Love Divine, All Loves Excelling - King’s Heralds I Need the Prayers of Those I Love - King’s Heralds

Love Divine, All Loves Excelling - King’s Heralds I Need the Prayers of Those I Love - King’s Heralds

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Voice Of Prophecy

H.M.S. Richards

The Sinner’s Prayer

Love divine, all loves excelling, Joy of heaven to earth come down, Fix in us thy humble dwelling, all thy faithful mercies crown.

Grace who thou art, all compassion, pure, unbounded love thou art.

Visit us with thy salvation, Enter every trembling heart.

Come, Almighty, to deliver, let us all thy grace receive.

Suddenly return and never, nevermore thy temples leave.

Thee would we be always blessing, serve thee as thy hosts above.

We're happy to be with you for this worship service, and our prayer is that the Holy Spirit of God will be in every heart, and that hearts will be changed today.

If there is some sin in your heart that must be forgiven, why don't you ask for that forgiveness just now as we open God's Holy Word.

My father is speaking now on the subject, The Sinner's Prayer.

Do you despise others whom you consider worse than yourself?

Do you feel you are above others, in this way seek to justify yourself?

Listen now to this story or parable that Jesus told.

2 men went up into the temple to pray, the 1 a Pharisee, the other a publican.

The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican.

I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all I possess.

And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner.

I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other.

For every 1 that exalteth himself shall be abased, and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.

1 is the prayer of self-praise, the other of self-surrender.

The first man judged his own character, not by the righteous character of God, but by the character of other men.

The second man looked to God and realized his own insufficiency.

The first had a righteousness of his own.

The other was dissatisfied with himself because he knew he was a sinner.

The Pharisee judged himself by other men and so he judged other men by himself.

The worse they were, the more righteous he felt by contrast.

This led him to accuse others, other men he condemned.

The publican, looking at himself and not others, cried out, God be merciful to me, a sinner.

No man can really pray this prayer until he comes to the moment of truth, until he sees himself as God sees him.

That's the prayer which this neurotic generation of ours needs.

John Sutherland Bunnell tells of receiving a telephone call from an officer who had just arrived in New York City on his way to the Pacific.

Rather than spending his limited time with relatives or friends, he wanted an interview with a minister.

This well-known and busy pastor put aside other plans for the day, invited the officer to come and see him.

The officer opened up his heart and said he could not go into battle in his present state of mind.

He had stopped praying, had lost his faith, and was upset by his doubts and fears.

Bunnell told him that he was not interested in his doubts and wasn't going to waste the officer's time or his own by talking about them.

Then the pastor asked, "'Have you any pictures of your family?' "'Yes, ' said the officer.

He pulled his wallet out of his pocket, opened it, laid it on the desk between them there where both could see it.

Then with a burst of tears the truth came out.

And only in it could he find the spiritual deliverance for which he longed.

This prayer of the publican re-echoes the words of the prodigal when he came to himself and said, Father, I have sinned against heaven and I sighed.

I am no more worthy to be called thy son.

When we are living and willing to blame ourselves and not others, when we are ready to come back to God, heart and soul, when we throw ourselves upon His mercy and implore His forgiveness, then we can claim His promise and trust Him.

Remember this, radio friend, true repentance is not a frightful cringing or fear as we look at the wages of sin.

It's not a shrinking from our just rewards of waywardness.

It's not a cowardly retreat from the road we wish to travel out of fear of consequences.

It's a ceasing to travel our sinful way because it is the wrong way.

It's a determination to do right because it is right.

It's a turning from ourselves and our weaknesses to God and His strength, irrespective of results, temporal or eternal.

Real repentance never makes any allowance or plans for any continuance of sin whatsoever.

It makes a clean breast of things of every wrong as far as known.

It claims acceptance on the merits of the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world, as we read in John 1.29.

True repentance holds back nothing in confession.

We acknowledge our sin, our iniquity, definitely, too, not generally, but facts.

It was this evil that David referred to in his repentance of his sin in the matter of Uriah.

He didn't pass it off as a weakness or an inherited tendency, but he asked God to forgive his sin.

If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

A true confession goes further than a recital of our sins to God, there may be others involved with whom we should make things right.

We may need to go to a neighbor, a friend, father, mother, brother, sister, even the child, and admit our failure, ask forgiveness.

And we are not to try to transfer the blame by saying, if you had not done this or that, I would not have done as I did.

True repentance and acceptable confession makes no reference to the faults of others.

A public confession in general terms is usually neither advisable nor effective.

Only when a wrong has been done to the public, to the community, to the church congregation, or to some other aggregation of individuals, need a confession be made in public.

It is to God or to the individual wronged that the penitence should go.

But the confession of wrongs, though full and complete, is not enough.

True repentance always makes restitution for the wrongs done to others as far as is humanly possible.

Any material loss inflicted should be restored.

Restitution proves the genuineness of our repentance.

As the Apostle Paul puts it, all men need to repent and turn to God, and do works meet or appropriate for repentance.

True repentance means to be sorry for the sin, to turn from it, to turn to God.

Then we are to live, to act, to do works, meet or appropriate with repentance.

The message of John the Baptist as recorded in Scripture was that men should repent.

Repentance was a very key note of Jesus' ministry.

Under his authority, his own disciples went out and preached that men should repent.

Repentance is a fundamental doctrine of the Christian faith.

Christian believer, do you practice repentance?

If you truly repent and turn to God and seek His forgiveness in the name of Christ, your pardon is absolutely certain.

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The Sinner’s Prayer

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