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Be glad in the Lord, and rejoice
O righteous
and shout for joy all you upright in heart! Psalm 32:11
I came across this verse in my Bible reading this morning. We like joy,
don’t we? We like the idea of feeling joy, experiencing the joyful life.
We like being told to feel joyful and rejoice. We hope that our lives
will be filled with joy, and we seek it as a Fruit of the Spirit.
On the other hand, this verse comes at the end of a Psalm about
confessing sin to the Lord. In our society today, we’re glad to talk
about feeling good things but considerably less excited to talk about
confessing our sin. Even in more conservative settings, we may like to
talk about confession, but how frequently do we confess our sins to God?
When I was younger, I heard that God doesn’t hear the prayer of sinners,
only the righteous. This concept is supported by various scriptures
including James 5:16, “The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man
avails much,” and the blind man’s argument (probably taken from some of
the ideas in the Psalms) in John 9:31, “Now we know that God does not
hear sinners; but if anyone is a worshiper of God and does His will, He
hears him” and Psalm 34:15-16:
The eyes of the LORD are on the righteous,
And His ears are open to their cry.
The face of the LORD is against those who do evil,
To cut off the remembrance of them from the earth.
Ok, I agree. But I was disturbed by the way it was reiterated to me from
various teachers when I was younger.
If you follow the argument to its conclusion, it means that if you sin,
God won’t listen. Guess what? I’ve sinned. So have you. So have we all.
So where does that put us? Does that mean that at the lowest points in
our lives we can’t turn to God because he won’t listen?
That’s the impression I got from the teaching that I heard on this
topic. God isn’t like that though. He does desire for the sinner to turn
to him and pray and seek forgiveness. Look at Psalm 51:17:
“The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit,
A broken and a contrite heart—
These, O God, You will not despise.”
And just after the verses above in Psalm 34:18:
The LORD is near to those who have a broken heart,
And saves such as have a contrite spirit.
A broken and contrite heart, a broken spirit, those
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are considered a sacrifice to God. In the psalmist’s day a sacrifice
meant a gift to God for purification and cleansing. When we need
forgiveness and cleansing, a broken and contrite heart is exactly what
God desires and accepts. How many times does the Bible reiterate turning
to God from our sin, and He will forgive and restore us? It’s our hope.
He listens when we call out to Him, even when we call out to Him as
sinners.
So back to the idea that God doesn’t hear the sinner. He obviously
listens to the sinner with the broken and contrite heart, so what does
it mean that “God does not hear sinners”? What I think we’re talking
about here is not the sinner who calls out to God, but rather the sinner
reveling in his or her sin. After all, if you are not interested in
God’s help, how can you really be calling to God for help? It’s not so
much that God is unwilling to listen, but the problem is that this kind
of sinner is unwilling to talk to God. Even when he appears to be
praying, he’s not praying so much to God as to himself. Let me give you
a clear example of this.
Jesus tells the parable of the two men praying in the temple in Luke 18.
The Pharisee consumed in self-righteousness prays about all the
wonderful things he is doing, but the tax collector beats his breast and
prays “God, be merciful to me a sinner!” Which one of these did God
listen to? Guess what? It was the one with the contrite heart who knew
he was a sinner. The Pharisee was only talking to himself because he
couldn’t be bothered to let go of his pride and look to God.
Therefore, when you fall into sin, the first place you must turn is to
God. Don’t listen to Satan’s lie that you can’t call out to God because
He doesn’t want to listen to you, a sinner. Remember the lost stories in
Luke 15, lost sheep, lost coin, lost son? Remember the moral of the
story? Jesus said, “I say to you that likewise there will be more joy in
heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine just persons
who need no repentance.” Repent and call out to God! And know that He’s
always there to hear us if we are willing to call out to Him and not
rely on ourselves.
So what do those verses mean which emphasize God hearing the righteous
over the sinner? It’s not self-righteousness, but actually a reminder of
the blessing of being truly in tune with God. The one who walks
according to God’s will and with an intimate knowledge of God will be
praying according to God’s will. Isn’t that the kind of prayer that will
avail much? Let’s grow then in a knowledge of Him through a study of His
word, so that we may pray according to His will and see what God will do
with our prayers. |
