Confession

As long as you think You deserve forgiveness or you deserve mercy. You haven't really repented. A truly penitent person, says God, I understand I have no claim. At this point, I forfeited all of my rights. You have every right.

To destroy me, you have every right to punish me according to the full measure of the law. I ask that you don't. I plead with you that you won't. But I acknowledge that if you do it... I have no grounds.

the complaint against you. Martin Luther, the famous 16th century reformer, famously said that the Christian life is to be a life of repentance. Do we really confess our sins as often and specifically as we ought? RC Sprawl will seek to help us on this Saturday edition of Renewing Your Mind as we continue our study of prayer, focusing today on confession. Prayer is a significant part of the Christian life.

but it is also an area where many of us struggle.

So we are taking our time to work through this practical series from Dr. Sprawl. Each time I've revisited these messages, I've been helped.

so you may wish to return to them again and again. Request lifetime digital access to the messages and study guide when you donate today at renewingyourmind.org. We'll also send you a copy of the Valley of Vision. All this to thank you for your generosity in supporting Renewing Your Mind and the global outreach of Ligonier Ministries.

So what does repentance, true contrition, look like? Here's Dr. Sprawl on Psalm 51. In our last segment in our study of prayer, I made use of this simple acrostic. The word acts.

And we looked at these elements, simple elements, that should be included in every prayer. and we spent our time the last time looking at the first one, Adoration. And today I want to look particularly at the importance of confession. It's been said that it's important for the Christian to keep short accounts with God. that even though our sins have been nailed to the cross, And Christ has atoned for all of our sins that we've ever committed, past, present, and future.

Nevertheless, in terms of the progress of our sanctification and the development of our continued relationship with God, we are still called to come before Him on a regular basis, confessing our sins.

Now So often The way in which we confess our sins to God Is frankly an insult to His Majesty. As I said the last time, If we begin with the proper spirit of adoration, remembering who he is, the holiness of God, that should shape Our attitude when we move to that posture of confession that follows from it.

so that the spirit of our confession is one that manifests genuine repentance. and we distinguish in theology between two types of repentance. Contrition. And attrition. In our church recently, I told the story of the Battle of Bull Run, which was the first major conflict between the forces of the North and the South during the war between the States.

took place just outside the nation's capital in Washington, and when the battle was about to begin, the word spread throughout the city of this Encounter that was about to take place, and the women of the aristocracy of Washington got in their coaches and had their horses. Horses carry them to the site so that they could be observers and spectators of this battle, because the conviction was that this war would be over in a few days. Because the military superiority of the North was so much, vastly greater than the South. All of the industrial power that was there in the North. the railroads and the armaments and all the rest seemed to ensure not only certain victory, but rapid victory.

Nobody anticipated that the war would last until 1865 and have a casualty of 600,000. killed in that war. But What people didn't figure. was that two different kinds of wars were being fought. The North was fighting a war of conquest, the South was fighting a war of attrition.

And the difference is this. For the North to win the war, they had to conquer the South and occupy their territories. For the South to win what they were fighting for, all they had to do was to repel the invaders. and get the North to lose their will. to give up the cause because they had so many casualties.

So that they would stop invading them because the South had no desire to occupy the North, they just wanted to be free of the North. And it was the same type of thing that happened in Vietnam. The Vietnamese were not trying to conquer the Americans. They were just trying to outlast the Americans until the American people lost their will to keep on fighting. In other words, a war of attrition is called a war of attrition because the war is won when the cost is too great.

for one side to continue.

Now, when we translate that to theology and to repentance, what we mean by attrition. Is repentance that is motivated simply by a desire to escape. paying the cost for one's sin.

So, the true confession and true repentance. Involves a godly sorrow for having offended God, a genuine turning away from our sin, not motivated simply by a ticket out of hell or of a fear of punishment. When you see your little children with their hands in the cookie jar and you catch them there and your hands are on your hips and they see you with that scowl on your face and they say, Oh, you know, mommy, you're, oh, daddy, I'm so sorry. Please don't spank me. What you are seeing there is not genuine contrition.

What you are seeing is attrition, a repentance. Born out of a fear of the punishment or of the consequences.

Now, if we want to understand what this element of prayer is supposed to look like. We have the perfect model. a model inspired by God the Holy Spirit. In Psalm 51. in the Old Testament.

And this Psalm was written by David After he was confronted by the prophet Nathan, For his sin. with Bathsheba.

Now let me recapitulate that a little bit. You remember the story of David and Bathsheba? Although David was already married, He had more than one wife, and his eye fell upon Bathsheba as she was bathing, and he was smitten with her, and he not only took her to himself, but he conspired with his generals To send her husband Uriah, who was a loyal soldier to the crown, to David, and David got his generals to put Uriah in the front lines.

So that it would be sure that he would be killed in battle, so that then David could have Bathsheba for himself. And remember when Nathan came to David, He tells this parable of the man who had many sheep. and who saw this poor man who had one ewe lamb that was his sole possession and his pride and joy. He had this ewe lamb stay in his house and eat from his table and so on but this rich and powerful fellow came in and confiscated the poor man's lone lamb. And when David heard that, he was furious.

