An overview for Sunday School teachers and Bible study leaders of Lifeway’s “Explore the Bible” lesson for August 3, 2025, Psalm 32:1-11, “God’s Forgiveness.” Includes a sample introduction to the lesson, text outline & highlights, illustrations you can share, discussion questions for your group, and spiritual life applications. A video version of this overview is available on YouTube at:
INTRODUCTION:
You could open (or close!) this week’s lesson with this story:
“’Irresistible’ is the very word an Iranian student used when telling (John R.W. Stott) of his conversion to Christ. Brought up to read the Koran, say his prayers and lead a good life, he nevertheless knew that he was separated from God by his sins. When Christian friends brought him to church and encouraged him to read the Bible, he learnt that Jesus Christ had died for his forgiveness. ‘For me the offer was irresistible and heaven-sent,’ he said, and he cried to God to have mercy on him through Christ. Almost immediately ‘the burden of my past life was lifted. I felt as if a huge weight … had gone. With the relief and sense of lightness came incredible joy. At last it had happened. I was free of my past. I knew that God had forgiven me, and I felt clean. I wanted to shout, and tell everybody. It was through the cross that the character of God came clearly into focus for him, and that he found Islam’s missing dimension, ‘the intimate fatherhood of God and the deep assurance of sins forgiven’.”
(John R.W. Stott, The Cross of Christ, p. 42)
Then share how in today’s lesson in Psalm 32, we see how OUR sins too can be forgiven, if we will confess them to the Lord.
ALTERNATE INTRODUCTION (or use elsewhere in the lesson):
Psalm 32 was the favorite of Augustine of Hippo Regis, whom many call “St. Augustine”. Augustine had lived a very sinful, profligate life before he came to Christ as an adult, famously through the tearful prayers of his mother Monica. He wrote of the message of Psalm 32:
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