes the sentence with something absolutely definitive,
forgiveness, God’s forgiveness. If there is sin brought to mind
and God is always gracious to lead us to a clear view of a
spiritual assessment of our heart, those sins which he brings to
mind as we concur with him in the great blessing of confession,
they will be forgiven him. We can’t get any more definitive
than that. It’s a promise from God himself. Which is echoed
again in verse 16. Glanced down at that verse, confess
your sins to one another, pray for one another so that you will
be healed. Confess your sin, he says. for
forgiveness, that you would be forgiven and healed. That’s the
complete message of this passage. What a beautiful image is brought
to mind by this word translated as forgiven. It literally refers
to a sending away. Our sin and the memory of it
is sent away. But the even more beautiful thing
is it isn’t us that sends it, it’s God. It’s God that sends
it away, the penalty of it, the guilt of it, the thought of it, but that leads us to the all-important
subject of confession. In a sense, we’ve been there
because this man can’t be forgiven if he hasn’t owned his sin. James
isn’t teaching another method of forgiveness, but in verse
16, he spells it out. Look at it again. Confess your
sins to one another and pray for one another so that you may
be healed. It is always healthy to confess
our sin to God. Confession is that crucial blessing
open and available to us as his children. And here we come out
of hiding. We stop excusing. We quit trying
to blame others. We take ownership. We accept
responsibility. And we go to our Heavenly Father,
who, by the way, already knows the reality of our situation,
already knows the reality of our sin. He knows. Tertullian, early church father, and must have been a good preacher
with his handle on language, said this. Confession of sins
lightens as much as concealment aggravates. Did you hear what
he said? Confession of sin lightens. It lifts you up. It liberates
you. just as much as concealment aggravates
them. Haven’t you ever felt that? You
know that you’ve wronged someone. You know that you’ve done something
displeasing to the Lord. You know that you need to confess. You know that you need to own
it. And it’s building. And then suddenly you can’t contain
it any longer. And you fall down on your knees
and you cry out to your heavenly Father, isn’t that relief incredible? And so when we bow before Him
and confess our sin to agree with Him about the nature of
what it is we’ve done, we are not there to inform Him. Did
you know that? We’re not there to detail for
Almighty God all the ins and outs of our situation. He doesn’t
need it. We’re there to confess. We are
there to agree with Him that our deeds, our actions, our thoughts,
our neglect is sin. We’re to agree with His assessment
of it, not invent one of our own. My dear friend Robert Johnstone
said it this way, confession of sin to God is the essence
of true repentance. For a man who will not look up
and acknowledge his iniquity manifestly does not clearly see
or feel it’s evil. To Him we are called upon to
lay bare our souls absolutely, to repent of all the sins of
which we are conscious. Please know, just like prayer,
remember the general prayer, God bless all the missionaries
in the whole wide world, and we feel so good about that prayer.
It’s not prayer. And confession that goes like
this, Lord, I’m a sinner. is not confession. We’re to confess and to agree
with him. The specifics of what we’ve done.
That’s what makes it so cathartic, right? God knows. He doesn’t need us to beat around
the bush as to what we’ve done or said or thought. And now we know that he knows
that we know. We speak of it to him in all
of its explicit ugliness. Raising my voice at my wife,
stealing that money, thinking that impure thought, spreading
that gossip. We speak of it precisely. And we speak of it in its true
nature. Not in some vague generality. We confess the actual sin itself. And this in and of itself is
a tremendous deterrent to engaging in sin, isn’t it? If we know
that we’ve got to report back to God by the end of the day
and detail in full those sinful moments, isn’t that a deterrent? It should be. If we know that we are likely,
if God ever grants us repentance, we are likely to have to kneel
down and review each sinful episode before an all holy God. That’ll begin to serve as a check
to our consciences, won’t it? It should. So it’s always spiritually
healthy to confess to God. But James here goes even further
than that. And this really gets uncomfortable.
Because he urges us, he commands us really to confess our sins
to each other. I don’t even have to tell you
here to take a very deep breath. As we begin to consider this
one, because this practice must be understood. Because you see, there’s a real
potential danger here. Sometimes confession to others
can be positively wrong. James isn’t urging us to throw
caution to the wind, open the vault, and unburden our heart
of all the vile filth, all the grossest details of our putrid
lives. He’s absolutely not calling us
to do that in a public worship service. You can dab your brow now. Every
church I know of that at one time took these open prayer requests
from the floor almost immediately go away from it. Taking prayer requests from the
floor. In fact, us included, we tried
it. Why do we put an end to that?
