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Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at Hand By Gordan McMurray

Well, how many of you have actually been in a court room when it's been in session?
Can I have a show of hands? Anyone been in a court room?
Oh, quite a few. So you'll be in an advantage this morning as we look at a passage, Psalm 50, which I'd like you all to turn to because we're going to go through it pretty much verse by verse.
It's a picture, Psalm 50 is a picture of a court room but it's not your ordinary court room
it's just these sort of dimensions. It's a big court room.
Children, young people, James, others, who would you expect to find in a court room?
Any ideas? The judge. That's very important.
It's very hard to have a court without a judge, isn't it?
Yes, Lachlan, who do you think you'd find in a court room?
I'll have a think about that one. Anyone else? A jury? Anyone else?
The guilty party, the accused. Yes, may not be guilty until proven guilty but yes, the accused.
Who else would you expect to have in court?
Barrister.
Barrister, yep. Lawyers, barristers, yep.
Defence lawyers, yes.
Witnesses.
Okay, now the key parties that we're going to see this morning are the judge, the witnesses,
which I guess you could say is sort of like the jury as well, the accused.
Okay, they're the key parties this morning in the court room in Psalm 50.
So have a look at Psalm 50 and see if you can track this down and follow it.
Okay, so this morning, I've called the Psalm if you want a title.
We don't have a bulletin so you're going to have to listen a bit more carefully to see the structure.
In fact, I'll outline the structure, might make it a bit easier.
I've called it Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.
It fits in with what we were just saying actually.
The first point in verses 1 to 6, we're introduced, we're taken into God's courtroom in those first six verses.
In the second point, in verses 7 to 15, we see God lay the first charge.
Okay, so we don't really have a – God I guess you could say is the judge and the prosecuting attorney as well.
Okay, so God lays the first charge and tells us who is charged, who the defendant is.
And in verses 16 to 23, we see our third point, that's the second charge that God lays.
Okay, so we're going to work our way through and then we're going to ask ourselves the question,
well that's very fine for back then when this was written but how does that apply to us today?
Does it apply to the church today? Does it apply to us here this morning?
Okay, so let's work our way through Psalm 50.
In verse 1, the first part of verse 1, the Mighty One, God, the Lord, has spoken
and called the earth from the rising of the sun to its going down.
Now, to begin with, we're introduced to the judge.
The judge is named. It's none other than the Mighty God,
the God who is over all gods. Those names signify that and it's none other than the God,
Yahweh, the Lord, when you see Lord in capital letters as you know,
that is God's special name that he gave to Israel when he formed a covenant with them.
Okay, so it's the Mighty God, the God over all gods, the God who has chosen Israel.
He's the judge. Okay, that's what verse 1 is telling us.
And it tells us that he's called the whole earth together to be in his courtroom
in the second part of that verse. From the rising of the sun to its going down,
God has spoken and called the earth. So this God is a speaking God.
He's not a God you just sit up on your mantle shelf. He's not a God you can just pretend is there.
He's a God who calls the whole world together into his courtroom.
And he's the one who's going to sit on the judgement seat. He's going to be seated as judge in this court.
And you notice that really no one gets the option of refusing God's call.
He doesn't just say, well, would you like to come along? I'd like a few witnesses here.
He commands the whole earth to come before him in judgement.
And it's going to be like that one day again, isn't it?
Everyone is going to stand before God's judgement seat.
So this is the God we're talking about and this is the God the Psalmist is telling us about.
The God who has the right to call everyone into his courtroom and no one can refuse
and everyone then would be in awe of the judge who calls this court together.
2. Out of Zion the perfection of beauty God will shine forth.
So this God is not just the God who's in heaven, his throne room.
Zion was a picture, wasn't it, of the place where God dwelt.
It was where God said his name would be in amongst his people in Zion.
But here we see God is shining forth out of Zion so that everyone can see his splendour,
so that no one can be left in any doubt that he is the real God,
the God who is so bright and so unapproachable that his glory overshadows the sun itself.
This is the God who is in court.
3. In verse 3 we see, I think, it's a hint that Israel is speaking
because we read, our God shall come and shall not keep silent.
So there's a refrain here that people are expecting that God is going to come
and he's going to be the judge and it's going to be an awesome scene.
Perhaps this is suggesting that maybe Israel are quite excited at the prospect.
God's people are quite excited at the prospect that God is going to come and judge the wicked.
