Would you take your Bibles, please, and before we turn to Psalm 6 tonight, would you turn to 2nd Samuel chapter 12? We're coming to what is the first of seven Psalms or prayers in the Psalter known as the penitential Psalms. They're their prayers are actually the laments that are prayed over the sin that a person is committed or the consequences of those sins Five of them are written by David and two of them anonymously They seem to be rooted in the events of David's life surrounding his sin with Bathsheba His murder of her husband Nureia Hittite and all of the sad and destructive consequences that flowed out of that rash action They've been used historically in the church a great deal Traditionally the church at least in the middle ages would sing these seven Psalms and pray them each successive Friday for the seven weeks of length. In fact, they would pray them and sing them all all seven of them on Ash Wednesday to begin that sacred season of penitence Martin Luther when he was a young Christian and young professor Published a lot of books and the very first book he ever published was a little commentary on the seven penitential Psalms He said in 525 after about eight years later after he revised it He said among my first booklets I also published at that time was a little booklet on the seven penitential Psalms with an exposition and Although I still do not find anything wrong with it yet. I often miss the meaning of the text This usually happens to all teachers at their first attempt and it was so with the vendable Holy Father So as St. Augustine admits about himself Daily improved and writing and teaching So also in this little book Although it was acceptable and good enough for the time Because nothing better was at hand. I now Sense the gospel has reached me in the high noon of this Reformation Shining brightly have also made some progress in the meantime of Revising this booklet to show their true sense of meaning Luther would call these the seven penitential Psalms his Pauline Psalms because he saw in them a Gospel of repentance and faith and justification in Jesus Christ Now they do come it appears in some Some logical or chronological flow only one of the seven has a historical Supercription that tells us about it and that's Psalm 51 The first of these seven penitential Psalms to be written Because it says that this is a song written by David when Nathan the prophet went into him After he had gone into Mashiba And so I wanted us to look at at 2nd Samuel chapter 12 to see the historical context of these Songs of penance or forgiveness or repentance And in 2nd Samuel chapter 12. This is what the prophet says And the Lord sent Nathan to David when he came to him and said to him There were two men in a certain city one was rich and the other was poor The rich man had very many flocks and herds, but the poor man had nothing but one little you lamb which he had bought And he brought it up and it grew up with him with his children It used to eat it a morsel and drank from his cup and lie in his arms and it was like a daughter to him Now they came a traveler to the rich man who was Unwilling to take one of his own flock or heard to prepare for the guest who had come to him But he he took the poor man's lamb and prepared it for the man who had come to him The David's anger was greatly kindled against the man and he said to Nathan as the Lord lives The man who was done this deserves to die. He shall restore the lamb for fold Because he did this thing and because he had no pity Nathan said to David you are the man Thus says the Lord the God of Israel. I Appointed you King over Israel and I delivered you out of the hand of Saul and I gave you your master's house and your master's wives Into your arms and gave you the house of Israel and of Judah and if it were too little a thing I would add to you as as much more Why have you despised the word of the Lord to do what is evil in his sight? You have struck down your eye the Hittite with the sword and have taken his wife to be your wife And have killed him with the sword of the Ammonites Now therefore the sword shall never depart from your house Because you despise me and have taken the wife of your eye the Hittite to be your wife Thus says the Lord be hold I will raise up people against you out of your own house And I will take your wives before your eyes and give them to your neighbor And he shall lie with your wives on the side of the Sun for what you did secretly I will do this thing before all Israel and before the Sun David said to Nathan I have sinned against the Lord and Nathan said to David the Lord also has put away your sin You shall not die nevertheless because by this deed you have utterly scorned the Lord the child who is born to you Shall die then Nathan went to his house and the Lord afflicted the child that you're right as wife brought to David and He became sick and died out of this great Moment of pain this great fall from grace David writes a series of Psalms at least five of them we know Psalm 51 immediately after is probably the most famous when when he says against you and you only have I sinned and Done what is evil in your sight Then I think comes on Six and Psalm 38 Because they both begin with the same words O Lord Rebuke me not in your anger nor discipline me in your wrath I would guess I would suggest that Psalm six Came before Psalm 38 because David's talking about his enemies is rather vague and Psalm six here But much more intense in the Psalm 38 So the Psalm six was probably written when he knew that Absalom was beginning to filament rebellion against him in Psalm 38 when he was in the thick of that Painful time then Psalm 143 Must have been written just prior to the last campaign to get's absolute because it calls for forgiveness and deliverance And protection as he flees to the wilderness Then Psalm 32 came last you can tell it's later in life It doesn't have the pathos or the intensity of the other Psalms But it reflects a settled and clear thinking soul a mature man who's had a long time to think about sins Of course all of this The only one we really know There was written in the time of this historical context of his sin with Bashiba is Psalm 