Why do we put an end to taking a prayer request from the floor? because there are filtration
problems. To put it bluntly, some people have no filter. They don’t know where to stop.
They don’t know what’s appropriate. Or better here, what’s inappropriate
given a public setting. No wonder one pastor put it like
this. Indiscriminate public confession
of grievous sins is very mischievous. That is putting it so utterly
mildly. If you’ve ever given your testimony
in this church or filled out a membership application, you’ve
likely heard me say, I don’t need details. I don’t want details
about your sinful past. I don’t want them. I don’t want
to hear it for my own sake. I don’t want it. The bottom line
is there’s a tendency, mostly among young men, to use that
moment of testimony, which ought to be about the glory of Christ
and what He’s done in our lives. There’s a tendency to abuse that
opportunity and essentially boast of your prior sinful exploits. If you’ve confessed it to God,
and I think you could put this down as a principle, if you have
confessed it to God, stop talking about it. If He’s forgiven it,
if He’s put it out of His heart and mind, why are you continuing
to mull it over? Paul alludes in 1 Timothy 5.13,
remember he alludes to those things, talking about
those things not proper to mention. There’s got to be some waterline. And what we’ve found, what most
churches have found, is you open up the floodgates in a local
church to receive prayer requests from the floor, sooner or later
you are going to get burned. Somebody is going to inject some
vile confession to soothe their own conscience. and besmirch everybody in the
room with these vile thoughts. You don’t think that the ugly
details of your previous life fit into that category? You know,
and I’ll be brief here, I’ve noticed a devious tendency of
people who are too glib with details. Their aim seems, I don’t know
their motives, their aim seems not really to confess, but to
gossip, to blackmail. And so they share, they share
this terrible thing that they have done, which, oh by the way,
involves someone else. My wife, or what have you, my
boss. If we’re confessing someone that has anything to do with
anyone else, I would suggest we be extremely cautious of our
motives for doing so. And even more cautious with any
detail. So can we even imagine what an
unfiltered time of confession would look like in the church?
Count me out. I don’t want to be there. Many
times when I’m talking to someone, counseling someone, or drawing
near to that delicate point of identifying where they’re owning
some sinful episode or practice, I will pause and tell them, I
don’t want any details. It’s uncanny what people will
still regurgitate. I don’t want any details for
my own heart and mind’s sake. I don’t want to know. I don’t
need it. One pastor thought the same thing
when he said, there are many sins, which it is not needful,
but would be positively wrong to reveal to our fellow men sins
of thought. They would do us real moral harm
without advantage. Such much moral injury might
be done to the person who received our confession. We can confess to one another
if need be. without all the vulgar, impure
details. Put it this way, draw the picture
in black and white. I don’t need any color. Don’t add any color. James isn’t talking about an
unfiltered flood tide of confession in a worship service. If anything,
this private confession to a brother or sister is at best to a small
group for confession at all to be productive,
to be done correctly, to be done according to God, it should be
a rare thing. To come to a brother and open your heart, it’s not
a regular thing. It’s very occasional, which is
what makes it so effective. We pull a brother or a few brothers
together. We share what God is doing in
our heart and we pray. That’s it. If we’ve learned anything
from the Roman Catholic Church, it’s that as soon as confession
gets formalized into a regular feature, we’re on dangerous ground. One Puritan shepherd noted that
whenever confession becomes any way methodized into a system,
which is what the Roman Catholic Church is, where you whisper
into the priest’s ear all of your gory details. Whenever it gets methodized into
a system for periodic observance, then the desire for it is certainly
a symptom of spiritual disease. No wonder the reformers. The
reformers referred to the practice of Roman Catholic confession
where the parishioners were supposed to come in and bear their souls
before a man. The reformers called that the
slaughterhouse of consciences. So you say, when and how do we
confess to others? Do you know that at one point
in this church, in church history, not in this particular church,
there were appointed men in the church who were called penitent
elders. And these men would, they were
appointed to decide for people whether their sins rose to a
level, whether they should be confessed publicly or privately.