Israel had experienced a lot of persecution and a lot of trouble as a nation, hadn't they?
Maybe their expectation was that now, just as God had come at Sinai,
we read there in the second part of the verse, a fire shall be bowed before him
and it shall be very tempestuous all around him.
That's a bit like Sinai. Remember when God came down on the mountain at Sinai
and the mountain shook like an earthquake and there was fire and smoke and blackness
and trembling and a loud, loud noise?
That's the sort of picture we're getting here and it seems that God's people are excited
at the fact that God is finally going to come to judge, judge the wicked.
And then in verse 4 we see God calls to the heavens above and to the earth.
Now this reminds us that in Deuteronomy 4 when God was setting up the covenant with Israel,
it was the heavens and the earth that God called to be his witnesses.
In fact in verse 26 of chapter 4 of Deuteronomy it says, God says,
I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day.
So God had called heaven and earth to be witnesses,
to watch the covenant relationship between God and his people and here's the surprise.
In the second part of the verse, God is calling heaven and earth as his witnesses against who?
Who's the defendant? Who's he accused? Verse 4b.
The surprise is it's his people that are on judgment here.
It's the church, the Old Testament church who are being judged.
It's not the wicked out there but the wicked in here that God is judging.
And that's a surprise, isn't it? Because we often, I know I often get excited about the day of judgment
in the sense that finally injustice will be put right.
Finally wrongs will no longer continue, that God will put an end to injustice one day
and we believe that, don't we? That God one day will come as this sort of judge
in awesome power and majesty when everyone will be assembled before him.
No one will be able to refuse his call to judgment
and then every wrong will be judged righteously and everything will be put right.
But this is a scary judgment for God's people because they, we, you might say,
if we were back there in Israel's shoes in those days, because we call ourselves God's people, don't we?
So back then we would have been, as it were, Israel. Now the judgment is on us.
That's a shock.
And verse 5, lest we think, no, God's just talking about my people as in all the world being God's people
which is true in a sense because he's created everyone.
He makes it much more specific, doesn't he, in verse 5.
He says, gather my saints together to me, those who have made a covenant with me by sacrifice.
So there can be no confusion, can there, about who are the accused.
It's God's covenant people, those who have entered into covenant relationship with him
through the sacrifice made when the covenant was established.
No escaping at my saints, inverted commas, I suppose.
The ones who are set apart for me to be my holy people,
the ones who are uniquely mine out of all the earth, they're the ones that I'm calling to judgment.
It gets even closer to home now, doesn't it?
Now, lest we switch off and think, well, this is just for Israel back then.
1 Peter 4.17 says, for the time has come for judgment to begin with the house of God
and if it begins with us first, what will be the end of those who do not obey the Gospel of God?
That's the way Peter puts it to the New Testament church.
He says, judgment's going to begin with us, folks.
What hope will there be for those who don't obey the Gospel?
I'm going to come back to that later on but lest we switch off and think,
well, this is just for Israel, remember what Peter said there.
Verse 6, God's witnesses are called to declare his righteousness.
He says, let the heavens declare his righteousness for God himself is judge.
We always lament when an injustice is perpetrated in a court, don't we?
It's always reported in the papers, it always seems to be a terrible thing
when judgment and justice isn't seen to be done in a court case
and here God is saying, well, let the witnesses declare that I am righteous.
I've got no axe to grind here, I'm not going to judge impartially.
In fact, if the heavens would speak, they could declare.
Right down through the ages, at every point in time, God had been proved to be faithful
to his covenant promises that he made to Israel from Sinai right through.
God had been faithful and he was eminently qualified to be a righteous judge in this court case.
So that brings us to our second point.
That's the courtroom scene described, it tells us who the accused are,
who the judge is and who the witnesses are.
Now, what's the first charge?
In verses 7 to 15, the first charge is one of formalism.
Formalism, what does that mean?
Well, let's have a look at the verses and see if we can explain it.
Here, O my people, and I will speak.
O Israel, and I will testify against you, I am God, your God.
Now, why does God say that?
Well, number one, he's saying, look Israel, there's to be no doubt about this,
I have a charge to bring against you and remember who I am.
I'm not just a God, I am your God.
Remember, we're in covenant relationship, remember the covenant formula.
I will be your God and you will be my people.
That was the agreement that Israel made on Sinai with God,
a perpetual covenant between them and God.