51 But there is a tendency for commentators to read the Psalms into the life of David In fact, there's a delightful little book that I have written by Alexander McClellan that says this is titled the life of David as reflected in the Psalms You bear with me a minute. I want to read you what he says about these penitential Psalms and adversity had taught David self-restraint Had braced his soul had driven him to grass firmly the hand of God and Prosperity had seemed for nearly 20 years But to perfect the lessons that he had learned Gratitude had followed deliverance and as the sunshine after the rain and it brought out the fragrance of devotion and the blossom of glad tidings In all that he wrote and sang a Good man and still more a man of David's age at the date of his his great crime Selden falls so low unless there had been previously perhaps unconsciously a relaxation of the girded lines a negligence of the untrimmed lamp the Sensitive nature of this poet was indeed not unlikely to yield to the sudden forces of such Attemptation as conquered him But we can scarcely conceive of it having done so without a previous decay in his religious life Hidden probably from himself most likely and The source of that decay would possibly have been found in his self-indulgence His fostered life of ease and the long years of being in command The actual fault of the sin seems to have begun by a sloughed Application of his functions as captain of Israel We would have turned back a chapter in second Samuel we'd find these opening words in chapter 11 in the spring of the year The time when kings go out to battle David sent Joab and his servants with him and all Israel and they ravaged the Eminites and beseech robber, but David remained at Jerusalem And it was then while he was kind of lally-gagging around and doing nothing Then he went up one day in the evening about this time at night It's always you look down over the palace hill in Jerusalem a house on which a woman was taking a bath It's just where they usually bathed on the rooftop The scripture says he saw that the woman was beautiful and He sent his soldiers there and he took her Here's what McClaurne adds This saint of nearly 50 years of age Bound to God by ties which he raptiously felt and acknowledged whose words have been the very breath of devotion for every devout heart Forgets his longing after righteousness flings away the joys of divine communion Darkens his own soul ends his prosperity brings down upon his said For all his remaining years a cataract of calamities and makes his name and his religion a Target for the barbed sarcasm of each succeeding generation of scoffers as a man as a king As a soldier He is found wanting
Why belabor the sad story? Well because God does
God felt God the Holy Spirit that That this time of day would fall and his repentance and his recovery his spiritual journey through what People have called the dark night of the soul was so important that there would be not one but seven Psalms written about it Psalms that That encourage us when we fall into sin there are people in this room But probably more than a few Who quite frankly have never had a major spiritual collapse They grew up Children of the church they led more lives. They've they got good grades They they married well. They have nice families and Although they battle with sins. They've never had such a A calamitous collapse as David had But most people have most people have had some Fundamental moment where it seemed as if the world was ending around them because of their own sins Could have been a divorce or an abortion Some addiction or criminal record financial ruin physical and psychological struggles caused by Guilt I think of the young people in our in our culture who are being set up for For very difficult times with the moral meltdown all around us the adultery and fornication and The pornography and the date rape and the homosexuality and lesbian and even incense these things leave scars That will not go away and they're going to feel These scars and the pains that they bring for a long time
Solomon was right when he said Good sense wins grace But the way of the treacherous is hard Literally the way of the treacherous or the sinful is their ruin And Psalm 6 explores The hope of forgiveness for a person who thinks their life has been ruined By their own misjudgments and sinful conduct in fact their life is not ruined It's just reshaped by the grace of God that moves in in a painful but a powerful way You'll notice in this little Psalm if you turn there now to Psalm 6 that there is In this salt or four little paragraphs. You don't see it in the English standard version, but there are There are four stanzas and they each talk about a journey that David takes Through the remorse and the repercussions of his sins There's suffering under the humbling hand of God's discipline and the first answer and then a sense of security under God's healing hand of grace An experience of sorrow and under God's heavy hand of holiness and Then finally an experience of safety under God's helping hand of righteousness. So let's look at this first Little truth that David tells us when we sin and we go to the Lord and we confess There was a suffering that we experience Under God's humbling hand of discipline. Oh Lord Rebuke me not in your anger nor discipline me in your wrath Be gracious to me, oh Lord for I am languishing Heal me, oh Lord, for my bones are troubled my soul also is greatly troubled, but you, oh Lord, how long? David senses that because of his great sins he's under God's discipline God is angry with him and rebuke him God's wrath is put him under discipline David's God is not a laid-back deity who doesn't really care When David raped a woman and Killed her husband and covered up God wasn't cool with that He reacted to it He reacted in a righteous Indignation the David says feels a lot like you're mad at me like you're punishing me And he said this is difficult God I'm languishing spiritually in my soul. I'm I'm my bones feel like they're broken. I'm aching physically there. I'm experiencing some Spiritual some psychosomatic repercussions of this inward illness that's causing me to be physically