And he said to Nathan, Not in my kingdom He said, I won't put up with that sort of thing And he goes on this tirade about the injustice of this rich and powerful man who had confiscated the ewe lamb of the poor man. And that's when Nathan turned to David and said, David, Thou art The man. And suddenly David was wakened. to the reality of his guilt, and to the seriousness of his crime. Let me just stop there for a second and say this.

David is not at all atypical in that regard. We have an uncanny ability as fallen human beings. to rationalize our sins. To explain our sins to ourselves, to stop the accusing voice of our own conscience. And it takes something like The prophetic insight of a Nathan to awaken us out of our.

dogmatic slumbers at this point. And so when David had that experience, his remorse was genuine. and his prayer of confession has become a model for Christians ever since.

So let's look at this prayer in brief. in Psalm 51. Where David begins by crying out to God, saying, Have mercy upon me, O God. according to your loving kindness. and according to the multitude of your tender mercies.

Let me just stop at that point. When David cries out to God, he does not ask God for justice. Because he clearly understands. that he's guilty. Rather, he throws himself on the mercy of the court.

There is nothing in this psalm where David is saying, Lord, I'm sorry, but. Lord, you have to understand. that this was not a good day. I had things on my mind. I was under a lot of pressure.

There's none of that appeal to mitigating circumstances that would excuse his sin. David knows that he's guilty. David makes no attempt to justify what he does. Instead, he just cries out to God for God's mercy. Deal with me according to your chesed.

That is your Mercy, your tender mercy, your loyal love, because that's the only hope I have. And then he goes on to say. Blot out my transgressions. I love that image that he uses there because it is such an appropriate one and is one that all people of all time can relate to. You think of Lady Macbeth, who after she's involved in this fiendish murder and she has the blood on her hands and she can't wash the blood from her hands and she cries out in frustration, Out, out, Damn it spot.

And the reason she wants to get rid of that bloodstain from her hands is because it's haunting her, like the tell-tale heart in one of Poe's mystery stories. And the idea is. That she can't stand the physical reminder. of the guilt of her actions. And so, like Lady Macbeth, David cries out and saying, Lord, Blot it out.

Erase it. My sin is ever before me, and I can't stand to see it. It's haunting me. Make it go away. Wash me thoroughly.

From my iniquity, cleanse me from my sin. For I acknowledge my transgressions, and my sin is always before me. Here's where he's saying. It's always right there in front of me. Wherever I go, however I turn, I see My guilt.

And so, God, I'm dirty. I need to be washed. I need to be cleaned. and I'm asking you to blot these things out. to erase them from your memory.

Now one of the things that the Bible speaks of, again using metaphors, of God's forgiveness is this That God says, as far as the east is from the west, So far have I removed your transgressions from you. In Isaiah he says, Come let us reason together. Though your sins be as scarlet, what? They shall be white as snow. though they be as crimson.

They shall be as wool. Again, Isaiah is saying that God has the ability, the power, and the Spirit to change that bloody stain on our hands. and make it Absolutely white. And He removes our transgressions from us, and He remembers them against us no more.

Now again, that doesn't mean when God forgets our sin, that He has a memory lapse. Obviously, God is omniscient and He always knows whatever it is that we've ever done. But when he says he will not remember them, he means he will not. Remember them against us. ever again.

Once they are forgiven, They're removed from the record, they're blotted out, as it were, and he makes us clean in his sight.

Now that's important for us to understand because not only on a vertical level, Are we to understand what confessing our sins means and what repentance means and what forgiveness means. but also on a horizontal level. When you say to somebody that you forgive them, That means you hold it against them no more. You don't ever bring it up. Again.

It's put into the sea of forgetfulness.

So that the next time they do the same thing, you don't say that's two, you say that's one. If you really forgave them the first time. Because that's the way God deals with us. And so when we come before him in prayer, we are to come in this spirit. that David illustrates for us.

Now he says something strange here. In verse 4. A guest you And you only have I sinned, and done this evil. in your site. If this prayer were not inspired by the Holy Ghost, I would be inclined to question David's reasoning here.

because in reality David sinned against a whole lot more people than God. He sinned against his wife. He sinned against his own family. He sinned against Bathsheba. He sinned against Uriah.

He sinned against his generals. He sinned against every private in his army that was loyal to him because he violated the trust of his soldiers. He sinned against the whole nation because he was the king, and as the king, he was entrusted with leadership and was supposed to mirror and reflect the justice of God to his people. And he didn't do that.

So, I mean, he violated everybody in town.

So why does he say, It's against thee and thee only that I have sinned?

Well, in the ultimate sense, Sin is an offense against God. It is his law that is being violated, and the Bible tells us where there is no law, there is no transgressor. And when we break God's law, We are violating him. Because he is the lawgiver. And so at this point, David is not trying to minimize his guilt.

before men, but he's trying to maximize and come to grips to the full measure of his guilt before God. And that's why he makes this statement that it's against God. Then he goes on to say, that you may be found just when you speak and blameless when you judge.