They were uniquely his covenant people, there were terms set up in that covenant
and in fact, as I think I've said a number of times,
this covenant was modelled on a covenant that the people then would have been very familiar with.
When an invading king came and conquered a land,
he was seen to be the king of the kings in that land because he had defeated them
and he set up a vassal suzerain treaty.
The defeated kings became his vassals, they had to give tribute to him,
they had to pay him taxes in return for his protection, ongoing protection
and there would be peace in the land and the relationship was established.
Now, the form that we see in Deuteronomy is very similar to that sort of treaty.
The deal was that the suzerain, the conquering king, was the one who had to be obeyed.
He laid down the terms of the covenant and the terms of the covenant for obedience,
for blessing and for disobedience were terrible consequences.
That's the very sort of relationship that Israel had entered into with God.
God was no big bully, he had actually saved them out of Egypt and defeated their enemies.
But there was a real covenant contractual arrangement there
that Israel had entered into relationship with God.
God's reminding them of that in that verse.
I am your God, I am your king.
He says he qualifies his charge, lest they misunderstand him in verse 8.
What he's not rebuking them for is making sacrifices, verse 8.
I will not rebuke you for your sacrifices or burnt offerings which are continually before me.
So the issue isn't the fact that they're bringing sacrifices to God,
that was part of the covenant, wasn't it, to sacrifice to God, all the different sorts of sacrifices.
But there is an issue related to the sacrifices which we need to get to.
In verses 9 to 13 we are led to understand what the particular problem with these sacrifices is
and why their religion had become formalism, why they were just going through the motions.
Let's read it and see if we can understand what it's saying.
Verse 9 to 13, I will not take a bull from your house or goats out of your folds
for every beast of the forest is mine and the cattle on a thousand hills.
I know all the birds of the mountains and the wild beasts of the field are mine.
If I were hungry I would not tell you, for the world is mine and all its fullness.
Will I eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of goats?
What's God saying here to his people?
What has his people been thinking about sacrifice
and about their relationship to God through the sacrifice?
That's probably more the question.
It's a bit hard to fathom, isn't it, because we don't see lots of sacrifice,
we don't think in terms of blood sacrifice but if we were back in these days
the smell of animals' blood would have been inseparable from going to church.
Temples were just reaped of sacrifice, of blood and sacrifice and burning animal flesh.
That's what sacrifice is all about.
The temptation for Israel was to start thinking the way everybody else in religious lands
and everyone was religious about sacrifice and what was that?
Well, the basic thinking was you brought a sacrifice to your God to keep him happy,
possibly even to feed him. Maybe the gods needed this sacrifice to eat.
It was heathen thinking about sacrifice.
Had Israel fallen into that sort of heathen thinking about sacrifice
that God needed the blood of bulls and goats, that God somehow got hungry,
that God somehow was dependent upon them and needed to thank them
for sacrificing animals from their flocks and herds which was costly, was costly.
Can you see how formalism can come into worship?
Instead of Israel realising that God had saved them
and that sacrifice was a means that God had ordained for sinful people
to come before a holy God as a picture of the fact that sin is not easily dealt with,
that sin requires blood, requires death, requires an atonement between God and man
and that sin is a serious business and that this was a concession for God to make a way
for Israel to come to him who is the unapproachably holy God.
God didn't need their sacrifices. God wasn't hungry.
By coming to church, by offering sacrifices, they weren't doing God a favour
and therefore notching up brownie points with God so they could pat themselves on the back
and say, wow, aren't we good people? Look how we're looking after God.
No, sacrifice was not to be misunderstood.
God wanted sacrifice but he wanted it understood correctly,
not like the heathen understood sacrifice, not as religious people understand sacrifice,
not as religious people understand going to church,
that by going to church somehow you're doing God a favour,
giving up your precious time, giving up your precious money.
Yes, you're getting brownie points in heaven by going to church.
Can you see how formalism is shown here to be at the heart of God's first charge against Israel?
They'd fallen into the trap of thinking religiously rather than recognising
how the whole relationship had begun.
They hadn't done God a favour by bringing him sacrifices.
It wasn't their idea to look after God, it was God's idea to choose them,
to save them, to look after them.
Sacrifice was a recognition of their sinfulness and their need of God,
not of God's need of them.
So God reminds them and God gives them a verdict.
He says in verse 14, you must repent, you must change, you must turn around,
stop living this way, stop thinking this way.