sick and And my soul my spirit is troubled literally dismayed David has the signs James Montgomery boy says a someone who's experiencing depression not that Depression is always caused by sin but boy says in my counseling I have come across people who have been troubled by similar depressions I'm not suggesting that all depression is caused by sin But depression has many causes and since we're all sinners depression is seldom utterly divorced from our wrongdoing David's life feels like it's coming to an end and so The only thing he can do is ask God in prayer Do not review me Don't discipline me be gracious to me heal me O Lord Usually when we sin When we are alienated from God and from others the first thing we experience is The repercussions of our sins. It's not really The first thing that motivates us is that we've wounded our relationship with God It's that the effects of our wrongdoing have caused troubles in our life and we're hurting for that Now there are people who will say and I hear this all the time I hear it from people in the pew and I've heard it from other pastors and I think I've said it before to my own embarrassment shame Oh He wasn't really repentant until he got caught He didn't really care that he was cheating in school until He got caught and was expelled she really didn't care about those children until the DSS came and took him away He wasn't really gonna break it off with that other woman until he got caught And she served him with papers for divorce There's a sense in which we feel that once people get caught in their actions They couldn't possibly be genuinely repentant And I would say if you will let me be so frank that is absolutely pompous on our behalf and It is hypocritical What sinner naturally Says God I you probably haven't noticed this But I noticed the sin that I need to be accountable for I think you ought to discipline me What sinner doesn't hide from God What sinner doesn't cover up what he's done and when our
Sins find us out as Moses said Behold you have sinned against the Lord and be sure of this Your sin will find you out what sinner doesn't first say Lord This is too hard for me. I can't bear it. What person doesn't feel Like a victim because that's what we are We are the first victims of our own sins That doesn't mean that David's repentance our your repentance our mind is in any way insincere It's simply what Joseph said What you intended for evil God has used for good To bring about the salvation of many souls even to this day It's when we are found out in our sins when When all of the all of the things that God threatened what happened finally come down upon us that we finally take our sins seriously and I think it's wrong for us To conjecture upon a person's repentance as if it's insincere You remember the mamas and popas anybody remember them? There's somebody is willing to admit that race's hand. It's tell you how old you are Well, they were a group of two guys and two girls who are out of California. I love their songs great songs And most of the great rock and roll groups by the way seem to come out of California They were good and they had this song. This is dedicated to the one I love Jane asked me one time she said are you ever think about specific people when you preach and I lied and said no, this is dedicated to all of us whom God loves Because we tend to be harder on other people than we would on ourselves But we need to be careful about that because God would like through David in a different place With the merciful you show yourself to be merciful With a blameless you show yourself blameless with the purified in heart you show yourself pure But with the crooked you make yourself seem torturous For you save the humble man But the one with haughty eyes You bring down to disgrace We should thank God my friends honestly in a clear moment when the pain is passed We should thank God for the repercussions and sufferings that our sins bring because those are the things that make us desperate enough to run to God While all the time leading up to that fall from grace We've been drifting away from him as David did and we never noticed David is a desperate man Getting caught in our sins makes us desperate and I think that's good for us David says but you old Lord How long? How long will this go on? God has a reason for the length of that torture That's suffering under his hand of discipline But David also senses a security under God's healing hand of grace Turn O Lord deliver my life Save me for the sake of your steadfast love For in death there is no remembrance of you in the grave and she old Who will give you praise He says literally Return O Lord and rescue me some will say how dare how dare he He rapes a woman He kills her husband one of his most loyal men tries to cover it all up Goes on for the period of close to nine months pretending that nothing happened and only confesses When in front of the whole court David said You are the man You are the fellow in that story that I just told and your anger and Your statement this man deserves to die That is true of you But those of us who say how dare he Really don't understand grace
Here's this little word again for the second time out of one hundred and twenty-seven times in the Psalter this little word Kessed If there is a theology one writer said in the Psalms It is summed up concisely in this one word the steadfast love of God It's his covenant love and loyalty It's a statement to Abraham that I will make a covenant with you and your children To a thousand generations to be their God and you will be my people It's this new covenant that God says he makes with us that he will put his Holy Spirit within it and take away our sins because he says I will be a God to them and to their children And none of them will say know the Lord for they shall all know me From the least of them to the greatest of them For I will forgive their sins And I will remember their iniquity no more It was during the night of the Lord suffer that Jesus Christ took the cup and said this is the new covenant in my blood So when we sin the only The only defense we have is to flee to Christ and say remember your covenant with me