Now, this to me is the true spirit of repentance. And without this line, you don't have repentance. As much as you appeal to mercy, As much as you acknowledge your wrongdoing and all of that, until you come to the place. where you really believe that God would be perfectly just. To exact full punishment from you, or on you, or impose full punishment upon you, and exact full payment from you.

You haven't really repented. As long as you think You deserve forgiveness or you deserve mercy. You haven't really repented. A truly penitent person, says God, I understand. I have no claim.

At this point, I forfeited all of my rights. You have every right. To destroy me, you have every right to punish me according to the full measure of the law. I ask that you don't. I plead with you that you won't.

But I acknowledge that if you do it I have no grounds. to complain against you. That's a real spirit. of contrition. Then he goes on to say, Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin, my mother conceived me.

Now This is a very important part of this prayer. and one that can easily be misunderstood. We could look at this and saying, well, after all, God. You know, I was born in sin. And it was in sin that my mother conceived me.

Uh I I I was uh fallen at birth.

So what do you expect? I mean, this could be understood as an attempt to refer to mitigating circumstances that would ameliorate the degree of guilt that David bears. That's not what he's saying. Rather, he's taking his confession a step further. He's saying, I know that I was born in sin.

And I know that I was conceived in sin. Because I know that I sin because I'm a sinner, because I have a corrupt nature that penetrates the very core of my being, and I'm repenting of that. He's not passing the blame to his mother. He's not passing the blame to Adam. In whom David fell?

But he's acknowledging That very difficult, profound concept that the Bible has, that we are truly guilty in our participation in the fall of Adam. and that our being born fallen Is a just punishment of God for our guilt that was incurred in and with and through Adam. And so David is not only asking for forgiveness for the particular sin that he's committed. But he's praying for forgiveness for his sinful character, his sinful nature. And we rarely do that.

We do it sort of in a different way. Here's the way we pray for forgiveness. Please forgive me for all my sins. Yeah. We pray for forgiveness in general.

Now that's not what David is doing here. He's praying for forgiveness in particular. for specific sins And the only generalization he's making here is not for his sins in general, but for his character in general. Forgive me for what I am. for who I am.

For the sinful disposition of my heart that since my birth has been producing this kind of behavior. Behold, you desire truth in the inward parts. and then the hidden part you will make me to know wisdom. You want truth not on the surface. But truth it comes From the heart.

Then he goes on and asks God to purge him with hyssop that he might be clean, to wash him, that he should be whiter than snow. He says, Make me here joy and gladness, that the bones you have broken may rejoice. Hide your face from my sins. And blot out all my iniquities, and then asked that God would create in him a new and clean heart. and so on.

And let me move over quickly to verse 14. He says, Deliver me from the guilt of bloodshed, O God, the God of my salvation. And my tongue shall sing aloud of your righteousness. O Lord, open my lips. and my mouth shall show forth your praise.

for you do not desire sacrifice, else would I give it. You do not delight in burnt offering. but the sacrifices of God, are a broken spirit. a broken and contrite heart these, O God, you will not despise.

Now do you remember what happened? Immediately following the visitation to David from the prophet Nathan. How? David was guilty of murder and adultery. And because he was guilty of these offences, David was guilty of capital offenses.

and the penalty, the civil penalty for these crimes in the Old Testament would be death. But God spared David from that punishment, and Nathan told David that his life would be spared. But he said, The fruit of your union With Bathsheba will not be spared. God was going to require the life of the baby. And then the baby was born.

And remember the story that follows: how David went into his room, and for seven days and seven nights, he didn't eat, he didn't drink. He was in sackcloth and ashes, begging God in prayer, interceding for the life of that baby, saying, Please, please, please, please, God, don't let that baby die. And remember, after the week had passed, The baby died, and David's Attendants were afraid to go in the room and tell him because they saw how upset he was and how distraught he was. They were afraid that if they went in and announced to David that the baby had died. that David would do himself harm.

And he saw them out there wandering around and making nervous glances into his room, and David was smart enough to surmise what had happened. And he said, the baby died, didn't it? And I said, yes. And so what did David do? Immediately.

He washed his face. He got dressed anointed his head with oil. and he went to church. And he praised God. He took his punishment.

And praised God. And he said, Oh God, if you desired sacrifice, I would give that. If you want a burnt offering, I would give you that. But the sacrifices of God are a broken heart. A contrite heart, and you will never despise that.

And that should be our attitude every time we pray. that as soon as we adore the wonders of God, We need to contrast the beauty of His Holiness. with a fresh confession. of our transgressions. before him.

in spirit. of contrition. You're listening to the Saturday edition of Renewing Your Mind, and that was R. C. Sproul on contrition and Psalm 51.

If you have never contacted Renewing Your Mind and Lignier Ministries before, we'd love to send you a free book from Doctor Sproul. It's titled Does Prayer Change Things? You can request your free copy at renewingyourmind. org slash prayer, or by using the link in the podcast show notes. The message you heard today is from RC Sproul's series on prayer.

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Next time, R. C. Sproll continues our study on prayer, but he'll be looking specifically at the Lord's Prayer.

So I hope you'll make plans to join us next Saturday here on Renewing Your Mind.