Verse 14, offer to God thanksgiving.
The focus has to be on our heart, he's saying.
Be thankful when you bring your sacrifice, when you come to church.
Be thankful to me and pay your vows to the Most High.
Remember where you've come from.
Remember that you're only a people entirely because of my goodness and grace to you.
You'd still be slaves in Egypt if it wasn't.
You'd never be a people if it wasn't for me.
Abraham couldn't have children, many of the patriarchs couldn't have children.
It's all of my grace that you even exist.
Remember you owe me everything.
Remember to come with true thankfulness
and remember to do what you promise to do in response to my love.
Pay your vows to the Most High.
And verse 15, so the first thing he's calling upon Israel to do is to repent.
They'd got it wrong.
They'd been thinking wrongly about God, thinking that somehow they were earning God's favour
by what they were doing in bringing him these sacrifices and that God owed them.
No, no, he says, remember you owe me big time.
You owe me everything.
Come thankfully to me.
And verse 15, he says, believe.
Call upon me in the day of trouble and I will deliver you and you will glorify me.
That's the true response, always has been the response God is looking for in his people, isn't it?
Repentance and faith, turning away from our attitudes of rebellion and self-centredness
to attitudes of dependence and thankfulness and trust in God
and then having experienced God's salvation to glorify God, to give him the glory he so rightly has,
it's already his, but to declare that glory to others so that they might know this God too.
And then we get moved to the second charge in verse 16 to 23.
And the second charge so often in God's people goes along with the first charge.
If the first charge is one of formalism, thinking that we can gain God's favour
by this major's hypocrisy, thinking that God really doesn't see our hearts and our motives
and that we can just go through the motions, go formally, come to church and God is happy with that
and then we can live as we please for the rest of the week.
That's religion by and large, isn't it?
Thinking that, yep, keep God happy, the Roman religion was like that.
David Cook used to like to call it Nike religion.
What's Nike's slogan?
Just do it.
That's what the Romans wanted the Christians to do.
They just wanted them to just offer a little oblation to Caesar, a little oblation to the Gods,
keep the Gods happy, then do as you please, it doesn't matter, you just have to do this little thing.
Well, Israel was in danger of falling into that trap of formalism, just doing it
and then the heart being totally away from God.
Let's look at the next lot of verses.
It could be forgiven for thinking on first reading in verse 16 that God's now judging the wicked,
someone else other than his people, but no, it's still focused on his people.
But to the wicked God says,
What right have you to declare My statutes or take My covenant in your mouth,
seeing you hate instruction, and cast My words behind you?
And it's challenging, isn't it?
Because we are people who, like Israel of old, are so full of God's word, God's words.
We're so familiar with God's words.
We recite verses, we learn verses, as Israel did, no doubt.
The temptation then is to be familiar with the words
but to set aside their real meaning and to not fulfil their intent.
Israel had been guilty of speaking God's covenant, yes, going through the motions
which required reciting of the commandments and all sorts of other verbal responses to God
but in practice they were actually then just throwing them aside
because to read in verse 18 and following, their practice was so different to what they were speaking.
As they repeated the terms of the covenant, they then went and did otherwise.
Seeing you hate instruction and cast My words behind you, verse 17,
when you saw a thief, you consented with him and have been a partaker with adulterous.
You give your mouth to evil and your tongue frames deceit.
You sit and speak against your brother, you slander your own mother's son.
So God lays charges that show that Israel, if not actually, the people he's speaking to,
if not actually doing these things, now this is the interesting part,
when you saw a thief, he's not saying you were a thief but he says when you saw a thief,
you consented with him and have been a partaker with adulterous.
So he's not charging them formally with adultery and theft as much as associating with
and consenting with and going along with and agreeing with those who are doing these things
and it's challenging, isn't it, for us to think, do we really hate these things
or do we somehow sort of tolerate them? Do we have God's reaction?
Do we treat God's covenant seriously, God's word seriously on these issues
or do we turn a blind eye to things that we know are wrong
but really don't hate them like God hates them?
Maybe we talk about the word of God but maybe we don't really give it its full force
in our lives and change our lives on the basis of it.
This is what God was charging Israel with.
The use of our mouth, James, reminds me so much of the New Testament
and Jesus' challenges and James' challenges of how we live our lives
because he goes on to talk about our tongue.
How we use our tongue brings us undone so often, doesn't it?