It seems me touchingly important and Massively significant that when I run to Jesus Christ maybe for the one thousandth time over the same sin I never hear Jesus Christ say to me How dare you How dare you come to me And presume upon my grace
Because you can't you can't presume upon The covenant of grace it's not that I made a deal with God and now I've broken it no he's the one who made the covenant with us With Abraham and to his children to a thousand generations And I only have two Recourses of action when I'm guilty I go before God and I plead for justice, but I don't want that I don't want what I deserve or I go before God and I plead the standfast love of the Lord I say oh God I am guilty But I'm a guilty man under a covenant of grace And I belong to Jesus Christ for by grace I have been saved He also experiences sorrow sorrow that seems to be lasting for a long time the sorrow The heavy hand of God's holiness look at verses six and seven I am weary with my morning every night I flood my bed with tears I drench my couch with weeping my eyes waste away because of grief it grows weak because of all my foes Here's David saying I'm weeping and moaning and grieving for three reasons because I've dishonored God and I've sinned against this covenant of grace I brought sorrow upon many people my household My family and all my relatives the whole nation of Israel's now in a in a civil war over me And I bought great shame upon myself This is the long dark night of the soul when someone Languages in this sorrow and they say you know how long the Lord and here's the answer I think God says Michael you're going to stay in this sorrow for a long time because I want you to think about How you got here These things didn't happen overnight I mean, it's just not a completely righteous man Who goes up to read the scrolls of God on the rooftop finds a woman and falls off and to say no no Now you know better than that this thing had been building up For a period of four decades 40 years Because david's great sin with basheba the murder of a ride the hit night his cover up Was reached in five subtle phases When you look back on the life of david you could say wow we can see that Why couldn't he I think that's what Moses means when he says be sure when you send Your sins will find you out Here's what happened phase one David was always a forceful man He was hot blooded passionate aggressive even as a boy He talks and one of his psalms about killing a lion and killing a bearer with his bare hands He was renowned for his boldness. Look what he did is a teenager against Goliath the giant he had a temper He was ready to kill nayhab because naydab wouldn't serve lunch to his soldiers And he soon developed a pattern life He saw what he wanted He went after it He got it regardless of who he had to run over in the process There was much about his male type A personality that was unsanctified And david never really bothered about that after all He was a warrior king. It was justifiable David also loved girls. He liked the women He was a handsome fella. They liked him Scripture says he was ruddy and had beautiful eyes and was very handsome Girls used to sing songs about him when he'd come back from the war with Saul They'd say Saul has slain his thousands but david is 10,000 since they danced before him Parading him as the golden boy of Israel It seems that he married women because they were beautiful Now the name of the man was naybal And the name of his wife was Abigail And the woman was discerning and very beautiful And of course you know after naydab dies David takes Abigail. That's what happened with Mesheba It happened late one afternoon when david arose from his couch and was walking on the roof of the king's house Did he saw from the roof a woman bathing and the woman was exceedingly beautiful David sent for her And took her There's that aggressive man Now fueled with the life of lust a handsome man who liked pretty women David also became laks about the Bible I want you to turn for a moment to do to run me chapter 17. I want you to read with me A scripture that God gave to Moses and he told Moses When you come into the land that the Lord your God is giving to you And you possess it and dwell in it and they say I will set a king over me like all the nations that are around me You may indeed set a king over you whom the Lord your God will choose One from among your brothers you shall set as king over you You may not put a foreigner over you who is not your brother Now listen to this Only he must not acquire many horses for himself Or cause the people to return to Egypt in order to acquire many horses since the Lord has said to you You shall never return that way again Secondly He shall not acquire many wise for himself Let's just heart turn away Third Nor shall he acquire for himself excessive silver and gold And when the king sits on the throne This kingdom he shall write for himself in a book a copy of this law approved by the political priest And it shall be with him and he shall read it all the days of his life that he may learn to fear the Lord his God By keeping all the words of this law These statutes and by doing them that as heart may not be lifted up Above his brothers and then he may not turn aside From the commandment either to the right or to the left So that he may continue to long at his kingdom he and his children in Israel This king literally was this is what the law said Once a year the priest was to come in and read Deuteronomy 1714 to 20 to the king don't multiply horses They were equivalent of sports cars in those days motor cycles Don't take too many girlfriends or wives Don't get too rich And David made an exception for himself David did not multiply horses and it appears that the money he had he set aside to build the temple, but I'm telling you David had a lot of wives We know the names of eight of them Michael Abigail Ahinoem Maaka Haagath Abatal Eglah and Bashiba And in addition to that it says David took more concubines and more wives for himself in Jerusalem After he had come from hebron and he had more sons and daughters that were born to David We don't know how many wives he had A minimum of eight Perhaps two or three times that If you read