Return to the Lord

You may not know it, but there is some degree of controversy around the sinner’s prayer.

It is part of revivalism and crusades, and has become adopted by much of mainstream Christianity.

We see it in practice in places like Harvest Crusades.

There is a preacher.

He makes an evangelistic appeal.

And thousands of people go forward for an altar call.

One at the altar call, they are lead in what is called the sinner’s prayer.

It’s basically, a prayer to become a believer.

Why is there controversy?

According to harvest.org, the official website for the Harvest Crusades, they have had 8.8 million people in attendance to these crusades.

And out of these 8.8 million people about 506,000 people have prayed the prayer.

The thinking is that 506,000 have prayed the prayer and are now Christians.

The controversy is where are these half a million people who have become Christians?

If a half a million people became Christians you should see the change.

Let me put a half a million people into perspective for us.

I have some stats from May of 2017.

Murrieta had about 115,000.

Temecula had about 111,000 people.

But that’s still not 500,000.

If I totaled all the people from the cities of Murrieta, Temecula, Wildomar, Menifee and Perris we’d only have 488,000 people.

Which is still short of the 506,000 people that Harvest claims has become a Christian at their crusade.

But imagine, that every single person from Temecula - Perris, on the stretch of the 215 and 15 freeways became a Christian.

What would this area look like?

It should be radically different.

Sadly, we can’t find these half a million people.

The problem with the sinners prayer and the method of revivalism that we see is that people are moved to make decisions, but are lacking true conversion.

This morning, I’d like to look at what a real sinner’s prayer looks like.

Open your Bibles to

Read .

A real sinners prayer begins with understanding your sins.

This passage begins by saying, “Return, O Israel, to the Lord your God, for you have stumbled because of your iniquity.”

He says you have stumbled.

I don’t think stumble is a word that accurately reflects what sin looks like.

I stumble when I’m walking and I hit my toe on the curb.

My feet get tripped up, I momentarily lose my balance, but my face never hits the pavement.

Think of the old life alert woman on those old commercials.

Did she stumble?

No, “I fell and I can’t get up.”

She’s lying on the ground.

She hit the ground hard.

Hosea is a great romance story, but also a picture of God’s love for His people.

It begins with God telling Hosea to go and marry a prostitute.

You can probably see the problem with this.

We aren’t talking Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman.

We aren’t talking about the girl next door, who got mixed up in something bad and wants to be taken care of.

We are talking about a prostitute, who loves getting paid for what she loves doing.

So Hosea finds a prostitute, her name’s Gomer, and they get married.

But they don’t live happily ever after.

Inevitably, Gomer does what Gomer loves, and she goes back to being a prostitute.

She ends up having children with other people.

Hosea ends up naming these children names that represent their mother’s sin.

Jezreel - A reminder that God will bring judgment upon Israel.

No Mercy

And Not My People.

Hosea’s marriage becomes a picture of Israel’s sin with God.

If Israel was married to God, Israel has been having many affairs.

She’s turned her back on the Lord, and embraced other nations and their gods.

And now God is furious.

You see, it says that they have stumbled because of their iniquity, it doesn’t mean you’ve gotten a little tripped up.

It means you’ve fallen hard on the pavement.

It’s more like jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge and belly flopping into the water and having every organ rupture inside of you.

Stumbling over sin is death.

says, “for all sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

Some have seen a comparison to archery in the word sin.

The Greek word for sin is harmartia.

It can mean to miss the mark.

The archery comparison, is that archer pulls back the bowstring, breathes, aims … and it’s not as if the arrow just missed the bullseye.

Falling short, means it misses the entire target.

It fell 10 feet short.

No points.

Embarrassment.

Completely failure as the archer.

God has said live this way.

We’ve missed the mark.

We’ve stumbled.

We’ve fallen.

We are disqualified for anything but His fury.

The first step in a proper sinner’s prayer is understanding what your sins is.

The next step in a proper sinner’s prayer is asking for forgiveness.

If you understand how terrible your sin is then you understand that only God can remove your sin.

Isaiah says that our sins are as scarlet

They are a stain upon your record.

One early morning I was driving and it was cold outside.

Sometimes when it’s cold outside, it’s fun to roll down the windows and turn the heat on high.

I don’t know why but it feels good.

On this particular cold, morning, there was a dead skunk on the road, and I hit him.

I must have hit a stink bubble or something, but that smell permeated my car.

For a few days the inside of my car reaked.

I couldn’t get rid of that smell.

Sin sticks to us, like the smell of skunk to my car.

In verse 2, what’s interesting is the words are given to us.

“Take away all iniquity.”

Take away my sin.

The language there is as if God physically takes hold of our sins and walks away with them.

They are disposed of.

“though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be white as snow;”

They are removed.

Not only do our sins need to be carried away, but there needs to be a life change.

This is what is missing in most sinner’s prayers.

A prayer is said, they are dubbed Christian, and then they go home.

Never to be seen again.

500,000 people said a prayer, given assurance of salvation, and never heard from.

Notice that the prayer doesn’t end at take away my sin, it continues.

“we will pay with bulls the vows of our lips.”

God is desiring a people.

The proper word is repentance.

God expects repentance.

He expects us to not just ask for forgiveness, but to pursue obedience.

And if there is no obedience, then there is no forgiveness, because it’s a dead faith.

It’s a hypocritical faith.

It’s a faith that pretends to be something that its not.

This repentance is not a one and done thing, it continues your whole life.

As you grow in your faith, you’ll have things brought to your mind and you’ll realize it was wrong.

Look at verse 3, “Assyria shall not save us; we will not ride on horses; and we will say no more, ‘Our God,’ to the work of our hands. In you the orphan finds mercy.”

It’s not just say, “I’m sorry for sin, and here’s a sacrifice.”

It’s a complete surrender to God.

It’s a complete repentance.

Israel, had this hope that Assyria would save them from the Persians, and from the Babylonians.

And in an effort to please the Assyrians they would even take up idolatry.

Their conversion is not just a prayer of forgiveness, and the confession of God as Lord, but it is also supposed to be a surrender of our own pride.

This is the acknowledgment that God’s ways are better than our ways.

This is practically worked out by continually being in God’s Word.

You must spend time reading God’s Word.

You must spend time reading God’s Word every day, so that the pressing needs of your life are brought under the Lordship of Jesus.

Everyone loves assurance

When a person prays the sinner’s prayer, it’s always this great happy moment.

The preacher up front says welcome to the family of God.

Again, 500,000 people have been given this assurance, with no fruit to show of it.

I remember one time seeing Ray Comfort preach.

At the end of his sermon he had something like an altar call.

He prayed, and after he prayed everyone clapped.

He stopped the clapping and he said these words, and I’ll never forget them.

He said, “You don’t clap when you plant a seed for a tree. You clap when you see the tree has grown and is bearing fruit.”

And the same here, we know that a conversion has taken place, not just when a prayer of faith is made, but when the person puts into action the Lordship of Christ and a life of repentance.

And when these things are done, then you can clap.

Verse 3 concludes by saying, “In you the orphan finds mercy.”

You know that sins are removed, and you have been born again, when you can see:

A life that depends upon Christ for the forgiveness of sins.

A life that obediently lives out the Lordship of Christ.

And a life that continues to repent and trust in Him.

Then you can celebrate and say, I’m definitely a member of the family of God.

What’s your conversion like?

I imagine that you’ve asked for the forgiveness of sins.

But have you continued to repent?

Have you continued to place yourself at the mercy of God, and acknowledge His Lordship?

Pray