I don’t think we need those guys. I’m glad they got rid of them
whenever I think some simple principles should guide us here
about confession. Most notably, this one, public
sins confess publicly. Private sins confess privately. Let me illustrate. If you’re
arrested this upcoming week for bank robbery. and the story with
your picture is plastered all over the newspapers and websites,
you can bet that we are going to call you to repentance and
ask you to come publicly before the church and confess that to
the saints of this church. But if you have privately offended
a brother, if it’s only the two of you that know about it, or
if your actions or your words have offended him, You should go call him in all
privacy. You don’t need any help. Go in all privacy and confess. Your sin against him in private. That’s the admonition of Christ
himself, isn’t it? Matthew 5. Therefore, if you
are presenting your offering at the altar. He says stop the
church. Go. If you are presenting your offering
at the altar and there, remember that your brother has something
against you. Time out. If you are presenting your offering
at the altar and there, remember that your brother has something
against you, leave your offering there before the altar and go
first be reconciled to your brother and then come and present your
offering. God doesn’t need your money. Especially in that particular
occasion, your heart’s not right. You’re not at peace. There’s a time for public confession.
There’s a time for confession to an offended brother, and even
more rarely, there’s a time, there’s an occasion where we
confess to our brothers. One or two, several. Where we
need the help of their faithful prayers, And sometimes we just
need to unburden our consciences to a godly friend, a wise brother,
wise sister, an elder, a friend. As one put it, the important
point is that the sinner should not keep his guilty secret locked
up in his own bosom. To whom he should tell it is
left to his own discretion. Aren’t you glad you have good
Christian friends, faithful Christian brothers? A dear Christian sister
with whom to walk that with whom you can tell anything. But that selection process of
determining to whom you confess is a very important question.
And I searched my memory here, though. I couldn’t remember a
single time in my life, and I think I’ve been a believer about 30
years. I couldn’t remember a single time where I actually did this,
called up a brother or a group of brothers, and I sat down and
confessed something. I couldn’t think of a single
time where those relationships weren’t deepened, that I had
the humility to come to them and to share what I shared. Almost
always what it brought is in time an open door where they
came and shared their own. sin. Still, we want a brother here,
we want a mature man of God, we want a true Christian friend. As one pastor said, a burdened
heart should select its confidant with great care. A true friend,
pious and affectionate and experienced and discreet may be of much service. What a blessing it can be. What
a pure relief is ours to speak with someone just like us. Who struggles just like us. I would say that it’s one of
the greatest experiences of the Christian life, wouldn’t you? Because the change is so dramatic. So swift. So sure. That we come and we bear our
souls, they pray with us. How could we dare? How could
we bear to go back to them again? But if we sin again, we must. One faithful brother put it this
way, where such unburdening of conscience is done, not in the
spirit of gossip, but seriously and devoutly. As a help graciously
granted by the Savior for our weakness. Great comfort. And real spiritual benefit. May
be attained. And this is all due largely.
To the prayers of our faithful friend. We’ll talk about faithful
prayer next Lord’s Day. Would you humble yourself before
Almighty God? Oh, merciful God, we pause before
you. And we have both used and abused
this great privilege of confession. We’ve come before you and rambled
on With prayers of confession that were not literal prayers
of confession, we never named our sin, we never owned it. Lord, we also know that we have
had occasion by your grace, perhaps through the help of others, perhaps
all alone, we’ve had occasion to bow before you and to own
our sin. Lord, we thank you. for your
mercy and abundant grace for us in those moments. Lord, we thank you for faithful
friends to whom we can look, to whom we can call and ask,
with whom we can sit down and pray, to whom we can confess
and unburden our consciences and have them pray along with
us. Lord, we thank you for all of
this. And Lord, none of this would
be possible without our relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. And
so perhaps there are some with us today, anyone with us who
does not know the Lord Jesus. No amount of muttering about
our sin. No excusing it will ever do. Jesus Christ has already
paid the penalty in full. And Lord, our first act. Of repentance
is to look up to God and to admit to confess to him. The nature
of our sin. It is the very thing that put Jesus
Christ on the cross. Lord, we pray that if there are
any here who do not know Christ. That you might draw them to repentance
even this very day. We lay all of these things before
you and we pray them in Jesus name. Amen.