chronicles and you see all the sons he had He had some very fertile wives or he had a lot of wives But David liked women He was a lustful man He got what he wanted So he took this wife because he liked her he took that wife because he liked her then he took Bashiba and someone said I'm sorry David that somebody else's wife no matter She's pretty and she's mine David also Came lazy and took his office and his duty for granted Rather than go out to war he was a man of leisure and finally David was prone to violence In fact, that's why God said you will not build the temple You are a man of bloodshed and when David got mad He got mad enough to kill He got so frustrated with the situation There was no way out Once she showed up pregnant this beautiful girl named Bashiba So he said to Joe Lab You put your eye on the front lines And would draw support And he will die He killed one of his most loyal soldiers And his frustration anger to be in control of a situation There was already out of control You see how this thing crept up on him Incrementally after incrementally And things that people would admire He was a go-getter You know he's a handsome guy He's hot-blooded That boy can fight Man when he goes after something All these things that we would see as virtues There not to be vices That caught him in the end And I'm sure that many times David heard these words of Moses echoing in his mind Be sure your sins will find you out God leaves us in this season of suffering So that we can think through these patterns And take actions to redirect our life around them And back to good standing with Christ Finally he found safety under God's helping hand of righteousness Look what he says in verses 8, 9 and 10 Depart for me all you workers of evil For the Lord has heard the sound of my weeping The Lord has heard my plea The Lord accepts my prayer All my enemy shall be ashamed and greatly troubled They shall turn back and be put to shame in a moment The very ones who self-righteously said How dare he Impose upon God's out How dare this man claim a covenant standing Why should we feel sorry for this man David speaks to them and says three things God has heard my prayers God will forgive me and God will destroy you If you bother me anymore God you see has a marvelously wonderful way I'm becoming a good friend with broken sinners Men and women who are guilty and everybody knows it
And he has also an awesome way I'm becoming the enemy of self-righteous people And we should be warned by that
For God looks not at the outward appearance For the Lord judges the heart It's amazing to some people that the Bible could say After this sin that David was a man after God's own heart but he was Because part of being after the heart of God Is to look up at the cross and face our sins And throw our self upon the mercy of God or else Or else we're saying that Christ died for nothing
David in a very subtle way warns the people who say He's only sorry for a sins because it got caught That they too will be caught And if what they want is justice That's what God will give them
But if they extend to David another sin is mercy God will be merciful to them For James says so speak and so act As those who are to be judged under the law of liberty for judgment is without mercy For the one who has no mercy Mercy Triums Overjudgment So how do we pray this song? Well, it's not hard to figure out really If all I said is accurate Then we prayed this song always in three directions first we pray Looking to our own selves and our own lives and asking God for mercy For deliverance for grace for insight into our souls And for restored fellowship in the covenant of grace We should be asking God to help us see The little sins now that we don't take seriously before they combined And a cascade of spiritual force that sweep us Into catastrophic events And lead to our collapse Secondly We pray this prayer looking at other people caught in their sins and shame and sorrows And my friends we should never call into question The repentance of people who've been caught I wish I wish we could just preach through these seven penitential songs one after another because They are a tremendous theology of repentance And they show that like grace in the life of a person So repentance is something that grows incrementally over time until it is full and rich and wise and strong You can't expect the sinner yourself or someone else To come to full and mature repentance when their first caught When the collapse first comes And we need to give them grace If we are the friends of God And if God through Jesus Christ and the friend of sinners then We have to be compassionate friends of those who've been caught in their sins and are sorry at least For what has happened And thirdly We pray with an eye toward Christ This Psalm tells us something rich something that the world Denies is true Is that our fallen condition on our degraded state caused by our own stupid slip shot Selfish sins Need not drag us down into hopelessness And just because we're guilty of wrongdoing does not mean we have to roll over and silently condone the godless way of our Christless society around us We are redeemed Redeemed for better things Redeemed for a better life And the world will say to us oh it isn't it so convenient for you Christians that when you get in trouble you claim grace and god helps you out of it How easy for you But we know that number one it's not easy It costs God a great deal To ford us this covenant of grace again and again and again endlessly And it's not insincere To go back to God each time we fail And say to the world no no no Unlike you we do not believe that sin is the final word we believe that Jesus Christ Is the final word I have a friend and I love him he's been good friend to me for Better part of 30 years now And he's in prison He's in prison because Little sins in his life weren't taken seriously and they kind of marshaled the strength until My friend did some bad things and so he'd be in jail for a minimum of eight years I went to seem about three weeks ago and and he said to me my god this is the thing that troubles me most he said How after all these years Did God let this thing happen to me again?