Our tongue shows what's within us and so often we use our tongue in a way that is not honest.
It's what God charges his people with here and your mouth frames deceit.
You give your mouth to evil and your tongue frames deceit, I should say.
So easy, isn't it, to be deceptive in the way we speak.
It's so easy to think about our words and use them in a way that we know
will actually put a spin on the truth in order to protect ourselves
which is what we so often do, isn't it?
So really at that point, who are we depending upon?
We're depending upon ourselves and our own ingenuity to craft a way out of a situation that's uncomfortable
so we'd really not want to be shamed, we really don't want to be seen to have fallen short.
So we use our tongue in a way that is dishonest and God has picked Israel up on this.
Or we use our words to cut down someone else, slanderous words, even perhaps our own brothers and sisters.
We see it in the church too often, don't we?
That sort of hurtful use of the tongue and God says Israel, we're guilty of that too.
And again, what does he say about this?
In verse 21, these things you have done.
There's no argument about the charges.
God's not sort of calling Israel to defend itself because, as John reminded me,
it's not like the WMD affair, weapons of mass destruction.
It's not about misinformation, is the information correct or is it not?
God just knows this is right.
God sees everything we think, our motives, he knows all there is to know about us, doesn't he?
So there's no question of whether the judge has got it right.
He just has got it right.
These things you have done and I kept silent.
And God's silence, because if God were to judge every one of our thoughts,
every one of Israel's thoughts at every moment in time, God would never be silent, would he?
If God were to accuse us every time we did something wrong, it would be a constant accusation, wouldn't it?
But here God says, no, I kept silent and you thought that I was altogether like you.
Isn't that a danger in today's modern thinking?
God is so often thought of as like us that God will somehow turn a blind eye to things we do
that we know aren't right but we think somehow God will overlook it.
And as Christians, can't we presume upon God's grace because we know that God has saved us.
We know that God has worked miraculously in the person of Jesus to deliver us on the cross
and yet somehow we hide behind that, don't we, and think that then is an excuse for living as we please,
to presume upon God, maybe to think that God really doesn't really care how we live now.
And God's saying, well, don't think that of me.
I see all that is done that is wrong and I'm against it, I'm against it.
But I will rebuke you, he says in that verse, I will rebuke you and set them in order before your eyes.
So God is saying, look, I know all that you do that's wrong, I'm watching, I see it all
and I will rebuke you for it.
Just recently I've been reading a book and thinking about this concept of us as Christians being judged by God.
It's not a concept I think we talk about much, it's not a concept I don't think we think about much.
It's one I've tended to dismiss, I must say, and not thought seriously about.
We know we won't be accused by God and be condemned to hell if our trust is truly in Christ
and we are living by faith, by God's grace.
But we can sometimes then treat it as if everything else doesn't matter.
That somehow all those sins have been paid for and then they don't really hurt God
or don't really trouble God, the guy's not angry with sin still.
We are called as Christians to live as stewards.
Jesus often spoke in his parables, the New Testament is full of warnings.
Think about John's vision of Jesus coming to the churches to judge the churches.
John is overwhelmed, left for dead at the sight of the risen Lord Jesus Christ.
Jesus in his glory is overpowering.
So we're not to think of God as indifferent to sin in Christians and amongst the church.
God cares about how we live and wants us to live righteously.
He doesn't want us to become formalists and think somehow we're doing him a favour by being at church.
He wants us to be genuine and not hypocrites.
Verse 22 shows us that God can be very severe on his people.
Verse 22, now consider this, you who forget God, lest I tear you in pieces and there is none to deliver.
They're solemn words, aren't they?
God is a judge who is not to be trifled with.
Israel experienced God's tear in judgment, didn't they?
You've only got to look back in history and see the nation torn apart by God's judgment
because they refused to hear, they refused to repent, to heed the prophets.
When God is against us, who can be for us?
Who's going to stand up against God and win?
We certainly aren't.
No one we can enlist to help us is going to help us against God.
We're no opponent like God.
So lest we think that we can just come to church and by doing so we're doing God a favour,
this psalm should blow that notion to pieces.
Don't think, anyone here this morning, that just by coming to church you're in God's good books.
Don't think that God will not judge you and that hell is not a real option even if you came to church.
What solution? How can we escape God's judgment?
Well, the same way we began the Christian life is the way we must continue the Christian life.
We're called to repent.