And I said well brother you're asking the wrong guy we asking me to explain why God does what he does But it's usually at least in my life a pattern of things that That kind of incrementally grow over time and I ignore things that my wife tells me about Things that the kids mention Things that the elders say now you need to get a hold on that or things that the congregation Says pastor you You did this and it really hurt me and I just ignore those things and pretty soon they grow In strength Until they get a hold of me and they won't let go Nice suspect that that's what's happened to you
He said to me, you know Other than a friend in California and a guy in Tennessee you're the only person that ever Ever writes to me or Sends me money or visits me why aren't you ashamed of me And I said well Because if it wasn't for the grace of God I'd be your cellmate He said that's not a good idea. I'd kill you after a month. I said this probably true
but I said to him You're my friend and I don't pick my friends Because they always look good
I picked my friends the way Jesus does
And then he said to me I'd like to be a member of a church I'm an excommunicated from mine and he said Would you be embarrassed if I became a member of your church and I said I won't you would just join all the rest of the people Who need to be friends with Jesus Christ
Then I read this to him Jesus reclined a table in the house and behold Many tax collectors and sinners came and we're reclining with Jesus in his disciples When the Pharisees saw this they said his disciples Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners But when he heard it Jesus said to them Those who are well Have no need of a physician But those who are sick Go and learn what this means I desire mercy and not sacrifice For I came not to call the righteous But sinners I wish we had that whole conversation recorded by Matthew because I'm sure Jesus said Why don't you attack scavengers and sinners because if I didn't I'd eat alone every night Why are these my friends because who else do I have to choose from in the human race My circle of friends are pretty small the father the son and me the Holy Spirit three of us But if I want people to be my friends then I'm going to have to pick pretty messy gooey smelly stupid people Who keep shooting themselves in their own feet And I happen to like them And if we ask Jesus why Why did you pick me to be your friend? Here's the answer Because I did Because I chose to make you my friend
And that's the time to friends we need to be Even when our friends embarrass us When they bring shame upon the name of Christ when they're excommunicated from the church when they're thrown in jail because society says We don't want you to be our friend at all We despise you We say no No, you're our friends And we believe that your tears are repentance are sincere
Because we desire mercy And not judgment and we can be your friend because Christ Is this kind of friend to us?
This little Psalm 6 is a huge antidote to self-righteousness A self-righteousness that I am very prone to And so are most of you It reminds us That for reasons we will never be able to explain Jesus is the friend of sinners
Simply because he wants to be And that is grace That's the good news That God so lumb the world That he became our friend Let's pray Father, we want to ask your forgiveness tonight for all those times When someone got caught in some embarrassing and life Changing catastrophically negative event because of their sins And we questioned Whether they were truly sorry, whether they had the right to call upon you Whether their repentance was sincere Forgive us these things Forgive us for For wanting justice for other people and mercy for ourselves Forgive us for being poor friends
For a friend in need Is a friend in need And we are indeed your friends Because we are so needy And you are our redeemer Help us to look at our own souls It takes seriously the patterns that might find us out Help us never to be afraid to go again and again once we have sinned Even embarrassingly so And to plead before your throne Of mercy this covenant of grace to plead the blood of Christ As our righteousness And as our right to remain in your favor As the friends of Jesus Christ For we do ask this we plead this In Jesus name amen