Verse 22 calls us to think that God is a real God who will really judge sin
and verse 23 God says,
whoever offers praise glorifies Me and to him who orders his conduct aright
I will show the salvation of God.
God wants people whose hearts have been genuinely devoted to Him, doesn't He?
He doesn't just want formalists who go through the motion.
He calls us to true obedience, to actually delight in His salvation,
to really be thankful to Him for what He's done.
We sing tremendous songs every Sunday, don't we?
Songs that call us to praise God from the depths of our being for what He's done for us in Christ.
I mean Israel experienced such a wonderful salvation, didn't they, from Egypt.
Incredible experience of God's salvation going through that Red Sea
and then seeing the Egyptians drowned behind them as they tried to eschew Israel and destroy them.
But how much greater do we see God's salvation as Jesus, the Son of God.
God the Son becomes man, becomes a baby, grows up as a man, walks around this earth,
lives the covenant life to full obedience where every one of us fails,
every one of us is guilty before God.
Every one of us have no hope of pleasing God in and of ourselves, do we?
And yet Jesus lives that life of obedience perfectly.
He fulfils all the requirements of the covenant on our behalf
so that we, by faith in Christ, can praise God from our hearts that we have been saved.
That's how our worship should be every Sunday morning, shouldn't it?
Heartfelt praise.
No room for looking down at those who are outside of the church and thinking,
yes, one day God's going to get them thinking that we are earning faith with God by coming
and going through the motions. No, no.
God calls us constantly to repent and not to use our ingenuity to save ourselves.
Not to try and use our lips to come up with stories to excuse our sinfulness
but to come genuinely repenting before the Lord for our sinfulness
and genuinely accepting His sacrifice that He has so wonderfully provided for us in Christ.
This Psalm is very relevant to the church today just as it was back then.
Hebrews, Revelations, James, so many books of the Bible remind us that God is calling us to repent as well.
So yes, I think the application is pretty clear. I've sort of woven it in rather than left it to the end.
This Psalm applies to us at EVBC just as much as it does for Israel back 1,500 years ago
or more than 1,000 years before Christ.
So what do we do now?
I'm always impressed by the words of Dr Knox who I was told when he was retiring
as the principal of Moore College was asked what he was going to do in his retirement
and he simply said, I'm going to repent.
Of all the things you could plan to do, of all the things you could say about retirement,
to put that as fundamental to his retirement showed his attitude and should be our attitude, isn't it?
Repentance should be a daily exercise for all of us.
We can't ever think that we've notched up points with God
and we can then think of ourselves as better for it,
standing in God's sight because of our goodness.
This Psalm calls us to humility, repentance and faith in God. Let's pray.
Lord, we thank you that you are the awesome God who speaks.
We thank you for your Word that we have heard this morning that challenges us so deeply.
It's not a judgement upon the wicked out there but the wicked in here.
Lord, your Words show us that we must constantly repent because we are sinful people.
We must constantly depend upon your salvation because we can never save ourselves.
All our efforts at trying to gain favour with you or trying to excuse ourselves or attack others,
Lord, all those things are so patently obvious to you.
You see our motives, Lord, let alone our behaviours.
You see right through us. You know all there is to know about us.
We cannot hide from you, Lord, and unless we are in the Lord Jesus
and unless His righteousness is applied to us, we have no hope on the day of judgement.
No one can escape your courtroom and no one can argue their innocence.
No one can argue that you're unqualified to judge us.
Lord, that leaves us only two options.
We can either refuse to hear you and go our own way and be judged and condemned rightly
and torn apart by you or we can accept your wonderful offer of salvation in the Lord Jesus
and genuinely rely upon you for every grace we need, for forgiveness of our sins,
for ultimate deliverance in heaven itself and for the grace to live each day by faith in you.
Father, would you work in us that grace of repentance that we often, Lord, so tardy with?
Lord, we see within us these same tendencies to be formal, to go through the motions
but to have our hearts elsewhere.
We see within ourselves a tendency to hypocrisy, Lord, where we really deep down
would like to be enjoying the sins that we see others enjoying.
Lord, we pray that you'll forgive us for such attitudes.
We pray that you'll change us.
We pray that you'll make us a humble people who see that we desperately need your grace.
We could never get to heaven apart from the work of Jesus taking the curse
and the judgement upon himself that we so rightly deserve.
So, Lord, this morning would you accept our thanks and make us a thankful people, we pray. Amen.